An anonymous source has forwarded to me a pay-for-download article: "Can You See the Real Me? Activation and Expressoin of the 'True Self' on the Internet" in Journal of Social Issues (vol. 58, no. 1, pp. 33-48), by John A. Bargh, Katelyn Y.A. McKenna and Grainne M. Fitzimmons of NYU. It gives evidence that there's some reality to the self we present on the Net.

The researchers begin with Carl Rogers' belief that people often feel that elements of who they are don't surface in face-to-face interactions. Their hypothesis is that the anonymity of Internet encounters enables those elements to surface. They then did a set of experiments that confirmed this. Further, "features of Internet interaction facilitate the projection onto the partner of idealized qualities." While this sounds to the naive (= me) like a Bad Thing, in fact:

...these are precisely those features that previous research has determined to be critical for the formation of close, intimate relations: Internet communication enables self-disclosure because of its relatively anonymous nature ... and it fosters idealization of the other in the absence of information to the contrary...

Note that this study looks at anonymous interactions, not at long-term relationships built up through email and weblogs.

Jonathan Schull, founder and CTO of Softlock, has an excellent response to Joe Gregario's "cogent and pithy" blog entry on Google and Heisenberg. Joe argues:

The web needs to change to accomodate Google. Link, link to, be authoratitive on a subject, keep current and offer information others want and need and you'll succeed in Google's eyes. Let page-rank stand as the carrot and the stick of good web behaviour.

Jon, correctly guessing that I'll be drawn to his coinage "linktoitiveness" the way an Atlantic City mayor is drawn to a hotel room with a suitcase of money on the bed and a two-way mirror on the wall, suggests that being linked-to is not the only mark of page quality. We know empirically that it's a damn successful heuristic, but we also know that the system can be gamed and that the most popular kids aren't the only ones you ever want to eat lunch with.

On the other hand, we could also say that Google isn't trying to find the most worthy pages for us, just the ones we're most likely looking for. The search for worthiness is best accomplished through other means, i.e., give up.

A brief report on yet another disappointingly-attended conference: Collaborate East in Boston.

Actually, this won't be much of a report because I was only there for a 4-hour seminar. I did stick my head into the grand hall where the keynote was to be given by Robert Reich; the rows and rows of folding chairs had been replaced by a handful of round tables, making it look like the set up for a bar mitzvah for an unpopular only child. Reich is running for governor in Massachusetts and the size of the audience measures the popularity of the conference much more than his popularity. At least I hope so since I voted for him in the primary.

I also stuck my head into the exhibit hall; the press wasn't allowed in until the hall opens because we apparently couldn't stand to learn that the booths don't magically assemble themselves while whistling merry tunes. The exhibitors include many of the important players, but if the size of the floor is an indication of the health of the industry, you might want to consider investing in Nigerian beefsteak mines. On the other hand, if you want to speak with some of the key players in the field, this would be a great opportunity. Likewise, the conference schedule could keep you busy for a couple of days. What's bad news for the industry and the conference organizers could be excellent news for attendees.

The seminar I participated in had just 10 paying participants, but they were the type of people the conference organizgers undoubtedly wanted: mainly from large companies, trying to figure out how to use collaborative technology to save money and make money. When we went around the table asking why people were there, I was surprised that almost all of them were interested primarily in software to enable virtual meetings. Obviously that's important, but as Jeffrey Stamps and Jessica Lipnack (the "Virtual Teams" authors) put it, the synchronous collaborative tools need to be complemented by the asynchronous. After all, we're always working collaboratively even when we're not meeting, so we're really looking at a new context for work, not just some new tools.

Francois Gossieaux of eRoom
with Lipnack and Stamps

The seminar seemed to go well. In part that was due to the inherently gonzo approach taken by the session's sponsor. eRoom is an important company in this space, but not only was there no — no! — eRoom presentation, they even invited two speakers who are affiliated with Open Text, eRoom's competitor. You have to respect them for that.

Jaclyn Kostner, eTeamwork author,
makes a virtual appearance

Any bets on who will be the first capital-J to be fired because of something she or he blogs?

The scenario is easy to predict in its general shape: A journalist writes something in her blog that draws letters to the editor that say: "How can we trust this person to report the news fairly when we know that she holds such outrageous, insensitive, prejudiced beliefs? If she's a bigot on the Internet, how can we trust her not to be a bigot in your newspaper?" The journalist refuses to retract. The newspaper fires her.

I'll be late blogging today because I agreed to participate in a session on "The Future Workplace" at the Collaborate conference this morning. I agreed because it's local and I'd be going anyway to see what's up. More important, I like the company — eRoom — that put the panel together, and I'll get to spend some time with co-panelists Jessica Lipnack and Jeff Stamps, the urbane authors of "Virtual Teams." I did somehow manage to ignore the fact that it is a four hour panel. Oy veh.

So, this is a meta-blog entry. Which works for me because last night I had two meta-dreams. In one, I analyzed the dream of a friend. My advice to her: When she says that the fire in her dream probably did not stand for orgasm, she should take the "not" out of the sentence (and maybe the knot out of her orgasm). In the other, I was writing an apologetic note to the organizer of the "Future Workplace" panel. Not only was a I a no-show at the panel, but I couldn't even remember how I spent the morning I missed it. But then (in my dream) I realized that this was because I was only dreaming that I missed the panel.

AKMA blogs an article he's written on cyberspace's effect on our relationship to the Bible. Wow! AKMA, recently-tenured theologian at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, is the author of one of the best introductions to postmodernism, What is PostModern Biblical Criticism?, and is a serious multilingual scholar, as well as being one of the most interesting (= insightful, entertaining, compassionate) bloggers around.

He suggests two major effects the multimedia world of the Net will bring to biblical interpretation:

... first, a demystification of words as means of communication, and second, a relaxation of what has been the constitutive hostility of modern academic biblical studies to allegory. At the heart of both these proposals lies a sensitivity to the explosive breadth of means for communicating information in cyberspace.

Fascinating. But for me, as a Jew, its fascination rests in part on seeing how matters look to a thoughtful, scholarly, imaginative, playful and ultimately serious thinker from a different tradition.

For AKMA, demystifying words is a good thing, for we believe too naively in the possibility of literal translation and we exalt printed words over other forms of meaningful communication and expression:

Though the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the Word was not manifest as a part of speech or a siglum; the Word effected communion with humanity by becoming human, not by becoming an inscription.

As a Jew, we were given a set of words. They come from the mouth of G-d, but they're written in human language. We get over the translation problem by learning Hebrew and Aramaic. (When I say "we," I mean them other Jews; I don't know either language and I only believe in G-d enough to feel that if He exists, He's got a lot of 'splaining to do.) Yet, the Jewish tradition from the beginning has been aware of the hermeneutical problem of translation, for we don't believe that even in the original language there is a one-to-one relationship of word to meaning. When G-d speaks in human language, we still need to engage in an overwhelming task of "translation" and interpretation. That's why there are no (?) fundamentalist Jews who believe you can understand the scripture just by reading it out loud in a firm, scolding tone of voice.

But scripture isn't the only way G-d speaks. Creation is another. So, while the Torah obviously holds a special place for Jews in G-d's creation, it is not the only source of revelation. But what gives the Torah its special place? The fact that, unlike the rest of G-d's creation, it's in words. So, yes, printed (well, hand-lettered) words do have a special, "over-valued" place in Judaism.

Notice, of course, that having a special place doesn't mean having an exclusive place. Not only words convey G-d's meaning. So does the rest of creation. So does love. So does science. So does observance and practice and tradition. But words are special. At least G-d's words are.

So, if the multimedia Net results in letting some of the air out of words' tires for Christians, I don't think it will have the same effect on Judaism. For a text-based religion like Judaism - one that famously anticipated the hyperlinked nature of information - the Web shines as an aid to scholarship and to the conversations that are the way Jewish scholarship proceeds and succeeds. And, more important, for a community-based religion such as Judaism - Jews are a people, and observance requires living with other Jews - the Web enables a connectedness within diaspora that may indeed touch something deep within the collective us.

AKMA writes:

As academic biblical interpretation moves more rapidly and comprehensively into domains other than the printed word, practitioners will need to learn how to evaluate interpretations on unfamiliar terms. Under present circumstances, the dominant critical question posed to (verbal) interpretations consists principally in whether they appropriately honor the historical context of the text's origin; such questions well suit a discourse of interpretation that trades in propositions as its currency. When interpretations involve not only verbal truth-claims about interpretive propositions, but also shapes, colors, soundtracks, and motion, the matter of historical verisimilitude recedes among a host of other questions.

By rattling this cage, AKMA is making the cage visible. Our idea of truth is all wrapped up with our understanding of words. Truth pertains to words, we believe. When it comes to pictures, we talk about "accuracy" or "realism" but not truth. (That's why AKMA's reference to Magritte's "This is not a pipe" is so apt.) But if truth has instead to do with revelation — un-covering, in Heidegger's sense — then confining truth to the realm of words cages us. Words may have a special place in uncovering our world, but they are not the only shovel in the tool shed.

When the light turned green, the car ahead of me just sat there. I gave it a good five seconds (i.e., 0.5 seconds) and then blasted my horn. "What did you do that for?" asked my wife. "The light is still red."

So it was. I hadn't noticed the righthand turn light.

So, how do I apologize to the driver ahead of me? We lack a gesture by which we beg forgiveness. I propose the following:

With some too-patient hand holding by Kevin Marks, I seem to have succeeded in getting blogger.com to wrap this blog with the appropriate RSS tags. As a result, aggregators around the globe can now ignore JOHO on purpose.

As one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, I thought I'd pass along this outstanding example of "clueful" marketing that arrived in my inbox this morning:

From: Jenny Witherspoon [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 7:57 PM
To: 100@FREE MEMBERSHIP THIS WEEK!
Subject: hello

Hello this is Jenny Witherspoon I am one of the featured girls on www.amatureacadamys.com We are giving away 100 % FREE memberships for this week to see how people like it. Please check it out and let me know what you think! Hit me up on AOL Instant Messenger My Screen Name is JennyAmature82 If you don't like watching XXX videos , webcams, and looking at my NUDE pictures you may not want to join.

Regards,
Jenny Witherspoon
www.amatureacadamys.com

She really seems to have read and absorbed our book! This is non-money-focused ("FREE"), acknowledging that connection is more important than shoving coins over the line. It's all about joining with other people ("memberships") rather than mass marketing to a faceless crowd. In fact, she even gives out her IM account number so we can make direct contact! She doesn't put on a phony veneer of perfection — you can really hear her own voice. This doesn't sound like it was written by a committee and then deloused by lawyers! She signs her own name. And she's totally upfront about the fact that her product isn't perfect, acknowledging that we may not even be interested in it. Wow! It's great to know we've had this type of effect!

I'm so proud!

Back-to-back articles in the Boston Globe talk about the present hierarchical assumptions of business and the future of collaboration.

DC Denison pins his story on hierarchy on the intelligence failure that culminated on 9/11. He quotes Philip Evans, author of Blown to Bits, who says information hierarchies used to work because information itself was manageable.

The solution, according to Evans, is to create a system that allows for multiple, overlapping points where information can be sorted and analyzed. ''If we get better at sharing information across organizations,'' he says, ''we'll get better at processing an abundance of information effectively.''

The problem with information hierarchies isn't that some people have more authority than others, it's that the information flow is one-way and codified. In a non-hierarchical, web-based system, authority figures emerge, but they're only as respected as their work entitles them to be. This is how it works with the columnists you choose to read ... except now anyone can be a columnist even without being anointed as such. That's why blogging seems like a transformative business tool to many of us.

Scott Kirsner's article today talks about the present and future of collaborative software, a category that has not taken off with the rapidity with which it deserves. Many of the major players are in the Boston area. including eRoom, SiteScape, Lotus and Groove Networks. But Redmond, and its $51M investment in Groove, looms over the region and the article.

Here's the essential problem for the industry. Kirsner writes:

Simon Hayward at Gartner points out that the business world may take a bit longer before it embraces collaboration software as it has embraced e-mail. ''The technology can do a lot of great things, but the limiting factor is organizations' interest in using it,'' he says.

Yet Kirsner's article is clear that the benefits of using collaboration software are multiple and manifest. You don't need to be a rocket scientist, although maybe you do since Lockheed Martin is the article's lead example of a company using the stuff. So, why aren't organizations more interested in using it?

One explanation: We are in the realm not of scientifical business management but organized religion. The issue isn't business efficiency but the maintenance of power. Collaboration software does indeed hyperlink the hierarchy. And that's just plain scary to The Establishment, the status quo and/or The Man. The price of admission is business' corrupt soul.

BurningBird has announced plans to build a service that will put the thread into blogthreads. If you register your blog with her new service (which is a few months away from launch), it will automatically scour it for links to other blogs so that when Tom replies to AKMA and Jeneane replies to Tom and then Tom replies to Jeneane and then Jennifer replies to AKMA, all that will be saved and will be made reference-able and link-able as a blogthread. Excellent!

This is something we really need. In fact, I hope that BurningBird's work will be taken up by sites that are in the business of aggregating blogs — Google? DayPop? Are you interested? — so that blogthreads can be assembled from blog entries on sites that haven't registered with BurningBird and, most of all, so that they can be indexed and returned by the search engines. Wouldn't it be cool to search on, say, "forgiveness" and have Google and/or DayPop tell you not only that AKMA, Tom and Jeneane have blog entries about this but that there is an extensive blogthread on the topic?

Andy Mahood, columnist on game simulations (that is, games that are simulations, not simulations of games) at PCGamer, gave the product of the year award last year to Microsoft Flight Simulator which, in his view, narrowly edged out IL-2 Sturmovik. According to this month's column (July), not only did the Sturmovik developers try out their ideas in public at gaming message boards and other online forums, the company has been collected bug reports and enhancement requests there as well. They've been issuing "an aggressive series of patches" whereas "Microsoft recently issued a statement saying that it would not be providing any sort of patching process for the bugs found" in their product.

Brian Millar, who is in my pantheon of the Just Plain Funny, is collecting words he cannot pronounce or at least is so uncertain about that he is afraid to say them out loud.

My list includes:

macadam
coccyx
Scorcese

And my number one word that I can't pronounce:

"I don't think there was actually a plot, beyond some fairly loose talk and his coming in here obviously to plan further deeds."
-Deputy Dense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on CBS News about the Dirty Bomb Plot, as reported by Reuters, 6/13

Since Abdullah al-Muhajir (nee Jose Padilla) was picked up on May 8, and since Ashcroft's announcement over a month later was precipitated by no relevant event, and since Ashcroft wildly overstated both the readiness of the plotters (they were just talking) and the damage a dirty bomb would do (it might kill scores, not hundreds of thousands), it's only rational to assume that the announcement was timed for Bush's maximum political advantage. Has anyone advanced any other reasonable explanation?

So we also have to assume that the administration is stockpiling Abdullah al-Muhajir's who have been "picked up," ready to be announced the next time the Bush crowd thinks there's a political advantage to scaring the crap out of us and our children.

If lying about getting blow jobs from an intern is an impeachable offense, what's the penalty for spreading panic among an already frightened citizenry because it helps you stay re-electable?

Eric Norlin, who is "incentivized" by a small explosive capsule implanted next to his heart not to tell us too much of what he knows, says that the news was timed to "learn about the inner workings of the [terrorist] organization. "

Ed Nixon was prodded by my blog about HTML validation to point out that the Web Standards Project is up again. Its mission: to "fight for standards that reduce the cost of complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability" of web sites. The standards they like include XML, CSS, XHTML, DOM and ECMAS. Here's a bluffer's guide to each:

XML: Smarter tagging of documents (and other types of information) so that computers can do more interesting things than just display them in the right font.

CSS: Define the look (and more) of document elements external to the document so they can be displayed in the right font ... and so those definitions can be applied - and updated - across multiple documents. Part of the conspiracy to turn authors into text monkeys.

XHTML: Anal-compulsive HTML. Makes sloppy tagging habits so that the pages are more predictable to computers. No shirts, no end tags, no service.

DOM: A standard computer-eye view of the internal tree structure of a document so its elements can be found and understood in relation to one another. You never knew a simple document was that complex.

ECMAS: JavaScript removed from the vagaries and self-interest of the vendors and put into the hands of responsible adults.

I have heard a rumor through a friend of a friend who is shipping out to Afghanistan that we are in the middle of a the largest call up since Vietnam and are massing soldiers and supplies along the border in Afghanistan preparatory to the invasion of Iraq (through or over Iran?).

...is that it's based on an engineer's view of language.

There's an article about the Semantic Web by D.C. Denison in today's Boston Globe. Get it before it retreats behind the veil of pay-per-viewness.

Enfish, which makes a great search engine for your own email and desktop files, has a very responsive email support system. So, when I replied to one of their replies, I was aghast with delight to receive a bounce-back that began as follows:

Your reply did not process correctly. Please REPLY to this message and enter the text between the specified lines. Your message has been included below.

Let's see. The robot knows what my message was. It knows which lines my message should have been entered between. But it needs a human to do the cutting and pasting for it.

This makes as much sense to me as the phone error message: "Your call could not be completed. You need to dial a 1 before the number." If they know it needs the one, then put it in for me!

J. Thomas Vincent blogged a conference on the intersection of digits and entertainment the other day. It's an excellent report of what sounds like a useful conference. You'll actually hear people give a more reasonable defense of the Hollings Bill than I'm willing to listen to.

Jeneane's husband is blogging from Hong Kong where he's spending a few months with his band. Diary, letter home, article? I dunno. It's a blog!

I just got a Pockey 10G external hard drive and I find my geek gland is engorged. It's a little thinner, longer and lighter than a deck of cards (the Pockey, not my gland, children) , plugs into a USB port, and is letting me free up 10G of space on my laptop. In fact, it is now the main repository of my vast MP3 collection. (I have over 7 gigs of the classical repertoire recreated in dog yips.)

On the minus side, the data transfer is noticeably slow, although it plays back MP3s without a hitch. On the plus side, it's powered through the USB connection and thus I don't have to stack another piece of furniture in order to make room for one more transformer plug.

I hadn't been back to the home page of The Office of Homeland Security since I went to get a copy of the color-coded alert system to make fun of it. But I had breakfast yesterday with David Stephenson, a consultant to companies and the government on how to use the Internet to change their ways of doing business. He's been thinking about what Might Be when it comes to using the Net to help protect our country from terrorist attacks. David reminded me of just how bad the Homeland's home page is.

Have I mentioned that it sucks? And in this case, sucking isn't a laughing matter.

The basic problem with the page is that it's primarily intended as PR for the grand job the administration is doing. There's the endless photo montage of Bush signing legislation and Ridge looking tough but slightly bewildered at press conferences. There's the "Homeland Security Timeline" that lists speeches and budget increases but somehow misses the anthrax-based evacuation of the Senate and doesn't list a single one of the alerts Ridge's office has issued.

Most clearly featured are the press releases: "Tom Ridge Speaks to the Associated Press Annual Luncheon," "Remarks by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to the Electronics Industries Alliance." The impression this leaves: the greatest weapon in the anti-terrorism arsenal is the rubber chicken.

In one of his speeches, Ridge says, "We're going to knock down the information 'stovepipes' throughout government and turn them into pipelines." Excellent and important. So where are those pipelines on the Homeland home page? Where's even a link to the FBI page? How about a link to something - anything! - that isn't just more PR about what a swell job Bush and Ridge are doing?

In that same speech, Ridge says:

The American people must become active partners in their own protection. More than 30,000 have already signed up for the President's new Citizen Corps program. They'll contribute to homeland security at the grassroots, neighborhood level. I urge all Americans to serve.

And how might we serve? Where's the link to the Citizen Corps? Where's a place where we can leave a tip, get educated about what "be on alert" means and what "suspicious behavior" is, or ask a simple question? (I'm too civic minded to make fun of Ridge's suggestion that attending a PTA meeting constitutes an anti-terrorist action.)

In fact, the URL is within the whitehouse.gov domain, sitting there along with the pages for White House tours, the first lady, and the "Kids Only" page - all listed as buttons above the Homeland Security title, just one click away. Swell.

In Microsoft Word XP, type the phrase "Information Highway." (It's ok, you don't have to mean it.)

Notice the subtle purple underline indicating that Word has Smart Tagged it? Click on the down triangle to see the pulldown list of actions:

He just is, durn it. Especially if you think Bush is a moron. His Bush Diary is good, but what I really like are the email msgs announcing new entries in the diary. He writes with great confidence which is hard to do with comedy because humor writing is inherently a type of pandering, and his confidence is justified ... which is also rare with comedy. For example, in this week's message he waxes comedically about the sorry state of readiness of the National Guard patrolling California's bridges and recommends that we replace them with trolls. He archives his msgs here.

A few hours after sending a USPS money order Priority Mail with a request for delivery confirmation to an address in Atlanta, I received a message from eBay telling me that the recipient's account had been suspended because of unauthorized access. Does anyone know how to stop a money order?

Alternatively, does anyone know any goons hanging out in a bar in Atlanta looking to make a few bucks? (Note: I just want my money order back. I am not paying anything extra for throttling.)

USAToday reports (and Slate re-reports) that Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State during the first annual Florida Fraud Month, is working on a book about her experience. It's called Center of the Storm: Practicing Principled Leadership in Times of Crisis.

Other upcoming books:

The Stealth Executive: Managing the New Distributed Business by O.B. Laden

With the Help of My Friends: Succeeding in the New Gift Economy by Senator Robert G. Torricelli

Letting Go: The Art of Creative Severance by Gary Condit

Tough Love: The Slobodan Milosevic Story