Xark!

Waiting for Fireworks

More here.

Einstein says...

Make your own.

Bye-bye, George

Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo Diddley

I walked 47 miles of barbed wire,
Used a cobra snake for a neck tie.
Got a brand new house on the roadside,
Made out of rattlesnake hide.
I got a brand new chimney made on top,
Made out of human skulls.
Now come on darling let's take a little walk, tell me,
Who do you love.

Just plain scary

This is written to have strong emotional impact, but is definitely something to think about:

Bruce Schneier's latest Wired essay:  Our Data, Ourselves.

21 accents

Actress Amy Walker does a bunch of different accents in this video, including one that purports to be from Charleston, SC. It's the only one that didn't sound quite right to me.

Friday Morning Paranoia

Customs agents in the US, UK and several other countries can search your laptop, your cell phone, your PDA, etc.   

Here's an essay on dealing with it.

"Lies we tell kids"

I'm a big Paul Graham essay fan.  I don't always agree with him but I do consistently find his essays very thought provoking and often learn something new about myself or the world by thinking about them.

Here's his latest:  Lies we tell kids.

It's not only useful if you're interested in kids but also if you're interested in figuring out how the lies you were told growing up might still affect you.

Where does Google go next?

A bit away from recent Xark topics, but "there are no unrelated topics", right?

A friend of mine recently sent some commentary on the future of Google.  This provoked more of a rant than I usually indulge so I thought I'd post it here:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/09/technology/where_does_google_go.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008051205

 

I'm amazed at how many "business experts" who write for the papers seem to want cool little startups to become IBM.  I've worked at IBM.  "I" doesn't stand for "Innovation", despite the number of patents they file.  "I" stands for "Inertia".  Inertia can be useful, but don't mistake it for something else.

As an example of their business acumen, these commentators write things like:

As an example, the company spends at least $14 per employee per day on all that free food. At 19,000 employees, that works out to $67 million a year, or about 20 cents per share that would drop to the bottom line if Google were to have the temerity to ask its workers - shudder - to pay for their own meals. Twenty cents is a trifle; analysts expect 2008 earnings of nearly $20 per share. But in a pinch? No-brainer.

So, let's analyze that:  Let's say an average employee costs a fully burdened $85/hr.  (That's a substantial but not outrageous fully-burdened salary+bennies in a small company in MA..  I'm sure the numbers are slightly different in Silicon Valley.)

Therefore, Google pays employees an extra 9.8 minutes per day.  Do you think they make that back?  Somehow I suspect they do.  They might, actually - shudder - recover 20 minutes per day in travel to and from lunch.  No, of course travel time doesn't come out of the company time -- they get their 8 hours anyway.  But would they like 8.15?  How about 8.3?  It also encourages employees to eat together.  It's amazing what problems get solved over food.  Was that time work time or lunch time? If the company benefits it's certainly worth paying for.

At 20 minutes "extra" per day for $14, Google would be achieving an ROI of 102%.  And this Super Genius says, cutting that is an "no-brainer". I agree, that would indeed be a "no-brain" decision, and I'm ignoring the whole "work environment" type benefits. 

The other thing these guys like to insult is the whole lack of central control.  They view it as "It's time to grow up, kids" and give examples of all the waste lack of control engenders.  Obviously, the guys who are supposed to be in charge don't know what they're doing -- otherwise they'd obviously be telling people exactly what to do and when.

"You can't manage what you can't control"  is quite true.  But perhaps there are other forms of control than "allocation of resources" as taught first thing in MBA schools. Perhaps the people in charge at Google aren't actually *ignorant* of business management, they just disagree.

Perhaps a leader might engage minds and say "we're moving in that direction".  Is that control?  I think so.  In fact, I think it's *more* control than allocating resources.  If you get people enrolled in an idea and a goal you don't *have* to spend your time micro-managing.  Think JFK's space race.  Think of the X-prize competition.

In reality, the central planning style of control has some benefits and some drawbacks (I've recently been working with a bunch of Russians who came of age under the Soviet Union -- you should hear *them* talk about central planning).  With central planning, you theoretically don't waste resources competing with yourself.  It's easier to set and uphold some standards.  Of course, you can often waste resources getting it wrong or following a central planners personal pet project or political agenda.  As for standards, sometimes they're a good idea, sometimes not.

Non-central planning results in waste of resources, failures of coordination and self-competition, but it means that when you get someone convinced to move in a direction, they are doing it because they think it's the right thing to do.  Besides, people doing the work (e.g. the Gmail team) might just have a wee bit more knowledge about how things work and in which direction they're moving than the central planning committee.  Perhaps, once upon a time the wee little worker peons couldn't see the big picture.  Now they can (ahem) Google it up.

Ultimately, if you look at companies as an ecosystem and apply some "survival of the fittest", projects under a "consensus" decision model might be starved by other projects, or killed or out-competed by other projects.  That doesn't happen in a central control company -- in a central control company, the whole company is starved or out-competed by another company.  That is, surely, a more efficient use of resources, right?

One thing these commentators glimpse, however, is how difficult it is to attract and retain good people as a company grows.  They like to attribute it to a company no longer being dynamic and attractive.  If a company has been following their advice, I'm sure that's true. However, a great deal of the problem isn't about "already done that" -- it is about sheer size. 

At 19,000 people, Google is a statistical approximation of the universe.  Variance from average is harder and harder the larger you get.  Of course, if Google acted like every other company they'd be, well, average, right?

Realistically, I don't think Google can make incremental changes towards being a "normal" company.  "Normal" is a different equilibrium point.  Google has found another, non-normal, equilibrium point.  If they move in small ways towards "Normal" they could seriously hurt themselves.

What Google has been doing for years -- and quite successfully -- is to create a blazing bonfire of creativity and productivity and then find a way to harness some of it as profit.  They use Internet scale harnesses and you don't fill that with regional scale energy.  The *have* to have a bonfire to sustain themselves.  They can fail 3 ways:  not being able to harness enough of the generated energy, not being able to generate enough energy to pull their harness, and the firewood budget growing too large for the harness to pull.

All of these projects -- even projects that "don't pay for themselves" -- contribute to the bonfire.  Do you take away the wood at the edges just because it's not contributing to the huge flames in the middle? If you do too much of that you'll have a mighty sorry bonfire.

Commentators such as this would have them place tight cost controls on their fire-wood budget.  If Google does that then they are dead -- there might be enough inertia to raise a new company from the ashes, it *won't* be the same company.

Google, intelligently, was offering a "blank check" for firewood -- as long as it keeps coming.

Husbands panicking on Mother's Day

Last week I worked with the page designer for Friday 5 to create a D.I.Y. Mother's Day card section, and then we uploaded some cards to my Friday 5 blog. There are different themes: Sentimental, Humorous, Little Kid, College Student, Husband. This morning I checked traffic just to see what was bringing people to the site, and found a common theme:

...Mothers%20Day%20Cards%20from%20Husband
...mothers%20day%20card%20from%20husband
...mothers%20day%20card%20downloadable%20from%20husband
...mother%27s%20day%20sentiments%20for%20wife
...mother%27s%20day%20sentiment%20wife
...what%20to%20write%20on%20your%20wifes%20mothers%20day%20card
...mother%27s%20day%20sentiment%20to%20wife
...mothers%20day%20cards%20husband%20to%20wife
...husband%20mother%20day%20card%20diy

Friday 5: For when you care enough to panic in the middle of the night and try to download a free piece of shit to cover your ass and keep you out of the doghouse.

GOP geography

Another great forward from Sabine...

Too busy

Long time no post.  I've been busy.  Too busy.

Good thing?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Two new ones from Sabine

Sabine doesn't do "the blog thing," but she will send around some pretty high-grade stuff from time to time. Like the photograph above. And the "Engineers' Guide to Cats" video below...

How we got here

Today's T-Shirt idea

Coming soon to a virtual store near you...

Where does Charleston fit into this?

From a Newsweek interview with Richard Florida, author of "Who's Your City? How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life":

Cities have always drawn talented people. Is the increase you're talking about unprecedented?
We don't have enough historical information to say. But certainly over the past three decades that we can track this, yes, it looks like a pronounced trend. The world is getting smaller, so more places can play in the world economy, but the number of places that play is fewer. If you think about what happened to the car industry or the electronics industry over the past 20 years, there used to be a car company or three companies in every country, and then there was globalization in that industry. Now GM and Ford and Nissan and Toyota are battling it out, while many companies fell by the wayside. I think the same thing is happening with urban areas. Every country used to have a dozen or two dozen great cities. Now people are saying, "It's a global world. I'm mobile and I can go to New York, London or Beijing, or Bangalore." We're picking from a smaller set of cities, not just nationally but globally. So the biggest cities in the world are getting bigger and more expensive...

<snip>

And what are those implications for policymakers?
We're becoming so divided that these propulsive centers of our economy are generating fear, anxiety, and resentment. People say, "The cities are where the yuppies, trendoids, and gays live. We have to move back to family values." And our public policy actually punishes cities, as we transfer wealth from them to our hinterlands. It's in the culture wars, the Red and Blue states—the spiky centers are all bright blue, while the places being left behind are deep red. Barack Obama appeals to people in the spiky centers, Hillary Clinton appeals to the people in Ohio being left behind, and John McCain appeals to people who are outside and resentful of this kind of change. Sooner or later in our world economy, we're going to need leaders willing address this, but until then it's just going to get worse and worse, more and more concentrated. I think the real leaders with their heads screwed on right are the mayors. Regardless of party, a lot of mayors are focused on building thriving economies and increasing the quality of life in their towns.

I've been hearing about this study and this guy for a while now. It seems a fascinating topic, and an interesting one for an odd little city like Charleston, which is seen one way by the gentry, another way by the tourists, and yet another way by the people who make the city go, many of whom came here from somewhere else.

God Bless America

.50-caliber rifle vs. lawn mower.

Nazis from Lugoff

My favorite (but nevertheless unusable) quote of the day comes from a charming and extremely well-mannered Southern lady tour guide in Camden, S.C., who was plugging an upcoming event called "Armies Through Time" (April 12-13), which features a bunch of historic re-enactors from various wars:

"The Nazis, you know, are all those people you know from Lugoff. The Romans are all from Hampton."

Just as I always suspected...

Because there aren't enough little opinions...

It's actually been a pretty busy news cycle, and there are a few things I'd like to get off my chest:

Seth Godin: Ideas that spread, win

I'm working up a long-form piece for the media blog and it required going back and transcribing portions of Seth Godin's 2003 talk at TED. His topic: Sliced Bread and Other Marketing Delights. It should say something that a 17-minute, 5-year-old lecture still comes across as fresh -- if not radical -- but that's kind of Godin's point. Sliced bread wasn't popular for the first 15 years after it was introduced.

I've included a partial transcript after the jump...

Creative Middle Class, narrative bias, mediocrity...

Some links this morning, because it's a day full of ideas...

TRUE FANS: If you've known Janet and me for any length of time, you've probably heard us talk about the need to turn these new-media/tech tools into a sustainable economic model we've referred to as "the creative middle class." In a nutshell: If you can eliminate the 20th century functions of "publisher" and "record label," then connect content creators to the "right" audience  in meaningful ways, it's possible to have millions of people earning all or most of their income via their creative work. Not getting rich, but living creative, sustainable, meaningful adult lives.

Now here comes Kevin Kelly with a piece I'm sharing and spreading via e-mail and Google. It's got good info, and plenty of business model ideas. Must reading (there's a lot of that going around).

PERILS OF MASTER NARRATIVE: Janet wrote a great post yesterday about the ridiculous oxbows mainstream media enters via group-think reliance on political coverage master narratives.  And we made a point of talking about alternatives to narrative journalism during our trip to Oxford.

As if to reinforce that point, the media narrative this morning is actually distorting what actually happened last night. Yes, Hillary Clinton won big in Ohio and Rhode Island and staved off disaster by salvaging a narrow win in the Texas primary. But Texas also had a Democratic caucus, and it appears that Obama is winning that slow vote by a big margin.

Net result? Obama entered the night with a delegate lead of between 150 and 159... and despite Clinton's "dramatic comeback" will leave this round of voting right where he started.

Hillary takes three of four primaries, and the two big states.  Yet the delegate spread didn't budge.  The possibilities seem to range from a high-single digit pick up for Hillary to the possibility of a net pick up for Obama. So, big headlines and buzz for Hillary, but the same stubborn picture on the pledged delegate front.

That's apparently too nuanced for CNN, where everything is a story about "momentum." Who has the momentum? How did they get it? Why did it move? Where does it hide? What's its favorite breakfast cereal? If momentum was an animal, what animal would it be? If Hillary's momentum and Barack's momentum got in a fight, which momentum would win?

On one level it's just silliness. On another, it's a tragedy. 

MEDIOCRITY: In our house there are very clear distinctions about which writer "belongs" to whom, based on who brought that writing into our house. Hence: I "own" Jay Rosen and Jon Taplin, but Janet "owns" Dave Weinberger and Seth Godin.  Here's Seth's latest (and obviously, Janet gets the credit, dammit):

There's a myth that all you need to do is outline your vision and prove it's right—then, quite suddenly, people will line up and support you.

In fact, the opposite is true. Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths... whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it's over.

If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued. The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it's unlikely it would be worth the journey. Persist.

Excellent advice.

Images of the road

So we're back from our tour of the Deep South: 7 days, 6 states and plenty of gas ($3.17 a gallon in Alabama).  I've taken some of my photographs and put them in a gallery. There was snow and cool architecture and plenty of new ideas and new friends. Check it out if you have time.

The contents of my brain

You want access to my head? Get on my Google Reader list -- the personal newswire I've constructed via The Googleborg. It's a competitive honor, and your elevation to it doesn't mean you've arrived. Just yesterday I dumped five blog/sites, and probably half the 60 or so remaining sources are on shaky ground.

Why? Because there's so much out there and my time is so limited. I didn't check my Reader from Monday afternoon at 4 until Saturday morning, and I had more than a thousand items waiting on me.

I could have dumped them all -- but look at the gems I would have missed!

(Links to the good stuff after the jump... to see the Google Reader items that I'm sharing with others, check the new widget on the Xark sidebar... any Xark authors or readers who want to post their Google Reader share lists here should e-mail me.)

Why we're always tired

Duty Calls, from the ever-popular xkcd.

The White Stuff

As broadcast this morning on my way to work at 8am:

"The good news is that the air is barely moving, so we have no appreciable wind chill.  The bad news is that it's currently negative seven degrees [Fahrenheit] without the wind chill."

Yeah, it's cold.  We've barely gotten a break since the last Packer game when Fox demonstrated that even Alaska was appreciably warmer than Green Bay right now or, as our Chamber of Commerce president put it, gave the impression that we're within a dog-sled trip of the north pole.

The cold, on its own, really isn't the problem.  People here apparently do know how to deal with cold.  But without even the occasional warm day, the snow doesn't melt.  The problems isn't heavy snowfalls, which we really haven't gotten a lot of, but rather snow accumulation.  Of course the cities all plow the roads, but now they're having to plow the snow piles so we can see around corners.  Heavy machinery and dump trucks started sneaking out about a week ago to start scooping the snow up and dumping it elsewhere.  (I want to know where those dump sites are, and I want a sled.)  They're having to dig out the fire hydrants.  When I went voting Tuesday at the local high school, traversing it's driveways felt like doing the trench run in Star Wars.  When an SUV ahead would turn a corner, it would immediately disappear from sight behind the snow piles.

14, 15... Blastoff!

Something about this little passage from Thus Spoke Agricola struck me, so I pass it along. It