Text and Hubris

The difference between Apple as an evil empire and Microsoft as an evil empire player is simple. Where Microsoft’s technology was often a cheap imitation of what was already available in superior products, Apple’s technology continues to be solid, forward-thinking, and well designed. The game has changed and advocates of the open Internet as a creative platform need to step up.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Microsoft has changed a lot. I am no longer embarrassed to dual boot and I do find MS Office 2010 to be a fantastic suite of applications. In a lot of ways, Microsoft has done a lot to repair an image that needed it. That impetus for change didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen without an economic incentive. The same is true of Apple. If you want to help stop the proliferation of dumb licenses, help make the competition better. I am not asking you to code. I am not asking you to become a software designer. I am not even asking you to switch operating systems. I am just suggesting you look at the tools available and decide what works the best not just in the short term, but for the long haul. Use the open tools that are available or push your vendors to create standards-compliant products that can compete.

I know it is hard to compete with a free product. Then again, I don’t really think Apple’s iBook Author software is free. It is, potentially, the most expensive software available today. It pre-emptively takes full commercial control of any creative work designed in the software. I keep reading these arguments that try to liken it to a publisher buying a book and sharing the profits. Some point to Amazon’s publishing its restrictions that I would also strongly suggest everyone pay careful attention to. That said, as far as I am aware, Amazon isn’t dictating licensing based on a software package. I am able to create my work using whatever software I see fit. I can then shop my work to other publishers or sell my creation myself. Amazon only cares when they are the method by which I choose to sell, and that (like choosing Apple as a channel) is purely the author’s prerogative. More realistically, Apple’s stance would be like Microsoft demanding the right to sell and publish every commercial novel that was written with MS Word.

Hmmm….on second thought, let’s not give Microsoft any ideas. I am not so sure they have changed that much.

Jaron Lanier (author of You Are Not a Gadget) had an interesting take on the SOPA blackouts and Web activism. His article, “The False Ideals of the Web,” led to the reflections below.

I know that Lanier has his axe to grind and that is all well and good. We all do. I even agree with most of what he has to say. It is dangerous to frame any discussion in regard to regulating the Internet purely in terms of black and white. This is especially true when we are talking about battles between corporate interests. Several of the companies that oppose SOPA have less than stellar track records when it comes to supporting an open Internet community. In their continued attempt to enact a form of modern day enclosure on the content their users create they often end up working against the very ideals that first allowed them to grow and prosper. He and I have no disagreement in this regard, whatsoever.

Since we agree that much of the opposition to SOPA comes from companies with specific economic goals, I have to admit I was surprised by the direction his piece took. Lanier’s assumption that the argument against SOPA is somehow about the maintenance or worship of “free” content is completely off the mark. In fact, I would say just the opposite. Opposition to SOPA is about making sure that content creators, of any size, can continue to reach users. For some, this is merely about switching corporate gatekeepers where “new media” behemoths take the place of “old media” behemoths. For others, it is about preserving a creator’s ability to openly share content free from any gatekeepers without the fear of costly lawsuits that would essentially eliminate any chance they would have to share their work.

Google and Facebook do not oppose SOPA because they are the “good guys.” They oppose SOPA because it’s costly. That’s it. They may blanket us in the pretty rhetoric of openness and freedom but, ultimately, they’re talking about the bottom line. In all honesty, they probably could survive a post-SOPA world albeit in much different capacity. They have the financial strength to create licensing agreements with the MPAA and RIAA. The rest of us don’t have that luxury.

The Internet is bigger than Google or Facebook. It is bigger than any single company and, personally, I hope it always remains that way. In this case, the profits of these powerful companies align with the best interests of the Internet community and that works in everyone’s favor. We already know that this won’t be the case forever, though. Indeed, that is why I am heartened by the very thing that seemed to scare Lanier: the backlash against companies that supported SOPA. I am ardent supporter of free speech, but free speech involves responsibility. I believe organizations and people have a right to choose where they spend their money. If a company supports practices that I disagree with, I have the right to not patronize that company. I also have the right to share that disagreement with others. Is this behavior the beginning form of some sort of orthodoxy? Perhaps, it is. Is it any different than refusing to sign up for a website because you disagree with it polices? Not so much.

Lanier is right in arguing that there needs to be an aggressive look at models of payment for content beyond advertising. Information isn’t free even for those sites that provide content without cost. That’s one of the reasons why Wikipedia spends so much time asking for donations. I agree that we do sometimes get caught up in the “everything must be free” mentality and that there is still a long way to go in providing solid solutions to content creators of all sizes. Blaming “free” content, however, does nothing but play into the hands of those who support measures like SOPA. This not about an Internet without rules where content is merely a pointless commodity to be traded on the nearest torrent site. This is about an Internet where practical and sane content protections do not displace or harm a growing, vibrant, and increasingly important creative community that continues to push our boundaries and the possibilities of what technology and art can do regardless of their size of their pocketbooks or their lobbying firms.

I haven’t had a chance to read his book, yet. I am hoping to get it done this weekend. In any event, I do plan to be at this reading. Come early,though, it will be packed!

September 29, 2011 – 7:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
Neal Stephenson

In a special event co-sponsored by The Iowa City Public Library, Prairie Lights brings Science Fiction Writer Neal Stephenson to read from his new novel, Reamde.

Linked from the Iowa City Public Library

So much for that morning, eh?

After a chaotic week I found myself on the edge of a long weekend without my usual access to the Internet. I was, for several days, disconnected (I think I just shuddered a little). I could connect and interact in very basic ways but anything beyond that was all but completely impossible. Essentially, my communication stream became read-only. For a fellow used to living in a read-write universe, this was a true tragedy.

» Read the rest of this entry «

Okay, I have sent out a lot of invites. If you don’t see yours within a day drop me a note and I will resend it to you. I look forward to seeing many of you online. There were a few comments that I wanted to take time to respond to specifically. You’ll find them below. Once again, thank you for reading and for supporting D*.

Someone did mention that I sound a bit official in these posts so I want to stress that I am just a user. These opinions are mine alone and (except where linked) do not necessarily represent the opinions of the developers and staff of D*. Okay, moving on!

Shawn
The question is: how many other people will you be able to interact with on Diaspora? With everyone on Facebook, and many now obsessing over Google+, is there any more room for Diaspora?

While I think a lot of the craze for invites does have a lot to do with the “Ooooo…shiny” effect, I also think the heavy interest in the Diaspora project highlights a growing sense of unease that people have with Facebook and Google and how they run their platforms. I don’t think that Diaspora will supplant Facebook or Google in the near future but it definitely has a large enough base to keep everyone active and I think it has the real possibility of eventually reshaping our social networks. Imagine being able to join a pod built by your University or club or family (these are examples that Diaspora actually references). Getting to control and manage how you use your data and where you take it is an incredibly powerful thing in today’s environment and I think many people are just now beginning to realize that.

CRZ
You may have done a better job selling D* than the D* folks have. (Also, it sounds like you’ll actually send me an invite! I’ve been on their waiting list more months than I can remember….I’m still intrigued, but I haven’t been intrigued enough to be pushy about getting an invite. Also ALSO, the fact that D* would link here from their twitter feed just seems…I dunno, passive aggressive. But I can probably roll with all of this.)

First off, thanks! One of the things I found interesting about Diaspora when I first logged in was the fact that it did integrate with Twitter and Facebook. Now it’s fairly obvious that I won’t be using the Facebook option but I do use the Twitter option from time to time. From what I have read, the developers are not seeking to supplant these social giants. Rather they want to offer a better, more distributed, more open, vision of the social web. Essentially, they want to give us more options and let us choose. Now, it is my hope that this option takes the world by storm. I would point everyone to Yosem Companys (Diaspora’a Chief Evangelist) comments on this matter. What he says there is something that I have thought for a very long time and is one of the key reasons why I am so supportive of the Diaspora environment.

di Lampedusa
signed up for an alpha centuries ago, way before even people started talking about Google+, and I am still waiting… Lately I got an email asking me not to dispair, that the invite was coming soon, but I am still waiting.
Luckily, as you said, I can sign up in others’ experimental servers (but there’s no much activity there so far).
What do you do in Diaspora? Have you brought enough friends with you to have an active network?

My friends have been slowly trickling in, but I can’t say that my network was active enough based solely on friends who transferred to Diaspora (Obviously, things changed a bit today.). I didn’t need to rely solely on my existing contacts, however. Finding people with shared topics of interest in Diaspora is one of the easiest things to do. I just searched on a specific hashtag (say #photography) and added it to my followed tags list. Just like Twitter, this allowed me to find people posting on topics of interest and respond in kind. That hashtag list became a feed I could follow and add people accordingly. I think this is what Google had in mind for Sparks as well but that implementation was nowhere near as solid. I used those lists to find people and content. I quickly realized that Diaspora had done an excellent job of attracting some truly incredible people from all walks of life. It was a very pleasant surprise to say the least.

Pio
I’ve been following the development of Diaspora* since its inception was made public and anticipating its arrival as well as spreading the news (as I have done with your review) I think that since fb has become such a ubiquitous means of communication, while hoping for Diaspora to bring about its demise, we should propagate becoming more conscious participants of the means on our hands (paying closer attention to privacy settings and limiting the data we provide fb’s databases with) instead of, however rightfully, decryig Zuckerberg’s policies.

If you read Yosem’s comments above I think they offer a view that I can stand behind. There was a time when AOL was ubiquitous and I was never on that, either. I still had my access (ah, my SLIP account from Primenet.com) and that was enough. That said, I wholeheartedly agree that people should press on Facebook to increase its privacy controls and that they should educate themselves about the controls that already exist. The EFF has done some excellent work in this area helping users figure out FB’s somewhat complicated settings and FB has begun to simply things which is also a positive. By offering a choice, Diaspora continues to push FB in the right direction. If anything this serves as a benefit for users all across the social web.