If we accept that blogging is the opensourcing of ideas, then we need to expect returns from blogging that are consistent with opensource software. Let’s see how that plays out:

• Opensource models are open to inspection and are consequently better designed through criticism and error and modification; opensource ideas should similarly reflect learning through conversation
• Opensource models acquire best-of-breed characteristics through a democratised and intuitive “natural selection” process, a wisdom-of-crowds meets emergence and blink approach, learning through adaptation; opensource ideas should similarly reflect a mashing, a hybridisation, of different schools of thought
• Opensource models also provide some element of future-proofing, since non-hierarchical routes are used to set priorities and resolve conflict, and only non-hierarchical routes can avoid past-predicts-the-future innovator’s-dilemma tunnel-vision nonsense; learning through discovery of new things rather than rehashing of old, in ideas as much as in software

I don’t know that I am right about this, it’s just the way I think about these things. Comments and flames welcome as usual.

Stewart Brand

In this vein, I started re-reading one of my old favourites, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built, by Stewart Brand.

How Buildings Learn

First time around, I really loved the book, but two ideas there kept resonating differently for me. One was really Jane Jacobs rather than Stewart Brand, but it was via Brand that I learnt of it:

Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must come from old buildings.

The second was pure Brand:

Temporary is permanent, and permanent is temporary.

I want to sample bits of those ideas and mash them up in the context of blogging and enterprise architecture. Let me try it and see what happens.

Taking what Brand says in an enterprise architecture context, what can I make of it? The more I build something to solve a specific problem, the more likely it is that it obsolesces. Because problems are not constant. So we have to solve for problem-solving, not solve specific problems. Teach a man to fish.
I guess it’s the architectural equivalent of hard-coding. We need to avoid making problems into layers of lock-in of this sort as well. What does it mean to have lots of temporary things, from a software viewpoint? Is that what David Weinberger’s Small Pieces Loosely Joined was driving at? Is that what Doc Searls’ D-I-Y IT was trying to get to? Are OSX widgets lots of temporary things? Or Firefox plugins? or even WordPress plug-ins?
These temporary spaces were permanent because their foundations were hardwearing and durable, their pillars and infrastructure were strong, there was simple access to core infrastructure, because they did not cost much, because they were high on function and low on frill, and because people there went about their jobs rather than postured about.

Maybe that’s what enterprise architecture should be aiming for.

I tried doing the same thing with Jane Jacobs, applying her new-ideas-old-buildings concepts to the world of blogs. Is an A List blogger an “old building”? Can I apply the “old” to reflect age or experience or both? What relevance does the statement have in the context of blogging?

And the nearest I could come to was the reported conversation between Doc Searls and George Lakoff where Lakoff, I think, described blogging as rolling snowballs downhill. [Doc, did I get this right?] You start them off, but you’re not in control, and yes you get a buzz, but no ownership, just the buzz if and when you see what happens to the snowball, or even snowballs, over time.

And talking about starting the snowballs off and not being in control, you should take a look at The Man In the Doorway’s post on precisely this, being in command but not in control, as he found the time to read Blink. Command is leadership and can happen even in emergent environments, does happen even in emergent environments. Command is not permanent but contextual.

Control, on the other hand, is hierarchical, permanent-and-therefore-temporary, rarely domain or context sensitive. Control is The Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone knows it’s not there but no one says it aloud. If you need to have it you will never have it.

I was lucky enough to acquire a late 18th century edition (the William Jones translation) of Shakuntala by Kalidasa. [An aside: How nice to be able to get wikipedia references for a 5th century BC work of a Sanskrit poet. Keep going, Wikipedia].

And on the bottom of the title page I found the following:

Printed and sold by Joseph Cooper,

For the benefit of insolvent debtors.

MDCCCXXXIX

Poor Kalidasa. No Mickey Mouse Acts to protect his copyright two millenia later, and then having to face the ignominy of having “his” royalties used to assist insolvent debtors.

Compare and contrast Sir Paul McCartney, who, according to today’s Times, said:

“The only annoying thing is, when I tour America, I have to pay to play some of my own songs. But I don’t think about that. Because if I did, it would be just too annoying.”

The context was Michael Jackson’s enforced transfer of his shares in ATV to Fortress, in order to stave off bankruptcy. Full story here. I guess I don’t understand what Sir Paul is complaining about. “My own songs”? They stopped being “my own songs” the day the titles were placed in ATV, according to the DRM nonsense of then and now.

At least I can quote from the title page of Kalidasa’s works without breaking into digital fortresses.

One of the more unusual consequences of the digital-wrongs world we live in is that we have spawned a whole new industry “guess who’s got the title?”. Many of you are likely to have read Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat. [Go Wikipedia! Another aside. Is there a way we can all have wikipedia-associate relationships with Amazon? By this I mean that every time I link to a book at Amazon and someone else buys, the associate fee goes to Wikipedia? Could be a cool thing to do, right now I waste the opportunity]

The story I heard is as follows: Friedman saw a painting of the cover artwork he wanted. The publishers went ahead and acquired the rights. The book was duly published with the ship sailing off the edge of the world. Publishers were sued by actual owner of copyright, and found they’d paid the wrong guys. Book was retracted and cover changed. So if your World Is Flat cover looks like this, then you, like me, have the original.

Here’s the story as carried in Book Blog, I can’t get to the Editor and Publisher version.

Wherever you look, the current IPR and DRM models are cracking at the seams. Everyone wants to ensure artists and creators and novelists and musicians get paid. Nobody wants to steal anything. But that does not mean that current copyright, intellectual property and patent laws are the right ones for the 21st century. Sensible alternative compensation models can and will be found, even if those that exploit current models unfairly cry all the way from the bank.

The Sandi Thom story has taken a number of twists and turns. For those of you who didn’t see it first time round, here’s what I posted.

Looked like a classic internet basement-artist-made-good story. And I even mentioned her in other more recent posts, including the last one on Ian Anderson.

Then I saw the comment from Adrian du Plessis, which I reproduce below in its entirety. Thanks for the heads-up, Adrian, even if my stance makes no sense to you….

Start of comment:

Adrian Says:
April 13th, 2006 at 12:57 am e

I know we’ve all wished the Sandi Thom story was a sign of new thinking in the music biz, but, it just doesn’t like that way:

http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2006/04/suckers_thom_st_1.php

http://chartreuse.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/sandi-thom-vs-chuck-d-or-welcome-to-the-death-of-hype/

http://www.velvetrope.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1&Number=770385&page=3&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=2&fpart=1

still, we can build the revolution ( :

End of comment

So I went around the sites and followed the threads and did my next bit of due diligence. [The first bit of due diligence was to follow the story from the web to her site, to listen to the music, to read more about her and then to blog the story].

And it’s interesting. Here’s my summary: [For those of you who want to see what was on the chartreuse blog, click here]

• There is evidence she signed a publishing contract last year with Windswept/Pacific Music Publishing, who are not small.
• But this is not a recording contract, just a publishing one.
• There is evidence that she signed a contract with Sony only after the live webcasts. This is a recording contract.
• There is evidence she did the webcasts. Alexa says the traffic did not show. But that means nothing to me.
• There is evidence she has talent. At least to me there is.
• So maybe I’ve been conned. And maybe a good PR firm managed to break into slashdotland and start the rumours. And maybe she’s as real as Milli Vanilli.
• But from what I can see everything remains consistent. None so blind as those who will not see? No, I just like seeing good in people.

And so I am going to do the Ernest Hemingway thing and trust Sandi for now.

As he said “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them“

An aside:

There’s an intriguing dog-that-did-not-bark angle here. One of the comments I read said something like “How come 2 million people tuned in and there wasn’t a single mention on a blog?”

There are many inaccuracies but the point remains valid. The figures I have seen in MSM say 200,000 not 2 million, and worldwide at that. slashdot is not exactly miles away from the blogosphere, so there was activity there. And if there was a big PR agency involved all the way, surely they could have set up a technorati tag for Sandi and for that matter a wikipedia entry as well.

So I still go back to: I think she’s real, and that the story is real, and that people are reacting to smart PR guys “corrupting” a real internet story. Alexa and Windswept are not enough for me to stop smiling. But fewer teeth are showing now, that’s for sure.

If I am interested in learning, I am interested in being wrong and shown to be wrong. Goes with the territory. So maybe I will be proven wrong on this one. But I will learn.

Andrew McAfee, a professor at Harvard, makes some interesting points in a recent post to his blog.

In a telling, almost depressing coda to the post, Andrew says:

“I’ll end this post with an anecdote that showed me that these three trends* are not yet well understood by many business leaders.  Last week I was teaching in an executive education program for senior executives – owners and presidents of companies.  I assigned a case I wrote about the internal use of blogs at a bank, and also gave one additional bit of homework:  I pointed the participants to blogger and typepad, and told them to start their own blogs and report the blog’s URL to me.

What they reported instead was that they had no intention of completing the assignment.  They told me how busy they were, and how they had no time and no inclination to mess around with blogs (whatever they were).  Out of two classes of 50-60 participants each, I got fewer than 15 total blog URLs.

Trying to turn lemons into lemonade in class, I asked some of the people who actually had sent a URL to describe the experience of starting a blog.  They all shrugged and said it was no big deal, took about five minutes total, didn’t require any skills, etc.  I then asked why I would give busy executives such a silly, trivial assignment.  In both classes one smart student piped up to say “To show us exactly how trivial it was.”  At that point, class discussion became interesting.

[My emphases]

*The three “broad and converging trends” he refers to are:

• Simple, free platforms for self-expression
• Emergent structures rather than imposed ones
• Order from chaos

Having spent time with Andrew, I know there’s a great deal of value in what he has to say. I’d strongly recommend reading his blog.