Decentralization

The Supernova conference organized by Kevin Werbach, is getting started this morning in California.
The shindig is about decentralization — open spectrum, weblogs, WiFi, web services — new forms of decentralized communications, emergent social organization, and grass-roots content that will take down the dinosaurs of industrial bureaucracy and the behemoths of mass media and telecom. I have friends and colleagues at the conference; it sounds like the discussions are going be interesting and clever and fun.
The innovation up for discussion is real.
And the optimistic technological determinism is giving me the willies.
Because, while we’re developing and promoting all of this cool decentralized software and communications, there are:

  • people using centralized money to maintain and increase oligopolies on content and communications
  • people using centralized power trying to turn our country into a totalitarian state, with secret trials and searches without warrants and digital surveillance departments headed by convicted felons
  • people using decentralized power trying to kill people who look like us, trying to destabilize our society, and succeeding

Meanwhile, we’re feeling smart, and socially connected, and politically pretty powerless.
We need organization, with all of the decentralized and centralized tools and methods available to us, online and on the ground, and we need it now.

A new office — Ruta Maya’s in the neighborhood

Ruta Maya just opened on Thursday in my neighborhood. That’s a Central-American themed coffee importer, coffee house, music venue and all around hangout.
For those of you in Austin, it’s on South Congress in a strange, artsy-hip new professional office park, behind, of all places, the Expose strip club.
Now I need to get a wireless card, and I’ll have a coffee-shop office, which I’ve been missing in Austin ever since my favorite coffee place at 7th and Neches shut down. High Life was run by a husband and wife team. She was the head barista and she put artistry into coffee drinks. I can still taste their coffee. He ran the kitchen. Interesting stuff by local artists always on the walls. They left a couple of years ago to follow their dream to open a bed and breakfast in New Mexico. My IQ has gone down 20 points and personal productivity has plummeted since they closed; I used to go there weekend mornings to reflect and write and plan the week.
Even when I have a permanent office workplace, I go to coffee shops to sit, think, and write. There’s something about caffeine and background music that helps focus and concentration.
When I worked in a mostly-virtual team from the Boston area, my favorite office was TeaTray in the Sky, in Porter Square, Cambridge. The name comes from a quote in Alice in Wonderland; they had surreal Alice murals painted on the walls, teas from around the world, really good coffee, expensive but yummy food and desserts, and a secret wall phone jack (this was pre-WiFi). One of the owners had been a pastry chef at Biba’s which was one of Boston’s best restaurants.
In my neighborhood in Austin, Jo’s and Bouldin have the bohemian atmosphere but to be honest, average coffee and average food. Jo’s was built 3 years ago in classic Austin neo-roadside-shack style; the seating area is open-air, with plastic sheeting for rain and chill. The chairs are too short for the tables (for a 5’6″ person) and the tables and chairs rattle. No power supply. It’s nice when the weather is wonderful. Bouldin is genuine, South-Austin hippie, with games and ratty paperback books on the shelves, and a veggie-brunch menu. I wish they had better coffee. South Lamar Starbucks has drinkable coffee and usable chairs. But it’s Starbucks.
The Mad Bird opened up this year on South Congress, as an extension to a garden/landscape story. It is genuinely and delightfully odd; the back deck looks onto the plants display. Last spring, I watched a hummingbird hover around the flowers while working on a presentation over coffee and a sandwich.
A bit further away on Barton Springs, Flipnotics has good coffee and an Austin casual-hipster vibe. Mozart’s has a gorgeous view of the river, good coffee (they roast), mediocre, overpriced pastries, and a frat-child clientele. Mozart’s is my favorite date-screening location, and has been the site of plenty of unspeakably bad dates. Ask me in person if you really and truly want to know.
I’m just thrilled that Ruta Maya’s in the neighborhood. Next posts will be made with music in the background, good coffee and strange art on the walls.

Siva V on copyright

Reading some articles by Siva Vaidhyanathan in preparation for an EFF-Austin copyright dinner on Tuesday.
Great quote lifted from a SlashDot interview.
SV: I think the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) is misnamed. I don’t consider it a copyright act. I consider it an anti-copyright act. Copyright is a fluid, open, democratic set of protocols. Conflicts are anticipated by Congress and mediated by courts. The DMCA wipes out the sense of balance, anticipation, and mediation, and installs a technocratic regime. In other words, code tells you whether you can use a piece of material. Under copyright, you could use a piece of material and face the consequences. The DMCA replaces the copyright system with cold, hard technology.
It takes human judgment out of the system and drains the fluidity out of what was a humanely designed and evolved system.

academic working paper on the usability of open source software

via Slashdot
The article uses examples mostly from developer-oriented projects like Linux and Gnome.
Some of their premises seem obsolete. There are new generations of open source software being designed for humans, not just arch-geeks. Examples include weblog software: MovableType; and email/PIM software: Spaces, OSAF. These projects deliberately consider usability.
On the other hand, some of their suggestions are interesting, such as:
* providing tools for users to report usability issues
* creating packaged remote usability tests for users
* enabling bug-tracking systems to incorporate graphical and video
content (apparently Bugzilla discussions of interface issues require
creating ASCII art
* being more welcome to HCI practitioners
The discussion is very academic in tone. The article would be more compelling if the authors had actually tried to, say, contact the core Mozilla team and offered to implement their ideas.

Washington Post: Ashcroft urges justice department to ignore Freedom of Information Act

via Dan Gillmor
One 36-year-old U.S. law can be broken, it seems. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who is sworn to enforce all laws, has told federal employees that they can bend — perhaps even break — one law, and he will even defend their actions in court. That law is known as the Freedom of Information Act.

Swiss Re won’t insure against global warming liability lawsuits

CERES: Company executives could find themselves losing protection against climate change-related liability claims brought by shareholders. SwissRe, the world’s second-largest reinsurer, has announced it will withdraw coverage of such claims for senior executives of companies that fail to adopt adequate climate change policies. In the November issue of Environmental Finance, Roger Wenger of SwissRe said, “As an insurer, we only give coverage to ‘fortuitous events.’ If it is predictable that a liability would arise, we would have to exclude that cover from the policy.”
more seriously, from Gil Friend’s weblog