Category: Four pillars

Some people think that issues like Net Neutrality and DOPA are confined to the US, and don’t understand why I (and many like me) think this is a global issue, and that everyone should get involved.

Let me try to explain why:

• The internet, whatever you define it as, is global
• The internet allows us an opportunity to innovate on a grand scale, and make a real impact on issues ranging from poverty thru healthcare thru education thru climate change thru to many other things important to all of us, including business
• The value of innovation is derived primarily by consumers
• US consumers are critical to the global innovation process, regardless of where the innovation is  “created”
• Anything that pollutes the path of the end-to-end internet stifles this innovation

Now that may sound altruistic-pinko-utopia to some of you; when you read the rest of this post, I hope to have changed a little bit of your mind.
The latest issue of the Economist referred me to a fascinating paper, via this article. [Oh frabjous day calloo callay, the article has not been DRMed to death].
The article refers to a paper presented by Amar Bhide at the CESifo and Centre on Capitalism and Society Conference in Venice (I shall resist the temptation to add Italy as a suffix :-) ). You can download the entire paper yourself via this site.

I quote from the Economist article:

The most important part of innovation may be the willingness of consumers, whether individuals or firms, to try new products and services, says Mr Bhide. In his view, it is America’s venturesome consumers that drive the country’s leadership in innovation. Particularly important has been the venturesome consumption of new innovations by American firms. Although America has a lowish overall investment rate compared wih other rich countries, it has a very high rate of adoption of information technology (IT).

Read the article and the paper for yourself. There are a few things I’m not sure about, there’s much I don’t know enough about, but one thing’s for sure. Innovation is about consumers and not innovators. This is not new, it’s been a while since I first heard Michael Schrage say it. What Schrage actually said was:

Innovation isn’t what innovators do….it’s what customers and clients adopt.

The US is the biggest capital market in the world. It has the most “venturesome consumers”. It is critical to global innovation, particular web-related innovation. Global innovation is critical to our attempting to solve many of the long-standing problems we face. [Before you say it, I agree. Innovation is necessary but not sufficient to solve these problems, we have political and philosophical and spiritual and economic and cultural barriers as well. Or maybe I should just say Fear and Greed and be done with it).

So that’s why I care about doing everything I can to make sure that people understand the problems in the Net Neutrality Bill(s) and DOPA. And why we should all care.

These are not easy issues. But the consequences of getting them wrong don’t bear thinking about. So get involved.

Saw this in the Times today. A cosmetics company convinces the Dutch Supreme Court that one of its “fragrances” should be copyrighted; I can only infer that it couldn’t win the case on patent or trademark bases…. and given that the “original” retails at £40, and the “copy” at £3, I’m not meant to be surprised.

Whatever next. And people wonder why I call myself Confused.

I’ve now spent time reading through comments and coverage on the web, and came across Vicki Davis’s blog and post on the subject. It’s an absolute must-read. She knows what she is talking about.

Her point on the number of comments being made by people who have not read the Bill is itself worth noting. While I did read the Bill, I did not have the contextual knowledge she so clearly has, as to how schools in the US manage access to social software today. So I’m very grateful for her insights.

Anyone interested in the use of social software in education must read her post and her detailed critique of the Bill. There’s so much there for me to absorb and learn from. Thank you Vicki.

Thanks to Kevin Marks for bringing this to my attention. I quote from the ZDNet story:

• Web sites like Amazon.com and MySpace.com may soon be inaccessible for many people using public terminals at American schools and libraries, thanks to the U.S. House of Representatives.
• By a 410-15 vote on Thursday, politicians approved a bill that would effectively require that “chat rooms” and “social networking sites” be rendered inaccessible to minors, an age group that includes some of the Internet’s most ardent users. Adults can ask for permission to access the sites.
• “Social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids,” said Rep. Ted Poe, a Texas Republican and co-founder of the Congressional Victim’s Rights Caucus. “This bill requires schools and libraries to establish (important) protections.”
• Even though politicians apparently meant to restrict access to MySpace, the definition of off-limits Web sites is so broad the bill would probably sweep in thousands of commercial Web sites that allow people to post profiles, include personal information and allow “communication among users.” Details will be left up to the Federal Communications Commission.

Kevin also pointed me at what Danah Boyd had to say about this, which you can find here.

This is serious stuff. If the Bill becomes law, for one thing my Four Pillars suddenly becomes No Pillars. Or at best Two. But that’s not important.

What is important is Danah’s point about access. Social software skills are becoming more and more important, and are wonderful tools to create and release value. We are still learning about how to use them in education, healthcare and industry, but the value proposition is so profound that little, if any, analysis is required. What the Bill does is disenfranchise those whose primary access to social software is in schools and libraries. Which is incredibly saddening.

A few other observations.

One, the House voted 410-15 to pass the Bill. I wonder how many of those 415 have ever seen MySpace, much less used it.

Two, the Bill, while ostensibly designed to block MySpace, will affect all blogs and social networks for that matter most 21st century web sites, from Amazon thru eBay and Flickr. This is disenfranchisement on a magnitude that I find hard to believe. Again, probably carried out by people who have limited, if any, experience of the tools and facilities.

Three, if the Bill passes, the most likely outcome is that the very activity it seeks to prevent moves deeply underground, an appalling possibility. People forget the transparency that the web provides. At work I’ve always felt that driving dissent underground is counterproductive. In this context the parallel is worse than just counterproductive; new ways will be found that are actually harder to police than the status quo. And will cost a lot more. And yet fail.

Four, what we need is the exact reverse. Education in the benefits and risks of collaboration tools and social software, and ubiquitous access to the tools. And maybe we need to start not at the schools and the libraries, or even in the enterprises, but in the legislatures. Worldwide.

I’d be interested in knowing what Judy Breck and John Seely Brown and Clarence Fisher et al feel about this, with its terrible impact on education. So I shall watch their blogs with even more interest than is usual, if that is possible.

I love reading Tara at HorsePigCow; she writes stuff that’s sufficiently off-beat to make me think hard and go places I didn’t plan to go. Which is a good thing.

Tara recently posted on the death of the browser, and then followed up after a comment by JulesLt.

And it made me think. About the different behaviours people exhibit in the context of the devices they use, and how those behaviours change when the devices aren’t connected to the ether.

Let’s take the device first. And for the sake of this argument, let’s keep it simple and concentrate on the laptop or handheld computer.

Some people are happy to work “offline” on things, like choring through e-mail while connectionless on a plane; they get off the plane and then zap a plethora of mails out. They seem happy doing this.

I’m not sure why, but I don’t do this. And I perceive I’m not alone. I tend to work “analog” when I am not connected, rather than work “delayed-digital”. I read physical printed things. Listen to music. Sleep. Talk to people. And it’s not just the laptop, it’s the blackberry as well. No signal no writee.

Staying with devices. They become like pens. Some people want to use their particular special pen. Some will use the nearest pen they can find. Some don’t care. And that’s the way I see people use mobile computers.

When we look at applications, I take Tara’s Google Calendar point completely. There are some applications such as address books and calendars where you need an offline or no-connection facility, which requires a local copy. It is immensely frustrating to be denied access to low-volatility information just because you’re offline.

But you have to be careful. Local copies create their own evils. Synchronisation. The need for discipline in the size of what is synchronised. The problems of synchronisation failures or mismatches.

My guess is that there are some things where I would always want a local copy of the information, such as music and video and photo and address book and calendar. These are also things I can put easily on a USB stick. And all the synchronisation I want is probably at port or Bluetooth level in close proximity to the host device and independent of being connected to the ether. And I become personally responsible for the backing up and the housekeeping.

There are some things where I would always not-want a local copy of the information, where the joy comes from outsourcing the pain of looking after it and maintaining it and backing it up and and and. Like this blog.

As far as possible, I want to minimise the things I must have on my portable device, and have a full backup on flash memory. This way I can detach myself from device ownership, using the USB stick as my personal augment to any suitable device.

And offhand I don’t want to have anything that has to be replicated and synchronised between my device and a web server, too many things can and do go wrong.

But that’s just me.

An aside. I wish I could have an address book that worked like iTunes. A big library, with a Gracenotes equivalent to extend and enrich what I enter. And a simple way of creating contact playlists for phone, for blackberry, for laptop, etc.

Just musings.