Monthly Archives: April 2005

Flat Tires and E-Government

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“The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They’re the kind of people who’d stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn’t bother to stop because they’d want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.”
Dave Barry

Ugly Pants Republicans have the potential to fix the flat tire that is politics in Americans but they won’t because they’re distracted. The distraction is wealth. They have the capacity to increase their standard of living and they do it. As the efficiencies of the Internet and Open Source Software slowly trickle down and make markets truely free, jobs will be cut and as a whole our standard of living will go up. Middle class people will lose jobs but essential products for the poor will become more affordable as the redundancies of business in the form of paperwork and paper-shufflers are eliminated.

Democrats are going to face a tough reality check. Would they pull over and fix the flat if it meant removing their own tire? If their intentions and political will are truely based on altruism then sacrificing for the poor shouldn’t be an issue. But they’re not pulling over. The Democrats are driving right by the three wheelers in their luxury sedans, worried about foreigners taking their jobs. Does it matter that those foreigners will make spare tires more affordable for the poor guy on the side of the road? Nope.

The Internet and its ilk(globalization, e-commerce, efficiency) are causing the capable if distracted UPRs into early retirement. In a few short years those lug nut savvy commuters are going to have a lot of spare time on their hands. Time they may decide to devote to improving government.

So there are a few trends that leave me with hope for democracies:

  1. Business efficiencies are freeing up time for savvy leaders currently entrenched in corporate America.
  2. Efficiencies in the Media business are leading to a tipping point after which politicians are more likely to be held accountable. Eventually politicians will be looked at as a source of inspiration instead of corruption, attracting capable leaders.
  3. Business efficiencies are going to free up time for regular citizens to become more aware of politics. Nobody wants to come home after a tough day at work and contemplate the subtleties of Medicare reform even if it is in their interest.

I don’t know how long it’s going to take but accelerating change seems to be a solid theory. Moore’s law applied to social progress can’t be a bad thing.

Acouplea quotes for my next post…
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
John Adams

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
Plato

Wheat, Chaff

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Liberals want to make the world better through economic equality, Conservatives through god and freedom from government. The liberal tactic is commendable, nobody wants to have a gigantic wealth divide, but it slows the economy. Liberals are ok with the idea that we might on average be worse off just as long as nobody is really poor. Conservatives believe in individual freedom. Why should I be held back by someone who, on a level playing field, can’t keep up with me? Two totally separate worldviews, both with the same goal: Making the world better.

There’s a really strong argument in favor or Liberalism combined with globalization in The World is Flat. The argument is that globalization creates incentive to avoid war. It’s a good argument and probably true except for one thing. People, as in the case with Liberals, are willing to sacrifice living standards for an ideal. What happens when poverty is eradicated and people have less incentive to work and therefore less incentive to build diverse global alliances? We’re going to have 10 Billion people hanging out with a lot of time on their hands.

I have no doubt that we’ll soon end global poverty and probably cure cancer and AIDS as we figure out how they work. Whether or not we continue to fight is debatable. On paper it looks like a utopia but then so did Communism. Human nature is hard to see right now, maybe adversity keeps people normal.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Abe Lincoln

If we keep kids in school to keep them off the street and out of trouble what happens to the world when everybody is empowered? It’s assumed that the best parts of human nature will flourish in that environment but what about the bad?

Patent Reform – CSPAN2 Rocks!

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I was channel surfing last night, waiting for water to boil, and came across a hearing on patent reform. Dean Kaymen, inventor of the uber-hyped Segway, explained the need for massive patent reform. There was some disagreement among the panel of experts about what needed to be done. The corporate IP lawyers argued that they were unable to defend against frivolous lawsuits from what are known as patent squatters and therefore damages needed to be capped. The small inventors argued that damages should not be capped simply because the government wasn’t doing its job. Considering the importance of this hearing for the future of capitalism I was surprised to find only two articles covering it. Kaymen argued in favor of the little guys but didn’t mention trends. The Longtail/Democratization of Innovation trend could have been used to argue that the small guys will increasingly need protection as they become the main producers of intellectual property. The big guys have an ulterior motive with their push for damage caps. If the big corps do accidentally violate a patent they can’t be held fully acountable because of the government’s inability to decide which patent suits are frivolous. I don’t think anybody bought the argument.

Everybody seemed to agree that the patent office is underfunded and that judges aren’t fairly handling cases. It was kind of nice to watch these inventors that I’ve read about actually teaching our legislators a thing or two about the realities of doing business. And the legislators were eagerly listening! I’m generally disenfranchised with what the government has devolved into but moments like this rekindle that weird sense of patriotism that sometimes rears its bald head. There’s a good overview on Patently-O.

The Sands of Time

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I found a funky little java app on the web that does age estimates. They’ve used technology like this to find missing kids for a long time and now we can use it to scare the hell out of ourselves. The picture on the left is me now at 26, I added 30 years with the software. Looks like I’m going to find a job cleaning barnacles off of supertankers in the North Sea.

Death of a Vineyard

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I watched Sideways and Death of a Salesman yesterday. That’s a lot of humanity to digest in one day. The dialogue in Sideways was so spot on it was like watching candid reality tv. I’m going to have to watch it again with less wine in me. I only write about non-techno topics when I drink or after movies for some reason. Here are the questions I jotted down after my Netflix induced cine-binge that I’d like to have answered before I’m 30.

Is trust something worth having when dealing with people? Is it better to assume everybody is out to get you and never get burned or is it better to trust everybody and hope that the pros outweigh the cons?

Assuming we were designed by nature to procreate how are we supposed to know what constitutes a genuine connection and what is simply nature’s potent but temporary
hormone cocktail? Or is it just a necessary catalyst that we’re not supposed to rely on until death do you part.

Where is the line between arrogance and healthy self confidence? Selflessness and self doubt?

What if instead of nature vs. nurture, nurture turns into nature. Then we really are destined to become our parents.

I’ve yet to find a religion that can answer those questions, mainly because of the conflict with science that ignores the possibility that we might just be savage post-apes with just enough forebrain to prevent (most)savagery. Science explains a lot about but not all of human nature at least so far.

Most religions assume life after death or reincarnation, some form of immortality. If we’re destined to live forever then it’d be easy to take life for granted. I’m an anti-immortalist and I still have trouble reminding myself that this is everything and I should stop and smell it.

We’re terribly complicated creatures but we have a lot in common, how is that possible? Why is it so hard to look at ourselves honestly that we have to be reminded by famous playwrights? Or do we know and just choose not think about it? Is that the same thing?

Writing Frenzy

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Almost 3,000 words in the last 5 days. I think it’s because I write more when I’m learning. The pieces are starting to come together. I’m losing interest in IT and starting to look at ideas that affect the whole economy. Ideas like Democratizing Innovation and Innovation Blowback that are showing up early in the IT industry because it’s basically pure information so ideas aren’t delayed by tanker diverting hurricanes.

Another idea. Microsoft, Oracle, etc., have a lot in common with the long distance providers of the 90s. Open source may have the same effect on big software companies as VOIP did to AT&T and MCI and blogs are doing to News Corp and Time Warner. Everybody is now better off because communication is cheap and reliable. Government subsidies create wealth for a few at the expense of tax payers, it’s a similar idea.

You can look at France and Germany and see how they’re struggling to adjust to globalization. We in America might face that problem in a few years as software makes the economy hyper efficient. Present day reality is a shock for socialized economies. The standards based, open source enabled economy of the future is going to be a shock for our economy. If a group of companies believed that it might make sense to push for standards where as current business are afraid of them (Microsoft and the Office XML Schemas).

I’m starting to get curious about linguistics. I want to learn chinese partly because it’ll help me understand english and partly because there are probably more people alive now in China than existed in the history of mankind before 1800. So there are probably a lot of unknown Platos and Shakespears with blogs that I can’t currently read.

tr.v U-bi-qui-ti-zation

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My last post stirred the ire of Doc Searls who I quoted in my last post. He responded in the comments:

Open source is bringing software into maturity as a commodity-enabled business. There will still be plenty of business in selling those commodities, and value-adds on those commodities, and in closed-source software as well.

I personally think open source is a panacea… for any business not in the business of making software. From Wikipedia: “In the world of business, a commodity is an undifferentiated product whose market value arises from the owner’s right to sell rather than the right to use.” You can sell open source software but nobody will buy it(it’s free) so by definition it cannot be a commodity. Commodities are the best analogy we have to describe OSS but unfortunately the business definition doesn’t quite fit. Doors may come in standard sizes which leads to a lack of differentiation and therefore commoditization. Someone still has to cut down the tree, ship the lumber, apply a stain or paint, etc. I can email a copy of an open source application to anybody in the world for free. A better word than commodity is ubiquity.

The construction business consists of labor and materials. The OSS business ostensibly of services and code. You can build a house but you cannot just email the blueprint to a friend and duplicate that house at no additional cost. So construction is a bad analogy if you’re looking at services surrounding OSS because the service/labor is a result of an inability to duplicate for free, which is what digital is good at. Services surrounding open source software exist because that software isn’t yet mature enough to allow simple operation. That won’t always be the case, when software matures the need for services dries up.

I don’t think Mr. Searls’ point was that you can get rich selling Apache, it was that the applications built on top of LAMP will become the businesses of tomorrow. My question is how these businesses built on top of an open source foundation will compete with open source applications. What mysterious force prevents OSS from moving up the stack from operating system and platform to application? My Longtail of Innovation post, if correct, would suggest that big business is a hinderance to innovation, at least in software. Though I don’t agree with everything in “Hackers and Painters” the author makes a convincing argument there.

It seems that some(oldschool capitalists) criticize open source as anti-capitalist, defensive geeks claim open source is going to lead to a new era of profitability in the software industry (we do have to eat and some VCs are biting). Then there are those of us who believe that open source will ubiquitize software, killing the software industry as we know it. That doesn’t mean we aren’t going to see any more software it just means that starving artists will have some hungry new companions. The software industry is going to take one for the team.

I have a few variables I weigh more heavily when shaping my outlook on where things are going. Longtail, standards, ubiquity. I don’t assume that all good ideas are destined to generate wealth. Charity is a good if unprofitable idea. Open source is the same. The era of the geek as the gatekeeper to information is nearing an end and that’s probably a good thing.

Will new ideas emerge that actually create more jobs in IT? Maybe. Would the efficiencies created by open source in every other industy make those IT jobs look completely insignificant in comparison? Definitely. It might make sense to compare the fall of mainstream media to the fall of the software industry. Both exist because of insufficient technology; a lack of low cost distribution channels in media and a lack of standards in software.

Post-Capitalist Model

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For the last few years I’ve been under the impression that the Internet, Open Source, and open standards will make obsolete any job that can be done by software or exists because of inefficiency. So it follows that the stock market will eventually collapse, probably starting with the IT sector.

The only jobs left will be in the entertainment, education and research. All of the smart people stuck in high paying but crap jobs will trickle down and replace the incompetent people in E, E and R. The generation raised with these people as their teachers and cultural icons will be a lot smarter than we are. People are going to cash out their stocks and dump the money into bonds and real estate. Interest rates will approach zero and inflation will set in. GDP will cease to be useful as a measure of economic health.

It could happen fast. What if businesses are sensing this acceleration of progress and holding off on investing in new equipment. We would see an initial drop in stock prices, the recent decline of IBM fits here, followed by a boom in productivity, layoffs and competition as open standards and open software are adopted in place of wheel-reinventing people.

The following two quotes, from Doc Searls and an Economist article respectively, both make incorrect assumptions:

“The fact is, or will be, far more money will be made because of open source than will be made with open source–or with any of the infrastructural (in Tom’s words, vanilla) software it replaces. Think of open-source infrastructure as a huge, flat cake on which you can build a vast new market for any kind of topping you like. A cake which, by the way, only gets bigger.”

“Are there no limits to the power of open source?
Of course there are. The model is particularly well suited to information-rich goods, of which software is merely the most obvious example, since it is pure information.”

Doc Searls claims Open Source will be an economic panacea and The Economist claims it’s reach is limited to information centric businesses. I think Doc has the right idea but instead of more money, the benefit of open source will be lower costs for everybody. That seems like a small difference but if you have an opinion about wealth distribution it’s not a minor detail. He’s right in the sense that B2B transactions would be affected, lowering production costs, but that applies to the competition as well. I suppose it’s true in the sense that markets will appear that don’t currently exist because it’s too expensive to try now.

The Economist article is the unusually off base. From the Wikipedia entry on “market”:

“In modern times, mainly after the invention of the electronic computer, markets are not always located in a physical space. Such virtual markets consist of communication paths where information exchange is easy and deals may be struck. A notable example of this is the international currency market.

Virtual are identical to non-virtual markets, the difference is that the information exchange is facilitated by proximity in the case of a physical market. So we can infer that a good definition of market, virtual or not is, a place where information exchange allows deals to be struck. If any market consists of the exchange of information (and currency) then the idea that certain businesses are more “information centric” is missing the point. All business is information centric. The internet, protocols, languages and platforms are maturing into the standards that are the foundation for the future of communication and information.

I use Amazon.com before I buy something at WalMart. Here’s why.

The first few times I used it, I felt like I was going to sneeze. It really does have sonic feel to it. This took about 2 weeks to get over, doesn’t bother me in the slightest now. There’s a relatively high pitched whine while it runs however it’s not loud. The manual recommends you to barely apply pressure and just let the tips of the brush dance on your teeth. This is very important.

That is a user review of a Sonicare toothbrush. I can’t imagine a business less information centric than Sonicare. Yet I’m using the Internet as way to get information about what to purchase in the form of pricing(Froogle), vendor reviews(Ebay) and product reviews(Amazon, MetaCritic). Jobs in marketing are going to evaporate unless they involve writing fake reviews on Amazon.com. Sites like MetaCritic and things like Flickr and Del.icio.us are doing the same thing as Amazon. Spin free information. Other jobs will become redundant as productivity jumps. I’d venture to guess that millions of jobs currently exist, parasites of pre-commoditization, that will be gone in the next ten years.

The interesting thing to consider in this hypothetical situation is the effect a shift like this would have on wealth distribution. I’ll think about it next time.

Ideas for an Essay

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My problem is that I have lots of ideas and get started on them but never have the time to finish them. That or I find something new that grabs my interest before I’m done. Case in point: the following are ideas about politics that I never managed to combine into something coherent but here they are anyway in case I somday find the time to edit this…

“It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.”
From A Conversation with Friedrich A. von Hayek, AEI, Washington D.C., 1979:
Lead into the religious right.

“It seems to me that the religious right today can preserve their position in politics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.” House

The roof of many a holy man’s mouth have been burned as a result of the theory of a man named Max Planck. His theory of electromagnetic radiation and the microwave ovens that followed are a way of life for those of us that cook too much on purpose to avoid two piles of dishes. Likewise the legs of many of the left have been burned by sun heated leather after returning to their expensive convertable cars. Cars they can afford because of free markets and (relatively) small government we enjoy in America.

My intent isn’t to point out that people are wrong. The point is that facts are irrelevant when crafting a plan to get people to vote for truth. Irony. So what do those two worldviews offer that is so appealing to the majority of humans? Hope. Consciousness is an accident then we weren’t designed to contemplate our origins.

Science will not slowly find it’s way into acceptance. Schools are still trying to ban the teaching of evolution years after the monkey trial. The decline in church enrollment is only and indication that people are more accepting of personal spirituality. That’s good for a libertarian movement.

Tax breaks for science.

Political Science is a misnomer if we’re going to allow it to be influenced by superstition.

God vs. Unemployment

Give the wise fable that Aesop… there was no talking cat.

The strange part is that really smart people believe in these things. More evidence that our basal needs trump intellect, Clinton/Lewinsky. If we are savages, why

We’re hell bent on proving the opposition wrong.

To preserve our freedoms and prosperity we have to lead

http://www.asanet.org/media/pressrel0507.html”As to the role of secularization (i.e., skepticism), the researchers did not find this to be a cause of the increase in “no religion,” because most “no religion” responders maintain religious faith, a belief in God, and a belief in life after death.”

http://www.csicop.org/scienceandmedia/evolution/

After the passage of the legislation, Jefferson wrote Madison to express his pride in Virginia’s leadership on this crucial issue. “(I)t is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests and nobles, and it is honorable for us, to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions.”

Why is it that the religous right questions that piles of bones we unearth but not the food heated by their microwave?

Pace of innovation is accelerating

Social questions are no longer separate from economic questions.

Hayek (Responsibility party)

http://www.techcentralstation.com/033005F.html

The recent articles about a new party are intended to scare Rove straight. Of course they still have to get elected.

Environmentalism is OK.

The underlying cause of this pain is ignored becuase the benefits associated with it are overwhelming.

http://www.alternet.org/story/21641/

The world was sick because it lacked the medicine to free our ideas. Communication advances, the Internet, is that medicine. The old herbal remedies we’ve been applying for decades are no longer needed.

Strategy
————–
Learn from Open Source

NYTimes Article

What is the 5th institutuion press business.

In the future, those with good ideas, smart people will have the money. Mark Cuban funding Grokster. Strategy for the “new party”

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006420

http://www.rollingdoughnut.com/

3rd issue is do only what needs to be done, interstate highway was a good idea.

The idea that libertarians selfish is stupid. The record unemployment in Germany because of big government is supposed to be generous?

Lets say I’m a “selfish” Libertarian and only tip 10%. My German counterpart considers himself generous with a 15% tip. I order top shelf booze, the left winger, lets call him Gerhard, can only afford the half priced booze. If you were the bartender would you rather have me as the tipper and get a $10 tip or the generous Gerhard and get a $7.50? If you have a job then consider yourself the bartender. You can consider libertarians selfish but only if you’d rather have the $7.50. Not to mention the fact that Europeans don’t tip(not entirely true). There is no consequece for bad service in Europe. In a nice restrant a few blocks from the vatican city, I ordered pasta and received a microwaved frozen dinner. Not even on a plate, still in the box.

People with a lot of money are more careful about how to donate it than the government. People with money tend to be smart and the aren’t influenced by money because they have enough that they can give it away. Bill Gates, the pinnacle of greed, has donated Billions to charity. Money that in the hands of the government would likely end up in pork projects.

Charity subject to free market principles may just flourish. Tax brakes for charitable donations could be increased.

Candlemakers protest sunlight. Satire, big government damage is harder to see.

Mention The Bush strategy of Ownership society and Rove’s tradeoff of spending for longterm small government gain.

Address the other side:

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_03_14/article1.html

Vulgarized culture, V-Chip.

Military? Jupiter sucks in the asteroids and lets us live.

Cato Institute relationship to the Powell doctrine

Address patience. Bloggers.

Noam Chomsky “case Noam Chomsky makes when he refers to “private tyranny”.” Relate to his lack of understanding of bloggers.

http://freedomkeys.com/paradox.htm#pcdt

Dinosaur Podcast

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There are two reasons old media is interested in citizen journalism: It has the potential to build credibility and it’s cheap. 91X, a Clearchannel owned radio station in San Diego, is running a contest with the following rules:

If you are picked to be a 91X Coachella Correspondent you will recieve a two day 91X Coachella pass, campground spot out at Coachella, some camping gear and a 91X Coachella Survival Pack.
By entering this contest you must agree to the following:
In the event I am chosen, I am NOT ripping out solely to party. I promise to report to 91X LIVE! from Coachella (via satellite) with a compelling/well-executed product to include band interviews/photos/and performance reviews.
Potential Correspondents need to be available Monday, April 18th from 8:30am to 1pm.

I could be cynical and assume that ClearChannel just doesn’t want to pay employees if they can get someone to do the job for some camping gear. Whatever the motives, this could be the beginning of a real shift in the industry. Rupert Murdoch of FOX had some interesting points:

“What is happening right before us is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don?t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don?t want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what?s important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don?t want news presented as gospel.”

It’s interesting to note that the contest rules explain that you have to provide a well-executed product. That phrase is evidence that ClearChannel doesn’t really get it. Maybe they think they can re-gift their old methods with faux-independent wrapping paper and save a few bucks in the process. The recipe for success, according to most experts, is trust. A team of amateur DJs might cut down on production costs but the foul stench of ClearChannel lingers. Regardless of talent and spin, citizen journalism run by big media dinosaurs faces extinction.