[joho] JOHO - May 11, 2002
- From: "David Weinberger" <self@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <joho@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 12:13:31 -0400
JOHO
Journal of the
Hyperlinked Organization
========================================
May 11, 2002
Editor: David Weinberger (self@xxxxxxxxxxx)
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+--------------------------------------------------+
| CONTENTS |
| |
| POPE ON THE INTERNET: The Church's message on the|
| Internet gets it surprisingly right ... and |
| unsurprisingly wrong. |
| |
| BOMBASTIC TRUTH: Christopher Locke's new book |
| is brave personally and... |
| |
| GETTING PERSONAL: ...the personal on the Web |
| connects in a way that broadcast can't. |
| |
| THE GIFT OF LYING: Honesty is overrated. |
| |
| STOP ME BEFORE I'M INCONSISTENT AGAIN!: Noting |
| the inconsistency of the previous articles |
| |
| WALKING THE WALK: the Navy gets all KM-y. |
| |
| COOL TOOL: Mitch Kapor may have something for |
| us, and Kanguru storage. |
| |
| NOW PLAYING: The games people, um, I , play. |
| |
| INTERNETCETERA: CIO survey. |
| |
| BEIJING AND PERU ESCAPE HOSTAGE PLOT: Two slip |
| past the Microsoft sentries. |
| |
| WHY SEARCH ENGINES SUCK: Except Google. |
| |
| VIRTUAL EVERYTHING: On the heels of the virtual |
| keyboard, our labs have been busy... |
| |
| THE ANALS OF MARKETING: Why marketing sucks. |
| |
| LINKS: Your contributions, outstanding as always |
| |
| EMAIL, SCURRILOUS ATTACKS AND PREMEDITATED |
| INSULTS: Must get more email! |
| |
| BOGUS CONTEST:Kids Versions |
+--------------------------------------------------+
+--------------------------------------------------+
| IT'S A SMALL PIECES WORLD AFTER ALL |
| |
| Some reviews have started to come in. It seems |
| that you either think the book is entertaining |
| but New Age-y or you think it's entertaining |
| and important. (New Age-y??? Oh, where did I go |
| wrong?) I should keep an updated list at |
| www.smallpieces.com. But do I? No. |
+--------------------------------------------------+
+--------------------------------------------------+
| APRIL IN CHINA |
| |
| I managed to spend most of the month in China, |
| speaking four times for IBM (once in Thailand |
| to be technically accurate). During the second |
| trip over, I took Nathan, our 11-year-old, and |
| the two of us wrote a weblog for the Boston |
| Globe's www.boston.com. |
| |
| But I'm back now and am over the jetlag. Sorry |
| for the long gap between issues. Blame it on |
| those damn Chinese: |
| http://travel.boston.com/views/weblogs/china |
+--------------------------------------------------+
We Blog Every Day
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger
-------------------------------------------
THE POPE ON THE INTERNET
I was about to send this issue when I read the
Pope's message about the Internet. I hereby
acknowledge I am a Jew and thus am using up some
of the precious world supply of chutzpah in
responding to the Pope.
* * *
The Vatican put out a message today. Its heart is
this:
The Internet is certainly a new "forum"
understood in the ancient Roman sense of that
public space where politics and business were
transacted, where religious duties were fulfilled
where much of the social life of the city took
place, and where the best and the worst of human
nature was on display. It was a crowded and
bustling urban space, which both reflected the
surrounding culture and created a culture of its
own. This is no less true of cyberspace, which is
as it were a new frontier opening up at the
beginning of this new millennium. Like the new
frontiers of other times, this one too is full of
the interplay of danger and promise, and not
without the sense of adventure which marked other
great periods of change. For the Church the new
world of cyberspace is a summons to the great
adventure of using its potential to proclaim the
Gospel message. This challenge is at the heart of
what it means at the beginning of the millennium
to follow the Lord's command to "put out into the
deep": Duc in altum! (Lk 5:4).
The Pope is way ahead of many others, including
Leading Businesses, in seeing the Net as a new
public place -- actually, a new place for a new
public -- rather than as a lower-cost broadcast
medium. And yet the broadcast model of evangelism
still holds sway: the Church is in the business of
propagating a "message," albeit put quite
beautifully ("out into the deep"). That explains why
the Pope sees the Internet primarily as a way of
making initial contact: "How does the Church lead
from the kind of contact made possible by the
Internet to the deeper communication demanded by
Christian proclamation?" There is not much
recognition that the Net needs to become not just
the knock on the door but also part of the
continuing faithful relationships we humans have
with one another. Nor is there any hint that the
Internet threatens the hierarchical organization so
evident in certain religions we could name,
naturally favoring a more rabbinic approach in which
seekers congregate around those who
demonstrate learning and wisdom and faith.
While the Pope concludes by urging "the whole Church
bravely to cross this new threshold, to put out into
the deep of the Net," he does so in the context of
the Internet as something that "causes billions of
images to appear on millions of computer monitors
around the planet." The implication ultimately seems
to be that the Church needs to deliver the right
content, metaphorically replacing pictures of Anna
Kournikova with images of Jesus.
The fact that the Net allows conversations as well
as the delivery of content shows up as a danger:
The Internet offers extensive knowledge, but it
does not teach values...Moreover, as a forum in
which practically everything is acceptable and
almost nothing is lasting, the Internet favours a
relativistic way of thinking and sometimes feeds
the flight from personal responsibility and
commitment.
Relativism need not be what we learn from our
encounters with others. Respect and open-mindedness
are more likely given the fact that the Internet as
a technology teaches us one value more deeply than
any other: the joy of being connected ... which in
some parlances is more accurately termed love.
The Vatican's enthusiasm for the Internet as a tool
for world peace and evangelical outreach is
impressive. But this papal communication is oddly
mute about the implications of connecting each of us
-- even, eventually, the meekest and humblest -- one
to another, unmediated and direct. To one outside of
the Catholic church and thus unreliable as a
commentator, it feels like an important moment of
denial in an otherwise surprisingly warm embrace.
Happy World Communication Day.
[Thanks to Peter Kaminski
(www.istori.com/peterkaminski/) for pointing me to
the Pope's communication today.]
-------------------------------------------
BOMBASTIC TRUTH
NOTE: It's not possible for me to write an
objective review of "The Bombast Transcripts:
Rants and Screeds of RageBoy" which collects the
best of EGR into one convenient hardbound volume.
EGR is Christopher Locke's 'zine which consists of
equal parts industry insight, comedy and reader
abuse: www.rageboy.com/index2.html . Chris is a
good friend and mocks me at several points in his
book. So, objectivity is out the window. But,
that's conveniently the topic of the JOHO article
following this one.
Christopher Locke is a brave writer. Despite the
book's subtitle, this is Chris' book as much as it
is Rageboy's, and not because Chris is the person
behind the persona. The Bombast Transcripts is
RageBoy and Chris Locke by turns. It's RageBoy
interviewing Mr. Ed (yes, the horse) about ecommerce
and postmodernism and RageBoy ranting about the
demonic master he served (known to the rest of us as
IBM). But it's also Chris trusting us with his
heart, as well as with his art. It's Chris falling
in love. For real. As in love poetry:
sitting in the lobby
of the Grand Wailea
there is no inside or outside.
the sky comes right through
it's a breeze.
everywhere clouds
water flowers
one world continuous
no edges.
so much
so much has happened here
and on the way to this place
which has taken a lifetime
to arrive at.
...
And there's Chris also writing in a lovely way about
the Buddhist prayer flags on Mt. Everest. And
there's Chris reporting on his trip to Denmark in
which we feel him falling in love, but just for a
moment, with one of the organizers of the event that
brought him over. It's in that essay that he tells
us flat out what we realize we've been waiting for
him to say all along:
What's going on has nothing to do with ecommerce
or broadband or any of that. Those are just tools.
Like the horses we painted in the caves at
Lascaux, like the bone axes and bows we made, the
religions and mythologies we invented, the
literatures, arts, intellectual disciplines. Just
tools. What they are for is to help us fall in
love with the world again, and again, and again
forever.
The Web is the sound of us falling in love with the
world again. RageBoy is just tough love.
"The Bombast Transcripts" is a tour de force. It is
as right about the Internet as anyone has been. But
that story is entwined with Chris' own. As he's
throwing acid in IBM's face, he's also invoking his
months of meditation, his decades of debauchery, his
years of geekhood. "Bombast" risks everything in
order to be true. Chris is willing to embarrass
himself and to embarrass his readers if that's the
way to say what's needful. No one will like all of
this book but if you can't feel the gust of truth
blowing through it, then, well, may RageBoy take
your soul.
-------------------------------------------
GETTING PERSONAL
A stranger's just a friend you haven't
met - The Simpsons' upbeat ending to "A
Streetcar Named Desire: The Musical"
Something remarkable is going on at Chris Locke's
newsletter, EGR [1], because something remarkable is
going on with Chris. Chris has broken up with
Laurie, the love of his life. What does "love of his
life" mean? It means that Laurie was his great
flaming love twenty years ago and they reconnected
two years ago. A few weeks ago Chris said some
things that were strong enough to bust 'em up, and
he's been miserable ever since. Actually,
"miserable" is too narrow a word. He's been beating
on emotion's shores like a year's worth of weather
rolled into a day.
Why is this any of your business? It's not, of
course. Yet it's there as if it were. That's what's
remarkable.
This is not the first time in our history that a
writer has shared his passions and his pains in
public. It's not even the first time that it's been
done in relative real time. (It may be the first
time a lovelorn author has asked his readers to spam
his ladyfair with imploring letters, however.) But
it's somehow not as voyeuristic as it should be, for
the line between what we keep private and what we
make public is becoming fuzzier. It's also more
painful than voyeurism allows; Mike O'Dell says (in
an email) that Chris is "peeling his hide off in
public so we can hear him scream." It hurts.
Take someone who doesn't have RageBoy's penchant for
laying himself out as his own best argument: Halley
Suitt [2]. Halley is normal the way the rest of us are
normal (i.e., not the way RB isn't). Yet she wrote
frankly and carefully in her weblog (Halleys
Comment) about her father as he was dying. In the
past, this is is the type of stuff we might share
with a close friend, but Halley posted it for all to
see. Why expose this to strangers? As we all know,
intimacy isn't a consequence of friendship, it is
the cause of friendship. The strangers who read
Halley's moving comments become Halley's friends.
(And, by the way, for a normal person, Halley's
pretty remarkable.)
Of course intimacy doesn't have to be about love
and death, although those are damn fine topics.
Mike Golby [3] writes a blog from South Africa where he
reflects on issues of race and prejudice, knowing
he's skateboarding through a minefield. A couple
have blown up on him. He refuses to stop talking
about the truths closest to him.
So what's the difference between these blogs and
'zines online and old-style confessional articles?
It's not just the immediacy of it. The old
publishing model has us writing to a faceless mass
of readers while the new one has us writing to
faces, albeit faces we haven't seen yet. The form of
speech and the topics are direct not as a rhetorical
device but because the connection is real: a line
connecting us, not a gap of space and time through
which waves propagate. We don't feel that we're
shipping content from us to others. We're not
publishing, we're not broadcasting. We're
connecting.
* * *
[UNWRAP THESE URLS as necessary]
[1] Chris Locke's EGR:
http://www.rageboy.com/index2.html
http://www.topica.com/lists/egr
[2] Halley Suitt's blog about her father's death:
http://halleyscomment.blogspot.com/?/2002_04_07_halleyscomment_archive.h
tml
[3] Mike Golby's blog:
http://pagecount.blogspot.com/
Jennifer Balderama's blog about her father:
http://nonsense-verse.blogspot.com/?/2001_12_23_nonsense-verse_archive.h
tml
-------------------------------------------
THE GIFT OF LYING
"Now Marge, it takes two people to lie: One to
tell the lie and one to listen to it"
- Homer Simpson
Liars everywhere. A Pulitzer prize winner turns out
to have lied to his classes about being in the
Vietnam war. A congressman may have lied about
having sex with an intern. A local candidate was
caught lying to avoid repaying a student loan. If
you didn't know any better, you'd think that by and
large 21st century Americans are the most truthful
people in history, we're so shocked and outraged
that someone might lie to advance his interests.
We've developed a zero tolerance policy for lying.
But of course we all lie all the time, every day,
about, well, everything. We shade our resumes, we
exaggerate our daily exploits -- heck, I once lied
to a telemarketer. So why are we now so surprised at
the revelation that politicians, among others, lie?
That used to be taken as the foundation of their
character.
It's not just the old Puritanism that this country
never really escaped: angelic standards we apply to
humans to make us feel superior to those who have
faltered. There's something more disturbing about
this. Our social interactions are so complex and
rich, with so many motivations and fears and desires
thrown together in an unruly stew of colliding
interests that lying in all its variations is an
inextricable part of being human together.
People aren't liars *alone.* Lying is a social
activity. The desire to limit us to saying true
things is a desire to simplify our social nature.
Truth comes in short, declarative statements, but
our social lives are long threads with tangled
strands and so much reflection and refraction from
what I meant to what you wanted to hear that if we
only said what we know to be true, we would be as
interesting to talk to as ants laying down pheromone
trails. A zero tolerance policy for lying if
successful would make our time together more like a
prison sentence than like a shared life.
So, sure, punish the liars who do real damage to
others, but don't act as if lying were a sin
performed occasionally by nasty other people. We
humans lie, and we're better for it.
-------------------------------------------
STOP ME BEFORE I'M INCONSISTENT AGAIN!
Oooh, it seems inconsistent to have two articles
about the personal nature of the Web and then one
about how everyone lies. But that's only if we
accept that to be personal is to tell the
unvarnished truth. There's a reason we invented
varnish.
+--------------------------------------------------+
| MIDDLE WORLD RESOURCES |
+--------------------------------------------------+
WALKING THE WALK
CIO Mag. (May) has an interesting case study by
Stephanie Overby of the Naval Sea Systems Command's
experience putting in place a knowledge management
system. NAVSEA "engineers, builds and supports the
entire U.S. Navy fleet," with more than 130
acquisition programs. Because it takes so long to
build a multi- million piece of metal that floats,
there was a special need for continuity of
experience. So, they identified 16 "best practices"
(i.e., processes that work) to share among its
45,000 employees. But gathering the information
proved difficult because many employees didn't want
to give up their "personal" knowledge. They were
eventually persuaded to comply; that's why ships
have yardarms. To convince them that there was
benefit to following the best practices, NAVSEA
introduced the practices one at a time to spread the
pain across time. But, they failed to quantify the
various savings, so when the top brass looked at the
$65,000 it was costing to KM-ize each best practice,
they balked. The program has been frozen with only 7
practices entered into the KM system.
Meta-best-practice: Gather supporting data when you
work on your best practices.
My conclusion: Don't ever let a single measure --
e.g., the cost -- determine your judgment.
COOL TOOL
This tool doesn't exist yet. Mitch Kapor, the
founder of Lotus and cofounder of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org), is working on an
open source competitor to Outlook. He and his team,
which includes Andy Hertzfeld from the original Mac
team, are starting with a blank piece of paper and
are designing an application that -- they promise --
will do a better job of managing the details that
manage your life: calendar, contacts, etc.
It'll run on Windows, Macintosh and Linux. It'll be
free.
It's pre-alpha now.
Ok, since that tool's not available, here's another.
The Kanguru Microstorage Drive holds 16MB-1G in a
package about the size of your thumb. No moving
parts, no batteries, no cables, no drivers. It's
great as an emergency backup so long as someone else
in the building has a USB port. As soon as I bought
mine for $70, the list price dropped to $39 for the
16M version. But it was worth the $70.
http://www.interactivemediacorp.com/microdrive.html
+--------------------------------------------------+
| NOW PLAYING |
| |
| In an effort to embarrass myself further, here |
| are the games I'm currently playing: |
| |
| ALIEN VS. PREDATOR 2. First-person shooter that |
| won a bunch of game-of-the-year awards. Good |
| Quake-style graphics. But despite the layering |
| in of a complex narrative between levels, I'm |
| finding it repetitive: hide, bang, run. Also, |
| more graphically violent than it needs to be. |
| |
| RICOCHET. Breakout for the new millennium. |
| Imaginative game play given that you're just |
| bouncing balls off a paddle into bricks. Lots |
| of fun for $20. |
+--------------------------------------------------+
| INTERNETCETERA |
| |
| InformationWeek (April 29) surveyed 10,000 IT |
| managers and discovered the following: |
| |
| The median base salary for managers is $83,000 |
| and is $61,000 for staffers. VPs make $135,000, |
| down $10,000 from last year. CIOs dropped from |
| $133,000 to $119,000. Best of all, the savings |
| were passed on to you, the customer! (Ha ha. |
| Just kidding.) |
| |
| "Web-security staffers" make $20,000 more than |
| the average staffer, resulting in the sudden |
| proliferation of "My country went to Afghanistan |
| and all I got was this lousty $20K raise" |
| t-shirts. |
| |
| The top changes in the workplace for managers |
| were: It's more stressful, employee morale is |
| lower, and there are fewer employees overall |
| and in the IT department. |
| |
| "Women still make less than men in IT, and the |
| gap seems to be growing." The gap for staffers |
| is $7,000, up from $6,000 last year; for |
| managers, the gap is $10,000. So, if you see a |
| manager's penis offered at eBay for |
| significantly less than $10,000, you're getting |
| a real bargain. |
+--------------------------------------------------+
-------------------------------------------
BEIJING AND PERU ESCAPE HOSTAGE PLOT
Now that the Chinese central government is getting
serious about cracking down on piracy, the Beijing
municipal government is going to switch from Windows
to Linux. And Beijing is the pacesetting local
government.
Meanwhile, Michael O'Connor Clarke [1] has blogged a
Peruvian congressperson's reasons why his government
should go open source...
One by one, the world comes to its senses...
[1]
http://llareggolb.blogspot.com/2002_05_01_llareggolb_archive.html#761299
28
-------------------------------------------
WHY SEARCH ENGINES SUCK
At NetworkSolutions, go to the Manage Account[1] tab,
type in the name of the domain you want to manage,
and click "Go!". You're taken to a page that
presents an Ask.com search query box where you can
type in the question you want answered. Could it be
any easier?
Unfortunately, apparently I was the only person ever
to ask "How do I change domain servers?", "How do I
change name servers?" or "How do I change
nameservers?" because the response was:
"Thanks for asking your question! Unfortunately,
we couldn't find any answers for this one."
Ok, How about something a little easier? Why not try
the example thoughtfully provided right under the
instructions: "How do I renew my domain name?".
Response:
"Thanks for asking your question!
Unfortunately, we couldn't find any answers for
this one."
[1] https://www.netsol.com/en_US/manage-it/index.jhtml
-------------------------------------------
VIRTUAL EVERYTHING
In the wake of the exciting virtual keyboard, our
labs have been busy inventing new virtual objects.
But this is, as the Playboy folks like to say, a
pictorial, so head on over to the online version:
http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-may11-02.html#virtual
-------------------------------------------
THE ANALS OF MARKETING
REDUCTIONISM AT WORK DEPT.:
"The Internet is obviously a critical
part of any e-Business. But the Internet
is only a common set of protocols for the
transport of information."
-- Sybase ad.
And reading is only the common set of protocols for
the translation of oral words into written marks.
And Sybase's products are only the semi-intentional
arrangement of bits.
----
AND NOW FOR SOME GOOD NEWS:
Simon Wistow over on the Cluetrain discussion list
points us to www.BigBlueSmoke.com, a site that
proclaims: "Sun Launches Web Site Debunking Big Blue
Claims." It attacks its competitor with a ferocity
and sense of humor I can't recall before seeing
coming from a multi-billion dollar company. (Simon
points out that a "whois" on the domain name does
indeed indicate that Sun owns the site.)
-------------------------------------------
LINKS
David Isenberg has published another issue of his
SmartLetter (http://www.isen.com).
Article 1: More states are barring public
ownership of telecommunications. This is a bad
thing.
Article 2. Dewayne Hendricks and David Reed (an
all-star cast!) on packet relay radio as a way to
get around the impending 802.11 spectrum mashing.
Article. Mini-Article 3: Steve Talbot on Evil.
This is important stuff even if -- especially if --
like me you find these issues more than a little
confusing. My rule of thumb: Isenberg is right.
Not that George Gilder thinks so. Gilder, the swami
of telecosms, goes after the article Isenberg and I
wrote together (www.netparadox.com) with the
subtlety of a velociraptor in a bunny farm.
Unfortunately, he's locked his ideas into his
$300/year newsletter so you'll just have to believe
me when I tell you that he's wrong. (Yo, George, how
about publishing the article on your site for free
so we can have a decent conversation about it?)
----
Arnold Kling juxtaposes a sourpuss interview with
David Gelernter in The American Spectator with a
quote from my Small Pieces site. The important
point to remember is that the debate over whether
the Net is Good or Bad is not an empirical argument.
It's not even a religious dispute like Macs vs. PCs.
It's more like two different moods encountering one
another:
Cynic: "I'm depressed and angry. "
Optimist: "No, I'm not!"
http://arnoldkling.com/gqe/arch13.html
----
AKMA, one of my very favorite bloggers, has a
thought-provoking piece on the significance of the
facelessness (literal) of the Web.
www.seabury.edu/faculty/akma/2002_03_17_blogarch.html#10893859
----
----
I mentioned Teilhard de Chardin's "noosphere" when
commenting on Akma's blogthread-inspiring idea that
the Web might be usefully compared to the mind. I
heard from Trevor Bechtel, Assistant Dean at the
Loyola grad school:
In your deliberations about the web and the brain
you should know that Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg wrote
an article in WIRED [1] in 1995 on just this subject.
The article compares Teilhard de Chardin's
thoughts about the noosphere to the rise of new
information technologies.
I liked much of what Teilhard had to say when I read
him in college. I was particularly impressed by his
founding his ontology on love. But the noosphere
seemed like a stretch. It's turned out to be a bad
idea rescued by an improbable technology.
[1] www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/teilhard.html
My blog on mind and web:
www.hyperorg.com/blogger/archive/2002_03_01_archive.html#75027397
----
Mike O'Dell sends us to a site about a project he's
involved with. Hint: What might be the opposite of a
Segway scooter?
http://www.massivemadness.com
----
Mike also writes: "The entire psychogenre of
'dancing pages' is a new revelation in self-
display." The page he sends us to is like a
catalogue of annoyances.
http://members.tripod.com/funky.hippy/deep.html
----
Daniela at LivingCode
(http://livingcode.ManilaSites.Com) points to
InvisibleCities, a collaborative site that seeks to
encourage being creative as an alternative to being
entertained.
http://www.invisible-city.com/us/index.htm
----
Megnut (www.megnut.com) writes:
I'm doing a monthly column now for The O'Reilly
Network entitled, aptly enough, Megnut. You can
read the first one here on "Attendee-Centered
Conference Design" aka My Observations from the
SXSW Interactive Festival last week in Austin TX.
Megnut was one of the inventors of weblogging and is
an always-delightful observer.
www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/03/19/megnut.html
----
Ryan Ireland has moved his always enjoyable blog,
Becoming (www.irelan.net/becoming/). (The new host,
Movable Type (www.movabletype.org/), can suck in all
your previous Blogger entries if you move there.)
----
Valdis Krebs, the network mapping king, charts the
relationships among small terrorists loosely
joined:
http://www.orgnet.com/MappingTerroristNetworks.pdf
----
Bob Filipczak writes
Heard about this on the radio this morning. Sounds
pretty funny. It's essentially a synthetic voice
reading spam aloud all day long. It's at
www.spamradio.com.
If you sign up for the pay service, they come to
your house, remove your TV remote and prop open your
eyelids with toothpicks so you have to watch the
commercials. And they say there are no business
models on the Web!
----
Mark Dionne reminds us that his favorite Salon
writer, Cintra Wilson, is back and boy is she
viciously funny. Here she is on The Oscars:
www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2002/03/25/oscars_2002/index.html
----
I've lost who sent this to me, but SciTech Daily
compiles lots of news about, well, sci and tech.
http://www.scitechdaily.com/
----
Michael Mark has unearthed a campaign by an
enterprising marketer (actually, a socially-aware
novelist with a sense of humor, although it can be
hard to tell the difference) to get companies to
pay him for mentioning their products in his work:
http://www.nomediakings.org/invoice.htm
----
Gary Unblinking Stock reminds us that the
foul-mouthed, funny-by-being-true mnftiu "Get Your
War On" comic strip has a new issue out:
http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war9.html. And it's
taken me so long to get this issue of JOHO out that
there's actually a new new issue there:
http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war10.html
Gary also recommends http://toy.thespark.com/burn/
that turns even the mildest of prose into a
curse-like-a-sailor flame. But you still won't be
as funny as mnftiu.
-------------------------------------------
EMAIL, SCURRILOUS ATTACKS AND PREMEDITATED INSULTS
In my highly implausible bloggery about the Web as
utopia [1], I wrote:
The Web is a world that is profoundly social. Its
geography itself is social, a map of connections
and passions. It is thus a world that we've made
for ourselves that is a reflection of our best
nature and a place where can imperfectly perfect
our imperfect natures.
Kurt Kurosawa puts his finger on the issue in an
email to me:
Nah, it amplifies the powers not only of trolls
but True Evil.
There's a lot of truth to that. In fact, it's
undeniably true. But, ultimately (i.e.,
indefensibly) I don't think it's a neutral
technology. It's an amplifier because it's
connective, and connectedness isn't neutral.
The real question is: How would we ever settle this
issue?
[1] www.hyperorg.com/blogger/archive/2002_03_01_archive.html#75003527
----
I was all set to reply to a blogger who wrote, in
reference to my "Web as Utopia" piece":
Dave, being a nice bloke, sees the web as utopia.
A transcendent Platonic ideal of Socratic
discourse, where those of good faith commune on
the nature of the world. Then there are those who
see in the seedier side of the web the darkness of
their own souls, for we are all fallen creatures,
and the line between good and evil runs through
all our hearts.
But the blogger took down that entry. Damn! Well,
I'll be damned if I'll waste the reply I'd already
written:
Hell no! I don't see the Web as socratic. I see it
as connective. Socratic dialogue is only one
form of connecting, and a pretty paltry one at
that. Yelling, joking, teasing, provoking,
criticizing, grieving, and flirting are all forms
of connecting. So is simultaneous masturbation.
What makes the Web utopian (in some sense) is that
it's connective, not that it's polite, rational or
even intelligent. IMO.
----
Joe Murphy [1] writes [edited for space]:
...I've an account at LiveJournal [2] at the
moment. .. By far the biggest userbase is kids,
though. And they use the Net as a whole in amazing
ways. I feel completely outrun and outdone.
Their webpages aren't so much a piece of
virtual territory, as a combination of cute t-
shirt and expressionist artwork - "look at me,
I have style!" Some of the designs are just
*terrific*. ..
There's a huge lack of privacy, or need for
anonymity, which I'm not used to...With the kids,
'asl' is the first 'question' asked. It baffles
me, and makes me laugh, but to the kids it's
absolutely second nature. Anonymity just isn't
important. Friendliness and openness is...
So while I'm proud of my little efforts online,
and very proud of the friends I've made over
the last 7 years, and while I very much
consider myself at home online, I'm amazed at
what kids are doing with it.
Joe, I'm a little confused by your need to tell me
what's going on with the kids. I'm 14.
And here's the nine-one-one on my A/S/L: Golden
Delicious/10.5D in loafers but I like to go up a
half size for sneakers/Harold Bloom.
[1] http://www.livejournal.com/users/broin
[2] http://www.livejournal.com
----
Steve Giovannetti (www.giolist.com) writes (full
version in the online JOHO) in response to something
I said about the Web being spatial:
From my perspective you really need to consider
that although the net appears or can be
observed to be somewhere else it in fact is
very tied to the physical world and to specific
localities. e.g. If an overweight UNIX admin
with plumbers butt bends over in the right
aisle at my hosting facility in NJ and knocks
over the system where my pages are served from
my site is gone for the duration...
...If you want to talk about the web as a place
then where is it? The answer is that it's
everywhere. It's all around us. Bits may be
passing through your body right now encoded at
802.11b or as CDMA packets. Servers and clients
are all over the world and in orbit above our
heads. ... This notion of the web as an
omnipresent space fascinates me...
Well, neighborhood networks -- people supplying
wireless connectivity to the rest of the physical
community -- will make the Web close to ubiquitous
and not just in the sense that bits may be passing
through me. (Those long sends from Bob Frankston
make my molars tingle.)
But, of course there is a physical component to the
Internet. I think we agree that it'd be a mistake to
think of it only as physical.
----
Tim Bouma writes:
I'm doing a project on 'values' - but
discovering they're mostly blah blah (e.g.
enron: respect, integrity, communication,
excellence; bureau of atf: excellence,
integrity, quality of service,we control the
smokes- yada yada). These values are like a
warm glass of milk gone cold . So I decided to
try to come up with a core list of values of a
'successful' company that you totally wouldn't
want to work for... So far I've identified four
core values (or anti-values)....
1. Money: Money is the ultimate measure of
success. Less money means less success
2. Unchecked Ambition: Because unchecked ambition
usually leads to certain types of success. And
these types of successes normally lead to money
(refer to value 1)
3. Our Success first, others second: If you don't
first succeed yourself, how can expect others to
succeed?
4. Ends matter; means don't: It's the end that
counts - how you get there doesn't.
I think these values pretty much cover it - if
you can think of any more core values, i'd
appreciate it.
Wow, this is a rich field of study. How about:
Only instant answers accepted.
Mistakes are only made by incompetent people.
Death to the competition!
The real work is done at the top.
You can't handle the truth.
We are accepting entries in a Mini-Bogus Contest...
----
Bob "Professor" Morris writes, apropos of something
else:
A mathematician walks into a room where the
drapes are on fire. He notices a bucket of
water on the floor nearby. He says "I know the
solution to this problem," and walks out.
The engineer sees it, adds it to the bugs database,
and walks out. The marketing sees it, and walks out
before a shaft of sunlight can touch him and kill
him.
Mini Bogus Contest!
----
Mike O'Dell writes, in full:
So how come the Instant Messaging conference
lasted several days?
-------------------------------------------
BOGUS CONTEST: KIDS VERSIONS
Chris Heathcote, reading that I've written a kids
version of my book(www.smallpieces.com/kids),
suggests other business books be done as kids
books, too. Here are some thoughts:
+--------------------------------------------------+
| From Tom (Peters) I Am: |
| |
| I will not settle for what's good. |
| I will not settle although I could. |
| I will not take my chips and cash in. |
| I will wear the Red Bang of passion. |
| I will not think in time with clocks. |
| I will not think within the box. |
| I will not think about my optioned stocks. |
| But I will think, sparing no dollars or pence |
| About becoming His Excellency of Excellence. |
| --- |
| |
| The Grinch who Stole Six Sigma. |
| --- |
| |
| Lawrence Lessig's The Code, darkly illustrated |
| by Maurice Sendak of Where the Wild Things Are |
| --- |
| |
| Richard Scarry's Busy Book of Web Services |
| --- |
| |
| Who Moved My Chee...oh, wait, that's already a |
| children's book. |
+--------------------------------------------------+
Thoughts? Suggestions? Better ideas?
----
CONTEST RESULTS
Our contest asked you to explain my book in 100
words.
Matt Carmill and Bruce Burn's attempts are in the
online JOHO.
----
Ross Knights writes:
Your book's title reminds me of the description
I heard long ago of a really old car: "10,000
automobile parts flying in close formation."
Haven't we all felt that way sometime? Until next
time, keep those small pieces loosely joined!
(RageBoy, this means you.)
--------------------------------------------------
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