“The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis.”
I didn’t think to add privatization as the next step after militarization, a slide from public agency through militarization to privatization. When the conversation is about public agencies competing against private companies what is meant is that there’s no profit for private entities. The tricky part is that one of the advantages of a public agency is that it does not have, or should not anyway, a profit motivation. The public agency has the luxury of being able to offer services that do not become profitable and even run in the red. So, when a public agency is condemned for not being economically efficient, that is exactly the reason that the service should stay in the public. When this service is privatized, the profit motive means that the service will have a doubly decreased budget – first the red must be absorbed and then the black must be appropriated for profit.
So, where an agency cannot be privatized, it is restructured to operate like a corporation. When that fails, the straw man of intrinsic failure is raised as a motivation to militarize or privatize the services. Reminds me of the strategy that I’ve identified previously in the way that Microsoft implements standards.
“There are as many definitions of information design as there are information designers. Some think it’s the presentation of complex or potentially confusing information. Others see it as a method to visualize quantitative data. In the end it comes down to how you define information and what you mean by design.
Here are my definitions:
Information: Anything that people need to be aware of in order to make better decisions.
Design: The discipline of developing structures which enhance people’s lives.
So if you can agree with those definitions, a good definition for information design might be:
Information design: The discipline of developing structures which allow people to find information that’s relevant to them, and use it to make decisions which enhance their lives.
This sounds simple when you say it that way, but it has broad implications to a field that most people think of as ‘the chart people.’ It’s a broad role that crosses organizational silos and goes straight to the heart of what is essential. It includes things like interface design, meeting design, and standards for organization-wide communication.”
I’m not sure I would tie information to decisions for the same reason that Senge separates decision-making from dialogue. There’s a trap in defining a thing by how it can be used. This confused the verbs “be” and “do” which is a logical typing error. The danger of logical typing is the implicit hierarchy.
Design, I think, isn’t about developing structures. The process of developing a structure is about a specific deliverable, an instantiation of a larger principle. The larger principle is the climax of design, whereas the deliverable is the denouement. Design is a discipline that seeks to understand what should be and to then develop ways to approximate or approach that. Further, design should be iterative, going through and asking what should be again and again, and still again as it attempts to approximate and approach a changing ideal. This changing ideal changes not so much because it is uncertain, but because each design decision changes the conditions from which it comes.
This fluid condition comes in part from the way in which design also should ask questions about the boundaries and constraints in which the design process takes place. Design doesn’t just surface and determine the boundary conditions, but also questions them. These boundary conditions are determined from collaboration between designer and client, which can be an artificial distinction. The simple distinction is that a process of design is for someone and by someone, but these should be in relationship.
So, design is a process that simultaneously asks what should be and what can be for the purpose of co-creating something. In this case, that something is not information. The something is yet to be determined. Information is one of the boundary conditions. Information is the media in which the work is to be done, a material to become something.
I watched the Frontline about Katrina response and it appears pretty damning. Not only is the corporate takeover fatally flawed, but the corporate partisans are inept.
I’ve long thought that due to the delay between social movements and the appearance of adherents in the political system that we have entered the time when the yuppies and corporate raiders have taken office. It’s the morally bankrupt hostile cocaine culture that is now in power. The frame of government as corporation is showing itself to be a deadly filter. I’m not entirely comfortable with the assessment by Jane Jacobs of what happens when commerce and politics are mixed in her work Systems of Survival but that certainly comes to mind.
The current administration hates government that they do not benefit from. Frankly, I think they think they hate all government, but they love using the government for their own purposes. This creates a situation where policy is antithetical to the political goals of those in power. For example, nonspecific funds distributed under the label of homeland security becomes a massive corporate welfare check to industry involved in security technology. These security technology companies are vastly entangled with the military-industrial complex that has sought out a diversification during the cold war and in advance of what they feared most: the peace dividend. If government wasn’t spending on military, then they would lose their favourite teat.
A thought that occurs to me is that the reason that the corporate raiders are so hostile to FEMA as a functioning professional organization is that by gutting it and moving under homeland security FEMA becomes more militarized. They’ve been moving everything under the overall umbrella of the military-industrial-oil complex.
“The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid. While Google could put these containers anywhere, it makes the most sense to place them at Internet peering points, of which there are about 300 worldwide.”
Via Slashdot, there’s a comment about a Cringley article talking about something that Google is up to with both dark fiber, that I mentioned before, and what may essentially be semi-mobile processing and storage borg cube. These borg cubes then become a platform for just about anything. Certainly, they can cache the google video and image content closer to the users which are becoming more and more capable of broadband speeds. Google could also leverage the cubes for delivery services, like what Akamai does or acting like active peers in BitTorrent or other sharing networks. These borg cubes could also become hosting locations for network applications or more mundane web and blog services.
Moreover, along with just about anything the imagination could conjure, these cubes could become the host of a Google VOIP service and act as the peering points for Google MuniWiFi services. (One might watch to see if they put one of these cubes at the peering point for any place where they’ve implemented their MuniWiFi.)
Instead of moving the network connection to the public peering site, Google might be moving the services to the public peering site and using the fiber as a private network.
UPDATE 7jan06: Well, looks like I was close with the comment about caching video closer to the users, but didn’t quite see that they would be going after the pay-to-play / TV downloads market.
But, what if Tinderbox could surrender all of those functions up to TextEdit and MS Word and other desktop apps? What if all of the ‘notes’ in a Tinderbox document were just documents and files, and all of the relationships managed by Tinderbox (ie. spatial, links, aliased) were just encoded as extended attributes?
In this scenario, the file system is the Tinderbox document. Don’t want to use your whole hard drive? Make a new disk image and compartmentalize things. Tinderbox could become the world’s most revolutionary Finder rethink ever invented. And the thing is, I can see all of this being enabled by Spotlight and extended attributes.
People are getting close, but the element to add to this is the notion explained in articles like that by Ars Technica’s Siracusa on the future of metadata and Spotlight, etc …
Spotlight is close, but not quite. Spotlight doesn’t treat hits as objects. One can’t right click and manipulate the files through spotlight. For example, try renaming the file. Also, it’s an annoyance that one can’t “go to this file’s location” instead of having to open finder and go there manually or open the file.
It’s getting close, but it’s not there yet. When the file system is more like a real database and the metadata magic reaches the kind of level imagined in Siracusa’s articles, then that will sure be something. Spotlight, iTunes are glimspes of the future … and system-level, pervasive access to the kind of services provided by Tinderbox, DevonThink and the rest are there. It’s ready to burst out and change everything … but it’s being held back.
Mac OS X would be to other operating systems as wiki is to the web, perhaps?
“ABC has canceled Night Stalker, the second time the network has given the axe to a series about reporter Carl Kolchak and his pursuit of supernatural phenomena, Variety reported.”
Why do all the shows I like get cancelled?
Night Stalker is the most recent. Kitchen Confidential is another. Of course, there’s Firefly. Twin Peaks … and, I remember being disappointed when they cancelled Outworld, an odd little sci-fi show back in the late 80’s. So many lost shows …
When I was a senior in high school, I stopped watching TV, even though I had a TV in my room. TV was just so horrid that I couldn’t stand to waste my time anymore. Broadcast TV is just abominable. Not only do they cancel shows most of the good shows and keep vapid, insipid tripe, but networks make their presentation and schedules as annoying as possible. It is as if they believe they will have my unconditional attention.
The fact is that I will not view whatever they put on the air. I’ve given up TV before, and will do it again. It’s a definite sign that I tend to watch old shows that are re-run. And, most of the new shows are available after a short delay. There’s nothing compelling about seeing a show the day it comes out. I’m already weaned from that through liberal use of DVD and Tivo.
That they put annoying banners at the bottom of my recorded shows, which have recently doubled in size they obscure on screen, and futz with starting times, and randomly screw with new episodes by inserting reruns between … these are all reasons that I find TV more annoying. This is not endearing behaviour, but rather behaviour that is more likely to make the break.
When I had DirecTV, I didn’t bother with any local stations, so the ridiculous chanting from cable that “We’ve got local stations!” is just stupid. Local station are getting gutted by the DVD releases of shows and, now, by the networks releasing shows online. There’s nothing left to syndicate for non-affiliates, and the affiliates are just mindless parrots without merit of their own.
King 5, the local NBC station used to have a sometimes funny sketch comedy show that was on Saturdays next to SNL, but that died a slow and painful death. What other local content is there? Local news? Bah. Local news is a joke. It’s fluff, and mostly non-local content anyway. When it is local content, the majority of that is mindless blather about the weather. The weather here is mild. It’s not that big of a deal nor is it really either a surprise or a show-stopper if it’s not great.
I just can’t bring myself to pay for all the cable channels or DirecTV, and I sure as hell am not willing to pay for digital cable as an add-on expense.
So, maybe, the Tivo was a gap-stop that prolonged the life of TV past the point when I stopped being willing to have the networks dictate my life. Now, it’s just not the benefit it was. There just isn’t enough good TV on that I feel I need to watch it broadcast. Why not wait for it on DVD, or just skip it completely. Was Tivo mere my patch, to help me quit?
I’ve mostly given up on going to the movies. Unless there’s a really compelling reason to go, that the movie is somehow going to be so much better on a larger screen … hardly a reason to call them “The Large” screen anymore since they really aren’t … I wait for movies to come to DVD or don’t bother anymore.
So, ultimately, DVD is now my primary source of choice for movies and TV shows. So why not just cancel everything except for Netflix? No, really. Why not? It would have been nice if Netflix and Tivo had gotten the download feature to work. Turns out that’s the reason I finally got a Netflix account in the first place, but it’s a feature they aren’t going to be able to really offer because, at least they say, the studios have exclusive relationships with networks to offer movies, so can’t offer them for download, even protected in some fashion.
Quite some time ago, I ran across something about a series of books that would be re-interpretations of classical myths by modern authors. The first of these books would be Margaret Atwood re-interpreting the Homer’s Odyssey from the viewpoint of Penelope. Turns out, while I wasn’t paying attention, The Penelopiad was published.
Not only that, but the second in the series was published and I’m even more excited about this entry into the series. Jeanette Winterson is the author of Weight which is about Hercules and Atlas. Atlas appears in some of her other works, so that’s interesting.
I had not heard of Winterson before I saw a stage adaptation of some of her work done by a former PALOD colleague done at a series of plays by students at Evergreen. It was very moving and well done, and so I was interested in finding out more about Winterson’s work. Now, I have even more reason.
The publisher has a page about the series. Apparently the next two are about Theseus and Sampson. I hope these live up to the excitement I get when thinking about them. This series is a great opportunity to re-connect with the massive store of metaphor and theme that exist in the world’s cultural heritage, and of which the post-modern world seems only marginally conscious.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch animal protection agency demanded prosecution Tuesday for the shooting of a sparrow that knocked over 23,000 dominoes during an attempt to set a world record.
The ill-fated bird flew into an exposition center Monday in the northern city of Leeuwarden, where employees of TV company Endemol NV had worked for weeks setting up more than 4 million dominoes in an attempt to break the official Guinness World Record for falling dominoes.
The common house sparrow — of a species on the national endangered list — was chased into a corner and shot by an exterminator with an air rifle.
“Under Dutch law, you need a permit to kill this kind of bird, and a permit can only be granted when there’s a danger to public health or a crop,” said agency spokesman Niels Dorland. “That was not the case.”
They thought it was a domino demonstration, but they ended up creating a recreation of Mousetrap. The only way this sequence might have been better is if the sparrow had been a cyclone started by the moving wings of a butterfly.
Last night, I ran across this papercraft model of a wild west city, which can be used for multiple games. Whitewash City looks pretty wild, and sounds interesting. There is a game by the maker of the model city called Gold Town which is a non-violent game set in the wild west. Looking at this, I feel a big desire to get them all. I’ve always had a thing for little villages.
There’s a good gallery picture which shows the whole city laid out for a game.
I was doing some additional searching an ran across a pretty awesome and complex model of a sailing ship and a model of a tropical island. These two remind me of World of Warcraft, in style, color and theme.
Apparently, there a papercraft theme going on right now for me.
… but you should. Beware the squirrels. I mean it this time.
“The findings, published recently in the journal Animal Behavior, present some of the most detailed information to date on squirrel vocalizations, which the researchers now believe constitute a complex language that is unique to the animals.”
I was browsing through some pages of random 15 videos on Google’s video search and ran into a video of this punk Irish band. Until the singing started I thought this would be pretty grand.
Here’s another that I thought would be good because of the title of the song, but didn’t quite deliver. Watch Ctrl – Alt – Kick. It’s still amusing, anyway. I wasn’t sure if the title was the band name at first. The title reminded me of the band “Kill Switch … Click!” which doesn’t appear to have a decent web pressence.
There’s the point when I wasn’t just reading an article but actually reading the article. I’ve been hearing news on the radio about these riots and had not yet heard what they were about. This article helps clarify what is happening and the scope of what is going on. It’s also a bit of a boggle to realize the scope …
Intellectually I can understand what is happening, but I realize I have no way to really understand what it would be like to be there.
Like the pictures of fallen overpasses being used to illustrate what would happen if a particular gas tax repeal happened, this is an example of what would happen if we, as a country and society, abandonded multiculturalism and affirmative action.
“The very notion that you can slap a brand on nearly anything and that will change it for the better seems ludicrous. How’s this for a notion: Make better products!”
David Gray, over at XPLANE, wrote today that he’s tired of hearing about re-branding and suggests, instead, that companies focus on better product. It occurs to me that branding is the last recourse for companies that have lost the ability to innovate their product any longer, or that the product lasts longer than the company hopes people will re-purchase the product. So, without the ability to offer new features and a product that actually lasts, the only option is to re-brand the product. So, re-branding is a way to shorten the delay between the initial purchase and new purchases of the product.
The other option, which I think is worse, is to make the product just another addition to the throw-away minimal-use trash heap, where the consumer has to constantly re-purchase some component of the product.
I think the focus on re-branding is an indicator that the products are better than they were. Otherwise the company wouldn’t need to work so hard to get people to re-purchase. The trick is not to get caught up in that cycle. Re-branding, therefore, is a symptom. If the company weren’t re-branding, they’d likely de-value the product in some way to make it disposable.
Branding is the post-modern version of innovation in the physical product, I suppose. Since it just isn’t possible to offer the kind of magical product that people have been led to expect from post-industrial space-age technology, the brand is the only place where this can be created.
Instead of making better products, and instead of working on brand, we need to culturally re-frame what a desirable product is, and the economic model that surrounds those cultural assumptions. Trustworthy technology that lasts and works is desirable, not the wizz-bang that fizzles out.
