Thursday, November 17, 2005

There's a reason David used a Sling

It is hard for me to write a post about how I disagree with Doc Searls' Article, because I think the article is so well written and covers so many important topics and ideas. So I want to start this off by saying that it is a fantastic article. But I would not write a post just to say "me too" either. So the rest of this post is about how I agree 100% with his description of the problem, but disagree with his prescription for the future.

Let me summarize for anyone who does not have the time (or patience) to read the entire article. Doc breaks it down into three sections.

Scenario I: The Carriers Win - Doc describes how the phone carriers (SBC, Verizon, etc) are fighting with the Cable companies over who gets to own the Internet. Both want the government to pass regulations to limit competition so that they can charge consumers more. It includes great examples of how these companies play dirty.

Scenario II: The Public Workaround - Doc explores the possibility that another company, perhaps Google, could challenge both types of incumbants with a wireless solution that replaces the pipes that they are fighting to control. He also discusses how these laws that are supposed to be pro-market are really anti-market.

Scenario III: Fight with Words and Not Just Deeds - In the final section Doc discusses how to reframe the debate by promoting the metaphor that the Internet is a place rather than a transport system. He concludes with seven paragraphs that all begin with either "We need" or "We should", stressing the importance of fighting the big companies from taking over the Internet. My favorite two paragraphs of this section are the following:

"We need to remind policy makers that the Net's biggest success stories--Amazon, Google, eBay and Yahoo--are the stories of Bezos, Page, Brin, Omidyar, Yang and Filo."

"We need to make clear that the Net is the best public place ever created for private enterprise, and that the success of the Net owes infinitely more to personal initiative than to the mesh of pipes in the ground beneath it."

I agree with the premise behind these two strongly, that the people made the internet, not the technology or the wires. (In fact I was thinking of this from a more anecdotal position yesterday; I must have subconsciously anticipated reading this article today.) However, my perception of what comes next is almost the opposite of what Doc suggests.

"These are ideas, of course. I present them forcefully because I believe we--the technical community--are being called to fight for a world we made and continue to make. And one which is under grave threat."

It's not just under grave threat, it's doomed. It is absolutely inevitable, in my opinion, that the system of yesterday will get devoured by the big companies. But while Doc suggests we should fight against this process, I say don't waste the effort. Instead let's focus on the next generation, the next invention that big companies won't understand for a few years and therefore won't be able to spoil. Let them have the Internet, because just as Doc highlighted, the real value is in the PEOPLE. They can have the product, but they cannot have the people who made it. We're going to go build something new and better and if the big companies want to stay where they are, fighting over who gets to squeeze the last drop of revenue out of yesterday's accomplishment, so be it. That's what David did to Goliath; he didn't fight brute strength with brute strength, he calculated a precision attack against Goliath's weakness.

Doc quotes "World of Ends", by David Weinberger and himself, in a blockquote section titled "The Internet is Stupid". He brings up a brilliant point: "Adding value to the Internet Lowers its Value.". If the carriers are determined to lower the value of the Internet by "improving it", then they are going to push more people towards the next generation.

One of Doc's concerns is the rising tide of Digital Rights Management (DRM) hardware. Hollywood is fighting hard to get copy protection built into television tuners. This would control what and how you record or copy broadcast television. There is also a hardware DRM system going into High Definition Radio players. Doc's suggestion is to "contact your Congresspeople. Tell them to keep the Net open and free and to vote against any legislation meant to protect any industry from "threats" they see coming from a new world they refuse to understand.", but why waste the energy. If you want to effect real change you cannot go through the seemingly direct, but ultimately toothless, mechanism of writing to Congress. You've got to harness the power of all those lobbyist dollars by sending a signal to the companies that pay them (with your dollars, mind you). Can you imagine if the electronics companies complied with the new law, put broadcast protection in a new line of televisions, and nobody bought them... I know, it sounds crazy, but just imagine if everybody stopped buying televisions, opting instead for monitors (a television without the tuner) and watching a steady stream of video podcasts (if you need some non-MPAA entertainment, I highly recommend Red vs. Blue). Now I realize that it is unrealistic to expect every single person to participate, but let's start with everyone who reads Docs' blog. I humbly request that instead of spending time writing letters to Congress, that Doc make an extra podcast so that we have less reason to bother with the RIAA and MPAA. They don't own sound or video, they only own the content they've bought up. The more good content we put out there that does not conform to their rules, the more we undermine their position.

Not that they need help! Look at the current Sony snafu for evidence that consumers are not going to put up with whatever the studios do. Currently the population in general neither understands DRM nor knows what to do to avoid it. This particular instance with Sony will probably raise the level of consciousness because it is easy to describe: people bought the CD's with the rootkit included and their computers were infected with a virus that Sony included on the CDs. David Berlind writing about his DRM woes in Between the Lines speaks to a different crowd and his call to stop buying DRM music is along the right lines in my opinion. Not to beat a dead horse, but the message that no company can fail to hear is the message of consumer dollars.

Finally, reading through the comments in response to Docs' article, one from Jay struck me, "I'm tired of paying top-dollar for less than satisfactory services". My response... DON'T! You determine what you buy. If you are really tired of it, then make a change. My biggest problem with the post is that the language denies any responsibility for the purchasing decisions. Since I can assume that he is not talking about basic human necessities (people struggling to survive don't spend their time posting on blog comments, they spend it surviving), then he is making a choice to purchase these items, but refuses to own up to the responsibility. He continues, "As another commenter pointed out their dislike that everything in the US seems to have a price tag, and usually it's a premium price. I'm also tired of it as well". Everything has a price tag, capitalism simply puts it right in front of you. No matter what the economic system, there is a cost associated with everything. We take the sum total of the world's ability to produce goods, and it gets spread out among the people in the world. And regardless of the system, someone is placing a value on your time and exchanging it for equal value of goods. As far as the premium price goes, supply and demand are not some social experiment, they are names for forces that work in the system. Even when they are manipulated by governments or companies, supply and demand are still intrinsic forces. If you really believe that the price is too high, then don't pay it. Again, take responsibility for the purchasing decisions that YOU make.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Two Years Behind the Hype

I imagine I am about the last geek in my age range to find Friendster for the first time, but when I heard about it, about a year ago, I just did not get it. But a friend of ours had sent me an invitation to join her "friends" and I decided to go ahead. I wasn't actually expecting to get any benefit myself, it was more like when I receive a request for my contact info. I respond so that the person will have accurate information about me. Boy, did I have a surprise coming.

So I signed up for friendster and became a friend. Immediately I noticed that a good friend that I had fallen out of touch with was listed as a "friend of a friend". Within a few minutes I had found another few old friends, but this first "friend of a friend" was the one who responded in minutes. We opened a chat and traded highlights from the past 4 years in about 10 minutes. I had this wonderful feeling afterwards.

That's the power of the Internet. Forget all of the marketing and the "web special" deals, the best thing about the Internet is how it connects people. Without it, I know the address for my friend's parents, who I'd have to bother to ask for a current phone number or address. Or I might bump into someone who has kept in touch with her at my high school reunion next year, but with the Internet I reconnected with her that day.

Another part that was a lot of fun was reading the profiles of people who I would call acquaintances. Especially in college, there were a great deal of people that I knew who they were, I shared classes with them, but I was not friends with them per se. However, six years removed, it's really fun to read who lives where, works where, and what they are doing.

I also must give friendster a big hand for making it so easy to use their service. I would guess that the chat function that I used is relatively new based on the "Beta" tag, although FlickR still says Beta and it is not a spring chicken. However, the fact that we were able to have an instant message conversation without worrying about installing software, or who's using which provider, made a huge impression. I may be the last person in the world to find it, but I think the timing was
perfect.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Is That Your Final Answer?

On Saturday I witnessed a bit of unintended comedy. While I was helping our neighbor, Cy, set up his DSL connection he went through one of those standard setup questionaires: name, password, etc, and of course the very popular secret question. This form gave a fairly long but mundane set of potential secret questions. I am going to skip the discussion about how secret questions tend to not be all that secret, it is too easy of a target.

Cy decided to use the secret question "What was your mother's maiden name?", then he proceeded to type in the four letter family name from his mother's family. Upon clicking the "Next" button, an error message explained "Your Secret Answer must be 6 or more digits".

I started chuckling immediately. Fortunately Cy was able to find another secret question with an answer that was long enough. However, if his first pet was named Rex, and his first job was as a cook (or chef), and the first street he lived on was Oak, etc then it could have been a big problem! I understand making passwords be of a certain length, but when you answer a question, you do not have control over the length.

This could be the jumping off point for a whole discussion of identity: how broken the system (or lack thereof) is, but I would prefer to leave it for today at the simple point that requiring a certain length answer to a question is just plain dumb... uh, silly... wait, idiotic...

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Locked in 16:9

If you think about filming a single person, it seems strange that film and video are wider than tall. After all, humans are upright and taller than even the widest reach of their arms. However, the reason must be the influence of gravity, that pesky force, that says that we all walk around on essentially a plane. We interact with other people and objects in that horizontal plane, so we need a wider lens to capture a group of people.

With still pictures, people became very comfortable with turning a physical print on its side to see a long shot. Then when digital photography took hold, programs became adept at rotating the photograph 90 degrees.

With digital video, the standard of television, 4:3, or widescreen, 16:9, are the oonly available sizes. If the video will eventually be displayed on a television, including the new rage, widescreen monitors, then it makes sense to keep the video in the standard view. But for a computer video, like the type that I have posted to our family blog, it would be better to turn the camera on it's side, and then rotate the video in the computer by 90 degrees to show Garrett in the majority of the window. A choice of 9:16 or 3:4 would be a nice addition to video editing software in an age of video blogs and easy file exchange.