Category: Four pillars

Mitch Ratcliffe pointed me at this letter, posted via Doc Searls, which gave unusual meanings to the word “unlimited”.

And it reminded me of an experience I had, nearly two decades ago, travelling on British Rail as it then was.

I was looking forward to a game of golf with some colleagues of mine from Data General. We were scheduled to tee off at 8am somewhere near Dorking, I think it was Gatton Manor at Ockley. I didn’t drive (I still don’t, never have done) and so we agreed that I would take a train from Windsor (where I still live) to Camberley. The others would pick me up from the railway station there, and we would drive off to Ockley.

All well and good.

Now in those days, the fare system on UK rail networks was unusual to say the least. It felt like there was an average of a dozen different fares for every journey, based on a variety of factors ranging from day through time of day through direction of travel and age and round-trip and advance booking and a slew of other factors.

[Remind you of anything?]

It was 530am when I marched up to the ticket counter at Windsor, stated my requirement politely, and was delighted to find out that I could have a “cheap day return” to Camberley. Which I bought, and was given two stubs of paper as a result.

The physical hub-and-spoke nature of rail networks in the south-east of England are laid out traditionally. That is to say all routes are based on going towards London or coming from there. So if, like me, you had the effrontery to want to travel north-south while living west of London, you had to go towards London, change, then come out again.

[Remind you of anything?]

So I resigned myself to the convoluted journey, got on the train, switched at Staines to head in the opposite direction, and was dreaming of hitting small white spheres great distances while nodding off. As one does.

Now all this was in the days before ubiquitous mobile phones. As we approached Bagshot, the stop before Camberley, I saw my colleagues waving madly from the station car park; they had decided to intercept me one stop earlier. So I got off, clubs and all.

The ticket inspector had other views. I couldn’t get off there. Apparently, despite having paid to go to the next station on the line (and to return from there later) I was not allowed to get off at Bagshot. Because Bagshot did not qualify for a Cheap Day Return from Windsor at that time of day. And Camberley did.

[Remind you of anything?]

I did what you would expect. Gave him my card, told him “So sue me and find this story in the Sun tomorrow”, clambered past him and went to meet my friends. I could not believe the guy. How could someone possibly tell me that I did not have the right to terminate my journey one stop short of where I’d paid to be, a stop that the train stopped at anyway? Insanity.
Not much happened later. No fines, no appearance in court, no nothing. But there was a letter. A letter that reminded me of the Laws and Bye-Laws of travelling on British Rail. Which, when summarised, stated:

• They didn’t promise that trains would be on time.
• They didn’t promise you would get a seat.
• They didn’t even promise that there would be a train at all.
• And, to top it all, the two stubs of cardboard they gave you, your “tickets”, were actually their property as well. To be returned on demand.

Remind you of anything?

So Mitch, that’s what I think of the letter. Doomed to failure. British Rail had to morph and change, but they too have a long way to go.

David N Wallace makes a very important point. It is much more than a coda to Doc’s piece and my follow-up post, and deserves its own space, not just on his blog, but on mine as well. So I reproduce it here:

Now I know about the edge, I live there. On the edge, the fringe of society. Maybe not as near as some, maybe further out than others. As a general statement, most people living with disability live there, as do other marginalised groups of individuals.

Marginalisation occurs when something on the edge is unconnected.

This can be seen in the area of housing and disability. Institutions versus community living. It is simply human decentralisation. Where rather than data moved out and siloed, people are. People living in the community without the freedom of connection to the ‘network’ of other human beings living around them become cut off, isolated – marginalised. What should be a clear path is blocked by barriers.

Institutionalisation is not a state of place, but a state of disconnection.

On the fringe you need to be adaptable. My whole life is one of intense adaption – a life-kludge.

That’s essentially why Lifekludger exists, to remove barriers to connection – to connect around the idea that technology is a great way to get people living with disability, even though they may be living on the edge, that they might be connected and not marginalised.

Thanks for opening my eyes, David.

For me at least, this opens up a completely different perspective and frame of reference.

Thanks to Pete Shaw who pointed me at this WSJ article while commenting on one of my recent posts on iTunes. It’s headlined Free, Legal and Ignored.

Just shows what happens when people think Free means Gratis and plan accordingly. There are probably people in Generation M who don’t know who Richard Stallman is.

But they do know what Free as in Freedom is. In a strange kind of way, they don’t even mind lock-ins. Provided it’s their choice. What they have been used to is lock-ins by stealth, and this they refuse point-blank. So they will buy iTunes for their iPod, and refuse tracks that won’t play on iPods. Because that’s the way they see it. This track won’t play on iPod. I have an iPod. I like my iPod. What good is that track to me?

As stated previously, I still hope and wish that Apple will do the right thing with FairPlay. But they seem to understand Generation M better than the competition, and will probably time the move right.

Today’s Economist carries comment and analysis of the iTunes business model following the recent attempts by France to prise open iTunes. You can find the entire article here, thankfully weedless i.e. not DRMed to submission.

I’ve never bought anything from the iTunes store; my children have, by the clickload. I am different from them; I’d already invested considerable sums in acquiring more than a thousand CDs, and what iTunes gave me was a simple, convenient way of unlocking the physical assets I’d already paid for and making them available for mobile use.

And an excuse to buy another Mac (or three) and pretty much every iPod ever released. As if I needed an excuse.
So, for people like me, ITunes represents something quite different. It represents freeing up music I already had. It represents a powerful way of managing the music I already had, in terms of finding tracks, creating playlists, transferring them to mobile devices, listening to the music, sharing it all with my kids.

Think of it as Four Pillars all at once. In ITunes I have syndication, I can publish the music to devices and people around my household. In ITunes I have search, for tracks, artists, albums, whatever, however. In ITunes I have fulfilment, in terms of the capacity to acquire the music and videos. And via iTunes ecosystem pieces like last.fm, I can sustain conversation about all of this. Soon I expect to see presence and IM and videochat more seamlessly integrated into the iTunes experience, either directly by Apple or via last.fm and pandora and members of that ilk. Soon I expect to see more seamless mashing capabilities as well.

And for the present, I’m prepared to pay the price of lock-in, where I can only listen to these tracks via an iPod. Yes it is a jail, but at least it’s an elegant one.

And I have the belief, possibly benighted, that Apple will do the right thing on FairPlay. Within the next two years. And guess what? I’ll probably go buy another iPod to celebrate. It’s about freedom to choose; you don’t have to exercise the freedom, you just need to have it. And if the product is good enough, you will keep buying it.

The Economist article asserts that the music store is a “loss leader” that serves only to boost sales of the iPod. I would make one more assertion. That there is a high correlation between tracks sold via iTunes and physical CD sales. Maybe the music industry needs to understand this as well, that, for certain market segments, iTunes extends and augments hard CD sales rather than substitute and depress such sales.

A related topic. I read what Malc had to say today, about the framing problem with taking Apple head-on in this space. He’s absolutely right. His stance reminded me of this article on The Transition Away from Microsoftness, from the Linux Journal.

Nobody in his right mind will try and compete with Microsoft Office head-on, it has a dominant position in the market, its users swear by it the same way drug users swear by their drugs, they don’t care about the lock-in, etc etc. What Nicholas Petreley has to say makes complete sense. If the opensource world wants to take Microsoft Office on, it will not be by making a cheaper/faster/better Office, but by providing something completely different. Something so different that people will buy it for new reasons, and land up reducing their commitment to Office almost as a byproduct.

I see the syndication/search/fulfilment/conversation tools doing just that. Today. Office is more likely to die by a million small cuts than by a NetScape/Internet Explorer war.

If nobody in his right mind will take on Microsoft Office, it begs the question why people think iTunes can be taken on that way.

Not within their frame of reference. Not around their anchor-points. Not on their battlegrounds and playing by their rules. iTunes cannot be beaten by jTunes or MTunes, that is madness. Breaking wind in the face of rolling thunder.
Spot on, Malc. Hope you enjoy the Linux Journal analogy.

Go subscribe to Doc Searls’ Suitwatch, his July 6 newsletter is well worth reading. You can subscribe here. It’s free. [Update: If you don’t feel like subscribing, or want to take a quick look, you can now go to a webified version here. ]
There are a small number of issues out there today where non-participation is not an option. You have no choice.

You can start with the survival of humanity and with improving the lot of humankind. Move through the abolition of poverty and more equitable distribution of food, clothing, shelter. Migrate from there to better healthcare and education and personal security. Arabesque yourself into world trade and protectionism and global warming and consequences. Stop again at health via epidemics and near-epidemics, dip your toes into natural and manmade disasters and their prevention and cure.

These are some of the big issues. It is tempting to philosophise and move into belief systems and beliefs themselves and the implications of breakdown of family and community cultures, to get my sleeves rolled up for a creation-versus-evolution battle. But this is a blog about information, so I’m not going to go there for now.

What people need to understand is that the three i-battles for information: the internet, identity and intellectual property rights, these three battles need to be won. Won in such a way that we can make use of the tremendous technological advances we have made, and thereby solve some of the problems listed above.

That’s why you have no choice.

Here’s the coda from Doc’s latest piece:

• Right then I realized that Net Neutrality is just another name for a clear
  digital path between devices. Regardless of how near or far away they may
  be. And that there is an incalculable sum of money to be made in clearing
  those paths and putting them to use. Also that I won’t live to see the job
  finished.
• “Broadband” is like “long distance”: just another name for transient
  scarcity. We want our Net to be as fast, accessible and unrestricted as a
  hard drive. (And in time even that analogy will seem too slow.) The only
  way that will happen is if the Net becomes ubiquitous infrastructure —
  something which, in a practical sense, nobody owns, everybody can use and
  anybody can improve.
• There is infinitely more business in making that happen, and using the
  results, than Congress can ever protect for the carriers alone. And guess
  who is in the best position to make money doing that?
• Right: the carriers.
• Will somebody please tell them?

We’ve all heard the phrase that control has passed from the centre or core to the edge. But for some reason we spend too long believing that the edge is about new devices and even new software.

The edge is about people. Control has passed to individuals.

Doc quotes the Bob Frankston view of the internet as a path. Much of our diatribes against carriers and IPR and identity is to do with people trying to insert, sometimes reinsert, control points in that path. And the compelling need to prevent this.

[Incidentally, both Bob and Doc have helped me really begin to understand the importance of all this, along with a wonderfully open set of people brought together by Gordon Cook of the Cook Report]

Connected-Not-Channelled means a clear path between the people connected. Not the devices connected. Not the software on those devices or on the “edge”. And not anything in between either. Especially not anything in between.
When control (of digital rights, of identity, of antivirus, of spam, of whatever) is truly in the hands of empowered individuals, we will see real value emerge. Value that can change lives and life.

When I buy a book or a CD or a DVD, responsibility for managing that physical asset within the law passes to me. And I can choose to stay within the law or break the law. Or change it.

The same has to be true of digital assets. The responsibility is mine. If I break the law I am accountable for it. I must either stay within the law or change it.

Any attempts to create nanny controls between the endpoints, while understandable in concept, has too many undesired and unintended consequences. And a few intended but undesirable ones.

I can foresee a world where all these controls people are trying to impose or interpose continue to exist. But not on the path. But at the individuals connected by the path. Personal firewalls and personal encryption and personal antivirus and personal antispam already exist. And we will see more of these personal things in the identity and privacy and confidentiality arenas, and they will leak over into IPR and DRM.

If individuals choose to create personal walled gardens that’s OK.

What is not OK is when people pollute the path.

Path Pollution is a crime against the cyber ecosystem, with too many undesirable consequences to bear thinking about.

It cannot happen.