Category: Four pillars

Rumours continue to grow that Apple will announce a special edition Beatles iPod today as part of making Beatle songs available via iTunes. An event that has been predicted for a very long time, so let’s see what surprises are in store. We’ve had the trademark lawsuit settled once and for all. We’ve had a Beatles song playing in the background while Steve talks. So what will he do for One More Thing? I hope it’s more than iPhone-only Beatle ringtones.

I still haven’t met anyone who would refuse an iPhone.

Ever since I started this blog, I’ve been trying to stress the importance of dealing prudently with the Three Is of Information: Identity, Intellectual Property Rights and the Internet.  Recent events have only served to highlight why.

Most of you are aware of the tragic time that Kathy Sierra has had, her response, the polarised debate that ensued, the continuing firestorm, culminating, at least for the time being, in Alan Herrell’s e-mail to Doc. The blogosphere is a small world; you have seen me refer to Kathy’s writings many times; I have, and continue to have, enormous respect for her and her writings; and I know many of the people involved in the debate (at both extremes!), and count quite a few as my friends. Much has been said in the heat of the moment, and much emotion expressed. These are sad times.

Nobody should have to put up with the perverseness, hate, misogyny and bullying that was directed at Kathy. It cannot be defended or condoned. Full stop. So how are we going to prevent this from happening?

Not by knee-jerk attempts at “governing” what happens on the web; personal empowerment is a key attribute of the web, and should remain so. Let us be careful about introducing cyberlaw sledgehammers.

Not by McCarthyist hounding of people judged by innuendo and insinuation either; the presumption of innocence is not something the web can take away. If we do this, all we do is bring the worst of journalism into the digital world rather than the best, which we are still in a position to do.

Not by polarised emotion and blamestorming and flaming either; I am saddened to see just how many friends I have on both sides of the arguments right now, people I will continue to call my friends. I prefer to take the beam out of my own eye rather than look for motes in my friends’ eyes.

We live in a world that has a lot of evil in it, and the Web gets its share.  While I have seen many attempts to legislate ethics, I have also seen them fail. The community space that is the Web can only be “governed” by community ethics and community values. Civility and common sense are more important than legalism and legislation.

If we get Identity right, we can go a long way towards preventing the recurrence of what Kathy faced. Bullies, especially cyber-bullies, tend to be cowards.

If we get Identity right, we can also go a long way towards preventing Digital McCarthyism as well.

Getting Identity right will help ensure that the Web is a safer place for our children, at home or at school; that Web tools can be used more effectively to teach and communicate.

Getting Identity right will help us ensure that the Web is a safer place for us, as we get and spend and lay waste our powers.

Getting Identity right will allow us to ensure that the Knowledge Commons doesn’t become another Tragedy of the Commons, as we use Identity to push back against mindless DRM and IPR legislation.

It’s all about Identity, and the trust that is engendered when Identity is real. And the things that can happen when trust does not exist, or when Identity is not real.

The entire Kathy Sierra incident is a tragedy, one we can and should learn from. Maybe it’s time we became passionate about Identity. I have enjoyed reading Kathy’s blog; I have also enjoyed reading the blogs of many others scattered right across the spectrum of anger and argument engendered by what happened to Kathy. If we want to continue to enjoy reading such conversations, then we have to do something.

And Identity is where I would begin.

I guess some of you may have read Carl Honore’s book on the subject; one way or the other, I thought you might enjoy the following links:

If we had no Web, how else would we even begin to consider spending hours watching a cheese mature?

And how else could we enjoy this, a video of someone creating a Lego version of Mario and then laboriously crafting scenes in order to make it watchable?

I was born nearly 50 years ago in a building on Lower Circular Road in Calcutta, not far from Sealdah station. I have very limited memories of living there, so limited that I question whether they are real. But I’ve visited that building many times, my family technically owned it till 1980.

It seemed huge. Because it was huge. Floor upon floor of rooms laid out enclosing a massive inner quadrangle, vaguely turret-like towers at the four corners with gigantic reception rooms and hallways fronting all this. And a basement where the printing press used to be. A basement where I had the best of both worlds during a rebellious adolescence, a place I could vicariously call home every now and then despite enjoying all the comforts of home with the family elsewhere.

I wasn’t one of those people who discovered their love for their home town years after they left it, I started missing Calcutta while still on the train to Delhi en route London. It wasn’t one of these “absence makes the heart grows fonder” deals, I have always treasured the place and will continue to do so. Particularly the memories of the times I had there, family and friends and school and university and everything.

But you know something, I never knew it was called the City Of Palaces until a few years after I left; it was when I was reading an article about the works of the Daniell brothers that I first came across the term.

Since then I’ve been searching for, digging up and collecting a whole variety of artefacts that relate to the City of Palaces, somehow revelling in the fading grandeur and nobility that Calcutta represented. Can’t quite explain it. It was more than just arguing about India Coffee House or Eden Gardens or the Maidan or Tagore or Ray or Sen or what could become a very long list. It wasn’t about the capital city or the Black Hole or St Xavier’s or the movie halls or Clive Street or Mother Teresa or Joi Bangla or Amahdayr Dabi Mahntay Hobay or a democratically elected communist government. It wasn’t about the RCGC or the Tolly or the Swimming Club or Belvedere or Park Circus or the trams or minibuses or Nizam’s or Bihar’s or the bookshops on College St, on Free School St or in Gariahat. It wasn’t about the jhal mudi or puchkas or the Strand or Victoria Memorial or lounging at the British Council or quizzes and the DI and Neil O’Brien and Sadhan Banerjee and Francis Groser. It wasn’t about watching Sugarfoot form and play and grow. It wasn’t about Moira St and all that it represented.

It was about all of it. And I’ve been privileged to be able to afford and find and collect said artefacts, from Magnolia and Firpo’s menus to photographs of the City in the latter half of the 19th century to diaries and journals and family albums depicting life in the first half of the 20th century.

With all this in mind, I enjoyed looking through a collection of photographs provided in a comment by Stuart Isett. Go take a look, it brings to life the glory and the mundaneness that makes Calcutta Calcutta.

I’ve been on the road for the first time since going bionic, and for some reason I listened to my cardiologist’s advice. Which meant conserving my energy, going to bed earlier than I would have otherwise, resting as much as possible in general.

All this also meant that I didn’t get to blog. In fact, ever since the heart attack I haven’t been posting that often, and the eleven-day break since my last post is probably the longest I’ve had. So I thought I’d take a look at the effect of my laziness on the various ways people rank this kind of activity.

On technorati I have drifted gently from around the 5000 mark to around 10000; on alexa I’ve moved from nothing to nothing, too irrelevant to be measured (although I tell myself that it’s because most people who read this don’t use Internet Explorer <g> ).

For some reason my inactivity seems to have made me more popular on google. (Alright, alright, enough of the laughter). Since Christmas, if you search for “jp” on Google, I get included in the top 8 results. Seems to vary according to the time of day.

I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere. I have no idea why the result is the way it is, given I’ve never Optimised For Search Engines, pay nothing for such things, sell nothing, buy nothing, and have relatively trivial rankings elsewhere.

But there it is. Google says I am more popular when I say nothing <g>.