So in the last post I spoke about my online body and how it compares to my offline one. But a body cannot exist in vacuum. It is a tool we use to interact with our environment and other bodies around us. So there are two realities to go with the whole concept of online and offline bodies. These realities are the laws that govern the abilities that the bodies can have. My 'real' body can run at a certain speed, it can shout at a certain volume. If I am in place A and you are in place B, and I cannot shout from A to B, I cannot communicate with you unless I come find you. (forget phones for the moment, that's cheating!). So the 'real' world is limited. And these limitations govern the interactions, and the decisions we make. The limitations are the problems we struggle to solve. In fact, the limitations bring out the creativity in us, how we work around the constraints of our environment and the shortcomings of our bodies is a major source of inspiration, even if only by necessity.
If you thought I would say that the online world is UNlimited, you have been misled. The online world is also limited, albeit differently. We may have the ability to contact anyone, and we may have the ability to cover vast distances but the bandwidth we have through which to communicate is very small. If our needs are covered by language, that is fine. Perhaps even video communication can be used through web cams. Additionally, we can have asynchronous modes of group communication through forums etc that have little parallel in the offline world. So the online world is a world where the balance of easy/difficult is different than the 'real' world. The simple ability to touch someone is impossible. We cannot even transfer the smallest object through the online channels we have at our disposal.
If these worlds are different then, and our social structures have been built for the offline world, my question is, shouldn't we be more imaginative in the structures we explore online? Until now, a number of new modes of communication have been explored from forums, to social news sites, to micro-blogging services. And we still have a long way to go. My feeling is that we have a lot more to discover in this field and a lot of surprises await us there.
However I have one more surprise for you. I may have spent most of this post convincing you that these worlds are different, but it was only to make a point. In fact, separating these worlds is a fool's errand. What happens online affects what happens offline and vice versa. We are the same people and each one of us is a pin that connects the two worlds together. Technologies like mobile phones, social networks etc. make this connection perfectly explicit. It may be possible to lead two different lives in these two worlds, but most of us chose not to but rather opt to combine the worlds and use the one to overcome the limitations of the other. So I may use chat to speak to someone important to me that is away now. Or I may meet someone online but sooner or later I will want to meet them offline.
In the future we may even use something like a contact lens to see online items in the offline world. Imagine going to your favourite coffee place and seeing an electronic note from one of your friends. Or going to town on Saturday morning and instantly knowing exactly where your friends are. The worlds will only come closer until they have perfectly merged into one.
This makes the challenge much more important. Once we find the social patterns we can form online, the next question is to see how they can be combined with the real world and what the social patterns that will form in the combined world could be. This is my motivation for wanting to study social computing, if anyone wanted to know.
Saturday, 31 May 2008
Thursday, 29 May 2008
My Online Body
Having mapped out my usage of online services in a previous post, I came to make a rather unexpected realization. I have an online body, with functions similar to my 'real' body, composed of online applications that exist on the Internet. As my physical body has senses for input, has storage capabilities and also the ability to cause a change in its surroundings through voice and actions, a similar pattern exists for me as a citizen of the online world.
The role of my eyes, ears and other senses is played by a set of programs that allow me to find content from around the web. Google mail allows me to receive a message from someone who wants to speak to me. Google reader allows me to follow the websites I subscribe to. Google's search allows me to find websites that have material I need. And of course the wider web contains the actual content. So these are my online senses.
Google documents plays the role of my online memory. Very often I will see something that will cause an idea I want to jot down somewhere. What better place to do that than online, so I can have access to my notes wherever I go.
Once some ideas get mature, it is time for me to make them articles that I can post to the web. So I write an article that I post to Blogger. In this sense, Blogger is my mouth. Also FriendFeed plays a similar role, one of allowing me to express myself, albeit mostly through the selection I express myself and the people who 'hear' me (find their way to my post), can actually consume my thoughts and the act of communication is complete. If we forget about bodies, online or offline, communication is the transference of thoughts from one mind to another. This is accomplished differently in each world but the end result is similar, if not the same.
You may say that even though I have these online senses, they still require my hands to type, my ears to hear the sound and my eyes to read the screen. You would be correct, but this is merely a technical issue. There is no reason to believe this will not be unnecessary in the future. Perhaps all we will need to partake in the online community will be a functioning brain. I say this thinking of a friend of mine who, having minimal control of his fingers and eyes, is able to lead a mostly normal life online and actually use it to enhance his real-world life. This leads me to the thought that if we could transfer our mind into a web-connected computer, I would still be able to do all these things. My online body is autonomous and requires no input from the real world. If nobody ever told me anything again in the real world, I would still be able to be informed. By adding Instant messaging and social networking to the mix, I could even maintain human connections without ever leaving my habitat. In fact, adding services such as adsense, paypal and online banks to the picture, someone could ostensibly also maintain a successful professional life throughout the same setup.
Now, I can see a lot of humanists getting extremely angry at my overreaching simplifications. I should probably clarify that I don't mean to say that a mind experiencing the world purely through on-line means would be able to live a fully satisfying life. The emotional aspects and our need for real-world contact, human touch etc. is not to be underestimated. It is just interesting how far this body has evolved in such a short period of time. Most of these tools did not exist 10 or 15 years ago, so who knows where we'll be in another 20 or 30 years.
Having defined our online and offline bodies, it is interesting to explore how they are interconnected. Nobody can say that 'what happens online, stays online'. The two realities definitely influence one another in ways we can perhaps think about and draw interesting conclusions, maybe in a future article.
The role of my eyes, ears and other senses is played by a set of programs that allow me to find content from around the web. Google mail allows me to receive a message from someone who wants to speak to me. Google reader allows me to follow the websites I subscribe to. Google's search allows me to find websites that have material I need. And of course the wider web contains the actual content. So these are my online senses.
Google documents plays the role of my online memory. Very often I will see something that will cause an idea I want to jot down somewhere. What better place to do that than online, so I can have access to my notes wherever I go.
Once some ideas get mature, it is time for me to make them articles that I can post to the web. So I write an article that I post to Blogger. In this sense, Blogger is my mouth. Also FriendFeed plays a similar role, one of allowing me to express myself, albeit mostly through the selection I express myself and the people who 'hear' me (find their way to my post), can actually consume my thoughts and the act of communication is complete. If we forget about bodies, online or offline, communication is the transference of thoughts from one mind to another. This is accomplished differently in each world but the end result is similar, if not the same.
You may say that even though I have these online senses, they still require my hands to type, my ears to hear the sound and my eyes to read the screen. You would be correct, but this is merely a technical issue. There is no reason to believe this will not be unnecessary in the future. Perhaps all we will need to partake in the online community will be a functioning brain. I say this thinking of a friend of mine who, having minimal control of his fingers and eyes, is able to lead a mostly normal life online and actually use it to enhance his real-world life. This leads me to the thought that if we could transfer our mind into a web-connected computer, I would still be able to do all these things. My online body is autonomous and requires no input from the real world. If nobody ever told me anything again in the real world, I would still be able to be informed. By adding Instant messaging and social networking to the mix, I could even maintain human connections without ever leaving my habitat. In fact, adding services such as adsense, paypal and online banks to the picture, someone could ostensibly also maintain a successful professional life throughout the same setup.
Now, I can see a lot of humanists getting extremely angry at my overreaching simplifications. I should probably clarify that I don't mean to say that a mind experiencing the world purely through on-line means would be able to live a fully satisfying life. The emotional aspects and our need for real-world contact, human touch etc. is not to be underestimated. It is just interesting how far this body has evolved in such a short period of time. Most of these tools did not exist 10 or 15 years ago, so who knows where we'll be in another 20 or 30 years.
Having defined our online and offline bodies, it is interesting to explore how they are interconnected. Nobody can say that 'what happens online, stays online'. The two realities definitely influence one another in ways we can perhaps think about and draw interesting conclusions, maybe in a future article.
Monday, 26 May 2008
Meta-Idea #1: There are no stupid ideas. Really.
You know that thing they say in class, to encourage interaction and all, "Ask anything you want. There is no such thing as a stupid question". Well, it turns out this is not universally enforced. What if you ask: If everything came from God, where did God come from? Oh dude. Stupid question. You're not supposed to go there. Should we research stopping Death? Oh dude, another stupid one. Death always has been and always will be. We're not supposed to stop it.
Thing is, there used to be another set of stupid questions: Will humans be able to fly? Oh, don't be foolish. Will we be able to fertilize outside the womb? Oh the horror! I am sure, when someone discovered a way to make fire, there was someone else there growling that harnessing fire is messing with the elements of nature. After all, it had never been done before. We tend to look back and see everything that has happened as a natural thing that was supposed to happen. But not further. OK, we can fly, but lets not try to extend our intelligence. Lets not try to change our genes. Lets not try to live 200 years. oh no, if we do that the world will come to an end.
Boy, do I have news for you! If there is one thing that humans have consistently been doing since the dawn of time, is breaking down barriers that were perceived as impenetrable. And every single time we have simply adapted to the new reality. We have not been struck down. (yet.) (that we know of.) So don't underestimate us. And don't mess with progress. You're only joining a long tradition of people who have tried to prevent the inevitable and wasted their time in the process. And even worse, some have actually wasted the time of humanity. And that is a crime if there is one. The only thing that can stop a bad idea is reality. If I think I can fly, and jump off a cliff, I will always crash. That's the true test. So give me a chance to test my idea and enjoy your time doing more productive things. Go take a tan on the beach. Make love. Enjoy good food. Maybe test your own ideas. So much to do, other than blabbing away.
If there was a superior force that has put us here, and if there is a reason we are here, it appears that our mission is to learn more and more. That's what we've been doing anyway. Maybe somewhere in the knowledge waiting to be discovered by humanity's collective intelligence, there is something really important that we need to know. Maybe there is a bomb ticking, ready to explode. Maybe we can stop it, but only if we have learned enough on time. Maybe not, but we'll never know until we know, right?
So this is my first idea about ideas. A meta-idea if you will. There are no forbidden thoughts. No places we should not explore. No things we should not try. Do not tell me what to think. Not that I will listen to you anyway, but if you do, you will only betray your lack of understanding on how things have really worked so far. And you may make little puppies cry. We don't want that now, do we?
UPDATE: I think this image really says it all. Only, the villain is not always religion.
Thing is, there used to be another set of stupid questions: Will humans be able to fly? Oh, don't be foolish. Will we be able to fertilize outside the womb? Oh the horror! I am sure, when someone discovered a way to make fire, there was someone else there growling that harnessing fire is messing with the elements of nature. After all, it had never been done before. We tend to look back and see everything that has happened as a natural thing that was supposed to happen. But not further. OK, we can fly, but lets not try to extend our intelligence. Lets not try to change our genes. Lets not try to live 200 years. oh no, if we do that the world will come to an end.
Boy, do I have news for you! If there is one thing that humans have consistently been doing since the dawn of time, is breaking down barriers that were perceived as impenetrable. And every single time we have simply adapted to the new reality. We have not been struck down. (yet.) (that we know of.) So don't underestimate us. And don't mess with progress. You're only joining a long tradition of people who have tried to prevent the inevitable and wasted their time in the process. And even worse, some have actually wasted the time of humanity. And that is a crime if there is one. The only thing that can stop a bad idea is reality. If I think I can fly, and jump off a cliff, I will always crash. That's the true test. So give me a chance to test my idea and enjoy your time doing more productive things. Go take a tan on the beach. Make love. Enjoy good food. Maybe test your own ideas. So much to do, other than blabbing away.
If there was a superior force that has put us here, and if there is a reason we are here, it appears that our mission is to learn more and more. That's what we've been doing anyway. Maybe somewhere in the knowledge waiting to be discovered by humanity's collective intelligence, there is something really important that we need to know. Maybe there is a bomb ticking, ready to explode. Maybe we can stop it, but only if we have learned enough on time. Maybe not, but we'll never know until we know, right?
So this is my first idea about ideas. A meta-idea if you will. There are no forbidden thoughts. No places we should not explore. No things we should not try. Do not tell me what to think. Not that I will listen to you anyway, but if you do, you will only betray your lack of understanding on how things have really worked so far. And you may make little puppies cry. We don't want that now, do we?
UPDATE: I think this image really says it all. Only, the villain is not always religion.
Saturday, 24 May 2008
My Content Mess
So, I was making a diagram of all the services I use online, just to help myself better understand how things are connected. To start with the fact that I need a diagram to make sense should be cause for concern. I am a programmer and that should mean I am quite good at holding things and connections in my head. Still, I needed a diagram, so here it is:
Now, while making the diagram, I made a number of observations:
For one thing, I use more services than I thought I was. There are 13 services listed here, and this is not everything.
Also, their interconnections change relatively fast. I repeatedly had to update the connections in the days I was making this, so I don't expect it to stay current for a very long time.
Another observation: I have followers in many of these services. Aside from my blog readers, my Google reader friends can see my shared Items, I also publish my starred items feed, I have a lot of connections in Facebook that can see my activity there, and also some connections in Friendfeed. In fact, since all these services offer open feeds, there are people who could be following me on any of them. There may also be overlap in these sets of people, and I try to maximize it by sharing content between services as much as possible.
Although this all seems a bit complicated, it is better than having one provider do everything for me. Yes, I could do most of these things with a combination of Facebook and Google Reader but it would not be nearly as easy, effective or enjoyable as it is now that I use the best of breed tools in each category. I do have a number of problems though:
1. Too many passwords and accounts. Please someone start using OpenID so I can log in everywhere with single set of credentials. I know it's not perfect, but it's the best we have.
2. Facebook is selfish. What can I say? In the diagram, you can see the little arrows going in, but nothing going out. Why? Because Fb does not let me take my data out of their walled garden. Apparently, what happens in Facebook, stays in Facebook. That's their choice, but that's also the reason I am moving my activity elsewhere. For me, Facebook is turning into a place where stuff gets posted automatically for my old-fashioned friends to see. I avoid posting original content inside Facebook. My cool friends are moving to Friendfeed, that apparently trusts its users more and traps them less.
3. Overlap. What if I write a blog entry and then share and star it on Google Reader, and Facebook, and FriendFeed? Well since I have linked all these together, It may end up 3 times on FriendFeed and 5 times on Facebook. But it is the only way it can get to the widest possible audience, all the people who are following me on all these services. Someone want to do a smart filter that merges all the identical entries? I have heard talk about something like this on Friendfeed, let's see.
4. Not only can I not merge overlapping articles, I also cannot aggregate comments. So what if I post something here, then share it inside Facebook and Friendfeed? There is a possibility that independent comment threads will start and I will have to follow them in three places. There are a number of new ideas coming up in this area, I will look into using them and I hope they generally catch on. (Of course, keep in mind #2)
5. Friendfeed and recently Facebook, are acting like aggregators. This is cool. I like it. But they don't let me integrate with any site I want. They offer me a choice. For the moment, FriendFeed offers everything Fb offers and more, but this may change. My problem is that I have other websites where I am or could be active. Examples are Zotero, Threadless and DeviantArt. The first website that makes it easy for its users to write the adapters themselves, is the winner. Less work for them, more capabilities for us. My money is on Friendfeed, but we'll see.
6. Status messages: there are just too many! I have status on Facebook, Twitter and Google Talk. They generally offer me the same utility. Someone make it easy for me to keep them synchronized? (Of course, keep in mind #2)
7. Bookmark managers. Del.icio.us and Google bookmarks each have their own advantages. Del.icio.us has a great firefox plug in and a nice social aspect, but Google Bookmarks makes my Google searches more relevant. So I want them both to have access to my favourites. I have found a way to transfer data from the one to the other, more or less, but I would like them to be synchronized. I also would like them to be synchronized with foxmarks which I use to keep my browsers at work and at home synchronized. Any ideas?
8. And now for my favourite complaint: Everything is centralized. Waaaaah! Why doesn't anyone build something where I can keep doing my work as I like without being tied to a single entity? Or many single entities for that matter. Perhaps then all the other problems would be moot since I would be able to solve them myself. Oh well, I guess my PhD work is relevant here, in the long-long term.
Overall my little content network is complicated but works mostly Ok. I wonder how many of these will be solved by next year. Maybe there is a ray of light on the conventional horizon called SwitchABit. It's still in development but sounds interesting.
Yet another blog post that I thought would be small but turned out huge. Oh well. I need more experience blogging.
Now, while making the diagram, I made a number of observations:For one thing, I use more services than I thought I was. There are 13 services listed here, and this is not everything.
Also, their interconnections change relatively fast. I repeatedly had to update the connections in the days I was making this, so I don't expect it to stay current for a very long time.
Another observation: I have followers in many of these services. Aside from my blog readers, my Google reader friends can see my shared Items, I also publish my starred items feed, I have a lot of connections in Facebook that can see my activity there, and also some connections in Friendfeed. In fact, since all these services offer open feeds, there are people who could be following me on any of them. There may also be overlap in these sets of people, and I try to maximize it by sharing content between services as much as possible.
Although this all seems a bit complicated, it is better than having one provider do everything for me. Yes, I could do most of these things with a combination of Facebook and Google Reader but it would not be nearly as easy, effective or enjoyable as it is now that I use the best of breed tools in each category. I do have a number of problems though:
1. Too many passwords and accounts. Please someone start using OpenID so I can log in everywhere with single set of credentials. I know it's not perfect, but it's the best we have.
2. Facebook is selfish. What can I say? In the diagram, you can see the little arrows going in, but nothing going out. Why? Because Fb does not let me take my data out of their walled garden. Apparently, what happens in Facebook, stays in Facebook. That's their choice, but that's also the reason I am moving my activity elsewhere. For me, Facebook is turning into a place where stuff gets posted automatically for my old-fashioned friends to see. I avoid posting original content inside Facebook. My cool friends are moving to Friendfeed, that apparently trusts its users more and traps them less.
3. Overlap. What if I write a blog entry and then share and star it on Google Reader, and Facebook, and FriendFeed? Well since I have linked all these together, It may end up 3 times on FriendFeed and 5 times on Facebook. But it is the only way it can get to the widest possible audience, all the people who are following me on all these services. Someone want to do a smart filter that merges all the identical entries? I have heard talk about something like this on Friendfeed, let's see.
4. Not only can I not merge overlapping articles, I also cannot aggregate comments. So what if I post something here, then share it inside Facebook and Friendfeed? There is a possibility that independent comment threads will start and I will have to follow them in three places. There are a number of new ideas coming up in this area, I will look into using them and I hope they generally catch on. (Of course, keep in mind #2)
5. Friendfeed and recently Facebook, are acting like aggregators. This is cool. I like it. But they don't let me integrate with any site I want. They offer me a choice. For the moment, FriendFeed offers everything Fb offers and more, but this may change. My problem is that I have other websites where I am or could be active. Examples are Zotero, Threadless and DeviantArt. The first website that makes it easy for its users to write the adapters themselves, is the winner. Less work for them, more capabilities for us. My money is on Friendfeed, but we'll see.
6. Status messages: there are just too many! I have status on Facebook, Twitter and Google Talk. They generally offer me the same utility. Someone make it easy for me to keep them synchronized? (Of course, keep in mind #2)
7. Bookmark managers. Del.icio.us and Google bookmarks each have their own advantages. Del.icio.us has a great firefox plug in and a nice social aspect, but Google Bookmarks makes my Google searches more relevant. So I want them both to have access to my favourites. I have found a way to transfer data from the one to the other, more or less, but I would like them to be synchronized. I also would like them to be synchronized with foxmarks which I use to keep my browsers at work and at home synchronized. Any ideas?
8. And now for my favourite complaint: Everything is centralized. Waaaaah! Why doesn't anyone build something where I can keep doing my work as I like without being tied to a single entity? Or many single entities for that matter. Perhaps then all the other problems would be moot since I would be able to solve them myself. Oh well, I guess my PhD work is relevant here, in the long-long term.
Overall my little content network is complicated but works mostly Ok. I wonder how many of these will be solved by next year. Maybe there is a ray of light on the conventional horizon called SwitchABit. It's still in development but sounds interesting.
Yet another blog post that I thought would be small but turned out huge. Oh well. I need more experience blogging.
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
A Spam-less e-mail system
The last two posts have been quite different to each other. While the first one was an organized, principle-establishing and mature but rather basic article, the second one was more of a braindump, thinking out loud kind of post. Seeing this pattern that is forming, today I would like to introduce yet another category of posts I want to make: Ideas. When I say ideas, I mean technical concepts that can be turned into products or services. You may ask why I do not use these ideas myself, to make these products and profit. Why publish them in the open web to be 'stolen' by anyone? The truth is, and I don't mean to be pretentious, I have far too many of them for the amount of time I can expend on developing them. So while I am working on a big one for my PhD, I might as well hand the other ones out for adoption and hope to get visiting rights once in a while. And of course there is valuable discussion that can be made, and technical points that can be raised and a great educational experience for me all around. I do not pretend that all my ideas are valuable or that they do not need any correction. So without further ado, I present to you, thespam-less e-mail system, let's call it v-mail.
To set the mood, let me talk about the social network messaging systems. Many prefer them over e-mail. Why? because they have verified everyone who can send me a message and therefore have a very high signal to noise ratio. In fact, almost all the messages that reach my inbox are valuable and directed towards me personally. So it is easy to see why people may prefer this method of messaging. What are the problems with this system? Well there are quite a few. For one thing, centralization. Everyone needs to have a facebook orwhatever-book account in order to send me a message. Another is the difficulty in adding people on the go. If I meet someone and tell them to mail me, I do not want to have to go home and add them to my social network first. Also, I may have my mail address published somewhere and people I have never met before may want to e-mail me. This is impossible if I require prior approval for someone to send me e-mail. So how do we exit this seeming catch-22?
My answer is, by applying the best of breed solutions to each problemseparately. What I mean: Let's start with the social networking messaging system. So we have a mail provider, let's call them v-mail.com, that allows you to create an account and add a list of other addresses that you accept messages from. They may give you a standard e-mail address (say, alexandros@v-mail.com) but any e-mail from a source you have not added to your list gets dropped and never reaches you. So this would be an implementation of the basic social networking messaging system. In fact it is one step further, since it allows for multiple servers to communicate, much like the current e-mail system. All you need is an account with any provider of this new mail system. It does not have to be the same as mine, in fact, nobody is stopping you from hosting your own provider and becoming completely self-sufficient.
Next problem: Adding people is hard work, especially if you have to remember to add people later. For this we can use an sms-service that you can use your mobile phone to add people with. So when you add a new person, you may send a simple text message (e.g. add someguy@x-mail.com) to your provider. This would instantly solve that problem. This person can now send a message that will get through. Of course to start your list off you could import contacts from various social networks, address books and e-mail applications.
How about anonymous people that want to send you messages? Well, this has been solved already. Go to any website that wants to get contacted by its readers. They will not publish an e-mail address for fear of spammers. What they do is expose a contact form with a CAPTCHA (these strange numbers you have to type in so that they know you are a human). This contact form could be available at my mail provider's website so that anyone can contact me as long as they provide a valid v-mail ID and prove that they are humans by typing the CAPTCHA. This could also be used to request that someone adds you to their allowed list.
So by merging social networks, e-mail, mobile phones and the web, we can create a composite system that guarantees we only get verified e-mail. Let's go over some of the benefits:
To set the mood, let me talk about the social network messaging systems. Many prefer them over e-mail. Why? because they have verified everyone who can send me a message and therefore have a very high signal to noise ratio. In fact, almost all the messages that reach my inbox are valuable and directed towards me personally. So it is easy to see why people may prefer this method of messaging. What are the problems with this system? Well there are quite a few. For one thing, centralization. Everyone needs to have a facebook orwhatever-book account in order to send me a message. Another is the difficulty in adding people on the go. If I meet someone and tell them to mail me, I do not want to have to go home and add them to my social network first. Also, I may have my mail address published somewhere and people I have never met before may want to e-mail me. This is impossible if I require prior approval for someone to send me e-mail. So how do we exit this seeming catch-22?
My answer is, by applying the best of breed solutions to each problemseparately. What I mean: Let's start with the social networking messaging system. So we have a mail provider, let's call them v-mail.com, that allows you to create an account and add a list of other addresses that you accept messages from. They may give you a standard e-mail address (say, alexandros@v-mail.com) but any e-mail from a source you have not added to your list gets dropped and never reaches you. So this would be an implementation of the basic social networking messaging system. In fact it is one step further, since it allows for multiple servers to communicate, much like the current e-mail system. All you need is an account with any provider of this new mail system. It does not have to be the same as mine, in fact, nobody is stopping you from hosting your own provider and becoming completely self-sufficient.
Next problem: Adding people is hard work, especially if you have to remember to add people later. For this we can use an sms-service that you can use your mobile phone to add people with. So when you add a new person, you may send a simple text message (e.g. add someguy@x-mail.com) to your provider. This would instantly solve that problem. This person can now send a message that will get through. Of course to start your list off you could import contacts from various social networks, address books and e-mail applications.
How about anonymous people that want to send you messages? Well, this has been solved already. Go to any website that wants to get contacted by its readers. They will not publish an e-mail address for fear of spammers. What they do is expose a contact form with a CAPTCHA (these strange numbers you have to type in so that they know you are a human). This contact form could be available at my mail provider's website so that anyone can contact me as long as they provide a valid v-mail ID and prove that they are humans by typing the CAPTCHA. This could also be used to request that someone adds you to their allowed list.
So by merging social networks, e-mail, mobile phones and the web, we can create a composite system that guarantees we only get verified e-mail. Let's go over some of the benefits: - You could use a typical e-mail program and e-mail standards. Additional functionality such as list management would be nice but notnecessary to start with. In fact you could use this new e-mail program to communicate with traditional e-mail addresses, as long as you add the people you correspond with to your allowed list, which could be done automatically when you send an email to someone. In a sense, it's backwards compatible.
- The user is back in control. If someone on your list starts spamming, you can simply remove them and never receive another e-mail from them.
- Leaking your email is no longer a problem. The information of your e-mail address is useless to a spammer since they cannot send automated anonymous messages anymore.
- This solution can work well in a decentralized environment. no need for the massive processing power required by spam filters, anyone can do it on their home computers.
- It's good for the Internet since spam is a massive waste of bandwidth.
Monday, 19 May 2008
Ugly Beauty
Have you ever seen a work of art that you find beautiful, yet its message is simply wrong? I have had quite a few occurrences of such cognitive dissonance recently. It may be nationalist poetry, extolling the virtues of my nation above all others, it might be religious music or film that underneath it all spreads a judgemental and unhealthy worldview. But even being aware of these underlying themes, I catch myself admiring these works of art. Even connecting to their message on some level when it is sufficiently elegantly put, before realizing the content of my thoughts and bringing myself back into line. However the fact that I am able to drift away to what at its core is vile propaganda elegantly masked, is a reality that i cannot help but be troubled by.
One explanation would be that these messages are communicated in a way that bypasses reason and reaches straight to my emotional centers. From there it is able to generate an experience that will attempt to convince my mind to adopt and justify these ideas. After all they seem so beneficial to the overall well-being of the bearer. They make me feel good about my self. The fact that they lack in correspondence with reality is something that is of little concern at that moment. Soon afterwards, a fight unfolds between reason and emotion. Essentially reason cannot win unless it evokes an even stronger emotion. I may have an emotional principle of truth, a deeply held belief that only by accepting beliefs that can be demonstrated to be true can I hope to reach long-term peace. If then I am able to identify the candidate belief as suspect, logic can prevail by resolving to the emotional foundation that that principle is built on. However even if things are thus and if in the end logic prevails, my emotion has still served as a beachhead for irrational ideas to make their stand. So I am troubled as to why. I do not consider emotion to be irrational, it simply seeks to fulfil my needs and many times is more intelligent and reactive than my conscious mind.
The only answer I can provide is that emotion is acting as a proxy for other beliefs I have previously internalized. Some internal inconsistency in my own worldview. If this is the case, the cognitive dissonance I experience when facing ugly beauty should be a cause for concern. What are the beliefs inside me that are supporting such ideas? I need to search inside myself and reevaluate my very foundations if I am to follow my determination to be aligned with truth above all else. In this context, ugly beauty can serve as a valuable hint, a red flag if you will. As long as I am vulnerable to it, my conversion is not complete. I still partly support my world lies and self-delusions, even if my willingness is to be free from them.
One explanation would be that these messages are communicated in a way that bypasses reason and reaches straight to my emotional centers. From there it is able to generate an experience that will attempt to convince my mind to adopt and justify these ideas. After all they seem so beneficial to the overall well-being of the bearer. They make me feel good about my self. The fact that they lack in correspondence with reality is something that is of little concern at that moment. Soon afterwards, a fight unfolds between reason and emotion. Essentially reason cannot win unless it evokes an even stronger emotion. I may have an emotional principle of truth, a deeply held belief that only by accepting beliefs that can be demonstrated to be true can I hope to reach long-term peace. If then I am able to identify the candidate belief as suspect, logic can prevail by resolving to the emotional foundation that that principle is built on. However even if things are thus and if in the end logic prevails, my emotion has still served as a beachhead for irrational ideas to make their stand. So I am troubled as to why. I do not consider emotion to be irrational, it simply seeks to fulfil my needs and many times is more intelligent and reactive than my conscious mind.
The only answer I can provide is that emotion is acting as a proxy for other beliefs I have previously internalized. Some internal inconsistency in my own worldview. If this is the case, the cognitive dissonance I experience when facing ugly beauty should be a cause for concern. What are the beliefs inside me that are supporting such ideas? I need to search inside myself and reevaluate my very foundations if I am to follow my determination to be aligned with truth above all else. In this context, ugly beauty can serve as a valuable hint, a red flag if you will. As long as I am vulnerable to it, my conversion is not complete. I still partly support my world lies and self-delusions, even if my willingness is to be free from them.
Saturday, 17 May 2008
The Bane of my Existence, Part 1: Centralization
Hello Dear Reader,
Since this is a new blog, I thought I'd start it off with a theme that tends to come up again and again in my thoughts recently. There are two things I really don't like. No, that's an understatement. I really really despise them, see them everywhere and cannot help thinking we would be better off without them. The two things being barriers and centralization. For this first article I will focus on the second of the lovely pair.
Centralization refers to situations where many entities depend on one. We all depend on our governments for policing. We (almost) all depend on Microsoft for Windows and Office. We all depend on Georgie Bush to not start a nuclear war. The banking system not to go bankrupt. The reason this approach to organization is very popular is that it is easy and obvious. We all appoint someone to do something. Oddly enough, large scale centralization is not found in nature. Nature does everything in a very distributed manner. So why has nature in its wisdom rejected centralization? The one problem with centralization is that it creates a single point of control. When we are dependent on that someone, we are subject to their whims. If I am dependent on Facebook to connect to my friends, then Facebook says how I can and cannot communicate with my friends. I can complain until I am blue in the face but at the end of the day there is little I can do. If Facebook decides to change their policies to what they feel is right and I wrong, I have no options.
In fact it gets worse than that. When Facebook decides to delete a person's account, their social life may be impacted, especially if they are a U.S. college student. Also, when Facebook for some reason or another is unavailable, our information and connections are unavailable with it. The latter two examples are not merely a single point of control. They are a single point of failure, which is the second problem with centralization. You may be willing to accept handing out a measure of control in exchange for a service. Are you prepared to deal with that service becoming unavailable and/or unrecoverable though? Two more examples: A state goes down, people dependent on it are left out in the cold. And this is not a metaphor for the people living in Siberia when the Soviet union collapsed. More recently, Microsoft decided to shut down MSN Music. What's that got to do with anything you ask? Well, Microsoft's ingenious leaders had made it so all music that had been purchased from said store had to be periodically re-authorized through the store for fear of evil pirates. A brilliant strategy of penalizing your paying customers, but some had been willing to go through the humiliation in order to do what they thought was right, ergo, get digital music legally. When the music retailer shuts down guess what happens? Music purchased = bye bye. Depending on a centralized provider does not seem such a good idea any more.
The thing is, something always, ALWAYS goes wrong eventually. It may take years or decades but it does. Decentralized systems are built to withstand failure where centralized systems are in denial of it. That is why centralized systems have not survived in nature. Decentralization is not simply a nice thing we would like to have. On a grand scale it is linked to our survival and is something we should be actively pursuing and researching. Do we know how to achieve it in all the facets of our life? Certainly not, but moving to a decentralized world does not only require more new research and technology. It requires us changing our worldview and with it, our models of interaction. And that to me is the greatest barrier we face.
I would like to see this as a discussion, so please go ahead and add your thoughts. As has been this blogs' standard practice all these years, you are encouraged attack the ideas above with a vengeance. The point is to find (and maybe correct) the flaws be they syntactical, factual or logical. However if you cannot find something to disagree with, by all means go ahead and agree. Who am I to stop you?
Sincerely Yours,
Alexandros
UPDATE: A new point sprung to my attention that I don't think warrants another post so I will add it here. Another problem with centralization is that centers tend to collude to protect each other. We have seen a lot of support from state to business, and a lot of support from business to state. All this does is prevent the failures from renewing the system so that the zombies can keep walking until they all face a crisis so large that will make them all collapse together. Problem is, the longer you delay the renewal of the system, the larger the chances of a general collapse. As I wrote in the main article, centralized systems are in denial of failure and are therefore bound to be its victims.
Since this is a new blog, I thought I'd start it off with a theme that tends to come up again and again in my thoughts recently. There are two things I really don't like. No, that's an understatement. I really really despise them, see them everywhere and cannot help thinking we would be better off without them. The two things being barriers and centralization. For this first article I will focus on the second of the lovely pair.
Centralization refers to situations where many entities depend on one. We all depend on our governments for policing. We (almost) all depend on Microsoft for Windows and Office. We all depend on Georgie Bush to not start a nuclear war. The banking system not to go bankrupt. The reason this approach to organization is very popular is that it is easy and obvious. We all appoint someone to do something. Oddly enough, large scale centralization is not found in nature. Nature does everything in a very distributed manner. So why has nature in its wisdom rejected centralization? The one problem with centralization is that it creates a single point of control. When we are dependent on that someone, we are subject to their whims. If I am dependent on Facebook to connect to my friends, then Facebook says how I can and cannot communicate with my friends. I can complain until I am blue in the face but at the end of the day there is little I can do. If Facebook decides to change their policies to what they feel is right and I wrong, I have no options.
In fact it gets worse than that. When Facebook decides to delete a person's account, their social life may be impacted, especially if they are a U.S. college student. Also, when Facebook for some reason or another is unavailable, our information and connections are unavailable with it. The latter two examples are not merely a single point of control. They are a single point of failure, which is the second problem with centralization. You may be willing to accept handing out a measure of control in exchange for a service. Are you prepared to deal with that service becoming unavailable and/or unrecoverable though? Two more examples: A state goes down, people dependent on it are left out in the cold. And this is not a metaphor for the people living in Siberia when the Soviet union collapsed. More recently, Microsoft decided to shut down MSN Music. What's that got to do with anything you ask? Well, Microsoft's ingenious leaders had made it so all music that had been purchased from said store had to be periodically re-authorized through the store for fear of evil pirates. A brilliant strategy of penalizing your paying customers, but some had been willing to go through the humiliation in order to do what they thought was right, ergo, get digital music legally. When the music retailer shuts down guess what happens? Music purchased = bye bye. Depending on a centralized provider does not seem such a good idea any more.
The thing is, something always, ALWAYS goes wrong eventually. It may take years or decades but it does. Decentralized systems are built to withstand failure where centralized systems are in denial of it. That is why centralized systems have not survived in nature. Decentralization is not simply a nice thing we would like to have. On a grand scale it is linked to our survival and is something we should be actively pursuing and researching. Do we know how to achieve it in all the facets of our life? Certainly not, but moving to a decentralized world does not only require more new research and technology. It requires us changing our worldview and with it, our models of interaction. And that to me is the greatest barrier we face.
I would like to see this as a discussion, so please go ahead and add your thoughts. As has been this blogs' standard practice all these years, you are encouraged attack the ideas above with a vengeance. The point is to find (and maybe correct) the flaws be they syntactical, factual or logical. However if you cannot find something to disagree with, by all means go ahead and agree. Who am I to stop you?
Sincerely Yours,
Alexandros
UPDATE: A new point sprung to my attention that I don't think warrants another post so I will add it here. Another problem with centralization is that centers tend to collude to protect each other. We have seen a lot of support from state to business, and a lot of support from business to state. All this does is prevent the failures from renewing the system so that the zombies can keep walking until they all face a crisis so large that will make them all collapse together. Problem is, the longer you delay the renewal of the system, the larger the chances of a general collapse. As I wrote in the main article, centralized systems are in denial of failure and are therefore bound to be its victims.
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