SOPA PIPA Anyone?

Out here in the Southwest desert we have a puffed pastry called Sopapilla.
Per our friends at Wikipedia (the only large scale NON-PROFIT engine of Information exchange)
“It is generally served as a dessert with honey poured between its two layers…(sometimes served) in place of bread, or filled with ingredients common to tacos and enchiladas.”

I can see how one could easily confuse this confection with the hot air filled Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate companion the Protect Intellectual Property Act, because both are  loaded with tasty pork.  But trust me, SOPA PIPA will be very hard to swallow.

About 15 years ago, we began a journey into the world of FREE information exchange.  Alvin Toffler spoke of it years before, telling us that an information based economy would be VERY different from a goods based economy.  If I give or sell you my Book or car or chair, you now have the book or car or chair and I do not.  If I give or sell you my information, you now have it and so do I.  Additionally, in each exchange of my information, by virtue of simple feedback , I am very likely to have even more information than I had before.

But this is crazy talk, say the congressional lobbyists for the Music, Movie, Print and Video publishing houses.  You cannot just copy our “intellectual products” and give them to the world.  Oh but we can.  And this is the fundamental dilemma, if ANYONE can copy your product and mass produce it, how does ANYONE make money off of it?  And if the publishers can’t make money off of it, not only will they cease to produce it, they will cease to exist.

Making it illegal for any individual to make a copy of  a song, a movie, a book or a video(and it always has been illegal) has had little or no impact on the practice.  Does anyone really believe that making it MORE illegal is going to deter the free exchange of information?

I have long advocated a simple solution, “Make the right thing the easiest thing to do”.  Steve Jobs tried this with the iTUNES, “hey-it’s-only-99-cents-and-it-is-built-in-to-your-IPOD” approach.  This worked okay, but the multi-billion dollar recording industry is now a shadow of it’s former self AND if you don’t want to deal in an all things Apple, there are multiple ways to copy without fees.  While this put a lot of recording execs out of work, the Artists who actually produce what we are supposed to buy, suddenly started making more money from Live Events using their free viral music as a publicity generating MONSTER.  I have two words for you “Justin Bieber”.

This story will be repeated over and over as each Media giant faces with their own mortality.  They must find a way to add value to their product so that consumers will want to buy it (bootleg quality is always suspect) or, more likely, embrace the Information Economy for what it is and produce events and experiences that the consumer will  pay to attain.

The three most important words an Artist, Author, Movie Maker or Performer can hear from their fans are “I want more”.  I say this all the time when it comes to Sopapillas, but when it comes to SOPA PIPA the three words being uttered in the direction of consumers are “You’re under arrest”.  Not a really solid marketing strategy for the Information Economy.

lEARNing about Fire

Last week my wife’s new Kindle Fire arrived.  We call her “Easy Reader” because words on a page are more than she can resist.  She still insists we subscribe to a Daily Newspaper for her reading comfort, but it is now clear to me, that she has been won over by eNews delivered to her smartphone and the Fire of Kindle will eventually burn off her desire for “news” printed.   While I am confident that the conversion of this most avid “paper” junkie portends the demise of all gas powered news delivery, the jury is still out on whether the eBook will replace our collective need for hardcovers and paperbacks.
I know many bookstores are being shuttered, but I just read an article indicating  that there may well be a real place for the local Book seller in the hearts and minds of readers even in this virtual world.  This years  introduction of the iPad, has taken eBook sales up to ~10% of total book sales.  BI (before iPad) they were in the 6-7% range.  I have no doubt we will someday see the percentages reversed, but there is a much bigger more significant trend to be considered.

Three weeks ago I attended Drupal Camp Phoenix.  A gathering of some 100+ professionals skilled in the art/science of creating Web Pages.  Drupal is one of many new authoring tools created by and for the purpose of rapidly presenting and delivering content to the WORLD WIDE web.  This particular tool is not for the dabbling author who finds WordPress too challenging.  However, I mention it here because one Drupal based educational website illustrates a point I have been trying to make for years.

BuildAModule.com teaches you everything you need to know about Drupal.  There are over 500 video lessons taking you, quite skillfully, step by step through the myriad of Drupal’s capabilities.  Each lesson displays the text of what is being conveyed visually and verbally on the screen.  You can start and stop at will.  The system keeps track of which lessons you have taken as you move through the logically ordered “chapters”.  It is by far the BEST self paced software learning experience I have ever had.

But I don’t tell you this because I think everyone should learn Drupal.  I tell you this because this entire system/business was created by one individual.  He didn’t just build the website. He records all of the lessons. He set up a smartphone based credit card processor for sales of subscriptions and sets of training DVDs/downloads.  He developed and implemented a marketing plan that puts him in front of potential customers each week.  It is truly a one man show and THAT is the point.

YOU can, almost effortlessly, publish YOUR content today and make it available to billions as soon as you hit save.  YOU can communicate with your existing and potential customers anywhere in the world anytime they need you from just about anywhere you happen to be.  AND IF you have a product and business plan that allow you to get noticed by even two or three millionths of the potential customers out there, YOU will profit from your venture.

Are Better Jobs Coming?

We just got new mobile phones.  I still call them mobile phones because to me “Cell” phone conjures up images of Jimmy Cagney talking to his mouth piece thru the glass at Sing Sing.  But Mobile Phone is so archaic, heretofore I will use the term Mobi (pronounced Mobee) to describe these devices.
We contemplated iPhones, but for $30 a piece I got the latest 4g droid technology and I didn’t have to switch carriers.  I have two simple rules when it comes to buying a Mobi,
does this add any real value to my lifestyle and does the cost match the benefit?
Sorry Steve,  but I can get much more for much less and fashion has never been a priority with me.
More on Steve later. 
My daughter discovered an “amazing” feature on our new Mobis…Voice to text translation.  Now, I am the first to admit that I marvel at Voice recognition capabilities in our smart devices.  It is truly an amazing technology, especially in such compact packaging.  But this “New” feature in our Mobis allows us to send Text messages to others, by speaking.  Let’s think about this; “Watson I need you” translated to text and sent to his device so he could read it?  Gee the telegraph was doing that 50 years before.  The miracle of the phone was Voice over wire.  The miracle of the Mobi was voice over Air.  Text over air was called paging and, while it was miraculous 30 years before Mobi, it’s really kind of passe’ now.  On the other hand, Mobi texting IS a significant advancement over passing notes in class. But the reason you pass notes is because you are not allowed to talk so Voice Recognition is not a particularly useful feature for texting’s primary purpose.  Also would you still speak “LOL” and “OMG” or would you actually say the words.  Now if you say the words and it translates them to Text speak…perhaps…no that would be SILLY.

Now back to Steve.  I virtually met Steve Jobs at a NEXT announcement event.  In those days he was considered a failure that had to be ousted from Apple before he ruined the company. Really.  Unlike his more recent ANNOUNCEMENTS, there were only about a dozen people in a small conference room in Phoenix, AZ huddled around an enormous projection device displaying Jobs behind his NEXT cube.  It was an amazing machine.  Doing all the things HE felt a “personal” computer should be able to do.  He was absolutely right, but at 6-10 grand nobody would be able to buy it.  20+ years later, most of these features are now in our Mobis.  We were allowed to ask questions via a land line(remember those) link to Steve, so I asked when these would be available to purchase.  As I recall, he replied with something like “we will be announcing availability in a month or so, but you can order one today”.  In exchange for my contact information I got a vhs video copy of the presentation and some flashy literature,  but I never heard from NEXT again.

Jobs had, once again, failed to meet the demands of the personal computer market place.  While he had the something WAY Better in terms of features and built to be Faster than anything, Jobs never really cared about the consumers number one demand “CHEAPER”. And held over from his Apple days, the question of reliability remained.

Jobs went from next to Pixar, where money was no object and his demanding, never good enough style set the animation bar so high that Disney had to buy the company to keep up.
Then he went back to Apple, and a consumer that, for some reason, was now willing to overlook higher price tags.  Not only can consumers not get enough iPods, iTunes, iPhones and iPads, they are willing and eager to replace last years model with the latest no matter what the cost.  Basically, Steve Jobs had become a fashion mogul.

Now he is gone and I suspect someone and something else will soon become the Apple of the consumers eye.

Event horizons

Two weeks ago my granddaughter completely forgot about her Karate Banquet.  So did her mother.  24 hours later tears were shed over the missed opportunity.
She so wanted to go back.  And, nine and half years into her life she came to the realization that yesterday is gone.

On an almost daily basis  I get email, postal communications, and phone calls from various financial wizards claiming that they can predict future events.
They tell me how their past prognostications have led to enourmous “profits” (pun intended). AND for just 199.95 a year I can be positioned to take advantage of  the opportuniites.  BUT WAIT, there is more, IF I sign up in the next 5 minutes not only will they double the offer(2 years instead of one), but they will send a lucky few, ABSOLUTELY FREE,  a set  of special reports that they have spent years researching.

So, these folks knew what was going to happen, but they failed to take advantage of it and now they have to sell their predictions to make money?

There is an old Twilight Zone where a guy receives a letter from a “Swami” predicting the outcome of a ball game.  The letter says, if this prediction comes true,
send in 5 dollars for an even better prediction.  As the story continues the guy keeps sending more and more money and the predictions keep coming true.
Finally, he embezzles funds from his company and goes for one big score from the Swami’s stock prediction.  The next week, he doesn’t show up for work but the
embezzled funds have been returned in full.  A friend who has been skeptically watching all this realizes he could have made a fortune too.  When he tries to locate the Swami,
he learns that the Swami only predicted events with a 50-50 proposition…start with 10,000 letters get 5000 believers(give or take a few), then 2500, then 1250, etc.
The cost of predictions rise as the swami continues to be right and in the end he randomly selects a stock and sends it out to the last few “winners” willing to pay the high price of his final prediction.   When the only media for scam delivery was the U.S. Post Office, the Swami would have been tracked down and sent to jail.   Today, the Swami would be a billionare with no threat of jail time. 

About 5 years ago, I stopped wearing a watch.  It could only tell me what time it WAS, and as my granddaughter can now affirm “you can’t go back”.   I still record my time spent on activities so I can get paid and I can better assess just where all my time went.   But when it comes to planning for tomorrow, I have shifted to an event driven mindset.  Questions of “when will this be done?”, are now answered with as soon as I solve this problem, or as soon as this event occurs.  I can still estimate the amount of time it will take me to achieve something, but in my event driven world, other higher priority events may render the event irrelevant OR speed up OR  prevent completion by a specified time.   Many things must run on schedules, but for the most part, we have machines that deal with these issues requiring adherence to a clock.

On the other hand when it comes to taking full advantage of events in our future, without timing,  it’s a 50/50 proposition.  

eGods

In the fourth grade, I learned more about what I didn’t know than in any other single year of my educational career.  The wit and charm that had served me so well  during my first 4 years were no match of the stern gaze of Mrs Maloney. ”eGods and little fishes, Mr Lindstrom”, she would cry.  To this day I have no idea what it meant, but my report card from those dark days clearly indicates, it wasn’t good.   According to various sources Ye Gods was the OMG of the Greeks and Romans.  It eventually became eGods, then eGads because God’s name was not to be taken in vain.  Around the 17th century, Mrs Maloney(yeah she was that old) added the “and little fishes”.  Nobody knows why. They were probably afraid to ask.

Today, as I have been trying to tell you for the last 4 years, little fishes are becoming eGods every day. Case in Point is one Amanda Hocking a 26 year author with rejection notices from all who would call themselves Publishers.  So Amanda decided to call herself a publisher and started producing eBooks.  500,000 SALES later, those who would call themselves publishers gave her a $2M advance for her next series of TweenAge fiction.  Now, I don’t know what these publishers are going to do for her, that she hasn’t already done for herself, but from her point of view she can now focus on writing instead of publishing for, basically, the rest of her life.

In another magazine that arrived at my house on the same day as the Christian Science Monitor delivered the news about Amanda, there was an article about the death of MySpace.
eGod status can be fleeting.  MySpace came out before Facebook and ,all things consdered, they are essentially the same idea.  But Ye Gods did not look kindly on MySpace.  Instead Mark Zuckerberg was deified(at least by Time Magazine) for that which he created in 7 days.

Finally, Green Latern arrived in theaters last Friday.  A super hero with the power to create things with his mind. Gadzooks!  What will you think of next?

The Absolute OMeGa, Man

When I started this blog back in 2007 it was,  I thought,  just a good way to promote my book.  Over the years  it became a way for me to deal with the rush of technological change altering not just how we read but how we gather our information.  More recently, while it’s popularity has increased dramatically,  tales of my Adventures have become less and less frequent at a time when I should be providing more information.   At the same time I have seen a significant increase in demand for my book and, almost daily, I get asked about the status of my next book, when is Considering SomeplacElse the movie coming out, when will you start/finish the Laughing Bear Million Laughs project, what about the eSynched movement you were going to start, will the Rocky the Polar Bear stories ever be produced, and what about all those new software applications like the Remedy Data Wrangler and SCRUM?

When asked what super power they would wish for 60% of the US population asked for “Time Travel”.  They did not specify whether they would use this power for traveling backwards or forwards in time, but I suspect going back to right wrongs or take advantage of opportunities lost would be the primary motivation. ”If they only knew then what they know now”.  While I would certainly take advantage of such a super power if it were granted, it is not at the top of my list.

The savvy Captain Jack thought about wishing for eternal youth, then chose the unknown mystery of a pirates life for him.   But neither eternal nor pirates life are for me.  

My favorite Twilight Zone episode contains a stop watch that stops everything around me.  This would give me more time and, I think, preferable to traveling backwards.  This is most tempting, but still not good enoough.

In, what is probably my 2nd favorite movie of all time, Forbidden Planet, there are machines avaialble to create whatever you can imagine.  This, is getting very close to something I would wish for, BUT I would fear the consequences of unleashing monsters from my ID.

No, my super power wish harkens back to the early days of computing, when I was told that, one day soon, a machine WILL respond at the speed of my thoughts.  And while there are computers that process data signficantly faster than my aging brain, there is still no personal computing tool that doesn’t make me wait.  AND when my brain has to wait more than 3 or 4 nanoseconds, it starts thinking about other things.  Now, I’m not saying I would have a billion thoughts while waiting 3 seconds for my iCon device to process a command, but it is very easy for me to “forget” what I was trying to do during those 3 billion nano seconds, because something else has now captured my attention. 

The QWERTY keyboard was invented to slow down the typist, because the typewriter mechanism couldn’t keep up with a humans ability to move their fingers across the original, much more efficient, keyboard design. (Yes the most commonly used letters were NOT where they are now, they were positioned to maximize our ability to strike them in quick succession).  We didn’t even redesign the tiny touch pad keyboards on our phones. Come on guys, really? A full size key QWERTY Keyboard on a 2 inch screen. I guess we still needed to make the human slow down, because the tool can’t keep up with us.  Voice Recognition you say?  Try saying “Voice Recognition” into your microphone and see what gets typed the first two times you say it.  

No, I don’t need a time machine, I just need a machine that can create as fast as I do, because  “If it only knew now, what I knew then, I’d be done.”

McLuhan You In

In ancient times there was a revolutionary television show called Laugh In.  Unlike many of the variety shows of the era, it followed no real formula.  Each week we had to tune in. Yes, in those days there were no DVRs or “encore” presentations (we called them reruns ).  Being there for the event would provide us with the catch phrase of the week (today they might be referred to as tweets) “sock it to me”, “here comes da judge”, “veerrrry eeenteresting”.   A wall of doors(as opposed to windows) would open and close with individuals delivering alternating straight and punch lines.  “That’s the way clari nets”, “That’s the way the o boes” then Goldie Hawn would say something like  ”That’s the way the drums”.   Kind of a 3rd tier Celebrity Facebook.  The show even did a news of the future sketch, hysterically stating that 20 years from now in 1988 “President Ronald Reagan will…” but they couldn’t even complete the joke they were laughing so hard.

Anyway,  one of the catch phrases that stuck with me was “Marshall McLuahan what are you doin?”.   I didn’t know much about this guy at the time.  It turns out Professor McLuhan was a Canadian Communications theorist who predicted the rise of the world wide web and coined the phrase “the Medium is the Message” which later became a book called “The Medium is the Massage”.  McLuhan theorized that the way content was delivered would eventually be more important  the content itself.  This was all very confusing to those of us living in the 60s, programming computers with punched cards and using CB Radios for wireless communications. 

Yet here we are 40+ years later with 4 cell phones for every man woman and child in the US.  AND we don’t use them for making phone calls, we are texting, surfing the web, listening to music, watching movies on 2 inch screens, recording and posting images, even scanning bar codes.  Our televisions are crammed with 100s if not thousands of channels.  There is now so much “content” out there, we must ignore the vast majority of it, lest we go mad.  Instead we focus on being in constant communication, getting the latest buzz,  and then as McLuhan predicted, we seem to forget about it because our digital media is constantly massaging us with new messages.

In the days of Laugh In, messages were updated weekly and they took the summers off.  Our brains had time to review and contemplate.  Little did we know that Marshall McLuhan was actually viewin (the future).  But,I guess that’s the way the P Sees, that’s the way the Eye phones, thats the way the medi(a)Ums.

About Facing Society

“An organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.”

I guess there is nothing in the definition that requires members of a society to actually gather together and make physical contact.  Pity.
30 some years ago I worked with two brillaint computer guys at the steel mill.  One was nicknamed 9600 because he talked so fast it was like listening
to bits coming across the fastest modem available at the time. (Those of you who don’t get it…today he would be called 4G , a faster talking version of  Mr. Facebook). 
His associate, on the other hand, was right out of the Kings Speech, stammering and stuttering his way through each conversation.  
Physically and intellectually, they were roughly equivalent though 9600 would more likely make the cover of GQ. 
Now, it happened that both had an interest in my secretary and 2 or 3 times a week I would see one or the other of them “socializing” at her desk. 
This was not unsual as, face time with my secretary was of considerable value to single gentlemen throughout Steel Mill Society.
She went out with 9600 for a while but after about 6 weeks of exchanged deskside cordialities, SHE ended up asking the less than Kingly speaker for a date, then another and another, until it became a very strong, very real relationship. 

I wonder, given the volume of hits, my secretary’s Facbook page would garner in today’s society, would she still “friend” him?

I can do a lot of things from my computer.  I can even have video face time with folks on my phone.  But to me, being in the same room with other humans will always be a vastly different experieince.   I wonder, though, has this kind of social networking gone the way of the U.S. Steel Industry? 

InSpiraling

A few weeks back I had the privilege of contributing to the Get Inspired project.  A quite worthwhile and very ambitious project to interview 300+ Baby Boomers in the coming year.
I answered the question,
“What does inpsiration mean to you?”,
with, 
“To me, inspiration is acquiring the energy to begin, continue, or complete”.

I, like my freindly online thesauraus, casually equate inspiration with motivation.  This may be grammatically correct, but inspiration is really a special kind of motivation.
While it may come from an outside source, the energy produced must comes from withIN.   The drill sergeant, the coach, and the boss may provide us with the motivation 
to perform a task, but true creative energy requires the INspiration.

Last night I watched the movie Inception .  At its core, the movie seeks to explore where ideas begin.  Then it determines, for us, that all ideas that inspire us to act are born in the subconcious.  Leaving alone the idea that someone else can enter our dreams and “change our minds”, I believe that I am more likely to be inspired while concious and subsequently influence my dreams.  Regardless, of how it really works,  self motivation is critical.

Over the past year, I have failed to find the energy necessary to write weekly entries in this blog.  Many of you have tried to motivate me with emails and conversations.  Thank you for that.  Several of you have also sought to change my mind about writing another novel.  I thank you for those kind words and encouraging thoughts.  My day job has sought to keep me working on the, quite limted, range of tasks that they just “couldn’t do without me”.  Their flattery is not really inspirational, but, to paraphrase Noel Coward, Friday’s paycheck does provide  sufficient motivation.  My dreams awaken me frequently with ideas on everything from stories that MUST be told, to websites that must be built and to how to fix the leak in the bathroom. 
Finally there is my concious mind, sitting here trying to ramble into something inspirational.  I am aware of, no less than, 12 projects requiring, of me, the energy to act.  All of these swirling in my brain, clamoring  for attention, demanding priority, insisting that they go next.
Suddenly  I am inspired by the 30 year old words of a very good friend of  “mind” ,
Howard Gentry, who once told me to 
“break everything down into 5 minute tasks and tasks that require more than 5 minutes. Then start working on the 5 minute tasks ONLY.”

I spent 5 minutes upgrading this version of wordpress.  Another 5 coming up with the ispiration for this post.  And now it is done.

Quick, what is the next on the 5 minute list, I suddenly have all this energy!

Cloudy with a Chance of Sane

It has been a good 20 years since I taught Information Systems at the local community college.  With the help of Webster’s Dictionary(the actual book) I defined the Information Revolution as “rapidly changing knowledge communicated or received”.  I then presented the words of several futurists predicting the societal impact of the “Information Revolution”.
Alvin Toffler discussed the economic implications of an Information based economy by stating “information is not finite like a car or furniture, you can’t really own it.  in fact if you give your information away you will likely end up with more”.  John Naisbitt spoke of how our isolating technologies would create a huge demand for REAL social interaction resulting in a boom for Churches, Civic Organizations, Live Entertainment, Shopping Centers, and  anything that gets us REAL face time with our friends, family and neighbors.  He called it High Tech-High Touch.

None of the research I did back then hinted at anything like the internet, or the rise in companies like Google or Facebook or Amazon or eBay.   While it certainly can be said that we have MUCH MUCH more information, I am still not sure it can be said we have an information based economy.  Unless of course we are all supposed to be selling e-books on how to make money on the internet by selling e-books on how to make money on the internet.  There was an economist who once postulated you could have an economy wherein half the country got paid to dig holes and the other half got paid to fill them in. But I don’t think that’s the same thing as no one getting paid to post their daily routine on facebook so anyone can read about it for free.  As for the High Touch prophecy, the only thing I see being touched is the screen on the device that links the individual to their facebook page. 

And now, there is ”The Cloud”.  Store your life in the void, they tell us,  so that you and your friends will be able to access it from anywhere.  Let your devices learn about you so the bits and bytes can tell you what you are interested in, what you want to do, where you need to go, and even how you are feeling.  I am told that the Cloud is going to be just like any public utility.  Plug in and you will get all the information you will ever need without having to EVER lookup from your smartphone.        

Personally, I love isolation when I am creating something, but when I am done, I really miss the sound of live human reaction coming from live humans in same room with me.
There is something about a shared live experience that can’t be felt through the touch screen.   This was Naisbitt’s point.  

We are losing touch.  Our experiences are becoming more and more virtual and consequently our lives more and more isolated. 
There is still time for us to realize that Life is not something that can be stored like a car or a piece of furniture, nor can it be truly experienced by putting our heads in the cloud. 

About three months ago I went to the bank on my bicycle.  I could have done an electronic transfer, but I had decided that this particular transaction required live interaction.
As I rode through the park adjacent to my house, I witnessed the collapse of a woman in obvious distress.  She was barely concious and told me she had a heart problem.  I called 911 on my cell phone and tried to explain to the operator where we were in the park.  I’m not sure why 911 had no GPS to locate me, but there was no time to worry about the shortcomings of virtual directions.  I told him to send the ambulance down the main drag that bordered the park and I would flag them down.  I stayed with the woman until I heard the sirens.  Then I went to the edge of the park and directed the EMTs to their patient.  One could argue that cell phone technology saved this woman’s life.  But I believe the human touch made the REAL difference.