Monday, December 09, 2002

Panel: Beyond the Web Jeremy Allaire Mike Helfrich, Groove Networks Karl Jacob, Cloudmark Doc Searls, Linux World Intro: web is at its core a centralized client-server application architecture   Karl: P2P Spam. 230k registered users since June.  Shift from stove pipe companies (Amazon) to consumer-defined (e.g. Classmates.com emerging from inside the network).   Mike: P2P decentralized Collaboration application.  Circumvents the inefficiency of centralized IT.  Clusters within the enterprise, rapid formation of teams and supporting applications  -- a need in business and in modern government.  Adaptive systems -- Social Software.  Rich Clients for use in perhpheral infrastructure enviroments.  Speed and self-healing. Rich person to person interactions vs. rich person to information.   Doc: Decentralization = N-x architeture.   Big companies didnt invent the net, technologists did. Trends start with technologists, not customers (or technocrats for that matter).  Self-fulfilling vision of a place: no one owns it, everyone can use it and anybody can improve it.  Google is a monopoly, but Technorati adds value.  WiFi...Arraycom uses smart antennas for cellular broadband.  Internet services we dont have yet but are going to be deployed: IM, identity services.  Create the infrastructures that others can build upon.   Panel discussion:   Mike: CIO of DoD recognizes customer determined interoperability (standardization) is key.  Great DoD (see post on FCS & Embedding Training) examples of Advanced Distributed Learning using rich clients and institutionalization of knowledge.   Karl: Emergent behavior and network adoption is quicker than you anticipate.  Real-time trust evaluation and feedback.   Jeremy: Web not good at Immersive media, multi-user experiences, sophisticated user action   Doc: Email is not a rich experience, but everone needs it.   Marc Canter: HTML is limiting coordinates, time (it is real), media mgmt.   KnowNow: open sourced a component of its architecture   Karl: eBay and Amazon's biggest cost is servers and network, push it to a P2P.  What do you open source from these models?  Ratings systems?   Mitch: Power of social networks. Military has social set of practices that makes it work just as well as the hierarchy. Makes the same point as my post on Social Software.  Community is leadership and guidance that brings people together.    Kevin: the spam problem with open networks?  Karl: 99% of the people agree on what is spam, community is self-regulating.  Simple rules, complex results.  Trust the network.  Thinking in the small to define the rules. Large companies could set these kind of rules and then turn it loose. Identity good for centralization, authorization, ratings too.   Karl's points bringsup a big point to me -- elements of a service or relationships or architecture that contain risk should be unbundled and centralized.  Centralizing risk allows the pooling of risk.  Pooling is in contrast to unbundling risk under centralized control.  The analogy is MS's Passport (control) vs. Visa (pooling the risk of banks).   Doc: infrastructures: of the net itself (Vint Cerf, infrastructure is the protocols) vs. application overlays.        Dan Farber: Amazon provides a personal infrastructure.  Balance between having a real business vs. creating open innovation is as big a question as De/centralization balance.   Dave Winer: Amazon & eBay opening identity, or a consortium     Standout issues: + Again, trust + Content production costs for individuals + Meta data capture costs + Identity + Directory + Security 5:43:20 PM    comment [] Howard Rheingold Howard: "When power is decentralized, new opportunities arise for new types of collective action." text messaging allows redistribution of memes to the entire phone book in two thumb strokes characteristics: two technologies converging to make a third and distinct, which may even be attractive to segments that didnt even use the other two role of young early adopters/adapters  PC in 80, Net in 90 -- Moores Law and other factors insure technologies evolve in their quantitative power that enable qualitative evolution  Volunteer grid computing (SETI, Protien Folding project) shows quantitative power of collective action.  Science is a form of collective action.  Decentralization of literacy & printing press enabling scientific and political collective action Primitive reputation system of eBay (bi-directional nested feedback) works to form collective trust.  Markets are a form of collective action (heterarchy is actually a better description).  With trust (from 3rd party) I can engage in one-off transactions on the street (ride sharing example). Location-based services leveraging social network-based reputation ratings.   GPS coordinate-based newsgroups.  RFID tags enabling information to be inserted into things (this is Saffo's long time ago prediction of unbiquitous sensors).  Available today: UPC bar code reader tied into Google identifies maker, lawsuits, political watchdog groups -- almost like decommoditizing the PR of CPGs.  Having this information changes the way you percieve the world, as well as those you go through the world with. Political struggles over these technologies (DCMA, etc.) have to do with: closed systems trying to remain closure who controlls innovation (teenage hackers vs. Disney employees) From the audience: Dave Winer interjects that we are inventing new monopolies (Google, how open a system will it remain, competition in what you can search for), someone else interjects the concern of decentralized mob rule -- Howard agrees there are scary aspects of this. Cory: We can build collective action, but we are not good at sustaining collective action. H: By short cutting the deliberation process it may negatively effect democracy  Kevin's early example of collective overload when he included an email address for a ~94 FCC public comments generated 350k reponses Democracy by Disclosure book provides cases of how requiring corporate information disclosure leads to better compliance/performance, but collective action differs Kevin asks what historical mistakes can be avoided. The core issue of how this threatens democracy or markets hinges upon how these technologies support existing social networks.  If these are simply tools that can flow communication to the 12 closest people to the key political decision maker. Demographic parallel with baby boomers timed with technology maturity are the big trends that make smart mobbery probable.  Age impacts what generation of technology is primarily adopted...its kind of like how your favorite songs are the ones that were playing when you first fell in love...15 year olds are adopting mobile phones and instant messaging...leading to a huge demographic block that expects mobility, presence, and real-time connectiveness. What I like about Howard's views how he is discovering key themes that may make the world a better place, and its something he obviously cares about.  Also, places of political strife are where they need smart mob technology the most, and it just so happens that the lack of terrestrial infrastructure (POTS, CATV) are generating the wireless infrastructure in these places. 5:36:34 PM    comment []

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