b.cognosco

LawMeme dissects a letter sent by a gaggle of Congressional ninnies to Dick Clarke (no, not that Dick Clark), Chair of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board calling on the government not to fund any development under the GPL license.

I'd like to attribute it to honest ignorance, but what are the chances? Rick Boucher may be the only guy in Congress with a clue.

Tara Sue Is No Joke

10:55:00 PM

comment []

Tara Sue Grubb's run for Congress in North Carolina may be a joke to some, and maybe she doesn't have a Texas snowball's chance of beating Howard Coble -- this time. But if you want a sense of what the next generation can do when we finally get the decrepit, decadent, codgers out of power, go read what she has to say. The girl is no joke.

She has heart, she has logic, she has principles. And she has cajones. I know who'd get my vote if I lived in NC District 6.

The Beautiful Logic of Douglas Engelbart

7:23:55 PM

comment []

Doug Englebart advances his theory for achieving sustainable, discontinuous innovation through careful augmentation of Human Intelligence. Note that he does not seek to augment knowledge, but intelligence -- with a strategy, process models, and feedback loop supporting a group mind, focused on broad problems, integrating external data, and sharing results in a self-renewing cycle.

It's an elegant theory, and reflects the much broader meme of evolving, increasingly complex organic systems -- his comparison of Collective IQ vs Market Intelligence made me think of the relation between higher brain functions and the limbic system. The principle of augmentation -- adding to Human capabilities, not simply automating them -- is central to his premise.

Englebart gives us an understandable framework for purposefully achieving and raising Collective IQ, and shows how this can lead to sustainable, discontinuous innovation by drawing out the important differences between this and simple knowledge retention or information retrieval systems.

Doug Engelbart on improving collective IQ.
I don't think I have read as eloquent an explanation of what collaborative intelligence augmentation is and why it matters as Douglas Engelbart's World Library Summit keynote speech Improving our ability to improve: A call for investment in a new future. Here are just a few quotes - but I think it's well worth attentively reading every word of the text. And taking time to think about it.

...the investment in C activities is typically pre-competitive. It is investment that can be shared even among competitors in an industry because it is, essentially, investment in creating a better playing field. [...]
At the C level we are trying to understand how improvement really happens, so that we can improve our ability to improve. This means having different groups exploring different paths to the same goal. As they explore, they constantly exchange information about what they are learning. The goal is to maximize overall progress by exchanging important information as the different groups proceed. What this means, in practice, is that the dialog between the people working toward pursuit of the goal is often just as important as the end result of the research. Often, it is what the team learns in the course of the exploration that ultimately opens up breakthrough results. [...]
One of the most important things that we need is a place to keep and share the information that we collect - the dialog, the external information, the things that we learn. I call this the "Dynamic Knowledge Repository," or DKR. It is more than a database, and more than a simple collection of Internet web sites. It doesn't have to be all in one place - it can certainly be distributed across the different people and organizations that are collaborating on improving improvement - but it does need to be accessible to everyone - for reading, for writing, and for making new connections. [...]
Another key, early investment is in the development of tools to provide access to the knowledge in the DKR for all classes of users, from beginners to professional knowledge workers expecting high performance. This "hyperscope" - that is my term for it - allows everyone to contribute and use the information in the DKR according to his or her ability. [...]
The feature of humans that makes us most human - that most clearly differentiates us from every other life form on Earth - is not our opposable thumb, and not even our use of tools. It is our ability to create and use symbols. The ability to look at the world, turn what we see into abstractions, and to then operate on those abstractions, rather than on the physical world itself, is an utterly astounding, beautiful thing, just taken all by itself. We manifest this ability to work with symbols in wonderful, beautiful ways, through music, through art, through our buildings and through our language - but the fundamental act of symbol making and symbol using is beautiful in itself. [...]
I come to this conference representing my own small organization, the Bootstrap Alliance. We don't sell a product or anything else. But we do offer an opportunity for you to be actively engaged with other people and other institutions that are interested in understanding how to use this new fire that has been brought down from the heavens.
More specifically, the Bootstrap Alliance is an improvement community that is made up of other improvement communities - we are focused on improving the ability to improve, and on helping other groups that share those interests do a better job of it. We exist to help C-level organizations do a better job of being C-level organizations. Our approach to this, not surprisingly, is based on concurrent development, integration, and application of knowledge across those different pioneering communities.
[Fleabyte, thinking with computers] via [ Source: Seb's Open Research]

The Internet Is Not A Television

6:58:30 PM

comment []

Copyright fights are not nearly so culpable in the dearth of broadband sales as the facts that it costs too much, takes too long, and God help you if you ever need support from the phone company.

I don't want to hear one more mis-informed, self-serving, obsequious politico stand up and claim that all we need is movies over the Internet to spur broadband. They should all go focus on writing laws to stop the creation of fake child pornography pictures or something. Assistant Commerce Sec'y Mehlman should go to work for the MPAA and lose the cover.

Copyright Fights Slowing Broadband Growth. Internet News Oct 24 2002 10:39AM ET
[...] Speaking on a panel discussion entitled "Pirates and Posses: The Battle Over Digital Copyright," Mehlman said, "While users are adapting broadband very rapidly and in line with reasonable expectations for a new technology, the greater availability of movies, music and games from legitimate sources will be critical to more rapid and sustained consumer adoption." [...]
"Companies clamoring every day for government help to accelerate broadband adoption can make significant strides on their own and without government mandates by working with the content community to satisfy their concerns," he said. [...] [ Source: Moreover - IP and patents news]

Our Moral Compass

6:39:32 PM

comment []

We can't pass legislation to jail genuine criminals -- people who committed fraud, theft, and malfeasance with corporate and stock shenanigans -- but we can pass laws to stop people from painting dirty pictures. Can anyone say "It's time for an election. Let's stir up something for the children"?

Sorry, this dog ain't gonna hunt.

As for the prosecutors, does anyone know a prosecutor who believes he should actually have to prove wrongdoing, or physically track down and pursue real criminals? This isn't LA Law. These guys want a pass wherever they can get it. That's why we have juries and judges. They don't need more laws, they just need to do their jobs.

Bush urges ban on 'morphed' porn. ZDNet Oct 24 2002 3:43AM ET
[...] Prosecutors claim that such a law is needed, since otherwise it is too difficult to prove that an actual child was involved in the production of an electronic image on, say, a seized hard drive. [...] [ Source: Moreover - Online legal issues news]