I, Cringely | The Pulpit
A great deal of backbiting has always plagued the world striding colossus that is Microsoft. From the very beginning, people have disliked MS' approach, from their purchasing of MSDOS to their blatant Macintosh emulation. And as the internet changes and surges into new areas, Microsoft seems determined to grasp it's mode of operation and force the internet into it.
The internet and it's quick market reaction may be the only reason Microsoft is still around. The sensitive barometer of software development builds tools for what people use, because otherwise software initiatives die. Even the strange and unique world of open-source development builds windows binaries often as not. This continuiing reaction to the user base has giving microsoft a continuing validation by forces that might rather it die a quick death.
And this is a good thing. Regardless of philosophical differences, I believe that total progress is the goal. And Microsoft still has something to offer us. It's massive budget and scare-mongering tactics may earn it the ire of many, but it also spends money like a wino on french holiday trying to grow the computer market. And the computer market should be grown. It's too useful of a tool to remain the province of the rich and geeky. So it helps us. But it's also a huge corporation that in the end has only legal and pricing considerations. So it doesn't act in what we can call a moral manner. But neither does any other large corporation. They can't afford to, and it's not their job. Accountants aren't paid to be moral, lawyers aren't paid to be moral, and all the others in MS are simply there to do a job. They do their job, and the end result is immoral behavior. Where does the buck stop? Arguably the owners of microsoft are not doing a job, and can be expected to support moral behavior. But the simple fact is that corporate ownership is seen as a form of investment, so it is in fact a special kind of job. another one whose only requirement is return on said investment.
So perhaps expecting moral behavior is too much from a large corporation. There is, as we have found, no single agent that can impart a moral sense to their actions. This is not a very good state of events, but it's what we have. I would hope that Microsoft either acknowledges this fact, or rectifies it. Or dies a quick death. It's not to my advantage to have immoral actors around.
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Haystack Home
It is an occasionally useful maxim of mine that standardization cuts two ways. It decreases variety and increases volume, almost without exception. The sometimes counter-intuitive result of standardization is an increase in human variety. The development of TCP/IP vastly reduced the kinds of interaction between computers while simultaneously multiplying the amount of information exchanged. Humans used this new volume for a dizzing array of webpages, services, games and most importantly organization of these kinds of information. Search engines are webpages, but in certain ways, they are above them. You go to webpages for specific content, even if of a dynamic kind. Search engines are fundamentally different, and belong in a different kind of category. services like finger and ssh are similar. They provide information about other services, or provide increased levels of interopability. They transcend simple transaction, but operate on the same mechanical level.
These specialized kinds of variety all operate on a single level from the standpoint of the computer, packets of information with particular addressing and content. This similarity allows the computer to transmit with impunity the great array of ideosyncratic creations that we call the internet. The key is that the standardization exists on a transparent level to the computer. If the english language or picture color balance were standardized, little increased volume would result. Because a computer lacks the ability to take advantage of the regularities in such standardization. Without extra potential volume, little new variety would result, and the standardization process would be a useless venture, from the standpoint of computers. Teaching english and photography may be easier in that hypothetical case.
If software was several orders of magnitude smarter, regularities in english and picture color balance, might be tractable to increased natural language parsing, and intelligent search of photos. But I digress.
The key is to provide increased potential usable volume by reducing underlying complexity up to the point of transparency. the encroaching standardization can never get in the way of human variety. This key point explains why standards that work with TCP/IP work up to a point. html, XML, dynamic content, standard port addresses, IPv6, these are all good things and useful to many people. But technologies like OS specific net connectivity, social exchange technologies, and even tiny simple things like standard quoting rules in forums and email lists fail miserably or just lead to balkinization.
But standards on the edge of human variety and machine parsibility is where the exciting ideas are. The question of which side of the line a technology falls under is an open question that often depends on effort, cleverness and popular interest. A wonderful example is the above 'success story' of XML. XML is another child of a larger technology called SGML. This miserably complex, highly disordered description framework had hundreds of interpretations which were almost entirely opaque to one another. But the central concept was such a good one that clever folks were compelled to snip usable portions of it into nice sub technologies that enjoyed much more success, like html, certain vector graphics formats, and document description frameworks. Enter some years later, faster computers, more complex software environment. XML, a specification that's nearly as powerful as SGML, and in many ways just as opaque is a runaway success. The line of machine-useful information is higher, and the human variety imparted to XML applications is truly stunning. Almost all SGML applications are now ported to XML(affirming their equivalency, though XML has a much greater ease-of use and cleverness factor). The difference is very slight, but enough for the differential of widely used and deprecated.
The moving line of standardization vs. human variety has reached new heights with the advent of complex software and UIs that reach into complimentary arenas and make available the unions to their users. The above link is a software project that may or may not succeed, but shows the approximate position of what kinds of information may be succeptable to machine organization for human benefit.
I was surprised by the possiblities and the sheer pleasure of interacting with a UI like this. It's pleasant surprises and steady advances that make me hopeful for informational technology like this. None of the underlying technologies are new. IMs, Emails, websites, text searching. But treating these superficially different services as a standardized commodity brings new potential USABLE volume to the table. It's theoretically possible to have infinite webpages, but only a small finite amount are useful. technologies like google and haystack bring that usable amount much higher, and haystack links that usable volume to other usable volumes, like private correspondence and personal data. The resulting human variety from this standardization may be used for... well, whatever you want to use it for :-)
It is an occasionally useful maxim of mine that standardization cuts two ways. It decreases variety and increases volume, almost without exception. The sometimes counter-intuitive result of standardization is an increase in human variety. The development of TCP/IP vastly reduced the kinds of interaction between computers while simultaneously multiplying the amount of information exchanged. Humans used this new volume for a dizzing array of webpages, services, games and most importantly organization of these kinds of information. Search engines are webpages, but in certain ways, they are above them. You go to webpages for specific content, even if of a dynamic kind. Search engines are fundamentally different, and belong in a different kind of category. services like finger and ssh are similar. They provide information about other services, or provide increased levels of interopability. They transcend simple transaction, but operate on the same mechanical level.
These specialized kinds of variety all operate on a single level from the standpoint of the computer, packets of information with particular addressing and content. This similarity allows the computer to transmit with impunity the great array of ideosyncratic creations that we call the internet. The key is that the standardization exists on a transparent level to the computer. If the english language or picture color balance were standardized, little increased volume would result. Because a computer lacks the ability to take advantage of the regularities in such standardization. Without extra potential volume, little new variety would result, and the standardization process would be a useless venture, from the standpoint of computers. Teaching english and photography may be easier in that hypothetical case.
If software was several orders of magnitude smarter, regularities in english and picture color balance, might be tractable to increased natural language parsing, and intelligent search of photos. But I digress.
The key is to provide increased potential usable volume by reducing underlying complexity up to the point of transparency. the encroaching standardization can never get in the way of human variety. This key point explains why standards that work with TCP/IP work up to a point. html, XML, dynamic content, standard port addresses, IPv6, these are all good things and useful to many people. But technologies like OS specific net connectivity, social exchange technologies, and even tiny simple things like standard quoting rules in forums and email lists fail miserably or just lead to balkinization.
But standards on the edge of human variety and machine parsibility is where the exciting ideas are. The question of which side of the line a technology falls under is an open question that often depends on effort, cleverness and popular interest. A wonderful example is the above 'success story' of XML. XML is another child of a larger technology called SGML. This miserably complex, highly disordered description framework had hundreds of interpretations which were almost entirely opaque to one another. But the central concept was such a good one that clever folks were compelled to snip usable portions of it into nice sub technologies that enjoyed much more success, like html, certain vector graphics formats, and document description frameworks. Enter some years later, faster computers, more complex software environment. XML, a specification that's nearly as powerful as SGML, and in many ways just as opaque is a runaway success. The line of machine-useful information is higher, and the human variety imparted to XML applications is truly stunning. Almost all SGML applications are now ported to XML(affirming their equivalency, though XML has a much greater ease-of use and cleverness factor). The difference is very slight, but enough for the differential of widely used and deprecated.
The moving line of standardization vs. human variety has reached new heights with the advent of complex software and UIs that reach into complimentary arenas and make available the unions to their users. The above link is a software project that may or may not succeed, but shows the approximate position of what kinds of information may be succeptable to machine organization for human benefit.
I was surprised by the possiblities and the sheer pleasure of interacting with a UI like this. It's pleasant surprises and steady advances that make me hopeful for informational technology like this. None of the underlying technologies are new. IMs, Emails, websites, text searching. But treating these superficially different services as a standardized commodity brings new potential USABLE volume to the table. It's theoretically possible to have infinite webpages, but only a small finite amount are useful. technologies like google and haystack bring that usable amount much higher, and haystack links that usable volume to other usable volumes, like private correspondence and personal data. The resulting human variety from this standardization may be used for... well, whatever you want to use it for :-)
Saturday, August 30, 2003
The Hunger Site : Give Food for Free to Hungry People in the World
You should run through this simple and helpful series of websites everyday. I have it on my personal homepage along with the webcomics I read to destroy my mind. It costs little of your time, and boosting their traffic both helps directly, and encourages other charities to help out.
It's rare that it costs so little to make a positive difference, but this is really almost something for nothing. Advertising revenue is supported by the traffic through the site, and as the traffic increases, so does the revenue. And the higher the numbers, the more advertisers are attracted to it. Such displays of created wealth almost make one forget all the horrible travesties that capitalism creates. But we must do what we can.
You should run through this simple and helpful series of websites everyday. I have it on my personal homepage along with the webcomics I read to destroy my mind. It costs little of your time, and boosting their traffic both helps directly, and encourages other charities to help out.
It's rare that it costs so little to make a positive difference, but this is really almost something for nothing. Advertising revenue is supported by the traffic through the site, and as the traffic increases, so does the revenue. And the higher the numbers, the more advertisers are attracted to it. Such displays of created wealth almost make one forget all the horrible travesties that capitalism creates. But we must do what we can.
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Dennis Kucinich for President Campaign, 2004 - Official Website
very rarely am I impressed, but this guy has a pretty slick campaign and he manages to be in favor of both helpful government AND privacy. He promises to make a point of repealing anti-terrorist legislation (PATRIOT and friends) and reinforcing individual rights, and withdrawing from WTO and NAFTA, while actually paying attention to the treaties we sign with other countries.
If you've gotta vote for someone, vote for this guy.
very rarely am I impressed, but this guy has a pretty slick campaign and he manages to be in favor of both helpful government AND privacy. He promises to make a point of repealing anti-terrorist legislation (PATRIOT and friends) and reinforcing individual rights, and withdrawing from WTO and NAFTA, while actually paying attention to the treaties we sign with other countries.
If you've gotta vote for someone, vote for this guy.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
On love.
It's come to my attention recently that a lot of people have dubious opinions of romance. To these people I say that romance is an enduring thing. People keep and inflate what is important to them, and so romance grows. People investigate and practive what is interesting to them, and so romance grows more skillful. And people make mistakes and so romance grows more thoughtful.
Romance is both a function of biological imperatives and information theory. Suppose you have an intelligence, who looks around, and tries to figure out why things act the way they do. And suppose there is another intelligence who does the same thing. What do you think will happen? They begin to pay attention to each other. As intelligences they are some of the complex AND unpredictable behavior in their local environment. And as they learn, they become more complex. Becoming more complex forces the other intelligence to try harder to understand, growing itself. And so these two happily spend ever increasing proportions of their time on each other, growing and learning. A simple story, of love? Love is the story of two people growing together, but it seems like more than that. But weakly, already we begin to see a basis for fascination with other within even simple expressions of people.
Love is not an emergent thing, but it is something that has great basis in our identity as thinking beings, and as such, it will endure so long as that remains so. Love is important to people now for a wild variety of reasons, the greatest of which is emotional. But important and beautiful things are preserved, even through great change. So we can expect love to outlast our simple emotions in some form or another. As we grow up, we only lose those things we no longer want or need.
It's come to my attention recently that a lot of people have dubious opinions of romance. To these people I say that romance is an enduring thing. People keep and inflate what is important to them, and so romance grows. People investigate and practive what is interesting to them, and so romance grows more skillful. And people make mistakes and so romance grows more thoughtful.
Romance is both a function of biological imperatives and information theory. Suppose you have an intelligence, who looks around, and tries to figure out why things act the way they do. And suppose there is another intelligence who does the same thing. What do you think will happen? They begin to pay attention to each other. As intelligences they are some of the complex AND unpredictable behavior in their local environment. And as they learn, they become more complex. Becoming more complex forces the other intelligence to try harder to understand, growing itself. And so these two happily spend ever increasing proportions of their time on each other, growing and learning. A simple story, of love? Love is the story of two people growing together, but it seems like more than that. But weakly, already we begin to see a basis for fascination with other within even simple expressions of people.
Love is not an emergent thing, but it is something that has great basis in our identity as thinking beings, and as such, it will endure so long as that remains so. Love is important to people now for a wild variety of reasons, the greatest of which is emotional. But important and beautiful things are preserved, even through great change. So we can expect love to outlast our simple emotions in some form or another. As we grow up, we only lose those things we no longer want or need.
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