Jeremy is always coming up with provocative notions about the way the evolving web is changing things … and fast. I hope he is right that we are on the verge of a new publishing paradigm that falls largely out of control of the “big guys”. He’s lucky and wins either way with one of the top tech blogs in the world OR as a Yahoo guy.

It’s certainly true that we are not yet close to “great” information environments for various groups of humans.

Forums were becoming great as niche interest sites, but many have become crap now that the smart people all went off blogging.

Blogs have helped to allow more of a focus on good thinkers thinking, but even good blogging is one sided, often superficial and fairly unstructured, and rarely “user centric”.

Websites are structured and often info rich but (I certainly include my own sites) working way too hard to please Google, & Yahoo & revenue sources. Money is definitely trumping quality on the web in a HUGE way, I think far more than most users realize. *Most* websites exist to turn a buck, and even great hobby sites are often co-opted by the profit motive. That’s not necessarily bad, but it’s certainly makes them less inclined to focus on what a user will NEED vs what a user will BUY.

Where are all the users in all this mess?

Surfing for something that isn’t there yet.

A lot of concern over this item at boing-boing suggesting Wal Mart is racist due to a recommendation that suggests an association of “Planet of the Apes” with Martin Luther King and other African American heroes.

…ONLY ONE PROBLEM… (prying the DVD from my cold, dead hands….)

As any fan of both Planet of the Apes and MLK would know, this association is reasonable and flattering if taken in the intended sense.

Yet another great example of how artificial intelligence (ie the algo choosing the similar selections) is better than human intelligence*, but we humans are just TOO STUPID TO GET IT.

The references ARE intentional, but not suggesting African Americans = Apes.

This clever algo has CORRECTLY determined that Planet of the Apes has a powerful allegorical theme suggesting that racism and discrimination are fundamentally wrong …. and that these are the same notions of … the people on the list!

I can’t wait for the computers to take over, there will be so much less explaining to do!

*Example TWO: Try playing chess against a modern computer.
*Example THREE Try playing ANY game of intellect, even those that have a large component of chance, against a computer.

Today’s profundity is this: We need to create charity giving and poverty reduction mechanisms that are easy to scale. I actually think it’s a profound idea. Companies like Wal-Mart, Google, and Ebay are masterworks of complex, scalable, problem solving architectures. The use interchangeable programs/parts/stores/data centers/etc to make it much cheaper and easier to build up capacity, production, and distribution.

Contrast this with, for example, the massive public works programs of the “War on Poverty” or Agency for International Development. Although it’s now common practice to avoid massive projects that tend to create their own problems and leave many concerns unaddressed, this may be getting replaced too often with thinking small which leads to labor intensive, small solutions that don’t really do much for the big picture.

This began as an exchange with Matt at Google when I suggested taking charity donations in exchange for Dennis Hwang’s signed Google logos, which have quickly become one of earth’s most viewed art forms. Matt correctly noted that this was a nice idea, but hard to scale (ie there are only so many Dennis Hwang original logos).

So, what are these scalable solutions? For the undeveloped world Micro loans appear to be one such success story. These are small loans that enable “small time” capitalists to get a start in areas where cultural and economic barriers are illogical and substantial. I’m not convinced this approach can work in the USA as well as 3rd world because the barriers here tend to be personal rather than institutional.

A good test of the scalability of Micro loans is in progress now that EBAY founders are pouring money into that effort. Good for them!

I just posted the points below note to the excellent Matt Cutts at his blog. Citing the official Google blog, even Matt is characterizing the fact that Google won’t change the algo for AOL as an indication they have not jumped the shark or done anything odd.

1) With all due respect to Marissa and Google officialdom, one of the reasons we read you, Zawodny, and Scoble is to get the “real story” rather than the one the PR mavens and corporate legal department have edited. I think I’m still with Battelle on this which means “concerned”.

2) The problem points were not clarified by Marissa. If AOL content has ranking problems and is reviewed by insiders it confers an incredible advantage to AOL content. Why? Because the algo has imperfections. If the insider review simply determines that “AOL’s dogfood section has 302 redirection problems” Google’s given AOL a LOT more than one gets by simply memorizing the guidelines and your posts. I understand this type of help has been given to large advertisers for some time but that is no consolation to the rest of us.

3) I hope Google takes Danny’s (SES) advice and initiates a paid review system for all sites. Charge the big ones more to help subsidize the mom and pop reviews. At the point where special treatment was given to the big guys Google slipped. Paid review is a way to regain that trust.

Call me old school, but I can’t help but think the current obsession with internet video will prove costly in terms of clogging up networks and will not gain mass popularity for some time.

The information internet is revolutionary while the video internet is simply a change in formats with probable reduction in the quality of signal and content.

I predict that the big deal Video thing Google is announcing tomorrow will result in “no big deal”, but… I’ve been wrong before.

Post moved to Technology Report, my new technology blog.

New Year’s Eve brought some great conversation to our dinner table last night.

My holiday tradition is to research things after these talks and send out emails clarifying my views. This year’s was a … long one… and I’m going to blog it over the next few days so all that effort is etched in the eternal stone of the active and archived internet:

The big picture. Geopolitical issues for us are somewhat abstract. Not so for people in Iraq, or the far, far greater suffering people in Africa, India and other areas of extreme poverty across the globe.

Although I engage in the politically charged debates about this stuff and enjoy it I’m increasingly and deeply ashamed and concerned by the polarization and roadblocks to progress that they cause. These debates, on a collective national level, interfere GREATLY with all of us coming together on the obvious “low hanging fruit” solutions to pressing global problems such as “better water supplies for developing world” and “Natural disaster relief”. Contention is fun but often it is not productive.

It’s ironic, tragic, and very fundamentally immoral that we Americans spend more time on the rights of Jose Padilla than the rights of a starving child in the Congo. We can help change this.