echovar - Latest Comments

Re: Phone Gender: It’s Aphrodite In A Mini-Skirt

Karoli — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:47:22 -0000

Well, alrighty then. It would seem that whoever is in charge of this ad campaign also supports the Stupak amendment and other anti-women type messages. Grrrr. The last one is particularly annoying.

Re: Phone Gender: It’s Aphrodite In A Mini-Skirt

cgerrish — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:42:35 -0000

Ah, the 'pimply adolescent' might paraphrase Wittgenstein here: whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent.' But, it's the adult who retains the guise who is the real culprit. The genuine adolescent has just cause, the adult still donning the backwards baseball cap, talking on his Droid, simply neglected the task of growing up.

Re: Phone Gender: It’s Aphrodite In A Mini-Skirt

openid-14555 — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:17:07 -0000

Touché! Let us adults ask the pimply adolescents exactly WHAT is wrong with sexual rapture? The mythological Aphrodite may have been vain and unfaithful, but no where do the myths imply that she was dumb. Should the hormonally-compromised Droid some day pass through puberty to maturity, it too will realize that Aphrodite's considerable talents in attracting suitors were essential to the survival of the species. So too with the iPhone.

Re: The Twittering Machine: A Network of Accelerants & Silences

hardaway — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:45:53 -0000

Ahhh, you are not kidding. Most of the viral memes just clutter my stream and don't interest me. And yes, I use silence and negative gestures from trusted authorities as filters.

Re: Liner Notes For The Gillmor Gang: Dynamic from Both Sides of the Glass

Karoli — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:21:36 -0000

Fabulous post, Cliff. That ability to change things in real time, from both sides of the glass, has some amazing ideas rolling around in my head.

Re: The Silo & The Pipe: Doc Searls gets Venezuelan

cgerrish — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:10:55 -0000

Your data is always already yours. It resides on your fingertips before they touch the keyboard.

And you seem to make the point that the silo metaphor is leaking oil, and barely serves either its literal or metaphorical purpose in your rhetoric. Silos by definition are not interoperable. Turning "users" into "silos" is the ultimate contortion of a once stately metaphor.

There are no silos, think Network, nodes and the pipes that connect them.

Re: The Silo & The Pipe: Doc Searls gets Venezuelan

adrianalukas — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:27:44 -0000

Hm, but piping my data and stuff around different silos doesn't make them less of a silo, it just makes them interoperable silos. Doesn't make me that much better off as a user, if user autonomy is what I am after

And as Doc points out elsewhere - a choice of silos is not a free choice.

But even practically, piping just isn't good enough - my data is still one step removed from me and I cannot control or analyse it the way I might want to. Open means that my data is mine and can be 'ported' by me (not the platforms de jour) to an application of my choice. If we are to have silos at all, let's make the users 'silos', i.e. autonomous platforms connected and networked on the web.

As for Twitter, I wish them well. The calls for their nationalisations are repulsive to me, their business plan is irrelevant to me and I wouldn't expect anything less than a very good exit strategy for them. They earned it, good luck to them. What I want is the identi.cas of this world to flourish...

Re: High And Low Culture: The Price of a Ticket

L. Strether — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:44:47 -0000

That's a really perceptive post- I'll be looking at this blog from now on, as this was my first visit.

Re: The Silo & The Pipe: Doc Searls gets Venezuelan

cgerrish — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:57:04 -0000

We're saying some of the same things in different ways. Microsoft failed in the attempt to replace the Network, and so had to join it. In a network, the potential for connection is critical. A silo is unconnected by definition.

Apple's music play isn't a silo, it's a successful business. There's no barrier to creating music players, stores or applications. Microsoft has done just that. But there's no requirement that once you are successful-- you must give the store away. It's entirely possible that a direct distribution model, or a music micro-community model will disrupt the central store model in the next few years. But that's an issue for users to decide which solution is more valuable. Lala.com is a very compelling model. Amazon's MP3 downloads work perfectly with my iPod and iTunes.

Yes, interoperability -- pipes are enough. Now, "pipe" politics look different than "silo" politics. Real time and latency is a big issue -- does the pipe update in real time? Rate limiting is an issue -- does a node limit traffic and why. Censorship, does a node censor any kind of traffic? How can identity be piped from node to node? How can micro-communities form across nodes? These are all political questions in the realm of the pipe -- the connection.

The metaphor is important because it implies boundaries to the conceptual analysis. Looking to the pipe rather than the silo opens a new field of issues. And it recasts 'silo' issues in the context of the Network. In some cases, Microsoft is more interoperable than open source counterparts.

Twitter is a business that's trying to build sufficient scale to create a return on investment for their investors. Rather than ask 'at what cost?' -- we might ask, 'at what benefit to the Network?'

Re: The Silo & The Pipe: Doc Searls gets Venezuelan

meta_robert — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:49:10 -0000

Interesting that you mentioned Netscape and LDAP. One thing I've been pondering lately is the closed nature of the twitter directory. There is user info just floating out there (it comes with the tweet when you pull from the API) but there is no access to the user directory itself... Twitter really does appear to be trying very hard to be open with developers, but I wonder if this is their "ace in the hole"

Re: The Silo & The Pipe: Doc Searls gets Venezuelan

twitter-3339171 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:35:45 -0000

What makes the Network "the silo that killed all other silos"? The Internet has its protocols and standards, but it is not by nature something that seeks to contain, for its own self-serving purposes, everything that depends on it.

Motivations matter. Microsoft failed to control the network, as Craig Burton pointed out long ago, in A Bulldozer Through the Intersection. But Microsoft wanted to control the Network. According to Craig (and bear in mind how long ago this was -- April, 1996), Microsoft began losing that game when Netscape and friends adopted LDAP -- an open directory standard. The story here, now almost forgotten, was vendor vs. vendor hockey at its finest, and one of the ways that Netscape's early work fighting Microsoft paid off later for Google, which in many ways is Netscape 2.0.

The larger motive, or both Netscape and Google, was growing the whole marketplace. They could still dominate that marketplace by doing better work, or by offering more goods and services. But they would not own that marketplace in the sense that they controlled it as a private domain.

The distinction here is between an open market space where many can participate and a closed market space that one company controls.

I don't think Twitter is being like the old Microsoft here. I think it is trying to be as interoperable as it can. But I think some of its moves, such as sticking with bit.ly and not working (far as I know, and I would welcome correction on this) toward an open standard for URL shortening, serve to control and contain the marketplace rather than to open and enlarge that marketplace -- one which they already dominate, and which opening would not threaten.

I also don't buy the Beatles analogy. The Beatles were one band. They never controlled the music industry. Today, to a much greater degree, Apple does that. And they achieved that position by verticalizing a stack of dependencies. Today the vast majority of little music players are iPods (and now iPhones). These operate only with iTunes software. They interoperate with approximately nothing else. Want to buy music for your iPod? Go to Apple's store. Want applications for the iPhone? Apple's iTunes store, again. A large third party marketplace has grown around all of this, and it's all inside Apple's well-crafted vertical space. I don't think it's wrong, or antique, to call that a silo. In fact, I can't think of a better metaphor, and it has nothing to do with politics; nor is it obsolete open source lingo. It has to do with linguistics and the concept of the container. What is Apple's iTunes/iPod/iPhone contained market space most like? A stovepipe? A smokestack? A bottle? Call it what you will, a metaphor is unavoidable. Pick one.

Again, I don't think the Twitter folks are much like Steve Jobs & Co. But I'm sure many of their investors would like them to be. If so, at what cost?

Which brings me back to the question I asked earlier. Is interoperability enough? I say it's not.

Re: The Silo & The Pipe: Doc Searls gets Venezuelan

cgerrish — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:01:50 -0000

I exhumed the moldy metaphor of the 'capitalist pig' intentionally. If you'll recall, in its original context, one was either a 'capitalist pig' or a ' commie bastard.' Like the 'silo' it's a binary opposition that has outlived its usefulness.

If the Network is the computer, a silo is not part of the computer. Once MSFT lost its bid to become the Network (The silo that killed all other silos), it had to join the Network. Thus their new focus on 'first, best and interoperable.'

Interoperability is a question of the 'pipe' -- the connection of one node to another. Oauth is the plumbing Twitter uses to pipe identity to this comment stream.

Don't confuse plumbing with a value proposition. As Steve Gillmor might say, Twitter is like the Beatles. Two guitars, bass and drums is plumbing, but they have every right to the music they make with those instruments. Twitter has taken the micro-message and the directed social graph and created something special. Technically, there's no barrier to entry, anyone can create a micro-messaging service. It's Twitter's mindshare that would be very difficult to overcome.

The Beatles cause a fail whale on Amazon because their Box Sets are sold out. Twitter's fail whales are similar -- you can buy a different box set if you like, you're just not getting The Beatles.

Re: The Silo & The Pipe: Doc Searls gets Venezuelan

twitter-3339171 — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:29:51 -0000

Good points. I agree with many of them, especially around piping. There are rich metaphorical and technical lodes to mine there. But, while I'll agree to leveraging the "open source silo meme", I object to being lumped in with a "drumbeat for the nationalization of Twitter" and accused (by inference, but clearly) of considering Twitter's folks "capitalist pigs".

What I've been working toward, for many years, is recognition of the business-supporting qualities of open infrastructure. You're right that the pipe should be considered part of that, as should other structural conventions of digital plumbing. I'd like to explore that. But you're wrong to suggest that I advocate a "hypothetical socialist realist distributed micro-messaging ecosystem". I don't.

By the way, it's interesting that Twitter is offered as a way to log myself in to DISQUS. Is that an example of piping? I suppose so. Also interesting that, while I've been part of the effort to establish OpenID as a (not the) standard for this kind of thing, using Twitter (for me at least, in this case) is much easier. My fault, I'm sure, for not remembering any of my many OpenID ID/login/password combinations.

What matters is that there are alternatives. Means for logging in are substitutable. Both Twitter and OpenID supply plumbing, much as a lumberyard supplies lumber.

The problem comes when the plumbing from Company A only works within its own walled garden.

So I grant that Twitter and Facebook interoperate. Are you saying that's enough?

Last thing... Below is a checkbox that allows me to "Tweet this comment as @dsearls". Since I'm way over 140 characters I don't know what that means. But I'll check it to find out.

Re: High And Low Culture: The Price of a Ticket

pattyoboe — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:45:12 -0000

Fun read, and I hadn't seen/heard that Nessun Dorma before. Thanks!

Just located this blog ... hope you don't mind this random commenter appearing.

Re: Why Marketing is Broken

steveworth — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:20 -0000

I too don't find any use in simplifying FD.
I choose feeds that I need and I don't need attention tracking at all.
What I need is more powerful filters to pick out the important info from feeds I do follow, and this can't seem to come in line to be implemented. Jack Charlton

Re: Edward Kennedy (1932 – 2009)

hardaway — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 23:27:57 -0000

Brought me to tears, Cliff. Poetry is for moments or extreme emotion. Ted Kennedy was, indeed, an ugly duckling grown into a swan, now carried on the water.

Re: Edward Kennedy (1932 – 2009)

Lynne Leaf — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:24:12 -0000

Beautiful tribute to the last brother ... said through the words of Rilke, my favorite poet. Thank you.

Re: A Loss of Connection: Digital Intermediaries

cgerrish — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:20:21 -0000

I remember seeing Ram Das many years ago in Santa Cruz. He road his
bicycle everywhere.

Re: A Loss of Connection: Digital Intermediaries

hardaway — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 21:50:02 -0000

Ram Dass said it best: "Be. Here. Now." It was not, of course, original with him.

Re: Why Marketing is Broken

mmorpg — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:28:03 -0000

Meh. It's not broken, If it was people wouldn't keep advertising, but they are MMORPG

Re: The Real-Time Web and Information Arbitrage

ReeseJones1 — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:49:16 -0000

Artful blog site & conversation topic Cliff. Most favor sending any data over the internet faster (RSS, Twitter, Hubble or 3D tele-presence).

Astronomy/Geology are some ways "Slowsky" like for precision, but these predict things that can move very fast. Many thousands of years of Slow careful human astronomy data collection, analysis and forecasting through all history (now including employing the fastest network communications infrastructure and powerful compute resources worldwide). Recently the orbit risks of >5,000 asteroid like objects (NEOs) have been identified including >70 large ones with probable earth collision orbits http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ You could even help via the ASE/UN project http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/26779 There are likely 10,000 more NEOs yet to be detected.

Combine astronomy data analysis & communications (you may have noticed both Google & Microsoft are hot on astronomy) with geologic fossil record analysis of historical asteroid collisions data to determine impact consequences. We know "an asteroid (several are) headed toward earth", we also know timing and probable consequences. But the recent first ever forecasted Asteroid/Earth collision (2008 TC3) last year was detected only 1.5 days prior to impact.

2008 TC3 could have hit New York, London, or Tokyo. Future impacts may be a similar Fast surprises plus the already identified NEOs on probable collision orbits. We also know there are financial market risks and legal risks of these events (see ASE/NEO/UN program).

Perhaps Twitter or RSS will help observers to report the next asteroid collision path, perhaps detected by an armature astronomer like this week's Jupiter collision reported to the IAU http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/weekinreview/....

Faster is better for some things but Slowsky patience like watching star fields to notice a shadow passing between, logging, then reporting it appropriately - is how these asteroids are detected. An urgent report of inaccurate data delivered faster will not yield a better result. A Tweet urging - "An Asteroid is going to hit" the incorrect place... will not be best for anyone (except the "fame" of being the very first to report... something... perhaps wrong). Mindful "Slow" action can be good.

Consider the Slow Food movement and other slow deliberate movements. Perhaps there is a Slowsky argument ;)

Re: The Real-Time Web and Information Arbitrage

cgerrish — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:02:48 -0000

In geologic and astronomical time scales, any human communication would be considered very fast. And if an asteroid was headed toward earth, I doubt we would consider it a matter for slow contemplation.

Re: The Real-Time Web and Information Arbitrage

ReeseJones1 — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:39:35 -0000

A 2007 example real "realtime" internet media using then existing telecommunications infrastructure with 40 cameras/stream + audio in realtime over 12k miles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcfNC_x0VvE You could use RSS/Atom/Web feeds to schedule such real real-time meetings.

And some thinking about the speed value resident in information: consider the geologic and astronomical records - for modeling the future economic value of asteroid hits. Not fast, but high value when needed. A kind of Slowsky contemplation.

Re: The Real-Time Web and Information Arbitrage

cgerrish — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:59:31 -0000

Speed is necessary, but not sufficient for the economics of the real-time web. For examples of the 'slowsky' argument -- look for responses to FriendFeed's move to real time.

Re: The Real-Time Web and Information Arbitrage

dave — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:38:16 -0000

Hmmm. It's taken you more than 3 minutes to respond. Not very realtime! :-)