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December 30, 2003

Social software
: Lots of smart folks are trying to figure out what the hell social software is, even as money pours into it. The problem is, the Internet is already the social software and rather than artificially imposing new social software on it -- rather than trying to turn us all into social spammers -- the real trick is freeze-drying what's already happening in the real world and virtual world instead of an artifical one: What do all my links signify about my network; what does my network have to say about the topics that matter to me; and perhaps, what connections can my connections make (but why would they?)? That's the trick; that's the mega McGuffin and everybody's chasing it. drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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Know-it-alls
: On Jessica's Well:

Resolved: This House (OK, this Blog) believes that the collective knowledge of the blogosphere is greater than the collective knowledge of professional journalists regardless of the subject.

Well, I could argue that today but that would be beside the point. Will we come to this tipping point (if we haven't already)? I'd go with the affirmative, wouldn't you? [via Michele]drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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At the start
: Michele recalls the start of the amazing Command Post.
She and the site aren't getting enough credit for their impact on news. This group blog did a phenomenal job finding, editing, selecting, and presenting the very latest and best news on the war. Nobody but nobody did that better. They showed the true potential of weblogs and editing by mob; they showed us the future of collaborative news. No, they didn't report. They edited the world and did a great job of it. Hats off.drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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Pissy on the pissy
: In an incredibly long-winded, humorless, overblown rant, one Arthur Silber attacks me for dubbing those who would see a dark lining to the silver cloud of Saddam's capture as the Coalition of the Pissy.

I was simply paralyzed by this massive, apparently unanswerable intellectual onslaught. But then I remembered that the originator of that phrase has written for periodicals such as TV Guide, People and Entertainment Weekly. Lest you think that is merely a cheap shot: I mention those publications only because they reveal the kind of complex and nuanced intellectual pedigree from which slogans such as this latest one spring, as I will proceed to document in this post. I also realized something much more important: all those who adopted Coalition of the Pissy as their war whoop of condemnation against anyone declining to join their mindless dance of joy are nothing more than moral bullies and intellectual thugs. They are the enemies of mind, and of thought -- and they are the enemies of truth, justice and freedom in a very deep sense. They are the advance guard of the Truth Police. For them, history does not exist, nor does the past in any meaningful sense at all, nor does the future.
These barbarians live only in the moment, only in the now -- disconnected from everything that has become before, and from everything that is likely to flow in the future from our present actions. Thought, principles and ideas are alien to them, in the most profound sense imaginable.

Oh, my. But you forgot: We eat puppies, too. [via Kevin Eugene Cole]drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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Sir Web
: Tim Berners-Lee deserves no less than knighthood.drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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Iran relations
: The Guardian says the U.S. is softening on Iran.
: But at the same time, the Telegraph says:

President George W Bush was sent a public manifesto yesterday by Washington's hawks, demanding regime change in Syria and Iran and a Cuba-style military blockade of North Korea backed by planning for a pre-emptive strike on its nuclear sites.
The manifesto, presented as a "manual for victory" in the war on terror, also calls for Saudi Arabia and France to be treated not as allies but as rivals and possibly enemies.

Good cop of the world, bad cop of the world.drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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Something is cooking
: TV news just showed a jam getting into Newark airport as every car goes through a security check. Something is up. drive ALI M 5273 A 1

: UPDATES: Italy bans flights over Rome, for fear of attacks.
: Hamburg reportedly heads off a car-bomb attack.
: "Republican Rep. Christopher Shays, however, said people ought to avoid places like Times Square, calling it irresponsible for officials to make people think they don't need to take precautions.
'Secretary Ridge says just do what you normally do,' Shays said. 'If normally you go to Times Square, I wouldn't do what you normally do. I wouldn't go into places when you're packed and where if there was panic, a lot of injuries would take place.'"drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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What Iraqis think
: Zeyad translates and posts the results of a fascinating poll of Iraqis conducted all over the country by the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies. Go see all the results. Some highlights:

1)What was your reaction to Saddam Hussein's capture?
Overwhelming joy 59%
Shock and confusion 20%
Sadness 16%
None of my concern 5%...drive ALI M 5273 A 1

3)Do you think that Saddam deserves a fair trial?
Yes 84%
No 16%drive ALI M 5273 A 1

4)Do you prefer that Saddam be tried by:
An Iraqi court? 60%
An Iraqi court with International advisors? 15%
An International court of justice? 25%drive ALI M 5273 A 1

5)What is the fair judgement you believe Saddam deserves?
Execution 56%
Imprisonment 25%
Clemency 19%drive ALI M 5273 A 1

6)What do you think a speedy trial of Saddam would achieve?
It would prevent an internal schism or conflict 45%
It would ensure security and stability 30%
It would increase chaos 14%
It would help end the occupation 10%
Others 1%drive ALI M 5273 A 1

7)How do you think Saddam's capture would affect the resistance?
Decrease resistance activities 53%
Increase resistance activities 27%
Cessation of resistance 20%...drive ALI M 5273 A 1

9)Which is more important to you?
Providing security 54.9%
Providing fuel 35.8%
Saddam's capture 34.4%
Providing electricity 28.8%
Improving the economic situation 5.3%drive ALI M 5273 A 1

10)Do you agree that those who suffered from the regime should be compensated?
Yes 12%
No 88%

And then they were asked whether a series of Saddam's actions were crimes or were justified. They thought they all were crimes... except fighting Israel. drive ALI M 5273 A 1

: MORE: Al-MuaJaha has a report from a visitor to Baghdad about life there:

The restaurant business in Iraq is booming, wherever you go, restaurants are full. Some of them even charge by U.S. dollars. Prices are high for local people and reasonable for foreigners who have dollars. An average price for any Iraqi or western dish is between 6000 ID, which is equivalent to $3 U.S. and 10000 ID or $5 U.S. Quality is getting better after the war: drinks are served in a very limited way, mainly imported beers. When I asked about our good beer, which we used to produce, I was surprised to learn that even the beer factories were looted, in addition to all the other factories....
Foreign restaurants, like Indian Chinese French, Italian English and American restaurants, are not yet there....
It is not likely foreign investors will open restaurants in Iraq at the present time and it may takes a long time.
However, when I asked about the giant American fast-food chain, MacDonald’s, I was told that one Iraqi expatriate succeeded in striking a deal with MacDonald’s to open one restaurant in Baghdad.

And some countries will no doubt accuse us of attacking the Iraqi people with mad cow disease.drive ALI M 5273 A 1

: YET MORE [via Iraq Blog Count]...
: Hear Iraqi singer Macadi Al Nahhas here.
: See Iraqi art here.
: What is it with Websmart Iraqi dentists?
: What's most cool is that there seem to be some Arabic-language Iraqi blogs starting. This is good news. This is what happened in Iran. More to come!drive ALI M 5273 A 1

: Blogalization reports:

"Will terrorism end and the problem of security in Iraq be solved?" The latest poll from the daily Alef Ya in Baghdad shows a fair degree of optimism among 13,000 respondents about the prospects for security in Iraq.
39.4 percent foresee an end to the insurgency within one year, 47.2 percent within two years, while 13.4 percent do not see the problem going away.

drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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Naked blogging
: Jason Calacanis reports that Pud of F'd company has a new venture: anonymous instant photo-phone moblogging. Send your photo to pics@mobog.com and it will appear within a minute; ready for audience comments. No name, nothing fancy, naked moblogging. Oh, and yes, some of the photos will be sure to be of naked bloggers. drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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Jargon
: Happened by the TV today when FoxNews was getting ready for Tommy Thompson's press conference on the ephedra ban. The screen said: "FoxNews Alert: Waiting for newser on ephedra ban..."
Newser.
I'm not sure whether that was an intentional use of news jargon; the line changed a minute later to "news conference."
But I think we'll see more sharing of new biz jargon; it's a way to make everyone feel like insiders.drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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Gotta love geeks
: Bloggers can't stop, even to eat. drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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Iran's political earthquake
: Hossein Derakhshan, Iran's premier blogger, explains how the earthquake in Bam reveals the fundamental separation of the people of Iran from their government:

Nothing could ever show the real sense of diconnectivity and distrust between Iranian people and the Islamic regime, and its deeply dysfunctionality better than a devastating quake....
People inside and outside Iran are desperately trying to gather donations, but they don't want to give the money to the government....
However, the reason is pretty clear: When a government can run the whole country only by the oil and gas income, it doesn't have to answer its people's needs; it only thinks about its own needs. (In 2004, Iran will have $16 billion revenue from oil export, while it only depends on approximately 18% of citizen's taxes.)
So it's not important for the government that tens of thousands of lives are lost in road accidents every year, or millions are living in homes poorly resistible against any earthquake bigger than 5 Richter, or millions are open to different kinds of cancer because of the poisonously polluted air of Tehran, etc.
But they are pretty concerned about their own power and the threat from their own enemies; so they are always ready to spend a whole year of oil income, $16 billion, to achieve nuclear technology to use it as defensive weapons.
Why such a state ever bothers to care about the people's needs when it doesn't need their taxes and therefore their votes? Unless the power gets in the hands of real elected people, and the state is run by people's taxes, nothing will ever change; the state will have its own goals (to defend itself) and people have their own (to simply survive).

drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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Media man

: FCC Chairman Michael Powell sits down with the San Jose Mercury News and out come some pearls of wisdom.drive ALI M 5273 A 1

He illustrates the real shift in media and telecommunications:

The most powerful paradigm shift is the fact that applications are not woven into the platforms. . . .
Now to be a phone company, you don't have to weave tightly the voice service into the infrastructure. You can ride it on top of the infrastructure. So if you're a Vonage, you own no infrastructure. You own no trucks. You roll to no one's house. They turn voice into a application and shoot it across one of these platforms. And, suddenly, you're in your business.
And that's why if you're the music industry, you're scared. And if you're the television studio, movie industry, you're scared. And if you're an incumbent infrastructure carrier, you'd better be scared. Because this application separation is the most important paradigm shift in the history of communications, and will change things forever. . . . I have no problem if a big and venerable company no longer exists tomorrow, as long as that value is transferred somewhere else in the economy.

That idea of the application (or content) being separate from the platform is the architecture of the age.
It's what HTML, XML, and RSS are all about: content is separate from display and thus displayed anywhere.
Not to be tiresome and link everything to the local angle of blogs, but they, too, fit this model: Blogs ride on top of the infrastructure of others, without reporting structures or pressmen or trucks.
Politics now fit the model, too: Howard Dean used open-source tools to create a new, distributed campaign infrastruture apart from the DNC's infrastructure.
Hell, it's true even of terrorism: Bin Laden didn't need to run a country to reap change; he rides atop our infastructure. drive ALI M 5273 A 1

On media ownership, Powell says:

There is no question that there are an order of magnitude more media choices than at any time in our nation's history.
I don't know when this golden age was that everyone is benchmarking from. TV started by being dominated by three networks and three networks only, and it has done nothing but dilute since then. . . . Where was it more concentrated?
And we've had the invention of cable television, satellite television, the Internet. So you may disagree where to draw the line, but to argue for a line on the idea that the market is 10 times more concentrated than sometime . . . then you're just willing to have a debate not rooted in factual reality.

Exactly. [via IWantMedia]drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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We're in USA Today
: Kathy Kiely writes a fine overview of blogs' impact on politics in USA Today today. Haven't picked up the paper yet, but it appears to be the Page 1 cover story. Kiely talked to lots and lots of people, bloggers and political beasts ("Veterans of the political scene admit they're having some trouble adjusting. 'When I first got up here, I thought blogging was an Irish dance,' says Tricia Enright, a longtime Capitol Hill press secretary...). It's a well-reported piece that tells people why they should pay attention. drive ALI M 5273 A 1

: Tim Windsor, the blogless deputy GM of the Baltimore Sun's site, emails this reaction to the USA Today story:

To your comment about "influencing influencers," I think that blogs are currently the Velvet Underground of publishing. As someone once noted (Lester Bangs perhaps?), the Velvets had a huge influence over the development of rock music because, while they didn't sell many records, everybody who bought one of their records went on to form a band.

I like that.
: Tim now says the quote may be Brian Eno. See the comments.drive ALI M 5273 A 1

: Here's the USA Today page 1. drive ALI M 5273 A 1

: UPDATE: More fame (no fortune) as the BBC World Service Go Digital calls 2003 The Year of the Blog. Audio here. [via Blog Herald]drive ALI M 5273 A 1

: UPDATE: Tom Mangan complains about the loneliness of blogging. I don't see it that way. I see it as a very social activity. drive ALI M 5273 A 1

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