On the Value of Information Technology

I'm not writing about gadgets here, but about the information that makes the gadgets useful: Software. This video is nominally about web design consulting. But I've lived these situations back before the web, as well as with web clients. One problem is that the buyer of information has no idea what it's worth until he has it. And once he has it, why should he pay someone for it? Therefore, it isn't valuable. This dovetails neatly into other copyright issues, but I'm not going there. I have a few websites, most of which are loaded with free information that I painstakingly collected and developed. The sites are also built from scratch, mostly with a simple text editor. Some people see value in this; I receive donations. Some years as much as the low three figures. People used to ask me if HTML was easy. I'd say, "Yes, you just need to remember how a few hundred easy commands interact." Most developers don't bother to make sure their site even meets official web standards (as published and tested for free by W3C.org). Even WordPress, the engine on which this site is built, shows errors in the validator. Google? Thousands of errors on every page. I've had clients who understand what I do, and were happy to pay. Unfortunately, usually their superiors had to be cajoled. Eventually, these situations melt down and leave me out of work. The "Just a small change" problem comes up often. After I've been reporting and demonstrating every step of the way, and finally a web site is finished, then do they bother to look and notice that it isn't what they need. They make "little" requests comparable to having a builder simply move a bathroom from the first floor to the second as the keys to a house are handed over. This video made me cringe.

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The Internet doesn’t think

Edge.org has published the results to its annual question. This year's inquiry: How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think?. There are dozens of thoughtful answers that could occupy you for an entire day. The answer offered by cognitive scientist Joshua Greene caught my attention. Here's an excerpt:

Have you ever read a great book from before the mid 1990s and thought to yourself, "My Goodness! These ideas are so primitive! So… pre-Internet!" Me neither. The Internet hasn't changed the way we think anymore than the microwave oven has changed the way we digest food. The Internet has provided us with unprecedented access to information, but it hasn't changed what we do with it once it's made it into our heads. This is because the Internet doesn't (yet) know how to think. We still have to do it for ourselves, and we do it the old-fashioned way.

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Pics or it didn’t happen!

Image by Rohan Kar, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons I was mulling around the Lincoln Park Zoo today with a friend when a man stepped on me. He was filming a Siberian tiger with a high-end digital video camera, which he held on an expensive mounting. He was fidgeting with all of the camera's features, backing up to get the perfect shot, and he stepped all over my feet. The foot-stomping didn't bother me so much as the man's intent focus on something other than his present surroundings. A beautiful creature stood before him, but his attention was directed at the camera and the filming of the tiger more than it was the tiger itself. Not much later, something similar occurred in the Tropical Birds House. As I was watching the bleeding-heart pigeons, a man, family in tow, came around the corner with a massive video camera. He also had it placed on an expensive mount. Obliviously, he nudged forward until his lens nearly leaned on the display's glass. He fiddled and fidgeted. He zoomed on the critters for a moment, and left. "Do you think he'll ever watch that footage?" my friend asked. "No," I guessed. Without much thought I noted, "It isn't about the footage. He probably just bought that camera, and is filming because he wants to play with it." "So the actual footage is useless," he observed in return. I intuited that the man's camera was a new purchase because I've done the exact same thing with a fresh 'toy'.

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Right to Link

We all know how nearly fastidious Erich has been about making sure that we don't violate any copyrights with the images we use on this blog. One way we manage this is by linking to content that we cannot properly copy or post. But now the issue of whether one can violate a copyright merely by linking to another web site is making legal rounds. I found out about the Right to Link movement via my WebProNews subscription. There is more information at www.right2link.org. What's stirring this up is Rupert Murdock blocking access to his content coming from certain legitimate url's. Here's a link to the story.

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Google, China, and hypocrisy

You've probably heard the stories in the news. A superpower has been shamed, a totalitarian state has been outed. A tyrannical government has been spying on the private communications of its citizens, including that of activists and journalists. What they plan to do with the fruits of their techno-espionage is not well understood, but given their history they can hardly be up to any good. What is clear is that this government is fanatical about crushing any challenge to their perceived supremacy, whether those challenges are internal or external. They even demand that private companies aid them in censoring unfavorable news (with a stunning degree of success), and these private companies (mostly based in the United States) may even have helped them spy on their citizenry. You could be forgiven for thinking that this was just another blog posting about Google and China. It's actually a post about hypocrisy. First, if you haven't heard, Google is re-evaluating their decision to do business in China, ostensibly as a result of some cyber-attacks directed at the Gmail accounts of some human-rights activists. The U.S. State Department is planning to lodge a formal protest on the alleged attacks. Plenty of others have already analyzed this story. As usual, the real story is behind the headlines. The San Francisco Chronicle reported last week:

The Google-China flap has already reignited the debate over global censorship, reinvigorating human rights groups drawing attention to abuses in the country and prompting U.S. politicians to take a hard look at trade relations. The Obama administration issued statements of support for Google, and members of Congress are pushing to revive a bill banning U.S. tech companies from working with governments that digitally spy on their citizens.
To prevent United States businesses from cooperating with repressive governments in transforming the Internet into a tool of censorship and surveillance, to fulfill the responsibility of the United States Government to promote freedom of expression on the Internet, to restore public confidence in the integrity of United States businesses...
So far, so good. Restoring public confidence in the integrity of U.S. businesses might be a tall order for any bill, but whatever. The rest are all noble goals: preventing repressive governments from using the internet as a tool of censorship and surveillance, promoting freedom of expression, and so on. Just one problem: none of these provisions apply to the U.S. Government. You see, the U.S. Government is the tyrannical superpower from the first paragraph of this blog post. You might have asked yourself why it is that the Chinese people put up with having their private communications read by their government. The real question is this: Why do you put up with it? [More . . . ]

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