connecting*the*dots

Mr. Sun:

Joe - We are in the umpteenth chapter of Jerry’s historical look at the Wray case. Along the way, we’ve made day trips to November 3, 1979 and had a very smelly sleepover in the News & Record’s dirty laundry room. Every week, people are pouring over this historical detail. You have even been excerpting it. As usual, there is all this amazing interest and energy around placing blame and confirming preconceived notions about race in Greensboro. You see identity group politics. I see other things. The river rolls on. When it comes to discussing the TRC report, or anything that requires people to let go of their judgments and take a leap of faith together, the interest stops dead cold. All of the sudden, it’s a “waste of time,” “part of the past,” “a crock,” — too “backwards looking.” Clearly, it’s not the direction that’s the problem. It’s the focus. People are loving the look backwards as long as what they see is familiar. I don’t know who is right or wrong in the Wray case. I don’t even understand the question. I would just like to see people on both sides of the divide divert even a fraction of the energy they currently devote to meticulously footnoting their own particular shade of racial bitterness. This feels like a late-career Tyson fight to me — all this competitive hype, but when it’s all over there is no clear winner and it all feels like a setup for the rematch which you know is coming and you’ll have to pay for it.

(originally uploaded by noonespillow)

By Jason Lefkowitz, in a comment thread on Joho the Blog:

Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution says:

“The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative…”

One Congressman for every 30,000 citizens was the rule until the early 1900s, when Congress simply fixed the size of the House at 435 members. I’m no lawyer, but I’m not sure how they could square that with the language of Article I; anyway, that’s been the rule ever since.

The result is that today each Congressman represents roughly 700,000 people — an order of magnitude more than the Founders intended them to. The result is that House campaigns are just as media — and image — driven as campaigns for greater offices, which is a shame.

An interesting thought experiment: if we went back to the Article I rules, we’d have something like 10,000 House members today. How would the operations of government have to be modified to accommodate them? A Virtual Congress? Regional Congresses?

What’s interesting to note is the actual intent of this detail in Article 1, Section 2:

The total number of Representatives is set by statute, not in the Constitution. The detail concerning 30,000 means that the ratio would never be lower than 1:30,000 (like 1:20,000). This was done to prevent the House from getting too large and to prevent larger states from having an overwhelming number of representatives. The average ratio today is about 1:640,000.

So, legally speaking, we’re actually guarding the concerns of our forefathers with such numbers — they wanted a decent sized House in order for business to get accomplished.

But our forefathers couldn’t have imagined the information age.

I left a comment in the thread that might sound radical, but I think it would be a great way to up the degree of transparent discourse in government.

What do you think?

(photo snapped by Яick Harris and photoshopped by miss_rogue)

Let me fan out my geek cards on the table, face up, before I begin this post…

I’m all about open source, open content, open collaboration, etc., but I’m also East Coast, so please, FOC’s on the West Coast, help me out with this whole FooCamp debate.

Why do some consider Tim O’Reilly’s annual invite-only event of a few hundred friends, employees and people he thinks are interesting to collaborate and have some fun with, such a bad idea?

Dave makes an argument that the closed aspects of FooCamp sync up with the mindset of investors financing a narrow set of “proven” technology, which, he argues, leads to the formation of a bubble culture.

But couldn’t that be said about any closed event? I mean, Yahoo! has “Hack Days” for Yahoo! employees. Isn’t this the ultimate example of a closed event? (thanks to Chris for letting me know in the comments about the open Yahoo! Hack Day coming soon)

At least O’Reilly sends out invites to people outside of his staff… right? Or am I missing something here? Tim O’Reilly’s words:

…”You have to understand the objectives of the event. Its primary purpose is to make sure that O’Reilly’s editors, conference planners, and technical strategists are exposed to new thinking from people who are on our radar but haven’t necessarily been part of our community. Second, it’s to make sure that our individual contacts become collective contacts. Third, it’s to create a great mix of old friends and new, so that it doesn’t become “same old, same oldâ€?, and there’s always new blood.”…

That actually sounds progressive, especially from a business management perspective.

I mean, I dig what Dave’s saying on a philosophical level regarding closed-mindedness, but O’Reilly’s explanation seems to put that puppy to bed pretty quickly. Also, while I’m completely supportive of Chris and Tara’s BarCamp explosion as an alternate, open collaboration vehicle, even Tara accepted her FooCamp invite… so how can it be so bad for the industry?

If we could wipe out closed-events from the face of the planet, maybe open events-only would dent a VC-driven path to another bubble. But back on Earth, in this capitalist society of ours, people go after the short-term buck with the most tested approach available. Absolute conference “openness” can’t compete with the corporate investment mindset of my fellow East Coast money-men (I’m not a money man, I just lived next to them in a past life ;)

And seriously though, doesn’t this noise kinda give the influence factor of Foo a uranium supercharge?

Along those lines, does anyone know O’Reilly’s position on Israel’s right to exist? (heh)

Terrance—over at The Republic of T—asks a simple, yet provocative question in preparation of the 2006 elections: What’s Your Platform?

Okay, I’m game. Here are my most imperative policy reforms, in no particular order.

1) 2.0 the hell out of government
Congress was only able to see "finished" intelligence before voting to give the Bush administration power to go to war (as a last resort). In my world, anything that the Executive branch sees, the Legislative branch sees. My voice is represented by my state officials, not the president. This one example of a non-transparent government directly led to the deaths of more than 30,000 human beings.

The most applicable 2.0 philosophy for reforming government is the philosophy of openness. From open source to open content, imagine the possibilities of employing a government that makes all de-classified government documents, congressional voting records, appointee resumes, etc. instantly available in a relational database with open APIs for public use. All of this information is available now, but it’s not prepped for accessibility and reuse. This is the future of accountability. Up communication and transparency, reduce the "Fuck You!" noise of the left vs. the right blogosphere to constructive collaboration… that is until government tries to pull something, and then we get back on them like white on rice.

2) Create a nominal tax to directly supplement teacher salaries
Great teachers are few and far between nowadays. Why? Well, you try dealing with kids, administrators and parents all day, adhere to and circumvent the red-tape and legalities of this age with the grace of a seasoned politician and pull in ~$45k per year.

I’m talking about, say, a .1% tax that goes directly towards teacher salaries. I gotta admit, I got the idea from Mini-Me when he appeared as a genius teacher on an episode of Boston Public a few years back. His thesis was that the degree to which students are prepared by their public school years directly impacts their earning potential, so reward their hometown education system with a nominal, flat tax return to impact teacher salaries. Tell ‘em. Verne!

3) Rip up the Patriot Act
As alluded to in the first part of my platform, transparency of government will lead to politicians being held accountable to create humane national and global policies. It’ll also foster the innovation of extremely real-time and smart communication user experiences, which can then be applied by government in the authenticated realm of classified material.

This edict of transparency cannot be applied to individuals. Our individual right of privacy is what has distinguished us from the rest of the world for centuries. The Patriot Act is legislation with language that allows for the control, intimidation and investigation of Americans through the guise of terrorism. It’s like the old censorship debate; who defines what is terrorism? The abuse of American rights have already begun.

4) Election reforms
First, all television campaigns are free. Each major candidate (there would have to be some way to determine "major," possibly something akin to the BSC polls/stats via past political progress made) is provided a set amount of credits to apply to the "purchase" of air time. This opens up the playing field to a diverse class of politicians who can focus on the issues, not their fund raising. I bet Tom Delay would even go for this.

Second, ensure that voting is both easy to access and secure. All voting systems could easily be tied together into one database, while creating alternative voting options, such as over the internet and by phone. We’ve been to the moon people…

5) National health care for everyone… Yes, you too
Riddle me this: Large corporations get major discounts on health care coverage due to the amount of employees they staff, right? Okay, then why not treat congressional districts as semantic equivalents of large pools of employees (citizen residents) by submitting them as huge groups into the bidding process?

C’mon, try to tell me why that doesn’t make any sense.

6) Incentivize industry to reduce our dependency on oil and clean up the environment
I know, the oil industry has major power claws dug deep into our political system, but this is my platform, so I’ll risk the blunt gas nozzle to the back of my head. This current administration gave tax breaks to manufacturers who create hybrid vehicles, but capped the production of cars to 60,000 that qualify for the break. Yeah.

First, we create California-like emmission standards and apply it nationally. Second, we apply money to develop alternative forms of fuel instead of planning a fucking trip to Mars or building that damn bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Third… well, I’m not that smart, but these people are.

Well, that’s my platform. God knows there are other extremely important issues (like getting out of Iraq, impeaching Bush, etc.), but that’s all the brainpower I have for tonight. I’m sure many of you want to label me as a liberal communist or some other "sticks and stones" nomenclature, and if I just described your take on me, my message to you is grow the fuck up. These are serious times, calling for serious people. The longer you avoid engaging in honest discussions along these lines, the easier it becomes to spot your agenda.

To the rest of you, let’s work together to get these bozos out of office in 2006.

I’m An American

At one time in my life, I would even say that I was blindly proud and patriotic.

I grew up watching The Lone Ranger and John Wayne movies on WOR re-runs on Saturday afternoons. My neighborhood was full of sprawling lawns and happy families. The American dream, right?

Well, eventually I grew up, realizing that things aren’t always what they seem to be.

Over the years, I’ve become exposed to a cross-section of people with varied backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. These breadcrumbs of my travels — mixed in with my own experiences — have made me realize the truth of what being a citizen of this most powerful nation entails:

The benefits of our common goodness, as well as the baggage of our wrongful intent, is what we must continue to evolve towards enlightenment, otherwise, such power can go unchecked.

Historically, American’s dedication to the creation of democratic institutions, producing innovative life-altering government and laws, as well as products, services, medicines, the internet; all have been inspirations to other nations on the face of this planet.

Unfortunately, the DNA of our mafia-style history of murder, slavery and unchecked capitalism has seeped into most of these democratic institutions, whether it be through industrial lobbyists, foreign policy or corporate conglomerates and deregulation.

9/11 changed a lot for me.

I was living in Park Slope, Brooklyn on September 11, 2001. After the attack, my outwardly-facing patriotism far exceeded my formative peek. I shopped for hours, in sold-out stores, looking for a flag to place in my father’s car window. I mean, those were my neighbors, my countrymen that perished in a blink of an eye or worse, over hours leading up to a leap out of a 85th storey window.

But during the months leading up to the Iraq Occupation, my perspective of this nation — more specifically, this administration — went straight into the shitter. My belief in our government and our constitutional processes came to a screeching halt.

I pulled a 180.

The Flip

There’s a reason my blog has its current palette and why I refuse to buy any more blue or red clothes. It’s that sickly, deep with me. Our country hasn’t been a democracy since the end of WWII. Our leaders are heading into the 50th year of a post-WWII plan to create a New World Order.

• Why do you think the Third World can’t evolve out of its poverty ridden, corrupt, AIDS infested, pushover status?
• Why do you think we continue to run rough-shot in Latin America?
• Why do you think we invaded Vietnam?
• Why do you think we’re in Iraq?

A Conversation From “Network”

Arthur Jensen: [to Howard] They say I can sell anything; I’d like to try to sell something to you.

Arthur Jensen: It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU WILL ATONE. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America, and democracy. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it. Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.

Arthur Jensen: The world is a business, Mr. Beale; it has been since man crawled out of the slime. Our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality - one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock - all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangelic.

Howard Beale: Why me?

Arthur Jensen: Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.

Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

Any of that sound familiar? Up until the past few weeks, I had my doubts that we’d *ever* regain the potential of our great Republic… And then Patrick Fitzgerald finally spoke… And then the Democrats grew a pair. Something happened to me…

I became somewhat optimistic again.

This is my current mental model regarding the state of our nation. We’re pragmatically moving in the right direction.

• The blogosphere is holding corruption accountable
• The mainstream media is beginning to do their jobs
• Discourse is rampant
• Indictments are being served
• Technologists are decentralizing media more and more with each passing day

We’re slowly moving towards democracy, slowly moving towards our common Republic… but we still need to take it up a notch.

• We need to remove ourselves from Iraq
• We need to start developing progressive solutions to our issues of poverty, education, health care and foreign policy
• We need to create alternate forms of fuel
• We need to feel comfortable in that uneasy role of rapid change and evolution
• We need to hold the hands of corporate America in order to break down the old business models of the 20th century, and help instill collaborative, open business models that leverage the best aspects of capitalism, the best aspects of innovation, the best aspects of humanity
• We need to become global citizens

We need to be we, indivisible to the utmost degree.

I’m really trying to walk this walk… hard. Are you?

Until we’re all there, I’ll continue rooting for the Jets and the Suns, eating Pumpkin Pie and Broccoli and washing it down with an OJ and Lime juice smoothie. Why you ask?

Because I’m an American.

First off, thanks to the good folks at Adaptive Path for granting me an invite to review the *alpha* version of their first web service, Measure Map. Onto the review…

Usefulness: Interaction Design

Knowing the Adaptive team, I’m sure they did their homework in modeling design personae and context  scenarios to drive their interface, function and behavioral requirements, yet being that this version of Measure Map is an alpha release, it would be a little unfair of me to review the usefulness of the service as if it were completely mature. That being said, here’s my review as a potential design persona, representing an archetypal mix of blogger, designer, marketer and technologist.

Dashboard

Bubbled up to the surface of the service is a default presentation of:

• Number of visitors who have been to my blog today
• Number of links which been used from other sites to navigate to my blog today
• Number of comments left on my blog today
• Number of posts visited today
• Popular posts for today (with an RSS feed for placement on my blog)
• A dedicated messaging area for presenting upcoming features

While the interface satisfies my immediate need for analyzing recent activity when logging into the service—stitching together the decentralized activity of people across the web into a centralized interface for simple digestion—it fails to give me a quick view of who is accessing the blog and where they are traveling within.

My TypePad stats tool may not be chock full of the features found here, but onLoad it does provide me with a display that communicates a narrative of actors and movement. A potential solution would be to display a sliced view of these stats in the lower half of the interface when clicking on an umbrella icon of the large icons at the top of the screen. That would be a smart use of Ajax.

Primary Sections

If Visitors equates with unique visitors, then I’m pretty geeked already. That qualitative recognition is hard to produce, but it seems as though this is what Adaptive has provided, as on they present a percentage statistic of the number of daily visitors who are return users.

The dynamic graph of visitor traffic is extremely useful for a default quick glance of today’s traffic, or by simply pulling on a widget handle, exposing traffic over n period of time. AP also provides a sweet linear navigation devise, which dynamically shifts the traffic view over two week intervals.

Links are broken up into two categories: incoming (including search terms) and outgoing. Incoming links are standard tracks across all services, while outgoing links nicely differentiates from my basic TypePad stat tool. Outgoing links help me understand the movement of my audience, yet for some reason AP decided against displaying movement through internal links. Understanding where people are coming from and what captures their interest to leave my blog is great, but I need to understand how people are moving throughout my own domain.

Typepad produces this stat and I’ve found it very useful. Session interfaces with a cross section of explicit unique entrances, movement and exits might be too much for the free version of this service, but displaying internal links without the stitching would be very useful.

The dynamic graph operates with the same efficiency and usefulness as the previous section.

The Comments interface displays comments left today, with a link to a page displaying comments, and post that "got comments." I don’t understand what the second stat refers to, as my total number of  comments have been tracked and the number here only reflects the test comment I left today.

That being said, the drill-down visitor comment page is a nice quick view of comment activity across my blog. I can only imagine how useful it would be to an owner of a high traffic blog, such as Daily Kos or AMERICAblog.

The dynamic graph operates with the same efficiency and usefulness as the previous sections.

The Posts interface follows the same UI construct of each of the previously mentioned areas. It displays the complete number of posts on the blog, with the number visited today and how the top 10 posts are drawing today (very neat).

The dynamic graph operates with the same efficiency and usefulness as the previous sections.

Secondary Sections

The Browsers page displays stats with browser logos within relatively scaled graphs. Very easy to read and digest. It would be nice to see platforms and resolution stats as well, though.

Stats for the Country of visitor origin are displayed within context a clean world map, with zoom capabilities and rollover country tool tips (a nice feature for a geography refresher, as well as helping bridge global blogging)

The Times that visitors arrived is clearly rendered within a dynamically generated graph, which displays the number of visitors per hour

The usefulness of the overall service is very high, especially for an alpha release. The behavioral and functional foundation is clean, consistent and ready for smart iteration.

Usability:
UI Design | Visual Design | Language| Presentation Layer

The user interface immediately struck me as one with a high degree of clarity, reduced down to a elegant and well structured design. Only primary and secondary colors are used with sprinkled, subtle visual clues, such as the Link area and RSS feeds tying together through the use of orange as a signifier of "connection" or "linking."

Explanatory and functional copy across the service is bold, clearly written and presented with the proper degree of contrast to ensure readability. The Visitor area copy and functionality is a little vague, as it leads me to believe that the number of visitors reflects unique visitors, which would be a great service to provide. I’d only ask AP to reinforce this with more direct copy in the interface if this is actually the case.

Visual displays of quantitative information (previous examples) throughout the service are extremely simple and powerful, both graphically and in terms of pertinent information. The dynamic presentation of graphs and data views doesn’t suffer from latency issues, and the experience is elegant enough to support the future addition of Ajax presentation features when needed. Adaptive did a great job in building this service from the ground up, as each design decision seems extremely well thought out.

How Did Measure Map Measure Up?

Overall, the presentation of Measure Map is a joy of an experience to view, read, manipulate and explore. Bloggers are going to be able to digest this experience with very few usability difficulties. I fall in the advanced camp, so some of my needs aren’t fully supported, but as an alpha release, man, this thing is looking like a home run.

Congrats, Adaptive!

Related reviews:

Flickr & QOOP
Google Reader
Flock
Yahoo! News w/ blog search
A9 Yellow Pages (.ppt | 5.2mb)

UPDATE: Check out some of the other early reviews across the web

When Wolf Blitzer asked for his opinion on the closed Senate hearing today, Carville responded with (paraphrasing):

"Sometimes you need to knock the mule over the head with a two-by-four"

Rock on… y’all.

(originally uploaded by monkeyc.net)

Either they want to get a piece of the blogosphere action or they want to shut it down. It’s the only way suits think: M&A with synergistic bottom line results or a hostile takeover to sell off business units.

One way or the other, it’s all about market disruption, marginalizing competition and turning a profit… within the current structure of corporate power and operations, of course.

Think I’m being a bit dramatic? Read this Forbes article titled, Attack Of The Blogs. Once you get the taste of corporate bile in your mouth, read the Fighting Back article. It’s enough to make you question our common humanity.

After absorbing the tone of Daniel Lyons article, you can see what this kind of advice does for the C-Levels who maintain the status quo profit structure. With all of the progressive business thinking going on in today’s world, it’s actually a pretty sad and sick relationship if you ask me.

A few weeks ago I posted about Technorati getting into bed with Edelman PR. Dave Sifry, the CEO of Technorati, commented within an hour of it going live. Now, I perceive that to be an example of a smart CEO tracking his brand in the blogosphere, joining conversations to provide transparency. But now, after reading the Fighting Back article, I’m actually wondering whether he came back at me with the first play from that playbook:

MONITOR THE BLOGOSPHERE. Put your own people on this or hire a watchdog (Cymfony, Intelliseek or Biz360, among others). Spot blog smears early, before they can spread, and stamp them out by publishing the truth.

On a personal level, I don’t know Dave Sifry from Adam, but the guy gave me his cell phone number at the end of his comment (since removed), so I’d like to believe that he’s on the right side of the revolution.

I guess this Forbes article is giving me corporate employment flashbacks, as it completely represents the old business model philosophy of mainstream, conservative, corporate America: stiff, pragmatic, rooted, closed and “we’ll take out your kneecaps if you fuck with our way of life.”

Joe Trippi, the Cluetrain Gang and Stuart Butterfield are all spot on. It’s beginning to look like Forbes and company all went through the No Child Left Behind program — they can’t understand the potential of extrapolating the philosophies of sharing.

UPDATE: Frederico is upset about this as well. And I found another one of these “corporate boys are scared as hell” articles. Check out The Mercury News article, An Internet fed mostly by amateurs is frightening.

(articles via Boing Boing and Crossroads Dispatches)

Roger Waters has moved his profound, progressive, creative juxtapositions into the expansive realm of opera. From NPR’s World Cafe:

"Roger Waters, a founding member of Pink Floyd, has released an opera about the French Revolution, titled ça Ira. The album is based on Etienne Roda-Gil’s original French libretto.

The two-disc album, which entered the Billboard classical chart at Number 1, features work by opera stars like Bryn Terfel, Paul Groves, and Ying Huang."

Waters provides an amazing interview. Well, for any true fan of Floyd, any interview with Rogers is an amazing interview.

Brilliant. Thanks, Paul!

As an American, I fully understand the definition of hypocrisy.

Whether you’re a devout Catholic or an agnostic who reads between the lines, it’s easy to see the hypocrisy that runs rampant in modern day America.

And while it’s absolutely true that degrees of hypocrisy can be found in the actions of all inhabitants of this earth, only the most despicable human beings will fine tune and harness their hypocrisies in order to move into greater positions of power and wealth to the detriment of others.

Large corporations have perfected this systemic practice of monetary advancement through the guise of competition and the free market and people who understand how to harness the operating levers of these machinations have the ability to freelance in similar fashion.

In this age of readily made available information, one can document patterns of hypocrisy quite easily, as they are in abundance. Take this example set forth by Sean Hannity, which is covered in detail within the documentary, “This Divided State,” shot just before the presidential election of 2004.

From the logs of Jesus’ General, it appears that Michael Moore charged a $40,000 appearance fee to speak to a crowd at Utah Valley Community College. Now, appearance fees, even of the $40,000 variety, are standard practice from celebrity types, whether they’re former government officials, top corporate executives, All-Pro athletes or even overweight filmmakers. The speaker’s political affiliation doesn’t play a part in the fee either, as both sides of the aisle cash in on these opportunities. So how does Sean Hannity expose himself as a hypocrite? In an effort to subterfuge Moore’s appearance, Hannity schedules a pre-emptive lecture at the same college and charges a, get this, zero appearance fee.

Wait a second… That’s not hypocritical. Student fees stay in student pockets for Hannity, yet Michael Moore, the liberal of all liberals, charges out the wazoo to come hear him preach. Before tackling this particular charge of hypocrisy, let’s think about how this no fee/fee dichotomy of actors play in the mind of students attending this school? What about the people that live in the community or the ones who came out to hear Hannity speak? What about the average tax-paying citizen hearing this news around the country?

The lasting image left in the minds of these hard-working Americans is “Sean Hannity cares enough to speak with us on his dime, while Michael Moore charges a big fee to support the creation of another one of his anti-American propaganda films.”

This prevailing message is so black and white due to Hannity’s uncanny ability to leverage his hypocritical nature throughout his career. The fact of the matter is that Sean Hannity charged this small college more than $48,000 in travel accommodations, specifically for traveling by private jet.

In the end, both Hannity and Moore charged upwards of $60,000 for their individual visits, but the way that Hannity structured the line items in his invoice allowed him to present a “no appearance fee” visit.

Sneaky, eh?

So why does this matter?

Michael Moore followed Hannity’s visit a week later. The pre-emptive disinformation by Hannity was designed to create a election time clusterfuck for Moore’s lecture the following week. While both men ended up selling out their respective lectures, Hannity pulled in $13,500 more in donations, which added up to a noteworthy difference in net school expenditures of ~$17,000. That’s an important number, for the next time this school is looking for a speaker with a fixed budget, they might shy away from Moore or someone similar in shape and size.

I wasn’t at either of the lectures, and I’m waiting for the DVD to become available, so I can’t say for certain why one group of people donated so much more than the other, but I’ll venture into the realm of speculation in this instance.

I’ve followed Hannity’s shtick since his days on talk radio in New York City. The man knows how the rile up a crowd, pushing button after button to get the flock moving in his direction. In the provided clip, Hannity drops lines such as:

“…Michael Moore isn’t worth one red cent of student funds, by the way…”

After measuring the crowd reaction to such an opinion (heavy cheers), he moves onto calling out to the liberals in the lecture hall to stand up and identify themselves, with a condescending chant of:

“…here little liberals, here liberals, liberals, liberals…”

With the background framed by a huge American flag draped onstage, Hannity follows up by putting a face to the opposition in the minds of the still-seated crowd by stating:

“…ladies and gentlemen, here is the surest sign that our educational system is failing.”

As the crowd cheers, all is well in Mulberry now that Hannity is here.

Now, forget the politics of the still-seated people for a moment; they could’ve represented a mixed political pot, ranging from liberals who refused to stand (or as I like to call them: Democrats) to the extreme right-wing conservatives (or as I like to call them: the Minority).

The people that remained seated are simply looking for something to believe in, which in today’s day and age, is completely understandable. But the sick thing about Hannity and his ilk is that they understand this audience inside and out and will capitalize on their fears without thinking twice.

So when the crowd disperses from a Sean Hannity lecture, you can bet that people are reaching for their
wallets to keep them feeling pumped up and proud to be an American. How could anyone, including Michael Moore, compete with a pre-emptive, "no appearance fee" grandstand such as that? (unless they were hell bent to use similar hypocritical, manipulative and deceiving tactics).

Again, I’ve yet to see the film and have only seen the clip from the Hannity presentation, but I’d bet that Moore’s audience included a greater opposition to his platform due to the Hannity circus that rolled out of town just a week prior; "anti-American" targets remain fresh in ones mind, especially when they’re coming directly to ones neighborhood.

So you might be asking yourself, how does all of this relate to blogging and Web 2.0? It relates on a multitude of levels:

• If you’re reading this, you’re already participating in the blogosphere, legitimizing it that much more as an alternative form of media and/or press.
• If you make a comment to this post or subsequently post elsewhere, you’ll serve to expand the
  discourse around Sean Hannity and the power of misinformation
• If you trackback to this post, you’re working towards creating a semantic perspective around Sean Hannity and the power of misinformation

Active participation in the blogosphere , such as the above, supports one of the primary pillars of the Web
2.0 meme; to make opaque information transparent. You might not have come across this instance of hypocrisy and misinformation if you weren’t reading this blog. Ten years ago, that statement would have been an absolute as personal publishing had yet to hit the market. So while people, like you, are expanding the reach and discourse of the blogosphere, intuitive interfaces—from Rojo to Blogpulse to Technorati—are being designed to help people connect the dots of information and data, aggregating far ranging contextual topics across the web.

Easy access to reliable information? Community and political discourse? Could it possibly be that we’re in the midst of rebuilding a Democratic Republic from the ground, or network, up?

Social networks exist in the reality of our lives. On-line, services such as flickr , Yahoo! 360 and LinkedIn are popping up all over the place, and while each of these social networks are focused on specific interests and needs of people via a particular branded domain, with hooks into other data sources from around the web, they still only serve as a microcosm of the semantic potential of Web 2.0 and beyond.

What would happen if brands truly opened up and worked together to share the greater possibilities of profit? How much more connected would our lives become in the process of such innovation? How could optimized information object search and retrieval, mixed into these applications, change the dynamics of wealthy, resourceful individuals using the media as a lie and spin zone?

I’d be a hypocrite if I said I wasn’t looking forward to the day…

May Jon Stewart’s reign never cease. All hail the smartass.

(originally uploaded by dreadfuldan)

Mother nature dropped Katrina.
The federal government dropped the ball.
Kanye West dropped the illest freestyle in the midst of the harshest climate.

And Mos Def just dropped Katrina Klap, a jam that will undoubtedly mark this moment in the annals of hip-hop and social activism.

1, 2, 3, 4 bust it!
This is for the streets
The streets everywhere
The streets affected by the storm called… America, huh.
I’m doing this for y’all
As for me, the creator

Get busy, y’all!

God save these streets, one dollar per every human being
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
Listen, homie
It’s dollar day in New Orleans
It’s for the water everywhere and people dead in the streets
And Mr. President, he about that cash
He got a policy for handling the niggers and trash
And if you poor, you black
I laugh a laugh, they won’t give when you ask,
You better off on crack
Dead or in jail or with a gun in Iraq
And it’s as simple as that
No opinion, my man
It’s mathematical fact
Listen
A million poor since 2004
And they got illions and killions to waste on the war
And make you question what the taxes is for
Or the cost to reinforce the broke levee wall
Tell the boss he shouldn’t be the boss anymore

God save these streets, one dollar per every human being
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
God save these streets, quit being cheap, nigger, freedom ain’t free!
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
Lord have mercy!
Lord, God, God, save our soul, a God save our soul, a God, a God save our soul
Lord, God, God, save our soul, a God save our soul, soul, soul… soul survival!

It’s dollar day in New Orleans
It’s for the water everywhere and babies dead in the streets
It’s enough to make ya’ holla out
Like, where the fuck is Sir Bono and his famous friends now?
Don’t get it twisted man
I dig U2
But if you ain’t about the ghetto
Then fuck you too
Who care about rock n’ roll when babies can’t eat food
Listen, homie man, the shit ain’t cool
It’s like, dollar day, for New Orleans
It’s for the water everywhere, homies dead in the streets
And Mr. President’s a natural ass
He out treatin’ niggas worse then they treat the trash

God save these streets, one dollar per every human being
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
God save these streets, quit being cheap, nigger, freedom ain’t free!
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
Soul survivor!
Lord, God, God, save our soul, a God save our soul, a God, a God save our soul
Lord, God, God, save our soul, a God save our soul, a God, a God save our…

God did not intend for the wicked to rule the world
Said God did not intend for the wicked to rule the world
God did not intend for the wicked to rule the world
And even when they do
It’s a matter of truth
Before their wicked ruling is through

God save these streets
A dollar day for New Orleans
God save these streets
Quit being cheap, homie, freedom ain’t free!
God save these streets
One dollar per every human being!
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
God save these streets
Quit being cheap, nigger, freedom ain’t free!
Feel that Katrina Klap!
Ghetto Katrina Klap!
Soul survivor
Lord, God, God, save our soul, a God save, God save our soul
Feel that Katrina Klap!
Let’s make them dollars stack!
And rebuild these streets
God save these streets
God save these streets
God save the soul!
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
Soul survivor

Don’t talk about it, be about it.
Peace.

Push it along. You’ve got to push it along…

Newsweek and Technorati are in bed together and I’m really hoping it isn’t a monogamous relationship.

I’m not sure when this started, but Newsweek is now citing "Blog Talk," creating a contextual column from the Newsweek article page (first image, click for larger image) that links to a full Blog Talk page (second image) which presents the last 10 blogs posts that have linked to the Newsweek article. This is being done automatically, sans any editorial review.

I’m currently working on a project for which I presented this exact context scenario for our blogger design persona. I couldn’t believe the serendipity. So to ensure the API and execution would support our needs, I ran a quick test and posted a response to the "I’m So Sorry" article, linking back to the story URL. Within 10 minutes of pinging Technorati, my post appeared on the Newsweek page. Okay, that’s very progressive. Sure, it’s only a glorified trackback system, but the underlying philosophy has huge implications.

We’re quickly moving to a sustainable model for presenting the individual perspective on the same level as mainstream media’s editorial-driven journalism. It’s a win-win; a site like Newsweek gets an increased blogger readership and bloggers have the opportunity to share their perspectives with people that tend to stay away from the scattered blogosphere.

From my perspective, this is the first step to truly legitimizing the blogosphere. What’s next? Well, if Google, Yahoo! and other mainstream news aggregators began to index blogs for their search queries, we’d be one step closer to breaking through the mainstream media stranglehold on information for the average American that receives their news on-line. All of this is what the promise of Community TV was supposed to provide twenty years ago, but ran into the obvious production challenges.

This is really good. It’s good for business, good for bloggers, and most importantly, good for bubbling the truth of a story to the surface. This is discourse.

A few months back, I finally stepped out of my dead bolted existence within Ameritrade and began to digest the current state of this Web 2.0 explosion, and as soon as I did, the Semantic Web seemed so much closer to fruition than it did just a few years prior.

Much of the renewed push and entrepreneurial spirit that has driven this industry-wide rebirth seems to have been driven simply by our economic recovery from the dot-com crash. On the surface, that answer is sufficient, but something deeper is at at play. So, with my newly created free-time, I headed down a 2.0 rabbit hole to take me on a journey for clarity.

What I’ve come to realize isn’t anything particularly shocking (unless you’ve been a corporate slave for the past three years).

We’re living in tumultuous times. The air we breathe is being compromised more and more every day. Poverty around the world is increasing exponentially. Our country is knee deep in another Vietnam, another occupation, another struggle for gaining natural resources at any cost. People are becoming polarized by important and moral, personal and social issues, seemingly on a daily basis. All of this is occurring during the reign of an administration that has even the staunchest of conservatives questioning whether we, the people, are living within the midst of a dictatorial democracy, rather than a thriving Republic, built on the principles of political discourse, government checks and balances, fiscal responsibility, the separation of church and state and the power of the individual voter.

So where does this leave us as a people?

Personally speaking, I’ve decided to refocus my effort to publish my views, opinions, perspectives, experiences, etc., in an effort to make even the slightest dent in the discourse surrounding our roles as American citizens.

What motivates me? Pick your poison: the War on Terror; the Rove/Plame/Wilson scandal; the Bolton push-through appointment; the Cindy Sheehan vigil. It seems that every day a new flow of bullshit only fuels the righteous indignation I’ve come to hold regarding this administration.

Is it even possible to imagine a more visceral description of an Aristocracy at play?

For me, the complete disregard of the intelligence and voice of the American citizen begins to explain the groundswell of blogging that has occurred over the past four years, specifically the political blogs and mainstream media watchdog sites.

Sure, the potential for capital gains plays a large role in the motivation to advance technology or any other industry. The web, though, is a bit different due to it’s low cost of entry, so I believe that moral conviction plays a role in both driving the evolution of technology and the passion to leverage it to it’s fullest degree.

So what’s the connection between geo-political events, blogging and the tactical fervor of Web 2.0? (social bookmarking, tagging, open source, open content, etc.)

In a nutshell: everything.

Without a true social democracy in the real, we’ve evolved to create one on-line — where boundaries can be broken down, hierarchies can be dissolved, control can be minimized, etc.

I blog in order to get my voice out into the ether of this new social construct; I tag my blog posts to provide context and semantic relationships on numerous levels, yet with a similar purpose:

1. On the base object level to provide a succinct description of how I perceive this content from a conceptual perspective, perhaps creating a) a greater connection with the reader on a discernible level and b) connections on associative & relational levels with other objects (within my domain and elsewhere)
2. On the categorization level to establish context within a particularly defined category or across a faceted classification scheme. If I were an actual brand, this would be how I’d ensure my position was reflected within my editorial construct and navigation scheme.
3. On the retrievable object level to allow for more avenues of findability (four, well-thought descriptive tags exponentially increase the odds of object retrieval rather than none or even one, either in straight queries or in contextual presentation on the base object level)

These are tactical strategies in the information revolution.

The same principles apply to tagging even more granular object such as photographs, video and sound files, as well as the macro-level social bookmarking of URLs. The effort, I believe, is based on the desire of individual voices to be heard amidst the shelling of the mainstream media. While technically speaking, Web 2.0 is about the creation of richly defined object models and attributes — the more good data we entrench within our objects (be it content, files or URLs themselves), the better the chance for a semantic web experience — the movement behind it is much more compelling, much more philosophical in nature.

After leaving Ameritrade in April, I spent a month digesting Noam Chomsky’s Understanding Power, which introduced me to the specifics of his propaganda model thesis, which I fully digested by watching the documentary Manufacturing Consent. Recently, Dave Sifry (CEO, Technorati) posted a graph on the Technorati Blog displaying the impact that blogs are making within the once dominated realm of entrenched, funded, mainstream media.

I’m only guessing that if Chomsky has studied the progression of the web, he’s smiling up in Cambridge right about now.

The legitimization of the individual (creative and political) perspective is being sustained in the 21st century by the conviction of the blogosphere, passionate focus on the possibilities of 2.0 revenue models and domains, such as Technorati, taking a leadership position. The concept of social dialog, networking and organization and the elemental foundation of capitalism are beginning to shift in exciting ways.

Imagine a near future where:

• Individual perspectives can be made more readily sustainable through a common revenue model, reversing the big money/power structure of publication and media saturation? How would that impact the politics of our nation? Our wage labor practices?
• Algorithms and interfaces allow for rich, precise retrievals of topical queries, with just as precisely retrieved contextual objects presented within a usable format, based on better clustering techniques and taking richer and more valuable attributes into account? How would this impact the way we learn and connect to one another?
• Information domains allow topically defined objects to be rolled up into navigable concepts by users (through customization) instead of predefined categories by information architects? How could this seamlessly raise the bar for common folk in their efforts to research online? To manage information across numerous domains?
• Mainstream media articles and blog posts are presented on the same level (query or article), ensuring checks and balances of mis/disinformation, without a partisan bias? How important is it for check and balances to be rooted within the last bastion of traditional governmental checks and balances — the media?

And the great thing is that we’re not too far away from this revolutionary existence.

Blogs are beginning to bridge the social and communication gaps between nations. My peers are thinking differently when developing this medium, even in traditional business development circumstances. The tactical approach to producing, managing, sharing, finding and using information objects — defined from the bottom up — is finally getting it’s due.

Yes, these are tumultuous times, but they’re exciting as well.

purpose to the point of the matter exists.
the fact that remains is at the top of the list.
which often changes daily,
but somewhat less than before…
our slutting days are over now that we’ve moved up to whore-
ing direct
me to the system’s ways…
direct me to the system’s grays…
expose the in-between wrinkles which make the system pay…
my faux mo fro’ stylin’ has me on a different wave-
length of focus can sprout an early grave-
yard markers can only count so much-
more can be known through a simple touch…
a beat (or two)
a drop (or three)
mirrors in my pupils reflect eternally.

a different type of code.
a bass line to corrode.
the old…
the new…
the positive…
the shrewd…

a la mode.

the context of the game,
acted out in no ones name…
except hours,
spent on the dimes,
exposing the crimes,
a sign of the times,
puffs worth times nine;
algebra’s property leads to mine:

in capitalism, a man’s value is equal to the amount he produces.
yet, production value has been reduced to service (inconclusive…)
a service based economy is ripe for leadership betrayals.
furthering the agenda of an administration which derails:
the creative life juices.
the spirit of the common man.
the community in which he lives.
the extent to which he lends a hand.
all planned…
all plotted…
all groomed…
all hatched…
the test is open book!
the formula is up on the board!
the calculators have been made available!
it’s time to hit a chord:

the bloodsuckers "leverage."
the meek "turn the other cheek."
a third party exists.
exposed for a peek…

a BOO!

Back in 1999, I found myself living in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts, working in an area tagged as Silicon Village. Yeah, it was a little premature, just like it’s cousin Silicon Forest in Portland and it’s big brother, Silicon Alley in NYC, but the dot-com era was booming and the entrepreneurial spirit had caught both Williamstown and North Adams square in the heart.

(originally uploaded by Original Sin)

It was an exciting time.

Tripod (the company I joined) had just been purchased by Lycos (or as the long-timers liked to refer to them; the Death Star) for more than $50 million dollars. The young, personal web site building company and online community had made it to the big time; now one more trophy brand in Bob Davis‘ portal empire.

But Tripod didn’t start off as a personal publishing website; they flicked on the converted cable factory lights with the intent to provide advice for college students and post-graduates in print and on the internet, while the resume engine and online community all came later. DeWitt Clinton, a Williams student and Tripod programming intern in 1996 tells it like this:

“In the beginning — and this tension carried on for years — Tripod was a content company that just happened to use the Internet. (Recall that they also had a magazine and a book published.) Thanks to some clever people like Jeff Vander Clute and Nate Kurz, a few useful ‘Tools For Life’ such as the Resume Builder, were built. These applications were an interesting synthesis of ideas from the designer(s), editors and programmers.

I would definitely say that Bo was in a position of watching what everyone came up with, rather than intentionally leading them there, saying as much in his recent book. The homepage builder was just one of these organic and surprising inventions.”

So what happened? How did the tipping point occur within Tripod itself? When did management decide to move forward and focus on personal publishing and online communities? DeWitt adds more color from an outside, post-acquisition perspective:

“The traffic generated by the home pages earned them an acquisition, not the editorial content. See the Geocities acquisition just a few months later for evidence.”

Bo Peabody, Dick Sabot and Ethan Zuckerman hired some super smart developers to get their original concepts online. They built the first online resume engine and created a place for community to form the first iteration of Tripod.com. But a crazy thing was happening — people weren’t using their product the way they had envisioned. People were more intent on building their own web pages with the resume builder.

Damn these people!

Bo and company had a choice to make; either stick to their origin vision or evolve to support the needs and desires of their members, moving Tripod towards focusing on homepage building tools.

They made the only choice they could.

In 1997, before revenue models other than advertising came to fruition, stickiness determined the value of most companies. Bo and Dick saw the synthesis of member desires and a business opportunity, usefulness and viability.

It was a no brainer.

The Lycos Years

By the time I came on board, Bob Davis had just scooped up Tripod and Bo was serving his commitment to Lycos, wandering the halls at odd hours.

“Corporate refocus” was quickening its pace.

The first driver I encountered was the order to cut out community all together and focus solely on developing a suite of personal publishing tools. Actually, that became the name of our group within the Lycos domain: Personal Publishing.

The move ostracized many of the original Tripod folk who had joined the company because of the possibilities of online community, as well as a bunch of members that chose Tripod for similar reasons. But the numbers proved that people wanted to build their own web sites, so the machine spit out its orders and rolled on.

My first project was to visualize the current experience in a tangible format, so we could determine where we were going to snip and cut sections and features. After putting together a precise map of page sequencing and explicit sections, I walked into the office of my design director (former Tripod lead designer, Dave Reid) to get his opinion. The direction given to him was crystal clear, so he studied my map for a few seconds, found where the “build” and “community” sections bordered one another, and proceeded to literally rip the map in half on that line.

No questions asked; no questions necessary. That was how the Death Star operated.

It took me about a year into my stint at Tripod/Lycos to really start to question the direction of the group. I mean, the projects I was being assigned to were superfluous at best, such as creating Hello Kitty skins for the Angelfire publishing tool UI.

It felt like the powers-that-be had run out of useful ideas, so they just wanted their paid bodies in motion, any motion, as long as we were being productive.

That’s when I began wondering what would’ve happened at Tripod if they hadn’t been sold to Lycos; if the smart people were still “in charge,” still listening to their members, still innovating based on where they came from and an evolving vision of where to go.

Maybe Technorati would be serving the world of “Tripoders” today, rather than “Bloggers”…

As things would have it, Lycos closed up the Silicon Village web factory to prepare for the Terra merger. I wanted no part of working inside of the Death Star in Waltham, Mass, so I moved down to Brooklyn and picked up a dotcom consulting gig.

It wasn’t the best move, but it was better than Hello Kitty.

Jeff Veen’s post the other day regarding the genesis of flickr placed me in this Silicon Village time capsule. His description of their roots reminded me about choices and their consequences — good, bad or indifferent.

There’s no “right way” to create a viable, useful product; no methodology that is absolutely sound or fool proof. The best you can hope for — as Bo so eloquently points out in Lucky or Smart?– is that if you subjugate your ego often enough, and live your life accordingly, options will be presented to you in a manner that you can act upon with intelligence, vigor and respect.

That advise should be the first amendment for both creating useful products and collaborating with smart people, as in both cases, consistently relying on ones self-referential perspective is rarely ever a spot on decision.

Viva la flickr! Viva la Tripod! No game, no resume… no problem.