Bone Dry Future

I’m going to a fancy-pants event tomorrow night at which each one of us — 20 in all — has to talk for three minutes about an impending significant technology, company, idea or trend. Since all 19 other attendees are certifiably smarter than I am — I can prove it — and since I am hypersensitive to what others think of me, I am having a small anxiety attack that has required me to consume my own weight in Cheezits in the past hour.

In the past, in my panic I’d blurt our “Love,” but with “Love Is the Killer App” on the cover of FastCompany (and the founder of FastCompany in attendance), my fallback answer has been co-opted. Would “Hate” work? Can I get away with “Ginger” and a knowing look?

There isn’t a chance in hell that I know about some trend, technology or company that these folks haven’t either initiated or already dismissed with an imperious wave of their hands. So, I’m thinking about saying something like:

The importance of the weblog phenomenon isn’t so much that it enables people to publish their breakfast menus or even their genuine insights. It’s that we now know what our “avatars” on the Net are going to be: not graphical cartoon representations but our body of writing. You are what you write. On the Web we are writing ourselves into existence. This introduces into the self the same issues of control, inspiration, invention, deception and play as have always been present in the relationship of authors to what they write.

Hmm, sounds deep without actually meriting much thought, which is fine since by the time I’m done, they will have moved onto the next person in line. Vague, ethereal, and if said with confidence, may not have the tire-air smell of truly vapid ideas.

If you have something better, let me know quick!

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Googlewhacking Embraces Complexity

We have a new leader in the race for the ultimate Googlewhack (a game promulgated by Gary Unblinking Stock). And he’s only 15. Sam Dionne has come up with “linux hayrack”:

linux: 47,300,000
hayrack: 3,110
Total Marks mark: 147,103,000,000

That’s seems like it’s not enough to beat Matt’s “linux anemonefish”:

linux: 48,300,000
anemonefish: 3,130
Total Marks mark: 151,179,000,000

But Sam reports a score of 157.6 billion and I’d believe him even if he weren’t my nephew. The fact is that Google seems to vary in its count of a word depending on what color socks you’re wearing. When Mark, Sam’s father, looked up “linux” a couple of days ago, Google reported 45,300,000. Within a few minutes, I checked and it was reporting 50,500,000. Matt and Sam cite different counts for “linux.” As a result, we have no choice but to resort to a Linux Constant and declare Sam the current leader … although with a score several billion lower than yesterday’s leader. Such is life in the digital fast lane.

Mark Dionne challenges our blithely writing off zero-hit Googlewhacking as a challenge for simpletons and unelected national leaders:

I’m not convinced that zero hits is easy with common words. Can you give a competitive example, over 1 billion?

Sam got 6 billion with “directory yestermorning”

I pass the challenge on to you. (However, I get two hits for “directory yestermorning,” one of which is outrageously pornographic…and, no, these pages show up even if you turn on Google’s anti-porn SafeSearch filter.)

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Free the Broadband

TechNet, a consortium of industry CEO’s, has issued a call for a national (US) initiative to get broadband to every household. The main thing the government has to do is get out of the way:

Government policies should foster innovation and reduce regulations — especially with respect to broadband applications and services;

Public policy should encourage new investment in broadband infrastructure and networks through competition and the removal of regulatory uncertainty and disincentives;

State and localities should promote streamlined laws and regulations that encourage broadband investment, and interstate consistency should be achieved whenever possible;

National spectrum policy should utilize market-based approaches that reduce the artificial scarcity of spectrum for valuable broadband applications;

Investment incentives, potentially including targeted tax incentives, should encourage broadband deployment to underserved communities and businesses;

Broadband policy should encourage innovation and government should not pick technology winners and losers.

The members of TechNet are:

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems; John Doerr, Partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Eric Benhamou, Chairman of 3Com Corporation and Palm Inc.; Paul Gudonis, CEO of Genuity; Tony Ley, Chairman and CEO of Harmonic, Inc; Rick Burnes, Partner with Charles River Ventures; John Young, retired President and CEO of Hewlett Packard; Les Vadasz, Senior Vice President of Intel; Bob Herbold, COO and Executive Vice President of Microsoft; Milo Medin, Chief Technology Officer of Excite@Home.

Sure they’re self-interested. But they’re still right.

An AP article by Brian Bergstein quotes Forrester Research analyst Carl Howe:

“There is no proof, in any way, shape or manner, that says if we give more broadband to everybody it’s going to make us more productive,” he said. ”It will make us more connected. It might make us happier. But I’m not sure it’s a better use of our money than putting 50,000 more teachers in schools.”

First, this isn’t an either/or. Second, the broadband project is likely to cost less than a single year of paying 50,000 teachers a salary (figuring an optimistic average salary of $50K). Third, the aim is to enable the market to find ways to provide broadband profitably, with the government supplying incentives only where the market doesn’t.

More important, no, there’s no proof it’ll make us more productive. But there’s every reason to believe that high speed connectivity will bring forth innovations we haven’t begun to imagine. If we give everyone instantaneous access to all of the digitized workds of humans and instantaneous, high quality access to the global conversation, we will change everything from broadcast TV to how we play music together to how gossip works. So, it may not make us more productive (although it probably will), but it certainly will make us more inventive, more creative, more inquisitive, more connective.

The obstacles are artificial. We need to clear them out of the way. This is a legitimate role for government. Let’s do it because we don’t know what will result. Hell, that’s why we fought them Redcoats 225 years ago.

(David Isenberg and I wrote a rough draft of a similar call, based on an incisive analysis by Roxane Googin. You can read the draft of “The Paradox of the Best Network” at NetParadox.com.)

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Spam’s Absolute Zero

RageBoy’s ‘zine, EGR, while touting his marvelous new book The Bombast Transcripts (on which more later), somehow manages to point us at a shrine site devoted to Beaner, a dead dog. After poking around for a while — future anthropologists are going to have to re-evaluate our culture when they unearth this site — I found a related site for Ollie who has joined his dear friend Beaner chewing couch legs in the sky. Ollie’s human life companions provide links to let us sign or read a site guestbook where we can record our thoughts of consolation and sympathy, preferably in all caps to vouchsafe our sincerity: “VERY INSPIRATIONAL FOR ALL LOVERS OF WEINIES”. The very last message reads in its entirety:

Great site. Just surfed in. Visit our discount vacation site @ www.magicrates.com

Yes, this person has spammed a dead dog’s mourners’ guestbook.

My challenge to you: Find me a spammer lower on the scale.

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Gogglewhacking: The Next Generation

The search for the Ultimate Googlewhacker continues. (A googlewhack, as you may remember, is a set of two common words that produce one and only one hit in Google. The score is computed by multiplying the number of hits each word returns on its own at Google.)

An entry from Andy Chen for one brief moment took the lead — snatching it from Dave Curley (“Dewpoint Beeped” = 15,982,900,000).

metronome : 115,000
dewpoint : 271,000
Total Marks mark : 31,165,000,000

Kevin Marks, inventor of the Marks Scoring System used in to evaluate Googlewhacks, points us to Mornington Crescent, a site where googlewhacking — invented by Gary Unblinking Stock (All hail Gary!) — is the subject of considerable conversation. There an entry from Matt puts considerable distance between him and the rest of the pack: “linux anemonefish.” Check the scoring on this humdinger:

linux: 48,300,000
anemonefish: 3,130
Total Marks mark: 151,179,000,000

Ah, but should “linux” be “Linux,” and as a proper noun be prohibited? Not according to dictionary.com that accepts both versions.

Kevin says: “I still claim the prize for having 2 on one page…”

Mark Dionne, p.o.ed about the no proper nouns rule is working on combinations with the word “windows,” taking advantage of Google’s indifference to case. Interestingly, however, “windows” only returns 39,900,000 hits, almost 10 million fewer than “linux.”

Question of the Hour: Who will break the One Trillion Googlewhack Barrier?

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Real-Time WebLogRolling

I’m sitting next to Howard Greenstein at Jerry’s Retreat. He’s blogging via the wireless network as he sits here . When I read over his shoulder, I saw that he was actually bloggingsomething about me, the bastahd. So, I’m doing some real-time reciprocity. Just because I can.

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AOL’s RedHat Box

The rumor that AOL is negotiating to buy RedHat raises my resting heart rate to 37 beats per minute, a full 2 beats faster than W’s. In my fantasy, AOL buys RedHat and comes out with an AOL PC aimed at the end of the market that still finds computers and the Net too complex. The AOL box is an incredibly well-integrated package that plugs into your TV and into the Time-Warner broadband connection that comes bundled with it. (Maybe it doesn’t need the broadband. We’ll let the marketing folks – and then the Justice Department – figure that out.) Flip a switch and you’re on the Net and you’re doing the Tivo thing, too. The GUI is designed from the ground up to be so simple that marsupials can use it to browse, write email, do basic word processing and play games. No user knows that it’s Linux under the skin, just as Tivo gives no indication (why should it?) that it’s a visitor from the planet Linux. But, in my fantasy, this is an expansible system in terms of hardware and software, thus creating enough of a market for Linux desktop apps that Microsoft is given a run for its (= our) money.

Don’t tell me how wrong I am. Let me dream a little longer… (I refuse to acknowledge that the outcome might be a second locked down OS. Noooooooooo!)

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Blogging Private/Public

Here at Jerry Michalski’s “retreat” – about 50 of Jerry’s closest friends talking for 2 days in NYC – blogs keep coming up. When setting the ground rules, Jerry asked that the journalists refrain from reporting on what goes on so that people won’t feel inhibited. But how about blogs? And what about the journalists at the meeting who have blogs? Free Dan! Blogging feels different; being unable to blog would be akin to being unable to discuss the proceedings with one’s friends, turning the retreat from something private into something secret. Jerry quickly came to what I think we all agreed was the right decision: Go ahead and blog but if you’re going to get real specific about what people said, check with them first. By the afternoon, Dan had already blogged the morning.

In the afternoon there was a panel discussion about blogging. A “panel discussion” means that a few people – in this case, Dan, Meg, Peterme, and me – stood at the front of the room, talked for a few minutes and then talked with the audience. The conversation seemed to me to center usefully on the odd mix of private and public that is distinctive of the Weblog form, and that is distinctive of individual weblogs that range from the confessional to the quotidian to the demi-professional writings of fully professional authors.

Great mix of people here. And, in a confessional note, I will admit that one reason I’m blogging this is because I’m flattered to be here. (The World’s Worst Blogsticker: “Go from Low to Rah! and you’ve turned Blogging into Bragging!”)

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Closed for the Weekend

Stomach flu permitting, I’ll be away for the weekend and unable to blog. See you Monday.

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New Joho out

As usual, I forgot to mention that I’ve published a new issue of my newsletter, JOHO. Much of the material you may recognize since I ran it here first. But not all, including a little piece on innovation that has a scientifical chart in it:

Here’s the table of contents:

It’s free. Would it kill you to take a look?

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