Musings & Meanderings

There’ve been many rounds of conversation in recent years about the term users. Many dislike it intensely. I’ve always had a ‘…just don’t call me late for dinner’ attitude to this term, finding it perfectly appropriate in some circumstances and less so in others. Instead of looking for an alternative generic term that encompasses every single person using a computer for any reason, I usually try to make the terminology congruent with the activity. Sort of an ‘it is what it does’ approach.

Here are some examples of terms I use:

1. audience
2. citizen
3. constituent
4. contributor
5. customer
6. member
7. participant
8. service provider
9. user
10. vendor
11. viewer
12. visitor

Last week’s conversation about Glam, on Michael Arrington’s and Jeff Jarvis’s blogs (here and here), got me thinking about this again, and realizing just how overly broad the definitions of our different roles here is. In many ways, those of us who’ve been around for some time still tend to think of geeks vs non-techs in terms of both support and business, of active users vs lurkers (and worse) in terms of forums and communities, and so on. These two-sided definitions make sense when observing and comprehending online activity from the perspective of personal experience. The more you broaden that perspective, however, the more variant roles and activities become, begging further definition. Beyond a core group, whether it’s social or special interest or a dev team, are far more complex communities and, further, entire societies.

Glam, for example, illustrates how increasingly professional bloggers and web publishers have become sub-contractors for advertisers. This may be a fairly traditional media model, but the old publishing definitions of writer and reader don’t fit the same way here. Whether we’re offering opinion, analysis, or entertainment online, the moment we start selling advertising we become a vendor of space in a way closer to a landlord model than to any other. The advertiser isn’t paying us for our attention, but for the numbers of other ‘eyeballs’ we can attract. So Glam and similar sites are, in effect, supporting a range of commercial activity that spans the entire marketing and media gamut from product to customer. Glam has users and its users have users, and so on.

The media model is one of the more complex ones, especially where it overlaps with pure free speech, but there are many other ecosystems developing in which one of the activities only is the exchange of goods and/or services. The difficulty with new role definitions here is that we each can play far more of them, and in more ways, than ever before. User, whether you love, hate, or are indifferent to the term, doesn’t come close to recognizing the range of multiple roles of a billion people beginning to create new ecocosms. There are hundreds of categories and thousands of definitions of hardware and software. There are endless business and job categories. Shouldn’t we have at least as many for the users? There are more of us, doing more various things, than in either of the first 2 groups, which some of us are also part of.

Me Tarzan …you Jane. See Spot run …to get online and click here? Machines are awesome, something I’ve believed in since I discovering Lotus 123 and DBase II about 25 years ago. Free societies, with free speech and free enterprise, are pretty awesome too. Advancing our comprehension of, and communication about, the latter up to the level of the former, is a goal worth pursuing, imo. What do you think?

Matt posts Best Open Source Social Networking awarded to WordPress by Packt Publishing. Wtg!

Check out the numbers in A Hollow Victory Microsoft which says “the fact is that open source has won this battle”. There’s a lot of spin in this post, which refers only to web hosting software, rather than the OS upon which Microsoft’s empire is built, but the basis is real. Unix and Apache are increasingly adopted by enterprise developers because they work, and new development growth continues to be increasingly based on open source vs Windows.

Open source isn’t about free. It’s about self sufficiency and community. It is about building things for ourselves instead of serving a master.

The anonymous WordPress blog to which I linked above, called There Is No Government Like No Government, claims to be about anarchy, yet is rich with the political cant of the extreme left, with an occasional right wing position thrown in. Does anyone other than me find this ironically amusing?

There’s a hidden chasm in many a segment of open source communities which is tied to political agendas (qu’elle surprise). Many community members bristle at big business, and many corporations deserve it, exhibiting intent to capitalize on free software, as they do on the free content millions of individuals create on the web every day. Open source community members are far more likely to be on the political left than the right. Nevertheless there is a core of practitioners of true free enterprise, which is apolitical. Here new economic models are needed, and here casting aside canned political agendas can make a great difference for all of us.

Open source developers who are apolitical shouldn’t worry about capitalistic opportunism, other than in the aspect in which it gains baseless dominance through big government support, regardless of which party is in power. The fact that open source has the momentum it does, is based on achievement and performance, not politics. Keep that thought.

We’re too smart and sophisticated to fall for a scam, right? Even if that is true, can you say the same thing for everyone you know and care about who uses a computer?

‘Rasslin’ with people who mean us harm is a pretty brave thing to do, and I’m grateful to those who take it on for all of us.

We can each do something every day to make the world we share a better place. Helping one another isn’t a formal obligation or duty, it’s an exercise of free will. Snoskred does more than her share.

From Please Help! What You Can Do To Stop Internet Scammers NOW.…

“Educating people about scams online is one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life, because every time I think the word is getting out proof comes back to me as a surprise that it is not.
I have the knowledge to stop people from being scammed but it still isn’t enough. I can’t make the word go far enough. I can’t seem to get other people to write about the scams and link back to information I have here on the site about them.
The elderly, the stay at home Mom’s, the disabled, the depressed, the lonely, the vulnerable - these are the people who get scammed the most.”

You can read more about Snoskred’s scambaiting activities here
Snoskred and Sephy’s new site Scam Warning.

Clay Shirky recently posted a brief message on achieving balance between arrogance and humility as a function of successful design. Arrogance and humility are powerful words. Our definitions of them vary as widely as do our definitions of success. In the commentary, I came across a suggestion to replace the word ‘humility’ with ‘empathy’. My first thought was that perhaps the author was misinterpreting the intended meaning of humility in the post, associating it with humiliation instead of with being humble. How differently we define these things!

To be humble, in my understanding, is to acknowledge ourselves in the context of God (secular or otherwise), of all life, including human life, of our universe, including all that is knowable to us and all that is not. Humility is not a denial or denigration of self, but rather a means of unity with a whole greater than any one of us. Although it is a concept taught as a virtue in many religions, it does not require a theological framework from any one, or any religion, to be understood.

Empathy is a more modern concept. It is the idea that you can do more than observe me and try to deduce something about me. By empathizing you can supposedly feel what I feel. Is this possible? Can you understand me well enough to feel what I feel? If you can, does this mean you can think as I think? That you can understand my motivations, actions, and responses in the same way I do? The answer to all these questions is no. Even a ‘psychic’ does not profess to achieve more than occasional and limited forays into the mind or soul of another.

So is empathy merely a buzzword? A useful term for opportunists? Did you believe Bill Clinton when he looked into the camera and said, “I feel your pain?”. Is it possible that this word is misused and that it can represent a concept of value which is generally not well understood?

In my view, empathy is a form of intimacy, not in the Biblical sense, or in any metaphysical way, but on an emotional level. The empathy may have a basis in familiarity, but it is intimacy which makes it true empathy.

You watch your child, rushing forward with an eager face raised high, stumble on an obstacle, and you experience the fall on a visceral level. I have had a similar experience watching an athlete go down. My imagination expands as far as my experience and knowledge allows. If, for example, I’ve heard the crunch of tearing cartilage in my own joint, my memory can instantly supply the sound. From my knowledge, I can also supply enough personal understanding of the person with whom I am empathizing to contextualize in time. How it feels to fall unexpectedly related to age, previous falls and injuries, how long it will take to heal and forget. Layers of meaning … an entire tapestry of past present and future context.

Empathy for strangers, especially those with whom we do not personally identify, on some level, is really very rare. It is difficult to do unilaterally, because strangers are, more often than not, entirely discomfited by the intense observation required. The projection of intimacy of any sort can be frightening. People who have a talent for it usually learn to keep that talent hidden, and to only reveal it in specific circumstances, usually presented as prescience or acumen.

There’s a less intense, and therefore easier, level of empathy, which is limited to a very specific context based on similar circumstances. We may both be parents of small children and recognize the commonality of what this demands of us each day. We may attend the same school or work for the same employer or be the same age or share the same cultural background, and so on. Empathizing in limited and contained ways with a peer group is natural for most of us. Empathizing with strangers is not.

Empathy, which can give us a valuable understanding of one another, is not a socially passive trait. On the opposite face of empathy is respect. We need respect as an active social trait in order to co-exist peacefully, and we need empathy to co-exist happily.

I believe that we can be highly empathetic without arrogance but not without humility. Arrogance, however, supports not only unshakable belief in knowing what others want, but also claiming the right to decide for them. That is, considered closely, a breathtaking claim to some of us. To decide for others through leadership based solely on arrogance is only possible through the use of force. To decide for others based on the humble understanding that their lives have at least the same value as our own, is to make a contribution of which we can be proud.

I may be a foreigner, with limited knowledge of the details of American politics, but I recognize propaganda when I see it.

Lawrence Lessig has been one of my reads since I joined the blogosphere because of his work in the copyright arena, and I consider his contributions to freedom in online publishing valuable. I approached his introduction of a new and different area of study and specialty with interest.

The hour I spent yesterday listening to the Corruption Lecture - Alpha Version was an emotionally turbulent one. I listened only once, and do not have a transcript; the following references to the content represent my personal impressions.

The presentation opens with, and is wrapped in, an (unpaid, I assume) advertisement for Al Gore’s book. This is followed by a paean to the cause of global warming which does not state openly, but leaves the listener/viewer to draw, the conclusion that refutation of global warming is a symptom of corruption. Throughout, images of prominent Democrats glow like angels while those of Republicans are offered in a demonic light. Visages of America’s founding fathers which are shown are as stern, forbidding, and authoritarian looking as any I’ve ever seen. No criticism is cast on these venerable personages directly; there is only one non-laudatory but essential statement (which hooks to the conclusion) proposing that those gentlemen would never have envisioned the world we live in today, with its specific challenges. The conclusion is that “re-making our constitution” is the work which Professor Lessig (and whoever else is included in his plural ‘we’) considers important and will be undertaking over the next 10 years.

All of this political dogma is wrapped around an introduction to the topic of corruption. This topic is initially presented from a view of personal and societal responsibility, in a very powerful way, a way which should lead naturally to a focus on morality. Instead, the flow is jarringly interrupted by the substitution of the word money for morality. We are treated to images of the long suffering proletariat, in the form of elementary school teachers and firemen, alternating with oppressor images, which include the sugar and pharmaceutical industries as well as Cliff Richards and Disney aka Mickey Mouse. There is a pointed statement to the effect that this study of corruption will be only about money. After this statement the focus shifts to defining political corruption in terms of indirect influence. Eventually it skips across a small menu of specific issues, such as the limited influence of politics on the Supreme Court, and campaign finance reform.

At the end, I am left with a feeling of betrayal and my abiding concern about schools and education.

I am hardly surprised by Lawrence Lessig’s political beliefs, nor is this the first shameless propaganda I’ve heard from any faction of the political spectrum. If I was interested in reading political views, however, I would be at RedState or DailyKos.

Were I an American, I’d have a difficult personal challenge in voting. Both political parties have held power through my lifetime, and both have increased government spending, as well as inappropriate involvement in the private affairs of individuals. I believe that a non-partisan study of corruption and political influence could have value, and also that both of these factors are directly tied to morality and personal responsibility, and therein to freedom.

The issue that disturbs me deeply is that this piece is presented as an embarkation point for scholastic study by a prominent academic. It isn’t a new issue either, and is intrinsically related to censorship, the banning of books, and the re-writing of history. My support of free speech, freedom of public information, and open access is fervent and based on classically conservative views, which include social responsibility and respect for the public trust. We are accustomed to the concept of betrayal by politicians, yet often oblivious to the same concept in regard to teachers.

What we don’t know can hurt us.