Category Archives: Science & Technology

Mr. Web 2.0 addresses rights to Web 2.0 service mark

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Tim O'Reilly returned from vacation to a firestorm of concern and penned this thoughtful reply

I thought it was a nicely reasoned, rational reply to the brushfire of angry commentary, but unfortunately did not really address the key concern of many which is that enforcing rights to "Web 2.0" *appears* to be outside of the spirit of Web 2.0 as representing open, freewheeling, new age business models. He seems to say this is only a conference thing but that does not jive with the more sweeping claims to "Web 2.0" that the staff replies seem to be addressing.

I think this may be especially true of those in the EU who are not as familiar with the O'Reilly name and sterling reputation.

It's easy for me to say but I think there is more to be gained from the positive publicity that will follow dropping the claim on the mark than from fighting to own it.

I think I've spent enough time worrying over this one – O'Reilly is a fine company and will handle this reasonably.

Fiddling while O’Reilly Rome burns?

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Poor Tim O’Reilly. He heads out on vacation and perhaps still unknown to him a firestorm of protest erupts overnight over his company’s decision to fight to protect their ownership of service mark “Web 2.0 Conference”.

I’m sure the O’ staff is upset and worried, but their statements are not managing to comfort the BlogBarbarians at the gate who grew very hostile very fast.

Though I’m generally in the “support” camp, feeling this is greatly overblown by detractors (which is part of why blog land is so enjoyable). I wonder if folks are doing a bit of fiddling over there while O’Rome burns. Clearly people feel that it’s not in the spirit of Web 2.0 to try to *own* the name “Web 2.0”.

This issue appears to have struck a strong chord and staff would be well advised to lay the groundwork for a retraction (rather than the groundwork for arguments in favor of the action).

Retraction is the logical step by Tim to avoid a PR disaster. Instead staff and even the inimitable John Battelle seem to be saying “we were right and when his 2.holiness returns he’ll rescue us from the situation”.

I’d bet my own rights (or lack of them) to my own name that O’Reilly will pull the claim to “Web 2.0” almost as soon as he returns.

Copyright is copywrong in this case since you are protecting more long term profits by … NOT fighting for this as an O’Reilly mark. Given the level of hostility NOW, think of the blog response if they actually go court on this issue !?!

UPDATE:  Here’s the resolution, which is very reasonable IMHO.   He’s only going to hassle this for “confusingly similar” conferences.

The Downloadable Brain era

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Some have suggested quite reasonably that the "next" really significant step in human evolution is the computerization of our brain functions, and that we'll usher in this downloadable brain era in about 30-70 years.  

Once humans have a process to "download" our brains into machines, or perhaps simply create processes where machines have their own consciousnesses, many of the challenges facing humanity could go away – perhaps overnight.     Concepts like health, water, food, fuel, and population will change as increasing numbers of societal participants will need few resources other than enough power to sustain their electronic consciousness .

For reasons I don't understand this sounds fanciful or even foolish to many who fail to realize or acknowledge the degree to which we NOW rely on machine intelligence.   From simple calculators and spell checkers to satellite photos to internet searches and computer models of climate our information gathering and processing is enhanced via machine processes.  

Sure, the leap to conscious machines is much larger but I'd suggest it will not prove qualitatively different from the subtle enhancements machines now bring to the table of conscious thought.

I'm just looking forward to playing perfect chess games every time. 

Playstation 5 = Human Brain says leading UK futurist

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Playstation 5 , said leading UK futurist Pearson, will be as powerful as a human brain.  He notes the dramatic increase in power as video games evolve, and predicts that by 2050 we'll be able to download our brains into computers.    Combine this notion with the recent brain blueprint experiments for a neat look into the probably future of …. self.  

The implications are nothing short of staggering for a world filled with machine housed consciousnesses, communicating at near light speed via global networks.  

How would these entities, perhaps AKA "you and me", view those who have chosen NOT to download into the machines?     I'm guessing favorably unless the physical entities became threatening which would seem unlikely.  Machines – conscious and otherwise – by that time will be so capable that it seems unlikely serious conflict would be to anybody's advantage.

I just hope I can make it to 2050 and have enough cash for the download.  Pearson think's it'll take 25 MORE years before the procedure becomes cheap enough to be routine. 

The Elegance of Efficiency. More Mediocrity NOW!

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I'm smashing up some concrete steps so I can repair them by pouring fresh concrete, and noting that the previous fellow (or hardy concrete pouring gal c1911-1950) did not have the benefit of Quickrete premixed bags to which I just add water, mix in wheelbarrow, and pour.  

They probably had limited concrete expertise as I'm finding big chunks of rock, no rebar material (metal to help strengthen the hardened concrete), and even a glass bottle buried in the steps.  Even I wouldn't toss in a bottle…but….

But the point is that that hardy concoction worked well for many, many decades.   It was a mediocre job but it was the RIGHT job.   Probably close to the same project lifespan as if they'd had the world's BEST concrete people working on the project – and even if the BEST concrete people's job would have lasted forever, it's likely somebody might have come in to remodel or otherwise destroy the "perfect" job.

The moral of the story is that in most cases the "perfect" job is NOT THE BEST THING TO DO!  In almost all endeavors it's better to have much higher levels of mediocre production than a modest level of high class production. 

"But would you want a doctor who is removing your spleen to believe in your principle of mediocrity?"  You ask, expecting me to say …. "that is an exception".

 It's not an exception and neither is national defense spending, which is absurdly expensive partly for political reasons but mostly because mediocrity is not valued highly enough in this venue either. 

I say we need MORE mediocrity in almost ALL things, especially those where risk aversion is most expensive such as national defense and offense, health care, and social security – our triple threat national budget breakers.  

Most of the world lives (and dies) with very modest levels of health care.  Here in the luxury world we can live a few years longer thanks to super advanced medical procedures, though most of  us squander those benefits with lifestyle decisions like smoking, overeating, and poor excersize habits.

The case for the massive interventions and high level expensive healthcare options we insist on in the first world is not only questionable from a practical standpoint due to very low ROI for high level interventions – it's questionable from a moral one – at least until the majority of people in the world have *basic* health care.

Homeopathy – it doesn’t work so why do so many people believe in it?

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This is a very nice clear thinking explanation of why smart people believe in nonsensical remedies like homeopathy.      In his book "Why people believe weird things", Shermer cleverly points out that many of our perceptions of how the world works come from childhood experiences and observations and contexts.  Later, rather than truly apply critical thinking to our notions, most of us simply work to rationalize those childhood perceptions using a scientific method tool box.     I'd suggest a good test of a clear thinking person is that they will, over time, collect evidence about their cherished beliefs and will tend to change their mind about a variety of things based on that growing body of emperical evidence.

Perfect Search = Advertising problems?

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Issues about Search are generally and wrongly presented as technological or computer challenges when in fact they are best viewed as *advertising* challenges.     Ultimately the search winner will be the advertising winner  (Now that winner is Google with Yahoo, MSN, and ASK working hard to catch up).  I'm suspicious that innovation is now driven more by advertising than by "quality search" considerations.  Certainly innovation is now mostly *funded* by advertising and bets placed on the quest for ad dollars.  

I suggested in an email exchange recently:

…. a "perfect" search engine set up like Google would make much less *directly* from ads since it would always deliver a perfect organic (ad free) result.   I suppose in some cases there would ALSO be a perfect ad match, but there is an interesting natural tension between profit, search quality, and market share.

Tom observed in response:

…let's assume a perfect search result is one where each search result has a bit of information that's of interest to the searcher; and since it's perfect, the search engine has gone over the results and found superficially similar results that don't contribute new information content, ranked the results according to useful information content, and generally done a perfect job.  I think there's still room for product promotion in there, especially if I'm looking for a product, which I increasingly do on the 'Net.

I replied:
I agree if we ssume as below that perfect search still does not really match us exactly to our query. But I'm more optimistic about search and think that when combined with personal histories and other inputs like query refinements, it'll come close to reading our query intention with extreme accuracy.    People would still BUY stuff as a result of search but it would be hard to use the existing models for advertising which associate only those willing to pay with the relevant results lists. 

“With enough money … current technology could compute the billions of neurons in the brain”

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Thanks to Politech for pointing out this remarkable attempt to Blueprint the Human Brain using high speed computing.   I'll be very surprised if we can't duplicate human style thinking within a generation.  In fact I'm optimistic that machines will so far exceed our abilities that many complex problems will have solutions available to us as part of this process.  I'm not nearly as optimistic that we'll accept/implement these solutions.   Many pressing global problems are solvable NOW, but the forces of ignorance, selfishness, and politics prevent the implementation.