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December 20 , 2002

Open the Spectrum: It's time to decentralize the ether.

The problem in a nutshell is that we license access to frequencies as if the spectrum of frequencies were land that has to be apportioned. While this may have made some technical sense seventy years ago, it doesn't makes sense technologically or economically now. The metaphor is wrong. We need new metaphors that are closer to reality, and then we need new policies that will open up the ether.

Spectrum is ubiquity

Open Spectrum is freedom...

Talking to Librarians: Random notes about information.

I gave a talk to a library association and pretended I knew something about the history of information.

Among the factoids me and my pal Google dug up:

While I knew that Herman Hollerith, inventor of the punch card, had been inspired by the way in which some looms were "programmed," I didn't know he was also inspired by...

Moral Fiction: Why do Pulp Fiction and Grand Theft Auto feel more moral than watching Ahnuld kick bad guy butt?

I watched Pulp Fiction again the other night. I don't want it to be one of my favorite films, but it is.Pulp Fiction accomplishes a true suspension of moral belief...

Reflexology: What's wrong with having the right moral reflexes? Nothin', that's what.
The Anals of Marketing: We're all in the sights of marketeers. Might as well enjoy it.
Digital Rights Liberation: News from the war we're losing.
Google Google Google!: Morsels, tidbits and three tips.
Paging Dr. Freud: I seem to be making more Freudian slips, perhaps because I want to sleep with my mother. Oops, I meant "because of the stress I'm under."
Misc.: Misc.
Walking the Walk: Maids Home Service discovers that portals are not read-only.
Cool Tool: DVDme lets you make little Timmy's dance recital look as slick as a corporate sales video.
What I'm playing: No One Lives Forever 2.
Internetcetera: The sudden decrease in dot-com failures must indicate a comeback!
Links: You found 'em.
Email, Advice and Time-Delayed Stinkbombs: Mail from the smartest readership on the planet! (And the least able to detect pandering.)
Bogus contest: Wireless Oxymorons

October 25 , 2002

Digital ID: Four lessons from the DigitalID World conference, including: IDs are nice but not the center of the universe

The sign on the banner in the conference hotel said that Digital ID is at the center of it all, but I'm still not convinced. Yes, a digital ID would let me avoid multiple sign-ins as I traverse various Web sites, but the convenience isn't worth the illness-at-ease that registering with Microsoft Passport would cause. And even without a digital ID system, I can use my credit card right now and buy anything I want online (up to my $125 credit limit, of course)....

The Need for Leeway: It's the only way we manage to live together, and computers are eating away at it

Let's say you a sign a lease for an apartment. It stipulates that you are not to paint without explicit permission. But your dog scratches the bottom of the door, so you buy a pint of matching paint and touch up the dog's damage. You are technically in violation of the lease but no one cares...

Educational Leeway: A Personal Addendum: Grading kids sucks

It's a bad thing when you come back from the feel-good Meet the Teachers night at the local, progressive public school and need a drink.

Hope on the copyright front: Multiple news items actually offer some hope. But don't get your hopes up about hope.
Notes and Disclaimers Pertaining to the Above Material: Covering my ass when it comes to using words
How to Become a Guru: Ten steps to financial freedom.
Why Google Totally Sucks! Really!: Nah, not really.
Misc.: Misc.
The Anals of Marketing: Jumping the Loan Shark and Yahoo the Censor
Walking the Walk: Timex finds the Web changes time
Cool Tool: Picasa organizes your pictures
What I'm Playing: Grand Theft Auto 3 - reprehensible but so damn much fun
Internetcetera: Broadband vs. cell phone adoption rates
Links: You send 'em, I run 'em
Political Links: Hey, you get ready to start a war, you get a few links
Email, Arbitrary Insults, and Suspicious Hacking Coughs: Where are you bastards?
Bogus contest: My brain on the Net

October 21 , 2002

Special Issue - Letter to FCC: Fail Fast!:

A bunch of netty women and men have sent a letter to FCC Chair Michael "Son of" Powell. The basic message is: When the telecommunications industry goes bankrupt, don't try to resuscitate the corpse. Let it go. Its infrastructure and the business model based on it are obsolete. It can't be fixed. Instead, let the market bring forth a new era of innovation and connectivity, let a hundred flowers bloom, let the moon enter the house of Aquarius, etc....

September 12 , 2002

Palladium and the Real World: Microsoft's bid to make our computers secure will also make them vulnerable to stiff-fingered copyright holders.

There are two problems. First, our computers keep getting infected with viruses, including the intentional virus called "spam," because they have no way of knowing which incoming stuff to trust.

Second, people who want to sell us content and keep us from redistributing it have no way to stop us cold.

There's a way to solve both these problems at once. But there's a price...

The 3 Rules of Digital Rights Management: There's nothing wrong with managing copyrighted materials, if you do it right.

I've got no problem with a company selling me a work of creativity according to whatever rules it wants to establish. I have no problem with companies making the rules they've established enforceable. But I do have a problem with fundamentally degrading the openness of the Internet ...

Real World End User Licenses: Defaulting to Stupidity: The importance of leeway.

Ed Foster writes in InfoWorld on the spread of end user license agreements to printed material. His example is a book on "Geriatric Care Guidelines" from Omnicare, sent unsolicited to physicians. A label warns you not to open the shrink-wrapping unless you agree with the license which, basically, forbids you from telling anyone what's in the book.

Lots of printed documents have had conditions attached to them...

The Pop-under that Saved the World: Find Osama!
Why Vacations Suck: Ten reasons no one likes vacations.
The Anals of Marketing: Stamps, End User Abuse License, and protecting Godzilla
Walking the Walk: Maybe conversation actually is important.
Cool Tool: LeXpert and StartUpManager
What I'm playing: Clive Barker's Undying
Internetcetera: Spamming the dead
Scandal Central: A picture is worth 10-20 years.
4 Conferences, No Wedding: I'm plugging them, even if I'm not going to them.
Links: You found 'em.
Email, Random Slights and Unsightly Growths: Your excellent emissions.
Bogus contest: Open Source Conspiracy Theories

July 24, 2002

Dreyfus on the Internet: Hubert Dreyfus, philosopher, has written a monograph about the Net that is profound and off the mark.

First let me say some positive stuff because I'm about to disagree with most of Hubert Dreyfus's attempt to deflate the Web in his book "On the Internet," in particular his assumption that we are still in an age of information scarcity, rather than information abundance...

Bluetooth Pro and Con: How do you want to go wireless? There's no simple answer yet.

Bluetooth is a wireless standard created to enable very local devices to work together: your computer can talk to the printer, and your PDA can talk to your computer, and your fax machine can talk to your coffee maker if it feels like making prank calls. It's USB without the wires.

But Bluetooth wants to be more...

Sham compromises: We're losing the Digital Rights Management battle
Keeping Telcos Simple, Stupid: How do you explain the telco mess?
Pocketful of Standards: A bluffer's guide.
Blogger Dead Pool: Who will be the first journalist fired for what s/he says in his/her blog?
The Anals of Marketing: Stupid, stupid marketing.
Walking the Walk: Automated integration: Boring but helpful.
Cool Tool: Multi renamer.
What I'm Playing: Jedi Outcast.
Internetcetera: News on the Net and off.
Eighth First Name Award: Google searching for first names.
Links: You suggest 'em, I run 'em.
Email: You write 'em, I run 'em.
Bogus contest: Tomorrow's Moral Monsters

June 26 , 2002

The Semantic Argument Web: Tim Berners-Lee's dream of a Web of meaning is unlikely to happen, at least the way he thinks.

Tim Berners-Lee, blessed be his name (and shortened be his name to TBL for now), has been pondering what the Web could become. His vision is that it spawns a "Semantic Web." I don't believe this particular vision is going to happen. And it's not going to happen for the very reasons that the Web did happen.

I get such a feeling of deja vu as I read about the Semantic Web, at least the bits I can understand...

Office of Homepage InSecurity: We should use the Web better than this.

I hadn't been back to the home page of The Office of Homeland Security since I went to get a copy of the color-coded alert system to make fun of it. Have I mentioned that it sucks? And in this case, sucking isn't a laughing matter...

Clueful Marketing: Could you find a better example?
Blogthreads: We need a way to refer to 'em. Shelley is going to give 'em to us.
A Small, Necessary Gesture: A hand signal for when you've been a jerk.
The Invalidator: The official HTML validator ought to loosen up
Walking the Walk: Macromedia and a game maker seek advice from outside their own conference rooms
Cool Tool : Pockey stores 10G USBly
What I'm Playing: Serious Sam: Second Encounter. Too much fun.
Internetcetera: Why am I still using Office?
Anals of Marketing: Mainly bad ideas.
Links: You found 'em, I intermediate 'em.
Small pieces: Alex Golub engages with it.
Email, Arbitrary Insults, and Suspicious Hacking Coughs: More lovely messages from y'all.
Bogus contest: Upcoming Books

May 11, 2002

Pope on the Internet: The Church's message on the Internet gets it surprisingly right ... and unsurprisingly wrong.

The Pope is way ahead of many others, including Leading Businesses, in seeing the Net as a new public place — actually, a new place for a new public — rather than as a lower-cost broadcast medium. And yet the broadcast model of evangelism still holds sway...

Bombastic Truth: Christopher Locke's new book is brave personally and...

Christopher Locke is a brave writer...The Bombast Transcripts is RageBoy and Chris Locke by turns. It's RageBoy interviewing Mr. Ed (yes, the horse) about ecommerce and postmodernism and RageBoy ranting about the demonic master he served

Getting Personal: ...the personal on the Web connects in a way that broadcast can't.

Something remarkable is going on at Chris' newsletter, EGR, because something remarkable is going on with Chris. Chris has broken up with Laurie, the love of his life...

Why is this any of your business? It's not, of course. Yet it's there as if it were. That's what's remarkable.

The Gift of Lying: Honesty is overrated.

...If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that by and large 21st century Americans are the most truthful people in history, we’re so shocked and outraged that someone might lie to advance his interests. We've developed a zero tolerance policy for lying.

But of course we all lie all the time...

Stop me before I'm inconsistent again!: Noting the inconsistency of the previous articles
Walking the Walk: the Navy gets all KM-y.
Cool Tool: Mitch Kapor may have something for us, and Kanguru storage.
Now Playing: The games people, um, I , play.
Internetcetera: CIO survey.
Beijing and Peru Escape Hostage Plot: Two slip past the Microsoft sentries.
Why Search Engines Suck: They just do. Except Google, of course.
Virtual Everything: On the heels of the virtual keyboard, our labs have been busy...
The Anals of Marketing: Why marketing sucks.
Links: Your contributions, outstanding as always
Email, Scurrilous Attacks and Premeditated Insults: Must get more email!
Bogus contest: Kids Versions

 

Browse back issues...



The Cluetrain Manifesto
by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and me

First it was a web site (www.cluetrain.com), then it was a book (from Perseus). We wrote it because it seemed to us that most businesses and the media were missing the obvious point about the Web: we're not there for a new shopping experience but to connect with one another. The Web is a conversation. We're drawn to it because at long last we get to talk in our own voice. And stuff like that.

 


Special Collections

Hyperlinked KM Journal

We cover Knowledge Management too damn much in JOHO. If you don't believe us, check this list of articles we've run.

 


Scourge Award
The RageBoy Chronicles

Chris RageBoy!" Locke is the official Scourge of JOHO (as well as being the editor of Entropy Gradient Reversals). You can catch up on the latest skirmishes and learn the strange history of the Web's most esoteric 'zine-based water balloon fight.


The Best of JOHO

Our staff picks its favorite episodes

Special Offers

Just paste these special, glow-in-the-dark chiclets onto your home page and reap the transcendent rewards of being so cool that you spell it "kewl"!

But, be warned: Don't break the chain! The last person to do so ended up as a senior executive at Lycos.

Special Issues! Publisher's Overstock!

Now and then we run high-value Collectors Quality special issues on topics we think will try the patience of even the most saturnine reader. Here are some of the more recent ones.

The Longing

Why is our culture on fire about the Web when we can't even say what it's for? A desire so fervent must express a deep longing, a spiritual longing.

In fact, we embrace the Web with such enthusiasm because we hope it will enable us to end the contract we've implicitly signed that says we'll give up our human, individual voice in exchange for the illusion of living in a managed world. The Web returns our human voice.

That's what we long for.

Down with Reality!

The person staffing the ticket desk asks me: "Do you have an electronic ticket or a real ticket?" Two thousand years of philosophy, and this is what it comes down to.

"Reality" is a value judgment...

Business and Time

We're seeing an important shift in the nature— not just the pace— of business time. We're moving from a type of heroic chunkiness in which projects are private until published, to a collaborative rhythm in which much more is exposed to public view, for longer, and deadlines are not as important as readiness.

The Hyperlinked Metaphysics of the Web

Our culture has had a container-based metaphysics: space and time are containers within which events occur, and things are only truly real if they're self-contained. The Web, on the other hand, presents us with a hyperlinked metaphysics that is transcendent and fundamentally spiritual.

 

NPR Commentaries

For a list of my commentaries for National Public Radio's All Things Considered, click here

 

 

Some Sites I Like

EGR (Entropy Gradient Reversals): Chris "RageBoy" Locke rants, rages, and abuses his readers - and knows more about more than anyone I know.
TDCRC (Titanic Deck Chair Rearrangement Company): Chris Locke told me to put in this link. I dare not disobey.
TBTF (Tasty Bits from the Technology Front): Keith Dawson provides Web coverage you'll have trouble finding anywhere else
Doc Searls' weblog: A Cluetrain co-author's delightful, insightful bits.
Chris Locke's weblog. Your Daily Rageboy.
LockerGnome: Daily email newsletter chockablock with Windows goodies, tips and
Chris Pirillo's enthusiasm
The Wohl Report: Amy Wohl's weekly insights into the industry she's advised for, well, decades.
KM World: The hang-out for the Knowledge Management "industry"
The Petzinger Report: Former Wall Street Journal guy's newsletter on what companies are actually doing to change, and insightful musings. Hey, Tom, write some more!
Intranet Design Mag Tons of useful information
The Tweney Report A gutsy 'zine from Dylan Tweney
The Gilbane Report News briefs from the "e-content" industry
net.Opinion Eric Hall writes with clarity, depth and warmth about the technology enabling hyperlinked organizations
Rise of the Stupid Network David Isenberg explains why the telcos ought to wise up.

 

Contact Info

David Weinberger
self@evident.com
617.738.8323

94 Westbourne Terrace
Brookline, MA 02446


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