Cyberspace may be virtual, but it has significant impacts on the physical world. All those computers and devices and networks consume huge amounts of energy. On the other hand, changes in how people live and work in the Network Age could produce significant environmental benefits. This session will examine how the new infrastructure of the connected world can become a solution rather than a problem for environmental sustainability.
Moderator Christina Page (Yahoo!) leads a conversation featring Chris Lloyd (Verizon), Paul Nagel (Control4), Bill St. Arnaud (CANARIE), Brendan Herron (Current Group), and Ivan O’Neill (Southern California Edison).
Susan Crawford of One Web Day discusses the threats to the Web that exist in many countries (not just the US). She tells Nick Douglas about the September 22nd celebration of One Web Day in many cities around the world.
Nick Douglas interviewed Scottt Beale of Laughing Squid about participating in the social scene, online and off, plus the challenges of the Network Age.
The other day, I sat down with Esther Dyson to interview her in advance of the Supernova2008 conference.Since Esther’s emails close with the saying, “Always make new mistakes,” I asked her if she often saw people making the same old mistakes, and what advice she had for them.
Now, I was thinking she might answer something along the lines of, I don’t know, venture capitalists still act like lemmings or entrepreneurs don’t give up on stupid ideas fast enough or something.Instead, she surprised me by saying, “I am appalled at the basics of email.”I asked for clarification, and the result comes out like a primer for pitching Esther, or anybody.
Remember the subject line – make it meaningful. Not just “Hi!”
Don’t go on and on, and hide the date you want the recipient to do something in the 6th paragraph.
If you want results, you must accommodate the person you are approaching – don’t make them work.For example, re-attach the original document in a reminder message!
If you want an intro, writethe email so that all the recipienthas to do is forward it.
If the message takes four sentences, don’t add an attachment that they have to open.
If your company looks “just like” a company she’s already invested in, that doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to invest in number two!
If she says your company is not ready for prime time, don’t bother asking her to introduce you to John Doerr.
In brief, Esther says, “If people did email right, they’d get better responses.”I had to guiltily admit that I’ve perpetrated some of these sins; maybe even in the email I sent her asking for the interview in the first place.Shame!
Image caption: What Esther will look like if you send her good emails!
What about real spam?“The way to solve it is to put the burden on the sender, not the recipient.It’s too easy to send mail, and there’s no penalty.”She’s trying to solve this with Boxbe, a company she has invested in.Boxbe scores email from one to ten; Esther doesn’t look unless it’s below a 7.
How does Esther sift through all the emails she gets, in an age where we are all inundated with email?She suggests “self-restraint” – Don’t sign up for those lists.Learn how to filter better.Get better at saying no politely and promptly.
The theme for Supernova2008 is “Challenges of the Network Age” – and Esther suggests that the real challenge is human nature.She told me a brief anecdote about Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton Hotel chain, on the Tonight Show.Carson asked him (I’m paraphrasing), “You’ve played host to kings and queens, to captains of industry.Do you have any message for the world?”And Hilton replied, “Put the shower curtain inside the tub.”Esther’s message: approaching things from the recipient’s perspective costs you nothing and means so much.
…brings together a distinguished collection of Internet observers, scholars, innovators, entrepreneurs, activists, technologists and still other experts, to write short essays, to foster an on-going public dialogue, and to create a durable record of how the rules of cyberspace are being formed, potentially impacting their future incarnation.
The project launches in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and focuses on “Constitutional moments on the Net.” I wasn’t sure what this meant, so I asked David Weinberger. He answers in the video below.
The first essays published are by several well known Internet luminaries, (including Supernova’s Kevin Werbach.) They are:
John Palfrey with the Preface to the site, David Weinberger on Tacit Governance, Esther Dyson discussing Governance-Tacit or Explicit?, and Kevin Werbach: Steering to the Edge of Trust.
Earlier in the week, I was able to interview David Weinberger via Skype on his essay, and how Tacit Governance has helped the Internet grow to where it is today.
Supernova’s theme for 2008 is “Challenges for the Network Age” - you can read more in this post by Kevin Werbach, Supernova’s founder.
One of my clients, Scott Draves (known as Spot), is an award-winning software artist, some of whose art is based on a complex network. I’ve interviewed him to learn more.
Isabel Walcott Hilborn: To create your art, you work with networks — made up of both people and computers. Can you explain how networks factor into your creative process?
Scott Draves: Right, much of my art harnesses a large collection of computers and people into a cyborg mind: “the Electric Sheep“. It’s a distributed screensaver that produces an abstract animation influenced by everyone who watches it. My intention is to produce artificial life in virtual reality.
So there’s the literal network of thousands of computers working together as a supercomputer to animate the “sheep”, a distributed render farm. These computers also form a p2p bittorrent network for sharing the final animation files.
The people behind the computers form another network — everyone who’s watching can vote on whether not they like what they see, and the more popular sheep reproduce with a genetic algorithm including cross-over and mutation. So the sheep evolve to satisfy their human audience.
There’s also “intelligent design” in the sense than people can use additional software to make their own sheep, and submit it to the gene pool. So there’s an artificial intelligence competing and collaborating with crowd-sourcing. What makes this design network go is Creative Commons licensing, which reduces the resistance in this circuit of mind, binding it together.
There’s another and much larger network: the software that implements this work is itself Open Source. The client and server are free software under the GPL, programmed by a globe-spanning team. They are made from components and tools developed by thousands of programmers over decades, based on science and mathematics published worldwide.
The Electric Sheep are standing on the shoulders of these giants, our technological and artistic fore-fathers. This is a network too, the web of ideas, in which every artist, and every person, is ultimately engaged.
Isabel Walcott Hilborn: How long did it take to build what you have? Can anyone make a network?
Scott Draves: The Electric Sheep started in 1999, but were based on a rendering algorithm that I developed in 1992. So the Electric Sheep have been growing for a very long time, but there are certainly networks that have gotten larger in less time, like say MySpace. So yes, anyone can start a network, but whether or not anyone will join is another question.
Isabel Walcott Hilborn: What are some of the key differences you see between working with a network and working independently?
Scott Draves: When working with a network you have given up a degree of control, so you have to very carefully consider everyone’s motivation. The network only exists by the will of the participants.
Some networks move at a glacial pace, which can be frustrating. For example, writing software portable and reliable enough to run on almost any Windows PC or Mac is hard enough. Doing so through a “committee” is glacial compared to solo hacking where I can try out ideas every minute, instead of monthly. I can only roll out a new client/server protocol once per year.
The reward, however, has no substitute.
Isabel Walcott Hilborn: What benefits have you gained from creating a network to make your art?
Scott Draves: In my case, the network is an essential.
Isabel Walcott Hilborn: What are the main challenges you see coming from your network?
Scott Draves: On the technical side, the biggest challenge has been finding the bandwidth to run the server. Ultimately broadcast should get built in to the infrastructure of the net (what if ISPs ran torrent seeders?).
The human side is more complicated. The GPL and CC have done a good job of handling the intellectual property issues so far. But we still face simple problems like vandalism, and what I call the “Las Vegas Effect”.
The screen-saver is based on the popular vote, and often the most popular sheep seem to appeal to the lowest common denominator: they have bright colors and fast motion. I call this the “Las Vegas Effect” and it’s something I struggle with. As “god” of the system I could obliterate any sheep that displeases me, but I almost never interfere so directly.
Instead I channel my personal aesthetic into the “Dreams in High Fidelity” which is the dual to the screen-saver: instead of low resolution for free, it’s High Definition for a price. These limited edition works contain only sheep actively selected by me, assembled according to my design, and re-rendered at vastly higher quality.
The two versions are symbionts: neither could survive without the other.
UPDATE:
As the Featured Artist for Supernova 2008, Scott Draves projected his limited edition fine art “Dreams in High Fidelity on two screens at the Technology Showcase and Gala. The projection of his work at this event was made possible by the Panasonic Projector Systems Company. The dual projections are also visible in many of the video interviews on the Sevenload site.
Here’s a snapshot of the projected work at the event, courtesy of Lisa Rein:
In the one-girl’s-trash-is-another-girl’s-treasure category, Microsoft announced a deal to allow LinkedIn, Facebook and some other lesser-known social networks to scrape Hotmail address books to look for friends.
Some for-profit industry commentators went along with Microsoft’s PR hype, like OnlineMedia Daily. Others, like ZDNet’s Steve O’Hear, were more skeptical.
In other news, Google is bringing the issue of protecting human rights at the cost of the company’s market share to a shareholder vote - adequately reported by Joseph Hunkins at WebGuild. The two proposals up for a vote are that Google would strictly control censorship and data sharing to protect human rights, and that Google would establish a Human Rights Committee to monitor these issues. Google recommends no to both proposals, and they’ll be able to point to the fact that their shareholders voted these proposals down as an excuse for not doing them.
The approach is an attempt to justify Google’s capitulation to anti-democratic policy from countries like China - behavior that they’ve been called to task for engaging in because of their “do no evil” mantra. The sad thing, to me, is that giving a question like this to shareholders: “Should we do the right thing even though it means making less money?” is giving it to the wrong party to decide. Shareholders don’t say no to profits.
It’s the users who should be asked, and the users who can decide to abandon the Google ship if they see objectionable, hypocritical behavior. Insofar as a choice to deny human rights may alienate Google users, the stock prices could fall on a “no” vote — but most of the time issues like human rights in far-away countries can’t compete with great technology and brand. An effective boycott is unlikely, a yes vote is unlikely. Perhaps “do no evil” and “make money in China” are fundamentally incompatible. Perhaps a mantra change to “do no evil except in countries led by repressive dictators” is in order?
I had been taking it for granted that programs to get computers to the developing world, such as One Laptop Per Child, were a great thing. And, certainly they are. I’ve also been taking for granted that people who want to learn about what I’m writing could read this blog, or my personal one. However, there are millions of people in the world that are illiterate, or visually impaired, but could benefit from more and easier access to information.
This morning at a panel at the “UN meets Web 2.0” event, I’m learning more about the challenges of connecting people all over the world. More blog posts on that to follow, I hope, but this morning I wanted to call out one item I heard from Mr. Emdad Khan, CEO, of InternetSpeech.com. I heard him discuss “Net Echo,” a system that allows browsing of the net, accessing email and even getting news via a voice interface over the phone.
Mr. Kahn said “Information is “money”, and the largest source of information is Internet, but a lack of computer or computer skills can be a barrier to people obtaining the information they need.” He says that PDAs an computers can’t bridge the digital divide in some cases, because those devices don’t reach the very bottom of the pyramid. Here’s a statistic - only 15% of global phone users have Internet access, and there are 500MM computers vs 3 billion phones.
Net Echo, which I only saw as a demo, allows audio-based browsing of major portals such as Yahoo and MSN, reading (and dictation of) email, and news alerts, all via a voice interface.
In addition to the developing world, the elderly, the visually impaired, and others could benefit from this system. I’m even thinking that this might be a way to get information when you’re on the go (though not when driving, that could be really dangerous!)
I’m looking forward to learning more about this system, and where in the world it’s being used to help distribute information via voice when text and words aren’t enough.
