Category Archives: Internet

NYTimes editorial on Google

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What Google also reflects is our changing sense of the dynamism of the Web. Nothing captures how statically we used to see the Internet as well as “information highway,” an old phrase that embodies pure linearity and the smell of asphalt. That stasis is also captured in the increasingly outmoded notion of an Internet portal like AOL, much of whose dynamism comes from offering a Google search bar. The fact is that many of us have grown comfortable within the amorphousness of the Web. We no longer need a breakwater like AOL when a good search engine promises to make the sea itself our home.

— NY Times editorial

Eastern Standard Tribe (Amazon summary)

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“Art is a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, a secret society bound together by a sleep schedule. Around the world, those who wake and sleep on East Coast time find common cause with one another, cooperating, conspiring, to help each other out, coordinated by a global network of Wi-Fi, instant messaging, ubiquitous computing, and a shared love of Manhattan-style bagels. Or perhaps not. Art is, after all, in the nuthouse. He was put there by a conspiracy of his friends and loved ones, fellow travelers from EST hidden in the bowels of Greenwich Mean Time, spies masquerading as management consultants who strive to mire Europe in oatmeal-thick bureaucracy. Eastern Standard Tribe is a story of madness and betrayal, of society after the End of Geography, of the intangible factors that define us as a species, as a tribe, as individuals.” —  Amazon review of Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow. Or you can read it for free.

“Our longing for the Web

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“Our longing for the Web is rooted in the deep resentment we feel toward being managed.” — David Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto. I’m not sure why this feels so true but it does. I’m rereading Cluetrain and find it more…relevant than the first time. You’re going to have to wade through more quotes (that I might have posted the first time).

What the Internet Is

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“World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else”

There are mistakes and there are mistakes.

Some mistakes we learn from. For example: Thinking that selling toys for pets on the Web is a great way to get rich. We’re not going to do that again.

Other mistakes we insist on making over and over. For example, thinking that:

…the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while advertisers spray them with messages.

…the Net is something that telcos and cable companies should filter, control and otherwise “improve.”

… it’s a bad thing for users to communicate between different kinds of instant messaging systems on the Net.

…the Net suffers from a lack of regulation to protect industries that feel threatened by it.

–Doc Searls and David Weinberger

101 Ways to Save the Internet

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Paul Boutin offers 101 Ways to Save the Internet. A few of my favaorites:

* Upgrade phone booths to Wi-Fi
* Death to fax machines. Send us an attachment instead
* Stop with the jokes
* Turn off your HTML email It makes you vulnerable to viruses – and bugs us.

NASRN websites

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I find this really amazing. Of the 30 member states in the National Association of State Radio Networks, only 14 have websites. The Web has been around for 10 years now and has revolutionized almost every aspect of daily life and business. I can’t think of many businesses that don’t have some kind of online presence.

Let’s get email accounts

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Sometime in the late ’80s, at a managers conference in Colorado (Beaver Creek?), I suggested we all get Compuserve accounts so we could communicate by email. I was hooted from the room (you know who you are). Yesterday our company email server went down and people are roaming the halls (“Can you check email?”). Hey guys, you got phone and fax…what’s the problem?

Wireless at home

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I put in the Wi-Fi here at home a month or so back but haven’t used it much. Not quite as snappy as the Ethernet connection. But I’m in my big easy chair and it’s kind of nice to be unplugged. More of a psychological freedom than actual.

RSS.

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I have to do some more homework before I can take a stab at explaining RSS but Chris Pirillo says it’s the next big thing and few people understand the online world better. My friend John insists he’s disappointed when he takes the time to check this journal only to find there’s nothing new. RSS makes it possible for him to be alerted (NOT by email) when this page –or others– is updated. More to come.

Gnomedex: Des Moines, IA

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Opened up the windows on the 4Runner…cranked up the XM Radio…and headed for Des Moines and Gnomedex 3. Hundreds of geeks (and one wannabe) from all over the country descend on Des Moines for two days. Much more fun than the big computer/technology shows. Dinner with O. Kay Henderson who has great new hair cut (yeah, I know that sounds gay but I can only admire, not do it, so…). She’s interviewing John Kerry today and asked if I had any questions she wanted her to ask him. I couldn’t think of any.