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The Internet

Interrogate New Media Professor Clay Shirky 75

Posted by Roblimo from the sushi-junkies-anonymous dept.
Clay Shirky is a Professor of New Media at Hunter College in NYC, currently on leave while he works with the acceleratorgroup. And writes. Prolifically. About almost everything to do with the Internet, with sidelong glances at Open Source and Linux, which (yes) he uses as his everyday operating system. What should you ask Clay? Take a look at his personal site, read some of what he's written, and go from there. (He's so wide-ranging that he's hard to pin down!) We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated questions to him Thursday afternoon (US EST), and will post his answers early next week.
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Interrogate New Media Professor Clay Shirky More

Interrogate New Media Professor Clay Shirky

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  • Microsoft.net and software as a service (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In your micropayment article [openp2p.com] at OpenP2P you praise the flat rate subscription model as a better solution than micropayments for services. How does this translate to Microsoft's .NET strategy of software as a service, and SUN microsystem's simmilar announcemnt. How does user territoriality (of their PC) and business logic factor in? people subscribe to content, but will they subscribe to products? Are there unseen economic factors that will kick in?
  • P.S. It occurred to me well after I'd written the question. The porn sites use two out of the three solutions (aggregation and subscription). It would be impossible to imagine them introducing micropayments. Once again, porn is the lead runner in implementing internet technology!

  • Long-term solution to content reward needed (Score:5)

    by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @09:31AM (#378818)
    I agree with you that micropayments are not coming any time soon. But I worry that the net is not accurately communicating its need for quality content -- and its willingness to pay for same.

    Amongst any group of users, my bet is that you'll find several who would pay for improvements in the quality and nature of the information they receive. Obviously there is great value in correct and timely information. In some cases, it is nothing short of a life or death matter. In most cases it simply keeps us a little better informed.

    I don't understand, therefore, why none of your proposed solutions (aggregation, subscription, subsidy) have evolved yet. Every site that I've seen try subscription has given up (except one: the WSJ). And everyone agrees that subsidy in the form of advertising is not going to fly.

    Many high-quality sites that deserve to survive are having a tough time of it, and it's not for lack of readership. The Onion hasn't created any multi-millionaires; it should have. Salon has had layoffs. The Straight Dope should make more money on its website than on its books. User Friendly should not have to resort to dead tree publishing or syndication.

    In short, while Fucked Company celebrates the death of the crappy sites and stupid business plans, the quality sites are in danger of dying as well. What's gone wrong? Why haven't any models come about that support what people really want?

  • Has impending fatherhood altered the way you view the net as a social phenomenon? What role do you imagine (or want) the net to play in Shirky jr.'s childhood?
  • Umm, how is the "new media" journalist any different from old days journalist? They both lie, deceive, skew, filter, and hide behind "right to free press" (yada yada).

    At least the "new media" journalist doesn't come with a supposed integrity - we already know they shouldn't be trusted.

    /mill

  • Evolution of the net (Score:3)

    by vallee ( 2192 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @08:08AM (#378821)

    A lot of organisations are pushing foward with more and more fancy multimedia features for the web, despite the fact that eyeball tracking experiments show that people tend to ignore even static images in favour of plain text.

    Do you think that we need any of this new technology, and will it ever become the standard format for the web?

  • In that regard New == OLD. (Score:3)

    by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @10:38AM (#378822) Homepage
    I've been noticing over the years a slow, steady decline in the quality of the Journalistic Endeavor. Slipshod reporting, etc. is not solely in the New Media's baliwick. This is not to tar the entire profession, but merely to point out that there's been raftloads of BS printed online and off that's not been thought out, researched, etc.

  • I dunno -- it depends on how it's designed.

    For example, assuming always-on connections, when Aunt Margaret forwards that knee-slapping joke that you've seen a million times already, why not allow the email program to simply forward a link (rather than the entire email, all nicely fungled with "> > > > " marks) to a shared folder.

    When you get the email, you already know that it's crap, and thus can delete it without having that email's bits flinging about the network.

    Or, even better, the complete and total elimination of spam. See, you can subscribe to a service that you trust to provide namespace services. They don't resolve every Tom, Dick and Harry, unless they meet certain criteria (such as not being a hotbed of spammers). Thus, your email program is set to only allow email in from "trusted" domains. This can be similar to the RBL, or something not quite so, umm... enthusiastic.

    My point is that it is possible that this can LESSEN network traffic, if that is specified as one of the goals of the specification. It can eliminate (or at least reduce) redundacy and waste, and possibly eliminate abuse.

  • Good points, all. It's something that's been weighing on my mind recently.

    Email is a tough example. But it's appropriate, since email is a good example of something where it would behoove us to scratch and start over.

    Email takes two basic forms -- chatty "conversations" and important missives. Chatty conversations would benefit from a p2p arrangement (similar to AIM), whereas important missives would benefit from encryption, signing, and other "high-dollar" functions. But what do we have now?

    We have email -- I send you a message, it could come from me, it could come from a friend using my computer, it could come from Ted Kazinsky. Who knows? There is no method for prioritizing mail, no built-in method for verifying a senders identification. It could stand a revamping.

    Are you going to allow users to create E-mail addresses from their own namespace? how is that database going to be maintained?

    How does Napster do it? They have a central server -- do you have to use Napster's server? Nope, you can use one of the OpenNap servers.

    This method of choosing reliable sources of namespacing (and allowing those sources to swap information between themselves) gives the Internet a greater flexibility, and the consumers more choices. If you're a home-schooler who wants to protect your children from pornography, wouldn't it be nice to choose a namespace provider who concentrates on the home-school market? It's like going with a "family-friendly" ISP, only better, because it's more than a regular ISP with filtering software. Home-schooling type sites can apply to the namespace vendor and get accepted. The namespace vendor monitors and maintains that submission, and if it ever starts putting up Pam and Tommy videos, they can shut it off.

    ... I'm getting another idea. With this namespace vendor idea, when a home-schooler types in "hot and wet" in a search box, he gets links to experiments involving boiling water, not Pam and Tommy videos, because the namespace vendor indexes it's subscriber sites itself, and provides those search services.

    Not perfect, but an interesting idea, anyway...

  • Worthwhile to scratch and start over? (Score:3)

    by rho ( 6063 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @08:37AM (#378825) Journal

    I read your "DNS System is Coming Apart At the Seams" article with pointed interest. It is a topic I frequently harp on in private conversations -- the lack of a human-focused network and network protocols.

    I've puzzled over the implications myself, but I'd be interested to hear your opinion -- Is it worthwhile to simply scratch what we have and begin anew, basing the new decisions made on more current assumptions?

    For example, hardware is cheap and reliable (as compared to 20 years ago), bandwidth is cheap and getting cheaper. Should the networking protocols reflect this new reality?

  • An open garden? (Score:3)

    by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @11:44AM (#378826) Homepage
    The big players in the interactive television game are all building their own walled gardens. What kind of effort would it take for interactive television to evolve into a more web-like open garden model? Which new media players could fight the traditional broadcasters for a place on the screen in the living room?

    -
  • Part of big impact of New Media is that is lets ordinary users influence the New Media, to a much greater extent than a letter to an editor.

    This ranges from wide ranging discussion boards like Tabletalk at Salon [salon.com] to an almost completely user generated and modified site like K5. [kuro5hin.org]

    So what do the owners/administrators of such a user generated site owe the users? What can the users expect in ways of making the site usuable and contentful, with a high signal to noise ratio, without censoring users? Can the users expected to be banned for proposing unpopular viewpoints? Can the users expect to own their accounts, or is it more of a licesing of accounts thing?
  • Not *thats* a question I can sink my teeth into!

    Now that I am a parent-to-be, I obviously feel that the net is a terrible evil danger and must be stopped at all costs.

    I would much rather have my child in the loving hands of ABC tv (a wholly owned subsidiary of Procter and Gamble ) than confrinting the mind-polluting filth that is /.

    -clay
  • I remember a quote that Neal Stephenson wrote about his geek tour of transoceanic network cabling. It said, in effect, that the concepts have not changed since the first copper wire was strung beneath the sea. Everything since has been a variation on this single theme. Sending blips of information in one end and receiving them out the other.

    You have been very involved and observant of many of the changes occuring within the internet, from peer based networks to social interaction between its users.

    Is there anything you have seen that indicates that the future of the net will contain many innovative, unique surprises for us?

    Or will progress continue in a linear, continual refinement trajectory with the same things done today only faster/better?

    And ideas on what the forthcoming surprises may be?
  • No real question, I just couldn't get that phrase out of my mind all day... Never mind.

    Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity

  • Sorry, it's a panix.com in joke.
  • Mister Shirky, you are becomming a professor in new media, a field which encompasses a lot of questions and little answers, such is normal for every prof'ship, but particulary yours..

    The GPL and other 'open' licences, (titles and names keep confusing me), protect intellectual property from getting abused by a firm or such. It may be used but not abused. We may or may not both agree on this.. However.. There is much controversy around protecting intellectual property (IP) in another way..

    What is the minimum kind of innovation, according to you, someone should have made in order to be able to obtain a patent?

    What size innovation will increase innovational momentum? Would an innovation threshold be describable? I feel that size of innovation is the exact point of 'inner conflict'.. How can we answer what innovation justifies protection or whether we should say "no, such is trivial.." ..

    Some might think this question to be offtopic but really I think this to be thriving development.. And any future decision about 'minimum' innovation in order to get a patent will contain the answer to speed of development and speed of integration of new technology into the society.. (That is the part that is relevant to me, and my fellow earthlings ofcourse.. )

    Sleep well,

    Luuk
  • Um, er... So you're saying that web pages that play over a stereo or a mobile phone are well-designed pages, and pages that won't are badly designed?

    I am delighted that evolution will never arrive at that particular fitness criterion.

  • Now, I don't want this to sound like a stoopid question, but as a student doing a Masters of Interactive Multimedia [uts.edu.au] a lot of our discussion is based around what is New Media, or more specifically Multimedia.

    If I ask a design person about multimedia they think it's the use of Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, HTML, etc, etc. It's the design elements and how a product looks. A multimedia project is a design project with some techie stuff at the end to make it work.

    A technical person will see it as the software that drives the product, maybe Director or for a web based project Java/Perl/PHP, etc. A multimedia project is a software development project with a nice front end.

    From a content producers point of view it's (obviously) the content. A script, the text and all copy for the site.

    The list goes on for marketing, sales, user interface designers, hardware engineers, project managers and educationalists.

    I believe it's all these things put together. To be a New Media specialist you need to be a "renaissance" man/woman with skills in all the different areas. What do you think?

  • And more to the point. In the Old Media, there were people to whom you were held accountable. Now in the New Media, while I believe no one would argue that editors should follow basic journalist ethics and principles... how do you enforce them, if they DON'T follow them?

  • Does New Media need journalism training? (Score:5)

    by georgeha ( 43752 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @08:16AM (#378836) Homepage
    Does the New Media need journalism training?

    In the bad old days, journalists almost always got some training before they were unleashed on the public. Boring things like finding out a complete story, verifying rumors before publishing, disclosing conflicts of interest, journalist integrity, and a whole host of other things (including spelling and grammar).

    Due to the rise of New Media, anyone with a web page can be a journalist, regardless of their qualifications. The Drudge Report is the canonical example. Matt Drudge can post any rumor he hears, without having to verify it.

    Now, I'm not sure I want to go back to the old way of journalism, but should New Media editors at least try to follow some basic journalist ethics and principles?

    If they should, how should they try to implement them?

    Thanks,

    George
  • Luckily this slashdot *feature* can be circumvented by reading at -1. I agree with the AC, and though I take your point about the sensitivity of comparing /. moderation with Nazi crimes, isn't that what the poem is about? These things happen gradually, ya gotta watch out for 'em.
    Slashdot moderation can be an ugly sight. osm roolz btw.
  • The ease of copying and distributing data, such as MP3's, has caused quite a stir recently. One of your articles talks about how this essentially makes the value of some intellectual property zero.

    What are your views on how this will affect producers of intellectual property? For example, what will replace the current recording industry model?

  • Your courses [cuny.edu] at hunter seem to integrate "applied" and "theoretical" knowledge of New Media - as opposed to many other Universities which will separate theory from studio. Could you elaborate on your teaching philosophy and why you teach the way you do?

    Also, what relationship does teaching have to your other work?

    Thanks,

    Danny (also an educator/consultant)

  • The internet and the wild west (Score:3)

    by cworley ( 96911 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @09:51AM (#378840)
    Not to be cynical, but...

    There was a time when internet users seemed to be able to regulate themselves. Viri weren't being passed, Spam was not tolerated, crackers were academics without criminal intent, intellectual property was not violated, information was free, domain names were free and not squatted, IP addresses were abundant, and privacy was maintained.

    Then the hoards moved online; like the land-grabs in the wild west. Good domain names are gone, nothing can stop spam (nobody in their right mind would post to a usenet news group anymore), script-kiddie crackers and new viri are abundant, using rights of privacy to gain anonymity, and copyrighted software and entertainment are traded for free, without respect for the copyright owner. Web pages have become more marketing than information (the marketing is free for you to consume, the information will cost you).

    Laws and regulations have not been able to cope; they've (somewhat) maintained the privacy, but can do nothing about the criminal behavior.

    With the lawlessness, bounty hunters have moved in, like those mentioned in:

    http://slashdot.org/yro/01/02/21/1852252.shtml

    This, along with court orders like squelching Napster by song titles and the MP3.com and DeCss decisions, will threaten free speech, fair use, and the privacy we've strived to maintain.

    Like the wild west, times will change, and once they do: there will be nothing left of the original state of the internet. Microsoft, with it's .net initiative, is moving to take control of the internet and make every port and protocol it's proprietary property.

    I hope I'm not oversimplifying the history of the net, but I have a very different perspective than you show in your writing.

    Your upbeat analysis seems to disregard most these issues, you seem to see the internet as it once was, but not where it's been going.

  • In the Icarus Effect you wrote "...I believe that we are witnessing another such tipping point, where networks are brought into individual computers, where all computing resources, whether cycles, RAM, storage, whatever, are mediated by a network instead of being bundled into discrete boxes. ..."

    Do you feel that we have moved into that era now? The best possible solution for network uptime is gained by distributing each service to service clusters. Recently Microsoft announced that doing this would be the best possible solution for them to handle such massive traffic. OR what more do we need to create in order to bring your RAIS architecture into effect ?

    Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
  • Eak! Make those references to the DMCA, as there is no Digital Copyright Millenium Act.

  • DCMA Encryption and Mass File Sharing (Score:3)

    by chancycat ( 104884 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @08:07AM (#378843) Journal
    Can you make a prediction?

    I'm interested in your prediction for how the next two years will pan out with regard to all the litigation around mass file sharing (see: Napster) and its relationships to DCMA and possible future twists with parties circumventing "protection means" like encryption.

    Recent developments have been interesting to follow, but I'm wondering if the furure is going to be getting scarier and more worrisome, or level out and more reasonable... and your contribution to this queston is most welcome.

  • Hey look ma! I just made some news!

    Seriously, though, look at Fox News. This isn't a New Media problem, its a general media problem. If you can't tell fact from rumor or conjecture, get off the 'net.


    Why is Gnome pronounced with a hard G?
  • The right to own (including IP) is included in the united nations declaration of human rights (article 17).

    er, would you mind quoting the relevant passage? I can't help but think that some phrase like "the product of ones labor" or "fair compensation therefor" belongs in there somewhere.

    Kahuna Burger

  • Yeah, and do you like Jon Katz. He can`t code either, but he`s still here, talking shit about peer to peer, micropayments, stuff like that.
  • After New Media, Cyber-, Virtual, E-, B2B, P2P, and what not, what's the next lame buzzword and/or prefix we will keep hearing in the coming year?

  • It appears to me that advertisement has long fought for attention by sponsoring entertainment. In television, for example, it started with things like "The Exxon Hour" but evolved into constant interruptions (ie Commercials) and then into product placements (look, he's drinking a Pepsi! I want one!).

    Technology like TiVO makes it really easy to remove interrupting ads from television. There are similar techniques for removing banner ads from Web pages. This force is pushing advertisers towards tighter integration.

    Advertisement budgets are the first to be cut in a downturn, so they are good targets for optimization. Given that the technology needed for producing compelling entertainment is getting very cheap thanks to technology, will advertisers be driven toward a model where they create entertainment themselves?

    The Whassup Budweiser commercials started as a student film. This thing was beat to death, but it was a viral effect. And it was amusing as it peaked. People were making Budweiser commercials for free and in styles that Budweiser could never pull off themselves.

    In the future, will big companies dole out money to amateur entertainers who tangentially promote their products? What if the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" thing were tied to some brand (Sega?) so that no one could think of one without the other? The originator gets paid by the advertiser, but the benefit comes from a legion of inspired entertainers.

    If this becomes a viable model of advertisement, will companies be able to afford NOT to adopt it? Will ads and entertainment converge?

  • I read your article 'parable of umbrellas and taxi cabs'. A great concept, something that I have not encountered in economics before. I am intrigued by the approach that the O.C.E.A.N. [ufl.edu] Project has taken for a futures market in CPU cycles.
  • You have the right to post stupid stuff and to read stupid stuff. Just browse at -1 sometime. The mod system is simply people giving their opnion about what is good and what is not. It does not in any way affect your right to say or read it.
  • Wrong example but the answer is still no. If my ISP where to take away my connection they would not be letting me use their lines, servers and routers to speak. But I would still be able to speak. That would be like calling it censorship because the newspaper refuses to publish a rant that I write. Or for a better analogy like a newspaper publishing my rant buried several sections back. If you think about it on /. you *can* publish which is better than most newspapers will do for you so if /. is guilty of censorship so is the New York Times. The better analogy would be the idiot on the train who notices my copy of "Building Internet Firewalls" and decides to talk to me about how neat W2K is. If I tell this person to fuck off and move to another seat I have not taken away his right to have or express his opnion. I have just made the choice not to listen to him. This is not censorship and is just what the mod system does. Is it abused? Yup sometimes. I for one try to correct that. But it is not censorship and if anything the situation is *much* better than anything you will find outside of the internet.
  • So you think that because the newpaper won't publish my anti-m$ rant that I don't have free speech. Or because I won't talk to idiots on the train that I'm taking away their free speech?
  • And then by your reasoning the net has true free speech. Sure maybe your views won't be seen by many people on /. due to moderation but to use the newspaper analogy that would just mean that the New York Times won't publish you but you could still get published by some other paper. And in fact my point that the net is more free than meatspace still stands because /. *will* publish you maybe on the net version of section d page 33 but still published and you can go to another fourm and perhaps have yourself published on the net version of page 1. For you to be right your argument would have to be that every paper in the country would have to put everything anyone sends it on page one. BTW this is a very interesting thread for me thanks for the debate.
  • Actually it was a serious question. What is holding up or making Linux accepted on the Desktop. Personally I would love to use Linux on the desktop, however the problem is I don't want to spend my time tweaking and programming to get an OS to do what I want. Yes Linux probably can do everything I want it to do, but I don't want to have to spend the next six months learning how, at the expense of not getting anything productive done in the mean time. The rest of your comment shows why you are an "AC". Cluck, cluck to all the ACs out there.
  • What is the single biggest factor you see in Linux coming to the desktop? And why?

  • Internet Civilization (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @08:50AM (#378856) Journal
    I think that it is well agreed that the Internet is changing civilzation. The slightly tongue in cheek, but serious question is "Changing it into what?"

    The spectrum of possible futures ranges from Utopian to paranoia making 1984 look like a children's tea party. And Idealism aside, there is a large class of people who like being sheeple, having all the tough decisions made for them.

    So that is the question - what is the Internet changing civilization into?

  • Right. That's the whole point of the web.
  • In your open letter to Jakob Nielsen [shirky.com] you say that evolution must decide what's good design. I agree that you can't force people into good design, but is the evolution doing us any good so far?

    For example, I can read web pages on a normal mobile phone. I like that, it's my own little hack, it's far from good, but it can do the job. Now, if usable web sites had been designed, we would all be able to read web on our mobile phones. Another example: Speech browsers. I'd like a box to plug into my hifi, and I want to relax in my best chair talking to my browser, having it read pages for me, playing music, etc. Both these things have been possible for years, but they require good, usable pages.

    It seems to me that the evolution isn't the fastest method of getting good design, mainly because people don't know what they never see, people like to have web on their phones, but they don't know that all that is needed is for web designers to do their job properly, and so there is no evolutionary pressure for designers to do their job properly.

    OK, so to the question, how do you want to create this pressure?

  • Many a techno-social books and articles I've read have made the point that the most interesting interactions takes place at the edges of groups formed through new media interaction.

    These most often aren't formal groups, but ad-hoc groups that form when people can interact with other people simultaneously experiencing a media.

    For example, there is the clash of the pro-Microsoft and anti-Microsoft groups on Slashdot, or the interaction of different religions on other web sites, or even call-in chat lines. Even Time magazine now allows people to post comments at the bottom of their online articles.

    P2P takes this even a step further by decentralizing this process and creating direct lines between people, sometimes even completely eliminating the middleman.

    So we have three ingredients: People, information, and interaction between them. As the Internet grows, the number of people is increasing, and the cost of interaction and distribution continues to decline.

    Where do you think this is leading us? I see several scenarios:
    The end of any form of reliable information from any media, and break down of accountability.
    Either a completely lock down or complete loss of control of information and IP (is there a happy medium)?
    Or something else completely unpredictable... Thanks.

  • yeah yeah yeah, his time is "valuable" cause he is so "prolific" with such a "wide-ranging" itinerary, but i really must know how he feels about sweat-shop labor, racism, gas prices, Bush's quite coup, the ISGAY.COM [isgay.com] fiasco, the illmisrepresented protrayal of futuristic seattle in Fox's Dark Angel, police brutality, Stileproject [isgay.com], and of course E-Online [slashdot.org]!
    i'm sorry

  • Micropayments (Score:3)

    by Ergo2000 ( 203269 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @08:39AM (#378861) Homepage

    In your article "The Case Against Micropayments" [openp2p.com] you state the case against micropayments. Has anything in the intervening time changed your mind (i.e. the collapse of content), or do you believe that the fundamentals of micropayments are impossible to achieve? Does your problem with micropayments stem primarily with pay-per-view, or rather the concept of mandatorily user supported sites (i.e. extrapolating micropayments to include subscriptions or content packs)?

    yafla! [yafla.com]

  • Schools continue to pump out traditional degreed people that are clueless with regards to technology. As a Professor of New Media, how do you get your ideals to work in other areas of study? Are you advocating other departments to participate in "New Media" development?
  • One of your favorite topics is the erosion of the global nature of the Internet's address space. This is being caused, you argue, by the lameness of the existing infrastructure, as well as by the emergence of communities (both P2P communities and walled gardens). You argue that the new communities are bubbling up through the floorboards, and that they collectively represent the next generation of addressing and control for network computing resources.

    One implication for software developers is that their programs will need to become community-context-aware; software features and namespaces will be aligned upon community boundries, rather than upon the device or user boundries that we see today.

    In his book Republic.com, Cass Sunstein argues that this data hiding nature of Internet communities will cause harm to any "deliberative democracy." Have you had a chance to look at this book? What are your thoughts on the issues raised?

    In your opinion, how can we build both walled gardens and open playing fields that provide for the entire spectrum of presence and accountability, from safe public spaces to intimate and anonymous backrooms? Is this possible without the cooperation and/or regulation of the many parties and technologies involved?

    Bonus troll: /. is a great example of a cybercascade producing community. Are self-reinforcing communities that are produced in places like this actually a good thing? Or are we, by "sharing" our resources with only like-minded individuals, just creating virtualized ghettos? Once they become the primary address space for our efficient new network-aware society, will communities such as /. invariably become oppressive arbiters of taste and behavior, much as the mainstream media are today?

  • I'm not sure what will happen, but it seems to me that even though anyone can now say anything, since anyone can do that, then we will get more points of view. If I'm at an event, and I write a story about that event that has some untruths, half-truths or rumors in it, other people who were at that event can get their say, and say "Hey, I saw something different!" The point is that being a journalist, is not the only thing someone does. We're all living, and we're all seeing things happen in our world. Every time I post a comment or an article on here or on my website [terradot.org], I'm a journalist, reporting my world. If other people think I'm not reporting my world acurately, by all means, lets talk about it and get the story straight! Journalists can't be expected to be right about everything all the time.

    cheers, joshua

    Terradot [terradot.org]

  • They have several servers up in Seattle and host interactive news and discussion-sites all over the world, and go down sometimes. They get back up very quickly and are responsive to user complaints.

    The best way to help them is to contribute funds, equipment and expertise. They are very committed to Open Source philosophy and a few [kuro5hin.org] of their chief technical experts are active on Slashdot and Kuro5hin.

  • After reading your piece on the WTO, [feedmag.com] I have a question for you.

    What do you think of the Indymedia phenomenon?

    Or, more broadly, do you feel that the increasing accessibility of digital cameras and other tools, which lower the cost of putting a strong Web-based newsroom together, might challenge the increasingly corporate system of mainstream news?

    Interestingly, you don't mention Indymedia [indymedia.org] in that article, but we're a collective of people who gets equipment out to intereted people, to cover the protests on the inside.

    They have connected live, streaming news about protests all over the world, including the recent UN climate talks, the WTO, the World Economic Forum, and the march of the Zapatistas to Mexico City.

    Although Indymedia started in Seattle, there are IMC bureaus all over the world now.

    I think they've done two important things- popularized the "movement against corporate globalization," and created a forum for debate.

    The debate you talk about- between the protesters who want to fix institutions like the WTO and the ones who want to abolish them- is taking place in the discussion rooms of Indymedia. Check it out!

    -perdida
  • Regarding your litmus test for all things P2P: "1) Does it treat variable connectivity and temporary network addresses as the norm, and 2) does it give the nodes at the edges of the network significant autonomy?" To what degree do you think these attributes could be incorporated into a buisness model? Could a viable buisness be established on a loose network of laborers or creative staff who are expected to vary in their work loads, availability, resource use and the like with minimal dependece on a central "server" to mete out assignments or suggest collaborations?
  • Wow, the above post was modded as off topic, in a discussion related to the New Media.

    Isn't the New Media supposed to be able to prevent and bypass censorship?

    Does anyone remember the phrase Information wants to be free?

    While the above poster may have displayed a lack of sensitivity in taking a quote used against Nazi concentrations camps and genocide and comparing it to a simple weblog, the point should be well taken.

    It would be wise to remember the words of Benjamin Franklin, I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to my death the right for you to say it.
  • am I censoring you?

    You can still access the net by going to the library, or using the Cyber X-Po at the mall, you just have to work a little harder.

    While I agree with you about most of the -1 stuff, some of it seems to be downmodded out of spite, or fear, or by the Slashdot editors. Don't these moderators konw that coverups rarely work?
  • standards?

    Do we hold New Media outlets that have made it (millions of page views per month) to higher ethical standards than someone running a homepage on an ISP dial up account?

    There seems to be an attitude at some New Media outlets of Hey, it's my site and I'm doing what I want with it!

    Now, I can understand this attitude if it's a part time site, with maybe 20 page view of day. But when you grow into a leading New Media outlet with 30 million page views a month, shouldn't this attitude change?

    William Randolph Hearst was accused of starting the Spanish American war to increase circulation for his newspaper. This was rightly decried, you can safely stand on a street corner and advocate war, but when you have a bully pulpit of millions of readers, you should be expected to have more accountability and responsibility. Sadly, I'm not always seeing this on New Media outlets.

    Should New Media outlets be more aware of journalistic integrity. Now, at Slashdot Rob Malda almost always let's us know about his VA LInux holding when he writes about VA Linux. He also posts stories about VA Linux's financial problems, to his credit. Should it be a policy that any New Media editor mention all conflicts of interest? Do they realize that with the ease of transferring cash, and the ease of faek indentities, New Media editors need to be cleaner than Caeser's wife.

  • Computers and humans. (Score:4)

    by influensa ( 267570 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @08:17AM (#378871) Homepage
    The way that people interact and exchange information over the internet has been one of your favourite topics.

    What do you think the "information age" is doing to humans regarding their ability to socialize and interact. With the advent of television in the 1950's, there was criticism that television eroded communities by keeping people in their homes. Right now, the so called "MTV Generation" allegedly has the attention span of a 30 second soundbyte.

    Many phenomona have been cited as a result of this. Some believe that because so much time is spent infront of televisions, alone, the population is segregated and isolated, unable to work as a community. Others would argue that television technology has merely expanded the community to a national or international level. Still others would refute that this monoculture is dangerous and allows our cultural identity to stagnate.

    In the late 90's and now in the early parts of the "new millenium" we've seen an increasing amount of information being transacted over the internet. Does the web as we know it enhance our ability to communicate, or does it further isolate us?

    Does a more distributed, decentralized peer2peer model of information exchange promise a type of interaction more natural to humans, or should we be for strategies to prevent further information glut and saturation?

  • Will journalism in the new media age ever adapt appoaches towards delivering the news that stray away from the tradition epistolatory form? In other words, for the most part, most news organizations (e.g. msnbc.com, salon, reuters...) still tend towards the a-to-z format, where you have a strong lede, followed by the who, what, when, where. Reading something at CNN.com is not too different than reading something in the morning paper. Will news organizations ever start experimenting with forms that are steeped in the potential of a networked architecture?
  • With the recent slowdown of the economy and the drastic drop in the selling price of most tech sector stocks, the market is growing tougher than ever for potential startups. Venture capital is becoming quite scarce, and unless you can prove a clear route to profitability in your business model, you're not going to get much funding.

    With recent trends leaning away from banner advertising in favor of direct profitability, how do you think this will effect sites (such as Slashdot) that operate without charge to the user. Will these sites be able to sustain themselves without a solid source of income? Do you think we will begin to see more targeted advertising being used that could possibly infringe on the privacy of the user, or do you think a subscription-based service is more feasible?

  • The right to own (including IP) is included in the united nations declaration of human rights (article 17). What do you think about their views on human rights compared to the typical slashdot one?
  • Wait a minute now!

    What kind of censorship is this??? Why is the above anonymous question about free speech and the (sometimes) corruption of it modded down?
  • What do you think about corrupted versions of free speech as the one we see here at slashdot? Free speech that only apply to people with the "correct" views. Other views are quickly modded down.
  • Corrupted version on the net i general that is. (slashdot was just an example).
  • And why on earth is this parent post just rated 0. After all, it is one of the most fundamental and interresting questions in these days of open source and free software.
  • You know just as well as me that posts that is against the typical slashdot view are modded down to -1 right away even if it IS an important question and not just trolling.
  • For example, I wrote the above post because a post by some other guy earlier about basically the same thing (but with some unessesary bad personal attacks). The question itself about the pseudo free speech often found on the net is quite valid.
  • Hahaha... You are just too much!

    Free speech is free speech and nothing else. Sure, if I live in China I may say whatever I want as long as no policeman hears it. BUT, this is not free speech. If what people say is forbidden OR hindered in any way you DONT have free speech.

    The slashdot way is NOT free speech because the content is modded in a distinct direction and therefore makes people read certain things more than others regardless of how often an certain expression is posted. It is a corruption of free speech.
  • Sure, here is a cut-and-paste.

    -----

    Article 17:
    (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
    (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
    -----


    You can check it out yourself at www.un.org->Welcome->Human rights(at top)->The universal declaration of human rights.
  • If the newspaper is selective about what direction published material should have, no you don't have free speech.

    This is the reason why all democratic countries make sure the newspapers and TV that exists in the country cover all kind of views.

    Have you been in school?
  • Along these same lines.. Which is the bigger threat to major media such as record companies/film studios/book publishers: A) the threat to legal copyright-based monopolies posed by p2p sharing? or B) the threat to the oligopoly power of the major companies caused by the lowered market entry costs (i.e., anyone can be a movie producer/record producer/radio station/whatever, out of their home for a couple hundred bucks)?...
  • Now, It's been some time since my last microeconomics class, but I can recollect the important bits.

    In systems with fixed levels of goods, free trading and rational people, pareto optimality is assured, if I recollect correctly. (I do, in fact, recollect correctly.)

    Your argument is that if I leave napster on over the weekend others are made better off while I am unnefected.

    Sadly, I believe this to be untrue for what I see as 3 reasons.

    1. Pareto optimal Napster would not have equivlant peer-loads.

    2. Electricity has *serious* cost where many of us live

    and 3. Leaving Napster on exposes me to risk.

    1. Hundres of thousands of 56k modem users are on napster daily, either labeled as 56k modems or as "unknowns," if not worse. Every time a fast connection attempts to download a file from these users, the faster connection has wasted it's users time. Thus, 56k modem users whou just have copies of Ja Rule's "Baby Girl Put it On Me," should *NOT BE SHARING FILES* because the napster server is slowed down in it's indexing. Now, if the 56k is serving a file which is not widely held, or there is a glut of downloaders (making the 56k modem have the possibility of, at one time, being the fastest avalible conection to a song) then it should stay up. Otherwise, don't share.

    2. I have a computer that I self-label as a cable modem because I am a good person. As an experiment (and due to high CA elect prices) I fixed my electricity usage to a high degree over two months, the difference being that in month 1 I left the box on 24/7, and in month 2 I left it on only when at home and awake.

    The savings was $20. The benefit to napster, because I'm just a cable modem user with a bunch of copies of Jay-Zee's "Money, Cash, Hoes," was negligible (there are other, faster places to get Money, Cash and Hoes than my house. Pun intentional)

    3. In addition to MPAA deleting my files risk, and Haxors breaking into my computer risk, and My Girlfriend Finding Porn risk, there's also the most serious "My ISP disconnecting me for serving too much traffic" risk.

    So, while I believe p2p is pareto inoptimal, I feel it's optimal from a too *much* serving frame rather than a too little. Additionally - who cares? Pareto optimality is a dead theory anyway - it's game theory now, isn't it? Don't you think a better question is "who in their right mind serves files?"

    "Who in their right mind serves files? If we don't why are we? Is it just incomplete information about serving - IE - do I not know my mp3's are being shared? (I do). Explain, assuming rationality and not altruism. (I think altruism is a copout - I certainly don't contribute money to protect-rich-kids-using-computers funds, but I do let them download my music at risk to myself.")
  • I want to know how Wall Street is going to rob the gullible people in the future. In the last few years, Wall Street was able to create different myths to separate the fools from their money. In that process, they sold us on the visions of B2C, B2B, P2P and all sorts of other business models. Then they told us that "profits are not important". When that didn't fly, they talked about the "new new economy". When that didn't work, they tried to sell us the "wireless future".

    I was smart not to put a dime in this bubble market, but there were morons who lost their shirt. I want to know what Wall Street is going to come up with next?

    Galactic Geek
  • Your bio says you are a professor of New Media, and I was just wondering what, exactly, you teach. I took a pilot course on New Media in college, and it was one of the most pointless classes ever. The prof babbled on and on most days, frequently contradicting himself and mostly proving to the students he had no idea what he was talking about. This was merely a survey course, trying to define 'New Media' and provide an overview of its current uses. Do you teach students learning about new media or do you teach students learning to use new media? If you do teach a general survey course, does yours have an actual theme or does it just meander from topic to topic, trying to confuse students as much as possible? Thanks.
  • I don't know that the resources and excess traffic that would be created by this system was taken into account when writing this paper. If every joe that wanted to create namespace for himself is allowed to do so the burdern created on the already swamped networks will be insane. Consider that they could change their name at a whim. Consider the millions of home operators doing this and then think of the excess traffic this will create. Each user will notify a sub server, which will update another server and so on. Any hopes of making such changes realtime are out the window. I could go on and on about how wrong I believe this idea to be. The last thing we need is to have to increase bandwith on a global scale to support a dynamically updated nameserver solution.
  • I just have a hard time envisioning this. How is Aunt margaret's E-mail going to get to you if DNS is out of the picture? Maybe your speaking more of a combined solution. However, E-mail is not the greatest example because it opens freeways of problems. Are you going to allow users to create E-mail addresses from their own namespace? how is that database going to be maintained? The problem lies in the fact that everyone will have to be connecting to a central server at some point. All those severs must be interconnected. If I change my namespace how is Aunt Margaret going to find me? She'll have to connect to her translation servers to find out who I am known as now. At some point there has to be a larger repository which everyone has to connect to.
  • Intellectual property depends in part on how one understands "property." What is proper is defined by the community. Are Napster's millions of users a community? If so, is there a sense in which they have de facto redefined what is proper? On the other hand, if I copy a copyrighted song, I have not taken the song away. But I have taken away the instance of payment for it. What is hidden/erased is not nothing, but the absence of something - my money. Does this not have to be entered into the understanding of the economics of digital copies?

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