Ideas
-
Laws of Identity
When digital identity ceases to be a pain in the ass, we can thank Kim Cameron and his Seven Laws of Identity, which he wrote in 2004, formally published in early 2005, and gently explained and put to use until he died late last year. Today, seven of us will take turns explaining each of… Continue reading
-
On solving the worldwide shipping crisis
The worldwide shipping crisis is bad. Here are some reasons: “Just in time” manufacturing, shipping, delivery, and logistics. For several decades, the whole supply system has been optimized for “lean” everything. On the whole, no part of it fully comprehends breakdowns outside the scope of immediate upstream or downstream dependencies. The pandemic, which has been… Continue reading
-
Beyond the Web
Note: This post was updated on the morning of 17 October 2023 (the one when I am writing this) to help me prepare for the latest salon in the Beyond the Web Salon Series, themed Human +/vs. Artificial intelligence, which is happening at noon today, co-hosted by Ostrom Workshop and the Hamilton Lugar School, both at IU. To prep for… Continue reading
-
Redux 002: Listen Up
This is a 1999 post on the (pre-blog) website that introduced my handful of readers to The Cluetrain Manifesto, which had just gone up on the Web, and instantly got huge without my help. It was also a dry run for a chapter in the book by the same name, which came out in January, 2000. As best I can recall,… Continue reading
-
We’ve seen this movie before
When some big outfit with a vested interest in violating your privacy says they are only trying to save small business, grab your wallet. Because the game they’re playing is misdirection away from what they really want. The most recent case in point is Facebook, which ironically holds the world’s largest database on individual human… Continue reading
-
Social shell games
If you listen to Episode 49: Parler, Ownership, and Open Source of the latest Reality 2.0 podcast, you’ll learn that I was blindsided at first by the topic of Parler, which has lately become a thing. But I caught up fast, even getting a Parler account not long after the show ended. Because I wanted to see what’s… Continue reading
-
Be the hawk
On Quora the question went, If you went from an IQ of 135+ to 100, how would it feel? Here’s how I answered:::: I went through that as a kid, and it was no fun. In Kindergarten, my IQ score was at the top of the bell curve, and they put me in the smart kid… Continue reading
-
Reality 2020.05.08
In The Web and the New Reality, which I posted on December 1, 1995 (and again a few days ago), I called that date “Reality 1.995.12,” and made twelve predictions. In this post I’ll visit how those have played out over the quarter century since then. 1. As more customers come into direct contact with… Continue reading
-
Saving the Internet—and all the commons it makes possible
This is the Ostrom Memorial Lecture I gave on 9 October of last year for the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University. Here is the video. (The intro starts at 8 minutes in, and my part starts just after 11 minutes in.) I usually speak off the cuff, but this time I wrote it out, originally… Continue reading
-
At Root an Evanescence
A Route of Evanescence, With a revolving Wheel – A Resonance of Emerald A Rush of Cochineal – And every Blossom on the Bush Adjusts it’s tumbled Head – The Mail from Tunis – probably, An easy Morning’s Ride – —Emily Dickinson (via The Poetry Foundation) While that poem is apparently about a hummingbird, it’s the… Continue reading
-
On Amazon, New York, New Jersey and urban planning
In a press release, Amazon explained why it backed out of its plan to open a new headquarters in New York City: For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term. While polls show that 70% of New… Continue reading
-
#RectangleBingo
This is a game for our time. I play it on New York and Boston subways, but you can play it anywhere everybody in a crowd is staring at their personal rectangle. I call it Rectangle Bingo. Here’s how you play. At the moment when everyone is staring down at their personal rectangle, you shoot… Continue reading
-
Idea: Woodstock vs. TED.
So I just read about “a 50th anniversary Woodstock celebration that would include TED-style talks.” Details here and here in the Gothamist. This celebration doesn’t have the Woodstock name, but it does have the place, now called the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. Since the Woodstock name belongs to folks planning the other big Woodstock 50th birthday party, this… Continue reading
-
We can do better than selling our data
If personal data is actually a commodity, can you buy some from another person, as if that person were a fruit stand? Would you want to? Not yet. Or maybe not really. Either way, that’s the idea behind the urge by some lately to claim personal data as personal property, and then to make money (in… Continue reading
-
Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing
Let’s start with Facebook’s Surveillance Machine, by Zeynep Tufekci in last Monday’s New York Times. Among other things (all correct), Zeynep explains that “Facebook makes money, in other words, by profiling us and then selling our attention to advertisers, political actors and others. These are Facebook’s true customers, whom it works hard to please.” Irony… Continue reading
-
Data is the New Love
Personal data, that is. Because it’s good to give away—but only if you mean it. And it’s bad to take it, even it seems to be there for the taking. I bring this up because a quarter million pages (so far) on the Web say “data is the new oil.” That’s because a massive personal data… Continue reading
-
How the personal data extraction industry ends
Who Owns the Internet? — What Big Tech’s Monopoly Powers Mean for our Culture is Elizabeth Kolbert‘s review in The New Yorker of several books, one of which I’ve read: Jonathan Taplin’s Move Fast and Break Things—How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy. The main takeaway for me, to both Elizabeth’s piece and Jon’s… Continue reading
adtech, advertising, Business, data, Ideas, infrastructure, Internet, Law, marketing, News, Technology, VRM -
The Daily Tab for 2017_06_06
Required viewing: A Good American, a documentary on Bill Binney and the NSA by @FriedrichMoser. IMHO, this is the real Snowden movie. And I say that with full respect for Snowden. Please watch it. (Disclosure: I have spent quality time with both Bill and Fritz, and believe in both.) Bonus dude: @KirkWiebe, also ex-NSA and a colleague of Bill’s.… Continue reading
-
Have we passed peak phone?
I shot this picture with my phone on the subway last night, while no less absorbed in my personal rectangle than everyone else on the subway (and I do mean everyone) was with theirs. I don’t know what the other passengers were doing on their rectangles, though it’s not hard to guess. In my case it was… Continue reading
-
The Internet deserves its proper noun
The NYTimes says the Mandarins of language are demoting the Internet to a common noun. It is to be just “internet” from now on. Reasons: Thomas Kent, The A.P.’s standards editor, said the change mirrored the way the word was used in dictionaries, newspapers, tech publications and everyday life. In our view, it’s become wholly generic, like ‘electricity… Continue reading