To be free, information has to be smart (comments on Chris Anderson's "Free!")

WIRED Magazine's editor in chief Chris Anderson, following up on the popularity of his Long Tail meme, theorizes in the March 2008 issue of WIRED about the modern tendency to put information online at no cost. I'll start this blog with the implications of offering free information in the computer field, and build from there to what I agree and disagree with in Anderson's article.

Anderson's taxonomy of "free" contains six models that justify giving the information away. The idea of "free as in freedom" (that is, open source information in the GPL or Creative Commons style) doesn't enter at all into his article. Is that important, given that the article is economic rationale for business? I think it's a crucial omission.

(continue reading)

O'Reilly Radar, other O'Reilly efforts win JOLT awards at SD West

The SD West conference and expo held its awards ceremony this evening. O'Reilly was a finalist for five products or services and won awards for all five entries. Radar took the top award in its category (Web sites) and Beautiful Code in its category (General Books). The Myths of Innovation, Head First SQL, and Safari Books Online won awards at the second tier (productivity awards).

Network neutrality: code words and conniving at yesterday's FCC hearing (Part 2 of 2)

Yesterday I summarized the public FCC hearing about bandwidth at the Harvard Law School, and referred readers to a more comprehensive background article. In this article I'll highlight some of the rhetoric at the meeting, which shows that network providers' traffic shaping is no more sophisticated or devious than the shaping of public perceptions by policy-makers and advocates.

(continue reading)

Network neutrality: how the FCC sees it (Part 1 of 2)

The mere announcement of an FCC hearing on "broadband network management practices" was a notch in the gun of network neutrality advocates. The achievement was reinforced by the line-up at Harvard University's law school today. The Comcasts and Verizons were outnumbered and outmaneuvered by the left wing of the network neutrality movement, which included such leading lights as Yochai Benkler, David P. Reed, and the honorary host of the event, Representative Edward Markey, who heads the House's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

Yet to a large extent, the panelists and speakers were like petitioners who are denied access to the king and can only bring their complaints to the gardeners who decorate the paths outside his gate. I believe that the FCC commissioners see distinct limits to what they can accomplish, and that their compromise will come out much closer to the current practices of the Comcasts and Verizons than to the more idealistic calls for an Internet that we should have had seven or eight years ago.

I feel a natural pull toward network neutrality, which I knew for many years in slightly different versions and different terms (common carriage, the layered protocol stack, the end-to-end principle, the stupid network) before the current buzzword emerged. But I soon realized that the subject was a thornbush from which it is hard to untangle a solution, and wrote a major analysis two years ago that I really think still stands as an accurate representation of the issues.

But where do industries, the public, and the government stand today? That's what I'll explain in this article. I'll drill down tomorrow in another article about some interesting details at the hearing.

(continue reading)

Rating the ratings, and the end of neutrality

When I search for my name on major search engines, I'm satisfied with the results. (I hope this modest admission doesn't spur any readers to change that situation.) But many individuals and companies can't make the same claim. Scads of self-help sites advise them to take deliberate action to raise their profiles, and SEO firms as well as others offer paid services to take such action.

Meanwhile, Wikipedians castigate individuals and companies for changing their own Wikipedia entries. No other behavior could reasonably be expected. Passive participation in the online reputation game is not an option.

The operational adage in this game is: "If I am not for myself, who am I?...And if not now, when?" to cite the over-cited Rabbi Hillel. (Now, that was a dude with some reputation. Too bad his Golden Rule isn't observed in cyberspace.)

Could another level of indirection--a rating of ratings--improve this situation? Probably not. But thought experiments are worth considering--especially since the stakes are even higher than I've indicated. Now only are we increasingly forced to take part in the ratings game, but we are prevented from being neutral.

(continue reading)

Educating computer users: the need for community/author collaboration (Part 2 of 2)

The context: membership dynamics and leadership roles

Every real-world and online community faces the same basic development issues. How do potential members view the community they're about to join, and how can the community welcome them by giving them the competencies they need? What opportunities do the leaders have for training other members, and what responsibilities do they have to act on these opportunities?

When it comes to recruitment, communities always have unwritten and often unconscious rules concerning who's in and who's out. Although a tight-knit elite sharing common values is useful for a few tasks, most communities now understand that allowing the greatest possible diversity of potential recruits will bolster the community's chance of success and bring in the strongest set of skills and ideas.

For this article, we'll focus on broadening membership by helping new members master the skills they need to succeed. The first tutorial that a computer user tries when exploring a web framework may determine whether she becomes an enthusiastic success story or disappears from the site forever.

(continue reading)

Educating computer users: the need for community/author collaboration (Part 1 of 2)

(This is the first part of a two-part article.)

Every computing project with a heart-beat is out recruiting new users, because the trajectories of competing projects place them in a grow-or-die situation. Celebrating the project's 100,000th download, noting increased traffic on its mailing lists, and boasting the release of a book about it--all these typical milestones implicitly measure success in terms of new users. It makes sense that the more effectively a project can educate its new users and turn them into masters, the more successful it will be.

Mailing lists and books represent the two ends of a spectrum of educational opportunities. On a mailing list, IRC channel, or web forum, questions and answers stream back and forth with a speed reflecting the tendency of the current state of affairs to evaporate. A book, by contrast, represents stability (not to mention opportunities for revenue). In between lie blogs, tutorials, wikis, FAQs, and a range of other tools for helping users mature.

Recently, the less stable end of this ecosystem has been destabilizing the other end, and this calls for a reassessment of their relationship.

(continue reading)

Recent Posts

• Developing an improved online environment for educating computer users on February 3, 2008
• Two tools we need to improve online information on January 31, 2008
• Survey: what benefits do online communities bring? on January 23, 2008
• Privacy 2007: Hiding in the Crowd on December 28, 2007
• So when will the job of a technical editor be abolished? on December 27, 2007
• Collaborative translation for all types of web content provided by Worldwide Lexicon on December 22, 2007
• Reputation: where the personal and the participatory meet up (installment 4 of 4) on December 16, 2007