extensions

Announced on the Twitter blog:

Summize is a popular service for searching Twitter and keeping up with emerging trends in real-time. Like Twitter, Summize offers an API so other products and services can filter the constant queue of updates in a variety of ways. The Summize service and API will be merged with our own and integrated under the Twitter brand.

There is an undeniable need to search, filter, and otherwise interact with the volumes of news and information being transmitted to Twitter every second. We will be adding search and its related features to the core offering of Twitter in the very near future. In the meantime, everyone is welcome to access search.twitter.com—there’s no need for a Twitter account.

It was a smart purchase and a good fit, something Twitter was absolutely lacking.

Still, the important question to me is, how is Twitter going to eventually make money? And will that decision completely ruin any chance of Twitter serving the public interest as a space for dialog and discourse?

“When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future…”

- Marshall McLuhan

I discovered the wonder of IRC today. Okay, before you laugh, I’ll have you know I was using LambaMOO when you young whippersnappers were in diapers!

But, all these years, never used IRC.

McLuhan’s quote is apropos, because IRC takes me back to the early days, when I first discovered how complex and fascinating technology really was, when the Internet was still a young lad. When we connected over phone lines with modems. When we used Lynx.

What’s old is new…

[Note: My essay, published on techPresident today.]

In some ways, it’s too early to write this post. Usually reflection takes place at the end of an event, but, as part of the Get FISA Right movement, I’m not so sure where the end really is…in fact, it’s moved so fast, I’m not even sure where it started.

The story of the Get FISA Right group has already been covered heavily in the press. Here’s the 30 second version: A group protesting Barack Obama’s decision to support the current FISA legislation appeared on his campaign website, and as tens of thousands of individuals joined, it became not only the largest group on his site, but a movement strong enough to force Obama to take notice. His response to the Get FISA Right group was a moment of validation; this became something real.

Maybe a bit too real, as I found myself on Fourth of July weekend sitting alone in a room on a conference call with 10 or so people I had never met before in my life, logged into my email, editing a wiki, organizing a political movement at breakneck speed — all while my family ate barbecue without me.

It was at this point I began thinking about Clay Shirky.

I recently attended techPresident’s Personal Democracy Forum in New York City, and heard Shirky talk about his book, Here Comes Everybody. He started his speech off with this:

The thesis of the book is, in five words: Group Action just got easier…The idea is that the transaction costs, the difficulty of simply getting a group of people together to accomplish anything of value has historically been high, and what we have now with the internet and mobile phones are tools that lower those transaction costs. And there’s been this explosion of what people are doing with it.

Those words have been resonating with me over the last few days, because organizing and participating in the Get FISA Right movement has been “ridiculously” easy. We’re using free, social software tools to connect, to think through ideas, to collaborate, all with the aim of taking the passion and energy created on Barack Obama’s website and shape it into political action.

So we’re using email and a listserv. We have a wiki from Wetpaint. We’re using Google Groups and Google Docs to create initial drafts before posting them for public review. And we’re using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to get the word out.

Group action really did just get easier.

Yet it’s not perfect, and mistakes have been made, and we’re questioning ourselves every step of the way. For example, once a (very) rough draft of our “response to the response” was created, we posted it on the wiki. But there was uncertainty — we knew there would be increased attention from the press after The New York Times published its recent piece on one of the group’s members, Mike Stark. Was it a good idea to put such a rough draft out in public, for reporters to potentially see?

We also had a long discussion about changing the email messaging function on the “My Barack Obama” site. The reasoning was that, once the group hit 18,000+ members, the flood of email the list produced was turning off a large number of people from the activist campaign. There were also questions about how “productive” a list that large could be. So it become “moderated,” meaning one of the group’s administrators would need to approve each and every message that went out. While there was some support for this change, many of the group members became upset, and disenchanted — there were charges of censorship.

Whether or not this was a mistake is still not known, but something had to be done. A happy medium was hopefully reached by applying an extremely “loose” form of moderation, essentially weeding out only obvious trolls. A Discussion Forum was also setup, and myBO group members were encouraged to move their conversations over to the new platform.

All part of a day’s work when running an open source political movement by the seat of our pants.

While the group has only been working together for a short time, there have already been some lessons learned:

Technology Must Be Boring

To borrow again from Clay Shirky, “Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.” By this, he means that it’s not until technologies become ubiquitous and commonplace and, indeed, boring, do they enable profound social changes. For the Get FISA Right group, this meant two things. First, the technologies themselves had to be free, readily available, and easy to use. Tools like Wetpaint and Google Groups “pages,” and sites like Facebook meant there were platforms around which we could collaborate. But beyond the tools themselves, for this group, collaborating online was “boring.” Many of the group members were already well-versed in blogs and wikis, and were able to quickly acclimate to the unique social norms and cohesiveness required to be productive online.

Transparency Over Perfection

As mentioned above, draft statements were posted out in the public domain well before they were ready. If we worked for a political campaign, this would never happen. But we decided transparency was something we valued, and conducting our business out in the open, we felt, only added to our credibility. That said, not everything was completely public. Certainly email discussions aren’t “public” in the sense of a wiki, nor are the pages in the Google Group; clearly, not everything can be done by committee. But every effort was made whenever possible to forgo perfection, get a draft of something together, and post it quickly.

Don’t Take It Personally

What is striking about the Get FISA Right group is the level of “professionalism” involved. By that, I mean every single member of the team is able to both give and receive constructive criticism extremely well. To an extent, the sense of urgency around the group’s mission — mobilizing the citizenry in the days before the July FISA vote in the Senate — forced an environment of quick decision making. But there was also a level of honesty that was palpable, as folks gave their opinions and hashed out decisions in real-time. For me, I think years of participating (pseudonymously) in the political blogosphere helped me become better at this sort of give-and-take — the blogs are no place for thin skins.

18 (Or Thereabout…) Is The Magic Number

The planning group was around 18-20 people, and this seems like just about the right size for this kind of effort. The group is large enough to bring varied backgrounds, expertise, and interests to the table, and also allows for work to get done across time zones. Whether it was two in the afternoon or two in the morning, others were available to work through whatever issues came up.

Hopefully these lessons can serve in some ways as a template for more efforts like ours. It genuinely feels like something new is being created here. I once heard PressThink’s Jay Rosen comment that citizen journalism is all about “extending the news space” into new territories. What we are doing with Get FISA Right is extending the political space in new directions.

But is this anything new? Haven’t blogs have been opening up politics to ordinary citizens for years now?

While that may be true, blogs, with the Dean campaign and, even more so, the first YearlyKos convention, have also become part of the political landscape. At this year’s Democratic Convention, bloggers will be reporting from The Big Tent. Politicians like Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, and John Kerry have posted frequently on Daily Kos. And blogs have become an important aspect of professional journalism too, as increasingly we see articles written primarily based on comments in the blogosphere.

But perhaps the most important distinction between blogs and the Get FISA Right movement is that bloggers have a home — a blog has roots. While the blogosphere hasn’t quite become arborescent, it’s 28 years later and we’re still tired of trees.

The Get FISA Right group has no home. We’re distributed; nomadic. We’re a Google group and a chat room and a wiki that is constantly changing. We’re a collection of email messages in the ether.

Perhaps that will change. Since our work started, we’ve created an Internet domain. We have a logo. Perhaps one day, there will be some roots.

But, for now, we’re rewriting the rules. We’re walking a tightrope.

We’re nomads. And it feels pretty darn good.

Check out identi.ca, an open source CC twitter-like microblogger.

Supports openID, too.

I’m attending techPresident’s PDF2008, and what’s most interesting to me here is not really the content of the conference, although that’s the main reason I’m here. But it’s really the culture of the crowd in attendance that’s notable.

It’s the strange and unique mix of what I’d call TechnoPoliGeek culture. A mix of policy wonk, tech geek, and Web 2.0 venture capitalist crowds, all merging together to listen to 10 minute mini-lectures from some really smart people, like Clay Shirky, Lawrence Lessig, and Douglas Rushkoff.

What’s most apparent are the toys. I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a conference where it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that *everyone* is live-blogging and live-tweeting the event. Up in the rafters (where there are power outlets provided at many of the seats), there’s this undercurrent, a hum, a constant tap-tap-tap of the keyboards that’s playing like a white noise under all the speakers.

But it’s not only laptops; there are iPhone and vidcams everywhere.

There’s also an undercurrent of capitalist utopianism. Not so much by the folks who run this conference, but by many of the attendees and speakers. VC’s, you know who you are…It’s a strange thing — a push/pull between those who want to make a buck off our politics, and those who want to save our Republic. Not sure if the two are mutually exclusive…

Which was really the subtext of Johnathan Zittrain’s presentation earlier today — he pointed out the very tenuous nature of Web 2.0, stating that, for example, Wikipedia was always one hour away from complete meltdown (spambots, vandals, etc), and the only thing that keeps it floating is the hard work of dedicated individuals who feel they “own” Wikipedia. This hanging-by-a-thread-ness makes listening to the triumphilists an exercise in absurdity, as what’s need to make these technologies work is, in many cases, a “civic defense” team, like the wikipedians.

I’m not sure if technology can save our Republic. If it can create transparency, if it can enable civic defense technologies, if it can connect people, and inspire them to get involved, this crazy scheme just might work.

Fascinating article from Alex Wright, on Paul Otlet’s vision for a pre-digital semantic web, circa 1934:

…Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”

…Otlet’s version of hypertext held a few important advantages over today’s Web. For one thing, he saw a smarter kind of hyperlink. Whereas links on the Web today serve as a kind of mute bond between documents, Otlet envisioned links that carried meaning by, for example, annotating if particular documents agreed or disagreed with each other. That facility is notably lacking in the dumb logic of modern hyperlinks.

Like Vannevar Bush’s memex, it’s an amazingly visionary work for such an analog kind of guy.

The new iPhone business model:

“Half the price,” it turns out, actually costs customers $40 more.

Perfect statement on Web 2.0 economics.

The top entries for applications on Google’s new mobile platform were announced, and one in particular struck me:

Locale - Locale is one of 7 Android applications submitted by MIT students. It enables you to set up location- and time-based profiles for your phone, so you can make it shut up when you’re at work, forward calls to your landline when you’re at home. Clare Bayley, Christina Wright, Jasper Lin, Carter Jernigan.

It’s a smart idea, and one we’ll see much more of, now that geolocation is all the rage. (See: Brightkite.com) But it’s also an idea that’s not at all new.

Back in the day, I tested a product called “Wildfire.” This was a telephony service that used voice recognition to “listen” to your commands, and act as a personal assistant. I did some searching, and found this article from 1994, describing the service:

Wildfire Communications has taken a fresh look at the act of communication and has created an elegant and useful speech-recognition interface that helps expedite and simplify phone use, yet is positioned to move beyond the telephone. It is one of the most creative designs of a communications interface that we have seen. Think of it as a glimpse into the future that isn’t a wishware video.

Wildfire uses a session approach. Instead of placing a call, hanging up, then placing another call (and fumbling with all the phone numbers and contact information between the calls), you dial once into your Wildfire assistant from your desk or the road. You don’t need any special equipment to call in. Any ordinary phone will do. Once you are connected to Wildfire, it…well, she — the current Wildfire system has a woman’s voice, and people naturally personify it — can place multiple calls for you.

Funny, it was a “glimpse into the future” that, 14 years later, for the most part still hasn’t happened yet, at least not on a large scale.

What Wildfire did well, though, was location-based calling. You could tell Wildfire where you were, at the office for example, and “she” would know to direct your incoming calls to your work number. Or, if you were working late at night, you could have Wildfire take a message, unless it was your wife calling, in which case the call would go through. To a certain extent, the proliferation of cell phones and the decrease in phone numbers we have to manage has “solved” this problem. But tying location to your phone was something of a revolutionary and, yes, futuristic idea at the time.

And about that “she”… Using it, I can attest to how “lifelike” the interface was, responding to your requests to “Call Joe.” The company had a toll free number that had a demo, providing customers with a taste of what this service was all about. Curious, I gave it a call today — sure enough, the number still works.

Give it a shot: 1-800-WILDFIRE.

I rec’vd an email from the “IRS” today:

Our records indicate that you are qualified to receive the
2008 Economic Stimulus Refund.

The fastest and easiest way to receive your refund is by
direct deposit to your checking/savings account.

Please follow the link and fill out the form and submit
before May 10th, 2008 to ensure that your refund will be
processed as soon as possible.

Of course, the link given doesn’t quite go to the IRS, despite that it came from a “.gov” email address. A quick whois search on the IP in the link revealed a server registered to an ISP that, from what I could tell with a few more google searches, seems pretty notorious for spam, etc.

If you google the text above, you’ll find it’s a well-known scam that the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the IRS began warning people about a few days ago.

These types of attacks, a phishing attempt at grabbing your bank account information, are increasingly becoming “commodities” in the world of cybercrime, as the economics are shifting to more profitable targets. From the NY Times:

Pilfered credit card numbers and bank account PIN numbers have become commodities on shadowy Web sites where stolen digital information is bought and sold. Company e-mail, business documents and personal health information are the new targets of choice for illegal hackers…

…A couple of years ago, credit card numbers and bank account PINs sold for $100 or more on sites selling stolen information…Now, the price is down to $10 or $20, compared to $150 to $200 for some of the newer documents.

Commodity or not, the phishing scam remains a tried and true way to get access to your money.

techPresident today mentioned a device I’d never heard of before: Chumby. It’s a small box with a screen that connects to your wireless network and delivers information from the web.

Previously, we knew this type of device as a “computer,” but, for some reason, this is supposed to be better.

Wired Magazine breathlessly calls this “worth the wait,” a “gimmick it is not,” a “perfect desktop companion.” The article goes on to tell us Chumby can get stock alerts, see info from tech web sites, read the news, and get — “BAM!” — Wikipedia’s “article of the day” delivered to our screen.

Wow! That’s so…..mundane.

techPresident, with the political take on this device, says:

Viewing content on a portable device that is updated automatically is more persuasive than turning on a computer and visiting a few web sites. It’s more persuasive because it functions as a reduction technology. It persuades through making a task simpler. No more going to YouTube, logging into email, turning on the television, or connecting to a mobile phone website to follow a campaign, just turn on Chumby and the channel is live.

Now, I’m all for “reduction technologies.” But, really, is “going to YouTube” all that difficult and time consuming? Is “logging into email” really so onerous and complex, that we need a new, $179 device sitting on our desk next to our computer???

Far from reductive, this seems incredibly redundant.

Except for, interestingly, it’s actually not at all redundant in terms of our computers, because it’s not interactive; it’s primarily a one-way device. (Although I saw at least one mail program with a keyboard that uses the device’s touchscreen.) The widgets that power Chumby are all essentially about viewing, and not updating or writing, information on the web: looking at stocks, reading the news, seeing your Facebook page. Which makes this seem like one giant step back into the broadcast-only world.

Chumby, speaking of taking a step back, smells a bit like the tech bubble of the 1990s, where every new idea was the Best! Idea! Ever!!! It actually reminds me of something known back in the day as WebTV. This was a thin-client, set-top box device that allowed you to surf the web and use email with your TV, instead of purchasing a computer.

Microsoft took a keen interest in this device (Hey ma, look — no computer!!!), but many others did, too:

Apple Computer Inc. co-founder Stephen Wozniak has snapped up a dozen. And since the boxes went on sale in October, consumers have bought more than 50,000–a decent start, considering that 35,000 audio CD players were sold in their first year. Says Wozniak, whose relatives use WebTV–not an Apple Macintosh–because it’s a breeze to learn: ”Find me a computer that is so human-understanding.”

Simplicity and “human understanding” was the Big Idea behind WebTV. It was pitched, if I remember correctly, as a way to bring grandparents into the Internet bubble. It was easy to use, and, because it was essentially like watching TV, familiar. It was simple, just like Chumby.

Of course, today, do you know anyone who uses MSN TV, which is what WebTV eventually became?

Didn’t think so.

There’s a market for these types of devices, but it’s a long-tail powered niche. Techies will like it, but it’s not going to have an impact on our politics, or change the way we practice our information-based habits. Most people won’t buy a Chumby, because — caution: gross overgeneralization ahead! — “most people” already have a computer, and don’t need another device sitting alongside (or in the same room, or in the same house…) a device that can already view Flickr photos or read CBS News headlines or find the number one story on Digg.

Call it the “tyranny of the PC,” but, for now, that’s the device we use.

iPhones aside, of course…