Musings & Meanderings

Hello WordPress.

It’s been a sharp learning curve so far, but even when I’m banging my head against the wall , I still have Louis singing Hello Dolly in the background.

Who knew that I’d enjoy poring over code files in the middle of the night until I figured out what they did or until I found my mistake? (If I’d only known that I should have been reading PHP instead of MySQL manuals first it might have gone a bit faster.) No, this isn’t a gig, just a hobby.

I’d originally thought of waiting to move in concert with other plans, but decided that learning WordPress and joining this community was a wonderful complement to any future development at all, and a perfect place for my personal weblog.

So here I shall muse and meander from now on.

Semantics being about relationships and meaning, I’m attempting to apply the term in a personal, communal, and resultant way as I see tools being actively developed. By us, I mean the users, consumers, constituents, or any other term currently being applied to hundreds of millions of non-enterprise users.

From semantic search engines such as Powerset to ontological database tools such as Snap Logic, the next generation of functionality would seem to be approaching. I do take note of the w3.org site statement on the summary of OWL flavors… “It is unlikely that any reasoning software will be able to support complete reasoning for every feature of OWL Full.”, and also note that there is little reference to the full potential for individual and societal use of and benefit from the semantic web now under construction.

The machine quest for meaning still seems to be about extracting more useful information from and about us.

Would we all benefit from better search? Certainly. Powerset, Hakia, and others, aim to compete with Google.

Would our use of social networks, blogs, etc., be enhanced by better ways of organizing data? Undoubtedly. Snap Logic can play a role in social network integration at an enterprise level and Aperture could be an integral component of, say, a Facebook or its successor. (Both of these are, I believe, open source based.)

Where, though, are the plans to put semantic computing power, such as it will be, in our hands?

Tim O’Reilly, in his recent post on the topic, writes that the semantic web means…
“the design of applications that don’t require people to think at all about ontology or document structure”
and that…
“Rather than there being a single specification capturing all the information about relationships between people, there will be many overlapping (and gapping) applications, and an opportunity for someone to aggregate the available information into something more meaningful.”

Who is that someone? A Google, whose real customers are advertisers? A Microsoft, as unlikely as that may be, whose aim is to remain one of our dominant connections to the internet?

My abiding question is why those opportunities can’t belong to a lot of ’someones’, namely us.

The usual and obvious answer to that is that someone has to pay for all this development, and for the servers and data storage and bandwidth, and the someone paying is invariably a VC or 3 driven by the goal of capturing market share first, and monetizing second. There appear to be few business models in which we participate directly in the Semantic Web.

Why? The most successful web projects, in terms of real profitability (rather than stock valuations based on media industry multiples of eyeballs), are still eBay and Amazon, businesses based on consumer activities that far exceed the scope of many current start ups.

Reading Nova Spivack’s response to Tim O’Reilly’s post, I come to his term folktologies, which he illustrates using the example of Freebase.

His description of potential applications does seem to envision these tools in our hands, giving each of us the ability to ‘make each other smarter’, but Freebase is yet one more VC funded behemoth of a startup which makes no mention of an economic model.

I do prefer Nova’s view to Tim’s, if only because it envisions computer users capable of contributing to ontologies. The idea that non-techies can’t manage such an activity and wouldn’t want to anyway is hard to understand for anyone who watched eBay grow, who watched millions of non-tech users navigate hundreds of esoteric categories and figure out how to double and triple list items for the best exposure. Next time someone says that people can’t do classification, think of those millions of non-tech collectors and dealer in eBay’s glory days of Web 1.0.

Perhaps I am wrong, and the average users, the Us I refer to, are perfectly happy to accept whatever we are offered for free with no concern about responsibility for future access to the content we and others contribute, but I do not believe this. What I do believe is that we need far more entrepreneurial focus on economic models in which we can participate beyond putting ads on blogs.

Develop this proposition fully, and it can even, when built out, address the most basic issue of geographical access monopolies. We can make this place economically viable and much more so if we all participate.

Economic models which involve us, the participants who are, increasingly, the content providers, would distribute the control of this new world, control which is currently held in a very few hands. It would distribute risk and profit and the common good and a public trust, and it would truly enable free enterprise. It is a concept which can embrace the multitudinous goals and dreams of many for the benefit of ourselves and each other. It is a disruptive concept, and no doubt frightening to some and threatening to others, however it can be a basis for prosperity on every level. I also believe that it is our best hope of protecting our freedom.

There are many workable models of communal combined with private ownership in recent history that equate to both successful businesses and healthy communities. Examples include co-op high-rises in urban centers and successful franchises. These larger economic models are indicative of how elements such as small community business, home based businesses, home ownership, and the dynamics under which these co-exist integrate into the fabric of a healthy and free society. Such human scale enterprises are invariably connected to public resources and cultural riches to which we all contribute. They are supporting elements of those overlapping circles within community structures to which Tim O’Reilly refers.

Every type of human endeavor is already represented online, all striving in competition for traffic and a Google Page Rank. A true semantic web, in my definition, requires enabling and forging the natural connections and interactions of a healthy society. These are as central to human meaning as triplets are to ontological databases.

The internet should remain free. Free access to information and free speech are our greatest treasures, both individually and globally. The infrastructure, however, has to be built on an economic model. The ownership of that model goes hand in hand with control of it. I believe that, in order to fully develop a semantic web, we need to create more and better means of full human participation in it.

What say you?

Getting out when you are physically disabled and in pain isn’t easy, and I haven’t done it enough since the major physical setback last December. Attending my first Geek Girl Dinner yesterday evening was great for me in more ways than one.

This was the first time I’ve been in a room full of mostly women with whom I shared work interests and even passions. After a couple of decades in a business where I worked exclusively with men, meeting mostly men in technology hasn’t fazed me much, but I also happen to like being a woman and am always thirsty for more powerful female energy in my life. Combining that with being able to talk about internet and web development topics was perfect.

A few of the people at my table were Sylvia, Director of Client Services at Broadview Software, a company that makes software for the television industry, Heather, who’s with Tucows and who has the coolest tattoo, and Shelley, a web designer with a lots of experience in accessibility. There were many more geek girls to meet… I look forward to being able to attend again.

The highlight of the evening was entrepreneur Leila Boujnane’s talk, followed by an open question session. Leila told her story, of how she traveled halfway round the world and chose technology over medicine, with sassy wit, revealing both a delightful sense of humor and an indomitable will to succeed. Bravo.

The central concept underlying Idée, Inc. is the identification of every digital image to a level of detail comparable in uniqueness to a fingerprint. This concept is, imo, an extremely valuable contribution to the core application processes we need more focus on in harnessing and benefiting from the full and barely apprehended power of the internet. Applications such as Idee’s visual search technology have the potential to support and enable many rich cultural activities beyond traditional media.

One of the things that intrigued me last night was that this gathering represented a truly wide political and ideological spectrum, yet these differences were of no issue in the face of common interests and dreams for the future. This is one of the ways in which women as a group have more power than they realize, in their natural ability to care and connect.

Thank you sponsor Tucows and to my fellow attendees, for an enjoyable evening.

Has anyone posted pictures?

Matt’s great post today, titled Showing the plug, not the cable illustrates for me once again how much we are all alike, tech and non-tech.

The central question, ‘Will it fit?’, is one that spans every culture and generation and knowledge gap that developers struggle with.

You could be a 40 something female (like me) shopping for clothing, an advanced user considering a social network, a developer integrating a hot web app, a collector or specialty geek looking for perfect components, a retired couple deciding on a holiday …the list of examples is endless. What we all have in common are the following questions.

1. What can it do?
2. How easy is it to get?
3. How much does it cost?
4. Who do I talk to if something goes wrong?
5. How is this any better than what I can get or already have elsewhere?

These are the basic questions in the head of every consumer of anything. The marketing approach of capturing people’s attention and making them think they can’t live without something can be effective, but it’s also transitory. What many marketers don’t do is directly address the basic ‘Will it fit?’ question. Sometimes that’s because they are isolated from other parts of the business or company. Sometimes it’s because the company couldn’t care less what happens to their customer base after they achieve a goal such as IPO. Fragmented attitudes like this have boosted the second, parallel list in most of our minds:

1. What won’t it do?
2. How hard can it be to get, install, etc.?
3. What are the real reasons I’m getting something cheap or free?
4. How much will I lose, in both time and money, if it’s a dud?
5. What’s the real cost and risk of dealing with anonymous strangers?

Anyone who wants to develop a product or service for Jonesers and Boomers needs to understand that the older we get, the stronger the negative questions are, based on negative experiences. Trying to tell us why your ‘thing’ is a hot must have isn’t enough even if, and sometimes especially if, it’s free. We want to know the downside in order to be prepared for it. Everything single thing we choose and do in life has costs and involves tradeoffs.

Use the clothing analogy and picture yourself buying a garment that you intend to wear regularly. Think of how many different aspects there are to your favorite garments. Elegant or sexy, cheap or free, are common sales propositions, and they have value, but they’re just the tip of the customer’s iceberg. It has to fit and every single body is different. It has to be flexible if it’s going to be worn more than once. It can’t fall apart if you wash or dry clean or wear it. It has to come with you when you move. This is just one shirt or jacket or pair of pants we’re talking about. We get just as attached to computer programs, browsers, and apps, and want similar things from them. The age factor falls fast with this analogy. Buy a garment in the latest synthetic microfiber and watch it fall apart or lose its shape the first time you do anything with it, and you won’t be so quick to buy another one, whether you’re a kid or an old timer, and also whether it cost one dollar or a thousand.

Matt’s post asked a great question about how cables are sold, which was …why don’t you show me all the details so I can stop wasting time and make an informed purchase? I’d be such a happy customer if you did that. The wiki video in his post is great also. I’ve had so so many of my contemporaries and older ask me what is the point of doing things online? After watching that video, I could picture many of them seeing a glimpse and thinking of trying, and also hear every single one of them asking their very first prospect question, “what about security?”.

The older and more life experienced or jaded we are, the stronger our orientation (usually) to the second parallel list above. A really powerful proposition will often bring the second list down to par with the first in our minds. Tipping the scale rarely happens by focusing only on making the answers to the first list stronger, especially once you pass a point of diminishing returns. Address both lists, and that means really answer the questions in depth rather than just brushing them off, and the result can be more than just a sale or subscriber, it can be a loyal relationship for a lifetime.

She was born in the Soviet Union, under Stalin. Her parents had lived through the Great War and the Revolution, and her father, a Russian Orthodox priest, had refused to renounce his God. So she attended a new school at least twice each year, never knowing when KGB attention would sharpen its focus on her little family and cause them to run in search of another place to live. In the end, the running was for naught, and by the time she was 12 her father was taken away for the last and final time. They were left with only a rumor, never formally confirmed, that her father had finally been executed. By the time war broke out again, she was fully indoctrinated, well trained in fear and suspicion and primal self-preservation.

After the war, she and her mother arrived as refugees in Canada. They worked as indentured servants for one year to pay for their passage, and they were incredibly fortunate. Their fortune was to be taken in together, instead of being separated, by a prominent gentleman and his wife. The gentleman was semi-retired, with duties only as a board member of a large and venerable publicly owned institution, and he mentored his younger ward, giving her the run of his personal library, and arranging for her employment at his firm’s head office in Montreal when her passage had been fully served.

“I remember this moment,” she tells me, “when everything changed. All my life I had lived with my heart clenched tight in total fear and paranoia, like a heavy rock in my chest. One day, as I stood on rue Sainte-Catherine waiting for the light to change, I became aware of everything around me in a different way. It was a perfect day, with blue skies and sunshine and a light breeze. Everyone on the street stood or moved so freely, so lightly. No one was afraid, or tense, or self-conscious. I stopped and stared, and the heavy clenching fear in my heart eased open and fell away.”

60 years later, she looks at me hopelessly and tells me, “It’s back.”, and then she tells me why.

In recent years, she, and her friends and family as well, have had cause to interact with our medical system, and related social services as well, repeatedly. There have been too many incidents where doctors and others engaged in providing medical care cited rules and procedures as their only communication to the patient. They filled out paperwork and routinely turned away anyone whose needs could not be clearly addressed by approved procedures. They offered narcotics and tests and specialist referrals that took months to materialize, were performed, and produced results that were ignored and not followed up on. She has further discovered that she no longer has access to effective representation by elected officials that can do anything to intervene on a citizen’s behalf.

For over 40 adult years, she worked hard, paid her taxes, always voted, and never hesitated to contact her political representatives when government services were delayed or inefficient. This process, she says, has stopped working. It seems to her now, that everyone she can expect to encounter through her old age works for the government, and acts more and more like the citizens of the communist country she grew up in, like chattel. This is why, she says, the fear is back. It is the fear of soulless automatons who thoughtlessly follow their master’s rules and do not see another human being when they look at her.

How much of this, I ask myself, is an echo of her past, and how much based on the current reality? Is there really much difference between advanced socialism and communism? There are some people who’ve received satisfactory medical care here in recent years. I’ve spoken to them. They were all highly successful, well known, and they were all men. I have not heard a happy patient story from an average citizen, or from a woman, in many years. The truly wealthy all leave the country for medical care.

How much does it take, I wonder, for those of us who haven’t been terrorized, to learn to be afraid?

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