Chris Blanc: Play and Projects: Blog

I was one of those darn fools who got an English literature degree. Before that, I was into programming; after that, I was into music. What does each teach?

• Music teaches you to think in abstractions and isomorphic structures;
• Programming teaches you to think of small objects interacting to produce results that don’t look like they come from such small objects.
• Literature, on the other hand, teaches you to view all of reality as metaphor.

When I approach the field I call “information science,” or the study of how things are organized in a practical (non-academic) sense, I like to use the term “information ecosystem.” This means the interaction between small objects to produce a result that is, like music, an isomorphic pattern that appears in different fields and objects. The patterns in which information is organized are the metaphors, and so you see them in many places even though they exist in none.

Kind of neat, isn’t it.

Johnson goes on to draw an analogy between these human waste-recyclers and their microscopic counterparts, bacteria. “Without the bacteria-driven processes of decomposition, the Earth would have been overrun by offal and carcasses eons ago,” he reminds us. “If the bacteria disappeared overnight, all life on the planet would be extinguished within a matter of years.”

Bloggers do similarly useful work. In fact, the blogosphere may best be thought of as a vast digestive tract, breaking down the news of the day into ever finer particles of meaning (and ever more concentrated toxins).

It’s worth remembering that, in a literary context, another word for “parasitic” is “critical”. Blogging is, at its essence, a critical form, a means of recycling other writings to ensure that every molecule of sense, whether real or imagined, is distilled and consumed. ^{^}

At the bottom of the information ecosystem are people who read stuff.

Obliquely above are people like me: we sip from the firehose of news and post the stuff we think is neat, and comment on it.

People then move that around off-line by mentioning it in conversation.

Eventually, someone higher-up may find one of these ideas interesting from me or another small producer, and cite or plagiarize them.

The technical term for the blogosphere as defined above is saprophyte, or a creature that survives by digesting and decomposing material.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the new media revolution; it got taken over by old media. While the Internet is home to a staggering diversity of voices, most people still get their online news from established, old-media players. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has just released a report on the state of the news media in 2008, and it finds that top online news destinations command an even greater percentage of readers than than do the top offline news destinations. ^{^}

But even as the corporate world has begun to embrace the idea of the bazaar as a forum for innovation, software programmers have continued to debate the strengths and weaknesses of peer production.

The open source model has proven to be an extraordinarily powerful way to refine programs that already exist — Linux, for instance, is an elaboration of the venerable Unix operating system, and the open source Firefox browser builds on Netscape’s old Navigator — but it has proven less successful at creating exciting new programs from scratch.

That fact has led some to conclude that peer production is best viewed as a means for refining the old rather than inventing the new; that it’s an optimization model more than an invention model. ^{^}

Further up on the food chain, there’s people who produce software. They aren’t quite to where commercial producers are, but they serve an important role.

Open source is free because the labor is free and someone else already designed a commercial version of the program, so the open source team gets a big boost in product design — free money from corporations, in other terms, even though no money changes hands.

As a result, like an oasis, open source attracts both people who live in parched places (low money) and those who are adventurers and have strayed past the boundaries with which they’re familiar, and are now out of water.

This part of the ecosystem allows ideas to cycle from the corporate sphere back down through the end-users (parched) and power users (adventurers), helping the software evolve.

The technology industry thrives on its ability to sell new products to consumers at an ever-increasing pace, and it has turned many upgrades into painless, one-click operations. But millions of users of nearly every type of Internet service and technology, from Netscape and AOL dial-up to old e-mail systems, still prefer to ignore the pitches and sit still — or at least move ahead at their own pace. ^{^}

This is your end user here. They want their technology to just work for five or seven years, because they use it for limited tasks. In fact, 90% of them do the same things: light web surfing, light email, occasional video and audioconferencing, Microsoft Office-style apps, and maybe running one of a handful of custom apps (recipe organizer, stitchery layout, tshirt overlay designer, genealogy programs).

The end users are numerous and so provide impetus for others to develop better versions of the software or operating systems they use. However, the end user won’t take on these new products — the power users will, and only then will the parched end-users explore them.

Simply put, top executives at most companies fail to recognize the value of IT. It can help a company transform data from its operations, its business partners and its markets into useful competitive information. It can be the source of profitable innovations in the way a company interacts with its customers and suppliers. But there is still a tendency to think of IT as a basic utility, like plumbing or telephone service. ^{^}

That’s because it is a basic utility at this point. Users want to make computers do things that are not related to computers, like create spreadsheets or charts or reports; programmers want to make computers do computer things; management wants to make the two work together to get a cash-producing product out there. Together they form one part of this ecosystem.

According to Levy’s introduction, “the best tech writing is still found where you’d most expect it: top-notch publications that seek out the best writers.” This means that blogging, which tends to focus more on daily commentary and criticism than on deep-dive reporting and traditional features, tends to produce less material that’s interesting to read a year later. ^{^}

There are other special relationships. Tech writers (writers in mainstream publications who talk about technology, as opposed to “technical writers,” who write manuals) are the people who go out and find the big ideas and then bring them back to others; they’re like lions who make a kill, eat their fill, and then leave the carcass for others to pick over and finally decompose, leaving a fresh bed of loam for next season.

The history of online social networking would make for an interesting book. It’s all the rage nowadays as if it were something new, but in fact social networking was already in play everywhere in the early 1980s, when the Web was dominated by the Source, CompuServe, and various homebrew BBS systems. ^{^}

It’s true: humans have always molded technology into the same form, because it’s shaped around the same ecosystem — the human social network that uses technology to achieve its daily tasks.

And here’s an example of one part of the ecosystem that is running through its long life cycle, and possibly facing changes:

I adored the Wikipedia when it was first launched and I contributed to a number of articles, some extensively, and always anonymously. The Wikipedia then was a riot of contributors, each adding bits and pieces to the articles they were familiar with, with nary an admin or editor in sight.

It worked and grew because it tapped into the heretofore unmarshaled energies of the uncredentialed. The thesis procrastinators, the history buffs, the passionate fans of the alternate universes of Garth Nix, Robotech, Half-Life, P.G. Wodehouse, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charles Dickens, or Ultraman—all those people who hoped that their years of collecting comics or reading novels or staring at TV screens hadn’t been a waste of time—would pour the fruits of their brains into Wikipedia, because Wikipedia added up to something. This wasn’t like writing reviews on Amazon, where you were just one of a million people urging a tiny opinion and a Listmania list onto the world—this was an effort to build something that made sense apart from one’s own opinion, something that helped the whole human cause roll forward.

Wikipedia was the point of convergence for the self-taught and the expensively educated. The cranks had to consort with the mainstreamers and hash it all out—and nobody knew who really knew what he or she was talking about, because everyone’s identity was hidden behind a jokey username. All everyone knew was that the end product had to make legible sense and sound encyclopedic. It had to be a little flat—a little generic—fair-minded—compressed—unpromotional—neutral. The need for the outcome of all edits to fit together as readable, unemotional sentences muted—to some extent—natural antagonisms. ^{^}

If you cross levels of the ecosystem, you get a temporary boost, but then struggle because you are out of context. If there is drought, prairie dwellers may go to the forest, and mice may hunt bugs, but those are unsustainable. The biggest problem on the internet is understanding its ecosystem, and recognizing which parts feed which audience. If you misread, you go through a short life cycle because your model is unsustainable.

Right now, in our information ecosystems, there is barely any knowledge of the different parts and how they interact. We view users as generic customers or receivers of free software. We need to start looking into users not as a solid group, but as a hierarchy of people with different needs and interests, and by finding their part of the ecosystem, pitch them the products they need instead of generic solutions.

Offering free Wi-Fi can get a cafe more customers, and they’re browsers, not table-hogs, according to a study of Paris coffee shops.

The study tracked Wi-Fi usage at five Paris branches of coffee chain Columbus Cafe over three months.

According to the chain’s Wi-Fi provider Free-HotSpot.com, the sites attracted three to five times more users per day than paid-for rivals, but those users stayed online for less time on average than paying users. ^{^}

Simple business logic: people don’t want to have many accounts to manage, as with each account they have, they increase their risk of getting victimized or simply paying for something that they cannot get organized to use.

So pay Wi-Fi, unless there’s an AOL for it — or one company that works across the globe in most coffee houses — is going to fail.

Free Wi-Fi attracts a diversity of users. Some are jerks who want to leech; others are normal people who are popping in to check email. Still others are the target audience: people who want a neighborhood haunt.

A haunt is a place you go when you have no other ostensible activity. It’s a place you feel comfortable, and you feel comfortable spending money. It’s also a place you go to when home is too lonely, or too busy.

If you want return customers… make yourself a haunt. That means spaces that allow different activities, both noisy and quiet. Unobtrusive music and staff. Maybe some books, comfortable seating. Be friendly to those who are coming for meetings, especially those who are relatively broke.

The ebook reader wars are heating up, just as the netbook wars are peaking.

Amazon has just announced the Kindle 2, an update to one of the better ebook readers I’ve seen:

Its nearest competition, as far as anyone can tell, is the Plastic Logic reader:

The Kindle 2 has a lot going for it: easily held, has a keyboard (version 1 did not), and has Amazon.com behind it to sell the hundreds of thousands of books needed in its format. The Plastic Logic reader, however, has two huge advantages: it’s got a completely onscreen interface, no keyboard, and is huge — full page size.

My prediction is that these devices are going to converge with netbooks rapidly, as people realize that for checking email and browsing the web, it might be nicer to have 12 hours of battery life than color screens.

Per an earlier post calling for this change, among other things, I’m delighted that Microsoft is making this change:

Have you ever wondered why Microsoft renamed the Add/Remove Programs (XP and earlier) control panel applet to Programs and Features (Vista onwards)? It’s possible that Microsoft is considering its own version of something comparable to Linux package management systems. For those that don’t use Linux, think of it like a Windows Update for all your software. Such a system could completely revolutionize how users interact with software on Windows, not to mention the security advantages of only letting users install software deemed safe (which in turn could cause privacy concerns, of course). ^{^}

They’re going to put in a single area from which all updates and software is acquired and managed and, if they’re really smart, they’ll provide a way for this to automatically update the software and sell software from third parties like the iPhone does. This is a positive development for the transparent operating system, which would put the focus on people getting things done instead of using the computer for the sake of fiddling with a gadget, which is the 1980s paradigm we’re replacing.

I got a chance to see the new Windows 7 beta in action. I am both impressed and non-impressed. I think they’ve improved on Vista, which I didn’t find to be a problem if you ran it on the right hardware, but I don’t think it will solve the problem.

People buy a computer for many reasons, but for most of us, being fascinated by the computer is not one of them. We want to use it to do things, in the same way we buy microwave ovens without really wanting to know how they work. We don’t need to, in the same way we drive on roads we have no idea how to build — this is specialization of labor.

What they want is what Windows XP started to give them: transparency. They want to turn it on for the first time and have it basically just work. They want it to keep working for the next four years while they use it as their primary machine, and probably for another four after that as a media server. They want to be able to easily swap out components, add consumables like RAM and disk storage, and upgrade the monitor easily if they need to.

They do not want to wade through spyware, or to learn a whole new visual language just to navigate the operating system. They do not want strange words to learn and confuse, or any terminology specific to the brand they bought. They also do not want to be abandoned by that brand: there should be one phone hotline, and one local store, where they can get trusted service and advice at non-ripoff prices.

Microsoft and Apple have been operating for too long on a “features” diet. Any time a problem or opportunity comes up, they throw features at it, adding bulk and interface complexity to the operating system. What they need to do is step back and see how many of these issues can be eliminated with good, transparent design, and how they can do it in as small and unobtrusive an OS as possible.

This description applies to both technical and interface concerns. People got really excited for “MinWin,” a tiny version of Windows that used little disk and RAM at the expense of backward compatibility and most of its features. They love the idea of a stripped down, nearly invisible interface, instead of a Pink Floyd light show. They want the thing to start quickly, not screw up, and be user serviceable without a CS degree plus Microsoft certification.

I don’t think this is unreasonable and suggest that the first of the two to actually deliver this will dominate the market for the next decade.

Ballmer announced that Microsoft is releasing a beta version of Windows 7, which will be available for download beginning Friday. The news suggests the world’s largest software maker may be giving up efforts to rehabilitate its often-maligned Vista operating system, which was released worldwide in January 2007.

“We are on track to deliver the best version of Windows ever,” Ballmer told an audience of several thousand tech professionals and journalists inside a cavernous ballroom at the Venetian hotel. ^{^}

The problem is not Vista, it’s that the Windows ecosystem is broken. This ecosystem, comprised of everything from Microsoft corporate culture to a media-fed computer illiterate audience to the Windows 95-XP business model, doesn’t work any more. It worked at another point in history, when just having a stable OS that had free and commercial software available in a stable, ongoing fashion (backward compatibility) was of the ultimate priority. That’s not true any more.

Vista is a fine operating system. It’s from the same codebase that produced the superlative Windows Server 2003 and 2008 frames. But, it’s not designed — with its heavy graphics load, code that tries to do everything for everybody, and RAM-hungry default configuration — for the average user. It pretends to be, because they put a pretty face on it. But a pretty face doesn’t obscure deep internal problems. The foremost of these is how the computer arrives to the end user.

Say I go down to Best Buy and pick up a Dell or HP. Like it or not, that’s how most people buy computers. It will come with Vista installed on a machine that doesn’t have enough memory. Worse, that machine will have junkware on it: every driver comes with a “manager” that doesn’t do anything of note except warn you to buy more ink, there’s lots of trial ware and spyware-like applications preinstalled, and then there’s helpful idiotware that pretends to keep track of your passwords, make your system more secure, and check for viruses, but mostly what it ends up doing is slowing the machine down to half of its normal speed. Further, the default configuration of the operating system includes vulnerable applications, too many applications, and lots of services running that the end user doesn’t need.

This means that the user gets a slow machine, has to fight off the junkware which often conflicts with the software they want to install, then has to deal with security problems, and only finally can get around to configuring the machine as they’d like it to be. Believe it or not, most people do this, even if it’s only changing around visual effects. Then they’re at the whims of the idiot gods of junkware, who ensure that a virus scanner stops legitimate program installations but doesn’t notice hostile embedded browser objects, that windows pop up all the time with sales pitches, that the system runs slowly and that competitor’s products don’t work.

Then, imagine you want to fix something. Open the Windows directory — there’s one hundred folders and two thousand files in the root alone. Nothing is organized. Pictures, sounds, programs, log files, and other program components are scattered chaotically through the installation. There’s no sense that there’s one place you can go to fix anything. It could be anywhere.

If they’re really unlucky, they call the geek help services (which we don’t name here) who will charge them $200 to install Microsoft Word and remove a virus, then will claim the motherboard is broken and hit them with another $500 for a new one.

That’s what we mean by the Windows ecosystem being broken. The consumer is viewed as a sacrificial pig and all companies involved are taking a bite; this worked when having a stable computer was rare, but now stability is the norm, and people see it for how parasitic it is. Microsoft needs to realize that its operating system is as it is presented to the average person — a baffling, chaotic ball of contradictions managed by predatory and incompetent servicepeople. This is why they like Apple: one manufacturer makes the computer, the software, and sells the repair service. Simple and no guesswork.

Vista is a scapegoat. When people are hopping mad at Vista, what they’re saying is that they don’t want another broken ecosystem computer, and that the HP they just bought with 2 of the 4 GB it needs to run correctly is a disappointment because it’s not better than Windows XP — it’s just prettier, which makes us think it’s a Macintosh clone designed to fool us like used car salesmen repaint junkers.

It’s not hard for Microsoft to fix this, but it requires they stop finding scapegoats and start thinking about the user experience as the average person encounters it.

I had a chance yesterday to fix a friend’s computer. It was an HP, complete with the software they enclose to make it easier to use. What a nightmare.

First, their system restore was destructive and gave the user almost no clue what was going on. Next, their system insisted on installing tons of software, including some monitoring stuff that did nothing positive. Finally, when you did get it up and running, there were files all over the place and many processes running, giving any rogue apps plenty of places to hide. When a user sees 112 entries in their task manager, looking up each one is out of the question, so they’ll blow it off.

Even more, I was reminded of one thing I did like about the Macintosh. On the old Macintosh operating systems, there was a single system folder, with every type of system piece sorted neatly into a subfolder. It was easy to find what you needed.

On Windows, and even on Linux, pathnames are a mess. Stuff is strewn everywhere for historical reasons, which makes it impossible for a user to say “this is the one folder I need to grab.” The same anarchistic spirit that makes Windows popular with developers means that every driver manufacturer is free to install a useless little “monitoring” application that tells you when your printer is out of ink, essentially free advertising, but does nothing else. Every application can drop whatever it wants in My Documents and put other essential files in any number of places.

Windows needs to be reorganized. The modern computer user populace is divided into semi-experts and those who want it to Just Work^TM and really don’t care. The former are going to use Linux and/or Windows and customize it heavily, but the latter want a simple OS that’s easy to maintain and has a clear division of functions. They want to be able to backup their hard drive by dragging one folder to Nero and clicking burn, and I think that’s a fair request.

Microsoft is burdened with so much bureaucracy that people view even small changes as near impossible, and each level is terrified that it will be the one axed if something goes wrong. Result: not only is risk not taken, but people are loathe to fix the ten thousand little problems Windows has and make it a better experience.

Right now, Windows XP has the market by the balls because, for the cycle of technology from which we have just come, it offered the easiest Just Works^TM experience. That’s not going to be so in the future. HP has it easy because people buy their computers from Best Buy or Office Depot, but they are actually non-competitive. This process of giving the user a mess to work with and hoping they don’t notice will only go so far, but as competition emerges, it’s going to become more and more clear that manufacturers like HP and Dell are dragging Windows down by offering machines that run at half-speed because they’re bloated with useless software, configured badly, and wide open for any parasite or moronic application to dump all over them.

To contrast this experience, I configured a white box machine from scratch with Windows XP, and while the process demanded finding drivers for parts that should have been generic, when the system was up and running it was a refreshing alternative. There were few processes. No windows popped up trying to sell me things or warn me of problems that they couldn’t fix. The system was responsive, fast and easily navigated.

True, the Windows directory was still a mess, and files were scattered in random order between three major directories. The Windows directory itself is a disorganized mess, as if every division of a major company just dumped its stuff in and expects others to clean up after it. But compared to the HP experience, it was a joy.

Cloud computing – where IT power is delivered over the internet as you need it, rather than drawn from a desktop computer – has gained currency in recent years.
…
But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.

“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign,” he told The Guardian.

“Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.” – Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman, The Guardian, September 29, 2008

I’ve written in the past of my opposition to cloud computing and skepticism about Software as a Service (SaaS).

I know people want backups over the net, and I know they want the ability to buy, download and reinstall software over the net, but the elephant in the room is DRM and persistence. Will I be able to get the same software again, or forced to upgrade? Will I be given only five chances to install, and then it becomes worthless?

As Stallman points out, the fact of the matter is that most of us want a physical product in our hands because we’re aware of how quickly business and infrastructure can shift strategy. Think about it: if you own Windows XP on a CD, you can install it any time you want, and have it work. If Windows has a DRM or registration policy, or you have to log in to download, it’s not so certain.

One thing Stallman attacks in this article is Gmail. How can that be? you think. Gmail is a nice service, and it’s a lot simpler and more consistent than most email clients. But if tomorrow Google stops allowing you to download your mail, you’re out of luck. I think this is what Stallman is talking about, and although his vision is a bit extreme, he’s logically correct and we should pay attention.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates spills some new strategy:

We’re hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I’m very excited about the work being done there. The ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone, so those scenarios connect up well to make it a great platform for the best gaming that can be done, to connect up to the thing being done out on the Internet, so that, for example, if you have two personal computers, that your files automatically are synchronized between them, and so you don’t have a lot of work to move that data back and forth. ^{^}

And:

Microsoft is set to announce Tuesday that it is launching a “public preview” program for two server products based on its Windows Server 2008 operating system.

The products, one aimed at small business and the other at midsize firms, combine the server operating system with Exchange Server and other software into a bundle designed to cost less and be easier to install than acquiring the products separately. ^{^}

Microsoft is going to push Server 2008 instead of Vista toward business, while refining Windows 7 as a dual attack: sharing of data across multiple devices, not SaaS, and making a light and fast operating system because, among other reasons, portable devices like the Asus Eee PC are redefining how we use computers, watch television, and communicate.

They are listening to their customers in Redmond, and have come up with a mature strategy.