The New York Times
When Linking Isn't Better Business[requires 'free' registration]
"Links, it can be argued, are the fundamental innovation of the World Wide Web. The ability to click on a word or phrase and be transported to another page on a distant Web site is the catalyst for the Internet's unprecedented growth.
But not everyone loves hypertext links. Take the Better Business Bureau, for example."
redux [06.16.00]8:56 PM
[requires 'free' registration]
"A crucial aspect of online journalism is the ability to garnish articles with hyperlinks that instantly refer readers to Web sites related to newsworthy issues.
But suppose one of those sites contains material alleged to be illegal--a pirated copy of an author’s book, perhaps, or an unlawful software program. Is the publisher who did the linking in hot water?
The answer, according to legal papers recently filed by eight motion picture studios in a closely-watched federal case in Manhattan, is sometimes yes and sometimes no."
redux [05.30.00]
"The shape of content and business relationships on the Web is tied to an old concept. Syndication, drawn from the closed world of traditional media, may be the model that allows the Web to remain open as it grows.
As with any new medium, the Net incorporates elements of media that came before. From Oprah to Dilbert, syndication deals are the lifeblood of today's broadcasting, cable and newspaper industries. In such arrangements, entities that create content license it out to distributors who integrate it with their own and other offerings. Several major Web-based companies adopted the syndication approach early on, though the market has remained fairly limited.
Online syndication is now poised to explode. But even as it changes the Net, the Net will change syndication. On the Web, the concept applies to commerce as well as content, and soon it will extend to dynamic applications. Syndication will evolve into the core model for the Internet economy, allowing businesses and individuals to retain control over their online personae while enjoying the benefits of massive scale and scope."
"In our system, each story has a *single* location, the site where it originated. We think this is the way new information is obtained. Comments from readers can add new facts and ideas and link to other related stories. And the portal sites, the ones with the huge flow, can play a big role, because in this model, they get paid for many (but not all) of the hits they deliver. It's a micro-payment form of what they already do so well on a much larger scale."
[requires 'free' registration]
"When a federal judge issued a decision last week in a case involving "deep linking," many reports suggested that the controversial Internet practice was now unambiguously legal. But the story is more complex than that. In fact, deep linking -- the practice of linking to a page deep inside another Web site, bypassing its home page -- still appears to be in legal limbo."
The Christian Science Monitor
'Trust, but encrypt' is new theme for Internet"It's a yearly gathering of those who don't trust the Internet folks who say "trust me."
The Eleventh Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy was held earlier this month in Cambridge, Mass. Items discussed included Carnivore, the FBI e-mail filtering software that has raised serious questions about the integrity of e-mail examined during FBI searches; UCITA, (the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act), a law proposed for enactment in all 50 states that would standardize the licensing of software and, if its critics are correct, possibly jeopardize consumer rights; and gadgets that "sky" - new consumer devices that phone home automatically, sending information via phone or wireless to the companies that build the devices.
Yet for all the good sessions offered, one of the best was Phil Zimmermann's. In the online privacy community, Mr. Zimmermann is a legitimate hero, an individual who literally took on the US government and some of its most shadowy intelligence operations ... and won."
redux [02.15.01]11:12 PM
"The debate over these questions illustrates one irreducible truth: privacy is not so much a legal or technical concept as a social one. "The dominant feature of the current privacy debate," Fred Cate told me when I asked him to try to sum things up, "is its irrationality. The drivers are emotional." I think he's right. The crucial question about privacy today is the same it has always been?namely, whom should you trust?
A lot of people instinctively don't trust technology, especially in the hands of businesses, to protect privacy. But, as Robert Ellis Smith and others have pointed out, contemporary notions of privacy have in many cases evolved not despite new technology but because of it. "Privacy," the influential journalist and editor E. L. Godkin famously wrote, in Scribner's magazine in 1890, "is a distinctly modern product, one of the luxuries of civilization." Phil Agre made a related point to me, a bit more bluntly. "The idea that technology and privacy are intrinsically opposed," he said, "is false.""
redux [04.30.00]
[requires 'free' registration]
"A liberal state should respect the distinction between public and private speech because it recognizes that the ability to expose in some contexts aspects of our identity that we conceal in other contexts is indispensable to freedom, friendship, even love. Friendship and romantic love can't be achieved without intimacy, and intimacy, in turn, depends upon the selective and voluntary disclosure of personal information that we don't share with everyone else. Moreover...privacy is also necessary for the development of human individuality. Any writer will understand the importance of reflective solitude in refining arguments and making unexpected connections: in an odd but widely shared experience, many of us seem to have our best ideas when we are in the shower. Indeed, studies of creativity show that it's during periods of daydreaming and seclusion that the most creative thought takes place, as individuals allow ideas and impressions to run freely through their minds without fear that their untested thoughts will be exposed and taken out of context. "
"We are trained in this country to think of all concealment as a form of hypocrisy. But perhaps we are about to learn how much may be lost in a culture of transparency -- the capacity for creativity and eccentricity, for the development of self and soul, for understanding, friendship and even love. There is nothing inevitable about the erosion of privacy in cyberspace, just as there is nothing inevitable about its reconstruction. We have the ability to rebuild some of the private spaces we have lost. What we need now is the will."
"Neal Stephenson, a writer with a cultlike following among the technologically minded and author of the classic "Snowcrash," has given an over-long, hugely digressive -- and brilliant -- speech. After many, many turns and a deep stack of points and stories, Stephenson gets around to saying that the best defense for one's privacy and personal integrity turns out to be not cryptography but, what do you know, "social structures." He is not explicit about the exact nature of these structures, but from the slides that follow, we get a sense of every sort of social relationship from neighborly friendliness to political parties. The slides show drawings of small circles representing areas of social trust. The circles widen and merge, to create a field of autonomy, a trusted space.
Stephenson is making a point about code: Without a sociopolitical context, cryptography is not going to protect you. He singles out PGP for criticism, saying that relying on the encryption scheme is like trying to protect your house with a fence consisting of a single, very tall picket. A slide shows the lone picket rising into the sky, a bird considering it with bulging eyes."
The Standard
Blinded With Science"Bell Labs is the last vestige of AT&T's bygone phone monopoly. In the serene, uncompetitive days before its 1984 breakup, there was plenty of room for the company to engage in endless research, file countless patents and create enough technology to overwhelm any adversaries. It hired the best scientists and engineers, and let them loose to pursue their dreams. The results included many of the seminal advances in contemporary technology, from the computer chip to the communications satellite.
But that approach was already looking like a luxury a decade ago, and over the past few years rivals that leave the science to others have managed to outmaneuver Bell Labs. "Traditional research has its place, but it's much smaller now," says Marek Wernik, director of disruptive market and business solutions at Nortel."
9:22 PM
"Xerox' woes might seem to provide evidence that there's something wrong with the U.S. system of corporate R&D. That's not the case. Innovation is rife in the U.S., from industrial labs to contract research outfits and Silicon Valley startups. Says Martin N. Baily, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers: ''We've been able to generate a fertile breeding ground because we have a range of funding mechanisms.''
Start with the corporate labs, which once resembled ivory towers. Today, their PhDs are getting their hands dirty on real-world customer problems. But ''Xerox has been relatively slow'' to latch on to that trend, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Rebecca M. Henderson, an expert on corporate R&D.
Companies that get more pragmatic about research aren't dropping the ''R'' to do more ''D.''"
"Change is inevitable, especially in the corporate world. Robert Buderi believes the important factor is how a company initiates and handles that change. His book, Engines of Tomorrow, focuses on the research division of corporations and claims that a company's central research operation is the bedrock of corporate change. Buderi strongly believes that the research process provides the technologies that spur growth.
If you are interested in the history of corporate research as well as corporate development, you will find this book fascinating."
SatireWire
REVOLUTION FINALLY COMES, BUT TIMING PROVES INCONVENIENT FOR RULING CLASS"The long-awaited Revolution, when the oppressed and disenfranchised break the chains of economic servitude and social injustice and put the tyrants and plutocrats up against the wall, finally arrived yesterday, but quickly fizzled after the ruling classes said they just didn't have time for it.
"It was 8 o'clock at night, we had guests over, I was introducing a new line of cookware in the morning, and suddenly my employees want to overturn the status quo and establish a classless society?" said Martha Stewart, CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and one of those slated to be "first up against the wall" when the Revolution came. "Of course I said 'No.'"" 11:32 PM
The Register
Email is 'third revolutionary step in human communication'"Email, or communication using Internet technology, is the third revolutionary step in mankind's ability to communicate, the first two being learning how to speak and how to write, a leading authority in linguistics claims."
"People can take the third paragraph of an email, copy paste and respond to that. They can take the fifth paragraph and do the same. This flexibility (and presumably speed is an essential aspect) has not been possible before, he argues.
In another example, David points out that a chatroom enables 30 or so to communicate at the same time. This would be impossible in any previous form of communication (although people often try it in pubs)."
9:21 PM
"Email is the gateway drug of the internet, because once email is in place, people begin to expect full interoperability."
"In fact, in a news flash that seems to have caught the entire telecommunications industry by surprise, people who buy mobile phones often like to communicate with one another. Had this not been such an absolutely unpredictable occurrence, maybe somebody at the WAP consortium could have predicted that when you add text to the phone, users might like to communicate with one another via text.
Access to email is the #1 feature customers want in a wireless text device (duh), and all those wireless auctions where the telcos spent 22 gajillion Zlotys to own the customer now look like a giant shell game, because the users don't want to get headline news. They want to talk to one another, and they will switch carriers until they are allowed to. Email is the thin end of the interoperability wedge, and this will be true of interactive TV as well."
redux [02.18.01]
"The Internet is widely regarded as primarily a content delivery system. Yet historically, connectivity has mattered much more than content. Even on the Internet, content is not as important as is often claimed, since it is e-mail that is still the true "killer app."
The primacy of connectivity over content explains phenomena that have baffled wireless industry observers, such as the enthusiastic embrace of SMS (Short Message System) and the tepid reception of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). Combined with statistics showing low cell phone usage, this also suggests that the 3G systems that are about to be introduced will serve primarily to stimulate more voice usage, not to provide Internet access.
For the wired Internet, the secondary role of content will likely mean that the dangers of balkanization are smaller than is often feared. Further, symmetrical links to the house are likely to be in greater demand than is usually realized. The huge sums being invested by carriers in content are misdirected."
redux [01.15.01]
"Nicole Thompson's third-graders can tell you all about the penguins and killer whales that populate Antarctica. They know about the months of darkness that grip Iceland each year and the fine tea that grows in Darjeeling, India. The Greenbriar Academy children have learned those facts - and countless more about countries large and small - thanks to a simple e-mail message from Thompson that has raced around the globe and brought more than 20,000 responses in six weeks.
It's crazy, just crazy," Thompson said. "At most, I thought we'd get about 2,000 replies.""redux [02.04.00]
"Email will become the killerer app. It continued to work when all else failed. Communication - not consumer storefronts - is the core value provided by the net and email is the star. The best things on the net make things easier and faster. Seems simple, but many of the failed business propositions of the past year seemed to go in the opposite direction."
"Imagine the discussions that must have gone on around the invention of the telephone: a new medium for delivering content directly to households. Indeed, that was exactly how some people did use it. In Budapest you could pick up the telephone and listen to music and news until the first world war... It didn't turn out that way because people preferred listening to each other: they preferred "self-generated" content."
"Companies with a strategy that facilitates communication between people, a strategy that facilitates self-generated content, will prosper as the world becomes more interactive and broadcast becomes just one sector of a much richer media world."
“"You're not a designer, you're not a writer, and you're not an editor!"
Well, no, blogger, you're not. And therein lies your gift. Because even if it's true the vast majority of blogs would not be missed by more than a handful of people were the earth to open up and swallow them, and even if the best are still no substitute for the sustained attention of literary or journalistic works, it's also true that sustained attention is not what Web logs are about anyway. At their most interesting they embody something that exceeds attention, and transforms it: They are constructed from and pay implicit tribute to a peculiarly contemporary sort of wonder.
...[T]he Web log reflects our own attempts to assimilate the glut of immaterial data loosed upon us by the "discovery" of the networked world. And there are surely lessons for us in the parallel. For just as the cabinet of wonders took centuries to evolve into the more orderly, logically crystalline museum, so it may be a while before the chaos of the Web submits to any very tidy scheme of organization.”
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