Joe's Jottings

Author: Joe

  • They STILL shoot horses, don’t they?

    One of the things that has surprised me over the last few months has been the resurgence of dance in various forms as a staple of the TV entertainment schedules.  Not that I’ve actually bothered to watch any of it; having two left feet and an aversion for sequins and modern dance has meant that vast tracts of the viewing schedule have been out of bounds for me recently.  When I was a kid I remember watching ‘Come Dancing’ occasionally with my mum – professional dancers doing things with odd sounding names like ‘Rhumbas’ and ‘Tangos’.  The only Tango I’ve ever enjoyed fully (including the orange drink) was the one in one of the Addams family films….

    It seemed that Dance was taking over from reality TV as a source of programming material, and I after chatting about it with my wife we started to wonder whether we were seeing a modern day and much diluted equivalent of the ‘Dance Marathons’ from the 1930s depression that gave rise to the film ‘They shoot horses, don’t they?‘ 

    The Dance Marathons of the Great Depression were events in which couples competed to see who could dance for the longest – frequently going for over 24 hours.  Couples would drop out when they were exhausted, and the lucky winners would walk away with a few hundred or a thousand dollars.  The marathons gave people without much hope the opportunity of getting their hands on a lump sum of money that, if not life changing, would certainly keep the wolf from the door for a while.  Of course, the possibility of illness or death from exhaustion was always there.  

    Obviously, we don’t see that sort of thing happen today – but the analogy is rather striking.  Both times of recession, both periods in which there was severe cultural and environmental issues (back in the 1930s the political extremism came from the Fascist right and the environmental disasters came not from global warming but from soil erosion problems in the US Midwest).  The difference is that today the process is drawn out of weeks and viewed by millions, and, if we include shows like Britain’s Got Talent, has potentially tens of thousands of people who audition and never get to the televised finals.

    Will we ever see something like those marathons happen today in the UK?  I doubt it; but I wonder how far the various talent and ‘public access’ dance shows like ‘Got To Dance’ will go in the pursuit of audiences?  The demise of ‘Big Brother’ may just be a temporary hiccough in the history of reality TV; perhaps the way forward will be a return to the past.

  • The Last Temptation of Mankind?

    halOne of my professional interests is in Artificial Intelligence – AI.  I think I’ve had an interest in the simulation of human personality by software for as long as I’ve been interested in programming, and have also heard most of the jokes around the subject – particularly those to do with ‘making friends’. 🙂  In fiction, most artificial intelligences that are portrayed have something of an attitude problem; we’ve had HAL in 2001 – insane.  The Terminator designed to be homicidal.  The Cylons in the new version of Battlestar Galactica and the ‘prequel’ series, Caprica – originally designed as mechanical soldiers and then evolving in to something more human with an initial contempt for their creators.  The moral of the story – and it goes all the way back to Frankenstein – is that there are indeed certain areas of computer science and technology where man is not meant to meddle. 

    Of course, we’re a long way away form creating truly artificial intelligences; those capable of original thought that transcends their programming.  I recently joked that we might be on our way to having a true AI when the program tells us a joke that it has made up that is genuinely funny!  I think the best we’ll manage is to come up with a clever software conjuring trick; something that by deft programming and a slight suspension of disbelief of people interacting with the software will give the appearance of an intelligence.  This in itself will be quite something, and will probably serve many of the functions that we might want from an artificial intelligence – it’s certainly something I find of interest in my involvement in the field.

    But the problem with technology is that there is always the possibility of something coming at us unexpectedly that catches us out; it’s often been said that the human race’s technical ability to innovate outstrips our ethical ability to come up with the moral and philosophical tools we need to help our culture deal with the technical innovations by anywhere from a decade to 50 years; in other words, we’re constantly trying to play catch up with the social, legal and ethical implications of our technological advances.

    One area where I hope we can at least do a little forward thinking on the ethical front is in the field of AI; would a truly ‘intelligent’ artificial mind be granted the same rights and privileges as a human being or at the very least an animal?  How would we know when we have achieved such a system, when we can’t even agree on definitions of intelligence or whether animals themselves are intelligent? 

    Some years ago I remember hearing a BT ‘futurist’ suggesting that it might not be more than a decade or so before it would be possible to transfer the memory of a human being in to a computer memory, and have that memory available for access.  This isn’t the same as transferring the consciousness; as we have no idea what ‘conciousness’ is, it’s hard to contemplate a tool that would do such a thing.   But I would accept that transferring of memories in to storage might be possible and might even have some advantages, even if there are ethical and the ultimate in privacy implications to deal with.  Well, it’s certainly more than a decade ago that I heard this suggestion, and I don’t believe we’re much closer to developing such a technology, so maybe it’s harder than was thought.

    But what if….

    In the TV series ‘Caprica’, the artificial intelligence that controls the Cylons is provided by an online personality created by a teenage girl for use as an avatar in cyberspace that is downloaded in to a robot body.  In Alexander Jablokov’s short story ‘Living Will’   a computer scientist works with a computer to develop a ‘personality’ in the computer to be a mirror image of his own, but that won’t suffer from the dementia that is starting to affect him.  In each case a sentient program emerges that in all visible respects  is identical to the personality of the original creator.  The  ‘sentient’ program thus created is a copy of the original.  In both Caprica and ‘Living Will’ the software outlives it’s creator.

    But what if it were possible to transfer the consciousness of a living human mind over to such a sentient program?  Imagine the possibilities of creating and ‘educating’ such a piece of software to the point at which your consciousness could wear it like a glove.  From being in a situation where the original mind looks on his or her copy and appreciates the difference, will it ever be possible for that conscious mind to be moved in to that copy, endowing the sentient software with the self awareness of the original mind, so that the mind is aware of it’s existence as a human mind when it is in the software?

    Such electronic immortality is (I hope) likely to be science fiction for a very long time.  The ethical, eschatological and moral questions of shifting consciousnesses around are legion.  Multiple copies of minds?  Would such a mind be aware of any loss between human brain and computer software? What happens to the soul?

    It’s an interesting view of a possible future  for mankind, to live forever in an electronic computer at the cost of becoming less than human?  And for those of us with spiritual beliefs, it might be the last temptation of mankind, to live forever and turn one’s back on God and one’s soul.

  • Web 2.0 – User Generated Content or garbage?

    wastebinSome months ago, an Internet Form that I belonged to was taken offline after an internal dispute….and it never came back.  The upshot of it was that the content of the forum was no longer available – gone for good.  Of course, it wasn’t all pearls of ever-lasting wisdom, but there was some interesting stuff there that’s now gone forever.  A week or so ago, another friend commented on my Facebook profile about the ephemeral nature of a lot of what we put online  as ‘User Generated Content’, and it’s quality, and that got me thinking about just how much user generated content is worthy of any form of retention.

    ‘Web 2.0’ is very much about user generated content; a Web 2.0 site is essentially designed by the interaction that it offers users of the site – be it the ability to configure the user experience, participate in discussions, real time chat, post articles or images, whatever.   For those of us from the 70s and 80s,  it’s all very reminiscent of the paper based fanzines and newsletters we created, or the BBS systems of the 1980s and 990s – of course, the sheer volume and speed of communication offered by Web 2.0 exceeds the earlier versions of ‘user generated content’.

    One might even include things like ‘Letters to the Editor’ in newspapers and magazines – how many of us knew someone who’d had a letter published in the local, or even national, press?  And then you get in to the rarer scenario of having an article, poem or story accepted for publication – and getting paid for it.  I still remember all the details of the first article that I had published in 1982 in the now defunct magazine ‘Electronics and Computing Monthly’.

    The further you go back, the more important one thing becomes – and that’s editorial filtering.  Basically, space was limited in magazines, and so you wanted to fill it with what would sell.  And that’s where the quality control of the editor came in.  Even with fanzines, there was a similar need – you had a limited amount of space dictated by the cost of copying, postage and the time taken to type and duplicate it all.

    Today, many of these limitations are gone – cost of publication is minimal, distribution is done by the reader picking their copy up form your site, etc.  Anyone can set up a publication in the form of a site, and expect to get a lot of content from users of the site.  In theory, a perfect world of conversation between similarly minded people across the globe, with no editor getting in the way and dictating policy.  It’s a wonderful dream.  And it doesn’t work.

    To be honest, most people are just not up to the job of writing for an audience; the editor didn’t introduce censorship – he or she bought along quality control, focus and direction for the publication.  I’m far from perfect myself, but I learnt quite a bit about writing for an audience by having a couple of hundred article and a dozen or so books published in the days of the ‘paper press’.  If we forget the obvious nonsense that turns up as comment on blogs – the spam, the ‘me too’ and ‘I agree’ posts – then much of what does end up online is often poorly phrased rant or loosely disguised ‘advertorial’.   A lot of content on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and the online discussion forums is by it’s nature ephemeral – water cooler discussions enshrined in hard disc space – and the good stuff that you do find is typically drowned in the noise.

    Like I said, I’m far from perfect and am conscious enough of my own abilities to know that my blog is simply the 2010 equivalent of a fanzine written by me and with a small audience.  But it’s important that we don’t get fixated on the idea that the removal of editorial policy on the web and the resultant ‘free for all’ for people to provide content is necessarily good.

    It isn’t.  It’s removed quality control, and generated a Web that is increasingly full of rubbish.  If you want quality – look for sites with editorial policy or moderation.

  • The PAYG Laptop?

    You write one article about Appliance Computing and the following morning this BBC story pops up – Laptop Launched to aid computer novices’.  The ‘Alex’, a Linux based laptop, is aimed at people who’re occasional computer users and comes with an Office suite, mail, browser, broadband connection and a monthly fee.  In other words, a PAYG laptop.  There’s nothing new about this; a number of Mobile Phone Companies offer mobile broadband access packages that include a Windows laptop, and in the recent past there have been a few occasions when companies have attempted to launch similar schemes, sometimes backed with advertising.

    I say attempted, because they’ve tended not to work, and I’m not at all convinced that this one will be any more succesful.  The company’s website describes the package available here,and to be honest it does seem rather over-priced for what is a modified and stripped down Ubuntu distro.  And one that seems to only work when your broadband connection is running.  It’s a good business model provided that you can get people to buy in to it.  There’s a review of the package to be read here.

    Now, first question – who is the market place?  The Broadband company who’ve developed this package claim that almost 25% of people in the UK with computers don’t know how to use it.  really?  That I find difficult to believe.  Most folks I know – across the board, non-techies, techies, old, young, whatever are quite au fait with using their computer to do what they want to do.  There may be aspects of computing that they don’t get, in the same way that I don’t ‘get’ iTunes, for example, or the intricacies of computer or video gaming, but I know no-one who’s bought a computer who doesn’t make some use of it.  Perhaps that 25% didn’t really want a computer, or have ended up with one totally unsuitable for them?

    If the market sector is this 25%, then what proportion are willing to buy a £400 computer and a £10 access fee?  Apparently a ‘sofwtare only’ option that can be installed on older computers and that will simply cost you the monthly fee is out in the next couple of months, which might allow people with older computers to make use of them.  the package comes with 10Gb online storage; does this mean that local storage is not available?  If so, what happens to your data if you don’t pay your monthly fee or cancel your subscription?  To be honest, that sounds like something of a lock-in akin to Google Docs.  According to this review, on stopping the subscription, the PC effectively ‘expires’ – along with the access to your data.

    I’m afraid that from what I can see I’m not impressed with either the environment or the limitations offered.  One of teh things that you learn after a while in putting together user interfaces is that people who come in knowing nothing soon gather skills and in some cases start finding the ‘simple interface’ that originally attracted them to be a limitation.  With a standrad PC, you just start using more advanced programs and facilities; with something like the Alex you’re stuck with what you’re given.  And whilst you could just buy a PC, and ask someone to set it up ‘simple’ for you (to be honest, it isn’t THAT difficult with a Windows PC, Mac or Linux machine if you ask about) and use a more ‘mainstream’ machine, you’re still stuck with your data being locked in to the Alex environment.

    The solution to this problem is perhaps to look at front ends that sit on existing platforms, rather than work to further facilitate the move towards a computer appliance future split between a large number of manufacturers who lock us in to proprietary data stores.

  • The Appliance Computer?

    ipadWell, the fuss over the launch of the iPad has died down somewhat – it wasn’t the Second Coming or the Rapture, the world didn’t suddenly turn Rainbow coloured (not for me. anyway) and the Apple Fans have gone quiet.  So, perhaps it’s time to take a few minutes to think about what the iPad might mean in the future.   This is an interesting viewpoint – that the iPad could be the first step on the road to the computer as a true ‘appliance’. 

    In some ways, this might not be a bad thing – after all, it’s the way that all technology has tended to go over the years.  Take for example radio – the first radio receivers required the operators to be reasonably knowledgeable about the equipment, and in some cases be able to build and maintain their own equipment.  Radios required large outside aerials, and I clearly remember a ‘Home Maintenance’ book that my mum had that dated from the 1920s that had great amounts of information about how to service your wireless were it to go wrong.  By the 1930s they were more self contained ‘black boxes’ – OK, self contained walnut wood boxes – and by the time we hit the 1970s little radios were being given away as children’s toys.  We’re moving along that path with computers; when home computers first became available then you were expected to want to write some of your own programs or even build the machine, then published software came along, then we have the time we’re in now when very few people write their own software at all. 

    But the thing is with contemporary computers is that you can still write your own software if you wish to; you can go out, buy a copy of VB.NET, download Python or PHP or Java and with some application write your own software.  And if your computer doesn’t support media you want to view or listen to, you can just get a piece of software installed that will do the trick.  And if you want it to do something totally new, you can again find an application somewhere, or write your own, or commission someone else to write it for you – all without fear or favour.

    If computers follow the logical progression, then we could expect to see them move on to a stage of development where they are pretty much ‘closed units’ – the old joke of ‘no user serviceable parts’ will be very applicable.  Think of the computer of tomorrow as being a little like your smartphone or a digital TV with Satellite TV and a DVD recorder built in; there’s content for you to view, you can save it, there may be services to buy, but you’re not going to be able to add functionality to it by producing your own code or content to run on it.

    In other words, surprisingly like an iPad.  And some analysts have noted that the apparent lack of expandability of the iPad might not be a design omission, but might actually be a deliberate design policy.

    Producing computers that are simply glorified media players has a number of advantages for many parts of the hardware and content industries.  To start with, if you can totally control the hardware and software environment then you can restrict your support calls; many software houses that produce applications for Windows have to have reasonable support functions in their companies because whilst their software runs on Windows, each PC running Windows is to a great degree unique, and therefore offers a near unique environment on which the application runs. 

    A further point is that once you stop people from being able to put their own software on these machines, then you also prevent a lot of the issues of illicit copying.  By controlling the platform you can control the way in which the platform handles content that might be protected by some sort of Digital Rights Management software.  Indeed, it’s not too difficult to imagine a situation in which the functionality available on the unit can be remotely enabled and disabled  based on the payment of licenses or rental fees – similar to the way in which satellite TV receivers can be activated or de-activated remotely.

    The Appliance Computer has a lot to offer manufacturers and content providers; it locks users in; it protects content; it makes the equipment more reliable.  But it also eats away at the very foundations of what has made so many software applications possible – the ability for anyone to write their own software.

    Don’t let Appliance Computing remove the freedom to compute.

  • PCC, Stephen Gately and liberal backlash

    The Press Complaints Commissionshas decided not to uphold complaints about an article by Jan Moir about the circumstances surrounding Stephen Gately’s death.  I’m not going to rehash the details of the case – a quick Google will allow you to find the original article, but my main interest is in some of the comments that I’ve heard floated up on Twitter and other web sites about the findings of the PCC.  The PCC did indeed receive a record number of complaints – 25,000 – about the column, and there was a fairly hefty campaign mounted over social networks such as Twitter to encourage people who felt strongly to complain.  The newspaper concerned, The Mail on Sunday, dodged censure:

    PCC chairwoman Baroness Buscombe said the commission found the article “in many areas extremely distasteful” but that the Mail had escaped censure because it “just failed to cross the line”.

    The PCC had considered context and “the extent to which newspaper columnists should be free to publish what many will see as unpalatable and unpleasant stories”.

    and two complaints to the Metropolitan police that were passed to the Crown Prosecution Service were also rejected as grounds for prosecution because of insufficient evidence that the piece breached the law.

    Jan Moir’s piece was ill-timed, and some of her comments were hurtful to some people.  I guess that there were those who found the piece upsetting who didn’t complain, and that there were probably quite a few people who wholeheartedly agreed with what she had to say; after all, complaints procedures rarely get support.  But, as they say, process has been carried out and judgement bought in by the PCC and the CPS, and in many ways that should be the end of it – whether you agree with the outcome or not. 

    Having said that, I wasn’t surprised today when I saw a fair amount of blather on Twitter from the ‘chattering classes’ referring to the PCC judgement, starting off by saying that as the editor of the Mail on Sunday is on the PCC, the verdict is immediately biased.  I guess that’s to be expected.  We then went in to slightly disturbing territory, with a Tweet that I came across along the lines taht the Tweeter didn’t want to censor comment but felt that something to rein in columnists from claiming authority they didn’t have.  There’s also this debate on the BBC’s own web site.  Now, why do I find that tweet rather disturbing? 

    It’s all in the wording.  Where does ‘claiming authority’ start and end?  Do we apply it across the board?  Do you have to be a political scientist to talk about politics?  A GP to write medical articles?  A physicist to comment on the LHC?  And what about us bloggers?  Do we have to ‘in with the in crowd’ before we can comment on the activities of celebrities?  Do I have to have a degree in economics before I can comment on the parlous state of the UK economy?  Should we have license to comment?

    I’m sorry – but a good columnist SHOULD occasionally say something that pisses people off; one shouldn’t b personally offesnive or abusive, but the sacred cows of modern society should be up for comment. Once you start down the road of ‘reining in’ columnists it’s the thin end of the wedge towards full blown censorship.  Would there have been so much fuss from the media and liberal intelligentsia were the column about the death of a young ‘smack rat’ in similar circumstances?  I very much doubt it; I fear that a lot of the reaction here has been about the death of  ‘one of their own’ in what must be described as unusual circumstances – unusual in my experience, any way.

     There’s an old saying that someone stays liberal on law and order until they get mugged or burgled; perhaps we might expand that to suggest that some people stay liberal on freedom of speech until someone dares to use it to say something they disagree with.

  • UK Government Data Release – much ado about nothing?

    Back in January the UK Government opened a web site up that was described as “a one-stop shop for developers hoping to find inventive new ways of using government data”.   The site, http://data.gov.uk/, aims to pull together government generated data sets in a form that application developers can use to create ‘mashups’ of data from different sources of public and private data, create map based information from the data, etc.  In other words, the idea if to open up public data for private use.

    I was pretty excited; professionally I’ve used some public data in the past and acquiring it is usually quite hard going.  Even if you know where to find the data, it’s not easy to just grab and download, and then it comes in various formats that need pre-processing to make useful.  So, I was pretty excited when I heard about this project.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that my nipples were pinging with excitement, but there was definite anticipation.

    So….my thoughts.  Bottom line for me at the moment is ‘Sorry chaps, sort of getting there but there’s a long trail a-winding before you reach your goal’.  Now, this may sound rather churlish of me, but allow me to explain….

    Nature of data

    First of all, a lot of the data on the site has been available in other places before now – however it is at least now under one roof, so to say.  The data is also available in disparate formats, like CSV files, etc.   The data is also pre-processed / sanitised – depending upon how you want to view it.  In some cases the data is in the form of Spreadsheets that are great for humans but dire for automated processing in to mashups.  The datasets are not always as up to date as one might expect; for example, on digging through to the Scottish Government data, I found nothing more recent than 2007.

    Use of SPARQL and RDF

    Although the SPARQL query language has been implemented to allow machine based searching of the site to be done, the data available via this interface seems to be pretty thin on the ground AND, to be honest, I’m not sure that the format is the best for the job.  SPARQL is a means of querying data that is represented in the RDF format to search what’s called the ‘Semantic Net’ – a way of representing data on teh Internet that is more easily made meaningful to search tools. But for a lot of statistical data, this isn’t necessarily the best way to search for data,  and the SPARQL language is not widely used or understood by developers.

    No API

    There’s no API available such as a Web Service to get at the data.  The site acknowledges this and states :

    “The W3C guidance on opening up government datasuggests that data should be published in its original raw format so that it’s available for re-use as soon as possible. Over time, we will covert datasets to use Linked Data standards, including access through a SPARQL end-point; this will provide an API for easy re-use.”

    I think this is a rather facile argument.  Apart from the data not being that up to date, one can surely publish the contentof the data raw – i.e. no numerical alterations – whilst still making it available via a SOAP, JSON or other similar API that more developers might have experience of and access to.   As it stands it just seems that some of the time spent on this project could have been spent in getting the data in to a format that could be served up in a consistent format to a wider range of developers.

    This current interface – wait for the heresy, people – may be wonderful for the Semantic Web geeks amongst us BUT for people wishing to make widescale, real use of the data it’s NOT the best format to allow the majority of non bleeding-edge developers to start making use of the data available.

    Summary

    This is an early stage operation – it is labelled ‘Beta’ in the top right of the screen, and as such I guess we can wait for improvements.  But right now it just seems to be geared too much towards providing a sop for the ‘Open Data’ people rather than providing a widely usable and up to date resource.

  • Google Buzz and Google’s incursion in to Social Networking

    GoogleMany years ago there was a joke in techy circles that likened Microsoft to the Star Trek aliens ‘The Borg’.  It appeared at the time (mid 1990s) that Microosft were indeed determined to assimilate everything they encountered and absorb the technology of other companies in to their own.  Well, like the Borg in Trek, Microsoft finally found that they couldn’t assimilate everything.  But today there’s a new Borg Queen on the block, in teh form of Google.

    Google Buzz was launched as an adjunct to Gmail, and Google got themselves in to hot water at the launch by having the system automatically follow everyone in your Gmail contacts list.  This was regarded as pretty heavy handed on Google’s part – and Google obviously concurred to some degree as they introduced changes to this part of the system.  The problem for Google is that they have a lousy history of handling privacy issues in both their Search tools and Gmail, and I guess starting a new product off with a similar disregard for the perceptions of their users was not a sound move.

    So, how relevant is this move by Google?  I have to say that I’m not convinced that Google will actually represent major competition to Facebook or Twitter with Buzz (or, for that matter, with Wave).  The lock in to Google’s infrastructure of Buzz is something that Facebook doesn’t have, for instance.  I don’t have to have a Facebook email account, and I don’t do my searching through Facebook.  And therein lies the problem for me – and it all comes back to Google’s database of intentions that I’ve mentioned before in this blog.  The more Google can derive about the way in which people use Search, who they interact with, what ‘clusters’ of interests people have – even anonymously – the more value Google’s database of intention is.  You might want to take a look at some of my previous articles about Google – Google and The Dead Past, The importance of Real Time Search and Google seeks browser dominance – to get a feel for my views on Google.   Google’s strategic moves have been consistently to get Google’s search into everything we do.  Gmail was their first crack at this with personal communications, and now with Wave and Buzz they have the tools to map social networks, and the search behaviours of people on those social networks, especially if people remain logged in to Google accounts whilst the do their searching.

    Let’s pretend…..you are logged in to your Buzz account and you search for something.  Google can link your search interests to those of the people in your social network, and vice versa.  They can thus add the collective behaviour of your searches to their database of intentions – remember what I said about the Borg? 🙂  And we’re not even thinking about the additional data provided by Google Apps…

     Google are also purchasing a ‘Social Search’ tool that allows people to ask questions of their social groups; I think we can safely assume that the responses will be squirreled away somewhere for future use.

    Even when anonymised, this sort of information builds in to a very valuable commodity that Google can sell to future ‘partners’.  Google’s behaviour at the moment seems to be to develop or acquire a series of discrete elements of Social Networking technology that they’re bringing together under the existing account system of Gmail / Google Accounts, which makes perfect sense.  At one time Microsoft filled in some of the gaps in their various offerings in a similar way to allow them access to market segments that they were still trying to penetrate.  Perhaps Google have learnt from the software behemoth.

    But they have a way to go – here are what I consider Google’s biggest challenges.

    1. The attitude of the public towards Google is not entirely positive, and whilst Facebook have had numerous privacy problems their defined market presence in Social Networking and not in Social Networking, Search, Email, Productivity tools, kitchen sink manufacture, etc.  
    2. Facebook may easily lose market share to a good competing service; their constant re-vamping of User Interface and buggy code upsets users but at the moment there is no viable competation for most people as Facebook is where their social network is.  Google would have to get people to migrate en-masse and over a short period of time to get the sort of success FB show.
    3. Wave is certainly buggy; Gmail and Buzz are designed to not run on IE6 and it’s debatable how long Google will support other Microsoft Browsers – I wonder how many people would want themselves tied in to Google at the level of software as well as applications?  Like I said earlier – Facebook doesn’t require me to have a Facebook email address.
    4. What’s Google’s target market; Wave seemed to be a solution looking for a problem; Buzz seems to be a similar ‘half way house’ affair that in some ways would have been best placed in Wave. Twitter and Facebook tend to provide specific groups of users with a defined user experience and functionality.  Quite what Buzz and Wave and Gmail together provide that isn’t available elsewhere is not clear to me.

    So….my thoughts?  If this is Google’s attempt to park their tanks on Facebook’s lawn, then they’ve invoked the ‘Fail Whale’.

  • Espresso Entrepreneurs and Cargo Cult Capitalism

    moneyAn item caught my attention recently – so much so that I actually replied to the other blog!  It suggests that in order to succeed as a startup you actually need to be in Silicon Valley or a similar place.  My reply is below:

    “Bit of tough luck for us Europeans, heh?

    Most start-up entrepreneurs need a good dose of reality, I’m afraid. It’s quite likely that 99% of us will NEVER create a ‘winner takes most of it’ let alone a ‘winner takes all’ business.

    For most people, moving to SV or it’s environs simply makes you think you’re doing something of value to the startup – the money spent and disruption experienced could be better spent on achievement within the business.

    In the film industry there’s what are called ‘Cappucino Producers’ – people in Hollywood or London who are in the right place, at the right time, with the right ideas, meeting lots of people, but who never actually manage to get a project off the ground because they’re distracted with the lifestyle.

    Don’t become an Espresso Entrepreneur. “

    There’s nothing new in what I’m saying, and I’m the first to say that I doubt that I currently have the nous to put together a world-beating company that takes first place in a market place.  And I’ve failed on more than one occasion….but, hey – that gives me a different perspective. 🙂

    My current business thinking in terms of getting my new baby off the ground has been very much influenced by the book ‘A good hard kick in the ass’ by Rob Adams, in which he disabuses several common myths about startups, and in that book is focus on what he calls becoming an ‘Execution Oriented’ company rather than an ‘Output Oriented’ company.  Execution orientation refers to the tasks and processes undertaken by the company that progress the business plan and actually get viable product closer to the market place – i.e. those things likely to make money.  ‘Output Orientation’ refers to the things done that are peripheral – e.g. doing lots of market research without using the results, focusing on office furnishings, etc.

    My own thoughts are that a lot of folks seem to be buried in the minutiae of Output Orientation; involvement in tasks and activities that at first appear to be progressing the business but actually don’t add much to the execution of the business plan towards profitability.  It all looks good, you can get out and about and meet other entrepreneurs doing the same thing, and there’s a general whirl of activity – much of which will not help establish sound businesses.

    I call this ‘Cargo Cult Capitalism’.  In the years immediately following World War 2 natives on Islands that had been occupied by the US or Japan started behaving very strangely; they started building mock-ups of air strips and all the associated paraphernalia to try and bring back the aircraft that had been supplying the troops on their islands (and hence giving them lots of stuff as a by-product).   These ‘Cargo Cults’ were basically an attempt at sympathetic magic; by mirroring what they’d seen the soldiers and airmen doing, they thought that they could induce aircraft to appear and land.  Cause and effect was something of a lost cause…

    And so it is with lots of startups – folks involve mirror the public behaviour of what they feel are successful startups, whilst neglecting the behind the scenes private behaviours that actually deliver the goods.  So…perhaps it’s time to consider whether what you’re doing is actually output orientation or Cargo Cult Capitalism; and if so, just ditch the Espresso and get executing!  

     

  • Saying Sorry, Contrition, Repentance and the Scorpion

    Earlier this week I commented on the words of John Healey, the Housing Minister who said that repossession is not always a bad thing.  As has been pointed out, the 46,000 people repossessed in the last year would probably disagree, and would no doubt like a word of apology from him.  You know, the ‘s’ word.  Sorry.  And, I expect that they would want him to mean what he says – to be truly sorry for the hurt that his comments may have caused.

    There have been other recent stories where saying Sorry may not yet be enough – John Terry and Ashley Cole, for example.  Of course, that’s a matter for them and their families, but the bottom line is that today saying ‘Sorry’ has been devalued.  People throw the word off when they get caught out and it’s hard for us to know whether they genuinely mean it or not.  Saying Sorry should be the external, communicable expression of that internal shift in attitude and behaviour that, as a Christian, I would call contrition and repentance.

    An act of contrition is a prayer that expresses sorrow for sins committed.  Repentance is the next step –  it typically “includes an admission of guilt, a promise or resolve not to repeat the offense; an attempt to make restitution for the wrong, or in some way to reverse the harmful effects of the wrong where possible.” (Wikipedia)

    When we hear the expression ‘Sorry’, can’t necessarily see whether someone is contrite or not, and but we can see whether someonehas been truly repentant – they change the behaviour that caused the problem and at least make a gesture towards righting the wrong.  I’ve dropped a few clangers in my time and hope that I’ve shown enough contrition and repentance for my behaviour – only people around me can tell me that.

    Without contrition and repentance – even if you don’t have any religious beliefs – all that it means when you say ‘Sorry’ is that you’re sorry you’ve been caught, and the only Commandment you’re concerned about breaking is the mythical ‘Eleventh Commandment’ – ‘Thou Shalt Not Get Caught’.  To say Sorry without truly expressing contrition and repentance is like being a child making a promise with ‘crossed fingers’ – for those unaware of this particular bit of childhood culture, such a promise was held to be breakable at will.  What may be acceptable in a child is particularly sad and graceless in an adult.

    Which brings us back to people in the public eye.  I’d genuinely like to believe that folks who get caught behaving badly see the light and that they will, after apologising to all concerned, will perform some little act of contrition and then prove their repentance by changing their behaviour.  After all, no one is perfect and, as they say ‘shit happens’ in the best regulated lives that may lead us in to the path of temptation.  But therein lies the mark of the man (or woman) – to be able to not repeat the errors of the past again.  

    When I encounter the ‘serial offenders’ of the world who do something, apologise, claim to be contrite, publicly change their behaviour and then get caught in a similar situation a few months later I do start wondering whether there’s something more involved than just lack of will power.  Perhaps it’s character as well.  There’s a fablethat’s been repeated in many places, about a Scorpion who wants to cross a river.  He ponders this problem for a while when he sees a frog hopping along.  He asks the frog whether it would be possible to ride on his back whilst the frog swims the river. The frog points out that the scorpion is likely to sting him on the journey and kill him.  The scorpion replies that were he to do that, then he too would drown, as well as the frog.  The frog goes along with this, and the pair start the river crossing.  Half way across the scorpion stings the frog, and as they both drown the frog asks ‘Why?’  The scorpion sadly remarks ‘It’s in my nature.’  

    Fortunately, most of us are civilised human beings of good character, and not toxic arachnids with an appetite for self-destruction who also destroy the lives of those around them.