just ended. Heartening and disturbing by turns, but always engrossing; it was an amazing piece of reality-TV.
Failure.
Liveblogging the ETCON has been a failure for me so far. I have yet been able to dredge back anything from the experience other than pain and fury at missing things. All thoughts, recollections and conervsations have been spurred or hung on the notes and writings of others.
As Milton Glaser (perhaps paraphrasing Whorf) said at Voice02: “The way you live changes your brain”. I think my coder and writer friends were able to internalise what they typed while they typed because the way they have lived has changed their brain enough to enable them to do so.
My so-called life as a designer means that doodles and dotted lines, boxes and arrows are the atoms of understanding I have to construct in my notebook with a black felt-tip pen.
I need my hypomnemata
What the world needs now..
The UN have published “GEO-3” – the planet’s regular medical.
“The choices this generation makes will be crucial for our descendants, according to a United Nations report.
Published by the UN Environment Programme (Unep), established 30 years ago, the report details some real improvements since then.
But it says the overall trend is adverse, especially in poor countries.
By 2032, it predicts a planet likely to have been largely affected by human hands.”
Okay, cool. If this is true, and I keep my technoidealist beenie-cap on, then it means that we have moved into the stage where fixing the planet is a design problem.
I say we put Brenda Laurel in charge of the design committee. Here’s the transcript [PDF, 30k] of her talk at AIGA:Voice02. She ended with this:
“We are only the victims and servants of business as usual if we choose to be.
This work of transformation which I have come to think of as culture work must be approached carefully but with great conviction and effort.
The tactic of culture work is not straight-ahead revolution; rather it is to inject new genetic material into the culture without activating its immune system. By intervening in the present, we are designing the future.
“Cooperative relationships among strangers”
In reflection, I think there was very little balanced critique of the social effects of the emerging technology at ETCON.
Just as there was a topical centre that was hard to name being described by the subjects and speakers around it there was however a “spiritual centre”, a belief not overtly stated, but was nevertheless being circled I think by almost every speaker (J.C Herz, Clay, Geoff Cohen, Cory and Steven Johnson in particular), and everyone speaking to each other.
This article on the work of Edwin Schlossberg by Steve Heller in Metropolis magazine seems to me to nail that spiritual centre in one phrase: the belief that “cooperative relationships between strangers” are to be encouraged as beneficial to all.
It should perhaps come as no suprise that Schlossberg was a pupil of that arch technoidealist Bucky Fuller…
“Edwin Schlossberg has long dreamed of building an immense high-tech game arena in the middle of Times Square where hundreds of people playing together at any hour would control power grids, move investments, or create structures to revitalize urban spaces.
If this sounds suspiciously like pop-culture utopia, it’s because Schlossberg–the grand master of human interactivity–believes that games and other shared experiences inspire cooperative relationships among strangers.”
I think at the centre of ETCON, powering it, was this nodal-point – an idea burning so brightly we could only look to it’s edges to understand. The belief in the benefit of technologically-enabled cooperative realtionships between stangers. It was Bucky’s technoidealism, coupled like a binary-star to John Nash’s Equilibrium.
I have a strict rule on aeroplanes, which is to only watch films that I would never go and watch in a cinema, or hire/buy on video/DVD. This exposes me to movies my predjudices and/or friends would never let me see. Case in point: “A beautiful mind”. I’m glad I did though, just for the (I’m sure) over-simplified but effective explanation of Nash’s Equilibrium it featured:
“Nash is with a group of friends at a Princeton graduate-student party when he is suddenly struck by an idea that forms the basis of his “rational choice” game theory, a theory for which he would eventually become famous. In a cinematic version of what would become the “Nash Bargaining Solution,” we witness Nash’s friends ogling one extremely beautiful blonde woman and four less-ravishing but still attractive brunettes. The other students all intend to seduce the blonde, and one even alludes to Adam Smith’s theory of zero-sum game competition the best man wins, and the others are left out in the cold, literally in this case. Nash, in a sudden flash, realizes that the basis of economic theory does not have to be a zero-sum game, but rather one that might assure mutually beneficial outcomes for all the parties involved (what would later become Nash’s “equilibrium” theory). Nash proposes that the students avoid seducing the blonde, since they will get in each others’ way and alienate both the blonde and the brunettes. Instead, by ignoring the blonde and concentrating on the brunettes, each will benefit (except, one supposes, the blonde). By seeing the barren outcome of their zero-sum competitive approach, they can adjust their strategy through cooperative bargaining and each, so to speak, enjoy the fruit of his efforts.”
I’ve been thinking for a while about “the things we try and tell ourselves” through our stories good and bad (film, games, tv, photography, imagery, consumer-design, fashion) about the “innerstructure”. Wonder what else will emerge (no pun intended) while we’re under the influence of the Nash/Fuller binary constellation.
In the last year, we’ve heard politcians and business leaders pepper their speeches with the language of interconnectedness, and at ETCON we heard many use phrases similar to Natalie Jeremijenko‘s “structures of participation” without much expansion on what the best structure would be and why – only that Hollywood was out to stop us before we even start to explore that.
Even though I don’t think our brains could have taken it, maybe we could have got there with another week of the same people expanding on that side of things.
At least we had a start, and we have the blogs as the beginnings of a “structure for participation” to take it further. It’s encouraging that technologists should be so socially aware of the impacts of their field – as opposed maybe to the majority of scientists?
I, for one, am ready to rally behind the banner of Bucky and John…
Phillip Pullman resources
Jorn Barger has compiled a fairly exhaustive and chronological page of resources, quotes, interviews, etc on the bard of Oxford.
“We are all stupid, and we are all intelligent. The line dividing the stupid from the intelligent goes right down the middle of our heads.”
» Philip Pullman resources
[via the ever awesome Linkmachinego]
Blimey.
“So I start my mission – leave my residence – Thinkin how could I get some Ted (Nelson) precedents”*
Awesome:
“The Web isn’t hypertext, it’s DECORATED DIRECTORIES!
What we have instead is the vacuous victory of typesetters over authors, and the most trivial form of hypertext that could have been imagined.”
Aww, Ted, mate. That’s a’changing… that’s a’changing.
» Ted Nelson: I DON’T BUY IN
* apologies to Rakim.
A-Life less ordinary?
I’m going to run out of A-Life puns soon, honest.
Last week at ETCON, Tim O’Reilly asked whether bloggers were building a city or ghettos…
Now Mark Bernstein has proved that at least his artificial People’s Republic of Blogistan tends towards the ghetto model.
Maybe no big suprise there, but more remarkable that the outcome in the light of what was being discussed last week, are the Seldon-esque methods he arrives at it… We can be simulated so easily…
» Mark Bernstein: ALife and Loyalty
[thanks PAUL!]
EMerging Tech, day 3, afternoon
larry lessig – the creative commons
writes books to figure out what he thinks
“code” – a dark story to be told, because the world didn’t recorgnise how computer
architecture and code embeds values into the world, and also how by not undertanding that
lawyers can screw that up and destroy it’s promise.
what are the values in the arhcietcture?
built into the core of the end-to-end interent was an archiectures, an essence that
guarantees a certain type of competition and freedom of creativity.
what wins what people choose, not what the content owners decide.
what the edge wants, not what the centre controls.
“future of ideas” – a dpressing story to be told again. threats to the structure of
particiaption from vested interests. war against the potential for innovation the internet
represents. they are winning the war. defenders of last century’s way of doing business..
suceeding in the popular mind and press… a story is being sold of “property vs. anarchy”
where property ownership = freedom, and the rest represented by communists, thieves and
anarchists.
between the extremes, there should be a “creative commons”.
freedom in the USA was architected…
the vested interested don;t want the competition that these structures engender.
Jack Valenti “they are waging a terrorist war against the most important industry in
america”
# etcon oreilly books under founders copyright. wild applause.
panel discussion –
including: David Reed, http://www.reed.com/dprframeweb/dprframe.asp?section=biography
talking about the historical lessons that allocation of radio spectrum can teach us.
carl malamud – http://www.media.org/carl.html
“copyright is dying” – david henkel wallace
“property is the sort of thing you pay taxes on -when is the last time that disney paid
taxes on their interlecttual property” – lessig.
the distinction of consumer and producer is broken down… (“the former audience” cf dan
gillmor via Doctorow). Producers WANT to control use in reaction to this break-down of the
status-quo.
questions from the floor:
going to steal the coverage from the conf. IRC channel
from #etcon:
can you be anonymous and still put something into the public domain?
the unknown comic
from Cory’s book: concept from high school whoopie, your reputation.
Reptuation becomes a key driver of choice. Reputation economy.
cory: how do we get the tech companies to do the right thing.
david keen – we have to give the people particpating in the policy creation the “right
words” – they won;t repeat a religion.
lessig – compaines aren;t paid to “do the right thing” their job is to make money…
apporach companies not as individuals that will do the right thing but as organisms that
want to make money… other wise we will fail. stop getting congress to get companies t tell
them to how to make poilcy. let;s recognise that they are very powerful entities that want
to make money, and address that.
from #etcon:
grr. that attitude winds me up. companies *can* be more responsible
we can’t just says about companies: “oh, we know they’re evil but they can’t help
it”.
make them accountable.
yes
and at some point if the standard position of companies *was* to be responsible,
then an irresponsible company would be rightly attacked
These guys make the gear. They make the content. They own the transport.
lessig – “there is no evidence that patents spur innovation… but there is evidence that it
costs millions of dollars to avoid them… patent searches, liability etc, etc” “stops small
groups of innovators from ‘stepping into the pool’ “policy makers don;t get how this
structure is destroy oppotunities for innovation”
Emerging Technology, Day 3, Morning
clay
wb services aren;t really that webby
EDI+
smenatics are A HARD PORBLEM
we need a new defn of local in a network world
differnt kinds of context horzion are created by webservicezs…
iversions of scope… appication can contain mullitple machines, instead of multiple appilcations on one machine
no longer bounded by the firwall
all our defn of bundles, quanta of IT are gone
context horzions
trust horizons (lberty alliance, MSpassport etc.)
coroodination horizons – when do the members of the group go beyond that i can grasp or be comfortbale with
semantic horzioons
whre do standards come from
the powerful human desire to join together in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration (is this local to tech indystry? = “you dont get an oscar for sharing”)
stock ticker examples prevalent… no sematic problems with the problem, yet still out of 5 exmaples, none are interoperable..!
where do standards come from?:
standards bodies
800lb gorrillas (google… unilaterqally does somthing and is big enough to drag everyone with them)
results of standards wars
microsfot (ubiquiotos enough, and high renough up the stack to effect standards)
or
no standards
near-term predicitons (1-2 years)
-two thread
EDI++ (XML + internet instead of proprietary) -big win to b2b but booo-ring…
RPC++ – slower, harder
more standards wars – xml makes it easier to right a standard..
people think they can own stanards… and can build them easier.. so go for stanards landgrab.
therfore stanbrds wars are
-started faster
ended faster, limited domains (fought mainly on just the semantics)
easier on the losers (cos not heaviy investment… just semantics)
rap[id deployment in controlled environments
-intrantes, supply chains, extranets
– in-company standards wars!!!
-everyone is a software publisher (first level of web, everyone was a publisher.. had to take on new responsiblity… now next level rises to level of reposobiluty and support of that of a software house)
slow deployment in large heterogenous environments
-e.g the internet.
q from audience – what about on devices, arfe they controlled envinements?
clay – prediciton still applies “higher in stack these things are towards the suer.. the more semantic coordination problems”
q- will webservices be viewd as us-cenytric standards seting?
clay – like EDI, the UN has created a web services standard – but yes… still tensions, pressures to create counterstandards along trade-bloc/national/linguistic lines.
clay – “remember that it took us twenty years to get to TCP/IP”
creative commons
once – islands of interllectual property protection in a “sea of freedom”
now the opposite is true.
it’s actually worse, because the islands of public domain, but it’s impossible to know where they are!
copyright is broad, growing and applies automatically
this default protection doesn;t always match creators intentions
transactions costs make it difficult to change the default
cretaive commons wants to cultiavte and clarify the public domain.
restoring the balance between te public and the proprietary
help people dedicate their works to the pu blic domain or disclaim some rights
help them communciate those intentions clearly to others
make it easy to identify and locate workls and the ways they may be used
increase the store of works online that people can share clearly
launching web-based application to do this.
why would someone do this
who – scolars, artists, musicians filmakaers
why – fame fortune freedom
how – public domain dedication / custom licensing
overall goal – increase the store of works online that people can share clearly
it’s very very cool.
lisa rein is demonstrating the web app – clear and easy to follow… fricitonless… y’know… it could take off. let’s hope so. so good to see the good guys doing something amazingly well in cooperation…
Petafloptimism 