From my backyard this morning:
I just realized this page has gone all text. Usually I have a few pictures up. I've been busy, though, and haven't had a chance to get out with my camera. Hopefully I'll have time this weekend. (going on a road trip.) I've been bad about email too. It's not you—it's me.
There should be a special word for that mix of anger and disappointment you feel when you loose five hours worth of development time because of a computer crash. Heads-up: Visual Basic 6 doesn't have any sort of auto-save, so if you cause an infinite loop–your program will regress to your last saved point. And you will swear. Loudly.
Silent Theft by David Bollier looks like an interesting companion to Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas. It's more about the plundering of the commonwealth through absurd patent and copyright laws. David Bollier opens the book with this nursery rhyme:
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common.
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common.
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
'Copy-Proof' CDs Cracked with 99-Cent Marker Pen: "Technology buffs have cracked music publishing giant Sony Music's elaborate disc copy-protection technology with a decidedly low-tech method: scribbling around the rim of a disk with a felt-tip marker."
It would also be great if conferences would make a list of every book mentioned in every talk. There were so many mentioned over the past few days, and I didn't get them written down. I remember Building Secure Software by Viega and McGraw, but that's it. At Lawrence Lessig's panel discussion yesterday, someone (David Henkel-Wallace, I think) mentioned a certain book as "the one thing you should read tomorrow to help fight outrageous copyright laws." (or something like that.) But I can't remember the book he mentioned. Anyone?
(This is another good reason to have a centralized note-swapping space.)
(This is another good reason to have a centralized note-swapping space.)
Some ideas from the conference that I'd like to jot down for safe keeping:
- As software companies are held more and more accountable for problems in their code, insurance companies may take over parts of the design process or set standards. (think underwriter's laboratories, which was set up to provide safer electrical equipment.) [related presentation slides.]
- As the technology industry matures, the problems become less technical problems and more human problems.
- Dan Gillmore's phrase The Former Audience kept recurring. Cory mentioned it on his site. It's a great way to explain the effect that weblogs and other collaborative communication technologies are having.
- The idea of copyright has been ingrained in everyone, and it's easy to understand. The idea of a thriving public domain has not been ingrained in everyone. There is a need for great metaphors and stories here so that it's easy to explain why a public domain is necessary for creativity. People should be debating it. Paul's Boutique couldn't be made today (without a thousand lawyers working around the clock). I want another CD like that...or I should be able to make a CD like that. I should be able to sample my culture.
- Unfortunately, I'm beginning to wonder if in the near future, the only place innovation can happen is inside large corporations. They will be able to absorb the costs related to patents, copyright, and insurance standards while smaller companies will simply be litigated out of business. And, of course, disruptive technologies like the personal computer or Napster would never have been released from a big company because it interferes with the existing system of doing business.
- Wireless technology will become ubiquitous, and hack the spaces that big companies won't provide high speed access to. And it's not because any company is pushing it or spearheading it. (It's not happening in the way companies have previously envisioned, anyway.)
- Tim O'Reilly's question: Are webloggers building a city, or living in their own ghetto? [mentioned in Rob Flickenger's EtherPeg article.]
I'm home from the conference. It was a great experience, and I can tell it's going to take a while to digest all of the ideas I heard over the past two days.
I'm just sick that I'm missing the Emerging Technology Conference because I'm sick. I'm feeling better though, and I think I'm finally past the contagious stage. I'll be there tomorrow. Meanwhile I've been living vicariously through Wes and Cory's live updates. Is anyone else blogging from the conference?
This makes me think conferences should set up a simple Web Service that bloggers could ping to let the conference know they've written something related. In fact, a method for sending/receiving weblog posts would make this simple; and publishing tools could build it into their interface. You'd just enter the URLs of the services you want to notify, and choose from a list as you post—if what you're saying relates to the subject of the service. Then attendees (or absentees like me) could get a list of the distributed conversations happening about a conference at the conference site itself. This would be handy for aggregating topic-specific discussions as well. You'd just set up a server and say, "ping this URL whenever you talk about [your favorite subject]." Let's call this a Distributed Conversation Server. I'll get right to work on that.
Update: They have pointers to some weblog coverage.
This makes me think conferences should set up a simple Web Service that bloggers could ping to let the conference know they've written something related. In fact, a method for sending/receiving weblog posts would make this simple; and publishing tools could build it into their interface. You'd just enter the URLs of the services you want to notify, and choose from a list as you post—if what you're saying relates to the subject of the service. Then attendees (or absentees like me) could get a list of the distributed conversations happening about a conference at the conference site itself. This would be handy for aggregating topic-specific discussions as well. You'd just set up a server and say, "ping this URL whenever you talk about [your favorite subject]." Let's call this a Distributed Conversation Server. I'll get right to work on that.
Update: They have pointers to some weblog coverage.
being sick on a beautiful weekend like this is frustrating. And just to drive the frustration home, one of my favorite bands, Ozomatli, is giving a free concert at Sonoma State University today.
Other corporations could learn a lot from Macromedia. When their actions were (kindly) criticized by a few weblogs, they had an immediate platform to respond. Because they have weblogs themselves, they are involved in the community, and Mike Chambers responded to my comments with clarifying information right here. Most corporations who want to respond to criticism would still be discussing what kind of press release they're going to write, if they were even tuned in at all.