October 24, 2002

Digital IDs

At DigitalID World I learned many small things and a few big ones. The small ones I've already forgotten (heck, it's been three days already!). So here are four of the bigger ones:

1. IDs are useful but not the center of the world

The sign on the banner in the conference hotel said that Digital ID is at the center of it all, but I'm still not convinced. Eric Norlin — the sort of person who goes from helping to run a successful conference one day to running in a marathon the next, oblivious to the depth of the resentment this causes — makes a good case for all the commerce and fun digital ID systems will enable. But I'm not convinced. Yes, a digital ID would let me avoid multiple sign-ins as I traverse various Web sites, but the convenience isn't worth the illness-at-ease that registering with Microsoft Passport would cause. And even without a digital ID system, I can use my credit card right now and buy anything I want online (up to my $125 credit limit, of course).

But digital IDs are indeed at the center of two particular type of relationships. First, in legal and contractual relationships, my digital ID does what my real world signature does: attests that the document you are looking at came from me. This is important, and poses very knotty technical challenges, but it isn't the source of the flurry of interest in digital ID. No, the dust-up comes from the sellers of digital content who want to control how you use their content after you've bought it.

Control it after you've bought it? That doesn't happen much in the real world, does it? If I buy something, I can do what I want with it within the bounds of the law. That's pretty much what "owning" something means: "You can't blow your noses in ripped out pages of Small Pieces Loosely Joined! "Yes I can. I own it." But not with digital content. No, no, since we can track and control it we will track and control it.

Ultimately, the furor over digital IDs is being driven by content owners who are forcing their licensing preferences on a market that could not have more clearly rejected their model. That's not a good thing.

2. ID isn't identity (and The Great Bifurcation)

Doc Searls gave a terrific speech at the end of the conference that I wish he'd been scheduled to give at the beginning. He began with what seemed like a joke: This conference is about ID but it really should be about EGO. But his pun bore fruit as he painted a picture of the richness and open-endedness of Web identities. Digital IDs don't touch the realness of us.

The point I take from this is what I like to call The Great Bifurcation: the need for Web sites to increase either efficiency or connectedness and to be quite explicit about which they're about. Efficient sites are reductive: they automate processes, eliminate unnecessary steps, and save time. Connectedness sites are enhancing: they tangle us further in one another and in our ideas. Both are worthy. Just make sure you are clear about which you're up to.

Digital IDs are efficient and reductive. They aren't really about building tangled, rich web selves/identities. That's no problem unless we forget that all that digital IDs and Web identities have in common is a pun on the word "identity."

3. Technology is policy and thus shouldn't be left to the technologists

A lot of great policy has been written into code by technologists; read The Code by Larry "My Hero" Lessig: the Internet's freedom was created by its architects and implemented by the people who wrote the code. DigitalID World made it clear how essential it is that this not be left to the technologists. For example, Microsoft Palladium on paper is a neutral technology that enables content owners and users to agree on the terms of use for content the user chooses to buy. Palladium is neutral about what those terms are, and thus — according to its its product manager — Palladium is itself a neutral technology. But, as I discussed in the previous issue of JOHO, Palladium is being dropped into a real world where there is a content cartel that can and will dictate terms that users will feel constrained to accept.

Phil Becker, the organizer of DigitalID World, says he wanted to focus on the technical side this year and plans on building it out into the user and policy maker communities next year. This will make an excellent conference substantially better.

4. Computers don't do leeway

It's all in the leeway.

I tried to make this point many times at the conference and always failed. Others might conclude that there's something wrong with the point. But those people are reasonable and have some self- perspective. I, on the other hand, am so set on this point that I'm giving it its own section. See immediately below.

Overall

Excellent conference. Lots of information. Fantastic people in an informal setting. New friends. Hung with people I admire. Congratulations to Phil Becker and a special thanks to Eric Norlin for bringing us all together.

Here's an overview of Digital IDs. http://www.digitalidworld.com/local.php?op=view&file=aboutdid
Here's an overview of the future by Eric. http://www.digitalidworld.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=103&mode=chrono&order=0
Here's Phil Becker on why identity is at the heart of the Net: http://blog.digitalidworld.com/archives/000076.html#000076

The Need for Leeway

Let's say you a sign a lease for an apartment. It stipulates that you are not to paint without explicit permission. But your dog scratches the bottom of the door, so you buy a pint of matching paint and touch up the dog's damage. You are technically in violation of the lease but no one cares.

Let's say you're a client of the Gartner Group. Their latest report says "Do not photocopy" at the bottom of every page. But it'd be really helpful if at an internal meeting you could distribute copies of page 212 because there's a complex chart on it. So you print up 12 copies and hand them out, warning the marketing guy that he's not to send it out to the press. If Gartner were to haul you into court, the judge would lecture the Gartner lawyer for wasting the court's time. In fact, by violating your license, you helped ensconce Gartner more firmly in your company.

You are standing on a street corner when a father takes his young daughter by the hand and jaywalks. You don't call the cops. You don't even lecture him about why jaywalking is bad. You don't do nothin'.

Leeway is the only way we manage to live together: We ignore what isn't our business. We cut one another some slack. We forgive one another when we transgress.

By bending the rules we're not violating fairness. The equal and blind application of rules is a bureaucracy's idea of fairness. Judiciously granting leeway is what fairness is all about. Fairness comes in dealing with the exceptions.

And there will always be exceptions because rules are imposed on an unruly reality. The analog world is continuous. It has no edges and barely has corners. Rules at best work pretty well. That's why in the analog world we have a variety of judges, arbiters, and referees to settle issues fairly when smudgy reality outstrips clear rules.

Matters are different in the digital world. Bits are all edges. Nothing is continuous. Everything is precise. Bits are uniform so no exceptions are required, no leeway is permitted.

Which brings us to "digital rights management" which implements in code a digital view of rights. Yes, vendors and users should have a wide variety of agreements possible, but the nature of those agreements is necessarily digital. If I agree to buy the report from Gartner with no right to print, the software won't be able to look the other way when I need print out page 212. The equivalent is not having a landlord install video cameras everywhere in your apartment. It's having him physically remove your mom when she takes ill because your lease says you can't have overnight guests.

If we build software that enables us to "negotiate" usage rules with content providers, the rules can be as favorable as we'd like but their enforcement will necessarily be strict, literal and unforgiving. Binary, not human.

Leeway with rights is how we live together. Leeway with ideas is how we progress our thinking. No leeway when it comes to rights about ideas is a bad, bad idea.

Educational Leeway: A Personal Addendum

It's a bad thing when you come back from the feel-good Meet the Teachers night at the local, progressive public school and need a drink.

After six blissful years of grading nothing, the school has decided to grade everything in sixth grade in order to prepare the students for the "real world" ... of seventh grade. "When students know they're getting graded, their work just gets better," said the very fine teacher who educated our son's sisters. (No sarcasm: she's a terrific teacher.) How sad is that?

The culprits here are easy to identify since the staff of our local school is dedicated, loving, smart and thoughtful: It's raining stupidity from above. "Test and blame" is the message coming from the feds, the commonwealth and even the town.

On the positive side, this episode has solidified my sense of what education is: Learning to love more and more of the world.

Home schooling anyone?

Hope on the copyright front

Lawrence "My Hero" Lessig has argued the Eldred case before the Supreme Court, trying to get the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension law rescinded. It was fascinating to me that while many knowledgeable commentators thought Lessig did a fine job but lost, Lessig — The World's Most Pessimistic Person(tm) — thinks he may have won. The commentators focused on the Justices' probing questions. Lessig, in his weblog, focuses on what they didn't ask about because that reveals (we hope) what they accepted.

The LA Times has run an article, by David Streitfeld, about Lessig and his crusade for reasonable copyright laws. Great reading. And, as Doc Searls has pointed out, this is published right in the heart of the Copyright Cops, the Rustlers on the Commons, the Vandals of Fair Use, i.e., Hollywood.

Among the good points: Lessig uses Walt Disney as his poster boy since Disney himself took advantage of stories that had passed into the public domain as the basis for his early cartoon successes. And, Lessig tells about Sony's lawyers informing an owner of an Aibo robotic dog that he is not permitted to reprogram it to dance to jazz.

Jane Black writes in BusinessWeek online writes about the Eldred case. It's a straightforward, well-written, balanced column that tells the truth and thus implicitly sides with Eldred.

JD Lasica writes that at the O'Reilly OS X conference Tim O'Reilly, who is high up on my God-Bless-'Im list, said:

"If I'm a publisher and given the choice of piracy or obscurity, I choose piracy."

Glenn Fleischman ended his weblog entry on the conference with this hopeful phrase:

Fair use has a posse.

It's about time.

Peter Kaminski points us to a brilliant speech given by Thomas Macauley in 1841 to Parliament as the question of copyright was being addressed. It's 10,000 words long, but it is witty, thorough, deep and pithy. Man, that Macauley guy could really write good!

Dan Gillmor writes about the semi-hopeful sign that Apple hasn't jumped into bed with the content dominatrixes who rule Hollywood and Congress. In fact, he points to coverage of legislation that actually looks out for the interests of the the rest of us: the Digital Choice and Freedom Act would explicitly permit us to copy digital works for personal use, just as we can currently make a tape for a friend. (As Dan said at the OS X conference, he hopes the fact that a friend is taping "The West Wing" for him when Dan's traveling doesn't make his friend a pirate.)

If I were Apple, I would seize the opportunity to kick Microsoft in the nuts by coming out squarely on the side of the listener/viewer. Team up with Amazon to provide an alternate model for distributing music over the Net with terms that make sense in the networked age.

Here's my crack at an Apple ad I'd like to see. (You need Flash to see it.)

Notes and Disclaimers Pertaining to the Above Material

Official notification and confession is hereby made that the following words ("WORDS") were used in this public communication ("COMMUNICATION") with the full awareness that WORDS may have been used in writings or other public expressions protected by copyright, trademark and Geneva conventions covering luggage. No representation is hereby made or implied that WORDS were the unique creation of the author of COMMUNICATION. The author of COMMUNICATION apologizes profusely for whatever pain s/he may have inflicted and hereby renounces without hesitation or scruple any claims, rights, injunctions or prohibitions on the following WORDS:

$125	'60S	'IM
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2	2002_10	212
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ANN	ANOTHER	ANY
ANYONE	ANYTHING	APARTMENT
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ARCHIVES	ARE	AREN'T
ARGUED	AROUND	AS
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AUTHOR	AUTHORIZED	AUTOMATE
AVOIDING	AWARENESS	BACK
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BE	BECAUSE	BECKER
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BIGGER	BINARY	BITS
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BLISSFUL	BLOG	BLOGS
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BRINGS	BUILD	BUILDING
BUREAUCRACY'S	BUSINESS	BUT
BUY	BY	CALL
CALLED	CAME	CAMERAS
CAN	CAN'T	CARD
CARES	CARS	CARTEL
CASE	CENTER	CHART
CHEMISTRY	CHICAGO	CHOICE
CHOOSE	CHOOSES	CLAIMS
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CREATION	CREDIT	CUBISM
CULPRITS	CURRENTLY	CURSIVE
CUT	CYBERLAW	DAMAGE
DAN	DAN'S	DAUGHTER
DAY	DAYS	DEALING
DECIDED	DEDICATED	DENTITY
DEPRESSED	DESIGNER	DICTATE
DID	DIDN'T	DIFFERENT
DIGITAL	DIGITALID	DIGITALK
DISCLAIMERS	DISCUSSED	DISTRIBUTE
DISTRIBUTING	DO	DOC
DOCUMENT	DOES	DOESN'T
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EDUCATED	EDUCATION	EDUCATIONAL
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ENABLES	END	ENDED
ENDEDNESS	ENFORCEMENT	ENHANCING
ENOUGH	ENSCONCE	ENSURE
ENTRY	EQUAL	EQUIVALENT
ERIC	ESSENTIAL	EVEN
EVER	EVERY	EVERYTHING
EVERYWHERE	EXAMPLE	EXCELLENT
EXCEPTIONS	EXPLICIT	EXPLICITLY
EXPRESSIONS	EXTENSION	EXTRINSIC
FACT	FAILED	FAIR
FAIRLY	FAIRNESS	FANTASTIC
FASCINATING	FATHER	FAVORABLE
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FINE	FIRST	FLASH
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FRIENDS	FROM	FRONT
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FUROR	FURTHER	GARTNER
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GEOMETRY	GET	GETS
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OTHER	OTHERWISE	OUR
OUT	OVER	OVERALL
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RAINING	READ	REAL
REALITY	REALLY	REALNESS
REASONABLE	REDUCTIVE	REFEREES
RELATIONSHIP	RELATIONSHIPS	RENOUNCES
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SELVES	SEMI	SEND
SENSE	SETTING	SETTLE
SEVENTH	SHAKEN	SHAKESPEARE
SHE'S	SHOULD	SHOULDN'T
SHTML#000531	SIDE	SIGN
SIGNATURE	SIGNATURES	SINCE
SISTERS	SITES	SIX
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TEACHERS	TEAM	TECHNICAL
TECHNICALLY	TECHNOLOGISTS	TECHNOLOGY
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TEST	THAN	THANKS
THAT	THAT'S	THE
THEIR	THEM	THERE
THERE'S	THEREFORE	THEY
THEY'RE	THING	THINGS
THINKING	THINKS	THIS
THOSE	THOUGHT	THOUGHTFUL
THREE	THUS	TIM
TIME	TM	TO
TOGETHER	TOP	TOPIC
TOUCH	TOWN	TRACK
TRADEMARK	TRANSGRESS	TRAVELING
TRAVERSE	TRIED	TRYING
TWO	TYPE	ULTIMATELY
UNFORGIVING	UNIFORM	UNIQUE
UNLESS	UNNECESSARY	UNRULY
UP	US	USAGE
USE	USED	USEFUL
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VIDEO	VIEW	VIEWER
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WANT	WANTED	WANTS
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WE'D	WE'RE	WEB
WEBLOG	WELL	WERE
WEST	WHAT	WHAT'S
WHATEVER	WHEN	WHERE
WHICH	WHILE	WHO
WHY	WIDE	WILL
WING	WISH	WITH
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WORK	WORKS	WORLD
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WOULDN'T	WRITE	WRITES
WRITING	WRITINGS	WRITTEN
WRONG	X	YEAR
YEARS	YES	YESTERDAY
YOU	YOU'RE	YOU'VE
YOUNG	YOUR	·

Note: If you'd like the small Visual Basic program I wrote to do the above, let me know.

How to Become a Guru

AKMA has noticed that DarwinMag.com has me listed as a "guru" and wonders how I achieved that exalted status. Well, AKMA, it's really quite simple:

Knowingly refer to Tim Berners-Lee as "Timmy Bacon-and-Lettuce"

Replace "air quotes" with "air brackets."

Maintain that when you said last year that "The Internet isn't a bubble, it's the rock-solid foundation on which the new economy will last for millennia," you weren't talking about the Internet.

Always make fun of The Suits.

Be late for meetings because atoms got in the way of your bits.

Include a nondisclosure agreement in your wedding vows.

Bought a box of Tide? Add P&G to the list of companies you've worked with.

Never give a short answer.

In return for Google-worthy links to your site, do "certain favors" for the Russian Mafia.

Never begin a sentence with "I think."

Backdate your newsletter as necessary.

Why Google Totally Sucks! Really!

Gary Turner advises me that I'm no longer the 6th hit on Google if you search for "david." I've been pushed down to #25 by the new #1 (David Bowie) as well as by David Lynch, David Gray, David Brin, David Grisman, Harry and David, and other famous and deserving David's.

I am crushed. Our neighbor's seven year old is currently fanning me with a peacock feather and intermittently holds a restorative mint julep to my wan lips. In months, perhaps weeks, I shall have the courage to venture out again.

Peter Kaminski writes to a mailing list:

Today's PR trivia: Google for "al qaeda", and along with the results you get one of two ads:

"Saudi Arabia offers you an opportunity to understand our fight against terrorism. www.aboutsaudiarabia.net"

"Saudi Arabia revoked Osama bin Laden's citizenship in 1994 and invites you to learn more. www.aboutsaudiarabia.net"

And why is it that if you google "oil", "war on terror," or "saddam," there are no ads, but "homeland security" has eight?

Misc.

Top Ten Signs RageBoy is Feeling Better

11. When he puts in a link to a bloody, angry, foul-mouthed CD, he remembers to put his Amazon affiliate code at the end

10. He's got enough strength back to type out all of "motherfucker"

9. Remembers that if he's a "babe magnet," he's got his polarity reversed

8. Uses elegant CSS definitions to put "Fuckhead" into 64pt green san serif font rather than messier inline notation

7. Drops "Big Lou Gerstner" from his blogroll

6. Winer and Lessig take out joint ad in Variety to complain about him

5. Hand writes a note to each of his EGR subscribers to apologize for not calling them fucking hosers enough recently

4. His blog entry on why the DayPop Top 40 eats motherfucking shit makes it onto the DayPop Top 40

3. When you click on his photo, it no longer takes you to a John Denver play list

2. RageBoy drops the page boy

And the number one sign that RB is on the mend ...

1. No one's safe any more

[BTW, RB's been posting some truly offensive stuff at his site these days. Good to see him back in the saddle. If you can stand the porn, his site is here.]

Jeff Jacoby in his column in the Boston Globe reports on a questionnaire he gave to the candidates for governor. One question was: "Name a position you take that is clearly out of step with most of your party." Jill Stein, the doomed Green Party candidate gave an answer I particular liked: In the Green Party it can be "hard to tell if you're out of step or just part of a good discussion."

The Anals of Marketing

That's the title of an article in "The Integration Survival Guide," the "Official Publication of Business Integration Conference Services."

Oy veh! What were the titles they threw out? "Heil Integration"? "Integration: The Final Solution"? "Integration Macht Frei"?

Jumping the Loan Shark

Can we convince David Chase, the creator of "The Sopranos" to make this season the last? ? David, ask yourself: What would Willy "The Bard" Shakespeare (AKA Eddie DeVere) do? Tony's gotta die.

Otherwise, we can look forward in seasons 7, 8 and 9 to jumping the shark episodes such as:

Dr. Melfi consults with her old college mentor ... Dr. Frasier Crane!

The lead singer in Tony Jr.'s high school band ("The Hits") quits right before the big dance, when, wouldn't you know it but Li'l Kim's tour bus breaks down right outside the high school auditorium, so she fills in.

Uncle Junior wins American Idol and gets to sing a duet with Celine Dion.

Ralph Cifaretto slips acid into the punch at the Soprano's annual Christmas Party (where Silvio delights everyone with his unexpected guitar skills), resulting in Matrix-like effects during the annual Christmas Party shoot-out.

After an entire season of intimations, Meadow and Adriana make out.

After an entire season of intimations, Furio comes out of the closet. Is he whacked? Nah. Group hug!

Big Pussy is back — as a friendly but bumbling ghost. And get this: Only Tony can see him!

A new crime family tries to move in on Tony — The Boss and the E Street Gang.

By the way, according to an article by Renee Graham in the Boston Globe, The Rockford Files was a major influence on The Sopranos. David Chase,cut his teeth writing 20 of the Rockford episodes. In fact, in one of the Rockford episodes, a character refers to his cousin Carmella back in Jersey. Interesting.

---

Flight Attendant: Please prepare for our landing in Tanzania...I'm sorry, it is now called "New Zanzibar". Excuse me. It is now called "Pepsi presents New Zanzibar."
- The Simpsons

Panama City, a Florida town of 9,000 souls, has decided to put ads on their police cars. The mayor said: "We had some concerns over the sponsors. We don't want to do anything that would make our city a laughingstock." It's a little late for that, Your Honor.

All that's surprising about this latest incursion of commercial propaganda is that, given its relentless logic, it took so long. (More surprising is that the Police Chief's name is Sam Slay.)

Yahoo has eliminated the email account for a long-term user, the Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace. From its home page, LMNO4P seems to be your basic Pete Seeger-singin' community peace group. According to the group, Yahoo says the account was turned off and the mailing list was deleted because the group violated Yahoo's service agreement, but Yahoo won't tell the group what its violation was. Yahoo does say that accounts are only terminated in response to complaints.

(In a display of subtle, pre-emptive anti-Semitism, LMNO4P says: "We think Yahoo! overreacted to a complaint by someone who disagrees with our politics, especially our public support for peace & justice in Palestine," although it has no evidence of this. When in doubt, let's blame the damn Zionists.)

It's bad enough that Yahoo is censoring groups it doesn't like, worse that the groups seem innocuous, and worst that it's denying any accountability. You might consider moving from Yahoo before it decides it doesn't like what you have to say, either.

Middle World Resources
Walking the Walk   Modern collaboration tools are changing the timing of Timex. According to an article by Tony Kontzer in InformationWeek (Oct. 7), Timex has turned to online collaboration to speed up the product development cycle. The tools (from Framework Technologies) include simple document management, messaging, and workflow. It's worked: Cycles have been cut by 40%. But, says the article, "For a company that's long depended on sequential product development, giving everyone access to the same information at the same time required a major shift in how people work." The unintended consequence has been that people want to be involved across disciplines. "You want the guy in manufacturing to have input into the design," said Timex's engineering systems manager. "That's the point of collaboration." In fact, it's what distinguishes coordination from collaboration: the first establishes neat lines and the second smudges them.	Cool Tool I've been uploading digital photos onto my computer for a couple of years now, the equivalent of a several shoe boxes full of loose prints. Along comes Picasa (www.picasa.net), a photo organizer for Windows. It's one of those cool products that works pretty much exactly the way you want. In fact, after you see it, you'll think that you knew all along how you wanted your photos organized. When you install it, it inventories your drive and makes a rough cut at grouping the photos it finds, using your folders and the file dates as a guide. Then you can sort through your digital pile any way you want. And just to wow you, Picasa automatically creates a time line that shows you all your photos in a swirling temporal sweep. $29 whether you download it or buy the CD.
What I'm Playing Yell at me all you want, but Grand Theft Auto 3 is a great game. You are a hoodlum out to commit mayhem. Exactly what mayhem is up to you. The environment — a city — is open, populated, and destructible. You can drive around in carjacked autos, mugging, robbing and killing, or you can work on a set of assigned missions that have you mugging, robbing and killing. Morally reprehensible, but also cartoonish and funny. I could have done without the casualness about killing the innocent, but it is ultimately a game about smashing up vehicles, so you don't want to be penalized if you run over a few pedestrians along the way. For adults, GTA3 is a breakthrough in its open playability. For kids, it's an improper blast.
Internetcetera From Andrew Odlyzko: U.S. Broadband Lines U.S. Cell Phones Dec 1999 2.8 M Dec 1989 3.5 M Dec 2000 7.1 Dec 1990 5.3 Dec 2001 12.8 Dec 1991 7.6 Dec 2002 20.0 (est.) Dec 1992 11.0   Dec 1993 16.0   Dec 1994 24.1 Broadband data for 1999-2001 from FCC statistics, covering both business and residential connections, with broadband defined as anything with more than 200 Kbps in at least one direction, cell phone data from CTIA Thus broadband growth in three years equals cell phone growth over 5 years. Hence even though cell phones beat broadband connections by almost exactly a 10:1 margin as of Dec. 2001, they spread more slowly. These figures come from an article called "The Many Paradoxes of Broadband."

Links

A family in Argentina has posted the portrait photos it's been taking every year since 1976. Great reading. (No, there's no text.)

After you've finished disbelieving your eyes at this sensational optical illusion, you can see a set of great Flash demos of optical illusions here.

Web Collage generates collages from random images on the Web. It updates about once a minute.

At the palindromic I Love Me, Vol. I, you can see what happens when the sliding door of a radio station van is moved all the way to the left, especially if the radio station is called HITS.

Get your War On remains the Truth Telling Comic that Makes You Laugh.

Chris Gaither has a delightful account in The Boston Globe of a 14-hour email riot among students and relatives at Wesleyan University. A message with a typo got sent to an administrative mailing list. As people tried unsuccessfully to unsubscribe, others told them that if everyone just shut up, traffic on the mailing list would cease. Others took it as an opportunity to goof around. 300,000 messages later, the list was shut down.

An anomaly, yes. And what do we conclude from it, hmm?

Andrius Kulikauskas couldn't take it any more. A general-purpose list we're on together has been going on about the coming war against Iraq, slowly descending into "How dare you insinuate"s and "If you just want to pose and exaggerate, then go ahead"s. He replied with this long message about his personal experience speaking truth to power, and truth to fear, and truth to neediness, at the most local level.

Andrius is enough of an idealist that he is sometimes shocked by the cynicism most of us take for granted. And lord bless him for it. And he never lies.

Julian Bond points us to http://www.voidstar.com/gnews2rss.php where you can turn a Google search into an RSS feed which can then be aggregated by lonely people who have finished collecting the new quarters from each of the 50 states. I'm actually a little vague about why you'd want a search as an RSS but I'm sure there's a good reason.

Dan Gillmor has followed up his excellent column about ten decisions that made the Internet the good thing that it is with a column on the three decisions that are still to be made:

Freedom to create and innovate
Customer choice and competition policy
Security and liberty

Dan's assessment of the decisions we're in the process of making in each of these areas is pretty glum. Maybe the Happy News section of this issue of JOHO will bring a smile to his pretty cheeks.

From Mike O'Dell comes a site that provides a plug-in that will tell you when a writer is being ironic.

Jonathan Cahill suggests we visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology, an exceedingly odd place, if it is a place at all.

Bob Filipczak, newly of St. John's U., says: "I thought the art historian buried deep inside of you (or deep in the cellar) would enjoy" Dear Aunt Nettie, a faux museum.

Dave Rogers by coincidence recommended a lecture, "Life after e-culture" by John Thackara about 15 minutes after I sent an email introducing myself to Thackara on the advice of a friend.

Peter Kaminski responds to my graceless and inane refusal to admit that I'd made a typo with a site that says "that maybe the truth is really that sometimes errors are art."

Knowing my family's religious commitment to the Simpsons, Kevin Marks passes along a link to an article that carefully explains why Bart is not a Nietzschean Ubermensch.

AKMA is clear and thought-provoking once again, this time ostensibly on the nature of confiding but actually on the importance of trust versus rules.

Tom Matrullo compares knowledge and vines. Fibrous and foliated writing!

The transcript of a chat I did at spirituality.com on the topic "The Spirituality of the Web's Architecture" has been posted here.

Matt Frondorf is driving from the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate, taking a picture every mile. In an interview, he calls it “statistical photography.” The pictures are on display in a nicely designed Flash app over at the Kodak site. Oddly affecting.

TeleTruth.org has filed a complaint alleging that Verizon (and the companies that merged to form it) have vastly inflated the amount and cost of missing equipment to the tune of $20-$80B. Why? Presumably because this "vaporware" counts as an expense that can be passed on to the consumer in the former of higher rates.

The press release is here. There's a table of contents here.

According to an article by D.C. Denison in the Boston Globe, there are about 100 wifi hotspots in Boston now, and over 150 in NYC. Still, those numbers seem paltry. But it'll change; Denison quotes Sarah Kim, an analyst with The Yankee Group:

''Most of the major universities now offer WiFi to students on campus,'' she said. ''That means that many college students are getting, and using, laptops with wireless cards. And then they bring those laptops along with them when they graduate, and go out and get jobs. So those students are going to drive adoption, too.''

Mainly what will drive adoption is that it's easier to create a hotspot than to force people to pay for it. Denison recounts the story of Michael Oh. On Labor Day, Michael positioned a black Saturn Coupe with a 6-foot Wifi antenna across the street from a Starbucks that offers 15-minutes-for-$3 wifi service. The reaction of the company that provides Starbucks with connectivity actually was pretty enlightened: ''There's a place for those vendors. But our customers want to know who they are dealing with. They want security and the reliability that comes with a real network company."

But mainly we want free connectivity everywhere we go.

You can read Denison's article here until the Globe locks it in its 15-minutes-for-$3 archive. (Oops, too late!)

Dan Gillmor points to some pretty durn funny UI humor.

More goodness from Dan Gillmor. In a column about what we can do to make our homeland more secure, he says that broadband is central to securing our information infrastructure since it allows data to be distributed rather than clustered in cities. (He also comes up with some crackpot ideas about using renewable energy, conserving, etc. Those West Coasters are just so nutty!)

At TheOldComputer.com you can download old TV commercials advertising computer and video games, back when sprites were sprites and there really was no reason to add color to Pong.

The Veepers technology from Pulse3D animates a still photo of a face and adds the sort of mouth movement familiar from the movie "Babe" (you know, the talking pig) synched up with a voice track. The results are somewhere between laughable and ghoulish, especially after the talking head has finished and remains staring at you. randomly bobbing and twitching.

Seeing it for yourself requires a small download. There's an example here.

There's a thoughtful article by Renee Tawa about blogging and Journalism in the LA Times. Best of all: Not a word about "teenagers writing about what they had for breakfast."

Clay Shirky's written another sterling essay, this time on the nature of communities vs. broadcasting and why only fools think they can convert a broadcast audience into a really cool community and everyone will come and like hang out and then they'll be like all popular and everything.

The essay makes five points:

1. Audiences are built. Communities grow.
2. Communities face a tradeoff between size and focus.
3. Participation matters more than quality.
4. You may own the software, but the community owns itself.
5. The community will want to build. Help it, or at least let it.

Clay is one of my favorites.

David Isenberg has published a new issue of his always excellent newsletter. In this one, you can read about "the future of voice telephony," which is not about talking pachyderms but a software product from Global IP Sound that uses the Internet to transmit calls and does so with higher-quality audio than you'll get on a "real" phone.

Some very nice writing over at Joe M's blog about a dinnertime conversation that is chaotic yet all about one thing.

Gary Turner is starting an anthology of quotations from unfamous people (where fame is defined by mass culture or acceptance into the Canon of Important People). For example, from Marek we have, among other bon mots, "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off." Gary is soliciting contributions.

Richard Seltzer at B&R Samizdat Express has reviewed Small Pieces Loosely Joined, quite enthusiastically.

Richard reviews a wide variety of books. I'm in the middle of Fagles' new translation of The Iliad and found Richard's review both learned and helpful, a rare combination. (Think I'm just reciprocating? Read some of his reviews for yourself, you cynical, jaded, suspicious, person! Take "Trying to Enjoy Bellow" as a fr'instance.)

I'm going to be the guest on his chat board Nov. 21. Details here. And I'm still not just damn reciprocating!

Dethe Elza of Living Code comments in an email on The Outrage Formula in which I agreed with a column by Charles Jacobs in the Boston Globe that says the predictor for which acts of oppression outrage us isn't the plight of the victims but our sense of identity with the oppressors.

Chip sent me this poem by Ani DiFranco that apparently she's reading at all her concerts now.

DarwinMag.com ran a column on why engineers are optimistic cynics. Kevin Marks and Maf Vosburgh four years ago wrote, "Code and Personality: How to tell your personality type from your code" an amusing yet instructive guide to with copious examples of source code.

This instant idea generator is Pretty darn amusing.

From Jonathan Arnold on a mailing list comes a rudely funny link: Taliban Reunited.

Dick Joltes, from the same list, recommends the latest in innovative services for today's highly leveraged executives: Cadaver, Inc.

Stephen Lamb has found this example of Server-side Suicide:

The Tsunamii.Net Crush Server is currently online live from the Millbank Gallery in London! Watch as the webserver counts itself down before it activates the industrial crusher attached to it, bearing 150-tonnes of brute force onto itself and terminating its existance. Check out the details on the Tsunamii.Net website or visit the webserver directly at http://195.195.81.5/.

Political Links

NOTE: This section is optional and will not appear on the test.

Salon links to a frank keynote given by retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni. Zinni is the "former head of Central Command for U.S. forces in the Middle East, who has worked recently as the State Department's envoy to the region with a mission to encourage talks between Palestinians and Israelis." The talk is surprising for two reason:

First, although it's written by someone in the his administration, it is quite critical. He says the administration is being naive.

Second, someone apparently did a search and replace on the article, turning every instance of "question" into "Ambassador Edward S. Walker." As a result, we get sentences that begin "The Ambassador Edward S. Walker becomes how to sort out your priorities," and a question from the audience becomes:

Ambassador Edward S. Walker: I have two Ambassador Edward S. Walkers...

(Salon is also running an interesting interview with Zinni for paid subscribers.)

I confess to being a knee-jerk, pacifist-leaning, NPR-listening, white-wine-swilling, heart-bleeding, Kennedy-voting, cigarette-banning, tie-dye-wearing, Mondale-mourning, Vineyard-vacationing, West-Wing-Tivo-ing, decade-old-spare-joints-in-a-bottom-draw-stashing, male-distrusting, race-apologizing, criminal-coddling Jewish atheist pointy-headed bleeding-heart middle class middle aged Liberal.

So, a recent column by Alex Beam in the Boston Globe was thought-provoking. (I usually find his writing just plain old provoking.) He points out that the Conservatives have much more fun than we liberals do. They get to drive in their SUV's, blow up bad guys, and rant on talk shows about how the media don't give conservatives any air time.

There's something to this. They're the Bad Boys/Girls. We're the scolds. It'd be real good to make Liberalism fun again.

Again? Yes, kiddies, there was a time when being a lefty-liberal meant that you were cool and the conservatives were squares. We got to smoke dope while they watched John Wayne movies. We got free sex and they got the missionary position. We got to rethink the world while they were pledging their allegiance. If nothing else, the left was the happen' place to be. Now it's as glamorous as sensible shoes.

We should work on changing this. Maybe a new hairstyle or something.

The Boston Globe's "Ideas" section ran an excellent article by Elaine Scarry, who teaches at Harvard, on why a distributed defense makes sense. Here's the way the headline writer put it:

FAIL-SAFE
On Sept. 11, passengers armed only with cell phones and courage succeeded where a multibillion-dollar military failed. Does their achievement mean that 50 years of American defense policy is all wrong?

After a careful and persuasive analysis of what worked (bottom-up action coordinated through cellphones and relatives) and what didn't (centralized defense with scrambling jet fighters) on Sept. 11, Scarry enlarges the idea to nuclear policy, concluding that the world will not give up these "monarchic weapons" (because they are to be used without any consent by the citizenry) until the U.S. does.

And when I googled her, I found that she's a well-known thinker on a wide range of topics, including a defense of the relationship of beauty and goodness; see an interview with her (by David Bowman) at Salon.

Common Cause has a page where you can fax a message to your Congressional representatives.

Pick any three countries and see what they're the axis of. Great site.

Email, Arbitrary Insults, and Suspicious Hacking Coughs

Where the hell did you all go? Oh, sure, you send me plenty of links. But how about the arguments, the disagreements, the sniping, the petty criticism? Or was everything in the September 12 issue so obviously right that you had nothing left to add? Hah!

Letter of the Month (really):

Mike O'Dell asks: "So what does self-referentialism have to do with me?"

This should answer that question.

Bogus contest: My Brain on the Net

Someone heard me on CNET radio (http://www.webtalkguys.com/) and was stimulated to send me an email suggesting that the Internet is becoming conscious. So, I started a chart mapping the similarities and differences:

Your twin challenges: Extend this list or come up with your own analogy.

And now it's back to the world of fast cars, smart women, and excessive blogging.

Editorial Lint

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