For those who need to understand how the Web is transforming the way businesses work, yada yada yada
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| Issue:
March 15, 1999 Author/Editor: David Weinberger Central Meme: Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy Favorite Beatle: John. Duh. Current Personal Crisis: Bought a new frying pan ... and realized it's probably the last one I'll buy before I die. Home page: http://www.hyperorg.com Contact information: Click here. |
ContentsDiversity and the Web Lunch Table: Will the Web let dogs and cats play together, overcoming mutual prejudice? Or will it let cats find other cats and dogs find other dogs?
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It's a JOHO World After All I'm making myself sick with the self-promotion I do under the title "It's a JOHO World ...". So, until I come up with a better way to inflate my own standing, I'll just say here that KMWorld and Intranet Design Magazine both run columns of mine, and AIIM's Inform is using a bunch of stuff. Because I'm still so impressed with myself about the NPR gig, though, I will note in this space when they run a commentary. Ok? People who really want to know more can apply for position of David's Mom, the previous occupant having come to a sorry end a few years ago. http://www.kmworld.com/feature.articles/index_articles.cfm?content=Turing |
Diversity and the Web Lunch Table
Note to our non-American readers: "Diversity" is a code-word we use to stand for avoiding the incredible coincidences that result in senior management consisting only of white men. I mean, what are the chances! But it does happen occasionally here in the States and maybe even other parts of the globe. Go figure! |
Let's assume we're all decent people and want a diverse workforce and a diverse
management team. Then, why don't we have 'em? And
will the Web help or hurt?
A couple of weeks ago, a CEO of a small company raised the diversity
issue with me. As he builds his company, he wants to ensure that the currently
white-male team changes its stripes, so to speak. I suggested that the only
way to do that is to hire people he doesn't like. This advice, obviously,
can only be agreed to by not actually thinking about it.
This CEO is sincere, well-intentioned and genuinely disturbed by institutional
racism and sexism. Even so, when the doors are closed and he's relaxing with
his white male management team, the atmosphere is that of Delta Tau Techno,
with sexist joking comments (nothing outrageous — just the usual male discomfort
with women), one-upping banter, and lots of bravado about kicking other companies'
asses.
So, now we come to the Web where no one knows you're a dog, male, white,
female, short, ugly, raven-haired, skinny, brown, hairy-backed, Moslem, beautiful, pimpled, obese, one-armed, omnisexual, naked, Baptist, lisping, muscular,
firm-gripped or Keanu Reaves. Sounds like just the thing for diversity!
Well, yes and no.
Yes, because for the first time we can have communities of interest that
are founded purely on interests, without any of the superficialities that
distract us small-minded humans.
No, because if there really are differences among groups, then in the frictionless
world of the Web, it will be easier than ever for groups of like-minded people
to cluster. But this clustering will exclude the unlike-minded, thus tending against diversity.
We'll end up eating at lunch tables with people just like us (virtually speaking).
This is the ineluctable result of two premises:
First, there are real differences among groups. That is, some generalizations
are true. (Remember, generalizations are true if they are generally true;
they do not have to be true in every case.) Women and men generally do not
approach problems the same way. Americans often have values and expectations
divergent from Europeans, Japanese, etc.
Second, people value those who are like them. (Beware: this is another
generalization.) A group of white men who are sincerely trying to diversify
while admitting "qualified" women and people of color will not feel comfortable
and will not value precisely what is different about the people they want
to bring on board. So, they may achieve diversity in looks but not in thought,
opinion, values and action.
So, how can we achieve real diversity on the Web and in our organizations?
One of our two premises has to give. Either we decide that all people are
basically the same or we make an effort to value what we don't value and to
like people we don't like.
The first premise ain't going anywhere. It requires us to put our hands over
our eyes and stop our ears with wax so we can believe that everyone is like
us. How convenient. And then we're not achieving diversity but merely willfully
decreasing our awareness of difference.
The second premise can be overcome by the principle of sympathy which says
that in the history of the world, it is always a good thing to include wider
and wider groups of people (and other animals) in the circle of beings we
care about and value. You never go wrong by extending your circle of sympathy.
So, concretely, what do you do? You fall back on the truisms that have escaped
from billions of lips in our time on earth: Try to find the good in people.
You bastards.
You might also want to pursue some Diversity Tips:
Don't flame. We're trying to learn that not everyone who fundamentally disagrees with us is a stupid jerk. But flamers are ashholes, disagreeing just to get attention. So, don't flame. Come on, everyone, out of the closet! We're never going to learn to love
people like you unless we find out that you're a person like you. Laugh at yourself. You are a really, really ridiculous creature. If we can't learn to like — and learn to learn from — people we don't like,
then there's no hope. So, keep hope alive! Take someone you detest to lunch
today!
Just as television diminished theatre, and cars diminished the scenery through which we drive, XML — certainly an important innovation — will diminish an important part of our current experience: writing documents. Instead, we'll be filling in more and more forms. Imagine that you are using
XML to drive an application for lawyers so that they can write up their notes
on client meetings in a way that will make the notes searchable and reusable.
Right now, the lawyers are using Word and writing them up any way they want.
But you want to make sure that all these notes start with a client number,
the date, the time, the length of the meeting, whether it was billable, the
case number, etc. XML lets you do this because
it is an SGML application, so you can write a Document Type Definition (DTD)
that not only specifies the tags you need to capture this data, but also the
rules for what will count as a valid — acceptable — meeting notes document.
But how are you going
to get your lawyers to follow the dictates of the DTD? Even if you give them
explicit instructions, some of them are going to decide that before they write
in the client name, they need to insert a note that the client is a subsidiary
of some other company. So, they do so whether or not you want them to. (By
the way, if this happens a lot, you designed your DTD wrong.) You could now start
writing Word macros that keep the lawyerse from doing the wrong thing. But you are
now in effect writing your own SGML editor. You should first pluck out your own eyeballs and replace them
with lemon-soaked golf balls before you agree to such an undertaking. So, what do you do? Easy:
You give your lawyers a form. You may design the form in Word or go with one
of the dedicated forms packages (which are starting to output in XML). But
a form makes it much harder for an author to stray. Forms are the way we constrain
writers. XML lets organizations benefit from structured, predictable documents.
Thus, XML breeds forms. QED. The big advantage of the
Open Buying on the Internet standard is that it's not EDI (Electronic Data
Interchange). And that may be enough to make it stick. EDI's been around since
money became popular and it has a bully's reputation. It enables a company
and its supply chain partners to automate transactions by sending one another
simple electronic messages that say things (in code) like: Msg #33: "I'd like
to buy 144 ballpeen hammers, my good man." Msg #145: "Excellent! I happen to have 144 on hand. They cost $2 each
but I can let you have a gross for $240." Msg #122: "That is excellent news. Are they left-handed?" Msg #289: "Dash it all. They're not." Msg #205: "Just kidding. Send me a gross of your very ripest." Msg #323: "Consider it done." This type of exchange, which can take place tens of thousands of times a
day for a major retailer, works very well but is durned expensive. The EDI
systems are a bear to install and run over expensive leased lines. Worse,
if you want to do EDI with your partners, you have to get your suppliers to
adopt the same EDI system that you use. Enter the Web. What does the Web do superbly well? Connectivity and standards.
Further, the Web scales well, so it can handle a huge volume of small transactions. So, the OBI consortium (www.openbuy.com) has built a standard that leverages
the Web for business-to-business electronic commerce. It uses the EDI messaging
structure, but wraps it in HTML so that all your suppliers need is a Web connection
and the URL of your OBI server. The information about pricing and availability
can be fed in automatically from your backend systems, and final payment can
be handled through an outside and trusted payment authority. OBI faces competition and overlap from XML EDI and the new cXML, but it also
has big names like American Express and Netscape behind it. It's got a snowball's
chance of surviving. And if not, something else will. It's too obvious a use
of the Web...
"We are thinking
about being the knowledge-sharing company," he [Greg Cholmondeley,
Xerox DocuShare product manager] said. "That's what you use documents
for." Intranet World (Feb. 22) "We are thinking of becoming the knowledge-storing company," said
Craig Flarney, product manager for the IronDrawers 1000 line of filing cabinets.
"That's what you use filing cabinets for." "We are thinking of becoming the knowledge-restoration company,"
said Maria Klopp, product manager for the LikeNew line of finish restoration
products. "People refinish their desks so they can do more and better
knowledge." "We are thinking of become the knowledge-occasioning company,"
said Felicia Marcus, Charmin' SoftSqueeze product manager. "People often
do their best thinking while wiping their ass." Microsoft has let leak its "plan" to enter the KM space. An upgrade
to Site Server, code named "Tahoe," will supposedly add document
management, version control, workflow and searching. Some technology code-named
"Polar" is supposed to add collaboration, workflow and "document
tracking," using technologies from SQL and Exchange Servers. The KM vendors immediately, of course, all issued press releases, bravely
saying: "Microsoft's commitment to this field validates the KM market
and the need of major corporations in today's competitive environment to aggressively
embrace these new solutions no matter what the price and how murky the benefit." But, in fact, Microsoft's entry into this field doesn't validate so much
as denigrate it. These non-announcements are less like a serious endorsement
and more like a "KM? Yeah, we do that too. Whatever." They're intended
to do nothing but make it harder for Lotus to publish a checklist with a big
red check in the KM box for them and a big fat nothing for Microsoft. Forget the fact that Microsoft can't even get its leaks right — they announce
workflow twice and count document management, document tracking and document
version control as three separate things. The real issue is that document
management is harder than it seems. That's why Oracle has failed three times
to offer a credible document management product even though they'd love to
build it into their "operating system." In short, here's the bottom line, as they like to say where they have writing
confused with general accounting: Microsoft's KM efforts validate the KM market the way Microsoft Bob validated
the artificial intelligence market. (For a spin that's a little less jaundiced about KM in general,
but is still pretty spicy reading, take a look at a column by Jim Montgomery
of KMWorld: http://www.kmworld.com/feature.articles/index_articles.cfm?content=MicrosoftHere)
We at JOHO are proud to
introduce a new feature in which we discover people who are infallible or
who work for companies that are. As we lesser mortals know all too well, most
of us are full of faults and succeed as much by luck as by our talent and
God-given good looks. But then there are the few who have achieved perfection
and won't ever stray from it. Well, if you were perfect, would you ever give
it up? Good for you!
Number one in our series
is is Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com (which is, by the way, a prominent member
of the JOHO Affiliate Program) who was asked by PC Week (March 8) a softball
final question in an interview: " What would you change about Amazon?
"
Bezos' reply:
"I
do think it is the leader in e-commerce. The thing I would change is how
long it takes the PC to turn on. The time it takes is completely unnecessary."
By the way, those who
are looking to short Amazon stock should take heart from Bezos' strong reaction
to the initial question "Will Amazon become a Web department store?"
"I disagree with
that premise. We're trying to innovate in the electronic commerce arena.
We ... can't be pigeon-holed. We defy easy analogy. It's not a vision that
can be communicated in a sound-bite. Come and discover and buy anything
online." Hey, Jeff, we go to Amazon
because it's a friggin' book store, ok? Try to
stay on message, ok. It's not a really complicated vision. In fact, it's sort
of like a sound-bite.
(And, if Amazon's a place
where you can buy anything, isn't that pretty much what we mean by the phrase
"department store"?)
Scott McNealy, 1987: "The network is the computer." Scott McNealy, 1999: "You already have zero privacy
— get over it." When JOHO confronted Mr. McNealy with this juxtaposition, he replied: "Juxtaposition? Wouldn't the two statements have
to be different to be in juxtaposition. Hey, get over it."
There's too much Linux
news for us to pretend to capsulize it. Basically, everyone who hates Microsoft
now officially loves Linux, including cabbies stiffed by Bill Gates and two
ex-product managers who sold their shares too early.
The big news is that there's
now an attempt to agree on a Linux Standard Base (LSB) to ensure that applications
are portable across different Linux distributions. The idea comes from Transmeta,
the incredibly vaguely named ("Acme Zenith Corp.") employer of Linus
"The Originator" Torvalds, but is now being embraced by Intel, Silicon
Graphics, HP, Compaq and IBM — and by four major Linux distributors.
But the real reason to
care about this is that it enables us to cite Bob Young, CEO of RedHat who
was quoted in PC Week (March 8) as follows: "LSB is a valuable exercise,
but over time, we've always seen Linux merge back to one standard without the
assistance of some overriding standards body. That Unix-like vulcanization
doesn't happen in the open-source world."
Ah, I hate it when a standard
turns into hardened rubber — resilient while inflexible. Alternatively, I
hate it when standards cross-breed with Leonard Nimoy.
Steve Telleen of GIGA
points us to:
where Bloomberg of the
Bloomberg Report opines on why everyone will always be eager to pay him $1,200/month
for his news feed. Yeah, and in the year 2005 we'll still be paying $18 for
a CD...
By the way, if he lost
the final G of his name, would anyone ever have taken him seriously? The Bloomber
Report? I don't think so.
Jerry Jongerius sends
us to:
which shows you not only
a list of routers standing between you and your Web destination but a map
of the globe with lines drawn to show the geophysical location of the routers,
giving you a warm glow of One Worldism.
The ubiquitous Jim Montgomery
sends us the following from The Industry Standard:
Wondering
where you rank in the media's pecking order? If you write for online pubs,
and you believe PC Mag's gregarious John Dvorak, you're basically a bottom-feeder. Wait a minute, we're lower
on the ladder than John Dvorak, a man who writes multiple monthly columns
about how Intel's next generation microcode will blow goats, because his self-centered,
whining words are on paper and our self-centered, whining words are on totally
recyclable electrons?
Well, I guess he's right.
In response to the ubiquitous
posting that "President Clinton of the USA" anagrams to "To
copulate he finds interns," an article by Timothy Noah and Bruce Gottlieb
in Slate points to an anagram server at http://www.anagramgenius.com/
that tells us that the same phrase also anagrams to:
"Nice flaunter,
pot dishonest"
"Counterfeit dishonest
plan"
"Rats! Telephone
disfunction"
and
"'Let's fornicate'
not punished!" BTW, shouldn't that first
one be "Nice pot, dishonest flaunter!"?
Apropos of just about
nothing, Mark Schenecker sends along the following hoary anagrams:
And Astronomers = Moon
starers. I am certainly looking forward to the next lexical fad to hit JOHO,
which will probably be palindromes. (Or should I say I'm looking forward and
backward to it...)
Greg Cavanagh passes long
these two links:
www.x86.org
for "awesome processor info," and
http://www.x86.org/News/HotNews.html
"The register files at the bottom are interesting." Well, everything
is interesting if you care enough.
Lockheed Martin is using an extranet to manage the design of a new
fighter aircraft. All the suppliers involved — eventually 200 companies
— have to move to online documentation if they haven't already done
so. (They also are being asked to stop buttoning the top button of their
sport shirts, but that's just for aesthetic reasons.) The result is that instead of sending papers around, there is a permanent
pool of information (don't forget to shower before you enter) that is
available to everyone with permission. In fact, Lockheed Martin's customer
for the project, The US Air Force, also is able to watch the project
develop and thus can influence design decisions early on, such as where
the cup holders should go. Lockheed Martin is using Open Text Livelink for the system. Open Text
is my alma mater, but JOHO remains an equal opportunity plugger and
you can rest assured that no "money" has "changed hands." Cool
Tool Keith Dawson's newsletter, tbtf (http://tbtf.com),
points us to one of the coolest spots on the web: http://www.bookmarklets.com.
Here you'll find a bunch of ultra-slim JavaScript utilities that you
save as a bookmark and execute from your bookmark list. Each is under
256 characters (the maximum size for a bookmark) but lets you do some
pretty useful things, such as: Hide the background image of a page you're visiting Put a temporary bookmark within the page so you can jump around Place selected text into an editable window See the size of the page in terms of the number of windows it'd take
to display it There are dozens more at this site, all free. And even if they weren't
useful, the idea is just too cool.
The always affable, remarkably beautiful, and under-attorneyed Peter Merholz
replies to last issue's running of a frame-jacking contest entry from him:
Um. David. I sent you no
such email. Of course he didn't! No no no. It was from Gershom Bazerman. JOHO apologizes
profusely to both of you, without, of course, acknowledging any blame, responsibility
or damages.
And while we're noting the oddly endearing fallibility of JOHO, last issue
I wrote:
"They site Forrester research
as follows:" Jeff Mann replies:
It is a sign of the faith
I have in your publication that I actually read this as trying to say how
they had put Forrester stuff on a web site, instead of citing it. Yeah, that's what I meant. And make me #2 in the series Myths of Infallible
People.
The real Peter Merholz writes, in relation to the special issue on virtual
vs. real reality: If you go to http://www.magicaldesk.com/,
you'll note that they offer you "your personal virtual desktop,"
which is a service that allows you to manage core personal computer needs—email,
address book, calendar, file storage, file viewing, etc—through a Web site.
I visited the site a few times before I realized the semantic leaping of
their phrase "virtual desktop." Think about it for a sec. By virtual,
they mean, "over the Web," and in doing so suggest that your computer's
desktop is "real." Ahem. Does this mean HCI people
will stop worrying over the verisimilitude of the "desktop metaphor"
as it's no longer metaphorical? And since you may already have a virtual desktop, i.e., a scrollable desktop
that is larger than its viewing portal, this would be a virtual virtual desktop.
This is becoming a virtually useless term. Really. By the way, you can read the original article at:
Clinton Glenn also responds to our article on virtuality vs. reality:
Are you saying Monopoly
money isn't real? Tell that to your friends and/or family after you've wiped
out their last Monopoly dollar, kicked them out of their plastic houses
and hotels, and taken their last deed to Ventnor Ave. Look at the disgust
for you on their faces and tell me my Monopoly money isn't real. If we take John Austin's point, then we only talk about "real" Monopoly
money if we are drawing a distinction with some sort of illusory Monopoly
money. Monopoly money might be said to be real compared with imitation Monopoly
money but toy compared with real currency. And while there's counterfeit real
money, is counterfeit Monopoly money a possibility?
Just one of the many faux-Wittgensteinian questions I used to ponder when we lived on Ventnor Ave. — the real Ventnor Ave. (No, not all
the houses are green.)
We also received a reply to the virtuality-reality article from Marty Heyman:
The present writer humbly
submits this in hopes of not aggravating the Doctor's aggravated nervous
state. The article seems based on an assumption that is quite difficult
to accept: digital things are accurate or trustworthy "records," in the
sense that a birth-certificate or automobile title or passport or airline
ticket is accepted as a "record." While any of the above can be forged,
the incidence of such forgeries is relatively infrequent. It's hard to do
a passable forgery and most people lack the patience, tools, and skills.
Not so with digital artifacts.
It is relatively trivial to modify a digital artifact unless they are sealed
in some signature format. Thus most people have no idea if a document is
a "record" of some consequence or if it is one of the many insignificant
versions of some file of that name. Aside from signed messages, we are unaware
of any widely accepted technology that creates a "record" from digital content
that can be reliably transmitted and provably correct content retrieved.
This would seem to be one of the weak spots on the road to the cultural
shift you're (rightly, in our opinion) advocating. Marty goes on to do the Full Disclosure thang, pointing out that his company
is working in this area. And God Speed to him and his ilk, for digital records
still are (in many instances and many ways) the "real" record of which the
paper version is merely a print out. The fact that these digital records aren't
very secure is the type of fact we need to keep ignoring if we're going to
get this digital economy off the ground.
Sir Kyle of Patrick writes:
I found that hyperlinked
fiction page ... (http://web.uvic.ca/~ckeep/elab.html)
very ironic. It's an awful page, just because the people who wrote it have
no concept of context for their links. Excuse me? These are supposedly people
well versed in the literary theory behind hyperlinks, and here they made
a page less navigable than half of Geocities... Yes, it's a bad site for interesting reasons. Too many links, not enough
context, not enough structure. I defy anyone to willingly visit more than
5 pages of this site.
...Or is it .... The Future???
Tony McKinley, sends us the following Fun Fact:
Scanning service bureaux
are noticing an increased demand for scanning emails printed on paper which
then need to be OCR'd and cleaned up back into ASCII. Now *there's* a job breeding secretaries running their fingers longingly
along the business end of their letter openers.
Ted Froberg sends us the following in our series "Satanism: The Other White
Meat":
Your declaration of "open
season" on IBM's Global Services ad (People who think. People who
do. People who get it.) reminded me of an ad I recently saw in the
latest issue of Discover Magazine (I believe it's the March issue). The
double-page spread appearing on pages 2 and 3 is an ad for an upcoming ABC
television special titled The Century with Peter Jennings.
The ad features a strange graphic image of Earth's full disk. Why strange?
If you rotate the page 45 degrees counter-clockwise you'll notice the cloud
patterns form an eerie image of a human skull just above the letters ur in
the word Century. ... Yes, that's Ur Skull, The Scourge of Y2K! Flee before it's too late!
David Isenberg sends the following:
OTTAWA, Feb 16 (Reuters)
- Finance Minister Paul Martin said on Tuesday he was expanding efforts
to make Canada the most wired nation on earth with hundreds of millions
of dollars in new technology spending, including establishing experimental
"smart" communities among Natives and in the Arctic.
Among new initiatives,
Canada will spend C$60 million over the next three years to set up one
so-called "Smart Community" demonstration project in each of the 10 provinces,
in the North and in a Native Indian community.
. . .
One government official
said such projects could involve experiments that would allow police departments
to electronically notify a household if a child had gone missing or social
workers could develop digital voice mail to stay in touch with the homeless
on the streets. . . . I can see it now . . . "Buddy,
can you spare a micropayment?" You have to be concerned when the examples are so farfetched. It reminds
me of the mid-80s when the PC manufacturers were telling us that there'd be
a PC (i.e., a $5,000 green-and-black PC-AT) in every home because you could
tell it how many people you were having for dinner and it'd print out recipes
with just the right amounts of ingredients! This was back before we understood
that the real driving force behind the computerization of the American household
would turn out to be a little somethin' called Pamela Anderson.
A couple of people forwarded the following to me:
To start let me say this, I'm tired of the porn email in my email box
and all that click here crap. ... I've spend [sic] seven hours or more a day for the last two
months researching the topic of Spam on the Internet.... In this time I
have practiced everything I have learned in blocking this crap mail they
call professional advertising and in the last few weeks I have not yet received
one piece of Spam. ...
....To order my detailed report and provide your help in fighting spam
send $15 to the address below and lets [sic] all, together, put a stop to spam
once and for all.
K.C. Smith
Filling out forms for
XML
Buzz Soup: OBI
Xerox: The Whatever Company
Microsoft's KM
The Myth of Human Fallibility, Part 1
Tag line evolution
Linux Vulcanization
Links
I Like
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Dormitory
Dirty Room
Evangelist
Evil's Agent
Desperation
A Rope Ends It
The Morse Code
Here Come Dots
Slot Machines
Cash Lost in 'em
Alec Guinness
Genuine Class
A Decimal Point
I'm a Dot in Place
Eleven plus two
Twelve plus one
To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler in the
mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero,
Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.
Middle World Resources
A Compendium of
Resources
Walking
the Walk
For the Hyperlinked Organization
Email, Arbitrary Insults, and Suspicious Hacking Coughs
http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-jan23-99-special.html
Dear Internet User:
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Evansville, IN 47711