The Internet Will Save Us All, or, The Great Equalizer

OK, I've had this idea for years that universal connectivity could lead to an end of scarcity and war in our world. That's the inner idealist/optimist.

The inner wise-old-cynical-nihilist says there is nothing new under the sun, and people will be people, regardless of technology and education.

The inner optimist got a boost today when I read the following from the KenRadio Daily Tech News Clicks:

Wi-fi buses drive rural web use

Buses equipped with wi-fi are being used to deliver web content to remote rural villages in the developing world. In rural India and parts of Rwanda, Cambodia and Paraguay, the vehicles offer web content to computers with no internet connection. The buses and a fleet of motorcycles update their pages in cities before visiting the hard-to-reach communities. As well as offering popular pages, the United Villages project also allows users to request specific information. A small box, with an antenna, onboard the buses and motorcycles communicates with the rural computers. In many parts of the developing world it is too expensive to lay the fibres and copper cable to deliver a standard internet connection. Wireless technologies also do not reach many remote places.

Time... the big lie

Time is a man-made abstract- a comparison of measured actions. Action is primary. Without action, there's no time.

Elaboration: we Newtonians travelling at very low speeds measure and perceive time as a ratio of motion to motion, whether the motion is the distance traveled by the hands of a clock, or the vibrations of a quartz atom. Unfortunately right now I can't pretend to know much about Einsteining physics, except something about time being squishy, and light speed being absolute.

What I do know is that if you stop the motion, then you cannot measure the time.

If action is primary, then experience is key, and priorities definitive.

Perception of time as a primary/fundamental unit can be convenient for understanding our world, but it can also be used in conjunction with our fears/desires/mortality to create a cruel illusion of scarcity that can blind us from quality experience.

real security vs. a sense of security

3/21/2007: Revision: Looks like we should all panic... IMMEDIATELY! Lock bumpers will break into your house and eat your babies.

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this is my second mobile blog entry via MMS... although the future is yet to provide me with flying cars or even personal aircraft (how about a jet-pack?), this connectedness is cool (although thumbing is silly... when I can dial by voice, why can't I dictate messages, too? Still, all things considered I give the state of technology a thumbs up... hooray!

Know any good locksmith blogs? After surviving the past three days protected only by a mini sticky-note deterrent, I am pondering the various symbols we cling to in order to feel a sense of security. I mean, what good is a deadbolt when I have barless windows all around my house? Real security comes from one's societal environment, I believe. Specifically a stable society following rules of law. Only then can my sticky note protect me.

In Microsoft we Trust

Woke up this morning to find my computer clock had "sprung forward" according to its best understanding of daylight savings time.

Or was it that my handheld "fell back?" Seriously, I'm not trying to be funny. But something has happened, and I no longer now what time it is.

I am going to use the kitchen oven clock as the standard, because I know I set that clock accurately a couple weeks ago based on the new rules.

Perhaps the real effect of our government changing the daylight savings time rules is an increased awareness of how deeply our lives are integrated with technology. Microsoft technology, specifically.

Ted Kaczynski must be pacing in prison. In Ray Kurzweil's, "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence," I read an excerpt from, Kaczynski's, "Industrial Society and Its Future." I thought that some of his points were reasonable, but his PR campaign certainly sucked.

"hope you brought your a-game, bitch."

"Hope you brought your a-game, bitch," is one of the taunt moves in the new video game, Def Jam Icon. I caught the following advertisement while watching TiVo'd Family Guy last night.


Anyone who has ever downloaded music can see that artists need a new way to get paid for making great music. Music as an experience-enhancement, specifically in video games, is one solution to the artist's dilemma.

On another topic, are hip-hop artists the cowboys and indians, or mobsters of a generation? In other words, is this healthy, harmelss fantasty? Or have today's artists crossed a line by BEING, pretending to BE, or BECOMING the violent, drug slanging, gun-toting, bitch-slapping characters they rap about?

This comes to mind as I picked up the latest copy of Source, and felt a pang of nostalgia.

I grew up with this stuff, but it was not just fantasy about which they rapped. Real people really died.

Forgive the multi-theme, un-wrapped post. This idea has been marinading for 2 weeks, and it is to move on. RIP Tupac/Biggie.

doppleganger

All of the Crock-o-pottami (that's plural crock-o-pottamus) in Crock-Town are a little sad right now. Why? Because of THIS: apparently, according to the advertisers at Dice, I look like the opposite of a better boss: the bad boss!

Evil me:

Real me:


That's OK. My friend Ned's nemesis is a stand-up comedian on Comedy Central. At least Ned's evil twin follows the proper goatee convention, so as to avoid confusion.
Evil Ned:

Real** Ned (still searching for photo. Real Ned is elusive.):


**Note: Real Ned is only slightly less evil than Evil Ned.

blogger mobile @ the drive-thru

Remember when drive-throughs were "modern?" I don't, although I have been told.

Lessig on Copyright Law

Ever wondered where copyright law came from?

watch this video:
http://lessig.org/blog/archives/003696.shtml

and the follow-up, here:
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003709.shtml

A refreshing bit of honesty in late night talk television

from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bbaRyDLMvA

updated May 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGLzpt3caHw


Interesting how the audience, who showed up expecting comedy, takes a few minutes to realize there is no punch line coming.


Excerpt:

Ferguson: People are falling apart. People are...People are dying. That Anna
Nicole Smith woman—she died!
[Audience laughs.]
No, it’s not a joke. You
know, it stops being funny, that. She’s got a six week old kid, or six month old
kid. What the hell is that? You know, and I’m starting to feel uncomfortable
about making fun of these people. For me, comedy should have a certain amount of
joy in it. It should be about always attacking the powerful people—attacking the
politicians, and the Trumps and the blowhards—go after them! We shouldn’t be
attacking the vulnerable people.

Reminds me of a Bill Hicks or Andy Kaufman audience.

Craig Ferguson keeping it REAL!

(more here)

WCMSaaS: Web Content Management Served as a Service

Hello, my name is Crockett Dunn, and I build web applications on hosted content management platforms. My company is Gold Zeppelin, and I primarily use EXP Web to offer hosted WCM (Web Content Management) to clients. Very recently I've begun toying with DotNetNuke in an effort to remain vendor neutral.

Saas, or, "What Happened to all of the Application Service Providers?"

Hosted software solutions are the way to go. Before the dot-com bubble burst, this was a hot idea: the concept of the Application Service Provider. Now the same (still great) idea is hot again, and it has the sassy new name, "Software as a Service," or, "Saas" for short.

This was a great idea then, and it is still a great idea now. Inevitable, really. The idea is basically this: you pay for use of the software but do not own the product or the means to "run" the software. Remember "dumb terminals?" And remember when we were all excited about "thin clients," (before thick clients got so cheap)? It's a similar concept, organized slightly differently.

Consider an automobile industry analogy: why buy the car, service station, and mechanics when you can pay monthly to use a car. Not only would you receive unlimited access to drive the car, but you also have it constantly serviced or even replaced. Your licensing fee would also ensure your car was always running with a full tank of gas, to save you the time of stopping at filling stations.

Moreover, would you rather "build your own" insurance PLAN, by purchasing extra, "backup" cars, service stations, and mechanics, or might you purchase an insurance policy (a guarantee of services) from experts?

To sum it up, rather than owning the car, you would own the right to always have the latest car model, access to automobile experts, and the car would essentially service itself and fill its own tank?

This may seem like a stretch, but owning a software product, and server hardware, and server software, and backup software, and disaster recovery plan, and uptime/redundancy solution, and expert administrators- that is as crazy and generalized as keeping your own auto factory and home-grown insurance policy just to be able to drive a car.

Software as a Service is the inevitable next step in the evolution of how we pay to derive value and utility from intellectual property.

What's the deal with Content Management?

Now that we're all on the same page, Let's talk quickly about content management. Specifically, web content management (WCM), more specifically, hosted web content management (a Saas model), with my company, Gold Zeppelin.

First, what the heck is content management? My experience has been that a good starting place for this concept is to convey to a prospective client the value of separation of design from content. The business argument is that this will free resources to perform other, more valuable work, rather than being buried in HTML for weeks.

Migration to a content management platform will also enable your business to be more focused with its future web efforts. For example, you will never again have to work on something as broad and nebulous as “the website,” or, "the new website."

From now on finances and human resources can be properly allocated towards specifics, examples of which include or new content contribution, visual redesign, navigational hierarchical re-organization, or my favorite, dynamic web application development (smart search, form submission, online registration, view my info, credit card payments, auctions, accepting donations, etc.).

EXP Web will serve as a foundation from which all of these tasks can be more easily performed. It is a web platform.

Here are the fancy presentations: http://www.sungardexp.com/menus/documents/octane8_1.html

Thanks for reading.