BigHook Chat — Yesterday, September 10
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| Sep 10 | 6:50 AM |
| Jon L. |
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| Jon L. | Above the content of David Reed's focal content for this AM. |
| Sep 10 | 6:55 AM |
| Jon L. | Mental typo: the content of his focal email, that is. |
| Sep 10 | 7:40 AM |
| Judi C. |  |
| Sep 10 | 8:30 AM |
| Judi C. | |
| Sep 10 | 8:35 AM |
| Jon L. | Everything open and free: a mindmap. http://www.mindmeister.com/28717702/everyt… |
| AGoldmanISP | |
| AGoldmanISP |
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| AGoldmanISP |
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| Judi C. | wow, NTIA database of apps... all on one page. |
| Sep 10 | 8:40 AM |
| dweinberger | "The Notches" has stuck for me. |
| Robin | Dewayne! Thanks to you, see this: http://gigaom.com/2009/09/10/mobilize-top-… |
| Judi C. | Congratulations Robin! |
| Sep 10 | 8:45 AM |
| dweinberger | "GigaOM’s Top 15 Mobile Influencers" |
| AGoldmanISP | I just voted for Robin |
| Nadia E. | Me too. Go Robin! |
| Jon L. | Pain is money for the NGOs. |
| AGoldmanISP | 8x8, Inc. got money to "educate small businesses" about broadband adoption |
| ArtKleiner | Pain is money for everybody. |
| ArtKleiner | Or more precisely for some members of every group. |
| Jon L. | Absolutely. |
| Sep 10 | 8:50 AM |
| Jon L. | "There's no resolution in Washington that avoids games." |
| Steve S. | I deferred my topic table till lunch today, which will come after Dave Reed's excellent discussion on similar topics. So for those that want more on the tussle between commmercial interests affecting mobile internet access, look for the me |
| AGoldmanISP | somebody post sascha's press release |
| Jon L. | Making a mesh of things. |
| Sep 10 | 8:55 AM |
| enoss | no governments, no incumbents. I need to turn this into a mantra somehow |
| Jon L. | It IS a mantra. |
| Judi C. | http://www.newamerica.net/pressroom/2009/o… - Sasha's press release |
| Jon L. | At breakfast, Herman mentioned the book _Crowds and Power_ by Elias Canetti: http://www.amazon.com/Crowds-Power-Elias-C… |
| Sep 10 | 9:00 AM |
| Sascha M. | Interestingly enough, after excoriating the FCC for inaction during my testimony, several FCC staff came up to me and thanked me for voicing what their were increasingly frustrated about as well. |
| Doc | Pepper: "serendipity, stupidity and stealth leads to innovation" |
| Jon L. | Sascha: sounds like they want us to push 'em. |
| Rick | AT&T also walked away from the early Internet. |
| Doc | Models that defy the laws of physics and economics can actually work. |
| Doc | DPR: QoS killed the bells' interest in cell phones. |
| AGoldmanISP | ignore mobility because you cannot quantify it (until the $ come in) |
| Sep 10 | 9:05 AM |
| Jon L. | Mistaken assumption about level of quality that's "good enough." |
| enoss | I repeat from yesterday AT&T turned down the .com registry |
| Herman (. | If you are control oriented you cannot imagine the value of freedom |
| dweinberger | Well, I'd argue that models that literally do defy the laws of physics can't work, at least without a killer business model. |
| Doc | Second example: satellite tv. |
| dweinberger | E.g., I invested heavily in flux capacitors. Bad move. |
| Jon L. | dweinberger: You've obviously never ridden a UFO. |
| enoss | so much US policy has the qualifier "unlike everywhere else in the world......" |
| Doc | Third example: The Internet. |
| Anders | On mobile. it helped that the cost/line was < |
| Robin | this is why I think we can push out a mesh in transportation sector. Who is going to bother with a few data bits so that you can pay your toll? or pay for parking? |
| Herman (. | So change is preceded by removing restrictions and protections, allowing "crazy ideas" |
| Anders | >2000USD initially vs the std industry notion of USD1000 for POTS. New roll outs in Africa are less than USD250 per user. |
| enoss | I wonder if this is specific to networks not applications....... |
| David I. | aha |
| enoss | netscape, icq/im, ebay, skype, paypal, facebook, twitter, google are all examples of small innovation but did not need stealth |
| Sep 10 | 9:10 AM |
| enoss | certainly they needed serendipity and innovation |
| wseltzer | cycles: as new entrants become incumbents, they try to keep out the next wave |
| Jon L. | Herman: or by stealth mode so that restrictions aren't even considered. |
| Herman (. | Jon: agreed |
| Doc | What is the role of the market and government, and balancing the position and the incentives of incumbents vs. new entrants. |
| Doc | "If we believe in an open end to end internet, there are questions... |
| Herman (. | Anything vested interests disdain is a good place to start :-), government should allow the experimentation |
| Tom F. | |
| Doc | How do you scale and still foster new investment? Is there a future for the service providers. |
| Doc | "Is a government network really a model?" |
| Anders | Vertical operators are now increasingly clear over how to restucture horisontally. They are just waiting for the political nudge. |
| Doc | "Is a regulated monopoly the answer?" Meaning a carriers' carrier. Isn't there too much evidence that this works early and fails late. |
| dweinberger | For those with eyes like mine: That graphic is a complaint from 1883 that there's too much change thanks to science. "Human nature can't endure much more." |
| enoss | PTTs are not a good example. electricity is better |
| Herman (. | Even government owned companies will exhibited all the bad traits of an incumbent, thats human nature |
| enoss | telephony is less a network and more a single app - voice. |
| Sep 10 | 9:15 AM |
| Doc | "Do the players even understand their own self'interest?" |
| dweinberger | good pt, enoss. But it may also be the case that our sense of what constitutes a "real" network has been shifted by the Net. (I'm talking about public perception and language use, not tech defs.) |
| Doc | "How do you get investment for innovation, rather than lawyers?" |
| Steve K. | thank you judi I am on :-) |
| dweinberger | back to the future ... I knew I should have invested more in flux capacitors! |
| Steve K. | probasbly something to do with a locked down corporate PC... |
| Steve S. | if only flux capacitors had understood their own self-interest |
| enoss | decentralization!! |
| Doc | "1. What's the model for investing in innovation and robust future-proof networks?" |
| enoss | lawyers rely on centralization |
| Doc | "2. Can stupid networks be profitable?" |
| Nurture G. | Good early morning to you Judi! Thanks for getting up 5 hours early. :) |
| enoss | YES! |
| Doc | "Is a regulated monopoly vialble?" |
| Judi C. | Thank you Ms Thrivability! |
| enoss | notice all the people who actually do it say yes and folks who have to come at it from elsewhere feel not |
| Doc | "Is a regulated monopoly an effective alternative to competition. -- effective at attracting investment?" |
| Doc | "4. Do the players understand their own self-interest?" |
| Doc | Are they educable? |
| Jon L. | Are they rational? |
| Doc | David I: The corporation is a machine designed to go after its own self-interest." |
| Herman (. | Definition of "profitable" is dependent on what you compare it to. Infrastructure like roads? Telco EBIT's? Fake reurtns like we have seen in de finance industry? |
| Anders | The conditions for getting competition are entirely different on Level 0 & 1 vs higher levels. This leads to different answers depending on what you mean with "network" |
| Steve S. | Do corporate executives even understand their own self-interest ;) |
| Sep 10 | 9:20 AM |
| Herman (. | And different for local loop versus higher levels |
| Doc | "At what point does the situation shift and they don't recognize it? What about when they use the name of the consumer for rationalizing poor service for consumers?" |
| dweinberger | dpr has just gone meta meta meta |
| dweinberger | heavy meta banned |
| Jon L. | Unquestionably. |
| Steve K. | why they dont understand their self interst? I suspect it is partly because so many years of regulation and scrutiny that the habit is to NOT too closely examine self interest or write it down anywhere because a DoJ anti-trust lawyer might find it. so the true prupose of the organization becomes unwritten and then, over time, forgotten of mis-remembered/misunderstood. |
| Doc | Th emacro qeustion... we all have this belief in end-to-end.. promote principles of free speech, other things we don't debate... how do we get investment in that? to what extent do we rely on the market, or government?" |
| FrankP |
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| Steve K. | my favority metaphor for the telcos is this forster sci fi piece from early 1900's "the machine stopped" I will post a file it is a fun read. |
| Doc | Scott: The innovator's dilemma is about the inability of an org to recognize its own good. It is an observation that a large corp, fixed in its ways, cannot recogtnize its own good, behyond a certain time frame." |
| Anders | Actually it is more of a matrix with Levels on one axis and Local, Middle mile, national , international on the other |
| Steve K. | |
| Doc | DPR: Christensen says that big orgs make correct decisions that are just wrong. |
| Doc | "There are many interests and they are incompatible with everybody." |
| Steve S. | Corporations are run by people. Most people act out of their own personal self-interest. Which may or may not align with the organizations self-interest. How many bankers got wealthy while destroying their financial institutions and our economy in the process. |
| Sep 10 | 9:25 AM |
| Jon L. | The values of an organization are generally not the same as the values of the individual in the organization. |
| Steve K. | steve s. YES! we have just been through a massive public exampl of companies filled with smart people making consciously self-destructuve decisions in order to avoid near-term loss or disruption. |
| Jon L. | SRC practices change brain patterns. |
| Jon L. | Same with Toyota, but having difficulty expanding because they can't export their management method into different contexts. |
| Jon L. | Empathy, willingness to care about the impact of what you do. |
| FrankP | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect what happens when you go over the numbers at lunch |
| dweinberger | empathy with whom? |
| Steve S. | STEVE K And, making those decisions because it meets their personal self-interest objectives. Hiting this quarter or year's target means 8 figure bonuses. Missing means not getting them. But money is just one part of it, there's all sorts of personal self-interest -- power, status, etc. |
| Doc | Art K: It is extremely difficult to impossible. There are three components ... to embracing the disruptive. First is awareness. There are companies that read Christensen, and are now having different conversations. Lots that knew there was a disruptive model, embraced it with the idea, and couldn't get it. Second is discipline. The willingness to set up practiced routines on a day by day bases that change the brains of those doing the work. Fincancial literacy for example. Posting numbers of that week's profits, etc. All of the people from the shop floor to the CEO go over the numbers over lunch. SRC has a great track record of spinning off experts from all levels. But that's not enough eithyer. Toyota for example. It is having difficulty expanding around the world, because thyey can't export their management method. Third is only guessable. It's a matter of debate. Social responsibility is a feeble effort to answer what else is needed to be innovative. Some form of empathy. Some willingness to care about the impact of what you do. Look at Seidenberg (?) says he cares about the roll-out. "Do you want to be known as somebody whose word is not worth the stone it's chiseled in." |
| dweinberger | corporate empathy = a realignment of interests? |
| Jon L. | Saul Alinsky: Moses to the mountaintop, bargaining with god, asks him if he wants to have a bad rep. |
| Robin | That third one doesn't work for me. |
| Sep 10 | 9:30 AM |
| dweinberger | but interests are at the heart of our awareness/perception/judgment/experience, where "our" includes individuals and organizations |
| Robin | Maybe it needs to be defined as ability to look at a much longer time frame? |
| Robin | or being very customer centric? |
| dweinberger | so, i guess i'm just agreeing with AK: It's really really hard because it requires a thorough transformation. |
| dweinberger | maybe what i want to ask AK is: Given how hard it is to accomplish a change and realignment of interests, how do we get there, especially if we're a large corp? |
| Rick | i see the third factor as courage, the ability to understand your plight, and bravely decide to side with innovation and growth even as it risks undermining your more immediate, safe, happy future. The problem is that most telco execs, and their shareholders, haven't been trained to see the world that way. Verizon's FiOS rollout is a fascinating anomaly that suggests Seidenberg *MAY* have that quality. |
| Jon L. | Culture change within orgs is very difficult. Some succeed by assessing individual internal values vs corporate values, and working to close the gap. |
| Doc | Herman: There is an elephant in the room is your profession, specifically a financial analyst in the telco arena. Everybody has an opinion on broadband, even if they know nothing. Most inmportantly the financial community thinks they should be thinking... They are very ignorant, don't know tech. |
| dweinberger | robin: "This is one of the innovator's dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake." http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/christ… |
| wseltzer | A question about Christensen's disruptive innovation: how much is about corporate competence, vs how much is numbers -- there are many more potential disruptors outside the incumbent than inside, so one might succeed? |
| Doc | Example of a big company that smelled the clues: IBM with Linux and open source. |
| Jon L. | Hierarchical firm vs flexible networks. |
| Robin | DW and Rick: yes, I agree. Courage, intuition. willing to experiment. take risks and then you can expand or cut... |
| Doc | That was a good example of a company that got in compliance with its own engineers. Not saying they did other things right, just that they embraced a disruptive movement. So happened that it was also a *constructive* movement. Linux and open source goods are just building materials, after all. |
| Steve S. | Yes. Acting out of self-interest |
| Sep 10 | 9:35 AM |
| AGoldmanISP | founders play a key role. companies that still have their founders can change. compare to Fiorina vs. the Hewletts at HP |
| Robin | ability to place lots of small experiments: interate, feed good ones and starve bad ones |
| Steve S. | trying to milk those last few years until retirement |
| Nurture G. | legacy baggage makes it difficult for innovation.... |
| Doc | Steve K: the key is a near-death experience. |
| Nurture G. | near death experiences are like a restart |
| dweinberger | western union |
| dweinberger | although arguably western union had a death experience |
| Nurture G. | Jim Collins talks about companies with level 5 leadership able to bring about radical change... "Good to Great" |
| dweinberger | Good to Great to Incumbent to Dead Wood ... |
| Doc | SK: fear is the only driver |
| wseltzer | dweinberger++ |
| dweinberger | (fear != Hobbesian. But this is an argument we probably should have over beers in stainless steel tankards.) |
| Tom F. | In 1990 I gave a copy of Christensen to every officer of Motorola (100+), and later went back to them for their reaction. There were 2 roughly equal groups: "Wow, we are in trouble, because we're making all those mistakes", and "Oh, I don't have time to read that." FYI, the entire top 2 layers were in the second group -- . |
| dweinberger | tomf :) |
| Jon L. | A sense of life cycle emerges. |
| dweinberger | AO's presence is an argument for getting more historians at BH. |
| Sep 10 | 9:40 AM |
| enoss | art k wrote the definitive book on the issue of "corporation's best interests" called "who really matters". must read if you are interested in this topic |
| Anders | on mobile forecasts: ericsson internal forecasts developed in similar ways in the 90s. demand was coming on much faster than anticipated over several years. every year the forecast was missing the growth, simply because they talked to their customers, the PTTs |
| dweinberger | "denigration of gov't" : Yesterday Chief Justice Roberts appositely synonymized government and Big Brother. |
| enoss | new competitor in unprofitable segments |
| Doc | Roxanne: The legacy guys failed by listening to customers, which makes it overfeatured and underproductive. |
| Doc | Kind of like the Ericsson story from Anders, above. |
| Nurture G. | Sufficiency |
| dweinberger | And yet, when CNN embraces the "crummy, good enough" tech of social media, it ignores its own strengths and looks somewhat silly. |
| Sep 10 | 9:45 AM |
| enoss | I wonder if they had time for golf! |
| Jane C. | Mozilla's mission-statement is great - "We intend to ship less lines of code with each subsequent upgrade" - they refuse to add new features unless they really add value. |
| dweinberger | ...just as isen left AT&T after writing The STupid Network |
| Herman (. | A new disruptor/entrant has to bring more than cheaper! Desktop publishing with a laserprinter was laughed upon by the graphics industry, not cheaper for large volumes, but created an immense amount of freedom for people, which was the killer |
| Nurture G. | as always - making it into a snappy statement means valuable qualifications are missing...and thus...it isn't quite implemented appropriately. |
| Doc | David I: Senior managment is an effective filter of clueful people. |
| Doc | Tom: There are companies that survived. Top guy undersood and made it happen, in each case. |
| Nurture G. | David I +++ |
| Nurture G. | consensus is a dangerous way of making decisions |
| Jon L. | Motorola vs Canopy |
| Jon L. | Stealth again. |
| Jon L. | Stealth as an exit strategy. |
| Rick | Ed Whitacre: moving from phones to cars, while openly admitting that "I know nothing about cars." |
| enoss | rise of professional manager = death of large enterprise. we are just witnessing it |
| Sep 10 | 9:50 AM |
| Steve S. | perfect example Rick |
| Robin | Can't describe some things in one sentence. YES, this is sometimes a problem for me. It takes 3 sentences, maybe more. |
| Judi C. | +1 Peter. Even twitter lets you add links for more info. |
| Jon L. | Managers deride engineers. |
| enoss | in the US the smartest graduates go into banking and law, in china they go into government |
| Judi C. | Dilbert principles at work |
| AGoldmanISP | enoss -- rise of the professional manager also had something to do with the end of the family business -- is the death of the professional manager a return to the family business -- or a move to the extended enterprise supported by consultants and outsourced professional services? |
| Rick | “I don’t know anything about cars,” Whitacre, 67, said yesterday in an interview after his appointment. “A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I’m not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.” |
| Jon L. | Respect for engineering, understanding of engineering, missing in orgs. |
| Doc | PeterC: "We have a super-management problem." |
| ArtKleiner | The supermanagement problem.... The best organizations have someone in place who really does understand their busienss. |
| dweinberger | Developers! Developers! Developers! |
| Robin | So are you saying Whitacre will succeed or won't? he is clearly not captured by car way of thinking. But he is likely very captured by protectionist/self preservation/monopoly way of thinking. |
| ArtKleiner | But that's not just about engineering. |
| enoss | now six years old http://enoss.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2… |
| Jon L. | Maybe not family business, but modular microcompanies, many bootstrapped? |
| ArtKleiner | Depends on who else Whitacre puts in place and how good he is at recognizing ideas and opportunities. In other words, he would have to be a genius. |
| Jon L. | Network microcompanies for larger effects. |
| Robin | I think Whitacre will fail. |
| Steve S. | did not know that Brough |
| Rick | Robin: I'm assuming Whitacre will not succeed, due both to his protectionist telco background and his ignorance about the fundamentals of the auto business. |
| Doc | Lou Gerstner got a lot of crap for being from a bisquit company when he came to IBM, but he was the guy who got behind his own engineers when they adopted Linux. |
| Steve S. | paradoxically robin, and just being provocative here, perhaps he'd be the best to understand the value of mesh-network-enabled smart vehicles |
| enoss | I am inviting steve k to address my board! |
| ArtKleiner | I don't know enough to think he'll fail; would have to see him at work. Past performance is no guarantee of future performance. But there's good reason to be skeptical of his chance of success. |
| ArtKleiner | Lou Gerstner is a good example. |
| Robin | Rick: exactly |
| Herman (. | http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/ Paul Levy, Boston, about running with passion |
| Judi C. | That's different Doc. Whiteacre is a power elite. There are things he doesn't "need" to know. |
| Herman (. | running a hospital |
| Jon L. | Paul Levy rocks. |
| enoss | "incentive" not= money. it is equal to cause or importance of task. |
| dweinberger | Add this to AK's discussion of how change happens? It helps not to be too ignorant to be afraid? |
| ArtKleiner | Plus Whitacre must have gotten to CEO for some reason. He isn't just an ordinary MBA. |
| enoss | look at opencape in their spare time |
| AGoldmanISP | a historical record of success and failure |
| Doc | To me what matters about Whitacre is that he was a classic clueless CEO in his old job. I have no doubt that he can be just as clueless in his new one. GM is doomedl |
| Jon L. | Pride in ignorance. |
| Jon L. | A defensive measure. |
| Robin | Steve S: the question is, what did he learn from his old industry? you are right, there is a really interesting pitch to be made. I have a brewing oped in my for Detroit newspapers. I think you've nailed what hte hook should be. |
| Sep 10 | 9:55 AM |
| Jon L. | Bolsters ethos of the professional manager. |
| Jon L. | World transformed by startups. In startups, the entrepreneurs do understand. |
| FrankP | owners versus professional managers.. |
| enoss | art, you still love your customers, which is a good thing. but....... |
| Jon L. | Entrepreneurial passion vs managerial 'mere competence' |
| Judi C. | integrity: an empty virtue. Love it. |
| Tom F. | The business schools cause a lot of the problem -- |
| Rick | Remember, Whitacre essentially triggered the network neutrality debate with his "won't use my damn pipes for free" diatribe. I'm not convinced he will go beyond that limited kind of thinking in his new job. |
| Robin | Integrity is the empty virture? I talk a lot about intellectual honesty -- is that integrity? I think intellectual honesty can drive you to make the right decisions. |
| ArtKleiner | I think the analyst issue is an important one. But I think it's |
| dweinberger | Integrity means either "I don't take bribes," which is a minimal qualification for leadership, or ... |
| enoss |
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| ArtKleiner | a bit of a red herring in that if you have Awareness, Discipline and Empathy you might not need to raise money through the capital markets and could wait the analysts out. |
| Robin | But could you have gone to business school, know what you don't know,and seek out and rely on the brains and expertise of those who do know it? |
| dweinberger | ...it seems to mean "I am what I say I am. I do not pretend to be what I am not." |
| enoss | not unimportant. maybe misused. |
| ArtKleiner | But you have to be a pretty special CEO to do that.. |
| wseltzer | regulatory law = how to kill technology without understanding it |
| ArtKleiner | Know-nothings in power. 1) MBAs. 2) Analysts. 3) Regulators. People who need to either "learn what a server is" or be a genius. |
| Robin | eliot: "unimpaired, soundness" could be interpreted as intellectual honesty |
| dweinberger | That sort of authenticity may be interesting psychologically but is basically irrelevant. And it's a feint to distract from the fact of one's inadequacy to do all that is required of one. |
| Jon L. | Technology planning by "kind of technical" people. |
| Doc | I suspect, Robin, that Whitacre performed well within some narrow traditional definitions, in his old job. And he did. He pulled a smart move by getting SBC rebranded AT&T, and by merging Bells before that. But he didn't get the Internet, and he still doesn't. That will be a problem for GM too. |
| Robin | am I the only MBA in the room? |
| ArtKleiner | An MBA education doesn't kill your capability. It just doesn't guarantee it. |
| ArtKleiner | I'm not an MBA but I ghostwrite for a lot of them. |
| Doc | DPR: It's a national shame that the FCC has no technical expertise. |
| enoss | I am more proud of my MBA than my law degree! ;-) |
| Jon L. | I think it's hard for an MBA to get the entrepreneurial spirit. Not impossible, but hard. |
| Sep 10 | 10:00 AM |
| FrankP | i'm not all that proud of my MBA |
| Doc | DPR: Stealth is all that will work. |
| dweinberger | I wish I had a MBA. |
| Jon L. | But there are so many more factors than education. |
| enoss | I will give you mine! I rarely use it anymore |
| Doc | "Dispiriting to hear stealth raised as the method of choice." |
| Judi C. | I hear you can buy the degree of your choice any day. Wait, lemme check my email... |
| Jon L. | And I've thought seriously about getting an MBA. Instead, I partnered with an MBA. One who's fired up with entrepreneurial passion. |
| dweinberger | Robin, you could have a PH.D in Evil, and we would still love you. |
| Jon L. | But he worked with Bucky Fuller before he got his MBA. |
| FrankP | MBA could = Mexico Brazil Argentin, bad bond investments in the eighties |
| enoss | it is not a default choice. it is the last resort of desperate men and women! |
| Jane C. | I have an MBA - I just did it too young. I need to study again now that I have more experience of the real world. |
| enoss | the only benefit of that pain is to benefit the company, not the individual or the idea |
| Doc | "The other way is you don't start alone, or just with engineers, you build all that under the adar until you move to a more concerted effort... all very deliberate, on e on one. We have partial efforts toward that, and others by intelligent and effectiv epeople working alone. It will take something like a political campaign.: |
| Tom F. | I always kept a sign on the wall next to my office: "Remember, everything worthwhile is done in defiance of management." |
| Robin | Would you learn about the failure of that strategy to work? |
| Herman (. | Art: how to influence a flock of birds? Don't concentrate on the conservaties/stubborn, get a few inquisitive leaders to discover a new fertile breeding ground. The rest will follow them. |
| ArtKleiner | Certainly the strategy doesn't always work. And it's easy to slip along the way. But it's the only thing that can work. Herman has the right approach. |
| dweinberger | But, Herman, would that work with a flock of tanks? |
| enoss | they have no shame! :-) |
| ArtKleiner | As for the "only benefit of that pain" - it doesnt' have to be painful, even if it's failure. It's better than working for a company whose values you hate. |
| Sep 10 | 10:05 AM |
| ArtKleiner | And it's also a question of parsing the benefits... |
| Robin | Nadia's point is a little bit like the telco bluffing strategy that was done in Amsterdam. If you don't do this, we will take matters into our own hands? But need enough critical mass to make that threat credible. |
| Herman (. | there will always be a way to get someone inside a tank stick his head out, that's the one you can get under his skin and work from there :-) |
| Rick | Isn't the answer the power of creative destruction, fomented either within a company (courage, per Art Kleiner) or from outside (start-ups/stealth)? It's not just one or the other. The real question to me is the proper role of government in encouraging these kinds of actions. |
| dweinberger | Are there examples of successful shaming? Shell perhaps? |
| Jon L. | "Never underestimate the power of ignorance." |
| Doc | Peter C: "Never underestimate the power of ignorance." |
| enoss | @art but it there is now such a low barrier to just doing it yourself or in a small group or in a smaller company |
| AGoldmanISP |
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| Robin | agreed rick |
| Tom F. | I put a couple of decades into that approach, and in fact several of my strongest supporters "sold out" when the crunch came. |
| Doc | |
| ArtKleiner | Fair enough enoss |
| wseltzer | Rick: does the proper role of government include a big chunk of "stay out of the way"? |
| Robin | pepper: will you post that article? |
| enoss | art, maybe you can impact the thinking by putting out a blueprint! sounds like a great article |
| wseltzer | i.e. don't bolster the incumbency with intellectual property protectionism |
| ArtKleiner | I'm thinking of writing a book with the blueprint but a lot of it isn't mine. We've learned a lot in the last 10-15 years. |
| dweinberger | from hierarchy to matrix to network...maybe should skip the matrix step?? |
| enoss | wow. it is amazing how businesses of all size are struggling with the problem/challenge of devolving decision making |
| Robin | government needs to offer protection/opportunity/platforms for small scale innovation. right now we have made incredibly high financial hurdles for innovation in trnasportation and in this telco space |
| ArtKleiner | Tom, I don't doubt you and couldn't comment without knowing more of the specifics. |
| Herman (. | Pepper: and are "laws of economics" graded as laws of physics :-) |
| enoss | the highest hurdle is simply the legal/regulatory cost of showing up |
| Sep 10 | 10:10 AM |
| enoss | but that is a classic "tussle" question. where do you draw the boundary? |
| AGoldmanISP | I hear that the FCC doesn't even know what conditions it imposed on mergers of the past 10 years, let alone audit compliance with those conditions |
| Rick | Wendy: Yes, I would say so. The problem is that the government all too often aligns with incumbents (for a variety of reasons). Their real fear is that one day the FCC says: "no more; we will simply get out of the way and allow technology and markets to run over you." So ironically, the incumbents attack regulation and yet crave its competitive shelter. |
| dweinberger | pepper: It's a problem when regulators think their job is to regulate a monopoly rather than to embrace competition. (Nice.) |
| Robin | "the opportunity for startups/bumblebees to try -- to fail or succeed -- without regulation keeping them out." EXACTLY |
| Anders | You have to design the system to make the regulated part as small and distinct as possible to avoid lots of problems with regulatory/political capture |
| Herman (. | You have to allow for many non-flying bumblebees.. |
| Jon L. | Pepper: "How do we create the leverages for the bumblebees to succeed." |
| Doc | Bet on the bees! |
| Brad B. | we never talked about the possibility that the problem is corporate structure and the solution is a new more network like corporate structure. Facebook and Twitter both are seeing more innovation coming from their API than from their internal R&D. These looser networks will bt the model going forward in any market where the pace of innovation is greater than a typical coprorations ability to react. |
| dweinberger | totally, brad! I very much liked what you said. I will hunt you down at this conf and force you to say more. |
| ArtKleiner | Brad, I'm skeptical of network-like corporate structures. There are a few out there - holacracy - but I think most corporations already have a network structure. |
| dweinberger | you too, AK! |
| ArtKleiner | Overlaid on the hierarchy. They're both circulatory systems. |
| Jon L. | ArtKleiner Are you skeptical of networking corporations? VS internal network structure? |
| ArtKleiner | Networking corproations - ie where a network replaces a hierarchy. |
| ArtKleiner | I think some kind of network of smaller companies could fulfill the same role that a corporation fills, but sooner or later they'd probably end up merging into a common hierarchy/ownership. |
| Jon L. | I mean creating a network of separate businesses to build a larger capacity, where the businesses retain their autonomy. |
| ArtKleiner | Unless they were not-for-profits and then they'd have other problems. |
| Jon L. | Right, that's what I was thinking of (network of smaller companies) |
| dweinberger | the hierarchy is likely to remain for a looong time for legal reason. But hierarchies only scale by stripping out info. So, watching hierarchies and networks coexist is totally fascinating. |
| Brad B. | the problem with internal corporate network structures is that they are not robust in the face of people moving within the corporation. I think it is better to have a network platform like Facebook and a separate innovating corporation that is separately funded and managed |
| Sep 10 | 10:15 AM |
| dweinberger | brad, ak, sounds like we should do a table or sumpin' |
| dweinberger | jonl too |
| dweinberger | and whomever |
| Judi C. | this is a problem of hierarchical vs flat management structure, no? |
| Nurture G. | Thank you to Miller, Snowe and Weed for the gift of beauty in our experience here. |
| ArtKleiner | I don't think there are absolutes here - I think it's situation specific. Sometimes Facebook will be the answer, other times internal networks are VERY robust. |
| ArtKleiner | Hierarchies are circulatory systems that pass information that will scale. Fernando Flores' speech acts - requests, promises, etc. - are the kind of thing that go well with hierarchies. But knowledge doesn't and you shouldn't expect to influence top leaders by going through the hierarchy with any substantive information. You have to find a way to reach them as people through a network, internal or external. |
| Sep 10 | 10:35 AM |
| AGoldmanISP | re -- personal data everyone know about doc searls and VRM? http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page |
| AGoldmanISP | dave w and steve s have similar ears |
| AGoldmanISP |
|
| dweinberger | AGoldman, can we keep the personal ear references off the chat? TIA. |
| Jon L. | The first cloud was the Internet... drawn as a cloud (that was the metaphor). Created a connectivity utility. |
| Sep 10 | 10:40 AM |
| Jon L. | As opposed to a path for each service. Standard protocols for connectivity, a utility platform that supported all kind of business/operations. |
| dweinberger | The Internet would not seem like a cloud if cumulus clouds were not our prototypes of clouds. |
| dweinberger | Sirius clouds? Not very Net like. |
| Jon L. | Starting to see cloud computing - enabled by the first cloud but in many ways distinct. Not a connectivity utility, but a resource and service utility. |
| Jon L. | Separation of virtual machines, storage, etc. |
| Jon L. | At Amazon. |
| FrankP | cirrus might wok for meshiness? |
| Jon L. | Amazon providing services in interoperable ways. |
| dweinberger | (oy, was my spelling off! Sirius, the Dog Cloud) |
| Rick | Nadia wants me to post this: Table talk on crowd regulation |
| Jon L. | Siriusly off. |
| Jon L. | Thrivability table talk today too. |
| FrankP | aybody seen R.U. Sirius lately? |
| AGoldmanISP | we, the customers, in search of a better network, do hereby... |
| Jon L. | FrankP: Sort of. |
| AGoldmanISP | more perfect network |
| Jon L. | I've seen his ascii in my inbox, at least. |
| Jon L. | What's the third cloud? |
| Rick | Or (my take on Nadia's idea), why not open source our way to disciplining the market behavior of incumbents? |
| Jon L. | Third cloud is the cloud around us, individually. The way we as human beings in the world manage our communications environment. |
| FrankP | 3rd cloud is the cloud around us! |
| enoss | sounds vrm-ish |
| Jon L. | (I have more of a fog, frankly.) |
| Steve S. | crowd-source it, i like the concept |
| dweinberger | are our social networks also clouds? |
| Jon L. | dweinberger They're star-maps. |
| Steve S. | google skymap ++ augmented reality ++ |
| Sep 10 | 10:45 AM |
| AGoldmanISP | +enoss |
| dweinberger | Name Tags Gone Wild |
| ArtKleiner | I love the star-map example: pull up a star map oriented to where you are. |
| FrankP | crowds not clouds |
| Doc | DPR: Model: the three clouds. First was the internet. At the highest level what it did was create a connectivity utility. As opposed to a service for each pathway. It said here is a standard plug and set of protocols that enables all kinds of uses, as with a power utility. Second, we see "cloud computing." enabled by the first, but now as a resource an service utility. Canonical example is AWS. Several kinds of services, resources, model for unifying and making interoperable machines and storage. More importantly, is services also in the same interop way, via APIs, for, say billing, management. they provide a whole biz back office service with an accounting model that ... You can be a CEO with no employees. So you see a utility model of resources and services that we've never seen before. This is where I would be investing now. Cloud is it for the next few quarters. Third cloud, looking toward future exponential growth, is the cloud around us. How we as human beings manage the stuff in the aura around us. The wireless devices that don't do it very well yet, but will evolve. The most interesting apps are not google search, but pulling out your Android phone, pointing it toward the sky, and having a star map match up guided by a compass and accellerometer. Interesting to get our minds around what that means. What's the tussle that will take place in this contextg. |
| Jon L. | What's the tussle that will take place in that context? (Digital lifestyle aggregation). |
| Jon L. | How do children become fluent about these technologies (or mediations via technology)? Via experience. |
| AGoldmanISP | ProjectVRM is headquartered at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and headed by Doc Searls, a fellow with the Center. |
| FrankP | nor is fessebucvh the applic an answer |
| Jon L. | Who's going to manage and understand the relationship databases on which you're going to build applications? |
| Doc | First question... How do children become fluent? How do they become fluent in the Internet and services? They do it by using it. The second cloud is being taught through facebook, both the app and the platform. FB itself might not be the answer, but who will come up with the relationship base on which we can build applicaitons? |
| dweinberger | Eszter Hargittai (eszter.com) is all about the skills required to use the Net successfully, and thus why merely connecting people won't achieve its social aims. |
| Jon L. | (Decouple data from specific apps?) |
| Judi C. | who's going to structure society... |
| Jon L. | (Data portability? Who owns identity?) |
| Judi C. | how are children going to learn. Check your emails, David sent out his questions this morning.) |
| dweinberger | eszter's research shows the skills are distributed unevenly along socio-economic lines ... not too surprising, but she's got the data |
| Doc | How will children lean and fluent and become expert in this? If you can't answer that question you're smoking dope, or listening to marketers. |
| AGoldmanISP | will children learn or be taught to not value privacy? we already take for granted some privacy tradeoffs that would have seemed to be invasions 50 years ago |
| Nurture G. | tools to enhance the continuity of our connections was roughly a discussion/pragmatic question that Pete Kaminski was opening at BH 07... |
| Jon L. | What's going to happen with video dialtone? |
| Steve S. | I can't resist answering: they learn because it's how they and their peers communicate, and humans, especially young humans, are especially gifted at learning to communicate. We don't need to teach, they're way ahead of us it. Just get them the devices and tools |
| Doc | Second, is video the final expression of ... |
| Jon L. | Delivery of videos on demand will drive fibre adoption? |
| wseltzer | how do kids learn the meta-skills - not just navigating facebook, but understanding that they too could build one? |
| Jon L. | FTTH |
| Doc | We invested in ADSL for video (DOCSIS too). |
| enoss | @wendy parenting! |
| Judi C. | meta-conversations setting the meta-context of the net |
| Jon L. | The new hip market for Blackberries = women and teenage girls (not business). |
| Ben t. | To Rick/Nadia, there might be an inspiration in this wired article "radical transparency now" about applying crowdsourcing to financial analysis. |
| Ben t. | |
| Tom F. | Almost all new technologies wind up being used for purposes other than that predicted initially -- even the telephone itself. |
| Robin | I have a blackberry. Does this mean I'm a teenage girl at heart?! |
| Jon L. | Do people care more about interactions than entertainments? |
| Jon L. | Robin: no doubt. |
| Steve S. | vcast |
| Sep 10 | 10:50 AM |
| Judi C. | JonL, depends on the people. Teens: absolutely. |
| Doc | FTTH won't just be for that, either. The new hit market for blackberries isn't corporate executives but women and teenage girls. They care about the interaction speed. |
| Jon L. | Content is Court Jester. |
| Doc | Folks, I missed David's actual question here. |
| Herman (. | Content is something to communicate about |
| Ben t. | The killer app of fiber is two-way TV Centric video-communication. |
| Judi C. | Doc, check your BH email. |
| Jon L. | Judi: I think it's probably broader, or broadening. |
| AGoldmanISP | View paste
|
| Doc | Third, if the action is about comms between devices, why are we focused on access to the internet and not to what's within 100 meters? How do you do that if you're verizon. |
| Jon L. | Why are we focusing on wireless as access to global Internet, not as access to local (neighbors). |
| Tom F. | re question 5 - what heavy duty computing? TEchnology has already overrun that one -- |
| Jon L. | 3G doesn't work well in some (steel) buildings; solution to put repeaters in the buildings. |
| Doc | Modern buildings are hostile to 3G. The solution is to put repeaters in there. |
| Brad B. | David would not buy a blackberry because it is a closed proprietary device. I assume that goes for iPhone too. We should explore the question of whether or not there is a market where the advantage of coherent consumer experience trumps the value of openess because integration is more important than innovation at certain points in the development of a market. |
| dweinberger | Another possible solution: Go outside. |
| Jon L. | Who will make sure that the area around us wirelessly works, and scales. |
| AGoldmanISP | IBM is ready to digest every e-mail, slide deck, and paper ever produced by its employees in order to build a better database of skills. |
| enoss | don't really understand the 100m thing well enough. is this QOS only? more? |
| Doc | Last question.. who or what institutions will make sure that the area around us wirelessly works and scales? It won't be the phone companies? |
| Steve S. | kudos to David R for question 4. when thinking about the world we leave our grandchildren this is important |
| Nadia E. | |
| Anders | the role of real estate owners/operators |
| Judi C. | who's going to care for the personal information? |
| Steve S. | corporations that are not evil today, might be 100 years hence |
| Doc | Self-contained devices are not the answer. |
| Steve S. | agreed doc |
| wseltzer | Brad B - I'm very interested in the question whether openness of platform and network can ever trump closedness of the device (of course iPhone offers little of either, we're finding) |
| AGoldmanISP | let's just hand the keys to doc. i trust him |
| Anders | several housing companies look upon themselves as proxies for users |
| dweinberger | Hypothesis: After 100 years _everything_ becomes evil. |
| Jon L. | Final questions: Re personal information. Self contained devices are not the answer (too small for needed data and computation) - so the device is part of a larger computational environment. Mixed mode network with interoperable services. |
| Judi C. | Would you trust your med records to the exclusive care of your health provider/insurance company? Google or Microsoft? Yourself? |
| Steve S. | except for 1000 year old eggs, they take longer |
| Nadia E. | we need a new level of interoperability |
| Jon L. | We need a new level of interoperability, not just IP level. |
| Doc | How do I access my own data quickly? With a mixed mode device. We need a new level of interop, a notion that this whole thing can function together. A third-cloud . How are we going to do that? |
| Judi C. | Doc, perhaps it's not a third cloud, it's the tools of interoperabililty. |
| wseltzer | interoperability of personal clouds; how do we preserve autonomy, privacy? |
| Anders | Local communications? outside big brother control? no way. |
| Nadia E. | walkie talkie mode |
| Doc | Bruce Sterling with "spime" visited this a few years ago. "In August 2004 he suggested a type of technological device (he called it "spime") that, through pervasive RFID and GPS tracking, can track its history of use and interact with the world." From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Sterling |
| Steve S. | or, say, if you |
| Sep 10 | 10:55 AM |
| Robin | doc: this is why I love the mesh network. Local data can stay local -- and there is a lot of that that is interesting. Indeed, some stuff needs to go to the internet, but not all stuff |
| Judi C. | Re: med records, a friend's father was unconscious in NY emergency room, docs called to Tampa care facility who would not release records without signature. |
| Steve S. | or, say, if you're interested in a date and might want to find someone nearby who is likewise interested and meets your profile ? :) |
| Jon L. | Yeah, Bruce and I once drew a spime map (while somewhat intoxicated). That image is somewhere... |
| wseltzer | what sorts of semi-permeable membranes can we create around this info? |
| dweinberger | so is dpr proposing a mesh + standards? (Sorry to be dense. It is my physical state.) |
| ArtKleiner | If you're having a heart attack instead of querying a call center to get an ambulance ot a hospital, query the neighborhood for someone who knows CPR - or for a doctor who can get your records instantly to know you have a broken rib and shouldn't get CPR - or better yet have the hospital coalesce around you. |
| Nadia E. | I think about the personal ad-boards in local supermarkets. People post adverts about letting/ subletting, trading etc |
| Judi C. | +1 @wseltzer: semi-permeable membranes. |
| dweinberger | And why would the third cloud be spatial instead of social? Fourth cloud? |
| Nadia E. | ad local newspapers |
| Nadia E. | and |
| ArtKleiner | Toon town - the world of inanimate objects greets you as you walk by. |
| AGoldmanISP | fourth estate |
| dweinberger | media are extensions of the body: McLuhan. |
| Nadia E. | Lakoff & Johnson on Embodiment Theory |
| ArtKleiner | McLuhan got it right. Dweinberger beat me to the McLuhan reference. |
| dweinberger | booyah! |
| Nadia E. | so mobile integrity as a matter of personal physical integrity |
| ArtKleiner | The booyah is an extension of the larynx. |
| Doc | There might be something to what Micheal Polanyi called "indwelling," which is the process by which our awareness extends outward through the expert but casual use of tools, clothing, devices, whatever. It is the process by which drivers speak of "my wheels," or pilots speak of "my wings." There is something clunky, so far, even of speaking of "my phone." The phone is not an extension of me, but a device largely managed and populated by remote powers. I may become expert at using it, but not at making it part of me. I do not dwell in and through my phone the way I do through, say, my bike. The frontier is in making the personal cloud first person possessive. |
| Jon L. | |
| FrankP | worth following... http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/index.asp |
| dweinberger | no, art, it's an extension of the male ego. |
| Steve S. | the price of not putting things in the cloud is increasingly to excommunicate yourself from society |
| Nadia E. | cool! |
| Steve S. | facebook, twitter etc |
| Doc | Thanks, Jon. |
| dweinberger | but last night we (= steve k) were saying that putting things in the cloud will increase hobbesian loneliness. |
| Jon L. | That's not the original map; second generation. |
| Nadia E. | where does the self end and other selves begin in the interconnected space |
| Robin | Steve S: yes, it is excommunication |
| dweinberger | (i agree with steve s on this, fwiw.) |
| AGoldmanISP | my netbook is a dumb terminal |
| Jon L. | Steve Kamman: I want my open access (not walled garden). |
| Sep 10 | 11:00 AM |
| Doc | Steve K: Bighook succeeds, makes the wide open net., and Google has Microsoft all over again. |
| Jon L. | Privacy implications of digital lifestyle aggregation. |
| Jon L. | Who owns your data? |
| AGoldmanISP | append for social media -- http://www.rapleaf.com/ -- give them a facebook account and they give the advertiser the rest of the data |
| Herman (. | I want my identity sensitive information on MY device, the cloud may or may not acoording to my will access that |
| dweinberger | owning your data is like owning your reputation. It's not entirely yours. |
| Doc | http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40076 : "Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index" |
| Steve S. | "you kinda own your data like you kinda own your credit report" |
| dweinberger | steve k's card as rfid? Whew! That explains why my leg tingles every time I get near him. |
| Herman (. | There if a difference between the imprint i make on earth and the traces I leave, versus my identity |
| Steve S. | so, i think he's saying buy google? |
| Jon L. | Elliot Noss: promises to end with an OFFER. |
| Steve K. | i dont cover goole. I have noooo idea |
| Nurture G. | So, if exposing our information is like being naked...and the information is actually the relationship between two people...then the metaphor implies that it is being exposed naked in your interaction with another |
| dweinberger | herman, it'd be fascinating to understand what that diff is. I think identity and the traces you leave may be inseparable. Maybe. |
| dweinberger | who is named elliot |
| Herman (. | Subject for a good talk/table or.. |
| Judi C. | Trusted supplier, who is small, like relationship with doctor or hair stylist... |
| FrankP | download opera 10 and roll your own |
| Doc | We need a trusted supplier with somebody who is not big who is not evil, who is local and we can trust, has a range of customers between one and a thousand. |
| ArtKleiner | But I don't know my doctor or my plumber. |
| Jon L. | Ask me about my JumpDomain/Enom experience. Opaque entities. |
| AGoldmanISP | my supplier is google (blogspot) and I have no relationship with them -- I'll take tucows over google |
| Anders | My way of tracking what goes on in my old company is my hairdresser |
| Robin | wow, elliot. You really really nailed your pitch following on Steve Kamman. I finally get it. I could trust you...hopefully you will stand up to my faith in you. |
| dweinberger | don't do it unless he throws in a Vegematic. |
| njames | sorry- had to step out. can someone post the headline from the talks that preceded Elliot this session? |
| Doc | A one-time offer for Elliot's services. |
| dweinberger | (Seriously: Only good experiences with Elliot as service provider.) |
| AGoldmanISP | anders has an intelligence asset |
| Sep 10 | 11:05 AM |
| Jon L. | Domains and email at cost. |
| Judi C. | domains and email at "pretty much" cost, and consierge service... |
| wseltzer | calling for guinea pigs :) |
| Steve S. | Sold! I have a new part-time business I will set up with you Elliot and give it a try. (Of course I already have all my domains at Hover) |
| dweinberger | The concierge service has been fantastic |
| dweinberger | plus, I completely 100% trust Elliot, whwereas my trust relationship with mny other hosts and providers is, umn, well, um ... |
| Steve S. | Hover being Elliots retail brand |
| Judi C. | Doc: this is personal. |
| Jon L. | Doc: This Is Personal. |
| Nadia E. | "Abstract:
Adopters of new technologies tend to interpret them in their own way, rather than simply
using them as their inventors meant them to be used. There seems to be a deep social need
to break free of technology as intended by its designers. This resonates with the yearning
for transcendence, that mystics, artists and philosophers have been turning their
attention to since time immemorial and which is the subject of recent research efforts in
cognitive neuroscience. A case is made for conceptualising the interface as a vehicle for
transcendence between different selves. If one accepts it, it follows that user experience
can be improved by not sealing in the user in a predetermined role, and in extension by
allowing for a more open-ended adoption of technology by users. The paper makes use of
empirical data collected during preparation and teaching of an undergraduate course
commissioned by Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. It
attempts to translate the implications of re-thinking the interface as a vehicle for
transcendence into guidelines to be embedded in designing human-computer
interaction."
|
| Jon L. |
|
| AGoldmanISP | Kleiner "It's business; it's not personal -- but it always is personal" |
| Jon L. | Loyalty cards are based on wrong assumptions. Brick and mortar world copied what's broken in the net world. |
| Jon L. | You have to be a member to shop there (and get right pricing). |
| enoss | woot. a vrm 3 min card |
| Judi C. | Loyalty cards for iPhone: scanaroo.com |
| dweinberger | But having a wallet stuffed with loyalty cards makes me feel so important! Don't take that from me, Doc! |
| Jon L. | The cloud around us. The Internet of things (spimes). |
| enoss | it makes my ass hurt |
| ArtKleiner | I've got to get to know my plumber. |
| Judi C. | DW, now you can have an iphone full! easier to carry, electronic power! |
| ArtKleiner | I hate loyalty cards. It's getting me to do the store's customer service work. |
| Jon L. | Our ability to extend ourselves through tools as extensions of ourselves. |
| Jon L. | Doc proves to have a transhumanist aspect. |
| dweinberger | but iphones are proprietary, closed edges of a totalitarian system, judi... |
| Robin | Part of Eliot's pitch: ONLY a small local company can provide you the anonymity you need. An important asset to where small is good -- the opposite of scale economies. |
| Judi C. | What's in our lives? What allows ME to extend into the universe? |
| Judi C. | totally agree, DW. |
| ArtKleiner | That's great. Have the device manage the relationships on our terms, not them managing us. |
| dweinberger | "I am not a loyalty card! I am a human being!" |
| Jon L. | Markets are delusions. |
| Judi C. | One proprietary use supporting another. |
| Nadia E. | So we also need new narratives for how we are ourselves in the world |
| Jon L. | Ready for Certain People to write Cluetrain Manifesto, Part 2. |
| ArtKleiner | ...or narratives will be created for us. |
| Sep 10 | 11:10 AM |
| Jon L. | In collaboration with this group, perhaps. |
| Sep 10 | 11:10 AM |
| FrankP | I see a bicycle helmet-like control module and cool shades with a heads-up display... for everyone (propellers on helmet optional) |
| Steve S. | hmmm, maybe one day shame will make people put wifi in buildings, going with Nadia's theme |
| dweinberger | exactly, nadia. I think you've put your finger on why I react to the imputation of Hobbesianism. Wrong narrative! |
| Doc | Jon L, we wrote Cluetrain part 2. The new edition has seven new chapters. |
| Herman (. | Agreed, nadia/dweinberger |
| Jon L. | Alex Goldman: The ripoff is something we take for granted. We generally don't get what's advertised. We know and accept it. Same with elections: we don't get what politicians promise. |
| ArtKleiner | Anytime you buy a product or service you are going to get ripped off - not going to get what is promised, and you know it and accept it and internalize it. |
| Jon L. | Doc: wow, quick service1 |
| Doc | "As soon as you get to the point that the customer is a problem..." |
| ArtKleiner | "Our customers are our problems" |
| Judi C. | There are already many stories written about us: in the federal and state databases, the financial world, medical records, our online accounts... it's only time before they link and paint pictures that we'd be hard pressed to argue with (right or wrong) |
| Nadia E. | thinking about mythopoeiesis |
| Jon L. | Reconnect companies with customers... requires changes at many levels. |
| Doc | |
| Doc | mythopoeiesis! |
| Judi C. | Problem: the TOS of your connectivity agreement prohibits these options |
| Doc | I love poeisis. For example, bozopoeisis. |
| Anders | On inside buildings. Building operators are increasingly looking upon this as a local infrastructure, like hot water |
| Jon L. | Doc, thanks. In my shopping cart. |
| Steve K. | I spend a lot of time as a guest in company HQ's. ALL of them "own" the airwaves with their own wi-fi, but require a guest ID and login to use it and in almost ALL of them have no simple procedure to actually GET a guest ID or password. If you ask your meeting hosts, they look at you blankly and someone scurries out and 10-15 minutes later they come back with a scrap of paper and a one-time ID an password after calling a person it security (even though the only thing the guest access does is send you to the public internet). THis is true at CISCO for crissake! reason why is because the security people would prefer to just de-facto shut the network down rather than "take the risk" of having "unauthorized" people accessing the internet?!? |
| Jon L. | Mythopoeiesis ++ |
| Doc | Customer disservice: http://www.despair.com/cudi.html |
| Nadia E. | On both a personal and societal level. Wh and we think we are in the world, and who we become projects onto how we interact with "others" <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LlqU1o3NmSw&h… name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LlqU1o3NmSw&h…; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> |
| Nadia E. | oh no embedding! |
| Jon L. | Steve: I visited a client recently who rquired guest login AND limited to company mac addresses (guests from satellites visiting corporate). |
| Sep 10 | 11:15 AM |
| Anders | new nanocells? |
| wseltzer | Jon L: and mac spoofing to a list of addresses written on a post-it? |
| Doc | Question for Scott and David (pivoting off Steve K)... Why is it that at MIT anybody can get on the wi-fi as a guest, but there are no power outlets anyhere... while up the street at Harvard you need a blood sample to get on wi-fi, but there are outlets at every desk? |
| Judi C. | Nadia: here's the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/v/LlqU1o3NmSw |
| Jon L. | Federating wifi. |
| Judi C. | +++ local federation |
| Jon L. | An idea whose time has come. |
| Robin | I so wish we could do that open network piece. The press has pushed people to lock it down. In NYC, there has been increasing lockdown of open networks. I put this to a media problem. |
| Anders | David big brother in coop with operators don't like this a bit |
| Steve K. | Jon l. and I have made the opposite argument to fiedlity's security people which was that we already have a list of our internal MAC addresses so we can police any "unauthorized use by employees" (ie. porn) by matching those MAC addresses. got a blank look. |
| Herman (. | there are simple and cheap devices for GSM that take over the connection and hand-off voice to the wireline voice connection (or over ip). The operators refuse or are hesitant to support the functionality. |
| Robin | I have a house on an island in Maine. 70 year round, 250 in summer. And when I went this summer is was heartbreaking to see that I could see 3 CLOSED routers from my house. Why? so crazy. |
| Doc | I believe in hub and spoke: individuals as hubs, and everything else as spokes. |
| Judi C. | hand up |
| Robin | +individuals as hubs |
| Jon L. | Steve: not surprising. People don't even want to understand the technology and how it can work. |
| wseltzer | Scott B.: failed assumption that it would be cheaper to provide centralized resource than manage the distributed ones |
| dweinberger | Closed wifi posts a big sign: "The Internet ends here." |
| Nadia E. | For those interested in joining the :"Or (my take on Nadia's idea), why not open source our way to disciplining the market behavior of incumbents?"- table...take a quick look at shttp://www.usnowfilm.com/ |
| Doc | Semi-unrelated (speaking of three-letter acronyms)... What about LTE - Long Term Evolution? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP_Long_Ter… "the last step toward the 4th generation of radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks" ? |
| Nurture G. | life, meaning, communication etc. lives BETWEEN us...and the sooner we lose this illusion of our personal INSIDE...the sooner we can move forward to something better. |
| Judi C. | using netbooks now: 15? Left their macs at home to use their netbooks: 4-5 |
| Sep 10 | 11:20 AM |
| Robin | jean: interesting point. Maybe we are all "hubs" and think about it as not hub and spoke, but hub to hub... |
| dweinberger | nurture ++ |
| dweinberger | people are networks. |
| Nurture G. | we are the spokes. |
| Steve K. | Preoblem with peer to peer conneciton of devices is it MUST be freeand MUST not be supported by a $$ seeking carrier. |
| enoss | how much were those antennae? |
| Jane C. | Yea Peter ... it may be the end of the problem but my house looks like a battleship!!! |
| Steve K. | support costs too high |
| Doc | I almost left my 17" Mac (which I have now) at home and brought the MacBook Air we have laying around because nobody likes it. |
| Jon L. | Peter: All the problems we've been discussing he's had recently. Lack of mobile phone signal. Had to get a repeater. Had to get multiple DSLs for bandwidth. Can see a lot of extra bandwidth external. |
| Doc | I have two Linux netbooks, but lost my password, or I might have brought one of those. |
| Jon L. | Problem in getting bandwidth sharing is convincing the neighbors to do it. |
| dweinberger | further to nuture and nadia: integrity as a virtue assumes a match between the inner and the outer, and thus assumes the metaphysics of inner-is-real. |
| Nadia E. | people already agree on disk sharing/ exchange : www. wuala.com |
| njames | if anyone (Robin?) is interested, i have collected a history of press stories on open Wi-Fi access going back to 2001 where you can see the narrative switch from "wow - easy net access anywhere" to "people are getting arrested for 'stealing' Wi-Fi" then the story dies in 2005. |
| Judi C. | What consumer-level solutions are out or coming to help others span/mesh this connectivity? |
| Steve S. | nice connecting some dots there David W. |
| Doc | My iphone wishes it were jailbroken. |
| dweinberger | they're Apple dammit! |
| Jane C. | Hopping is the future! |
| Judi C. | njames, that's sad (and not surprising) |
| dweinberger | We Are Mesh |
| Nurture G. | Thanks David W. interesting point. yes. |
| Nurture G. | zactly |
| AGoldmanISP | the largest ISP in the world is called linksys |
| dweinberger | do linksys boxes still come with the default as no pwd? |
| AGoldmanISP | steve: can we solve this with good software? |
| Doc | All tech customer support consists of people telling you to hit the reboot button. |
| AGoldmanISP | dw: i think not, but there's still a lot of old gear out there |
| Nadia E. | further dweinberger: or that the inner outer distinction is stable |
| Sep 10 | 11:25 AM |
| Herman (. | Freedom to Tinker |
| wseltzer | Steve K: vendors won't sell cheap high-power gear because the support call costs will kill them |
| Steve K. | default apassword for LINKSYS boxes is "admin" |
| Steve K. | but they still come "open" |
| dweinberger | sorry, steve s, but eszter's data contradicts you. |
| dweinberger | your daughter was taught skills inadvertently that then enabled her to succeed |
| Steve K. | scary thing i I can get into most people's home routers and re-configure them with admin rights. |
| wseltzer | the linksys community network |
| Steve K. | good news is no-one bothers. |
| AGoldmanISP | repost esther link? |
| wseltzer | it pained me when I was in DC, I could see 20+ wifi points, all closed. |
| Nadia E. | @dweinberger http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Designin… |
| Doc | How do you tech tech support people to know jack? Actual dialog with Cox tech support... Me: "Do you know what traceroute is? Do you know what I mean by a ping test?" Tech support: "I'm sorry. No." |
| Steve S. | would agree on socio-economic lines |
| wseltzer | (I opened mine, and never got overwhelmed by the traffic) |
| Robin | Irrelevant to this year's topic but relevant to last year's. See this graphic where my two worlds collide (climate & transportation) http://tinyurl.com/n5ne2k |
| Doc | "Any child is smarter than a sociologist, period." Peter C. |
| enoss | I would argue that the daughter of a LAN manager will be in a MUCH better position than that of a lawyer |
| Steve K. | problem with "closed wi fi is that no-one is sure if someone using the wi fi network can "see" their home PC via their home network. if there was a guestmode cleanly enabled (just like corproate netowrks) then I think most people would enable it |
| enoss | correlation vs causation |
| njames | in addition to Hargittai's work, is danah boyd's on how web interaction spaces (MySpace, Facebook) re-introduce socio-economic differences in youth culture |
| Robin | In my daughter's manhattan apt building, There are 40+ closed access points! And no community within to create sharing even among just a few. |
| ArtKleiner | Cochrane's Law. |
| Judi C. | in my neighborhood: 11 wireless networks, 6 are closed. |
| Robin | steve K; interesting idea. guest mode. I think people also worry about losing bandwidth |
| Ben t. | re: wifi, when governments threaten to sue you for someone else using your wifi illegally, you bet you want to close and protect it! |
| Jon L. | Wonder if there's not a performance hit if several other users are working thru your router? |
| Nurture G. | right Robin - the whole white flight/ my space ghetto thing |
| Steve K. | peter complins about people discounting the "facts" of engineers in favor of their "folk" belief, while discounting the "facts" of sociologists (grin) |
| Brough |
|
| wseltzer | Ben t - or you want to have it demonstrably open as cover |
| Sep 10 | 11:30 AM |
| enoss | could we exchange "geek" for $$$$? there may be some correlation between geek and $$$$ but it is geek, not $$$$, that matter |
| enoss | matters |
| FrankP | children of privilege do better than crack babies |
| Doc | In 2004 I did a study of public wi-fi in New York for Linux Journal. Back then well over half the access points were open. You could do your email in a cab. Now it's no longer even worth looking at. New APs come closed by default. FUD has won. |
| njames | you can't manage or how to manage complex work-related processes (complex databases, etc) on a smart phone. at least not yet. |
| wseltzer | the support costs used to help keep wifi open (easier to configure); now it seems the FUD has flipped that |
| Scott B. | re low income & iphone - see http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/arti… |
| njames | rather, "manage or learn to manage" is what i meant to type. |
| Ben t. | wseltzer: nope. the law makes you legally responsable for your access line, no matter who perpetrates piracy. |
| enoss | Tucows main cause for one web day http://www.littlegeeks.org/ and again, it is education and effort BUT it is not $$$$$ |
| AGoldmanISP | training is part of the stimulus |
| Anders | central part of internet use and cafes in Africa |
| FrankP | any data out of one laptop per child? |
| Steve K. |
|
| Steve K. |
|
| Ben t. | in fact the French government even "offered" to design a free client (hear snooper) that would "prove" that someone else used your wifi to do piracy. |
| enoss | in my house we talk about 21st century literacy = type, search and explore/hack |
| dweinberger | wendy ++ |
| Robin | an interesting thing about the closing of routers, is that they would trivially become reopened -- it isn't like other infrastructure for which there is no changing. |
| wseltzer | Ben t - US hasn't gotten that bad yet |
| Peter C. | The human population of near 8Bn people own 4Bn mobiles & 50% of these have browsers. The number of people browsing the web on mobiles exceeds the number on PCs |
| Rick | it seems like some children will find and use the technology, regardless of socioeconomic factors; others can only do so with the benefit of a favorable background, or education. so both david and steve are sorta right? |
| dweinberger | So, I should maybe mention that I've been beaten up on this point sufficiently -- to my great benefit -- that I'm on a hair trigger about it. Apologies for expressing myself too forcefully (= assholism). |
| Steve K. | iPod Touch, which isn't even a mobile phone, beats out all mobile phones except the iPhone int terms of volume of Internet access, according to data released by AdMob. The iPod Touch doesn't have a cellular connection, but users can access the Internet via Wi-Fi. It generated 6.7 percent of mobile traffic for AdMob in February. That's less than the 11.2 percent traffic generated from the iPhone, but more than any other mobile phone. Motorola's Razr came in third place, with 2.9 percent of AdMob's traffic |
| Peter C. | In the second and third world mobiles are transforming lives and business - everything from markets to health is being improved a bit of a time |
| Doc | Our kid goes to a Waldorf school, where there are no computers, plastic or non-natural stuff. At home we have no TV. We do have a pile of laptops. He uses them occasionally. When he does, he becomes expert at everything so fast that it's not even worth talking about "teaching." Recently he discovered MIT's Scratch -- http://scratch.mit.edu/ -- and kicked ass with it. |
| Sep 10 | 11:35 AM |
| ArtKleiner | Opening a router is trivial if you are comfortable with using a browser to find a device. Many people aren't, or are afraid of breaking something by making an error. |
| Sep 10 | 11:35 AM |
| enoss | with high-income kids it is entertainment and gaming! |
| dweinberger | Rick, some will. But the data suggest (according to eszter) that merely providing the hardware and connection will overall make the digital divide wider, not smaller. |
| FrankP | has anybody actually read Palfrey's book (I haven't) http://borndigitalbook.com/ |
| Robin | talked to a Korean who said they have almost 100 percent connectivity, which is actually meaningless when thinking about "the digital divide". People are using it uselessly |
| ArtKleiner | I have an iPod touch and its wifi access is spottier than my laptops. |
| wseltzer | Robin, what's "useless"? |
| Steve S. | David, to add, CWU did institute a program to train these women in blogging and social media-- training clearly is good and useful; and also agree that I'm talking anecote vs research so your viewpoint and challenge is welcome |
| dweinberger | i've read it, frankp. |
| Peter C. | The digital divide is gradually closing.....but in the west it is about choice - booze, betting and smokes, or an ePC for the kids... |
| dweinberger | palfrey and gasser are doing follow up research, maybe a sequel |
| FrankP | and? |
| FrankP | cool |
| Robin | I love the ipod Touch. Brilliant. No monthly charges! |
| Judi C. | There's a TED video on that: Indian children in rural areas learning PC interface... |
| Steve S. | I'm a Touch user as well Robin, agree |
| Robin | Wendy: good point. I was being brief and politically incorrect. He said huge amounts of spam, and mostly just telephone use. |
| dweinberger | the book Digital Natives is very good. Some surprises for digiscenti like us, and important for non-experts |
| Doc | I would add that many new access points, other than Apple's (and even there it's not ideal), are complicated beyond endurance and perform poorly as well. I worked with a cousin recently on setting up some APs in his house, and a series of Netgears and Linksyses all failed in various ways. I hate to think how hard it must be for the non-technical to do anything other than the defaulted stuff. |
| Jon L. | Doc: I bought a Belkin N+ and found basic setup easy, but ran into complications later. |
| dweinberger | nathan: relevancy. yes yes |
| Doc | "relevancy and usability." |
| AGoldmanISP | great source of free and insightful research http://pewinternet.org/ |
| Nadia E. | Uh ok, so why are there vastly fewer female stdets enrolled into the computer engineering degree programs in Sweden than males? |
| Nadia E. | students |
| Scott B. | re Pew study - see http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/200… |
| enoss | kids hack the darndest things |
| dweinberger | a generation growing up on iphones doesn't learn about generativity. Internet as broadcast. |
| AGoldmanISP | nadia: why and how did biology enrollment change from male-dominated to female-majority? |
| Nadia E. | but unless they feel that it is accessible to hack they dont do it |
| dweinberger | enoss lol |
| Sep 10 | 11:40 AM |
| dweinberger | I thought Magellan discovered anime. |
| dweinberger | steve s' problem is that he modeled curiosity, DIY-ness, and other vices. That's why his daughters succeeded on the Net. |
| Nadia E. | AGoldmanISP: Idon´t know. I tried to do molecular cell bio at Uni, dropped out two weeks later out of boredom :) |
| Nadia E. | molec cell bio |
| ArtKleiner | Agree about loving the Touch in general. |
| Jon L. | dweinberger iphone is just part of a larger ecosystem where learning is possible. |
| Steve S. | What are we for if not to pass our own vices to our children |
| Nadia E. | I like the blink blink too much |
| Peter C. | We should look at all data with suspicion....what is important is getting it ratified....making sure it correlates with reality and experience....and is it static, society specific, and technology dependent |
| Jon L. | Peter C: Totally agree. |
| Steve S. | yesterday's announcement with iTouch goes futher, positioning iTouch as a local net peer to peer multi-player gaming tool |
| AGoldmanISP | U.S. world dominance coincided with a regular and spectacular progression of aviation technology that you can see at the Air & Space Museum in DC |
| njames | but on the point of the value for throwing the toys out there and letting kids play and discover and to ideas about configuring games for learning, these are really cool: http://siftables.com/ |
| AGoldmanISP | steve s: link to the announcement? |
| Steve S. | I think that's a shame, in that the iTouch is potentially the best wifi communications tool there is, but APple won't put a microphone on it |
| dweinberger | scary thought: The new Apple touch device will adopt the AppStore totalitarian approach, and will succeed wildly. |
| dweinberger | AppStore totalitarianism helps with Nathan's usability and relevance problems ... at the price of generativity and openness |
| AGoldmanISP | steve s: are USB microphones available? |
| wseltzer | does Apple understand or not understand its market segmentation? |
| Herman (. | dweinberger: Zittrain's argument? |
| Jon L. | Yes |
| dweinberger | you can get an ear set + mic at an Apple store that works on itouch |
| dweinberger | yes, zittrain's argument |
| Scott B. | re - iphone touch & microphone - see http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=2243 |
| dweinberger | itouch + mic + skype: Sweet. |
| Sep 10 | 11:45 AM |
| Steve S. |
|
| wseltzer | does Apple fear that iTouch will cannibalize higher-margin iPhone, or miss that it opens a much wider network for iStore? |
| Steve K. | my question is why wireless seems to so often be the "brazil" of tech. always the technology of the future and never of the present? |
| Sascha M. | District 9 mesh: http://www.cuwin.net/projects/mamelodi |
| Steve S. | or do it's carrier partners (ATT) have enough clout to block it ... |
| FrankP | |
| dweinberger | wseltzer, the absence of reliable open wifi keeps itouch + skype from cannibalizing iphone. (or have i missed the point) |
| Jon L. | Thinking about Robin's point about excess bandwidth smart grid + auto grid + info grid |
| Herman (. | Steve K: wifi isn't "brazil" |
| dweinberger | massport = assport |
| Sascha M. | mesh can be very modest: http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/i… |
| Scott B. | these are very good - earphone + michrophone - http://www.apple.com/ipod/in-ear-headphones/ |
| dweinberger | and there's still only closed, locked, expensive LoganPort wifi there :( |
| Sascha M. | or quite substantial: http://wind.awmn.net/?page=nodes |
| dweinberger | well, some of the lounges have free-ish wifi |
| AGoldmanISP | I think that Logan empowers companies but not people |
| Scott B. | the airline clubs have their own wifi now at Logan |
| dweinberger | also, dogs will wed cats |
| FrankP | need a civilian distribution of QNT... anybody know the manufacturers? |
| Jon L. | How many airports have open wifi? |
| Jon L. | Free and open? |
| Steve S. | Scott, they're great but I keep breaking them by throwing them in my briefcase |
| dweinberger | oh i so love those airports, jonl, so love them so very much |
| Jon L. | I'm sure. |
| Scott B. | Pittsburgh |
| Rick | national airport in dc has a decent wifi network, but you can only choose from four different commercial providers -- nothing comes free in the nation's capital. |
| wseltzer | Denver |
| Scott B. | so stop throwing them in your briefcase :-) |
| Sascha M. | *used to do ping tunneling on a lot of different for-fee airport networks.* |
| Doc | Some are WEP or the equivalent that want a password at login, and some require opening a browser and doing it through that. Very annoying in both cases, worse in the latter. |
| AGoldmanISP | boingo and others have wi-fi ap groups |
| wseltzer | *has a DNS tunnel around* |
| Steve S. | Also, even worse, do you know Apple only let's the iTouch sync to certain bluetooth devices, and blocks all headsets that have mics (except for the new stereo A2DP sets which are $100+) |
| Doc | Absurdities of wireless... The FCC wants to save "free" over the air TV as it becomes digital, which takes decades. After it happens, nearly everybody gets TV over cable or satellite, where the carriers charge extra for local channels. Hence "free" TV turns into a premium service. |
| Sep 10 | 11:50 AM |
| AGoldmanISP | especially unhealthy for children |
| Jon L. | Suprised to hear Denver... last time I was there I don't recall free wifi. Been a while, though. |
| AGoldmanISP | when is technology indoctrination? we already know that code is law |
| Nadia E. | digiphrenia |
| enoss | google, and I say this with love, is like the borg. it is what allows them to execute at scale |
| ArtKleiner | Is the free wifi provider gradually doomed? Without an intervention? |
| Sascha M. | NAB: allowing white space devices |
| Sascha M. | will turn us until borg. |
| FrankP | nadia ++ |
| Nadia E. | when does the ease of sharing have consequence of oversharing |
| Scott B. | since the cable company has to pay extra for the local channels - why not charge extra for them? |
| Rick | i/we/i/we resent that, elliot. |
| Doc | "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together" -- John Lennon, in "I am the Walrus" |
| Nadia E. | Who am I? WHat am I doing here? who are you? |
| Jon L. | Free wifi all over in Austin, including downtown streets (City of Austin mesh). |
| wseltzer | DEN is "wifi" rather than wifi, with only some ports open, but at it's least open about that model. |
| Herman (. | Digiphrenia...wold be a good name for a blog |
| Doc | Is Maxwell's Silver Hammer an unintended consequence of carpentry? |
| Judi C. | these questions are all part of David R's last (?) question. Also fwiw (personal plug): http://digitalIDcoach.com |
| Jon L. | Sometimes a hammer is really just a hammer. |
| Nurture G. | Borg is an illusion about the mesh of who we are is the same - for everyone. But that isn't the case. We are pretty unique in the overlap of our spokes. |
| enoss | rick, on a break I will explain why it is a complement |
| enoss | compliment |
| enoss | I got a couple googlers comfortable with it :-) |
| Rick | i/we/i/we would welcome that discussion, eliot. or you can just join us... |
| Ben t. | Digiphrenia is nice. Or the other me. |
| Doc | "I honor the place where your interests and my own become one." - http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/09/in-case-y… |
| enoss | resistance is futile......... |
| Sep 10 | 11:55 AM |
| wseltzer | If smart devices are always getting smarter, will we get smarter local identity and information processing, rather than "trusted" third parties? |
| Doc | Steve K: Wireless is a Godot. Still waiting. |
| Doc | Wireless has made it all the way to the movies! |
| Jon L. | Wireless is delivering. |
| njames | Sascha's on a District 9 kick today |
| Jon L. | What wireless does breaks command and control business models. |
| Jon L. | Aliens brought wireless to District 9. |
| Nadia E. | hihi I just registered meandmyselves.com as well as digiphrenia.com |
| Doc | Steve, we may need to throw you out of the cult. |
| Jon L. | The Prawn won't share their technology. |
| Nadia E. | mo self mo problems |
| Steve S. | nadia, meandmyselves -- that's great! |
| Jon L. | Andrew: what people are willing to pay for is voice - ergo more valuable. |
| enoss | don't RIM/iphone/itunes revenues have to be thrown into the bucket now? |
| Steve K. | My default assumption as an investor these days is that you add three years to any wireless "promise" and discount anything that isn't utterly simple. |
| AGoldmanISP |
|
| Nadia E. | @Steve S. Ove been interested in this topic for a while: http://www.reboot.dk/page/5654/en |
| Tom F. | |
| Robin | Steve K: depends how you measure wireless, which is clearly with $ revenues, and the point is that wireless + internet dramatically reduces the exchange of money required. Wireless has transformed my life. I never sit at a desk with a computer. I am totally untethered by both phone and computer. Information is at my fingertips at all times. And when I don't have wireless, and I do mean wireless access, I feel bereft. Nothing works. |
| Jon L. | Possession is not portable. |
| Jon L. | (-David R) |
| FrankP | an exorcist thing? |
| Sep 10 | 12:00 PM |
| AGoldmanISP | PII regulated by red flags rule, PCI, and more |
| Steve K. | wirelss failures vs promises. UWB, Bluetooth, 3G, microwave last mile links (teleport), wiMax (TBD but well behind promises made), mesh... |
| Steve K. | pretty much everything outside of i fi and cellular voice |
| Doc | DPR: "Possession is not portable." you have a lot of rights to information created about you. We have inverted the problem. Now information is about you and held by others. Possession is paradoxially in the law. Has to do with control, not that you hold it in your hand. |
| Steve K. | wi fi |
| Doc | DPR:"Wireless is part of making possession more portable by making it more reachable" |
| Herman (. | Any wirelesss bit is desperately seeking a fixed line. There 3-4 levels of wireless, with different cell-sizes and shared bandwidth (down to nanocell in your home), each needing a fixed line. We move through these strata |
| Steve S. | Reminder: I will setup a discussion table on some competing commercial interests in mobile access: tussle between carriers, device makers, content owners, and "prosumers" |
| Doc | DPR: "Maybe we can make possession almost portable." |
| Steve S. | I will try to get the back corner table for this discussion topic |
| Judi C. | In Honolulu, temp is 75 (and dark) |
| njames | i live in the District (aka "the swamp"). I'm loving this |
| Rick | Steve K.: Wall Street demands promised certainty right now, but physics is a bitch. My advice is to add three to five years to every wireless business pitch, and it will arrive "without warning." |
| Doc | I can do the drumline from Wipe Out. |
| Jon L. | Doc wants to jam with the band. |
| Doc | I want to jam with every band. We did jam a bit with Mike Marshall & his young friends a couple Bighooks ack. |
| Sep 10 | 12:05 PM |
| Jon L. | Wish I'd been here! |
| Rick | Barbara, are you having Joan create pottery using the discarded remnants and shards of old common carriage laws? |
| Sep 10 | 12:45 PM |
| Judi C. | Looking over Dewayne's shoulder at Doc's computer... |
| Sep 10 | 1:40 PM |
| David I. | hello woild |
| Sep 10 | 1:50 PM |
| Judi C. | From June, but just pointed out to me: http://defragcon.com/Blog/?p=323 on Doc, David, Chris, and Cluetrain at 10 |
| Sep 10 | 2:05 PM |
| Herman (. |
changed the room’s topic to
Thrivability
|
| dweinberger | it's the stretch limo of ships! |
| Sep 10 | 2:10 PM |
| Herman (. | General question: does anybody know what the weightlimit is for cables strung along poles? |
| Herman (. | Weightlimit: the weight of the cable per meter, or per lenght between poles |
| Herman (. | Fiberoptic cable |
| dweinberger | with or without sparrows? |
| Herman (. | dunno |
| Herman (. | Context: point to point fiber requires thicker and heavier cables |
| Jane C. | Talk to Peter C. about cables ... he gets off on that sort of stuff! |
| AGoldmanISP | herman -- wouldn't one always trench? where is it impossible to dig? |
| Doc | |
| Anders | on High Voltage transmission lines with hundreds of meters between pylons |
| Sep 10 | 2:15 PM |
| Herman (. | Threnching /digging is sometimes very expensive |
| Herman (. | Especially over here |
| Herman (. | So I am interested in the practical limits of aerial |
| Sep 10 | 2:20 PM |
| Judi C. | looking... |
| Sep 10 | 2:25 PM |
| Judi C. | I heard the ship was in my neighborhood recently. |
| FrankP | Hartley says she's on her way home from Honolulu |
| AGoldmanISP | sascha |
| AGoldmanISP | amaze me brough |
| Steve K. | cisco stock fighting hard with $23. up 3.4% |
| Sep 10 | 2:30 PM |
| Jon L. | Wireless workaround via Brough: what's in 802.11 and in silicon shipped today-thinking about the implications. |
| AGoldmanISP | and with lower freqs, you can get through obstructions |
| Doc | |
| Steve S. | opencape! |
| Judi C. | does OpenCape reach Hawaii? |
| Sascha M. | Device-as-infrastructure ad hoc mesh: http://www.olsr.org/?q=node/30 |
| Sep 10 | 2:35 PM |
| David I. | Judi Clark -- yes it does, via the Internet :-) |
| Tom F. | Everything should be made as simple as possible -- but no simpler. A. Einstein |
| Jon L. | Judi, you need a very large free-floating radio mast. |
| Sascha M. | Open Source 802.11n implementations (4km link in urban environment with a 80+ Mbps throughput): http://www.saschameinrath.com/2009/jun/12/… |
| AGoldmanISP | destroying the _cross subsidies_ within the newspaper model |
| Sep 10 | 2:40 PM |
| Jane C. | Different grades of Free - gratis; buy one get one free; free for $20 a month |
| Judi C. | telco has cross subsidies as well, don't they? e.g., how much does an SMS message cost? |
| AGoldmanISP | exactly -- you can break up the telcos if you attack the overpriced industry |
| AGoldmanISP | attack the overpriced services |
| enoss | who burned through $25m? |
| dweinberger | FON makes open routers less open, but closed routers waaaay more open. |
| Judi C. | that's why cellcos are so protective about their data plans: protect the costlier services from being disintermediated by existing technologies |
| dweinberger | martin varsavsky |
| enoss | ack |
| Robin | Brad: we need to talk at the next break. |
| Robin | Transportation applications!! I've got 'em |
| AGoldmanISP |
|
| Sep 10 | 2:45 PM |
| Robin | Tom will also tell you that he thinks he could build the radio needed in a year, and start testing it and improving it. And I believe he could do it. |
| Sascha M. | Would it be inappropriate to yell, "You lie" re: Tom's statement that metro-scale networks don't work? |
| Sep 10 | 2:50 PM |
| Judi C. | Sascha, are you trying to raise money? |
| Sascha M. | Hadn't planned on it, why, are you trying to give some away? ;) |
| Nadia E. | Im hinking about the equivalent of jury duty for policy-making |
| Nadia E. | thinking |
| Judi C. | The guy who yelled "you lie" to Obama has apparently raised more than $69,000. |
| Robin | re attacking overpriced aspect of services -- text messages. After David R and I gave a talk together early this spring, I dreamt of the killer mesh consumer app. Download this s/w, turn your device into a node, and you can text message your friends who are nearby for free. |
| Sep 10 | 2:55 PM |
| AGoldmanISP | judi 00 wilson's opponent has raised a stack of cash. don't know whether or not wilson also raised money |
| FrankP | DNC reported over 100,000 contributionsfor his opponent |
| AGoldmanISP | robin -- go for it! |
| Robin | re the possibility of wireless mesh: 600 nodes in Vienna give that city free wifi. 2500 nodes in Athens ditto |
| Judi C. | Robin, you may have a problem be approved by Apple Store. |
| enoss | I got wes clark spam for wilson's opponent, Rob Miller, in the last hour |
| Robin | hmm....apple isn't actually making money on the msj units. My technical advisor (aka husband and CTO) told me that it is non trivial because most phones won't let you do it (I forget why). But maybe with penetration of iphones we should just make it work for those |
| Steve S. | robin also internet access plus google voice gives free sms access |
| Robin | right. so this is better for NOT smart phones... |
| Sep 10 | 3:00 PM |
| Steve K. | the nanostation http://www.ubnt.com/products/nano.php |
| njames | C = Blog something? |
| Sascha M. | Robin -- you could do that for free today if you had a hacked meshing iPhone. Luckily, we've already solved that problem: http://olsr.funkfeuer.at/labels/iphone%20olsr.html |
| Jane C. | See ... I told you he gets off on this kind of stuff! |
| Robin | Reminds me of my business school options class. It took REAL focus on my part to get it, and then I did. I admit to lack of focus right now |
| Sep 10 | 3:05 PM |
| Robin | ah, now this is clear to me. which is why beam forming is the key to mesh networking (?) |
| AGoldmanISP | http://mediaresearchhub.ssrc.org/the-carto… The Cartoon Guide to Federal Spectrum Policy — SSRC |
| Sascha M. | beam forming boosts signal (in a particular direction) and thus lowers noise (in all the other directions) -- very handy for boosting capacity within a geographic area. but beamforming without automated power control is like replacing your water pick with a firehose. |
| Robin | Sasha, right. which I tell people. curiously, I never put the killer app idea together with your reality...so in Europe, I could do this now with clever marketing? price of text messages is high, and lots of unlocked iphones purchase? |
| Robin | purchased |
| Steve S. | unlocked is different than jailbroken |
| Sascha M. | basically, every iphone today _could_ mesh... it's just a problem of unlocking that functionality. |
| Rick | Flight of the Bumblebee |
| Robin | power problem is made easier in cars, because when they are moving, there is power. And for poeple who drive their cars every day, their batteries would likely be available to power mesh every day. |
| Sep 10 | 3:10 PM |
| Jon L. | Mesh needs its own kind of wifi - same radio technology engineered for mesh. |
| Herman (. | How much power do you need for such a radio (electrical power consumption?) |
| Steve S. | Here's a radio question for the experts: how many radios can I put in a small box the size of say a linksys access point. Am I limited to one radio, or can I put two? Is a radio a chip plus power source plus antenna? Could I have 6 radios on 6 different channels? |
| Doc | I used to do AM and FM radio station site studies. TV too. Some perspective... In the U.S., AM stations run up to 50,000 watts, on frequencies so low that the whole tower does the radiating. FM stations run up to 100,000 watts and more. The frequencies yield wavelengths in the voice range. Radiators are several feet long, and located in high places. Same is true of low-band TV (channels 2-6), now abandoned. High-band VHF (channels 7-13), now mostly abandoned (becoming white space), were typically 316,000 watts. UHF TV (Channels 14-83) were typically 5,000,000 watts. That was analog. Digital over the air TV is typically up to 1,000,000 watts. Also on high towers and buildings. Still, brute force stuff. Huge waste of electricity, since viewing of this stuff is now quite low. |
| Sep 10 | 3:15 PM |
| Steve S. | We're talking Vienna, Austria? |
| dweinberger | yes |
| Jon L. | City of Austin has a mesh network over several miles of downtown and in parks. |
| Jane C. | Thrivability Discussion see: http://www.chrisjordan.com (Running the Numbers - An American Self-Portrait) - powerful images that can produce paradigm shift |
| Steve S. | http://awmn.net/cms/node (for those that read greek) |
| AGoldmanISP | fixed wireless power limits are one watt for 5.725-5.825GHz Outdoor ? |
| Doc | By the way, TV channels 52-69 were auctioned off in the 700MHz proceedings. |
| Steve K. | |
| Doc | Meanwhile, the powers involved in all these discussions are very low. Fractions of a watt. |
| dweinberger | "Το Χαμόγελο του Παιδιού" |
| Nurture G. | Thank you Jane. Frank opened an additional chat (leave this one :( to see it) where there is some other thrivability info pieces (thrivability and meshiness) |
| Sep 10 | 3:20 PM |
| Sascha M. | I'll grab the URL for the Athens map -- it's impressive. |
| Doc | Here's an interesting thing. SETI is based on the assumption that distant civilizations will express brute force radio practices that we are now abandoning. |
| Robin | I have a picture of the athens map but I can't paste it into this campfire chat |
| Doc | I still have my Ricochet Metricom transceiver. Total museum piece. |
| Sascha M. | |
| Judi C. | to paste a graphic: look along right col for Upload a file link. |
| Sep 10 | 3:25 PM |
| Doc | Ricochet was a great way to be on the Net 24 hours a day. No need to dial in. But the speed was low, and the need for hand-holding was high. |
| Doc | It was not faster in practice than ISDN. I rarely got better than 33kb/s. |
| Doc | But it was a shitload cheaper than ISDN. |
| Robin | Judi, taking a long time to upload. Do you think it is hung and I should try again? or does it take a long time? |
| Doc | In other words, is this the Metricom of our time? |
| Judi C. | Robin, is it a big graphic? If so, give a few more seconds. If small, cancel. You can email it to me and I'll give a try: judic@manymedia.com |
| Steve K. | WIMBY |
| Doc | WIMBY: Works In My Back Yard |
| Jon L. | Works in My Back Yard (WIMBY) |
| Sep 10 | 3:30 PM |
| dweinberger | Alternative name for Brough's company: The Notches. |
| njames | Susan C tweets and makes news: http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2… |
| Jon L. | Works in My Back Notches (WIMBN) |
| Doc | Dewayne: The real problem is the regulatory enviroment. |
| Herman (. | MYWIMBY.COm is still available |
| Steve K. | John L. that really doesnt sound like a natural act and/or legal in all states |
| Jon L. | Works in My Place, Y'all (WIMPY) |
| Doc | Next step: go to other places where you can change the regulatory environment so business can happen. Not doing here because we're fucked. |
| dweinberger | we thought it was enoss' ring tone |
| enoss | that "scrawford tweets" article is HIlarious |
| Jon L. | Yeah, poor Susan. She's in the panopticon now. |
| Sep 10 | 3:35 PM |
| wseltzer | somehow I doubt she'll be blogging about viola much anytime soon |
| njames | I'll take the coverage "Crawford's message is also significant because One Web Day, an annual event she founded in 2006 to encourage Internet users to show how the medium impacts their lives, is right around the corner." |
| Doc | From Twitter: @windley Rereading @dsearls & @dweinberger World of Ends essay for my #DIDW keynote next week. Important stuff http://bit.ly/FPixZ |
| Sep 10 | 4:05 PM |
| Jon L. | Boogie. |
| Sep 10 | 4:10 PM |
| Steve S. | well, first you have to define "work" ;) |
| Steve S. | per Scott B's anecodote yesterday |
| Sep 10 | 4:15 PM |
| Steve K. | FYI - Willow is here! She's probably the reason I get invited back... |
| Jon L. | Mesh on every house, one in every 20 wired to backbone. |
| Jon L. | Robin: why not have the router embedded in devices that do other things? |
| Sascha M. | I came in halfway through, but we've already proofed out and implemented what's being described in scores (probably hundreds) of locations around the globe. |
| Judi C. | is "mesh" a specific way of connecting or making these devices recognize each other? or specific devices? |
| Doc | Sascha, raise your hand and speak up about that. |
| Robin | I want to build a device that meshes AND on top of which you can throw any application you want. |
| Jon L. | second that |
| Peter C. | SETI - hopefully some distant civilization that wants to make contact will be sufficiently smart to have done the math and will transmit a 'simple' (NOT Spread Spectrum) signal. Unless they figure that we are smart enough to look for them using a prime based M-Sequence... |
| Jon L. | re Sascha speaking |
| Herman (. | There are some semantics about "mesh" which do not match |
| Steve K. | log-scale chart of the S&P500 over past 5 years. we are now back to October '08 levels - whoo hoo! |
| Sep 10 | 4:20 PM |
| Jon L. | Peter: prefer the STI - search for terrestrial intelligence. |
| Judi C. | so Tom is talking about a specific device |
| AGoldmanISP | Peter C: if they have better math than we do, it might be difficult to find them, no? |
| Herman (. | Robin: have you read Vernon Vinge "Rainbows End"? |
| Doc | Steve, so we're recovered? |
| Jon L. | Tom is talking about a standalone, Robin is talking about embedding in other tech, multipurpose. |
| Peter C. | A mesh in a mesh in a mesh.....it will have to be layered in some way....like Russian Dolls |
| AGoldmanISP | Tom is talking a specific device that he thinks will be relatively cheap and easy to buy, based on Brough's sketch |
| Sascha M. | I'm a bit confused about Tom's vision. We built that architecture in 2002. |
| Sascha M. | Also, Vienna Austria is an ad-hoc mesh (at metro scale) |
| Robin | Goal vs strategy is actually correct. The question is, how can you create an adequate density of nodes? what is the fastest and best method, at lowest cost? |
| Jon L. | So you realized Tom's vision. |
| Sascha M. | the sectorization is still part of the overall mesh. |
| AGoldmanISP | yes, FCC wants to pretend there are many modalities of competition |
| FrankP | Peter C. SETI is simply aUS DOD smokescreen for the constructiuon ofsome huge atenna arrays that are gathering data a lot closer to home than Tau Ceti |
| Sascha M. | well, i'm assuming that Tom's vision is more involved than at first described. |
| AGoldmanISP | Sascha -- isn't Vienna Austria somewhat hierarchical with a partial hub and spoke architecture? |
| Jon L. | End run around bottleneck is not necessarily mesh? |
| Nadia E. | is thinking about whether the citizens of geekistan would join the internet peoples communications commission |
| Herman (. | A mesh with hierarchy |
| Jon L. | Transponders along every highway and in every car is a multitrillion dollar project. |
| Herman (. | Nadia: that's your definition of digiphrenia |
| Judi C. | wondering how we'll get to mesh when so many people think they need secure wireless networks |
| Doc | Nadia, getting geekistan and The Rest of Us on the same page has always been a chore. It works when the geeks make an invention that mothers necessity. Less so when necessity calls out to the geeks. |
| Sascha M. | here's all the equipment you need to realize Tom's vision (as currently described): http://www.metrix.net/cuwin-kit-p-84.html |
| Jon L. | Judi: we were talking about that on break. |
| Robin | DAvid is describing DSRc -- dedicated short range radio -- spectrum setaside for transportation. Wireless distance is about 300 ft, meaning needed to build out an extensive roadside infrastructure |
| Sep 10 | 4:25 PM |
| FrankP | Judi C how about deployment of bullet-proof personal encryption sw? |
| Sascha M. | AGoldmanISP: no -- it's entirely ad-hoc -- runs OLSR mesh. |
| dweinberger | geographically-fixed mesh networks -- neighborhood meshes -- could make it over the geek hurdle if they came with neighborhood apps. |
| Steve S. | yes Judy, we didn't talk at all about being willing to trust your data that is transmitted over net. Some sort of end-to-end encryption becomes a necessity imho |
| Judi C. | Frank, does such a thing exist? or is that reality also only a dream? |
| Jon L. | At an earlier break, that is. People want that security, whether because they fear intrusion or because they want to protect their bandwidth. |
| AGoldmanISP | sascha -- interesting, looking at cuwin now |
| Sascha M. | the hub-and-spoke additions are so that when areas get congested, routing can utilize these longer-haul links to hasten throughput. |
| dweinberger | Boston's experiments with neighborhood meshes is in fact thnking about what the "killer" apps would be that will pull non-geeks in. |
| Doc | Violent agreement except where to start? Cool, but where are those places? |
| dweinberger | relevance and usability... |
| Jon L. | Mesh deployment would have to address those FUD concerns. |
| FrankP | it exists but I don't know3what the federales permit |
| Steve K. | |
| Steve K. | Sorry, charts uploaded |
| Jon L. | Art: no Booz. |
| Robin | This is why I've been focusing on transportation (because I know it) and because we can spring out a defined geographic density of nodes -- for congestion pricing, road toling, etc. |
| Nadia E. | Doc: I wonder what form Tech Jury Duty would take in Geekistan |
| Steve K. | other way to think about it is we are back to 1998 levels. eeek |
| dweinberger | neighborhood mesh apps -- and pardon my obviousness -- include: n2n (neighbor to neighbor) help lines, school pickup schedules, neighborhood wiki FAQ... |
| Doc | Art: There is a moral question you ask the contractors and the government agencies: since ths isn't going to work, how does this solve what smart highways were going to solve in the first place. |
| Jon L. | dweinberger: you could have all those without mesh. |
| Doc | Robin: smart grid is an ideal place to study this. Fixed and distributed across the U.S. |
| Steve K. | doc. we've recovered to 1998. that's better than 96, right? |
| dweinberger | sure, jonl. but we tend not to. Providing mesh with those apps up as a default will help explain mesh's utility and relevance... |
| Doc | Pepper: looking for easy way to get to tipping points. |
| FrankP | Doc: smart grid covering every topo ublished bythe USGS!! |
| FrankP | published by |
| Doc | Scott:There isn't a smart grid. There are a number of initiatives. |
| Jon L. | Austin's Smart Grid demo project: http://www.pecanstreetproject.org/ |
| Sep 10 | 4:30 PM |
| Jon L. | The Pecan Street Project is partly a Cisco project. Many of the local people (on the board) don't seem to have a clear idea what it's about. |
| Doc | Frank, is the USGP data freely available? Don't think so. But, dunno. The Ordnance Survey in the U.K. is still locked up. Canada? Others? Dunno. |
| FrankP | replace every USGS brass survey marker with some active components |
| FrankP | yes freely available |
| Nadia E. | You are called to a hearing at the internet peoples communications commission. You must testify truthfully and in good conscience as a private citizen of geekistan or you will lose your citizenship, and all the rights and priveledges that go with it. |
| Doc | Pepper: all about silo'd spectrum with security as an excuse. Because you need security. |
| FrankP | (or is it just freely available for publc lands? have to check) |
| Jon L. | From Pecan Street Project: Just as fiber optics transformed the way you communicate every day, we're about to revolutionize the way you receive, use and even generate energy. The Pecan Street Project is a city-wide laboratory devoted to exploring new ideas. It's a place where researchers and entrepreneurs can develop, test and implement the the urban power system of the future. |
| Doc | DPR: Internet means security, because 'internet' and 'security' are associated in stories. |
| enoss | the fact that they use the prefix "cyber" identifies just how date their thinking is |
| Jon L. | A company for "Internet of energy": http://www.picoinnovations.com/Welcome.html |
| Doc | DI: problem seems to be that large orgs lie or don't know from their own self interests and/or have heavy cultural biases... |
| Doc | Scott: they don't believe the Net can work. That's their understanding of how the tech works. |
| Doc | DI: can we address this at the belief system level, as well as the prove-it-works level. |
| Scott B. | agree |
| Jon L. |
|
| Scott B. | we will be building a example to show that it can work |
| Doc | Pepper: They equated the IP and the open inernet with insecurity. Literally had to go in with pictures. |
| Sep 10 | 4:35 PM |
| Rick | news flash: pigeon beats broadband -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm |
| Doc | ... They're stuck in the 1960s. |
| AGoldmanISP | +Rick |
| dweinberger | Pepper is demonstrating ArtK's principles for changing a bigco's mind. |
| Herman (. | |
| FrankP | |
| Doc | Scott: produces a white paper three years ago that said there shouldn't be an emergency responder system, but to make use of existing... Never made it in. |
| Doc | Brad: why are we asking permission? Rather, why not get proof, critical mass? |
| dweinberger | snails are faster than asdl: http://osdir.com/ml/operators.ioz/2005-04/… |
| Robin | Yes Brad. So I think I'm very close now to having those early examples that don't need permissions and can build to critical mass. |
| wseltzer | Why do we care about these guys? because they distort policy-making with their dying thrashing |
| AGoldmanISP | why carry it, why not put it on a car? |
| Scott B. | nric report (I helped, but did not write) |
| enoss | yossi vardi did the pidgeon thing in 2004 and then with snails in 2005 http://osdir.com/ml/operators.ioz/2005-04/… |
| Scott B. | |
| Ben t. | @ dweinberger: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idU… |
| Doc | DPR: DOD ...complicated project made soldiers ineffective in the field... so the actual operators made it work... FRS radios hacked with VoIP... just as secure.. |
| enoss | oops. same link. sorry board. the snails that brought me the link were too slow |
| Sep 10 | 4:40 PM |
| Doc | Brough: an end run doesn't need stimulus money... looking for something very modest that might turn into an end run but not depend on anybody in the meantime. |
| AGoldmanISP | military and wi-fi and RSS http://www.blueforcedev.com/ |
| enoss | ask for forgiveness, not permission |
| Steve K. | we need to find lots of small island communities - literal or figurative - to prove out this mesh idea |
| Doc | Benoit's 3 mins... |
| Steve K. | dave. why not build one in woods hole. |
| enoss | not kill them, just ignore them |
| Rick | but take their fiber |
| Doc | Synthesis: incumbents are inefficient, so let's kill them by replacing them. (SK: just kill them.) In europe that's politically unacceptable, because the telcos employ 100s of 000s . |
| Scott B. | ask GM |
| Rick | unacceptable here as well: Too Big To Fail |
| Doc | Question: how do we manage as a society the implication s of this corporate srategy... |
| Doc | It's not just the evil corporations, but the people working for them. |
| Robin | I posit that ubiquitous low cost data access will become an economic engine that is LARGER than the internet. We are talking about building a mobile internet |
| enoss | it will be slow. |
| Anders | Not sure it would be impossible today after the massive downsizing we have seen with some telcos |
| enoss | frog in boiling water stuff |
| Scott B. | yes but it will be different people - the first set lose their jobs first |
| Doc | Brad: Are we talking about the social contract since the industrial revolution? Have more peole been employed since the Internet? Seems so. |
| Anders | It was a key issue as Merkel came to office BTW |
| Robin | could actually be teh same poeple when we are talking about Orange -- those guys could do startups |
| Doc | In the late 80s over a million jobs were lost when Defense abandoned Southern California. The unemployment rate hardly changed. |
| Judi C. | enoss, frogs actually jump out when the water gets hot. |
| Doc | ... and many new businesses showed up. |
| Doc | Rip off the prosthesis! |
| Robin | Auto industry!!! how many billions went into GM? |
| Sep 10 | 4:45 PM |
| Robin | those jobs should have been let to die |
| Judi C. | Organizational behavior |
| Steve K. | deustche telecom is literally renting out its excess people basically as temps and contractors (to do non-telco jobs) Another trick they will admit to is moving their call centers to uncomfortable commuting locations to encourage workers to take a buyout package. they move to a new location every few years trying to shake loose the workers and the workers grimly hang on... |
| enoss | art of great at this |
| AGoldmanISP | that would be art? |
| Doc | Peter C, didn't you say earlier that BT has lost 100,000+ employees in the course of shrinking? |
| Anders | "If we dont get shelter from LLUB as we deploy fiber, we will put 9000 people on the street" this played havoc with the entire EU system |
| Jon L. | There's also organizational culture change consultants that seem to be effective. |
| enoss | let me try again...... art is great at this |
| Robin | money would have been better put into health care so that those unemployed guys could survive while looking for work and could do startups without worrying about health care |
| Doc | I think telcos in Europe will shrink if they suck. just my opinion. |
| Herman (. | If DT would be as efficient as KPN they would have to lay off > 100 k employees today |
| Jon L. | Example: http://www.momentumconsulting.com/ |
| wseltzer | Robin++ |
| enoss | I think all of the organizational discussion earlier was on this point. maybe I am wrong (again) |
| Martin G. | BT is 109000 full time employees, down from about 240000 at peak, IIRC |
| Jon L. | Another example: http://www.valuescentre.com/ |
| Jon L. | And then there's Art! |
| enoss | he really really does |
| Anders | There are lots of data on downsizing of several EU telcos |
| AGoldmanISP | martin -- is that a slow death or a rejuvination? |
| enoss | his friends call him maude |
| Ben t. | Martin, how many "outsourced" employees are still working effectively for BT from outside organisations? |
| Martin G. | mixture -- also bear in mind spin-off of Cellnet/O2 |
| Doc | Art: I'm with you. There is a huge field concerned with how orgs live and die. The current crisis has thrown the prevailing assumptions up in the air. |
| Doc | Previous: there was an acceptable level, the phillips curve, homeostasis, discredited but acceptable. Simple, clear debate between two myths. |
| Anders | As we started liberalisation in Sweden Telia had +50000 employees, today less than 10k |
| Doc | Simple level, both myths have been discreditd by events. |
| Doc | That a country can maintain by artivicial has been discredited. |
| Doc | Bandaid ripping also discredited. |
| Anders | DT has not been into the same process |
| Ben t. | And Telia is one of the few I know in Europe that has undergone the mutation. They're also doing more turnover with 10000 than they were with 50000 |
| Jon L. | Productivity rate high - 6% |
| Jon L. | Have corps let go a lot of people and are still producing the same amt? |
| AGoldmanISP | if productivity = profits per worker, can you grow productivity just by firing people? |
| Doc | No new idea of what ahppens to people. Produvctivity rate is really high. Before it was 2.3%. Now 6% (roxanne). Is that being caused by corps that let go of people while producintg evenly -- player piano -- or has this wave of innovation unleashed and just now by coincidence, or both? |
| Sep 10 | 4:50 PM |
| Steve K. | Apple Market Cap has edged out IBM's. Yoiks. |
| Sep 10 | 4:50 PM |
| Anders | Yes about 5000 are into totally different stuff |
| Sep 10 | 4:50 PM |
| Steve K. | |
| Jon L. | Or is Internet-fueled wave of innovation coincidentally beginning to have an effect? |
| Robin | Friend of mine works on this issue of productivity and what we do with it. Best option for this planet: shorter work weeks, less money, less consumption of physical goods == more sustainable world |
| Robin | same happiness |
| Doc | Art: weshould not be cavalier about laying people off. a year ago: band-aid+startups would have been the answser. Now it's more complicated and there are more unknowns. |
| Nadia E. | question: could we not have a compromise where we don´t rip the bandaid off, but move them somewhere where they cant stop others from getting medicine |
| Jon L. | Shorter work week = smaller salaries? |
| Robin | or stable salaries -- no raise but you can choose shorter work week, or more vacation time |
| Ben t. | Shorter work week is largely a myth... |
| Robin | Europe? |
| Doc | Art: the unemployment rates were going up before last October. In the U.S. most unemployed hasn't found jobs. |
| Robin | Amreicans work more hours than anyone else |
| Jon L. | Not creative destrucction but a financial meltdown. |
| Ben t. | If you look at actual work hour statistics, there's no significant difference between Europe and the US. |
| Doc | Brad: creative distruction. Did Craigs list destruction yield people finding new homes? |
| Nadia E. | so the people who are not in the race anymore are secure and can survive, but dont really have any decision making power. |
| Nadia E. | Maybe a citizen´s salary |
| Jon L. | The sort of thing journalists are doing now: http://www.texastribune.org/ |
| Herman (. | Meanwhile: I disagree violently with the position that incumbents will evaporate when you do an alternative endrun. There is so much else which is required and require scale and experience to make everything work. Even stronger, there is a lot which is NOT done today (listen to Martin G.) which require telco's e.a. |
| Doc | Steve: wrong age and skill set, you're fucked. |
| Martin G. | I work a 4 day week and never want to go back! In reality work more... but have time to build my skills, social contacts. Resent the social pressure to 'fit in' with the 'achieve at all costs' 5 day workweek |
| Jane C. | |
| FrankP | older people need to learn new skills...like how to rob gaqs stations and liquor stores |
| FrankP | gas stations |
| Doc | Leslie: we are at record levels of discouraged workers not counted in the unemployment rate. Cyclically you find this. There are people who have given up. Those are at record highs. Also young people can't find a livable full-time job. Not just geezers. |
| dweinberger | how many of us have recent college grads unemployed and living in our houses? |
| Jon L. | |
| Ben t. | For that, you have to be old, David... |
| Jon L. | (Last link re. state of journalism) |
| Ben t. | ;-) |
| Nadia E. | geekonomics |
| Robin | another reason for universal health care |
| Sep 10 | 4:55 PM |
| Doc | secret mounting crisis... our unemployment insurance system in most states is completely bankrupt. The fed will need to lend the states money to maintain the system. The result is that the unemployment insurance costs to employers is going up. There will be a fiscal drag as a result of trying to maintain a broken insurance system. |
| Herman (. | Nadia: you coin great verbs |
| dweinberger | Getting depressed. Bodily systems slowing. Pleasure centers shutting down. Can we have some happy talk now? |
| enoss |  |
| Martin G. | For telcos to 'go away' you have to believe that there will be no need to bill and service for a bunch of 'connected stuff' that will require some level of integration, provisioning, maintenance. Even if infrastructure became free, you'd still end up inventing something that looks like a telco to operate the service wrapper that lots of products need. |
| Martin G. | Mesh won't eliminate telcos, although it might wipe out *these* telcos |
| Ben t. | Martin, would it look like a telco or would it be a billing company? |
| Scott B. | also someone needs to fix the wires that remain |
| Herman (. | Much more than a billing comapny, managing operations for large volumes is an art |
| AGoldmanISP | would it not be a utility like the electric company, responsibile for billing and maintenance but no services? |
| Ben t. | The Swedish model seems to me to show that you can fragment the layers with different players focusing on different functions. |
| Martin G. | Sometimes you need a 'man in a van' to go out and work out what layer of the stack the break is in |
| Ben t. | That's not to say the telcos couldn't do it better, but... |
| Doc | Anders: telia was good at going from 15k to 9k people in a controlled manner. Others denied the problem. Telia said we need to do something else. So they created a shadow company. That retrained people. Lots went wrong. Very complex process. You do need to restructure these corporations, though. |
| Doc | above number was 50k, not 15k. |
| Ben t. | Doc, 50k! |
| Herman (. | Again: look at provisioning and management systems, it is devilshly complex to manage efficiently and flexibel |
| Doc | Brad: maybe we need to restructure markets. But would rather have creative destruction and real innovation, then deal with the results. |
| Doc | Benoit: not what I want. But fear that governments will want to step in and force caring about displaced workers and slow innovaiton. |
| Nadia E. | the term I believe is "Outplacement" |
| Sep 10 | 5:00 PM |
| Martin G. | don't think of it as a billing company, think of it as a selling company for connected lifestyle goods |
| Ben t. | Can you do that with 5000 employees? |
| Robin | Sadly, this is my 18 year old son |
| Doc | Elliot: We laid off 35 people. Did what everybody did in those cases: lost the least productive people. What we found was that we were just as productive. We could have been more efficient. Null hyp9thesis is that the world has changed so much that there is a whole swath of folks who were just fine ... but didn't stand out. (People who show little initiative are being selected out.) |
| dweinberger | at the same time, many of us find Google's 20% alternate project time to be appealing. |
| Jon L. | Sounds Darwinian. |
| Judi C. | Robin, this is me in Hawaii. |
| Nadia E. | I just registered weplacement.com |
| Jon L. | I.e., what to do about people who are "selected out" of the workforce? |
| AGoldmanISP | jon l: It can be more cruel to keep someone in a job they're not suited for |
| Rick | dweinberger, i like to say that i wrote my three law journal articles on my 120% time. |
| Jon L. | AGoldmanISP: Understood. I'm not making a value judgement. |
| Jon L. | Just an observation. |
| Robin | Judi; nice quote I heard and posted the other day: there are no lazy people, just people who haven't found their passion yet. I am counting on the reality of that. |
| enoss | @dweinberger 20% time or something like it can be productive. it is also important to note that few, maybe NO company has a workforce the caliber of google |
| njames | creepy feeling, remembering something from Arthur Kroker from a while ago "To succeed, the virtual class must rely on the exploitation of a neo-proletariat - "surplus flesh." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/le… |
| Doc | Elliot, I think these people are not naturally drones and average/sub-average performers, but rather that performance at that level was normative, accepted and comfortable for a very long time. Now we are in a world where all of us need to make our places rather than find them. |
| Herman (. | The UAW has been a good example |
| Jon L. | Robin: good point. Some people are in jobs that are not the right fit. |
| enoss | Doc: agree, but it is a deeply learned behavior |
| Judi C. | Pepper, check yr email please |
| Doc | Right, e. |
| Sep 10 | 5:05 PM |
| Pepper | RCR articles. Second about FCC proceeding on spectrum for smart grid |
| Pepper | |
| ArtKleiner | Robin, your point about the 4-day workweek and less money is partly on target, but passion about a job also makes people work longer. Personal productivity is hard to scale. |
| enoss | can we make it an anti-union point? |
| Pepper | |
| enoss | passion is the key |
| Doc | What are the future unions? What would be the unions in the world David Reed describes in his third cloud? |
| Tom F. | This is quite interesting, but is it relevant to our purpose? |
| Ben t. | Come work in France, you'll see what unions are!!! |
| Ben t. | ;-) |
| ArtKleiner | At their best, unions make a real contribution. The future of unions is a really interesting subject. |
| Peter C. | The tech cycle is measured in months ~9 |
| Judi C. | slowly floating away from telecom |
| AGoldmanISP | doc: in part future unions will help freelancers and contractors get benefits, get paid, and get rights |
| enoss | unions have not been useful/productive in at least twenty years |
| ArtKleiner | The best book I know on unions: Thomas Geoghegan, Whose Side Are You On? Now about 20 years old, but still relevant. |
| Peter C. | The manager cycle is measured in years ~ 2.5 |
| enoss | future unions is an interesting thought |
| Doc | unions are a black hole subject. |
| ArtKleiner | Especially when considered globally. |
| AGoldmanISP | enoss -- in USA, the SEIU has helped non-English speaking service workers fight some horrible employers |
| Steve K. | huge age gap on unions in this room and the world |
| Peter C. | Society change cycle in tens of years |
| Herman (. | So why is this preventing anyone of creating a sizable mesh wireless endrun network somewhere? |
| AGoldmanISP | enoss -- such as hotel owners |
| dweinberger | Doc +1. |
| enoss | I would argue that employees, or at least employees that good companies want, are the ones who have power relative to their employer |
| Judi C. | PeterC, that's interesting. Several projects that I've completed lately took about that much time. |
| Nadia E. | the brutality of meritocracy: we need new narrtives for social order |
| Robin | Herman ++ |
| Nadia E. | narratives |
| Nadia E. | progressive social order |
| enoss | hear hear |
| Judi C. | I can hear Fox News going to town on that! |
| ArtKleiner | Herman - we're anticipating possible backlashes I think. |
| Peter C. | For society to go frm VHS to DVD, CRT to Plasma/LCD TV, fixed to mobile phone all took around 10 years |
| Robin | killed off the weak caribou |
| njames | I'm sure the next "czar" is in this room. |
| Doc | Steve: bigco laid off weak caribou, then muscle (strong caribou). the old jobs will never come back. |
| FrankP | steve k. did you celebrate with a barbeque? |
| dweinberger | isn't this the same discussion that we had 40 yrs ago about automation? |
| AGoldmanISP | enoss -- I would argue that in many cases employees have no power w/r/t their employer, not because the employees are not good, but because the employer does not understand the difference between good employees and bad employees, between heretics and slackers, between innovators and brown nosers, and on and on |
| Judi C. | njames, czar of what? |
| Nadia E. | finally, Ive been lookin forward to this discussion |
| Sep 10 | 5:10 PM |
| Herman (. | Art: true, but if you want to get something realized you need set your target and elimante or reduce or accomdate for there backlashes and proceed |
| Peter C. | When the economic upturn comes industry will have a real problem staffing up again....it will take 2 - 3 years |
| enoss | @alex my point relates to good companies and good employees |
| Steve K. | that is why my peers think I am a leftist socialist nut-job |
| Doc | Art: Not convinced that the majority of people in the world know how to contribute, or are willing to contribute. |
| njames | Judi C: I was just riffing on your Fox News comment and their recent smear campaign on "czars" |
| njames | |
| Doc | Automation hasn't fully hit. We may well be moving toward a world where 10% are employeed rather than unemployed. |
| Herman (. | { sorry, jetlag kicking in, bad typing] |
| Nadia E. | @Steve K. Humanism is a beutiful thing. |
| Robin | New carbon economy which is likely more local, disagrees with that assessment of loss of jobs |
| Steve K. | nadia - dont tell my peers that (big grin just kidding) |
| AGoldmanISP | enoss -- how many good companies are there? for better or worse, I have worked for founder owned companies most of my life, except for when I worked for Scribner, which was own by macmillan, which was owned by simon & schuster, which was owned by paramount, which was owned by viacom |
| FrankP | steve k. scary that your peers think that... |
| Doc | I don't agree, but won't argue it. |
| Nadia E. | FrankP ++ |
| dweinberger | don't worry, steve k, I'll denounce you as a Hobbesian :) |
| Steve K. | frankP - most of my peers assume(d) they would never be laid off. that is why they collected all those degrees. layoffs happen to little people dont you know? |
| Peter C. | Automation always destroys jobs, but also leads to new areas of creativity.....computers! |
| Robin | this is a reason why being self employed is so good. You can't lay yourself off. |
| ArtKleiner | Robin - Agree about carbon economy maybe, but certainly about something coming along - if not carbon, something else. But will it pick up the individuals who just got laid off? Or are they "off the carousel?" Unknown. |
| Judi C. | Robin, disagree. I did. |
| Jon L. | Robin: I did once lay myself off. |
| FrankP | robin ++ |
| ArtKleiner | I did too. |
| enoss | those are the companies that are teetering |
| Steve K. | It was really funny to see the same people lecturing CEO's about the need for cost cuts suddenly go all "socialist" when their own jobs were under threat. My line from that period is the corollary to the idea that there are no atheists in a foxhole is that there are no free market capitalists during a layoff. |
| Herman (. | There is a very strong amount of evidence that wealth creation and growth can continue indefinitely, if you allow creativity (parallel experiments). Let's not be so pessimistic. |
| Robin | ok, you are right. I've not paid myself many many times -- unfortunately I was still doing the work. |
| Doc | Leslie: worked for labor unions for 22 years. Hear prejucidial statements about the kind of people who get laid off and why. did a survey with machinists union. Highly skilled. Aircraft maintenance... saw that even line workers were not allowed to see the manuals and dooing the prgramming. they came up with more efficient manu techniques. However, the culture within the corps supressed that kind of intiatives. Because there is a class system there. Like to deny and pretend doesn't exist. |
| Sep 10 | 5:15 PM |
| Doc | Toward Robin: The top employer in Santa Barbara is "self." |
| njames | not just class, but also Fordist dehumanization of the factory system. one person, one task. |
| Judi C. | channeling Life Inc. for a minute... ok, there. |
| Robin | Can we do it in a slow-ish fashion that enables a transition that is viable? |
| AGoldmanISP | some unions insist that if people do extra work, they get paid for another job function. in some cases, the union indirectly forces this behavior on the corporation |
| FrankP | leslie, some of that reluctance to allow creative effortby the union member may have had to do with bargaining agreements and managing to avoid litigation, maybe? |
| wseltzer | Creative destruction is still destruction. |
| Doc | Don Norman many years ago: “Microsoft is a conversational black hole. Drop the subject into the middle of a room and it sucks everybody into a useless place from which no light can escape.” Are we at risk of that here? |
| dweinberger | wseltzer ++ |
| Doc | Do any of us want *not* to create stuff that continues destroying phone companies? |
| Martin G. | BT trying to lower number of people doing 'fixing stuff', but reallocate as many as possible to 'making stuff' and 'selling stuff' |
| Robin | doc: yes. This is an issue, but it is a side effect. We don't have the positive path forward that would result in this unemployment. |
| Sep 10 | 5:20 PM |
| Doc | robin, right. I'd rather talk about the path. |
| Nadia E. | Can we broaden the topic to "what new societal narratives do we need inorder to facilitate this change, to enable it?" |
| Ben t. | The way in this is germane to me is that it means there will be some political opposition. |
| Steve K. | one reason those unions guys are the only people who know the networks is because that was their bargaining leverage vs management in a walkout. |
| Judi C. | ++ Nadia |
| Ben t. | "to me" meaning "in my mind" |
| Robin | ben+ |
| Steve K. | a company built a box that elminated the wiring spaghetti.. unions totally shut it down |
| Nurture G. | so facing some brutal facts about what is, what does a thrivable connected world look like - at the level of infrastructure, organization, and policy? |
| ArtKleiner | Earl Katz at Columbia on the stimulus - supposed to be about "job creation" - but it will reduce jobs in the near term. By increasing productivity. |
| Judi C. | that happens a lot here. Hawaii is down near Somalia in ease of doing business. (really) |
| Doc | My great-grandfather... http://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/3503903079/ ... head of the Steel & Copperplate Engravers Union in New York. Dig those glasses, btw. |
| ArtKleiner | -- according to Pepper |
| Martin G. | why do so many people want to invest 10, 20, 30 years of their life learning the specifics of one single employer? why expose yourself to such a high risk of skills obsolesence, and fail to renew yourself by giving yourself different experiences and professional networks? |
| Robin | doc, no family resemblance left |
| Doc | Pepper: Social dislocations have to be taken into account, especially in emerging countries, or we won't be able to sell new ideas. |
| Ben t. | Doc, he looks very severe... |
| Herman (. | Martin G.++ |
| dweinberger | So, does an end run have to solve the employee displacement problem first? |
| enoss | Martin Geddes: I think you should be able to reinvent yourself inside the same company. not necessarily, but possibly. |
| Rick | Increased productivity (up 6%) can just be the fearful survivors working their asses off. |
| Robin | martin, very good point, especially in world of high rate of range that we live in. This is of particular concern to me as I put my children through college. how to educate? |
| Nadia E. | for example, if the narrative promotes different measures of personal success and social capital in the world than the current ones, perhaps fewer psychopaths would be attracted to leadership |
| Herman (. | The airforce pilots performed less than the army guys |
| Doc | Ben, the dude was a hardass. |
| dweinberger | So, Free Psychopathic Agent Nation, nadia? :) |
| Sep 10 | 5:25 PM |
| Nadia E. | and more people who are being bored at "work" could be happier and contribute more to the world. Why does everything have to be about "corporate" |
| wseltzer | it's important that we be aware, but can we get closer to solving re-employment here /too/? |
| Judi C. | the guilds, networks of people sharing jobs among themselves |
| Nadia E. | ok. Sorry about rant. |
| Nurture G. | yes nadia and Judi. Agree with both of you |
| dweinberger | no no, Nadia, I was just making a dumb joke, imagining what all those psychopathic leaders would do at their new job. Sorry! |
| Nurture G. | part of this is the dissolving lines of what is inside and outside of an organization.... |
| Jon L. | More and more entrepreneurs. |
| Doc | Brett: Why solve the employment problem here? Do we think Broughs idea turns on solving the labor problem? |
| ArtKleiner | Narcissistic is probably closer to the mark than Psychopathic. |
| Nadia E. | Exactly.Human being is creative. its not people´s fault that they are forced into the shitty situation where they have to choose between pest and cholera. |
| Doc | Brett ++ |
| Robin | Stealth point: with Zipcar, we ignored some local tax issues because I believed that by the time it mattered as an issue, we would have built a significant constituency that loved and demanded our product and would support us when brought to the mat on the tax issues. And this is what happened. 3 years after we launched (and didn't pay the Boston $10 car rental tax), Enterprise got fed up and borught us before the AG. We prevailed...AG solved it by saying "$10 transaction" was payable with yearly membership, not hourly rental. |
| Jon L. | The Singularity! |
| Steve S. | I think the wireless end run of a gigantic chess game. The opening pawn move is the "simple stuff" of the radio, the routing, the pilot projects. But one should be thinking many moves ahead to the capital pieces that will come to bear down the road. Political and regulatory assault, intellectual property assault, cut rate below cost pricing / service give away / offers to make you fabulously wealthy by buying you out / etc. |
| Jon L. | The machines are taking over. |
| Nadia E. | isnt there enough food in the world to feed the worlds population? |
| Doc | Robin, did you worry about what ZipCar did to the employees of Hertz and Avis? |
| Jon L. | Jobless recovery. |
| Martin G. | You need to invest in yourself... in advance of a bigger car, a boat, going to Hawaii (Judi excepted). Just because your employer won't let you expense a book, a conference, a trip to see someone interesting, doesn't me you don't get your credit card out. |
| Herman (. | Steve S. : yes LT strategy is adamant, but starting is as well.. |
| Robin | Steve S: exactly. We do look at the longer run in the conference room -- but not overtly. |
| Nadia E. | so why are we not discussing how to harness the net and technology to create a new world. |
| ArtKleiner | Actually, Nadia, there isn't enough food. Not if people in emerging nations start eating meat. |
| Robin | no. I did not. |
| Jon L. | "We do invest in networks." |
| Robin | btw, back of envelope calculations put zipcar 2009 members diminishing car sales by 0.5% in the US. |
| Doc | Brad: Biz Stone wanted to know if Brad's folks had a social mission? No, but they depend on users deciding to participate... So we do have to pay attention. |
| Nurture G. | Nadia - I thought I was talking about that? |
| ArtKleiner | I love the idea that the Telcos are "too big to fail." |
| enoss | a bit culty/kitschy but http://www.amazon.com/Starfish-Spider-Unst… is on point |
| Doc | Brad; We've created a bunch of big companies that are too big to fail. |
| ArtKleiner | 40 years ago AT&T was the largest company on Earth. |
| Anders | actually, all the layoffs also create horisontal service companies to take care not only of the old telco CO buy also the networks of various new players |
| Jon L. | Networks of affiliation - forming into networks of cooperating contractors. |
| Nurture G. | yes Jon |
| Nadia E. | Except for Nurture :) |
| Robin | Anders yes, which is why we need slow change, instead of sticking with status quo and ending up with giant big disruptive change |
| dweinberger | AppStore is a oligarchic meritocracy |
| Nadia E. | ArtKleiner ...http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/sit… |
| Doc | I was too busy listening to what brad said to take notes. But it was cool. Claps deserved. |
| Sep 10 | 5:30 PM |
| Jon L. | It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. |
| Robin | doc, can you now write it? |
| Martin G. | people carry the delusion of corporation as 'mother'. it's not -- there's nothing caring or nurturing there. |
| enoss | I fear for the future of fish. looking forward |
| FrankP | twitter is the crack of social networks... users very passionate about it |
| Martin G. | you can have 'respect for people' |
| Nadia E. | and Judi and Robin and Anders and... |
| Nurture G. | thank goodness it is the end of the world as we knew |
| Nurture G. | it |
| dweinberger | Would anyone here not build a successful end run if it meant that employees at the incumbents would lose jobs? |
| Doc | Robin, not sure. I'd rather ask brad later to get it right. I think it was respectful of the unique contributions every individual can make, and that this amounted to a social mission. but I might have that wrong. |
| Martin G. | my whole career has been automating away jobs... |
| Nadia E. | dweinberger I don´t think so but doesnt it make a world of difference if those of us in the know would help those who are lost in this brve new new economy |
| Robin | DW: is this your new conversation question? |
| Doc | Art: email me with name and address for some issues ... kleiner@booz.com |
| Steve K. | |
| Robin | |
| Steve K. | ooops |
| Doc | woops, art.kleiner@booz.com |
| Judi C. | hand up |
| ArtKleiner | Yes, that's it - art.kleiner@booz.com. Send me the preferred address and we'll send copies. |
| Doc | How many people have been laid off? |
| Judi C. | have a good dinner y'all |
| dweinberger | me |
| Nadia E. | me |
| Anders | has left the room |
| Jon L. | Interesting that a country as small as the United States of America produces such great music. |
| Nadia E. | lol |
| Jane C. | Cheers Judi C. |
| Judi C. | thanks Jane |
| Nurture G. | nope, never laid off, but I keep threatening myself, if I don't get some more initiative.... |
| Steve K. | jon l LOL! |
| Nadia E. | little countries make big music |
| Jon L. | Yeah, Judi, you rock... virtually or live! |
| Sep 10 | 5:35 PM |
| wseltzer | Thanks Judi!! |
| Jon L. | I'm hoping they'll play an acoustic version of In A Gadda Da Vida. |
| Steve K. | laid off 3 people. all cases I fell like I did them a favor. Just not cut out for the work. |
| Nurture G. | Judi, thank you again for sticking with us today! Appreciate your support. |
| Herman (. |
|
| Judi C. | thank you Jon, thank you Wendy! I'm privileged to be in such great company. Thank you all. Thanks David I! |
| Jon L. | Laid off seven, and got laid off behind 'em. |
| Jon L. | Ultimately everybody was laid off. |
| Judi C. | when you hear that big swirling sound in the distance... aim for the drain! |
| Sep 10 | 7:35 PM |
| Anders | So what happened to the Tussle discussion ? |
| Judi C. | Thanks Gardner! |
| Sep 10 | 7:40 PM |
| Judi C. | Anders, they took it outside, or so I hear. |
| Sep 10 | 7:55 PM |
| Herman (. | http://www.dadamotive.com/2009/07/here-com… for a smile |
| Sep 10 | 8:05 PM |
| Jane C. | Do you think Jo'll play "the devil went down to Georgia?" |
| Robin | Herman: what's your email address? |
| Herman (. | |
| Judi C. | I bet he will if you ask him. Hey Fiddle Weed? |
| Sep 10 | 8:10 PM |
| dweinberger | Twitter rants |
| dweinberger | 140 seconds |
| AGoldmanISP | +dw |
| Steve K. | musica! |
| dweinberger | music to rant by |
| Sep 10 | 8:15 PM |
| Doc | When do we get to hear the bass? |
| Jon L. | Brazillionaires. |
| David I. | demonstrating how the chat works |
| Sep 10 | 8:20 PM |
| Judi C. | works well from here |
| Robin | anybody remember the GW Bush joke, the punch line of which was "A brazillion"? |
| Jane C. | Robin ... nope - enlighten me! |
| David I. | Pixinguinha wrote that |
| Ben t. | GW will be your most quoted philosopher for a long time! |
| Jorge | The joke from Bush http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jo… |
| Ben t. | My favourite of his is: "Did you know the French don't even have a word for entrepreneur?" |
| Robin | embaressing. I'm known for bad joke telling. Thanks Jorge: |
| Robin | View paste
|
| Rick | I thought maybe it was "How many women did Bill Clinton chase around the Victoria's Secret?" |
| Jane C. | My fav is the youtube Blair Bush video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nupdcGwIG-g |
| Doc | I remember the Kingston Trio, or Peter Paul and Mary, or somebody, did that. |
| Sep 10 | 8:25 PM |
| Nadia E. | Steve in beret is phat |
| Jon L. | Le Steve |
| Nadia E. | le Steve ze brazillionaire |
| David I. |
|
| enoss | I thought we were making up the whole steve in a beret thing. did he buy one to live up to it or was that just a funky coincidence! |
| Ben t. | I ave ze monopoly on french accent, so regulate me if you want, but i will sue you if you use ze selfsame accent!!! |
| Doc | Shape of things lyrics... http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/k/kingsto… |
| Jon L. | Steve's been wearing that beret all along, didn't you notice? |
| Nadia E. | Rick cen you zend Ben a zeazt end azzist leetur |
| Steve K. | i actually had packed it in a bag willow was bringing down BEFORE the whole beret meme popped up. |
| Steve K. | it is basque. |
| enoss | I like having vocals for the music. nice touch |
| Ben t. | Fancy a game of pelote, Steve? |
| Jane C. | Hmmm .... a basquet case? |
| Steve K. | a game of peyote? sure! |
| Sep 10 | 8:30 PM |
| Ben t. | |
| enoss | very good jane! |
| Ben t. | You americans 'ave to be taught everything about ze world, eh? |
| Anders | Lots of Kilombo: http://www.kilombo.org.uk/ |
| Ben t. | Bighook Haiku: Brazilian Music, Driven by a Rhythmic beat, Fingers on Keyboards |
| Herman (. | Bighook Unpluggeed |
| Steve K. | dahling. forget castro. forget the sugar plantation. forget it all. tonight we dance under the stars! |
| Sep 10 | 8:35 PM |
| Steve K. | fade to black |
| Doc | That was outstanding. |
| dweinberger | Benoit will be playing the 'armonica. |
| dweinberger | Great. Now we all have to put on cowboy hats. |
| enoss | I feel like I want spaghetti-o's |
| Herman (. | where are my wooden shoes? |
| Steve K. | any chance we could get s little bit of air in the room? |
| Robin | if cowboy hats were GW, what kind of hat is Obama? |
| Doc | Bass! |
| Robin | How can a Frenchman play harmonica like that? He needs his cowboy hat! |
| Steve K. | the reason the french didn't invent the blues? they have healthcare... |
| Jane C. | wow ... cool |
| Steve K. | we need a duet of benoit and the harmonica/accordian thingie |
| Sep 10 | 8:40 PM |
| Rick | "Still Ridin' That Copper Blues" |
| AGoldmanISP | the bass rocks |
| Steve K. | rick - LOL. "she took the fiber, left me the copper to ride..." |
| dweinberger | Les Notches |
| enoss | that is IT |
| enoss | it works on a number of levels |
| Martin G. | no, no, they took the copper and left me only this unbundleable fibre |
| Martin G. | non-unbundleable even |
| Rick | "My Baby Won't Mesh With Me Anymore" |
| dweinberger | My baby won't mesh with me anymore |
| Robin | the Marseilaise blues |
| Rick | sorry, "Mesh Around" |
| Martin G. | did you know that the harmonica and telephone are technologically related? |
| dweinberger | martin: both blow? |
| enoss | they both are related to the blues? |
| Steve K. | martin. how? feel like this will lead to a knowck knowck joke |
| Martin G. | no, via the reed harmonic telegraph |
| Steve K. | knock knock |
| Sep 10 | 8:45 PM |
| Martin G. | (no relation to DPR) |
| dweinberger | if you place all the reed harmonic telegraphs end to end, would they increase options? |
| Jane C. | le tricolore blues! |
| Jon L. | |
| Jon L. | The Reed Harmonic Telegraph, above. |
| dweinberger | you realize there is something odd about backchanneling to music, right? All I'm saying is that this is not normal. |
| enoss | it is normal at every les notches concert |
| Steve K. | dave. have you looked around you? |
| enoss | sort of like their mosh pit |
| Steve K. | the stasi wouldnt even bother before they shot us all |
| Steve K. | obi benoit kenobe |
| Sep 10 | 8:50 PM |
| Jane C. | willow the wisp |
| Steve K. | the much better half |
| Rick | david, your financial analyst is wearing a beanie. |
| dweinberger | Gary plays harmonica, right? |
| Robin | 2000 out of 300 million...pretty nice |
| enoss | we call that bed |
| Sep 10 | 8:55 PM |
| Jon L. | "We wouldn't have brains if cells couldn't crawl." |
| Ben t. | Thanks for the comments, guys. Glas some recognize our national anthem. |
| Judi C. | Gary: "creating transforming experiences" |
| Ben t. | And Martin, the thing about harmonicas, is that if you don't blow, you suck! |
| Jon L. | LOL |
| Rick | We wouldn't have the pub crawl if we had brains. |
| Ben t. | Oh, that was David actually. Smartass... |
| Jon L. | MBL took a leadership role 120 yrs ago. Not fewer than 53 Nobel Prize winners since. |
| Jane C. | Do they all get 5 free pizzas? |
| dweinberger | I held a chocolate one once. Delicious. |
| Rick | out of, like, 10 million Nobels, right? |
| Sep 10 | 9:00 PM |
| dweinberger | they don't glow. they sweat. why can't we just come out and say it? |
| Judi C. | it's not /that/ they sweat. it's /what/ they sweat. |
| dweinberger | cat flashlights! |
| dweinberger | cat "neon" signs! |
| njames | count me in |
| David I. | wait til the next generation of teenagers get ahold of this glowing protein! |
| wseltzer | (g)LOLcats |
| dweinberger | wendy ++ |
| Judi C. | heh |
| dweinberger | Reading in the dark with glowing cat kindles! |
| AGoldmanISP | glowing eyelashes? |
| Sep 10 | 9:05 PM |
| Steve K. | would you nail the cats to the bedpost? |
| Sep 10 | 9:05 PM |
| dweinberger | BH is like TED attended only by the speakers. |
| Rick | He wasn't wet, he glowed. |
| dweinberger | it came from uBio! |
| Nadia E. | e-glow |
| Jon L. | E.O. Wilson called for an encyclopedia of all life in 2003. |
| dweinberger | among the many cool things about uBio is that it lets you work with whatever taxonomy you want (pretty much), using whatever nomenclature for species that you want. Very miscellaneous in its approach. |
| dweinberger | (uBio was a MBL project.) |
| Nadia E. | thinking about how one would study range of biodiversity |
| Jon L. | We're in the sixth great extinction of record, the anthropomorphic extinction, which we're driving. |
| wseltzer | before we squish them, we should know who we're squishing |
| Rick | EOW also talked about the concept of "consilience," or unity of all knowledge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience |
| Steve K. | "its the anthrompomorphic extinction. we a driving it" Said as an aside.... YOIKS |
| Jon L. | I couldn't say it better, Wendy. |
| Nadia E. | what if our body was like an pen api and our biosignals were all online |
| Nadia E. | open |
| AGoldmanISP | nadia: we fear being programmable |
| Nadia E. | what if one could donate one´s biosignal records after ones death |
| Jon L. | Gigantic database collected in a standard way to be aggregated. |
| Nadia E. | fr integrity and insurance reasons |
| dweinberger | there are 10M different names for species |
| Sep 10 | 9:10 PM |
| Rick | to be perfectly clear, google has absolutely no interest in this project. |
| Nadia E. | "we sing the body electric" |
| dweinberger | Sure, Rick, but what about the Google Bugs Settlement that gives Google a virtual monopoly on insect species? |
| Jon L. | MBL responsible for the informatics engine. |
| Steve K. | c'mn rick. we know you are selling little teeny text ads for sea babies next to the entry for "brine shrimp" |
| Rick | That's just you and your flies in the ointment, David. |
| Jon L. | Google has your DNA, David. |
| Nadia E. | very cool |
| Rick | Yes! 2 for 2. |
| dweinberger | yes, but you don;t want to know how it got it, jonl. |
| Nadia E. | ++eol |
| dweinberger | indeed. EOL rocks the species. |
| AGoldmanISP | exactly -- david _is_ google DNA |
| Jon L. | Gary calls Google out. |
| Doc | http://twitter.com/eoflife ... now following. |
| Rick | Gary just made me go "Bing!" |
| Ben t. | Bugs 1 Google 0 |
| Sep 10 | 9:15 PM |
| Steve K. | scary thing is that "EOL" means "end of life" in the tech worold as in "we plan to EOL (kill) the product in 2 years." |
| wseltzer | EOL principles: Open source code, open access to information, CC licenses. |
| Rick | Bugs don't have a private life. |
| Doc | creative commons licenses, minimally restrictive, open, free, no copyright limitations... |
| dweinberger | omg. EOL knows I visit the millipede page every night at 11? Gulp! |
| Jon L. | |
| Jon L. | Argiope, the featured spider. |
| dweinberger | Problem at EOL: The peacocks keep editing their page, removing all the "proud as" language. |
| Jon L. | Scott dutifully types a comment on the site while Jon waits for the Nobel Prize. |
| wseltzer | "The most difficult part of the project so far is the social structure." |
| wseltzer | MBL: nimble and small so as to be able to respond to unique opportunities. |
| Ben t. | It's very exhaustive and very open: even *man* is in there! |
| Sep 10 | 9:20 PM |
| Jon L. | Yeti seems to be missing. |
| Sep 10 | 9:20 PM |
| dweinberger | they recently opened it up for more user contributions, i believe. |
| Nadia E. | crap, encyclofoodia.com was taken |
| Steve K. | we are like TED, but better looking, more stylishly dressed, and with a certain je ne sais quois... |
| AGoldmanISP | yeti.com is a real site |
| Jane C. | The world's best Aunt collection? |
| Ben t. | Are ya callin' me a je ne sais quoi, Steve??? |
| Nadia E. | and we wear berets |
| Nadia E. | i just registered tedopedia.com |
| David I. | Benoit, you've got a certain je ne sais quoi, but I can't quite figure out what it is . . . |
| dweinberger | someday, each of us will have our own opedia. |
| Doc | Isn't tedopedia an insect species? |
| Judi C. | Nadia, I bet you have quite a collection. |
| Nadia E. | yepp |
| Doc | Elliot, think they should register the domain names for every possible species? Or is that already part of the plan? |
| Nadia E. | cookiescode.com, chococanel.com, sharingiscaring.com |
| Ben t. | David, that's a belly, you just don't know it cause you don't have one that's big enough (belly, that is!) |
| Jon L. | How about nadiapedia.com? |
| Nadia E. | digiphrenia.com, meandmyselves.com |
| Sep 10 | 9:25 PM |
| Nadia E. | who the ;";eR;;!!!! registered nadiapedia? |
| Doc | I used to own bullforge.com. Also halfacat.com. |
| enoss | hmm doc that sounds like a goldmine! |
| Doc | Oh, also celeprosy.com |
| AGoldmanISP | yeah well I know who has goldman.com and I know I'm not getting it from them |
| Rick | bigfattykitty.com. |
| Nadia E. | manyme.com |
| enoss | to see a portion of my list go here http://yummynames.com/ . my list is searchable! |
| dweinberger | most popular name: Skipper |
| enoss | alex you know we love our surname domain names |
| Nadia E. | and now domainopedia.info |
| Rick | i heard madoff.com just became available. |
| Nadia E. | taxonomy and domain names |
| dweinberger | driven to drink, so the answer is the _bar_ code? Suspicious. |
| Steve K. | dave LOL |
| Nadia E. | lol |
| AGoldmanISP | yes enoss, but you don't have goldman.com because goldman sachs does. I'd rather negotiate with you than with GS |
| Sep 10 | 9:30 PM |
| enoss | we do have goldman.net . and you can't have it! |
| Doc |
|
| Nadia E. | very cool, how do they get people to contribute and how many contributors are there/ contributions/ month |
| Steve K. | at some point after this becomes a huge buearaucratic enterprise they will be inventi8ng new species to keep their funding... |
| AGoldmanISP | yes but I could get alex.goldman.net -- but not alex.goldman.com |
| wseltzer | "edit this species" |
| Jon L. | Wikipedia's editors would reject the entries as not notable. |
| enoss | it is yours if you will use it |
| AGoldmanISP | this aggregation of information should get easier -- there are serious enterprise software tools being built to take in info |
| Nadia E. | How about goldmanalex.com? |
| AGoldmanISP | hmmm good ideas |
| dweinberger | Wikipedia certainly should/could link out to EoL. |
| Jon L. | Actually Wikipedia editors would be drooling over this. |
| Nadia E. | whats more credible, crowds or academix? |
| Jon L. | And it would be good to have two versions, one open and one locked down. |
| AGoldmanISP | anyone hear of stream data processing from IBM? Or salesforce.com's service cloud link to twitter? or the latest in business information? |
| Nadia E. | cracademics.com |
| Sep 10 | 9:35 PM |
| Jon L. | Jean should rant about thrivability. |
| Nadia E. | science on speed |
| dweinberger | david |
| dweinberger | david |
| Sep 10 | 9:40 PM |
| njames | chill, talk, sleep |
| Judi C. | y'all look tired! |
| Anders | What happened to the thrievable tuzzle? |
| njames | a little random, but I'm looking for a "young person" (under 30?) to speak about Freedom of Expression for the Internet Governance Forum USA forum in DC on Oct 2. Any leads- pls find me. |
← Wednesday, September 9 | Thrivability Chat | Friday, September 11 →
BigHook Chat
People in this transcript
- AGoldmanISP
- Anders
- ArtKleiner
- Ben the Frog
- Brad Burnham
- Brough
- David I
- David Isenberg
- David P. Reed
- Doc
- dweinberger
- enoss
- Fiddle Weed
- FrankP
- Gardner Miller
- Herman (Citynet)
- Jane C
- Joanne Hovis
- Jon Lebkowsky
- Jorge
- Judi Clark
- Martin Geddes
- Nadia EL-Imam
- njames
- Nurture Girl
- Pepper
- Peter Cochrane
- Retired Person
- Rick
- Robin
- Sascha Meinrath
- Scott Bradner
- Steve Kamman
- Steve Smith
- Tom Freeburg
- wseltzer
