Author: JP

“Isn’t it nice when things just work”

I first came across this some four or five years ago, when researching the web for Rube Goldberg machines. But all I saw were references to the original Honda “Cog” advertisement. More recently, since maybe 2005, there have been a number of versions on the web. This one seems the most “official”, I only came across it recently while continuing with investigations into the Rube Goldberg space.

Worth seeing if you haven’t already done so.

Why am I looking into Rube Goldberg machines? Simple. Because one day I want to build a large “marble run meets Rube Goldberg meets Heath Robinson meets perpetuum mobile“. Told you it was simple.

Why then do I bother to talk about this in a blog “about information”? Because I think there are many lessons we can learn by digging into the making of the video. Lessons like what? Like maybe there is a “the physics are different” lesson to be learnt about software development meeting virtual world. Like maybe now that a critical part of Hollywood, post-production, is encamped firmly in Bollywood, the economics change as well.

Just musing. Comments welcome.

More musings about IPR

If you haven’t seen it already, do take a look at this letter to the Times last week, from Joseph Stiglitz and John Sulston.

Here are a few excerpts:

The question of “Who owns science?” is therefore a crucial one, the answer to which will have broad-reaching implications for scientific progress and for the way in which the benefits of science are distributed, fairly or otherwise. Two of the most pressing issues concern equity of access to scientific knowledge and the useful products that arise from that knowledge.

The current system of managing research and innovation incorporates a complex body of law governing the ownership of “intellectual property” — copyright and patents being the most familiar. Intellectual property rights are intended to provide incentives that encourage the advancement of science, enhance the pace of innovation, increase the derived economic benefits and provide a fair way of regulating access to these benefits. But does it really achieve these purposes? There is increasing concern that, to the contrary, it may, under some circumstances, impede innovation, lead to monopolisation, and unduly restrict access to the benefits of knowledge.

We believe it is time to reassess the effect of the present regime of intellectual property rights, especially with respect to the area of patent law, on science, innovation and access to technologies and determine whether it is liberating — or crushing; whether it operates to promote scientific progress and human welfare – or to frustrate it.

Every time the discussion is about patents, trademarks or copyright, people go all polarised. As if the debate is about pinko lefty tree-huggers on the one side and honest sweat-of-brow geniuses on the other.

This is not what the debate is about.

The debate is about old laws no longer being fit for purpose and needing changing. Changing radically. Changing in ways that do not treat everyone (yes, everyone!) as a criminal; in ways that pollute paths of communication unnecessarily; in ways that throw away the value represented by the web when coupled with ubiquitous communications.

The debate is about health, education and welfare.

Not cinema, as some people would have it.

The debate is about innovation.

Not stifling it, as some companies would have it.

So let us continue to have the debate.

Pictures and words: musing about open multisided platforms

Over the last two years, I’ve been continuing with my research into open multisided platforms, particularly with a view to building community with them.

I’ve been privileged over the years to be associated with openadaptor, tiddlywiki and web21c; from the earliest moment I’ve tried to learn how to get out of the way and stay out of the way, while somehow remaining accountable. Sometimes I think we need a new term to describe the sort of soft-hands leadership required; the last time I tried, the best I could do was “tangential management”. But that’s another story.

I continue to think about open multisided platforms, and I’m sure there’s a lot I will learn in the process, particularly as friends and colleagues point me at people to talk to, books to read, articles to ponder over, sites to visit. And this has been happening.

For many years, it was hard to talk about open multisided platforms. Open source people don’t go looking for monetisation models, they solve problems. They make shoes, not money. So it was with open platforms. Whenever you mentioned them in conversation, the first question was not about the community but about the business model. And when you mentioned meta-models built around the community, in fact often built by the community, there was wailing and gnashing and glazings over. Which sort of killed the conversation.

Things have become a lot easier. Firstly, people are more willing and able to understand the importance of community, and of second-order business models built around the emergent community. But secondly and more importantly, articles like Better Than Free have helped remove the scales from their eyes (thank you Kevin Kelly).

Nowadays, when people talk about platforms, it is hard to avoid mentioning what’s been happening with Microsoft and Yahoo and Google. And it always reminds me of these three pictures I saw in an article by Henry Blodget. Read the whole article, it’s worth it. Even if you don’t agree with some of it.

They tell quite a story, don’t they? It’s going to be interesting, moving from the lock-in world to the open multisided world, a journey we have only just begun to take. A high-stakes table, as the charts above show.

Musing about Information and Long Tail and Publish-Subscribe

I’ve been learning a lot from the whole Twitter phenomenon. How, despite its frailties and weaknesses, it continues to attract followers. How, despite it being “down so ***damn long, that it looks like up to me” people continue to build Twitter ecosystem tools. And how it spawns an entire industry around the Fail Whale: the Wikipedia article, the official site and fan club, the Facebook page and even the merchandising sites. And even a Flickr group, where this one, from FactoryJoe, remains my favourite:

So why is Twitter so popular? As I’ve said before, I think it’s about the pub-sub model. People do not want information on a “Hit Culture” basis, they want it on a “Long Tail” basis. Talking about Long Tail, there was a great review of Chris Anderson’s book by Steven Johnson some time ago. Some of the things he said in that article are germane in the context of stuff like Twitter:

It occurred to me reading The Long Tail that the general trend from mass to niche can explain some of this increased complexity: niches can speak to each other in shorthand; they don’t have to spell everything out. But at the same time, the niche itself doesn’t have to become any more aesthetically or intellectually rich compared to what came before. If there’s a pro wrestling niche, the creators don’t have to condescend to the non-wrestling fans who might be tuning in, which means that they can make more references and in general convey more information about wrestling — precisely because they know their audience is made up of hard core fans. But it’s still pro wrestling. The content isn’t anything to write home about, but the form grows more complex. In a mass society, it’s harder to pull that off. But out on the tail, it comes naturally.

Niches can speak to each other in shorthand. I do like that turn of phrase. Now Steven, one of my favourite authors, wrote that some time ago. As technology improves, I think the capacity for niches to carry and embed context in their shorthand also improves. Take for example the audioscrobbler to FoxyTunes to TwittyTunes to Twitter chain: you listen to something, audioscrobbler scrapes the song title and artist(s), FoxyTunes picks it up and creates a mash-up including the song lyrics, the web site, the MySpace or Facebook page, the Google returns, the Wikipedia entry, tracks for sale at Amazon or emusic, and so on. TwittyTunes then takes the url for the FoxyTunes mashed-up page and crunches it into a tinyurl or similar, then posts it as a tweet from you.

That’s just one example. The process itself is there to be repeated for many others, ranging from stocks and shares to planes and trains and automobiles.

Capillary conversations are here to stay. Niches will speak to each other in shorthand. Enabling technologies will get more and more robust. People will learn more about the use of publish-subscribe models. [An aside: there are a lot of people who pooh-pooh pub-sub, claiming that it doesn’t scale. The way this pooh-poohing is done, it reminds me of the way people used to say that Linux wouldn’t scale. Dinosaur death throes.]

Yup, capillary conversations are here to stay. And the sooner we understand that, the better.

Covering all your bases

First, an apology. I have this thing about cricket, and while some of you may like it, I realise it means nothing to others, and for that I apologise. I guess I tend to write “long tail”, with different posts being of interest to different small groups.

Now cricket people tend to know very little about baseball. If you asked a budding Bill Frindall what Tinker to Evers to Chance meant to him, you’d probably be met with a blank look. Baseball’s Sad Lexicon is not part of the traditional cricket aficionado’s vocabulary.

There are some things, however, that don’t need such lexical power for their enjoyment. Things like Abbott and Costello’s Who’s On First routine. I’d heard of it a long time ago, even read the script, but for some reason never actually heard it. Then, at reboot this year, Dan Gillmor made sure I didn’t miss out. [Thanks, Dan!].

Coincidentally, Tom Raftery made a passing tweet about the same thing today, as a result of which I found a video version.

If comedy routines were chillies, this one would be a naga jolokia.

If you’re a cricket fan, see how the other side laugh. If you’re a baseball fan, get your own back. If you’re neither, sit back and relax anyway. One way or the other, watch it. It’s too good to miss.

And if you’ve seen it before, I can’t see you not seeing it again….can you?