Conches

Radical Transparency

I used to be a high school teacher.  Nine years in the classroom and in the front office working with disenfranchised youth. There was only one thing nearly universally abhorred by every young person I have ever met, censorship. I spent a lot of my time as an educator making the case for nuance, that there are occasions where censoring or withholding information is necessary. 

In the way of the world, I have come full circle. I am a nearly unyielding advocate for radical transparency. With radical transparency we would not be at war in Iraq.  With radical transparency our economy would not have been floated by imaginary value where investment is more like gambling. 

In 2005 Harold Pinter was given the Nobel Prize for Literature. He just died on Christmas eve, 2008. There are two quotations from that speech that add the nuance that is necessary to this discussion.

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

A misunderstanding that I struggle to overcome is that transparency does not equal truth telling. The assumption that I, or anyone, hold the truth and the hubris to assume that I can calculate with any certainty the conditions under which that truth is to be withheld is absurd.  As Pinter says above, there is no truth, no reality.  I believe the best we can do is to aggregate our collective experience and understanding.  Only with radical transparency can this aggregation divine what may be real or true.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us, the dignity of man.

    - Harold Pinter Dec 7th, 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech

Only with radical transparency can we hope to respond to this challenge.

Change.org Idea: Limit Media Consolidation

At the urging of Arthur Codington, via a post on Facebook, I recently commented on a Change.org idea.

Limit Media Consolidation

We need more voices in the media. Establish policies that limit the number of radio/tv stations one company can own. Create incentives that give voice to perspectives we're not currently hearing in the mainstream media.

My comment is attached here (and on change.org), please go over to the change.org idea to post yours

What I think Twitter's Business Model Should Be

I Twitter. A lot. I read a recent blog post by Nick Bilton at O'Reilly on Twitter's potential business model. Essentially Nick recommends highly personalized "smart" advertising via Twitter. 

"@nickbilton, 45 other Twitters in Brooklyn love the MINI Cooper, they say it is easy to park in your area and great on gas. Check it out here."

While this is probably inevitable at some level, It would be really unfortunate and, I think, it misses the value of Twitter all together.  I have been writing about how I think Web 3.0 should be defined, characterizing web3 as uniquely user centric. I believe Twitter could be an interesting example of this if some new development happens.  That new dev is what I want to write about.

So, Twitter needs a business model.  Instead of creating another advertising delivery platform I would like them to figure out how to leverage their product by providing deeper services through new development.

Some ideas:

Compete with Yammer and provide powerful organization focused functionality.

"White label" Twitter to provide features for specific communities that are rooted in fee for service websites.  This is very powerful if these communities stay very porous where they can be discovered by Twitter users at large.  The driver to join is more about access to content than it is introductions to new Twitters.  Some examples are:

• last.fm
• ancestry.com
  
• salesforce.com
  
• Amazon.com (product and web service communities)
• GlobalGiving.org, Kiva.org, Ashoka, etc.
  
• Software or other product user communities independent from but sponsored by the the corp
  
• other...

Buy / Compete with MrTweet.net helping users find convergence with like minds, or even more interestingly, discover shades of grey or promote difference to fight agains the preaching to the choir or tribes mentality.

Web 3.0: WE can't let THEM decide it for US

Here is how Wikipedia defines it:

Web 3.0, a phrase coined by John Markoff of the New York Times in 2006, refers to a supposed third generation of Internet-based services that collectively comprise what might be called 'the intelligent Web'—such as those using semantic web, microformats, natural language search, data mining, machine learning, recommendation agents, and artificial intelligence technologies—which emphasize machine-facilitated understanding of information in order to provide a more productive and intuitive user experience.

Nova Spivack defines Web 3.0 as the third decade of the Web (2010–2020) during which he suggests several major complementary technology trends will reach new levels of maturity simultaneously including:...

This stuff makes great sense and it is a logical extension of web 2.0; actually, I would suggest that it IS web 2.0.  We will see the rise the semantic web and various sense making tools will emerge to help us filter and discover.  However, what I see in the definitions above is really, really, really interactive television where the USER has great control of the information that they can digest.  What is massively wrong about this definition is that it's nothing new.  It's a feature set. 

It is unreasonable to version the Internet in terms of features.  If features were the only variable then we are surely well past web 3.0.  So what do I think web 3.0 is...

Possibility

Benjamin Zander and Roz gave me an A. The single condition was that I project myself in to a better future and understand my contribution to that future.  Who am I not to be worthy of that A.  Dare I aspire to be graced with the responsibility to lead, to declare an A for others.  I project myself to be more than an obstacle, not the stick nor the carrot. The greatest difficulty is that I can only be I while owning that it's not about me.  I can only be I and so much more than me is what is needed. 

Benjamin Zander, Conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, believes in a world of possibility, possibility as opposed to scarcity, scarcity being the world of winners and losers, a world where judgment oppresses.  In order to understand a world of possibility, to live in the  abundance of potential, Benjamin Zander assigns his students to project themselves in to the future, a future where they have earned the praise that he gave to them the moment they met.  They do this with a letter, a letter from themselves as they stand in the future.  Roz, Benjamin's partner, help him craft this scheme.

So, Benjamin and Roz, here is the future in which I stand....

I have not sacrificed rigor.  I have not sacrificed rigor as evidenced by the reality of a better world. I have engaged deeply with love and wonder (Marian Bantjes) and I have not sacrificed rigor.  I got the answers right to questions that I didn't know we had to problems that I knew we could not solve. 

I found a way to value love.  Not with a cash equivalent but with Love.  As art is distinguishable from skill or artifice, as love is distinguishable from affinity or choice, I found a way to understand Love and its expression, as valuable.  Actually, exchangeably, cognitively valuable.

I had the courage to accept the grace of responsibility.  A responsibility to not claim my space, to not declare a truth, to not decide.  It was not me but I played a role. I can only be I and I was not the answer.  That was difficult to own. I did not know what the answer was.  I only knew that the answer was not found, which is not to say that it was not known, or was not emergent. 

Hearing signal from noise, seeing patterns in chaos, happened at the edges, where the network is new, where connections are being formed.  I only knew that there is great value in solving real problems and worked, with love and wonder, to magnify possibility.  I believed that we had not accounted for the value of  lives at the edges.  I believed that increasing the capitalization of human potential (Malcolm Gladwell) would not occur with winners picking winners.  I understood that the unknown was fertile.  I worked in the unknown. I said out loud what I did not know, what I was trying to understand, what I thought might be.

Something about the Chekovian (heart) string that finds resonance in each of us, regardless of our callouses, is what defined meaning and sourced the future.  And I did not sacrifice rigor.  I played a role.  I am content with my participation, with my contribution.

Media: An Abundance of Money, A Scarcity of Meaning

I have been following the media industry for a while now.  I claim no expertise, just an opinion. First, I think there are two critical reforms necessary for America to find its way: 1) voting reform. 2) campaign finance reform, 3) media reform.

1. Media is not just entertainment.
2. We need to fight the censorship of the center.
3. Youth Media is not paternalism.
4. Participatory and p2p media is the disruptive technology in media. 
5. We need a new infrastructure to support effective information systems.
6. Effective information systems can do more.

SoCap Day Two

Yesterday I spent the day thinking about investors and structure and deals.

Today, I thought about social enterprise.  I went to four sessions today and they coalesced in my head in a very odd way.

Media

Two of the sessions got me thinking about media and technology as social investment.  The first session I attended was on Information and communication Technology for the Developing World.  The conversation moved back and forth between the devices that were used (computers and mobile phones) and the content or what information was transmitted.  I also attended a pitch session where four new ventures pitched participatory media ideas.  My career started as a high school educator and when I first moved in to philanthropy I worked in youth media so I was very interested in this session. Without going too deep in to the content of this session, a central issue was how to pitch a radically new understanding of an existing market.  I immediately was reminded of some of the slogans of this field, "Content is king" and "The medium is the message" and the interplay between them.  In both developing world ICT infrastructure AND participatory media, there is a fantastic opportunity to create a totally different paradigm, one for which the medium and the content are sympatico, one that is not as centralized, one that conceptualizes the audience as a participant.  This would require a radically different understanding of networking infrastructure and a radically different understanding of media and information and truth and perspective.  Given that Nokia and Cisco and others will/do pour large amounts of money in to this space to ensure their position at the center, I do not have great hope that we will not need to make the same mistakes at least a few more times while we wait for the just the right disruptive solution.  My thinking is not crystal here but the central thought is how do we not miss game changing ideas because we are stuck on traditional models.

Intermediaries and Scale

The other two sessions were Fair Trade products and a panel that I sat on, the Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs.  The central issue for me, for both of these panels was the need for a vibrant B to B or intermediary layer to catalyze scale. 

As some one obsessed with data and how it moves, Fair Trade fascinates me. A Fair Trade banana is easy.  Coffee is harder because it involves roasting and sometimes mixing.  Chocolate is a lot harder because not everything ingredient always Fair Trade.  Clothing is really hard.  The Fair Trade data problem is not just ingredient sourcing but also working conditions.  My main question for the field is, given that Fair Trade can only be considered successful with massive scale, on the order of 2 billion farmers, how do you scale the certification especially given that the problem does not get easier with scale. Essentially, the core difficulty is not Fair Trade products, but it is convincing the market that the products are Fair Trade (whatever Fair Trade means), that the certification is meaningful.  This is the work of an intermediary, a certifying body. Maybe a lot of certifying bodies???

In the ANDE panel that I sat on, I held the flag for the intermediaries.  ANDE is a collaboration of several funders who are trying to define the market and reach an economy of scale for the investing in Small and Growing Businesses.  Like Fair Trade, scale is the critical component to success because the goal is to rationalize economies in the developing world and a whole like of successful new entrepreneurs is the vehical to get there.  So, I posit, the critical piece will be a build out of a professional B to B layer that can 1) effectively and efficiently move capital by vetting entrepreneurs and sell investors and, 2) build the capacity of these new businesses in these difficult economies.

Today was a good day...

An Organization You Should Look Into

"InSTEDD is all about humanitarian collaboration through technology innovation. We are looking carefully at the problems faced by those involved in disease tracking and disaster response, and we're moving forward in focused ways to help them."

more...

InSTEDD was born at the TED conference as part of Larry Brillient's TED Prize in 2006.  It's original mandate was around early detection of disease outbreaks.  They have since built the beginings of a very exciting ecosystem of tools for peer2peer, online/offline, mesh networked, information processing in the most demanding environments. 

The perfect Network Neutrality Foil

In a recent Forbes commentary I found a wonderful opportunity to show why network neutrality is important by contrasting individual rights with corporate profit motive. 

Phil Kerpen's comments are the perfect foil for anyone interested in democracy and a free and open society. His silly, Rovean playground insults leveled at "network neutrality Cassandras" and "the angry left" serve only to remove Mr. Kerpen from list of serious thinkers.

As for the details of his commentary...

He states:

"What is network neutrality? In its strictest form, it means a government mandate that Internet service providers have to treat all of the bits of data traveling on their network the same way. "

I am in complete agreement with this statement. It is a rare occurance when the two sides of a debate can actually agree on the basic issue without a lot of rhetorical noise. I support the "government mandate" because network neutrality is best understood as a critical component of civil rights with implications for free speech as well as the right of assembly and association. The primary difference between my position and Mr. Kerpen's is that he believes, above all else, in the right to make money regaurdless of how corporate interests may intersect with the interests of individuals.

Net Neutrality PI - Intro and Free Speech

Intro - Net Neutrality and Water Rights

I believe that Net Neutrality is very poorly understood. There is a clear reason for this. The industry that is most responsible for informing us about net neutrality is also the industry that would be most deeply effected by its implementation, big media.

Net Neutrality is usually represented with a freeway metaphor that espouses the logic of a toll road vs. a public roadway where you pay for speed and a better experience in general. The primary problem with this analogy is that it places all the emphasis on the transport mechanism as opposed to what is being transported. I was listening to an NPR interview with Maude Barlow recently. They were discussing water rights and it dawned on me that this was a much more interesting analogy. Water is becoming a commodity because corporations (Bechtel, Nestle, GE, …) see an opportunity to create profit by controlling distribution of a valuable resource.  This is directly analogous to information and how the telcos are working to control the distribution of information. In both instances, we see predatory corporate practices working explicitly against individuals and our ability to access resources that rightfully belong to the commons.  Additionally, in both examples, there are legitimate and lucrative business opportunities for private corporations to exploit that will actually contribute positively to the well-being of the communities to which they belong.