Articles by AndrewH

Owner of inkblurt.com

What Web 2.0 Means

October 18, 2005 by AndrewH | No comments

I’m not much of a joiner. I’m not saying I’m too good for it. I just don’t take to it naturally.

So I tend to be a little Johnny-come-lately to the fresh stuff the cool kids are doing.

For example, when I kept seeing “Web 2.0” mentioned a while back, I didn’t really think about it much, I thought maybe I’d misunderstood … since Verizon was telling me my phone could now do Wap 2.0, I wondered if it had something to do with that?

See? I’m the guy at the party who was lost in thought (wondering why the ficus in the corner looks like Karl Marx if you squint just right) and looks up after everybody’s finished laughing at something and saying, “what was that again?”

So, when I finally realize what the hype is, I tend to already be a little contrary, if only to rescue my pride. (Oh, well, that wasn’t such a funny joke anyway, I’ll go back to squinting at the ficus, thank you.)

After a while, though, I started realizing that Web 2.0 is a lot like the Mirror of Erised in the first Harry Potter novel. People look into it and see what they want to see, but it’s really just a reflection of their own desires. They look around at others and assume they all see the same thing. (This is just the first example I could think of for this trope: a common one in literature and especially in science fiction.)

People can go on for quite a while assuming they’re seeing the same thing, before realizing that there’s a divergence.

I’ve seen this happen in projects at work many times, in fact. A project charter comes out, and several stakeholders have their own ideas in their heads about what it “means” — sometimes it takes getting halfway through the project before it dawns on some of them that there are differences of opinion. On occasion they’ll assume the others have gone off the mark, rather than realizing that nobody was on the same mark to begin with.

I’m not wanting to completely disparage the Web 2.0 meme, only to be realistic about it. Unlike the Mirror of Erised (“desire” backwards) Web 2.0 is just a term, not even an object. So it lends itself especially well to multiple interpretations.

A couple of weeks ago, this post by Nicholas Carr went up: The amorality of Web 2.0. It’s generated a lot of discussion. Carr basically tries to put a pin in the inflated bubble of exuberance around the dream of the participation model. He shows how Wikipedia isn’t actually all that well written or accurate, for example. He takes to task Kevin Kelly’s Wired article (referenced in my blog a few days ago) about the new dawning age of the collectively wired consciousness.

I think it’s important to be a devil’s advocate about this stuff when so many people are waxing religiously poetic (myself included at times). I wondered if Carr really understood what he was talking about at certain points — for example, doing a core sample of Wikipedia and judging the quality of the whole based on entries about Bill Gates and Jane Fonda sort of misses the point of what Wikipedia does in toto. (But in the comments to his post, I see he recognizes a difference between value and quality, and that he understands the problems around “authority” of texts.) Still, it’s a useful bit of polemic. One thing it helps us do is remember that the ‘net is only what we make it, and that sitting back and believing the collective conscious is going to head into nirvana without any setbacks or commercial influence is dangerously naive.

At any rate, all we’re doing with all this “Web 2.0” talk is coming to the realization that 1) the Web isn’t about a specific technology or model of browsing, but that all these methods and technologies will be temporary or evolved very quickly, and that 2) it’s not, at its core, really about buying crap and looking things up — it’s about connecting people with other people.

So I guess my problem with the term “Web 2.0” is that it’s actually about more than the Web. It’s about internetworking that reduces the inertia of time and space and creates new modes of civilization. Not utopian modes — just new ones. (And not even, really, that completely new — just newly global, massive and immediate for human beings.) And it’s not about “2.0” but about “n” where “n” is any number up to infinity.

But then again, I’m wrong. I can’t tell people what “Web 2.0” means because what it means is up to the person thinking about it. Because Web 2.0 is, after all, a sign or cypher, an avatar, for whatever hopes and dreams people have for infospace. On an individual level, it represents what each person’s own idiosyncratic obsessions might be (AJAX for one person, Wiki-hivemind for the next). And on a larger scale, for the community at large, it’s a shorthand way of saying “we’re done with the old model, we’re ready for a new one.” It’s a realization that, hey, it’s bigger and stranger than we realized. It’s also messy, and a real mix of mediocrity and brilliance. Just like we are.

Churches of Bones

October 17, 2005 by AndrewH | Permalink

Nearing Halloween, you really don’t get any more Halloweeny than this.

Kostnice Ossuary, Kutna Hora, Sedlec, Church of Bones

Having gazed in wonderment down into the ‘bells’ where countless bones were stacked one upon the other, I began to appreciate that every skull represented a person; a life so different from my own, yet connected in many other respects not least because I too would one day be reduced to these ghostly remains, a forgotten memory from future’s history. Often plagued by existentialist thoughts, I think such a visit did more good than harm.

Reframing the debate

October 17, 2005 by AndrewH | Permalink

Victor blogs about a book he’s reading, (Don’t Think of an Elephant — which is about how progressives can re-frame political discourse), and he’s channeling some notes into his post.

Always start with values, values everyone shares.
Use rhetorical questions: “Wouldn’t it be better if…”
Show moral outrage with controlled passion.
Always be on the offense. Don’t negate the other person’s claims; reframe. Never answer a question framed from your opponents point of view.
Tell a story where your frame is built into the story.

It occurs to me this sort of thing isn’t bad advice for *any* situation where you’re trying to effect change. For example, if you’re trying to get your company to think differently about how it develops software, and how its current practices are antithetical to its purported values … not that I know of any companies that would do such a thing.

Calm Technology discussed at IA Retreat

October 14, 2005 by AndrewH | No comments

The folks at the IA Retreat got jiggy with ubiquitous technology. Here’s a record on their Wiki (Adam Greenfield as channelled by Chiara Fox): Everyware – iaretreat05 – JotSpot

It’s an idea that may have seemed a little weird back in 1999 when John Seely Brown and Mark Weiser were writing about it: The Coming Age of Calm Technology.

But when I notice how a coworker gets into his Prius, and the car just knows it’s him because of the fob hanging from his keyring, I realize this age is running toward us pretty dang fast. What’s to stop the car from also knowing to have his schedule and contacts ready in its console, his favorite iTunes playlists cued up, not to mention traffic information for his commute?

Why shouldn’t our information follow us around? Since everything’s going to be on one big network anyway? Hey man, it’s all about ustiquity!

(*Kicks self for not making it to the retreat…*)

via Victor Lombardi

Update: As Peter Boersma reminds me in a comment, Tom Vanderwal has been working with the “personal infocloud” idea for quite some time.

bplusd

October 14, 2005 by AndrewH | Permalink

Jess McMullin’s blog, about which I just found out, has some great stuff already. I particularly dug this quote:

bplusd

Design thinking emerges from design methods and process. But people can get to approaches that correspond to design thinking, without designers or design methods. The principles of iteration, of prototyping, of observation , systems approaches, and play are powerful ingredients in business success. Those principles are discovered by more than just design thinkers, and it’s arrogantly risky to assume we have a monopoly.

You tell ’em, Jess.

Interview with Jonathan Haidt

October 12, 2005 by AndrewH | No comments

This is a terrific article: The Believer – Interview with Jonathan Haidt

Haidt makes some thought-provoking points: the evolutionary origins of morality; why some people find some things repugnant and others not; the difference between moral pluralism and moral relativism; and other great stuff.

He also reminds us not to objectify people with whom we may not agree, and not to make too many assumptions (usually to our own detriment):

First, it would help if liberals understood conservatives better. If I have a mission in life, it is to convince people that everyone is morally motivated—everyone except for psychopaths. Everyone else is morally motivated. Liberals need to understand that conservatives are motivated by more than greed and hatred. And Americans and George Bush in particular need to understand that even terrorists are pursuing moral goods. One of the most psychologically stupid things anyone ever said is that the 9/11 terrorists did this because they hate our freedom. That’s just idiotic. Nobody says: “They’re free over there. I hate that. I want to kill them.” They did this because they hate us, they’re angry at us for many reasons, and terrorism and violence are “moral” actions, by which I don’t mean morally right, I mean morally motivated.

Some people will read Haidt and immediately dismiss him because they reject a scientific (i.e. evolutionarily based) point of view on matters of human morality and ethics. But whatever. That’d be too bad, because it actually gives some solid, rational reasons for the “left” to be a lot more tolerant and understanding of the “right.” (Even if they don’t agree.)

Irving WB on Open Standards & Innovation & Flux

October 11, 2005 by AndrewH | Permalink

Irving Wladawsky-Berger

I just thought this was a fascinating post. Here’s a chunk:

Coase also pointed out that, for a variety of reasons, there is a natural limit to what can be produced efficiently within the firm, which is why all businesses also have a more or less extensive supply chain, and strive for an optimal balance between what work gets done inside and outside the firm.
This balance is now in flux. Since we can now use technology, the Internet and open standards to begin to automate, standardize and integrate business processes, those transaction costs described by Roland Coase are dropping precipitously. Consequently, the whole nature of the firm, and what it means to run an efficient business, is going through very extensive changes. These are not easy changes. Not only is there a great deal of innovation required to automate and integrate business processes, but perhaps more important, there are even greater changes in culture required to transform Industrial Age business models to something more appropriate to our Internet era.

More ‘isms!!

October 11, 2005 by AndrewH | Permalink

In a comment on my previous post, Patrick mentioned that maybe I was a libertarian, and pointed out this blog entry from Andrew Sullivan on the difference between “secularism” and “Christianism” (basically saying that secularism is a fine and grand tradition that is about freedom, not persecution, therefore not an enemy of Christianity at all). The following isn’t directed at the comment (I’m not dumping at Patrick :-) ) … but his comment made me feel like opining …

First, the “secularism” thing: what a lot of liberal/progressive people don’t seem to get is that for over a generation “secular humanism” has been systematically taught as a “religion” within evangelical Christian circles. When I was a teenager and going to “non-denominational” mega-church Sunday school, I heard it said time and again (and read it in the various books I was reading) that secular humanism is, in essence, a religious point of view that worships the human being, and that is actively “anti-God.” That secular humanism’s aim is the eradication of faith in anything other than our own abilities as flesh and blood people. That it was an insidious movement full of conniving, conspiring elitists who were at the forefront of bringing on the age of the Anti-Christ.

No, I am not kidding.

So, I think Sullivan is a little naive on this score. He doesn’t want to see “secularism” stained with the same stigma we now see with “liberalism” — but he doesn’t seem to realize we’re dealing with millions of people who hear “secularism” and react as if you said “Nazism.” Secularism sounds much worse to them than merely “liberal.” They feel that saying our founding fathers were secularists is a revision of history; and that teaching secular values in our schools is essentially breaching the separation of church and state, because to teach it is to deny their children their beliefs in God and Christ.

[Edited to add: upon reading Sullivan’s later posts, I see that others took him to task on this already.]

So, as my folks back home would say, “we got a tough row to hoe.” Overcoming this systematic indoctrination in misinformation is a tall order.

Second, as for libertarianism, there are elements of it that definitely appeal to me. I’m relatively liberal in terms of my politics, I suppose, but I’m not a party-line person, and there are a few bits of conservative thinking I tend to agree with as well as libertarian thinking. For example, I agree government should leave us alone as much as possible. That is, government should not initiate interference in our lives unless it’s necessary for the public good. And even then, only when absolutely necessary.

But what is necessary? I think that’s where I differ from a lot of libertarians. I think it’s necessary that the country provide opportunity to even the most downtrodden. By opportunity, I mean helping to remove barriers to improving their lives, not necessarily subsidizing the continuation of their current state. Much harder to do than to say, I realize, but that takes government.

I believe in having excellent infrastructure within which individuals and communities can thrive. But I don’t think it works to leave that up to the grass roots or the “rugged individual” — it takes government too. People like to point to Bill Gates and other success stories and say “they earned their money, they should be able to keep it” but without an infrastructure supported by a strong federal system these companies wouldn’t have had a chance to exist.

Also, I believe in the idea of public education. It’s an important part of socializing citizens into the national fabric, and requiring our children to grow up literate is essential to having an informed public. Without that, the Constitution simply wouldn’t work.

Basically, I’m not a believer in the idea that if you just leave the “market” alone, it will do everything right, or that smaller government is always good. It took government to keep the Union together during the Civil War. It took government to break apart monopolies and trusts, and to create better working conditions, and to enforce civil rights (a little late in the game, but better late than never).

I do think, however, that huge government programs should only be created if they include baked-in limits on themselves. That is, huge programs should, whenever possible, make themselves obsolete by actually solving problems and not just covering them over. I do think we have layer upon layer of inefficient band-aid stuff in government that people get used to and take for granted. (Much like people say that “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is “an American tradition” when it’s only about 60 years old.) I agree there’s a lot of waste. Some of it, unfortunately, is just going to be there no matter what we do — there’s noise in any human system. But government is absolutely necessary, and sometimes it has to be big to save its citizens from chaos, oppression, and despair. It’s our responsibility as the people who comprise our own government to keep it in check, though, and shrink it back down when we can. I suppose that’s a conservative value? But I don’t know any liberals who would disagree with this essential premise.

Rationalist Conservatism

October 6, 2005 by AndrewH | No comments

This has been quoted all over the place, but I just ran across it. It makes me nostalgic for intellectual, secular conservatism. It’s a perspective from a wholly other “George W” …

George Will in Newsweek, May 2005:
The Oddness of Everything – Newsweek Columnists – MSNBC.com

the greatest threat to civility—and ultimately to civilization—is an excess of certitude. The world is much menaced just now by people who think that the world and their duties in it are clear and simple. They are certain that they know what—who—created the universe and what this creator wants them to do to make our little speck in the universe perfect, even if extreme measures—even violence—are required.

America is currently awash in an unpleasant surplus of clanging, clashing certitudes. That is why there is a rhetorical bitterness absurdly disproportionate to our real differences. It has been well said that the spirit of liberty is the spirit of not being too sure that you are right. One way to immunize ourselves against misplaced certitude is to contemplate—even to savor—the unfathomable strangeness of everything, including ourselves.

This is much closer to the mindset held by the people who founded this country.

Andrew Sullivan discussed a similar divide back in April, between the “conservatism of faith and the conservatism of doubt .”

Edited to add: I meant to mention … Sullivan’s article is terrific. He makes it very clear how the GOP essentially fell asleep next to a body-snatcher pod and has turned into something quite different. (My metaphor, not his … but you get the drift.)

The way he describes the traditional “conservatism of doubt” actually sounds a hell of a lot more like my own politics than what many conservatives think of as “liberal” … I think many conservatives especially (and middle america in general) hear “liberal” and what pops into their heads is ideologue/atheist academic hippies and activist gays in tutus. And while those people are all kind of fun to watch in a parade, and while I love it that America is diverse enough to contain them all, they’re not necessarily the people I think are balanced enough in their perspectives to run our country. What I mean is that we have to watch out for wild-eyed fundamentalists of any stripe.

Editing again to add!:

A friend pointed out to me that an activist who likes tutus isn’t necessarily unreasonable. So, yes, mea culpa, I overgeneralized. Lots of very reasonable people are eccentric or non-mainstream in their appearance and social style. I was meaning militant/fundamentalist-activist, not just people engaged on activism. (PETA vs. the Humane Society, perhaps? Though, heck, somebody will probably disagree with that too.)

What I was trying to get at was I’ve met people from all different walks who are so narrow in their views, and militant, that it would be a bad idea to put them in office. Whether gay or straight, Christian or Atheist, liberal or conservative.

Essentially, anyone who favors less diversity of thought over more, or who would make everyone follow their ideology if given the chance, doesn’t “get” our country well enough to be entrusted with leading it. The Constitution makes it clear that the only ideology that’s “sacred” is protecting the rights of people to think and say what they want (without endangering people or lying for personal gain, etc). Otherwise, what is this “liberty” stuff anyway?

But are they allowed to run for office? Sure. Can people vote them in? Absolutely. Which is yet another reason why the separation of powers and checks and balances are good things. People with extremist agendas can be slowed down long enough to vote them back out when the populace comes to its senses (we hope and pray).

Candid Caption?

October 5, 2005 by AndrewH | Permalink




Candid Caption?

Originally uploaded by inkblurt.

I loved this bit… the guy really looks like a gruff hermit type. Which makes the sign seem a little menacing. Like, don’t feed the introvert, or something.

My daughter and I visited the Tate Street Festival last weekend, in Greensboro, NC. Tate Street is a wonderful little college-towny strip of businesses right next to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (the campus of which has gotten a lot fancier since I went there 10 years ago).

It was a great time. There are a few more pics in my Flickr feed.

Collaboration czar at IBM sounds off

October 5, 2005 by AndrewH | Permalink

Wladawsky-Berger writes about the big picture of the Internet and the rise of collaborative work … here he references a lecture he heard:

Irving Wladawsky-Berger: The Economic and Social Foundations of Collaborative Innovation

[In his lecture] Professor Benkler is essentially saying that collaborative innovation is a serious mode of economic production that has arisen because the Internet and related technologies and standards now permit large numbers of individuals to organize themselves for productive work, in a decentralized, non-market way. A similar argument has been made by Steven Weber, Professor of Political Sciences at UC Berkeley and Director of Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies, in his writings, and in particular in his recently published book The Success of Open Source.

This is an excellent article… makes a lot of great points.

I think one thing, though, that a lot of “cross-corporate collaboration” thinking is missing is that so many corporations need the same thing just within their own walls — cross-silo collaboration. Most major American corporations are like collections of companies with a shared logo.

We are the Web

October 4, 2005 by AndrewH | Permalink

I’m big on the idea that the Internet isn’t really about commerce or information reference, but mainly about community and conversation (which of course include things like commerce and knowledge — but only as facets of the larger social drive).

In Wired last month, (We Are the Web) Kevin Kelly evidently agrees:

What we all failed to see was how much of this new world would be manufactured by users, not corporate interests.

I was saying this back in 2002: The real killer app is people. But it didn’t start with me, alas… I seem to remember even in 1999 Whole Earth and other places were discussing the “highways of the mind” as social spheres, and the “WELL” as the prototype of sorts. So, I don’t know that Mr. Kelly is quite right in “we all failed to see” … I think many of us just forgot in the mad rush to make a killing in the tech bubble, perhaps?

Still, I’m glad this meme is propogating … it helps keep us aware of the real human context of all this technology.

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