isen.blog

For RSS/XML Users: Announcing A New Feed

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-23T20:39:30Z

I am changing my feed. Blogger now supports Atom, and isen.blog's been using it.
Unfortunately, I neglected to tell all my loyal, faithful readers about it. (Thanks Jorge.)

So here's the news:

Bye-bye http://isen.com/blog/index.rdf

Hello http://isen.com/blog/atom.xml

I've been posting inadvertantly (literally inadvertantly) to atom.xml since February 1. But now I am advertising. So check out the atom feed. Like RSS, Atom feeds are machine readable by all the major feedreaders. Unlike RSS, Atom files seem to be human-readable in a standard browser! Cool.

There's lots of good stuff in February's Atom feed, including all the
LATEST NEWS about WTF -- A Gathering of Smart People.

I am so naive. WTF? What does WTF mean?

David Weinberger on "The Echo Chamber Meme" (the echo chamber meme, the echo chamber meme . . . )

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-21T01:15:34Z

I went to a talk on blogging today, and "echo chamber" was one of the most-used phrases. Everybody seemed to know what "echo chamber" meant -- boy, talk about an echo chamber! David W writes "out of the cluster":

. . . I went to a baseball game . . . [and m]y bleacher mates were surprisingly unwilling to talk with me about whether the Sox were deserving of our collective support . . . we humans -- echo chamber participants or echo chamber castigators -- rarely engage in deep, meaningful and truly open conversation with people who fundamentally disagree with us. I have never debated a neo-Nazi, and if I did, I wouldn't do so with an open mind: No way is that son of a bitch going to convince me that he's right. No apologies.

Before you say "echo chamber" again, you might want to peek at a few more of Dr. W's wise words.

Five 9s at the FCC

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-20T22:18:09Z

The Extended Pheotype points out that

Some 89 million people watched the Superbowl, and 200,000 complaints [about the Janet Jackson show] were received [by the FCC]. Hmm. (sounds of calculator buttons in the background) . . . 99.9978% of Superbowl viewers didn’t feel motivated to complain . . .

Hallelujah! The FCC finally got better than five 9s on *one* network-related measure.

WTF: Which Themes Flower

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-19T22:02:49Z

WTF is coming together nicely. Here's the latest:

On-site lodging: Twenty-five of the Edith Macy's 47 rooms are bought and paid-for. If you're hoping to have an on-site room, act fast. There are only 47 rooms in the place.

No hurry to register if you're local, or if you're finding nearby lodging on your own. But please remember that all WTF rates go up by $150 on March 12.

Please publicize WTF! There are 196 seats in the Peter F. Drucker Auditorium. It would be great to fill them all with Communications Revolutionaries! So if you know others who might Want To Follow the meeting, tell them they're Welcome To Frequent WTF. And if you have a mailing list or a blog, and the spirit moves you to Want To Focus on WTF, please do so! I'm hoping that Web Transactions Follow. Bottoms up!

I've just updated http://stupidnet.com, the official Web site of WTF. I've added the most current list of registered participants. I've added the most recent polysemous entries to the WTF's Theme and Force contest. And I've sketched out a bare bones agenda.

Volunteers needed: There have been several calls from around the world requesting an audio webcast of WTF. I won't have the brainwidth during the conference. If you'd like to take this task on, I'll make sure that the World Tacitly Follows your Willingness To Fructify challenging tasks.

Wishing Transcendent Fulfillment,
David I
>

The Wireless Future is Almost Here

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-18T21:34:24Z

Jonn Lebkowsky writes:

Time is running out to register for the Wireless Future conference, which will be held March 12-16 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. Explore the future of licensed and unlicensed wireless technology with such luminaries as Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs), Kevin Werbach (organizer of Supernova and author of New America Foundation's Radio Revolution), Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the legendary Dave Hughes, David Weinberger (author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Dewayne Hendricks of Dandin Group, Joichi Ito of Neoteny, Ltd., Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury, John Quarterman and many more!

I'll be there. So will Yuri "magic-bike" Gitman, and Steve Stroh, two of my personal heros.

The price, now $225 cheap, includes admission to SxSW Interactive. But it goes up on March 1, so register now.

Sorry officer, I converged . . .

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-18T00:06:22Z

Martin Geddes gets it right again:

Saw the word “convergence” pop up again on the ITU web site. I love that word. So soothing . . . next time you see a car wreck on the freeway with blood and oil oozing under the twisted metal, don’t panic. Have no worries. Let your fear subside. The car has simply converged with the concrete barrier. Converged with fate. Converged into history.

One offender -- who should know better -- Bob Metcalfe. Every time he says it, it grates on me. I wish he'd stop using that word.

The "echo chamber" on our front porch

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-17T22:46:43Z

David Weinberger got my personal "Best Meme of Show" award at last week's ETCon. In a discussion of whether Deniac bloggers were listening to their own echo chamber, David W said something like, "Echo chamber? The newsboy throws the biggest echo chamber onto your front porch every morning."

(And all this time I thought Lacy Peterson actually was more important than stuff like global oil shortages . . . )

News from the Oil Patch

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-17T22:38:38Z

Princeton Geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, author of Hubbert's Peak, The Impending World Oil Shortage, which I reviewed in 2002, has an update on world oil production dated January 16, 2004. To review, Hubbert's Peak says, in essence, that world oil production will peak sometime in this decade, "never to rise again." Deffeyes, looking to tune up his prediction, writes:

At the end of December, Oil & Gas Journal published their oil production figures for calendar year 2003. From 2000 to 2003, world crude oil production has been essentially flat, which is to be expected as we roll over the top of the bell-shaped Hubbert curve. . . . There was some speculation that the year 2000 might stand as the single largest year of oil production. (Production in 2001 and 2002 was not as large as the year 2000.) However, 2003 squeaked ahead of 2000 by one-half of one percent. The important news is that growth has essentially stopped.

Professor Deffeyes points out that all of the 2003 production increases come from Russian production, where deferred Soviet-era maintenance is finally being remedied. He continues:

Although it is a bit silly, we can now pick a day to celebrate passing the top of the mathematically smooth Hubbert curve: November 24, 2005 . . . To his credit, Alan Greenspan has been warning about a natural gas supply shortage in North America. None of the presidential candidates want to warn us about blood, sweat, and tears. Each is trying to promise us a better future than the next. It is probably going to require some sort of major crisis before the world oil supply gets on the national agenda.

With the Japanese and US rejections, the Kyoto Accord on carbon dioxide reduction is now dead. I'm claiming to be The New Kyoto. We won't burn as much oil each year because it simply won't come out of the ground.

This is Big News, but you won't read it in the 'papers.

The other David Isenberg does good work!

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-17T17:24:55Z

This morning a package arrived in my mailbox addressed to "David Isenberg, Senior Analyst, British American Security Information Council," at my home address. Others wiser than I have observed that the Internet collapses name-space. I've known this other David "defense-analyst" Isenberg was out there for a couple of years. That's why I started using my middle initial.

Anyhow, this other guy does good work. I Googled him and found a report entitled, Unravelling the Known Unknowns: Why no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found in Iraq The summary states:

"The conclusion is inescapable: there is nothing to be found. This means that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair made a WMD mountain out of what, at best, was a molehill. As a recent detailed report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concludes, 'Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile programs.'

Why did the US and UK governments exaggerate the threat? Or were they themselves misled by available pre-war intelligence on Iraq's WMD capability? *snip* The main conclusion is that the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq suggests very strongly that the UN weapons inspectors succeeded in their mandate, and that the Iraqi government complied with its obligations."

I don't mind sharing a name with this guy at all!

The package has been forwarded to its correct destination.

WTF -- Who's Transacted First

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-13T22:04:01Z

The following people have actually registered and paid
for WTF2004. (Note: 27 on-site rooms still available.)

Patrick Leary, patrick dot leary at alvarion dot com
Gordon Jacobson, gaj at portman dot com
Steve Steinberg, steve at steinberg dot org
Martin Geddes, isen at martingeddes dot com
Dave Hughes, dave at oldcolo dot com
Russ Nelson, stupidnet dot com at russnelson dot com
Francis McInerney, francis at northriver dot com
Lane Smith, lasmith at usaid dot gov
Michael Olson, mao at sleepycat dot com
Raj Singh, rsingh at investcorp dot com
Tom Mandel, tom at tommandel dot com
Michael Katz, makatz at collaborationgroup dot com
Saul Aguiar, saul_aguiar at ieee dot org
Malcolm Matson, cityman at city dot co dot uk
Terri Adkisson, terri at mindjazz dot com
Stan Hanks, stanx at networkmercenaries dot com
Jean Pierre De Vries, pierredv at microsoft dot com
Steven Cherry, s dot cherry at ieee dot org
Brian Condon, brian dot condon at complexitygroup dot com
Alan Freedman, alan at computerlanguage dot com
Robert Williamson, windwardresearch at attglobal dot net
Gordon Cook, cook at cookreport dot com
Roger Williams, rogerw at nordlink dot com
Pito Salas, junk at salas dot com
Lindsey Annison, l dot annison at webpr dot co dot uk
Kenneth Tyler, ken at seedwiki dot com
Pontus Ekman, pontus at ekman dot se

Speaking with our EFF Hats on . . .

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-11T19:34:55Z

Howard Rheingold, David I, James Roberts at O'Reilly ETCon.

Trippi says he only made $165,000 on Dean Campaign

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-09T17:46:55Z

$165k is a lot of money, Trippi says. The firm he's a partner of reportedly made over 7 million. But Trippi says that all the noise about this issue is about stopping the flow of $25 contributions. "This is not about getting me, it is about how to get all these budding activists to say, 'Hey, I can't make a difference.'"

Rheingold blogs Trippi

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-09T17:38:46Z

I am sitting at O'Reilly's Digital Democracy Teach-in. Joe Trippi just talked, Howard Rheingold was blogging the speech in real time. I just took a look -- what Howard wrote is what I heard. Awesome, my hat is off.

David Weinberger did a pretty good job too!

Failure of Intelligence: Not Just for Networks Anymore

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-09T15:12:28Z

"When you are dealing with secretive regimes that want to deceive,
you're never going to be able to be positive."

Condoleeza Rice, Quoted by Reuters, January 29, 2004

Werblog on "Dean Hires Bellhead"

David S. Isenberg — 2004-02-07T06:12:27Z

Kevin Werbach writes

Dean doesn't get it.

Here's how Howard Dean justified his decision to replace campaign manager Joe Trippi with Washington insider Roy Neel: "What we need is decision making that's centralized." One would think that, after Dean's extraordinary rise from obscurity to front-runner status on the back of a radically distributed, networked movement, he would appreciate the value of decentralization.

Right on, Kevin. On the other hand, he was running for *president*.