All words inadequate.

Phil. Mefi. Doc. Chomsky. Yahoo. Noah Johnson. Hitchens. A Welshman in NYC. Tom. Schama. Haughey.

The design principles and evolutionary forces that begat the net, in 10 bullet points from Scott Bradner, as reported by Dan Gillmor:

“How did technologists, government officials and a host of other early players turn something with no obvious business model into a system that has become so intrinsic to the new century? A series of decisions proved critical — choices that helped turn data transport into a commodity business and put the power in users’ hands, not in the centralized telecommunications companies’ controlling grasp.”

These designed-in qualities that respond and unpack under environmental pressure are what Matt Webb calls “Secret Properties”. Learning to design them in is the challenge of social software.

» Siliconvalley.com: 10 choices that were critical to the Net’s success [via tomalak]

Zac Monro, a British 30-something architect has won the World Air-Guitar crown for the second time, with a spirited rendition of ‘Fell in love with a girl’ by the White Stripes.

Three points I’d like to make:

• Ladies – air guitar, done right can be sexy. Look at Zac and deny this. Come to Fat Tony’s and witness equally masterful displays!
• “Fell in love with a girl” sounds amazing played on an accordion. How the hell do you play ‘air-accordion’?
• Architects rule!

Okay. Sorry. I promise I will write something about design soon. Although I find leaping around doing air-guitar integral to the process of creating great user-experiences.

A useful little roundup from Alex Wright.

This post comes with a very big “my views may not be representative of my employer” sticker.

Channelsurfing in New York last weekend made me realise how very very lucky were are in the UK. We get the best television from the USA, filtered and aggregated – with none of the visual spam. Written about this before, but it’s suddenly a hot topic again amongst industry-leaders, with a leader on the very same subject in today’s Grauniad.

“He [Mark Thompson, CEO of the Uk’s Channel4] complains of British TV being “dull, and mechanical and samey” and looks enviously at the United States for complex modern TV, such as Six Feet Under or 24. The glib response to this is that the best place to watch American television is not over there but over here: because you can enjoy the comparatively small number of big creative successes, while avoiding the multichannel dross that goes with it.

The argument that we need more creative risk in British television – which Lord Puttnam drew attention to earlier this month – is important. (There is a case for saying that allowing US takeovers of British television companies, as the government would like, is more likely to produce extra outlets for existing US shows than nurturing indigenous talent.) But no one seems to know how to switch on this creative talent.”

Okay – well here’s a half-baked suggestion from someone who knows almost nothing about the TV industry. Clay and myself had a good debate about this when he was over in July.

It’s a structural problem.

In the USA, the ‘winner-takes-all’ nature of the TV industry means that all is risked on successfully ‘creating worlds’ – franchises that can live in syndication and other mediums.

The typical 22 episode (24, obviously in ’24”s case…) ‘season’ that US television has as it’s basic unit of commissioning means that rich, complex characters can be developed; sophisticated, intertwined story-arcs can be woven and worlds can be built

Compare and contrast if you will ‘Spooks’, which while trumpeted as an example of how Brit-TV can match the USA in terms of production values and ambition; failed miserably in terms of building characters*, story-arc and worldbuilding. Some of the writing was promising, so what would have been built if the creators had 22 episodes to paint their world rather than the measly 6 x 1 hour episodes that the BBC gave them?

The only British TV series I can think of doing this apart from soap-operas like Eastenders, are long-gone: The Prisoner, The Avengers and of course, The Doctor.

HBO‘s business model rests on the fact that people will only pay for stuff that is scarce – namely excellence: writing, acting and direction that is of an astounding quality. These factors plus the tendency that the rewards to creator-ownership of these franchises makes a market for quality that we simply cannot realise in the UK right now.

» The Guardian: Leader: “TV’s creative deficit”
—
* apart from the terrific Hugh Laurie who played an insanely brutal and stylish head of MI6 worthy of the pen of Grant Morrison or Garth Ennis, the dramatis-personae of Spooks were bunch of wishy-washy second-hand soap-opera ciphers – Jack Bauer would have kicked the crap out of the whiny lead character in Spooks who’s name I can’t even remember without refering to the website in a nanosecond

Hello… Come and try out an experiment we’re running on the BBC News website (probably will make more sense or be more satisfying if you are in the UK).

Dan Gillmor‘s notions of the ‘the former audience’ have inspired us to come up with ‘the remote-control reporter’:

“We asked you to debate which of four ideas BBC News Online should take up for an investigation this summer.

The four subjects are fly tipping, speed cameras, UK-US price differences and support for the mentally ill. Soon we will decide which subject we will tackle. Then we will ask you for your input on how you think the investigation should progress over the next few weeks.

The process will continue until we reach a conclusion. That conclusion, of course, may not be the one you expect. That’s the point of investigation.”

I love this. While it’s not the collaborative media that Dan described in his talk, it’s an encouraging step for the mainstream media and the mainstream of internet users – who are not all as comfortable with posting to mefi, kuro5hin or slashdot as we might like to think.

It’s going to be fascinating to see how it progresses.

» BBC News : Politics: “What should we investigate?”

I love density of ideas. I love books like Snowcrash and Distress simply because of the idea-per-page quotient. The IPPQ slingshots you out from the book and into the world that it’s pages happen to cut across. You stop and move away from the narrative and unpack the ideas; and in books with a really high IPPQ you can barely catch mental-breath as even the most throwaway lines unfurl like idea-origami.

No pages as such… but Idea per PANEL quotient in The Spiders is through the roof. The alternate war-against-terrorism as prosecuted by President Gore is mind-blowing. Ecstasy Bombs, non-lethal laser weapons and live chat with Taliban soldiers via tiny remote-operated robot spiders… Incredible stuff.

» E-Sheep : ‘The Spiders’ : Part 3 of 4 [via boingboing]

He’s right. The new Royksopp video is absolutely amazing. Just over four minutes of brilliantly mixed and morphed information graphics.

I want this to be how my journey to work feels when I have broadband location-aware wireless Gucci sunglasses augmenting my reality second-by-second with every accessible statistic beautifully interpreted, overlaid and syncopated with the mp3 stash streaming through bone-conduction into my brain.

» Royksopp: “You Remind Me” [realmedia]

» Royksopp website

For commercialbreaksandbeats.co.uk.

It’s a service that references the music featured in TV adverts in the UK. So whenever you have one of those niggling little tunes in your head, you can find out exactly what it is with minimum fuss. It’s saved my limited sanity several times.

The spur to use it this time was a wonderfully summer-y little ditty as featured on commericals for Fanta, which turned out to be from an album I already had – Sleepwalking by Rae and Christian.

Sorry for the diversion.

Some great articles over at Shift Magazine right now.

One is a review of current ‘eco-tech’ innovators:

“Technology has enormous potential to clean lakes, purify the air and soil, reduce our landfills, reverse climate change, even revitalize our economy. But more of us need to step up to the karmic plate and demonstrate its umpteen green applications.

Thankfully, some of us already are. “

Somewhat related to this, Phil is blogging his experiences at the World Future Society’s conference in Philadelphia, USA over at his site Overmorgen, starting here.

The other article that caught my eye on the Shift site, was a ‘future of ideas’-meets-adbusters style piece on the bleak prospects that current thinking and action by commerce on copyright and interllectual property are making possible.

“Let’s not be any more naïve than we have been already. Copyright will not go away in our lifetime. Neither will trademarks and neither will patents. But consider this: As new technologies undermine the business models of the big intellectual property owners, those big intellectual property owners are seeking new ways to defend and enlarge their turf, and this is not a done deal. New and odious bits of IP statute and regulation are showing up in our legislatures and our Parliaments all the time, but they can be stopped, the same way anything else ugly and stupid can be stopped.

They can be stopped by vigorous and sensible public debate, by people who know their culture is under seige and who are committed to helping their fellow citizens understand. This is not pretty or simple, but making law and influencing public policy have never been pretty or simple. Our culture is private because the law has allowed it to become so, and the law can begin to swing the pendulum back, but making it so will require a delicate and persistent effort in the backrooms, in the courts, and in the streets. “

» Shift magazine: “THE PRIVATIZATION OF OUR CULTURE”