In the last few weeks, I've watched the INDUCE Act Hearings and convention speakers, live or at slight delay, and had ad hoc, virtual living room conversations on IRC.
Now folks are starting to use BitTorrent as a way to share videos of government and political debate and discussion -- even as the mainstream media gives us less substance and more fluff.
.. when you hand people a complex tool like a computer, the variation in what they can do with it is enormous. That's not a new idea. Fred Brooks wrote about it in 1974, and the study he quoted was published in 1968. But I think he underestimated the variation between programmers. He wrote about productivity in lines of code: the best programmers can solve a given problem in a tenth the time.
But what if the problem isn't given? In programming, as in many fields, the hard part isn't solving problems, but deciding what problems to solve. Imagination is hard to measure, but in practice it dominates the kind of productivity that's measured in lines of code.
My favorite quote from Paul Graham's essay, based on his OSCON talk and book, Hackers and Painters. I need to go read the book, carrying questions about the craft vs manufacturing models of software development.
The article also repeats some unhelpful stereotypes about hacker's lack of empathy. Graham appreciates the Mac and Google as examples of beauty. But he also describes the natural habitat of the geek as tools rather than applications.
Graham suggests optimizing a tech company's development process by sic'ing the best developers on infrastructure, far away from customer applications. "have the smart people work as toolmakers. If your company makes software to do x, have one group that builds tools for writing software of that type, and another that uses these tools to write the applications."
Graham says that hacker's hate having to "customize something for an individual client's complex and ill-defined needs." To use Martin Fowler's image of "bad smells in code" that hint at poor design, this is a bad smell that suggests poor account management -- somebody on the developer's team hasn't done the hard work of understanding the customer's needs, and helping the customer prioritize. (though it is a genuine problem sometimes -- customer truly is internally conflicted, hopelessly confused, and is impossible to please.)
The stereotype isn't 100% right -- there are counterexamples of software developers with empathy -- but Graham echoes the cultural prestige given to hackers who stay the furthest away from the people who use their work.
In case you were wondering about the point of the party convention: here's one of the main reasons. In addition to an infomercial, with delegates as "cheer track"; and a celebration for rank and file party faithful, it's about "donor maintence."
Even as John Edwards gives a rousing speech about "Two Americas", here's who's looking down on the populace from the Fleet Center Sky Boxes (as reported by Michah Sifry)
Level 9 boxes
902 DLCC
903 IAFF
904 B04/IBM & Verizon
905 DNC Vice Chairs
906 Kerry Faithful
907 Mayors
908 Trial Lawyers
909 USSS
910 MA Cong Delegation
Level 9 boxes:
901 DNCC Operation
916 B04 Org Labor/AFSCME
915 B04 Org Labor/SEIU
914 B04 Org Labor/AFT
913 New Balance and Simon Properties
912 Boston Foundation and Fidelity
911 B04 Org Labor
Like the Republican machine (Enron, Halliburton), the Democratic party machine is currently about raising millions of dollars for television ads.
Money buys access. A partial list of those being feted in the "Mayor's club" includes: Daimler Chrysler, Diageo's, DTE Energy, Faulker USA, Hinton, Communications, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, KNP/Dutko, Microsoft
Here are the advertised benefits for participating in the "Mayor's Club", for a $5000 donation. "an opportunity to share ideas and interact with the nation's Democratic mayors — in small group settings — throughout the year," including invitations to "NCDM business meetings and receptions held in conjunction with the US Conference of Mayors January and June meetings; Annual Chief of Staff Dinner;Mayors Trust Roundtable luncheon series in Washington, DC with visiting Mayors; [and] Special events throughout the year — including private dinners and receptions."
I'm voting against Bush because I think his tax cuts on the wealthiest are irresponsible and expansionist foreign policy is dangerous.
But we can't forget that the current system is bought and sold. It's not going to turn around until a combination of small donations and public financing is enough to win an election. And maybe someday expensive tv ads won't be the leading way to communicate with voters.
The Washington Post has the first articulate explanation I've seen for declaring war on "terror." I don't agree with the explanation, but at least I understand it.
Caleb Carr, a professor of military history, describes terrorism in the same category as slavery and piracy -- practices that were once common, but have been rendered unacceptable.
It's true that both slavery and piracy are still practiced, but only in remote corners of the world; certainly genocide is still with us, but its employment is now cause for immediate sanction and forceful reaction (theoretically, at any rate) by the United Nations. Banning such tactics and actively stamping out their practice has been the work of some of the great political and military minds and leaders of the past two centuries. Now it is time -- past time, really -- for terrorism to take its place as a similarly proscribed and anachronistic practice."
The trouble with this argument is a Robbean one. Guerrilla warfare is an ancient tactic used by rebels to fight more powerful foes, using tactics of sabotage, assassination, and terror. Contemporary terrorists are fighting guerrilla wars, using modern techniques of organizing networks, and disrupting modern infrastructure.
Slavery and piracy could be banned because they were mainstream. They were practiced by states, which could be persuaded or compelled to obey laws. In England, abolitionists used political persuasion to outslaw slavery. The US fought a civil war, and the slave states were defeated. Piracy was once a common technique of interstate warfare and extralegal taxation (see wikipedia on Privateering. In the mid-1800s, nations signed treaties to ban privateering, and the tactic faded away. Meanwhile, criminal piracy appears to be on the increase.
Guerrilla groups behave the way they do because they cast themselves as outsiders. They don't have empathy for the civilians of the enemy, so abolitionist-style appeals to morality won't work. They're using military tactics that are effective when you don't have access to an army.
Carr damns explanations of guerrilla tactics as misplaced moral relativism. But you don't have to sympathize with rebel groups, or morally justify killing civilians, in order to see that these tactics can be perceived as a rational way of fighting a war, for groups who see enemy civilians as infidels or occupiers.
It is possible to defeat particular guerrilla groups. But you can't just dissuade groups who see themselves as outsiders from using the the tactics available to them. Some argue that terrorist tactics are a sign of desperation. Some groups may be desperate. Others are just calculating and smart. It is a very efficient way of using minimal resources to create maximum damage and distress to an enemy.
Terrorist groups aren't states that will sign treaties and then abide by them. Getting involved in every guerrilla war on the planet is a way of ensuring perpetual warfare, and creating more enemies.
The September 11 commission suggests that we should give up trying to fight a war against a tactic, and should instead focus our efforts against Islamic militants, especially Al Qaeda, who have declared war on us.
Carr thinks that this will confuse Muslims, who will believe that we're fighting a Crusade, in the medieval sense. I think this is bogus. If we don't actually declare that we're fighting a Crusade, and don't make as if to invade and occupy
multiple Muslim nations, most Muslims will understand that we're fighting particular groups of radicals.
I think the September 11 recommendation is sensible. Identify and defeat an enemy that has declared war on us. Build alliances around the world to help defeat a global network.
But the US shouldn't storm into every guerrilla conflict from South America to South Asia, just because a given group of outsiders decides to bomb a power plant or a restaurant.
"If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child," Obama said. "If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. 'E pluribus unum.' Out of many, one."
"The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats," he said. "But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
I hate speechifying most of the time, and reading that had me teary. Here's the transcript, and video.
Appealing to common feelings and ideas, from the heart. Reaching for the good part of American patriotism - tolerance and community, entrepreneurialism and political freedom - rather than the bad part - arrogance and self-righteousness.
Politics and policies through people. His stories don't sound like a politician's theoretical concept of the common man - trekking to a supermarket for a photo-op, trailing camera-men and handlers. He sounds like a guy who talks to people.
You know, a while back, I met a young man named Shamus at the VFW Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid, 6-2 or 6-3, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he'd joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to him explain why he'd enlisted, his absolute faith in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might hope for in a child. But then I asked myself: Are we serving Shamus as well as he was serving us?
And he's not an anchorman -- doing a bit of background research, Obama has the policy details, enjoys the game, and has guts. From a New Yorker profile
In Springfield, Obama led a campaign for death-penalty reforms that resulted in unprecedented legislation, requiring the police to videotape all interrogations in cases involving capital crimes.... When he talks about the maneuvering it took to line up the state’s prosecutors behind the videotape bill, and to keep the police associations neutral, his eyes narrow in pleasure. “You can’t always come up with the optimal solution, but you can usually come up with a better solution,” he said over lunch one afternoon. “A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence.
This record is tremendously impressive. The injustices in the criminal justice system are among the worst things about today's US, and the policies that keep things the way they are held in place by rhetoric on safety and crime control. It's hard to build an alternative vision, and weave support for change into the heart of the system. That's what my heroes at ACLU Texas are doing, bit by bit - they've provedracial profiling, freed people unjustly emprisioned in Tulia, beat a bill to privatize the prisons. I know this is hard and brave and worth doing.
Some time last spring my colleague Rick Klau mentioned that he was setting up a weblog for an obscure Illinois state senator who was running for US Senate. Another example of the Dean team getting involved in the day-to-day, like the ex-Dean guys who've become precinct captains here in Austin and across Texas. Rick told me about the house party he and his wife were planning for Obama, and the home-made hors doevres for 100 that were left over when the party was rescheduled.
So this is the guy Rick was talking about all this time. Wow. He'll get spun by the spin machine, gain a Senate voting record, win friends and enemies. He has the potential to be a national leader - and gets to show all of us in his next job. The conventional wisdom is charisma - but inspiration and connection, substance and guts isn't charisma, it is greatness.
The comparison to Tiger Woods gets a lot of the silliness of US racialism in a nutshell. Quick, off the top of your head, which tall, pudgy baseball player does Bill Clinton resemble. What actor does George W look like? You can't think of any, right? All middle-aged white guys look alike. We've got one tall skinny tan guy in politics, so he looks like that one other tall skinny tan guy who plays golf. Geez.
Neural implants are a science fiction cliche -- folks in the future have the net wired into their brains.
Leave off the wetware, and the experience is here today.
In his write-up about blogon,Jerry Michalski comments on the discomfort of not having meetings augmented by Social Software:
It's a slightly spooky scenario, but I'll confess to having wished for a heads-up display that projects inside a pair of glasses who's who at a cocktail party, including who used to work with whom, who's friends with whom (hey, orkut) and who's dating whom..
At Socialtext, our meetings are augmented by voice, IRC (with a bot to post to the wiki) and Workspace. By the end of each meeting, enough artifacts are captured in a social context to enable group memory. Similar to using an Eventspace at a conference. When we meet in person we find it to be terribly inefficient. But that said, there is no such thing as virtual beer, the kind of schmooze we go to events for anyway.
Perhaps the the meaning time spent together in person has already changed without us knowing it. One of my favorite Pete Kaminski quotes -- time together in person is too important to spend working.
Wrote a little Technorati plugin in Kwiki, running here, and in Socialtext Will put it up on a public ST wiki in the next few days, too. All the better to keep track of the blogging of OSCON.
It's a proof of concept on the ease of moving plugins between Kwiki, a super-modular geek-friendly wiki, and Socialtext, the business-friendly workspace application build on Kwiki. The core object model and formatter are identical, so migration was easy.
Just read a lovely review of October Sky by Victor Ruiz, in Spanish, with the help of a bookmarklet phrase translator.
The brouhaha about Ublog's acqusition by 6Apart and some conversations with Spanish bloggers on Joiito was inducement to read blogs in Spanish and French. But I don't have enough vocabulary to read fluently. Picking up a dictionary -- or even opening another browser window to google-translate -- is sufficiently slow enough that I just won't incorporate non-english blogs into daily browsing.
I really wanted a one-click method of translating an unfamiliar word. So I modified a couple of these translation bookmarklets to accept phrases instead of whole pages.
Words that give meaning and context to the story -- cohete = rocket, huelgas = strikes -- are suddenly a click away.
An impromptu discussion group gathered in Ed Felten's blog comments as the Senate Judiciary Committee discussed the INDUCE act, another bill that bans innovative technology in the guise of protecting copyright.
I picked up a link to the hearing from a blog, discussed on #joiito at the time, and found the Felten conversation yesterday, through a Technorati search.
Technology vendors and tech activists were able to swarm and organize strong, cohesive opposition to the bill, which was submitted close to a deadline.
Unlike the DMCA a decade ago, technology vendors and public interest groups like EFF and Public Knowledge are sticking together, and acting cohesively to fight threats to innovation and creativity.
It's incredibly cool for interested citizens to be able to organize an ad-hoc crowd to watch the hearings. I can't wait for the day when the senate committee will use Technorati and its cousins, and the virtual gallery will be visible to the government.
Technorati's pairing with CNN to cover the Democratic convention is a sign of the times. Tools for “mass listening” like Technorati are key to a new era of politics.
Technorati enables the discovery of blog conversations in close to real time -- so convention watchers will be able to tune in to public conversation, around the US and around the world.
Mass listening tools can provide a richer perspective than polling, which captures answers to loaded, pre-defined questions.
One of the challenges faced by the Dean campaign was listening to the voices of the thousands of citizens active in the blogs and forums. When Joe Trippi was asked at the 2004 O’Reilly Etech conference about using the input from the online Deaniacs, Trippi talked about the big red bat that was used to measure campaign contributions. He didn’t mention ideas or policy proposals.
This wasn't just cynicism on Trippi's part. There weren't good ways to hear what thousands of people were talking about. With so many more citizens using blogs in public conversation, citizens and politicians need new ways to tune into the distributed conversation.
The second half of the 20th century was the era of "mass broadcasting" -- a few anchors spoke, and the rest of us listing. The first half of the 21st century is about "mass listening" -- more of us participating in public conversation, using new tools to discover those conversations, catalyze opinion-forming and political action.
Here's a brief outline of some of the more popular "tools for mass listening"
• Technorati is a weblog search engine that reveals which weblogs link to a given blog or write about a topic
• Feedster searches RSS feeds to discover and aggregate conversations.
• Daypop and Blogdex show the top news articles mentioned in weblogs. These tools give a quick check of the “zeitgeist”, showing what masses of bloggers think about the news of the day.
Note: I discovered the phrase in a paper by Elisabeth Richard of Canadian Policy Research Networks.
The week that Ohio's Republican Secretary of State booted Diebold for failing to fix security holes, the Texas Secretary of State claims that advocates for "safe voting" are mere "special interests."
The Secretary of State contends that the Texas process to certify voting systems is rigorous -- even though our certification process didn't pick up on Diebold's problems, didn't notice thatthe audit feature in ES&S systems is broken -- a system used in Dallas, Chambers, and Bexar Counties.
He says the fact that we haven't had a massive failure yet proves that the system is safe. Not good to have government officials with their heads in the sand.
Farhad Manjoo at Salon wonders whyreaders of political blogs make campaign contributions.
That is the silliest question ever.
Why do wealthy people put on uncomfortable clothes, eat mediocre food, and listen to boring speeches, sitting around white tablecloths with their friends, while giving thousands of dollars to political candidates?
People like to gather in groups to reinforce shared opinions. They like to make a difference, to further a cause they believe in. It's more compelling to give $20 when you see that it helps create a $20,000 joint donation that will make your candidate more viable.
Sure, there's some e-bay like psychological re-inforcement when you see others give. But not necessarily more than when a wealthy person gives $10,000 to match the $10,000 contribution of a wealthy neighbor.
Same game, there's just more of us playing.
I hear a piece of conventional wisdom that the Republicans are the party of the Heart, and the Democrats are the party of the Head.
Oddly, because days gone by, the smear was "bleeding heart liberal."
In the glory days of liberalism, heart and head went together. Rivers were burning, and enviromentalists wanted to clean things up. Black kids weren't allowed to go to school with white kids, neighborhoods were zoned "whites only." Tensions were very high at the time, but the liberal position had the emotional and intellectual advantage.
The conservative critique attacked excesses of liberalism - identity politics that read small insensitivities as major discrimination, civic spending that exceeded ability to pay, belief in hedonism as self-fulfillment, leading to drug abuse and endemic divorce.
There's a good letter to Andrew Sullivan's blog saying that so-called conservatives aren't making sense anymore. Big deficits instead of fiscal reason, imperial adventurism instead of strong defense, big-government in our bedrooms and snooping on our library checkouts and credit cards, crony capitalist corruption.
So, maybe its true that Republicans are the party of the heart, but if so, it means what "bleeding heart liberal" used to mean -- that an ideology that once had head and heart together has gone over the edge -- they're not making sense anymore.
I was also at the MoveOn sponsored showing of OutFoxed that Tim Trentham wrote about. The video shows how the partisanship of Fox news trumps the pretense of news reporting. Funny but telling bit included a reporter assigned to provide stirring and dramatic coverage of Reagan's birthday at the Reagan library a few years ago, even though there was nobody there but a group of fourth graders; and watching the Fox team echo RNC talking points, like the day they repeated the ridiculous meme mocking John Kerry for knowing French. The scarier parts were the news anchors calling anyone opposed to the Iraq war unpatriotic, and the surveys falsehoods believed by many Fox viewers, like WMD discovered in Iraq,.
The follow on actions promoted by MoveOn, Common Cause, and other sponsoring groups include
* opposing media consolidation
* asking local networks for fairer news coverage
* supporting AirAmerica, a new, left-of-center radio network, and other alternative networks. (Added. Note. I haven't seen AirAmerica - don't have an opinion about it).
* a campaign to legally challenge the Fox News "Fair and Balanced" trademark. One the one hand you can't trademark a phrase, so the suit has grounds. On the other hand it seems rather goofy to sue about a marketing slogan ("Coke doesn't really add life....").
What really struck me, watching the debased state of corporate media, was the role that we can play. It's not just about begging the mass media to do a better job (in conflict with their mission to make a profit by selling violence and sex).
It's about being the media. Local news is understaffed and insubstantial. If a blogger goes to a meeting and writes about what happened, we can cover the story.
And it's about using the access we have to to get more sources of media. John Robb does a much better job of covering international terrorism in Global Guerrillas than the mainstream press. Google News provides a selection of stories from worldwide media. It's eye-opening to see the take on the day's news around the world.
So, we need to fight the system, but it's as important to create the new system.
More - nice piece by Lessig disarming criticism of the film.
Still more, via Joi Ito -- 80% of of blog readers read blogs for "news they can't get elsewhere.
Ross Mayfield says that paid PR is less important when the CEO blogs, responding to a PR and blogging event.
Ross is overstating a bit -- he has PR background, and is really good at it.
On the other hand, the PR responses to this post overvalue outsourcing. Traditional PR and marketing agencies developed as intermediaries to bridge the vast gulf that opened between producers and consumers in a world of mass production, mass distribution and mass advertising.
Real people can now talk to each other across the gulf. Intermediaries are less important when the parties can talk to each other.
A PR and blogging discussion is full of PR pros eager for a new world where they ghostwrite corporate blogs. The idea makes me vaguely nauseous.
Blogging becomes a sub-discipline of speechwriting -- execs and politicians hire wordsmiths, and celebrities hacks to answer fanmail and ghostwrite bios.
I've always been skeptical of the Romantic pose of the Cluetrain guys -- blogging is the true, authentic voice, cutting through the phony, saccharine hype of marketingspeak.
But an outsourced PR blog is a corporate newsletter -- it's the pep-talk tone of the American Airlines letter from the CEO, multiplied by a million.
Then again, if it's really boring, we don't have to read it. In the world of blogging, the limit is the number of blogs a reader can scan in a day. If a CEO blog is interesting, it will get linked and found. And if the propaganda is BS, easier to link and puncture the bubble -- viz the response to Movable Type's new pricing.
With comments and trackback and Technorati and Feedster, there are more ways to find the real conversation.
It's been here forever -- tucked behind warehouses on E 5th street across from railroad tracks. Only a few minutes from my house, but it's one exit on 35 and an unmarked street. I found it for an AustinBloggers meetup that I came late for. Patio and uncombed garden, decor is austin boho pseudo-ruin. Outdoors which looks comfy but I'm shunning the mosquitoes.
Free wifi, good coffee, and excellent vegetables with breakfast. The (only) problem with Green Muse is the extremely limited menu -- their coffee cake is great but not so healthy as regular breakfast food, and the panini sandwich is... edible. Nice to have coffee, wireless, lectric, and nutrients in the same place.
Apparently there's a backlash against the unpopular plan to put toll roads on Austin highways. There's a petition to recall Mayor Wynn for his pro-toll position.
Despite public input 10-to-1 against, CAMPO Transportation Policy Board members passed a modified version of the toll plan Monday 16-7. Loop 360 will require another vote, but parts of Mopac, US 290, US 183 and the new SH 45 will be converted to toll roads.
What on earth are the politicians thinking! I lived in New England for a long time, where there was a long tradition of toll roads. They were wildly unpopular, because toll roads create traffic jams.
In 1996, Massachusetts governor Bill Weld made a big popular splash when he presided in person of the destruction of tollbooths on the Massachusetts turnpike.
Even the new electronic systems make cars slow down to pass through the lanes. This is not what you want during rush hour and during holiday vacation exodus periods.
I hope we can stop this before Austin learns the hard way.
Thanks to the techs at PC Guru on South Lamar, and no thanks to Fujitsu. The inside portion of the power connector was loose and needed resoldering. I needed to hold the power cord at an angle just so to keep it from depowering, and it didn't seem that far from not working at all.
I called Fujitsu tech support. The repair would take 5-7 days. The guy on the service line wanted a deposit of $100, and said the repair would be up to $600, if they determined I did anything that broke warranty.
And the kicker -- they wanted advance permission to reformat the hard drive. "Why on earth do you want to reformat the hard drive?" "We want to do the best possible job at warranty service. " "Sure, we'll mow the lawn. Please give us advance permission to cut down the trees if we need to."
At PC Guru, the repair was $120 with one-day turnaround. Nobody threatened to reformat the hard drive. What a pleasure to deal with real live geeks, who chat about Linux in the background, and are authorized to use their brain on the job.
So, my colleague Rick Klau has been invited to speak on the blogger's panel at the Democratic National Convention.
Very very cool. Something is inching toward change. Though rumor is they don't have wifi.
Hmm.... I wonder what they do at party conventions, other than schmooze and put on a TV show. I wonder what a party convention would look like, if a large part of communication was done by bloggers talking to people who talk back? What would a political convention look like if it caught theCluetrain?
p.s. good explantion, via David Weinberger of how conventions became tv shows, and how the media is part of the show
The awkwardness of Social Networking systems has been discussed at length. The ease of making "friends" leads to nearly-random requests that are awkward to turn down, and to personal introductions that are less personal and less effective.
There's one situation where the friction-free medium of Social Network systems reduces awkwardness. When you see someone with whom you've been out of touch, it is easy, and less awkward, to send them a note. In recent months, I've received notes from friends and former colleagues that I haven't seen in years. The listing in a YASNS, plus the context of a blog, makes it less socially awkward to restart a conversation.
I'm glad that the NYT is covering the trend toward the use of open source software in politics.
Unfortunately, the article embraces the "spin" of the content industry, repeating the canard that advocates of open source and the cultural commons are anti-intellectual property.
"Many of them propose rewriting intellectual property laws worldwide to limit their scope and duration."
The fact is, the content industries have presided over unprecedented expansion of intellectual property control. Activists are trying to roll back the power grab to a reasonable balance between ownership and the exchange of ideas that enables cultural growth and technical innovation.
Also, the article focuses on the collective and "free as in beer" side of open source. They describe open source technology for politics as a cash-free, collective technofarm. This misses the economic structure of open source deployment.
Some of the development for Dean and other grassroots activism has been volunteer work -- this is opening brand new channels for grass roots organizing, using volunteer labor and open source tools.
Meanwhile, the development for mainstream campaigns is done by paid consultants using open source and proprietary tools. Campaigns continue to pay money for development, support, and service accountability.
By using open source software, and contributing changes to the community, they save money on software license fees. Software license fees are typically only 25% to 30% of the total price of software deployment.
I'm glad they're covering the story, but this article misses the point.