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May 2007
Frank Paynter: "There is no room for prophets..."
The moment the writers of the Gospels set down the words of Jesus they began to kill the message. There is no room for prophets within religious institutions - indeed within any institutions - for as Paul Tillich knew, all human institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Tribal societies persecute and silence prophets. Open societies tolerate them at their fringes, and our prophets today come not from the church but from our artists, poets and writers who follow their inner authority. Samuel Beckett's voice is one of modernity's most authentically religious. Beckett, like the author of Ecclesiastes, was a realist. He saw the pathetic, empty monuments we spend a lifetime building to ourselves. He knew, as we read in Ecclesiastes, that nothing is certain or permanent, real or unreal, and that the secret of wisdom is detachment without withdrawal, that, since death awaits us all, all is vanity, that we must give up on the childish notion that one is rewarded for virtue or wisdom.
A thought to ponder for the day. (actually a few...)
Karl at Thursday, May 31, 2007 | Comments (2) | TrackBack
What's exciting about Google Gears
A lot of folks are going gaga over Google Gears and its capability to enable partially connected web applications (web applications that can run offline).
Here is a paraphrase from a comment I left at Burningbird (Shelley Powers's blog is one of my favorite places to discuss web technology and how it relates to society, politics, and more):
What really interests me about Google Gears is the local web server.
It's the Dave Winer Fractional Horsepower HTTP Server idea (from back in 1997), that's finally come of age.
Just what is possible when each of us have our own web servers, running on our desktops?
Immediately you think p2p heaven. But the possibilities for building collaborative apps is just massive.
I know, I know, for anyone who knows Perl, Python or Java, it's never been too much of a big deal to spin up your own webserver, but this looks like it makes it more than simple - it makes it practical.
If I'm reading it right, you'll need some form of centralized web app to co-ordinate collaboration across machines, which is no big deal.
The web's about being connected. And it's the online possibilities that Google Gears opens up that are rather mind boggling.
Karl at Thursday, May 31, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A thought for the weekend
Becoming a parent when you're young teaches you to grow up, by leading you to face responsibility.
Becoming a parent when you're older teaches you to be young again, by seeing the world through their eyes.
Karl at Monday, May 28, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hosting Issues Ongoing
Been a rough past few days at the hosting company I use. I'm hoping things settle down today and get back to normal. Hopefully then PF and the me will be back.
Hope you are having a good Memorial Day.
Karl at Monday, May 28, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Dave Winer: "There's always been too much made of death in the tech world"
Dave Winer: What is Web 3.0?:
...There's always been too much made of death in the tech world, in fact newspapers are still published, you can pick one up at any airport or train station. Many people have them delivered at home. We often go to newspaper websites for the news. Sure, there are problems, and the world is changing, but imho, we'll all do better if something called the San Francisco Chronicle continues to be published, even though the form of the newspaper will certainly change in the future. It would be a waste of a tradition, of a good coral reef, if newspapers really died. They need to change, and imho, when that change happens, we will safely be in the era of Web 3.0.
Karl at Thursday, May 24, 2007 | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Congratulations!
Congratulations to Will Bunch whose book, "The News Fix: Ink-stained Wretches and Digital Rabble Rousers Reviving American Media" is available for pre-order at Amazon.com. Will Bunch, one of the terrific columnists at the Philadelphia Daily News, coined the term and kicked off the norgs conversation, when just under two years ago he broached the idea on his blog and courageously, openly, talked of re-inventing the news organization business.
Congratulations to the Winners of the Knight News Challenge who have been awarded grants to innovate in community news.
Comments from some winers and commentators:
holovaty.com: Knight Foundation grant
Placeblogger: Placeblogger Wins Knight News Challenge
Global Voices: Global Voices wins Knight Foundation News Challenge
Center for Citizen Media: Citizen Media and the Law a New Project
Recovering Journalist: Hyping Hyperlocal
Publishing 2.0: Knight Foundation Funds Innovation In Online Journalism And Civic-Minded Digital Media
Socialmedia.biz: News Challenge winners
I almost applied for the grant for Philly Future, however, it just didn't feel like the right time for Philly Future, or for myself. Maybe next year.
Speaking of myself, congratulations to, ummm... me, for joining the Placeblogger advisory board. Philly Future is a placeblog. It's a place blog of placeblogs :) And if PF can help, I hope, me and we, can be of some service.
Karl at Thursday, May 24, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Law of Data Smog 13: "Cyberspace is Republican."
I made a few important edits to my post yesterday. Added links that gave context. Removed a typo here and there. Did you notice?
Well that's your fault you see. You're not media literate.
You are expected to revisit my posts to see edits and updates. As a good host, I should indicate my edits in one fashion or another (which I didn't do).
See Dan Farber: Media literacy in a media saturated world.
Very, very related if you want to see the societal shift this is part of: BusinessWeek: "I Want My Safety Net".
We are shifting risk from institutions, the producers of things, to the consumers of things.
The expectation is that since we are all now producers, we must individually keep BS meters up and running at all times, otherwise, it's our own damn fault if we get fooled by something.
While people point to blogs as the primary purveyors of this kind of thought, in actuality, it seems prevalent in all forms of media.
Scott Rosenberg: Amateur hour:
...saying the answer to the crisis in journalism today is "better media literacy" is like saying the answer to the crisis in education is "better learning skills."
He says this sarcastically but the redistribution of risk is a trend in everything from the food we give our dogs, to the education we give our children, from what we expect from our government (just re-look at Katrina), to the relationships we have with our neighbors.
The lesson - keep your guard up. You are on your own. Trust nothing and no one except yourself.
Good or bad? You decide.
The title of this post refers to a "law of data smog" in David Shenk's terrific book, "Data Smog". He was referring to the libertarian impulse that was prevalent in the late 90s Republican movement. He should have said "Cyberspace is Libertarian" and it would have been timeless.
Update:David Shenk posts a comment in this post's thread that in the paperback version of "Data Smog" he put down Law 13 of Data Smog to be "Cyberspace is Libertarian" instead of "Cyberspace is Republican"!
Karl at Wednesday, May 23, 2007 | Comments (3) | TrackBack
The battle between old and new media rages on... really? REALLY?
This morning I read a few posts, about a conference session and a panel at Berkley, that focussed on "Web 2.0", online journalism, and amateur participation.
While the topics discussed at both meetings seemed to overlap with many of those we discussed at the norgs unconference, I couldn't help but feel that the folks involved are far behind the discussion that's been ongoing in Philly.
So much so, I actually felt a bit sad. So wound up they are in false choices and pointing fingers. Jeff Jarvis had a recent, heated thread on the subject.
Read for yourself at down the avenue and Union Square Ventures (who has yet to approve my following comment - update:comment approved, good old spam filtering :)).
I posted the following at both blogs, and fully expect to be ignored or put down, because what we did in Philly was to stop pointing fingers. We stopped preaching to each other. And we listened (read Jeff Jarvis's take here and here).
For some weird reason, folks on either side of this debate, don't seem to care for that.
My comment:
------------------------------------
I wish I was at this event.
We had a similar event in Philadelphia last year that was focussed on news journalism and the web. It sounds like it covered related territory. (link).
Fact of the matter is, there is room enough for numerous approaches to filtering/finding news.
Algorithmic - Memeorandum, Google News
By the crowd - Digg, Newsvine.
By a single unpaid editor - A blogger.
By communities of unpaid editors - A genre specific slice of the blogosphere.
By a news organization - A newspaper with staffed editors - Yahoo News, Salon, Slate.
By hybrid community/editor efforts - Slashdot, Indymedia.
There seems to be an effort on the parts of some to create some false conflicts between these approaches. To promote one approach over the other as the *ultimate solution*.
That's a shame really, because in the dust of that are people becoming less and less informed (check out the latest Pew research) while wealth and fortune flow from one kind of media organization to another.
We can do far better. All of us can. My bet is that will happen when groups of us decide to put down our guns and work together.
Karl
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Karl at Tuesday, May 22, 2007 | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Chronicle cutting 25% of jobs in its newsroom: Links and Commentary
We've seen this story before. Newspaper announces cuts. Pundits and experts speak out about how to fix things. Then, more cuts, then, a sell off. It doesn't need to be that way.
SFGate.com: Chronicle to cut 25% of jobs in newsroom:
To cut costs and try to adapt to a changing media marketplace, The Chronicle will trim 25 percent of its newsroom staff by the end of the summer.
IP Democracy: Why Can't Newspapers Get With the Program?:
If somehow the newspaper industry just understood that even now the Internet is still the wild west, they'd take the journalists they're jettisoning and instead use them to create new web-based businesses.
Dan Gillmor: San Francisco Paper Whacks Jobs:
When Hearst bought the Chronicle years ago, it pledged to keep all the employees from the old Chronicle. Then it brought the SF Examiner employees along, and had what can only be called a bloated staff.But the paper did improve - wow, did it improve.
The city always deserved a vastly better paper than it had. It still deserves a better paper, but the positive change has been incredible since the Hearst buyout.
Yet that didn't translate to subscribers - circulation kept dropping, in part due to deliberate corporate decisions, and advertising didn't recover after the burst of the tech bubble and the increasing inroads from classified-ad competitors that work better for buyers and sellers. The newspaper was said to be losing $1 million a week a year ago, an amazing number. I've heard that the losses were slowing, but obviously not enough to matter. (For the record, we get the Chronicle - and several other papers - delivered to our door each morning when we're home.)
The Chronicle's website has been among the most progressive anywhere, and it reflects the dilemma many publishers face. The site is free, with no registration requirements. There are ads, but not enough revenue to make up for the whacks to the print advertising that are hard to stop. The archives are also free and open - which I have to believe is on balance a revenue booster over the paywalled archives at most other local papers.
Reflections of a Newsosaur: Staff cuts won't cure Chron woes:
The Chronicle's year-to-date deficit of $165,563 per day is roughly equivalent to the annual pay and benefits of two journeyman reporters. If the paper continued losing money at the same rate every day for the rest of the year, it could fire every journalist in the joint and still not break even.With continuing uncontrolled losses of this magnitude, the Chronicle, if it were a standalone company, would be going out of business.
The only reason the Chronicle is still around is the continuing forbearance of the Hearst Corp., a family-owned, $7 billion-a-year media conglomerate whose other newspaper, magazine and broadcasting interests are sufficiently profitable to effectively subsidize the struggling newspaper.
Not directly related, but worth a read or re-read:
Recovering Journalist: Betting on the Future:
Or this, from a Microsoft exec: "This is about the opportunity," said Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platforms and services division. "We believe that there are tens of billions of dollars in economic value that can be generated in this industry, and we are committed to getting a bigger share of it."Bingo. We're in the very early stages of Web advertising, and there's nothing but growth ahead. That's what Microsoft, Google and others know, and are betting on--while newspaper execs complain that the online business can't seem to catch up to the losses on the print side.
Oh, and why didn't a big newspaper company, or perhaps a consortium of them, step forward and buy DoubleClick or aQuantive? Good question. It would have been a very smart acquisition, a real bet on the future. The technology companies seem to have that vision. The newspaper companies apparently don't.
A few years ago, I was privy to a conversation among board members of a newspaper-centric media outfit about the possibility of buying a major Web company (I have to fudge a few details here to protect confidences). One short-sighted board member protested, "It would cost us hundreds of millions of dollars." But a smarter exec said, "Yeah, but if we don't do it, in a year it will cost us a couple billion dollars." He couldn't convince the others, and it turns out he guessed low: The Web company was sold a year later for several billion dollars--to another technology company. Once again, the newspaper industry failed to pull the trigger on the future. Some things never change.
Publishing 2.0: The New Vertically Integrated Media And Advertising:
It's clear now that the media and advertising industries, which thanks to Google and Web 2.0 now include the software industry, will be dominated by a new breed of company - the vertically integrated media and advertising company. Google's AdWords created a new model by combining a media company - Google's search results and its network of AdSense affiliate websites - with an advertising agency, i.e. advertisers buy ads directly from Google through its AdWords platform. Google also revolutionized the media and advertising business by introducing a data-driven dynamic marketplace into what had once been a market based largely on human relationships.
Doc Searls: How to Save Newspapers:
Informing is not the same as "delivering information". Inform is derived from the verb to form. When you inform me, you form me. You enlarge that which makes me most human: what I know. I am, to some degree, authored by you.What we call "authority" is the right we give others to author us, to enlarge us.
The human need to increase what we know, and to help each other do the same, is what the Net at its best is all about. Yeah, it's about other things. But it needs to be respected as an accessory to our humanity. And terms like "social media", forgive me, don't do that. (At least not for me.)
norgs.pbwiki.com: The Norgs Unconference Statement Of Principles:
7. The Internet 'disintermediates.' Business models based on scarcity of media and high barriers to production and distribution, are not only threatened, but are terminal. It's change or die time for broadcast TV, traditional record companies, and yes, newspaper companies.
Karl at Sunday, May 20, 2007 | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Community/Social Media/Social Software Must Reads This Week
fortuitous: Matthew Haughey: Some Community Tips for 2007 - Seven tips on how to run a successful community
Dare Obasanjo: "Social" is More Important Than "Software" in Social Software
InformationWeek: Cory Doctorow: How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community
Derek Powazek: The Real Story of JPG Magazine (Metafilter thread)
Mathew Ingram: Community is the hard part
Jeff Jarvis: Smartest media quote of the year
NYTimes: Clive Thompson: Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog
Blog Law: 12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know
Karl at Friday, May 18, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It's Primary Day In Philly
The Next Mayor will be covering it live throughout the day. Pass along its voter information page and regularly visit its blog for updates as the day progresses.
Young Philly Politics is sure to be a place to visit regularly, as will Phillyblog.com's forums.
Get out and vote!
If you have anything to share, links, commentary and news, post it to Philly Future and we will promote it to the home page.
Karl at Tuesday, May 15, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Blakeley Cooper: "You can never lose hope"
Philadelphia Inquirer: Art Carey: Credit to Mom, mentors:
...The fire that incinerated the North Philadelphia rowhouse had begun in the basement, probably ignited by someone cooking crack. The house was inhabited at the time by Blakeley's father, a man who had climbed high and fallen fast."My mother was very blunt," Cooper remembers. "She said, 'This is what drugs will do to you. You want to throw your life away? This is the end result.' "
Cooper, then 5, was so impressed he made a vow: "I will be better than my father."
In the years that followed, it became his mantra, especially in times of stress and discouragement. "It became the sole motivating force in all I did," Cooper says.
Today, Cooper, 30, is a senior information technology engineer at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Frazer, Chester County. His job is to devise code that enables computer systems to talk to each other. In night school at Wharton, he's taking business courses and he plans to pursue an MBA.
But it could all have turned out so differently.
"I grew up on the same streets where murders have occurred," he says. "But I was able to steer clear of that because I had people who had my best interests at heart and were willing to show me another way."
How Cooper traveled from where he came from to where he is now is a testament to his innate drive and motivation, to that amalgam of traits and values we call "character." But, as Cooper readily admits, he benefited also from family - in his case, a determined and dedicated single mother, and a civic-minded elderly couple who mentored and supported him.
A powerful story.
Karl at Monday, May 14, 2007 | Comments (1) | TrackBack
David Van Couvering: "I think I'm not alone in this belief"
David Van Couvering 's Blog: Technology as a positive force:
You may have read my blog about my concerns around technology. At the same time, I also believe that if you are conscious and committed and vigilant about how you use it, technology can be a huge enabler for helping make a difference in people's lives. That was actually one of the key reasons I chose computers as a career path when I first started in the mid-eighties.
You are not alone David.
Karl at Monday, May 14, 2007 | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Happy Mother's Day
I'm just returning from our Mother's Day vacation in Sea Isle City and wanted to wish all the mothers out there a happy Mother's Day :)
Karl at Sunday, May 13, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Kent Newsome: "Who we really are is the best resume of all."
Kent Newsome: A Little Perspective Can Set You Free:
People from my work life have discovered my blog. I knew it would happen when I started doing it. It's always a little scary to put yourself out there. But as Ayelet says, we are who we are, and there is freedom and efficiency in just letting down your guard and trusting yourself. Who we really are is the best resume of all. Other than a few well-meaning jokes about my little online journal, I have never once had a negative reaction to my blog. And I have had more than a few people tell me that it makes them more comfortable to see who I am away from work.We can't change the blogosphere, and we can't make others embrace our blogging philosophy. What we can do is try to see things from other points of view.
That's what I'm going to do.
That's pretty much where I am, and what I try to do every day. It's good advice, that's hard to keep.
Karl at Thursday, May 10, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Norgs Unconference Statement Of Principles
Not all "old media" has turned against "new media". The situation isn't as bad as this discussion on Techmeme may present. Far from it.
Here is, what I am sure, is just a small example: On March 25, 2006 a group of about 40 technologists, bloggers, newspaper and media execs and business leaders got together to discuss the future of journalism and held an unconference in Philadelphia.
The history of the unconference and on going conversation can be found here, but an important artifact of that day has been missing online until now.
A statement of findings by those that came to the unconference and conversed.
There's a lot here to chew on, as it walks the line between recognizing reality and finding a way to meet the needs of the future.
Some will find the following too general to be useful, others will think it nothing more than marketecture-PR-speak, others will be surprised that newspaper folks and bloggers, in a heated, intimate, discussion, came to conclusions as robust as these are.
I tend to think it it was great start, and I am working to gather the sign offs of those who attended the conference on what will be an evolving document.
The Norgs Unconference Statement Of Principles:
- The 'product' of a newspaper isn't the newspaper. In the sense that the 'product' of a musical act has never been the CD, or the Cassette, or the Album - mediums come and go - the music lives on.
- Newspapers are aggregates of information *and* relationships.
- Newspapers have been traditionally bounded by time and space. Inches on paper, space on news stands, the daily news cycle. The Web changes our relationship with time and space. The 'audience' isn't confined by physical boundaries now, neither should the 'newsroom'.
- Healthy democracies must have informed citizens. The reach and production of acts of journalism plays a major role.
- Lets be honest, most of the pieces in a newspaper aren't acts of journalism, but these additional bits are almost as important.
- Newspapers - for a time - defined the 'fourth estate', having near monopoly over attention driving influence. They were influence intermediaries.
- The Internet 'disintermediates'. Business models based on scarcity of media and high barriers to production and distribution, are not only threatened, but are terminal. It's change or die time for broadcast TV, traditional record companies, and yes, newspaper companies.
- The Internet and Web are a platform for collaborative communications and social/participatory media. Blogging, Citizen Journalism, message forums, email lists, Usenet, YouTube, Google, Digg, Slashdot, Flickr, Wikipedia, are just some examples of the many.
- The most successful Web services have recognized and utilized its participatory architecture. It's a read/write Web. eBay, Amazon.com, Slashdot, Yahoo!, Google,MySpace, have all leveraged this and based their businesses upon it.
- As technical barriers have fallen, and broadband availability widened, different forms of participation have proliferated - text, software, images, music, and now movies.
- 'Users' of the Web are not passive consumers. They are 'The People Formerly Known as the Audience'. They know more then you do.
- Acts of journalism can be produced by anyone and the Web blurs distinctions between the professional and the amateur.
- Producing certain successful (but not all) acts of journalism requires knowledge, skill, infrastructure (legal and financial), marketing and influence.
- The existence of ever increasing flows of media does not portend the same for acts of journalism.
- There is no news media versus blogging conflict. Blogging does not remove the pressures that existed on journalistic endeavors - corporations, politicians, forces of power - anyone who wants to manipulate a message - will try to do so.
- Journalists must become familiar with the medium they are communicating over. Editors have an important new role that will be embraced by someone, if not them.
- Participating on the Web means more then simply publishing files to a Web server. It means providing a means for those outside the organization, for the community, to participate in what you've published (link to, comment on, extend). It means going out of the confines of your Web presence and participating elsewhere.
- Authenticity, transparency, voice, and ultimately trust not only matter - they are central.
- Publishing systems and CMSes must be far more nimble. Stories are no longer static pieces that once published, are of no additional use. Collaboration must be enabled not only across a newsroom, but across the world, especially taking into account a newspaper's existing community.
- Stories on the Web gain in value long after original publication. It's the economics of the Long Tail. Reference archives - link to individual items prominently!
- Collections of stories, and our interactions with them, define communities.
- While birds of a virtual feather may flock together, this presents opportunities for those willing to provide new aggregates of news, opinion, and information.
Karl at Wednesday, May 9, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Potential != Reality
I think technologists like myself sometimes get confused between something that is potential, versus something that is real.
Small (well not small...) example:
With this personal blog I have the *potential* of reaching anyone - across the entire world - with an Internet connection.
That's amazing when you think about it for more than a split second.
It's easy to get caught up on that empowering potential and miss the hard realities that define it.
Karl at Wednesday, May 9, 2007 | Comments (4) | TrackBack
It Doesn't Rank
You won't hear about it on Digg. It's not on Newsvine. Good luck trying to find relevant links on del.icio.us. It's nowhere to be found on popurls, or OriginalSignal. It's not being talked about on the blogs Memeorandum, Megite or TailRank track. There isn't a page on Wikipedia. And little reference on WikiNews. On Topix.com or Netscape.com, nary a peep.
Even the regional online community I help host, Philly Future has little posted.
Philadelphia's larger community of aggregated local bloggers are talking, but maybe not with each other, and mostly to their own independent communities.
On Flickr there are over 70 photos, a few powerfully relevant. On YouTube much the same, and this offers hope.
What am I talking about? The rising tide of gun violence that is taking innocent lives by the day in Philadelphia.
You would think the obscene loss of life in our city would merit a few links, a few mentions, a few drops of interest.
But no. Not a whit. It doesn't register. It doesn't rank.
You could argue that there has been no 'defining event' to draw interest - like a mass murder.
Or that the national mainstream media (damn I hate that term) has largely ignored it as well.
But those excuses don't detract from the fact that what's happening here - and elsewhere in other urban centers across this nation - is news.
And that for some reason - our current social media environment - just looks the other way.
Mathew Ingram, when looking at Pew's latest research on who is using participatory media, wonders if the Web is half full or half empty? Greg Searling at search engine land and Jordan McCollum answer, although not as bluntly as I.
We have a long way to go.
A long way to go for those who are weak and powerless to be given a voice here.
A long way to go for those who have no influence a representation here.
A long way to go for those who have no visibility a means to communicate their importance here.
A long way to go for the news that affects our *daily* lives, the kind that percolates slowly, needs context to be understood, and is about subject matter we may not care to know about, but should, to be produced and distributed here.
This may lead to a place that elites find so distasteful, so raw, so low brow, so mundane and reflective of *all* of human society, they go off to establish something shiny and new.
Maybe so.
But until then there is work to do.
Related: Anil Dash: "Those of you who are defending this status quo are defending a culture of failure"
Karl at Tuesday, May 8, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Welcome to Comcast
A blogger to blogger hello to Sree Kotay who will be joining us at Comcast.
Karl at Tuesday, May 8, 2007 | Comments (1) | TrackBack
My entry at the Media Giraffe project
Matthew Alvey wrote up a nice profile of me for the Media Giraffe database a while back.
Karl at Tuesday, May 8, 2007 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
