Author Archives: Joshua Chalifour

Acquiring Knowledge: Computer-Assisted Shallow Atom Assembly (2)

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In a previous post, I said that search engines essentially accomplished their jobs but created a big problem.

Search engines initially answered our question of “How or where can I find the information I want?” but in indexing the content of the Internet and providing access, they created a much more troubling problem. That question tends to overshadow another question, which is equally if not more important, “How do I assemble knowledge from the information I find?” That question will be solved by computer-assisted shallow atom assembly, which I think may be a new significant stage of Internet-related development. Continue →

Acquiring Knowledge: A Great Shallow Breadth Over Depth (1)

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Has our approach to acquiring knowledge moved from the deep end of a continuum to the broad but shallow end? The Internet medium and associated technologies used to develop, contribute, and distribute knowledge with it, call out for knowledge acquisition through breadth. I think, in general, we’re using it to acquire knowledge via a great shallow breadth of sources over acquiring it via single deep sources. We’re developing an acceptance that acquiring knowledge via a great shallow breadth delivers an equivalent fulfillment of knowledge and in most cases, we may even be developing a preference for this method of knowledge acquisition. Continue →

Rip Movie

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Just saw the film, Rip, last weekend. The movie explores most of the present day struggles with copyright and notions of ownership of “intellectual property.” I thought it was interesting in how it presented a US government decision in the 90s (through interviews with those responsible) to definitively shift its economy from a manufacturing oriented one, to a more pure idea trade, in which ideas are property and treated like something like physical goods.

The point seemed to be that the US would make a deal with other countries, leaving manufacturing to them but idea production to the US.

It managed to present the issues in a passionate way that, I imagine, should capture the imaginations of many people who otherwise wouldn’t care about copyright issues at all.

“RiP: A remix manifesto is an open source documentary about copyright and remix culture. Created over a period of six years, the film features the collaborative remix work of hundreds of people who have contributed to this website, helping to create the world’s first open source documentary.”

Filmmaker Brett Gaylor encourages remixes of the film too.

Dell Mini & Ubuntu Love

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Near the end of December I bought a Dell Mini 9. If there is such thing as a Mini closet, I’m coming out right now and professing my love to this computer. It is my favourite among all that I’ve owned. That has nothing to do with processor power or that sort of stuff. For the last several months we’ve gotten along very smoothly and the only times I questioned our relationship were not the Mini’s fault (more its sometimes unreasonable parents–Dell–or the not entirely on-the-ball tech support setup). The Dell Mini is there when I want it without feeling like an obtrusive appliance in my home. Perhaps the chemicals just haven’t worn off yet but here are my impressions. Continue →

Ephemera and the National Memory

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I continue to be concerned with what I once called digital cultural amnesia. Though in reflecting on the word “amnesia” I no longer think it’s the best way to express the problem. Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, writes about the phenomenon in The Observer.

Too many of us suffer from a condition that is going to leave our grandchildren bereft. I call it personal digital disorder. Think of those thousands of digital photographs that lie hidden on our computers. Few store them, so those who come after us will not be able to look at them… it’s my job to ensure that this does not extend to our national memory.

She takes the personal analogue and raises it to a national level. Her article goes on to cite examples of the ephemeral nature of whatever is present on the Web, and explains the loss inflicted when this web material disappears.

Brindley identifies the issue as an important responsibility for libraries and archives, which of course reminds me of the 2007 Canadian Digital Information Strategy draft from Library and Archives Canada. (I wrote some thoughts on that as well).

Coalition! I Was Wrong about Being Wrong

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In my last post, I said that I was wrong about Dion’s political strategy in the last election. It turns out that while I wasn’t exactly right, I also wasn’t wrong. I’d imagined a scenario in which the conservatives were unable to win a majority, thus putting us back in the same, unworkable situation in which we entered the election. That part happened. In my imagined scenario the Liberals would have ended up coming to power through arranging for a censure or coalition against the Conservatives. Continue →

Polishing Up the Political Remains

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Looks like I was wrong about Dion’s political strategy. Even if I was right, it didn’t turn out as I thought. I waited until today to proclaim my wrongness because I thought the last likely possibility it could unravel as I theorized would be with the speech from the throne. Today the NDP, Liberals, and Bloc could have banded together to undo the Conservatives’ minority but from the news I’ve just read, Dion didn’t take that approach.

In the meantime, I’ve started a new project (conmem.ca) that a friend tells me, makes me seem like a crank and he’s probably right. I’m going use that blog as a public memory of the Conservatives’ deads. Eventually, I’ll expand the scope so that it’s more of a public conservation of memory of other issues, but right now the conservatives’ scandalous approaches to governing provide sufficient fodder. I’ve only posted two examples on that blog so far, though I have many others ferretted away, which I’ll publish in December. This month I’m a little too occupied with Nanowrimo.

As for this blog, come December (again), I ought to have some new little essays about ready to post about “intellectual property” issues.

Vote Swapping Breaks Democracy

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I’ve always thought the concept of vote-swapping was problematic. Not only is it flawed in its own right but treating it as an acceptable strategy is like snuggling up to the idea that one party can function as a spoiler and that somehow, certain parties are entitled to votes. This is endemic to thinking of politics in a left/right dichotomy. Continue →

Unravelling Dion’s Political Strategy

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Though my attention is tuned to our federal election, this post doesn’t continue the IP political issues I wrote detailing a stance against certain sorts of “intellectual property” regulation (NDP seems to address it best, though Dion provided a reasonable response to my letter). I’ll go on a tangent today: Stéphane Dion’s campaign strategy is so shrewd he’s already slashed through Harper’s pawns and promoted his own queen. I haven’t witnessed anyone say that, so I’ll take a shot at what I think Dion’s done. Continue →

Simulated TurtleSpice ERP Selection Serial

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How about practicing your big enterprise software selection project before you actually do it? Here’s a chance to participate in one, through a series of blog posts.

We were brainstorming article topics, some research projects, etc. at TEC the other day, when my colleague, David Clark, came up with the bright idea of guiding a fictional start-up, with its growing pains, through its ERP selection project.

He just posted the first installment on The TEC Blog.

The thing I like about this (and the reason I’m writing this post) is that it’s an interactive serial. Everyone reading the post can vote and comment on the direction that the company, TurtleSpice, should take to procede with its selection project.

Dave is keeping track of the votes and comments. He’ll publish the next step in the series based on how our readers vote. Of course, it’ll all be cross-referenced according to TEC’s regular guidance for software selection best practices.

Should be a fun experiment see how people would like to steer this.

Continuing the Bullying of Analysts Issue

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Today I read a SageCircle post about threatening analysts by cancelling business, which seems like a variety of bullying and certainly an abuse. I discussed analyst abuse previously, a situation that involved bullying an analyst. I looked at the situation as one that hampered both the analyst/vendor relationship and quality of communications. SageCircle offers the following smartness.

“First, it does not make business sense for an analyst at a major firm to change research that displeases a vendor, even one that is a client. If an analyst developed a reputation for being that malleable they would soon have no clients as what they sell in part is objectivity and independence.”

I completely agree with this statement. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to show vendors that they’re not helping their cause when they try to undermine the objectivity of the analyst’s perspective. Occasionally a software vendor does try to unseat this balance–I’ve felt the implicit if not sometimes explicit threat of cancelled business. TEC based its model on trying to be an “impartial advocate for the end user” which is why our company has an audience that software vendors want to be in front of. That objectivity and independence is the wellspring of the audience the vendor seeks.

I tend to agree with most of the SageCircle points except I’m uneasy with the following.

“…analysts are not responsible for contract value so they don’t care if a vendor client cancels. Yes, the sales rep whose year just went down the drain will care, but the analyst just shrugs.”

But really, A cavalier attitude toward the work produced is unlikely to do anyone much good. Although the analyst may not be the one directly making the sale (in my company’s case we try to maintain a sort of church/state separation), all employees of a company do need to pull together in their work–after all the analyst’s job is every bit as much on the line as the salesperson’s. Does this imply that no analyst can be entirely objective? Well entire objectivity is a full topic in itself and covers a lot more ground than just where the money comes from.

So where am I going with that comment? Look, how could an analyst do his or her job well if s/he wasn’t attentive to a vendor’s concerns (even if they do involve threats or bullying)? There may be some underlying issue that has not been well understood or another sort of misunderstanding. The analyst, conscientious toward his or her labours, ought to critically consider these possibilities rather than shrug. I’d argue that the analyst ought to have the intellectual capacity to separate the threat from the issues so that s/he can rise above a vendors’ unsatisfactory communication skills (which, in the end, is all that a threat boils down to) in order to deal with the issue at hand.

As for the rest of the SageCircle post, it continues with a series of nicely-made other points on the topic of cancelled-business threats–I tend to agree with those and won’t comment further here. Software vendors, it’s worth a read!

What Would Happen if You De-occupy the Cognitive Surplus?

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The “West” is known for its consumers. Much of the rest of the world is trying its best to head in that direction too. Reading Clay Shirky’s recent blog post, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, got me thinking about the stance of the passive consumer. I’m wondering if the new consumer will be a producer… that is, one who consumes that which allows him or her to produce, which may imply an end to the social possibility of un-directed free time.

I’m thinking about this in relation to Shirky’s insightful commentary on the notion of a cognitive surplus, which our era is just starting to come to grips with. He proposes this value that it’s better to do something than nothing. I don’t think I’m comfortable with that. His post highlights some of the ways that people use their time to collaborate on projects through Internet technologies and social media types of applications. The idea is that after the industrial revolution we live in an era with a significant amount of “free time” (I guess that essentially refers to time not spent in the context of a job). For a good portion of when this free time became available to us as a society, we’ve chosen to occupy it by watching television shows. Shirky, if I understood correctly, calls this doing nothing. Now, we’re waking up to the potential of this “free time” and we’re employing it in an active way–that is, doing something. Examples include writing wikipedia pages, contributing to group mapping projects, developing free and open source software, etc.

Actually, I don’t think watching TV is doing nothing. It’s doing something, passively. You let the program come to you and you don’t really direct your intentions onto anything in the world. You don’t act upon anything to produce some sort of an outcome. Since you at least have some perceptions and thinking or whatnot while you’ve positioned yourself in front of a TV, you’ve at a minimum passively-doing. So Instead I’ll refer to this as passive-doing instead of Shirky’s doing nothing, and in contrast to active-doing something (which would be the equivalent to Shirky’s doing something).

It so happens that I don’t watch much TV. I know, that sentence raises an irresistible temptation to stereotype me as one of those people who gloat and speak in a pedantic voice about how they never watch TV. That’s not what I’m aiming for here. I like a bit of TV and think it serves an important role (don’t want to get into that in this post though). Nevertheless people often identify excessive TV-watching as problematic. In my case, TV just rarely is my thing, and not because of what I’m doing through the Internet (though I definitely occupy myself that way too). I tend to have other activities or projects that I do (a lot of the time they don’t even involve electricity, like sometimes I’ll write with pen to paper. Sorry, did that support the stereotype?). Active-doing something and passive-doing are not doing nothing.

What’s wrong with doing nothing? Sometimes, I just sit, without a TV, and let my thoughts wander but I don’t do anything in particular. I don’t produce something or bring about some sort of change in the world (in the common sense). In fact these days I feel like I don’t do nothing often enough. I’m sure I’m not the only one as I can’t help but notice there appears to be an increasing interest in meditation–talk about doing nothing. I tend to think, as a society we’re very concerned with maintaining states of constant occupation.

This notion of a cognitive surplus points to the cultural phenomenon exploding via digital technologies. We’re waking up to what we’ve begun, socially, to do to ourselves with the Internet. And it’s amazing. Shirky’s idea seems to be that we’re just now starting to figure out how to handle all this free time. Why is it a “surplus”? Can we have such a surplus?

Surplus leads me toward supply and demand, production and resources; it feels rooted in commerce. The television watcher that Shirky implies was doing nothing (passive-doing) was a consumer of free time. But according to Shirky this has changed, now this same person can be doing something, in other words producing something via the Internet and social applications, or else some other modicum of digital living. Shirky says

“And I’m willing to raise that to a general principle. It’s better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation. When you see a lolcat, one of the things it says to the viewer is, ‘If you have some sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too.’”

I ask, why is it better to do something than to do nothing? Why should that be a general principle? Why the grounds for how we occupy our free time?

What about an evening occupied at a playhouse? In a sense this is quite similar to TV. Except we tend to consider the play an art that is outside the realm of television. It’s still essentially as passive, in the sense of doing, as watching TV. Some plays involve audience participation but these are hardly the norm–perhaps there is a reason participatory plays aren’t more popular. Sometimes we need to not occupy ourselves with producing. With being “on” and actively involved, our intentions trained on doing.

If the regular consumer of free time shifts his consumption from one of TV watching (passive-doing) to one of researching, debating, and writing Wikipedia entries (active-doing something) then doesn’t he become a producer? He’s consuming his free time by producing (intentions and energy trained at doing something), which is exactly what so many Web 2.0/social media enterprises are hoping will make their business models successful. Shirky is right in more ways than one to make his industrial revolution/gin stupor comparison to our current day digital tech & Internet/TV situation.

I wonder if we’re losing our ability to develop the mental dexterity which enables us to wander through an open-ended forest of perspectives on what we do do. The notion of reflection could be lost. If we always occupy our free time by doing something, we’re occupying ourselves out of time we might otherwise occupy in, for example, meditation. If using the cognitive surplus means we take up the value that doing something is better than doing nothing, I fear we may create a problem as unhealthy as the excess in passive-doing known as watching TV.