Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler has written a very comprehensive book to describe conflicts between analog and digital data creators in society and how internet based technologies are changing society and commerce.

It’s a good read but hard to grasp due to a focus on economics. Don’t be fooled the by title if your looking at computer networks….he has written it into the binding that ties his arguments together.  It is truly worth the read.

Benkler shares how technology has merged the professional and the consumer into a ‘prosumer’ due to low cost and high performing computers and robust networks have made distribution of information cheap enough that community is now empowered to drive change.

Take a look at how the internet has evolved.  The Akami to YouTube migration showed how multimedia has found a free, reliable distribution center.  When you also migrate 1st generation complex, large scale websites to new blogs and content management systems under the open source business model Benkler states that data is now a “non-rival” product that has democratized the digital workflow of data from brick and mortar to community, peer-developed content solutions.

Benkler suggests modern computing drives new, strong and deep collaboration that can have a large impact on the global economy and society.  Benkler also suggests that as more consumers embrace technology collaboration, change to our culture is possible due to engines of free exchange (wikipedia, creative commons, open source and the blogosphere) could be more efficient (when shared) than current models that are restricted by copyright and patents because the ability to duplicate (or reproduce digital content) makes little or no impact on business.

Tags: The Wealth of Networks, Social Technologies, economy, society, Yochai Benkler, education, change, reading, trends

Maz is one of my favorite comedians. Found him on the The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour (iTunes Link) tour and have purchased his performances on iTunes (iTunes Link). So glad to see him perform at a TED event.

Tags: SUPERFreakonomics, Stephen Dubner, Steven Levitt, Economics, datasets, innovation, energy, population, poverty, technology, Sudir Venkatesh, terrorist, trends

I have been following Larry Lessig‘s work on copyright and our digital culture for some time, reading his positions online, previous books and keynote addresses at TED, Wired and last week to Italy’s Parliament among others.  His work on Creative Commons is a direct action from the creative limitations of copyright.

His latest book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy is a very easy read for anyone who has also known his work.  He tells an important story about how new technology is clashing with old money.

Lessig illustrates how copyright’s old money (the big media empires) are clashing with today’s society and technology.  Old money is winning financial amounts here and there, but ultimately they are cutting their own throat as they can no longer control content.  Their motto: since we cannot have it our way anymore (due to the easy distribution of digital content) we are going to sue as many people as we can and take outrageous amounts of money along the way.

Lessig simply points out the two different camps: Read-only versus Read-Write.  Look at popular consumer phones and computers.  Today anyone can create a short video and post it to YouTube.  And by today’s “standard” in social networking — your somewhat expected to post multimedia content on Facebook and YouTube for example.

But post a 29 second video of a baby dancing to Prince’s Lets Go Crazy and Universal Music (they own Prince and his music) files a lawsuit claiming copyright violations.  Its old money trying to control society and Lessig points out it clearly no longer works.

He acknowledges great opportunities that permit art and commerce to thrive in our new hybrid economy.  Yet the RIAA continues to litigate, suing  individuals for monetary gain. YouTube is being forced to alter posted videos due to old-money ideas and their lawyers.

But with the unprecedented growth of the internet and YouTube which serves over 1 BILLION videos each day all the lawyers in the world will not be able to keep up to date.  In the US alone over 12 billion are watched everyday.  And after all the lawyers for the RIAA would rather sue wealthy people in America than say 1 BILLION poor people in China.  Its no wonder some internet media companies have their physical servers outside the US – since copyright is not equal under the law of every nation with a fast ISP.

Tags: Larry Lessig, Remix, art and commerce, copyright, creative commons, ReadWrite Culture, old money, Media Empires, YouTube, Change, control, trends

Tags: Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Seadragon, Photosynth, design, TED, Virtual Reality, imaging, trends

Tags: Visualization, information, Chart Wars, politics, trends

Gladwell shares that “The Story of Success” is really interesting when you dig deep into statistics. Gladwell addresses this with hockey players.  Yes, hockey players.  There is something amazing about playing a game on ice. Hockey requires speed and grace.  The fact that its not played on grass, sand or wood makes you wonder if there is “one talent” shared by the best hockey players in the world.

Researchers found that great players actually all fall within birth dates ranging from January to April for hockey and even for most soccer teams.  And as Gladwell points out the best hockey players like Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretsky, Steve Yzerman, Mario Lemiux and Dominik Hasek all have birth dates that allowed them to play against kids a year younger than them — and to no surprise they were handpicked (at some early stage) to further develop their skills.

Gladwell has taken an interesting angle regarding “success” in what some might even call perfection.  Gladwell tells the story of Bill Joy who not only happened to be at the University of Michigan at the right time (to study computing) but more importantly, took the time to spend countless hours learning and programming when he received access to the mainframe at school.  Actually Gladwell adds up those hours in his chapter called “The 10,000 hour rule” and points out that ‘talent’ can be achieved in 5 years when you practice 5.5 hours everyday.  Once you cross that measurement you have positioned yourself for success. Joy invented BSD Unix and Java.

The same 10,000 hour rule even applied to The Beatles who “had to play for 8 hours” in a strip club in Germany before crossing the Atlantic and ultimately rock n roll fame.  Can you imaging some chap telling his wife he saw them play for hours and hours…funny, but true.  Wonder what the impact would have been in America if word had gotten out about how they perfected their music?

In the chapter “The Trouble with Geniuses Parts 1 & 2″ Gladwell shares ultimately a lesson on the need to “fit” into today’s complex world of professional and personal relationships.  The story of Robert Oppenheimer who went on to invent the atomic bomb serves as one example of the life of a genius. Did you know Oppenheimer tried to murder his academic mentor?  Yes murder.

But Oppenheimer was able to “get away with it” due to his ability to speak to the heart of theoretical physics.  After protracted negotiations it was agreed Robert would be put on probation.  In contrast Gladwell shares in part 2 the story of another genius raised by a mother who forgot to fill out his student loan paperwork, his inability to share his passion of physics to his academic adviser and ultimately his dismissal from school.  He never returned to college.  Gladwell eloquently shares how the little things add up in life.

Gladwell shares in great painstaking detail the story of two plane crashes that were the result of cultural differences in the chapter entitled “The Ethnic theory of Plane crashes” that will make you shake your head in disbelief.  Hundreds of lives lost due to the inability of pilots, flight engineers and air traffic controllers to understand that cultures outside the US actually play a role in questioning the chief pilot (authority) regardless of mistakes made during flight.  Tragic lessons to be learned and applied in today’s globalized world.

One of my favorite chapters “Rice Paddies and Math Tests” shares the understanding that culture dictates success.  Students in Asia score higher in math tests vs. American students.  Why? Simply because Asian families have worked long, difficult hours in rice paddies for hundreds of years.  The idea that a math question can take 20 minutes to solve is no problem for Asian students. American students, on the other hand begin asking for help after 30 seconds.  Its somewhat shocking to see how far American students have fallen in test scores in math and science against students from countries all over the world.

Today the top 98% of American high school students when compared to their counterparts in math rank just 24th in the world.  Does this make you worry?  It should.  Many great lessons from Outliers.

Tags: Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, Globalization, Success Stories, Tipping Point, Blink, genius, education, reading, trends

Tags: OLPC, Sugar Labs, Amazon, XO, open source, globalization, trends

Larry has documented how the music and movie industries are turning students into criminals because they use cheap software, the internet and their creativity.  His presentation at TED hilights the core principals of his upcoming book.

The power and impact of the digital economy has placed copyright and the old guard clearly on the defensive.  Those aging companies still want the market to be “published” (in analog format) are unwilling to change to the new information economy.
–Well okay what I’m really trying to say is they don’t want to give up their revenue streams.

Okay maybe they do understand how the game has changed, yet I’m not sure the impact of how young people are wired has fundamentally changed their business model.

Actually I’m hoping Remix may also hilight how the RIAA should be chasing down the millions of pirates in China rather than students in America.  Larry is proving what everyone under 30 already has accepted as a fact of life…They have never been forced to purchase a majority of their entertainment in analog format.  Should be a great read!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tags: Photosynth, photo, virtual reality, panaoramic, globalization, trends

Walter Bender, former President of OLPC has launched Sugar Labs to promote the use of Sugar on more devices. Sugar is open source and I’m running it on my Powerbook via VMware’s Fusion. Sugar Lab’s approach: children should not be forced to learning a legacy operating system designed for adult computer programmers.

Lets face facts. XP is not designed for the world’s children living in poverty. The design is simple and perfect for children:

Sugar was designed to be used by children with no previous access (or understanding) of computers, but rather a fresh, new focused approached designed to intelligently and easily bring advanced tools to their attention:

Sugar will have a difficult time but I believe in their work and I’m sure many agree that Sugar is an OS designed for children. Think about that.

Tags: OLPC, Sugar Labs, Walter Bender, XO, open source, globalization, trends

There are timely lessons in this book from the $100 laptop and more importantly the exodus of top American talent. No surprise that top talent from India is returning home after attending college in America as globalization brings new opportunities to India.

You may be surprised to learn how Kao documents the loss of top Americans heading overseas. That’s native-born Americans leaving our best institutions (and their home country) to work in new innovation centers with more creative, less political conditions.

The list includes Paul Saffo from Stanford, John Seely Brown from Xerox PARC, Peter Schwartz from Global Business Network and Rita Colwell, former head of the National Science Foundation and current professor of biological sciences at the University of Maryland.

This American brain drain of our TOP talent is a sign that we’ll be losing more in the near term future. Politics aside the loss of talent to companies and institutions overseas (where restrictions on science are non existent) will only damage American technology leadership in the coming years.

As Kao points out the number of talented students being denied entry to the US based upon the new war on terrorism is not going to benefit America either. Kao is not addressing anyone with terrorist links, just those already accepted to our best schools being denied passports and travel based upon tighter security. We need that talent in our country to keep our innovation deveopment moving forward with the best talent … not backward in a time of war.

Globalization is directly impacting the quick growth of Singapore as a new hub for Innovation. By pulling some of the best talent from America, Singapore has quickly established a leading role in the development of future technologies — across the board. And they are not not stopping the invitations to bring the best knowledge to their country. Singapore’s Economic Development Board has secured the following institutions to open local, global schoolhouses:

University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Duke School of Medicine
Culinary Institute of America
Tisch School of the Arts

We have become too familiar with the much publicized success of India and China. Friedman has pointed us to Uruguay while Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland and Taiwan have also established innovation centers. Kao’s chapter, The New Geography of Innovation reinforces four key principals that used to be exclusive to America that are now everywhere:

1. Silicon Valley is now everywhere
2. Talent is now everywhere
3. Capital is now everywhere
4. Gov’t investment in military/aerospace is now everywhere

Kao’s message is clear: Innovate or Die. China is going in-house and saving billions to establish its own fleet of commercial jetliners rather than contract Boeing or Airbus.

The book is now added to my must read list for students and faculty in both K12 & Higher Education. Kao has a great book website. Take a look, download his free chapter and order the Book!

Tags: Innovation Nation, Kao, Globalization, technology, leadership, trends

But I’d like to buy a 1st Gen unit too. And I’ll config it to run Sugar.

Tags: OLPC, sugar, Negroponte, prototype, globalization, trends

Playing catch-up
Today we find a majority of schools around the country in the educational slow lane. For some reason it does not matter if the school is remote or urban, many are connecting at just 5 Megabits/second. Its like teaching history with books that still recognize Russia as the old Soviet Union….oh how I miss Gorgachev.
Any college connecting at less than 10MB — shows a lack of understanding and vision for their students who enter higher education seeking not just a degree but an advantage to enter the global marketplace.

How can any teacher provide engaging content to today’s rich media students with the school’s 5Mb/s connection? My home cable modem runs at 6Mb/s while other providers around the country are pushing 8Mb/s for a service that is sparingly used after work.

My home computer sits idle during the school day. I’d support any solution to transfer my 6Mb/s to my local school during the day. Okay, I know this probably will not work. But do you see my desire?

Lets go a step further
With emerging (and engaging) content coming from Internet2 any school (K12 or HigherEd) needs 10Mb/s minimum…to be honest it should probably be 25Mb/s minimum because 10 will be flooded immediately by students accessing rich media content.

HD video on the internet needs 8Mb/s alone, so 10Mb/s will not permit email, web and VoIP to function on the academic side while the administrative access to ERP software like Oracle and MS Dynamics cannot be off-line during a HD video broadcast.

9/11 video history
How successful could a teacher convey history lessons with access to video footage surrounding 9/11? For my generation: think of the value a history lesson from the December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor. The resource Archive.org has raw video from ABC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and even the BBC from 9/11 available for free. Take a look for yourself here.

Why is this important? Because ultimately any historian whats to convey a real sense of the times. And what a resource this can be.

I would be interested to see the same access to raw video of Katrina. History teaches us compelling and emotional lessons but the impact on today’s students will only be powerful if you don’t have to deal with the “stop/start/stop/start” video jerkiness due to slow bandwidth.

Competition
Countries including Canada, South Korea and Japan deliver over 1GB/s to their schools and libraries empowering their students and citizens. Yes thats 1 Gigabit per second! Our students (I.E. our future) are learning in the slow lane. Lets use an automotive theme:

Bandwidth to the Home
Japan: 1 Gigabit/second or 1,000 miles per hour
USA : 5-8 Megabits/second or 5-8 miles per hour

Do you see the crisis looming?
Its only going to get worse. Is Bandwidth on the radar for our upcoming Presidential election — Maybe to no surprise? Just as those countries are supplying bandwidth to schools, we are losing our research edge as more and more talented Americans leave for greener pastures overseas. Please understand today’s fight for talent is not east coast vs. west coast…..its now global.

Its now East Asia vs. Western Europe with American somewhere in between and beginning to show its aging infrastructure. If you were unaware of this talent migration, may I suggest Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back I’m just half way through and have been further enlightened to the dangerous slide occurring in America.

Tags: Internet2, bandwidth, school, community, globalization, trends

Would you like to fully understand the impact of this policy? May I suggest starting with Tom Friedman’s bestseller The World Is Flat 3.0?

Make sure you read Version 3.0 — Friedman‘s update measures how quickly the world has adopted Globalization with networking technologies woven into the fabric of global business, government and education sprinkled around some of the most far reaching locations worldwide.

Friedman shared in version 1.0 fiber has made Milwaukee, Mumbai and Moscow next-door neighbors. With these new digital neighbors we are just milliseconds away from economic, educational and cultural collaboration and communication.

In version 3.0 he proves that someone with a powerful imagination can secure business in Milwaukee or Moscow like no other time on the world’s history. Communication and Collaboration have been moved to a new level and any talented individual with a consumer computer, skill and network access can not just thrive, but drive new business around the globe.

…And while your at it, plan to read his upcoming book Green is the new Red, White and Blue. Its Globalization + Environmental Revolution. As he noted in an address at Brown in a Revolution someone always gets hurt.
Schools and business are lining up to be hurt by a lack of high speed broadband.

A National Broadband Policy:
Windhausen (Principal of Telepoly) is suggesting the upgrade of fiber to match forecasted global broadband speeds at implementation. The biggest impacts highlighted by John include Optical Switching, Core Switching and Access Capacity — also known as The Last Mile.
This means a network connection coming from a switch directly connects your local school, library, performance center or hospital. Traditionally this is the area where the network slows down due to local limits.

Bandwidth: As vital is air
Windhausen acknowledged telecommunication companies are hiding their current bit shortages by blocking capacity to bandwidth hungry applications including BitTorrent. Its a roundabout way to delay or block traffic to conserve bandwidth. The trouble with this approach (IMHO) is that telcom companies are attempting to cap bandwidth. Its the same as trying to choke air from my lungs.

The congestion automobile drives faces in major metropolitan markets like Chicago are reflective of the construction themes necessary to outfit our country, business and most significantly our children to compete in tomorrow’s global economy. And by the looks of how other countries are adopting broadband we must empower our next generation with skills for a knowledge driven economy:

U.S. rank among 30 OECD Nations:
15th in broadband adoption
14th in average download speed
18th in broadband price per megabit

Today’s advanced networks including Internet2 are making significant steps in communication and collaboration regarding science, engineering and medicine. By empowering citizens with fast broadband the ripple effect will be wide: telework, telehealth and distance learning. This will potentially reset the most important foundation in our country, education. But Network and Technology teams cannot upgrade education without teachers, curriculum/content specialists and parents demanding change.

The use of advanced networks in schools around the country by 2012 will not only keep our children’s heads above water in the global economic world, it will provide a structure of application and access that will carry them into their professions and personal lives.

Tags: Internet2, Windhausen, National Broadband Policy, Globalization, Network, community, trends

An enjoyable, easy read that further suggests leaderless organizations can fuel dramatic change within organization large and small.

Beckstrom, who just spoke at the 2008 TED conference presents content supporting how organizations can flourish when tightly controlled groups embrace the starfish effect.

He notes how Al-qaeda has embraced this type of leaderless organization and it becomes very obvious to any reader the last five years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This book actually complimented my previous read, The Wisdom of Crowds (review here).

The Star The Starfish and the Spider follows the successful work of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything because both draw upon the power in today’s globalized world to share knowledge — via OpenSource to engage Web2.0 enterprise solutions and corporate blogs to think and more importantly, act independently.

Book website Link

Tags: Beckstrom, Starfish and the Spider, organizations, community, globalization, trends

Tuesday May 13th Doug Van Houweling, President of Internet2 will keynote the first day of the conference. Joel Mambretti, Director of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern will be addressing the FTC on Wednesday.

You can register here for the 2 day conference in Madison.

Tags: Internet2, WiscNet, Doug Van Houweling, Joel Mambretti, Madison, global education, trends

This remarkable laptop for the world’s poorest students has so many green technologies that Apple, Dell, HP and every other laptop manufacturer should be incorporated into ALL laptops:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And why can’t I replace my Powerbook’s LCD strip for $1.00 similar to the replacement cost built into the OLPC? Well those same manufacturers want you to purchase another laptop…even when I search eBay for a solution.

Tags: energy, conservation, OLPC, Mary Lou Jepsen, globalization, trends

I watched a TED video of Barry Schwartz and was interested to learn more about his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less and learn the downside (and unhappiness) of abundance.

As Schwartz points out consider the types of choice in your local grocery store: 285 cookie options, 85 types of crackers, 95 types of chips, 75 iced teas, 29 chicken soups, 175 salad dressings and 275 boxes of cereal. Welcome to The Paradox of Choice. Try shopping for a new pair of jeans as he described in his TED presentation and the introduction to this book.

In my childhood things seemed simple. There were just three television channels…plus a PBS station. When the new school started I would receive two or three pairs of stiff denim jeans. Every kid in my school would wear the same dark blue demin and would not feel comfortable until the third week of school. By then our clothes were finally broken in via the wash cycle.

Don’t consider this book the opposite of Chris Anderson‘s The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. It would be more accurate to describe the book as what happens to individuals overwhelmed by choice.

How do consumers secure a feeling of satisfaction with overwhelming numbers of choice? Do we have that ability? Schwartz brings very interesting testing and research to demonstrate how consumers are unhappy with abundant choices. Schwartz notes how consumer ‘maximizers’ can become obsessive about our purchasing habits. But he also discusses how emotion within organizations can lead to bad decision making … even when everyone ‘feels’ right about the choice.

Its very interesting to see how this has been applied in your own work environment. So many choices within a technology environment, yet many times the choices made are really, really off the wall wrong. This book will help you understand why choices will derail your process.

Schwartz provides a closing chapter on how consumers can begin to break long standing, old habits. And old habits die hard!

For some it will be too late, but you can make the change with hard work and determination to live better and happier.

Tags: The Paradox of Choice, TED, consumer, culture, spending, trends