After reviewing a political map presented proportionally to electoral votes, I can only think a few thoughts. First, California is so damn big, in so many ways. Second, I do hope that predictions of “blue” victory work out. Third, my vote might “count” for more if it were not in California. Fourth, applying maps to statistics can be an even more compelling way to lie (ref: Benjamin Disraeli).
But I’m not moving, still.
(to the tune of “I want my TV” … think Sting pitching in for Mark Knopfler and the rest of Dire Straits)
Robert Andrews weighs in on the vigorous debate (hope that link works… the online-news mailing list archive is not easily linkable) with his thoughts on registration frustration.
My response? He’s proposing something that goes against corporate and human nature.
Corporations are most often focused on a winner-take-all scenario, which in the media space is increasingly unlikely. By using a centralized registration, the publications which attract the audience lower the barriers to entry for other publications. Yes, the converse is also true, that new audiences may be more likely to jump over the registration hurdle — but the tradeoff is unclear.
On the reader side, I don’t want to trust indiscriminately. Brands/sites do matter. I’ll take the risk of providing information to an individual brand, but I’m not eager to open the kimono, data-wise, where I can’t control the distribution beyond the single source. In the offline world, I don’t have that kind of control, at least here in the United States, and it’s aggravating. In the online world, I believe things are slowly (very slowly) going in the right direction on the privacy front, and helping educate consumers about the offline practices that have remained shadowy to most.
Don’t you think that the TypeKey opposition outside the SixApart world is remarkably similar to that voice about Passport? I’d argue it’s for similar reasons… a market leader proposing a “universal” system where they got to set the rules. Even if the leader bends over backwards to quell concerns about their motives, it’s an uphill battle. Note: SixApart doesn’t have nearly the clout of a Microsoft, despite their joint appearance (as sponsors) in the BlogOn “Business Transparency” panel.
I think the cyber-utopian view that each individual should control their own identity, in a federated system, is certainly the most compelling to readers. I don’t believe that Project Liberty will meet this goal, despite being aimed at the proper problem, because the data is not under the reader’s control at all times, just access to that data. Intellectually, I agree that those could be (should be?) one and the same, but until the US government follows some of the better EU policies on this, I’m not encouraged.
All this discussion and energy, of course, is useful, though. I’d appreciate being alerted to other efforts in this field. Will something grow and spread like HTML or RSS? That’s what we can all hope for.
Testing something… sorry about the nonsense.
…but I’ll hope that my credit cards are not yet among the public. With a name like John Roberts, I’m a ripe enough target for identity theft as it is. Article is at CNET News.com, by Rob Lemos.
Looks like a doozy of a map collection, especially since it needs specialized viewers… GIS is a whole technology subset I know very little about, but the end product is fascinating. The ever-increasing detail in which we think we can represent something is fractal; the deeper you dive, the more you realize you can never know the bottom. Go, Zeno, go.
Jonathan Delacour provides an Australian perspective to all the flag-waving in an American election year. Lots of refreshing viewpoints and facts, with a few jolts along the way, like this:
the United States:
…accounts for 5 per cent of the world’s population, 20 per cent of the world economy, and fully 50 per cent of global defence spending. It is structured for war.
In the 228 years since it declared independence, the US has made 200 military interventions abroad, says the Congressional Research Service, an average of one every 14 months.
The citation here is actually a quote from Peter Hartchner in the Sydney Morning Herald, but Delacour threads these facts and other ideas into an essay of import. Thanks to Tim Bray for the pointer.
Next time you want to complain about your job (assuming you have one), pick up Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The author spends one year trying to live on minimum-wage jobs alone and can’t pull it off. So much for the minimum wage actually adding up to something that really is a minimum. The book isn’t preachy, and doesn’t have answers to the dilemmas it underlines, but it’s a reminder of the daily struggle to survive that consumes all too many. I often feel fortunate to be where I am with family and employment, but this reporting tweaks you more than is comfortable… which is as it should be.
I read The Bourne Identity when it first came out, in 1980. I devoured it. The movie, 22 years later wasn’t bad, and I’ll be sure to see the new one. I’ve read many of Robert Ludlum’s other books, including the very funny The Road to Gandolfo, so I was pre-disposed to grab Ludlum’s The Janson Directive in the airport ten days ago. I was happy to see that (a) I had not read one of his books and (b) that Ludlum is still alive… but he’s not. He died in 2001, and The Janson Directive was published in 2002. Apparently, he has a few more finished books that are still awaiting publishing. I wonder how finished they were? After completing The Janson Directive, I’ll sum it up as a reasonably fast-paced rewrite of the basic Bourne Identity plot, without the amnesia. A fun read, but not memorable.
For a quick laugh, read the FAQ at the Ludlum Books website. One of the frequently asked questions is “May I please get a signed copy of one of Mr. Ludlum’s books?” Remember, folks, he’s dead! (That’s not their answer, but it should be.)
On a cross-country weekend without the kids (a story for another post), I enjoyed Moneyball by Michael Lewis. In answering a “simple” question — how does a poorer team, the Oakland Athletics, win so many baseball games — Lewis tells the story of orthodoxy and upheaval in a small, very public world: professional baseball. To crudely summarize an interesting book, Lewis finds that those managing baseball teams, for the most part, fail to examine the evidence and, instead, believe their own eyes: a mistake. Long-held opinions and beliefs about which type of player (age, build, style, etc.) will succeed lead most teams in one direction. The Oakland As, under the leadership of Billy Beane, clear the smoke from their eyes and look at the data, rather than the player. Zigging, when everyone else is zagging, proves quite successful. Not coincidentally, it annoys the heck out of those who are zagging.
Tim Bray read the book a couple of months ago, and made several connections, but these words bear citation:
…it’s fascinating (particularly towards the end) as a study of how a closed belief system reacts to the introduction of fact-backed heresy. Since the human race in general and technology profession in particular tend to the development of closed belief systems, this I think will find a lot of resonance with a lot of readers.
To complete the religious references… Amen.
Thanks to its author, its controversial message, its very popular arena, its excerpt in Sports Illustrated several months ago, this book and its story are fairly well known, whether you’ve read the book or not. A week after reading the book, I realized one reason I found the tale so compelling: its parallels in the two-way controversy/fascination between media and blogging.
The parallels are not perfect. Professional media is a more diverse group than those managing professional baseball clubs. There is no agreed-upon method for “keeping score,” which lets arguments simmer without the support of facts. In contrast, it’s hard to argue with a baseball team’s record… although assigning cause and effect keeps many busy.
Bloggers and the media are not in the direct opposition in which they are someimes placed, especially when you realize that many in the professional media are also among the more widely read bloggers, whether they blog professionally, personally, or both. After all, blogging is about writing, and few have more practice in writing regularly than “the media.” So, what do folks write about, on both sides?
The vision of what is the “right way” to practice Journalism occupies some in the media, especially in judgment of whether blogging is journalism or Journalism or neither or both. In turn, some bloggers appreciate the chance to claim that this is all new (it’s not), that it’s not about being journalists (fine), and that the world is going to change radically because of blogging (yet to be seen… I’d bet it won’t).
Some bloggers seem interested in storming the (perceived) castle of “established” media, and defining blogging in opposition to “big media.” While I love the underdog as much as the next person, let’s not forget two things. First, people don’t change as fast as technology, so companies (media or otherwise) and society are rarely forced to change at the pace desired/wished for by those who would benefit from a ‘revolution.” Second, big media has been under attack for a lot longer than blogging, and I don’t know if there is a castle to storm (mental image of Billy Crystal from The Princess Bride: “Have fun storming the castle.”).
I believe the web, in its enabling of real-time text publishing, is still the catalyst which all media are still reacting to. It’s only been a decade. Blogging is just the newest form of real-time text publishing, but it’s not radically different today than when Mosaic made newsgroups come alive. Yes, it’s easier, and that’s not to be underestimated, but that’s changed how many people are practicing these arts, not what they are doing. Quantity does matter, but quantity of production hasn’t changed the human limits on consumption. Do you have more time than you did ten years ago?
I’m emphasizing the text part of this shift deliberately.
First, radio and then television brought immediacy to the world of information long ago. The web brought a combination of immediacy and persistence which If I don’t listen to the radio or watch TV at the exact instant that someone wants to tell me something or share something new, I miss it. I can’t go back. TiVo and the like are changing that equation, but it’s still rudimentary, in that’s it is driven by my decisions before the event, not my interest after the fact. I can’t decide now, two days after Lance Armstrong waltzed into Paris for his sixth Tour de France win, that I’d like to watch the final kilometers of the mountain stages where the Tour was decided. We’re headed towards a world where audio and video may share the characteristics of text publishing, but we’re likely still a decade away from marrying immediacy and persistence seamlessly.
Another reason text matters is the skillset is more widely distributed. We may all have camera videophones in five years, continuously streaming to the net (David Brin and transparency come to mind). But straight images or words don’t automatically convey ideas. Moving pictures, pictures, and sounds may convey emotion with a power that only the best writers can match. Ideas, however, are more fungible in the written word. A reader can scan, review, absorb, ignore text at his or her own pace, not the speed (and time) chosen by the producer. Maybe it’s the lowest common denominator, but when people’s time is the currency, the power of consumer control should never be underestimated.
Side note: when RSS is described as “TiVo for text,” I find something awry… as noted previously. RSS is more like a flare shooting in the night, alerting all who might care and, importantly, only those might care that there’s is something new to consume. The only people’s time I ‘spend’ — and, I hope, don’t waste — is those whom choose to give me their attention, at their leisure.
I’m guilty of mixing too many themes and ideas here, but I’m not going to take the time to rework this version any more. I’m sure I’ll read more cogent thoughts on this in the future, and maybe I’ll say “Aha” then. I did enjoy Moneyball, even if I’ve stretched Lewis’s point too far in an attempt to make one of my own. Much better than The New, New Thing, and more measured than Liar’s Poker, if not as exciting and brash.
Last night’s BlogOn panel clearly was only to whet the appetite of the crowd, so I’m looking forward to today. While I and other other panelists did need to prepare, beyond bringing our brains and tongues (and hopefully connecting the two), the panel didn’t feel much different from other public discussions. We were really only getting started, and lots of the audience wanted to get involved… but I think Chris and the organizers had a schedule to try and keep, and energy to pour into today.
One unfortunate part of the discussion was the usual broad brush strokes. Various people, most notably Jason McCabe Calacanis of WeblogsInc, tried to pretend that “bloggers” can be grouped together as a class of information or people. That’s exactly what bloggers are not. The whole point is individual voices getting a platform on which to stand, and then individual talents take over from there. Some bloggers are interesting, some are … less so. Some bloggers focus on a niche, others wander broadly across whatever grabs their fancy. The makeup of the panel encouraged a bit of rivalry, deliberately I’m sure, between “big media” and “bloggers” — but it’s not in opposition, and the lines are crossed every which way. And the positions change pretty radically pretty quickly.
As usual, meeting the people whose blogs you’ve read is always interesting, and I wish the attendee list we were all given had people’s blogs. I’m more appreciative of those blogs that have a picture of the blogger on them now… but no promises about adding my own any time soon.
Here are a few posts I found about last night, via Feedster: