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Clive Thompson: Why Veteran Visionaries Will Save the World

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:08:17 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: keep on reading

Don't trust anyone over 30. That's the prevailing wisdom in Silicon Valley, a land once again bestrode by millionaire CEOs who just learned to shave. Many people believe that the breakthrough ideas come only from the young. And why not? Media stories constantly recite the ages of a few famous founders: Bill Gates of Microsoft, 20; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, 20; the Google boys, 25; YouTube's Chad Hurley, 28. Tumblr founder David Karp is 21 — and on his second successful company.

Young people rule tech innovation, we tell ourselves, because they have several key advantages. They're fearless and naive, so they'll try anything. They can spy markets that elders, with their locked-in views, cannot. And without dependents or spouses, twentysomethings can work the sort of pyramid-building hours necessary for a startup. It's a kind of Logan's Run world: If you're ending a third decade, you're obsolete.

But hold on.

Tags: clive thompson, veteran, visionaries

Google Chrome is here

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:15:27 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

Clip Source: googleblog.blogspot.com

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit "send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available -- you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

Tags: google chrome, browser, opensource

The Omnigoogle

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:25:02 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.roughtype.com

“Some say Google is God,” Sergey Brin once said. “Others say Google is Satan.”

The confusion about Google’s identity may not be quite that Manichean, but it does run deep. The company, which today celebrates the tenth anniversary of its incorporation, remains an enigma despite the Everest-sized pile of press coverage that has been mounded around it. People can’t even agree what industry it’s in. The many businesses that see the young company as an actual or potential competitor include software houses, advertising agencies, telephone companies, newspapers, TV networks, book publishers, movie studios, credit card processors, and Internet firms of all stripes. If your business involves information, you probably fear (and admire) Google.

breadth of Google’s influence and activity - just this past week it unveiled its own Web browser, introduced face-recognition software, and shot a satellite into orbit - can easily be interpreted as evidence that it is an entirely new kind of business

Tags: omni, google

We'll all be citizens of virtual worlds

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:13:41 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: What is the point of all this? It is quite likely that it will be a natural thing for future generations to meet their friends in worlds such as these, where they can watch the same music or videos while chatting to each other. And if that is where youngsters will be hanging out, then brands and media, including newspapers, will have to be there. Other life-mimicking worlds about to be released include shopping malls such as themall.tv, which aims to emulate an entire shopping mall with scores of high street shops. It claims to have signed up 500 brands.

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Most people still look askance if you admit to using virtual worlds where you move around with an avatar or 3D version of yourself. It recalls the technophobic reactions in the early days of the internet. But attitudes may now change for two reasons. First, children are piling into their own virtual worlds, so their parents can get a glimpse of what it is all about. And second, a huger user base is being created, one that is accustomed to virtual worlds and is ready to trade up to more sophisticated ones as they grow older.

Some of the kids' sites have more registered (but not necessarily active) members than countries have citizens. These include Habbo Hotel (more than 100 million registered users), Neopets (45 million) and Disney's Club Penguin (20 million). Up the scale there are spaces such as Second Life and hipihi.com from China. Kzero reckons that there are about 100 million active users of virtual world.

Second, virtual worlds are changing fast

Tags: virtual worlds

Grid of 100,000 computers heralds new internet dawn

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:14:00 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: The Grid is coming

Clip Source: technology.timesonline.co.uk

A network of 100,000 computers providing the greatest data processing capacity yet unleashed has been created to cope with information pouring from the world’s largest machine.

The Grid is the latest evolution of the internet and the world wide web and computer scientists will announce on Friday that it is ready to be connected to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

It is designed for schemes where huge quantities of data need crunching, such as large research and engineering projects. The Grid has the kind of power required to download movies in seconds, and the ability to make high-definition video phone calls for the same price as a local call. More importantly, it should help to narrow the search for cures for diseases. However, it is unlikely to be directly available to most internet users until telecoms providers build the fibre-optic network required to use it.

Tags: grid, computing, cern

Social media: Social Approximity?

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:06:58 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Now that bit about the telegraph may be a bit out of dot dot dash date, so simply substitute in "social media" for telegraph and you're back in the present tense. Social media are a recontextualization of old print forms and contents within a new distribution and communication framework (social web). It's not surprising that so many of our social practices (tools and uses) echo, if not amplify, their old media (broadcast) forebears: celebrity, self-promotion, news, anchoring, commentary, top tens, ratings, rankings, and polls (diggs, votes).

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

We have moved beyond "generation gap" differences in technology use and moved into the "experiential gap" in terms of use and understanding. Your experience with an application such as Twitter provides an understanding that cannot be communicated by reading about it or even being told about it.

Tom Foremski recently penned on twitter in which he notes the growing experiential gap that separates those who use new social media tools from those who don't. Those who use, get it, and those who don't, don't. Well, not surprisingly, this digitally dividing line is also the void that old media needs to bridge, if it, like its users, are to join the ranks of the initiated. The adoption curve sweeps like the arc of a #suspension bridge (!) plotting the line of escape from the old and tired traditional media landscape to the bright and shiny shores of the new.

The "content" of any medium is always another medium

The content of writing is speech

just as the written word is the content of print

Tags: generation gap, context, twitter, social networks

The Social web- all about the small stuff

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:07:17 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: googleblog.blogspot.com

The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting their responses. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day. - Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editors

What makes two friends feel "close" to one another? I'd argue that a big part of it is the small details that you know about each other

Tags: internet, social web

Grouping Recent Net Books: Internet Optimists vs. Pessimists

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:10:14 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: techliberation.com

A number of very interesting books have been released over the past year or two which debate how the Internet is reshaping our culture and the economy. I’ve reviewed a couple of them here but I have been waiting to compile a sort of mega-book review once I found a sensible way to conceptually group them together. I’m not going to have time to cover each of them here in the detail they deserve, but I think I have at least found a sensible way to categorize them. For lack of better descriptors, I’ve divided these books and thinkers into two camps: “Internet optimists” versus “Internet Pessimists.” Here’s a list of some of the individuals and books (or other articles and blogs) that I believe epitomize these two camps of thinking:

Adherents & Their Books / Writings

Internet Optimists

Internet Pessimists

Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks

Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur

Chris Anderson, The Long Tail and “Free!”

Lee Siegel, Against the Machine

Tags: net books, internet

The Internet Is a Brain

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:59:46 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: There is a lot we can learn from the brain and it can tell us where the Internet is headed next.

There’s nothing magical in the brain (at least that we’ve found thus far), and yet it delivers all our mental capabilities, and emotional ones as well – that’s a very intriguing thought. After all, just as there is no particular reason for this lump inside our heads to appreciate fine wines and music, cry, laugh, reason, love, daydream, and aspire to greater things, there is no reason why silicon or some other fundamental substance (maybe even carbon some day), could not be coaxed into creating something similar.

Clip Source: discussionleader.hbsp.com

The Internet is a brain. There, I said it. It has taken me far too long to publicly utter those words. And not because I don't believe them, but for fear that people will think I am crazy.

So, yes it may sound off-the-wall at first blush, but it's an insight that has helped me develop companies that are collectively worth over a billion dollars. It's an insight that will lead to the development of future businesses worth far more than that. More importantly, it is going to change the world as we know it, revolutionizing the way we think about thought and the way we think about ourselves.

Let’s get concrete about what I mean here. The brain is one of the most complex networks in the world, with more neurons than there are stars in the galaxy. Its hardware is a complex network of neurons; its software a complex network of memories. And so too is the Internet a network.

Its hardware is a complex network of computers; its software a complex network of websites

Tags: net, brain

Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:15:43 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: It is easy to become unsettled by privacy-eroding aspects of awareness tools. But there is another — quite different — result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves. Many of the avid Twitterers, Flickrers and Facebook users I interviewed described an unexpected side-effect of constant self-disclosure. The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act. It’s like the Greek dictum to “know thyself,” or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness. (Indeed, the question that floats eternally at the top of Twitter’s Web site — “What are you doing?” — can come to seem existentially freighted. What are you doing?) Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they’re trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

On Sept. 5, 2006, Mark Zuckerberg changed the way that Facebook worked, and in the process he inspired a revolt.

Pundits predicted that News Feed would kill Facebook, but the opposite happened. It catalyzed a massive boom in the site’s growth. A few weeks after the News Feed imbroglio, Zuckerberg opened the site to the general public (previously, only students could join), and it grew quickly; today, it has 100 million users

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

In essence, Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.

Tags: brave new world, digital intimacy

Is the End of Unlimited Internet Near?

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:04:04 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.abcnews.go.com

Get ready to say goodbye to unlimited Internet access.

Comcast Corp., the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, says it would set an official limit on the amount of data subscribers can download and upload each month.

Last week, Comcast -- the second-largest Internet service provider in the country -- announced that starting Oct. 1 it would officially set a threshold for monthly Internet usage.

In an online announcement, the service provider said that although it already contacts residential customers who use excessive amounts of bandwidth, it had never provided a specific limit. Now, Comcast said it will amend its user agreement to say that users will be allowed 250 gigabytes of monthly usage.

The company emphasizes that its cap is generous and will only affect about 1 percent of its 14.4 million customers. Experts say these customers might include heavy gamers and those who use a significant amount of bandwidth for creating or uploading video.

Tags: end, unlimited, internet

The era of the American Internet is ending.

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:45:18 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: “Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches.”

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

SAN FRANCISCO — The era of the American Internet is ending.

Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States.

Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control.

And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly flowing around the United States, which may have intelligence — and conceivably military — consequences.

“Because of the nature of global telecommunications, we are playing with a tremendous home-field advantage, and we need to exploit that edge,”

Tags: net, traffic, routing, us

The Future of Copyright

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:48:02 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: A must read

Clip Source: www.cato-unbound.org

A very condensed version of copyright history could look like this: texts (1800), works (1900), tools (2000). Originally the law was designed to regulate the use of one machine only: the printing press. It concerned the reproduction of texts, printed matter, without interfering with their subsequent uses. Roughly around 1900, however, copyright law was drastically extended to cover works, independent of any specific medium. This opened up the field for collective rights management organizations, which since have been setting fixed prices on performance and broadcasting licenses. Under their direction, very specific copyright customs developed for each new medium: cinema, gramophone, radio, and so forth. This differentiation was undermined by the emergence of the Internet, and since about the year 2000 copyright law has been pushed in a new direction, regulating access to tools in a way much more arbitrary than anyone in the pre-digital age could have imagined.

Tags: copyright, copyleft, future

Nonviolent Communication (NVC)

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:16:06 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: The goal of NVC is to get one's own needs met while also meeting others' needs. A key principle of nonviolent communication that supports this is the capacity to express oneself without use of good/bad, right/wrong judgment, hence the emphasis on expressing feelings and needs, instead of criticisms or judgments.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a process developed by Marshall Rosenberg and others which people use to communicate with greater compassion and clarity.^[1] It focuses on two things: honest self-expression — exposing what matters to oneself in a way that's likely to inspire compassion in others, and empathy — listening with deep compassion. Formal NVC self-expression includes four elements: observations (distinguished from interpretations/evaluations), feelings (emotions separate from thoughts), needs (deep motives) and requests (clear, present, doable and without demand). ^[2]

Those who use nonviolent communication (also called "compassionate communication") describe all actions as motivated by an attempt to meet human needs. However, in meeting those needs, they seek to avoid the use of coercion (e.g., inducing fear, guilt, shame, praise, blame, duty, obligation, punishment, or reward

Tags: non violence, communication, social networks

The Future Of Code, Digital And Genetic Continued

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:15:56 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

Simonyi talked about his “intentional software” concept. If the human genome can be encoded in a program that takes up less than 1 gigabyte, he asked, why does Windows require 15 or 16? So, instead of building software according to elaborate blueprints that detail every programming step, Simonyi is following what he called a recipe approach. His team at Intentional Software creates a set of programming tools, writes a very specific description of the problem they are attempting to solve, and then uses the tools to generate a software solution. It sounds like a software version of the directed self-assembly techniques used in chemistry and nanotechnology.

Over on the in vivo side of the house, Harvard’s George Church, biotechnologist and founder of the Personal Genome Project; Drew Endy, of Stanford University and a founder of the BioBricks Foundation; and Rodney Brooks, of MIT and iRobot, discussed what’s being called synthetic biology or synthetic life research.

Tags: future, code, digital, genetic