Posted 16:27 by Mark Federman permanent link
Semantic Blogging: Lightweight Knowledge Management

Many of us use our blogs as "external storage" for the myriad bits of information that we come across or observe. Random thoughts, random links, inspiration for future articles or particularly lucid fantasies are all fodder for our blogs, that is, when they're not being used to talk about cats, dates, or election fraud (at least Ukraine is giving it another go... some western democracies might follow their example.) The question that occurs, however, is, what happens when this information becomes useful to more than just me?

Enter Steve Cayzer, a researcher with HP Labs in Bristol, England. He has cobbled together a set of tools that serves as a demonstration for semantic blogging. He provides an explanation of what it is and how it works:

The semantic blogging demonstrator shows how we can use semantic metadata to enhance the blogging experience. It also shows how we can apply the new technology to a concrete application domain, bibliography management. However, the demonstrator is not meant to be the final word on semantic blogging, it is more a proof of concept. There are many extensions that would be possible over the existing framework.

Part of the idea for future expansion includes a "pop-up" ontology that helps users categorize items according to the local semantic vocabulary, and integration with an ontology linking capability that would allow tagging the entry to be searchable across multiple vocabularies.

Many of the proposals for the semantic web require extensive volunteer effort in "mark up," that is, tagging pages with semantically-meaningful metadata according to some sort of ontology or common information schema. As one might expect, this is incredibly labour-intensive. However, a "Tower of Babel" problem quickly arises: The meaning of a particular tag is highly dependent on context, and forcing a common dictionary on people is impractical, if not downright impossible. But using a lightweight publishing mechanism such as the blogging infrastructure, with dynamically-attachable, contextually-sensitive dictionaries, possibly served up by a Google-like service, overcomes many of the practical problems and allows the semantic web to grow organically, just like the web we know and... err... love.

If you (or your university) subscribe to Communications of the ACM, you can read Steve Cayzer's article about Semantic Blogging and Decentralized Knowledge Management in the December 2004 issue.
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Posted 18:08 by Mark Federman permanent link
Extensions of Management

Better late than never, I often say. Donald Officer has an "InSite Review" of my book, McLuhan for Managers that he calls, Extensions of Management.

In writing McLuhan for Managers, coauthors Federman and de Kerckhove have mined McLuhan's body of work for the powerful, interesting and creative concepts we'd consider sustaining principles and the core of his method. They've been remarkably successful in defining and refining those aspects of McLuhan's genius that managers, facilitators or planners can most readily benefit from.

Nicely put, if I do say so myself.

One of the great implications of "the medium is the message," and the use of the McLuhan thinking tools, is that once we can perceive all of the effects of a given new medium - whatever it is we are about to inflict on our business or society as a whole - we have the opportunity to choose which of them to bring about, or cause. With McLuhan's notion of effects preceding causes in this way, we actually get to create the type of world we want, as opposed to leaving it to the whim and will of the medium itself. Once we, collectively as business managers, politicians, policy makers and educators, realize this power, both opportunity and responsibility are laid before us, waiting our initiative to pick them up and make our world as we want it.

In business, we often speak of empowerment, but it, too, has become co-opted as the latest in business buzz-speak. Taking our opportunities and responsibilities based on clear perception is the real empowerment. It remains to be seen how many business leaders actually have the courage to see with clarity, and how many take refuge behind the fog of conventional rote-repetition of slogans.

This, of course, is revolutionary stuff - that is, it challenges the conventional authority of business schools, business practice and apparently successful business people. It challenges the way we have managed for 100 years, and the very underpinnings of today's modern corporations. That is both its strength and its subversive danger. As I responded to one person during the McLuhan Festival, such perceptions comprise McLuhan thinking as a political project, of course, extending this thinking beyond business life and into all aspects of public policy.
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Posted 10:40 by Mark Federman permanent link
Whose Rights are Protected?

Hardware Analysis provides a peak into the future of enforced "intellectual property rights," and yes, I am using the quotation marks advisedly. One user's account that describes the practical effects of Microsoft's Digital Rights Management, DRM at its worst? Here's a prime example, essentially highlights the DRM dilemma. You legitimately buy a "special edition" DVD set of a movie, and the special content - in this case, an HDTV version of the film - is protected by Microsoft's DRM. After a full hour of setup by a sophisticated user that had to use specialized knowledge to get the damn thing to work (among other things, "routing my IP address through an anonymous proxy server in the US I however managed to unlock the content just as well and was presented with a license agreement I had to agree to prior to being able to play the content back") he discovered that the DVD was licensed for playback for only 5 days before the license would expire.

Now, before you glibly say that this is only because he wanted to play the DVD on a computer, let me ask you: how long do you think it will be before all of our home entertainment equipment will actually be computers, "protected" by DRM-enabled software and hardware in this manner? How would you feel if you had to go through this sort of rigmarole in order to play a DVD that you legitimately (thought you had) bought, in your next DVD player? You are all aware of the Broadcast Flag law in the U.S., right? How long do you think it will be before a purchased DVD also includes a mandatory "pay-per-view" component?

As the article's author says,

I spent about an hour trying to play back a disc I legitimately bought and went as far as installing and updating a 3rd party application to my system that would allow me to do so, and now I'm only being given a temporary license, where's my rights as a consumer? If this is how future DRM protected content will be distributed I have strong objections to the use of DRM, as this is a prime example of how to quickly alienate any prospective consumers. If a license is given and the content decrypted isn't it clear that I'm the rightful owner? Can't I decide for myself when and where I want to play this content back on? Obviously Artisan Home Entertainment Inc. has other ideas about that, ideas they should clearly communicate on the dvd cover, instead of simply omitting them to prevent people not buying this two-disk dvd set. Shame on you Artisan Home Entertainment Inc. and may this serve as a prime example of DRM at its worst.

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Posted 10:06 by Mark Federman permanent link
Real Virtual Reality - Tropical Islands Resort... In Germany?!

Forget the funny goggles. Virtual Reality really works when you cannot tell the difference between the reality you normally experience in the world, and the reality that your senses are convincing you that you're experiencing. Think Disneyworld: What would you do if a 5'8" mouse approached you on Main Street in your home town? I experienced this at Ikea just outside of Jonkoping, Sweden. I visited on the day after its grand opening, and the moment I walked into the building, I was immediately transported to the Ikea store in Etobicoke, Ontario - same layout, same products, same staff, same funny names on the labels (except the locals could understand the funny names.) My mind knew I was in Sweden; my senses told me I was in Canada.

Now, a Malaysian investor has createed Tropical Islands - a new indoor resort in Germany. Built inside what was to be an enormous zepplin hanger, Tropical Islands recreates a Balinese lagoon, the sea and a tropical rain forest - with real rain!

The sand along the lip of the Balinese lagoon is a pristine white. Round the other side of the rainforest, the island in the centre of the tropical sea - a body of water about the size of four Olympic swimming pools - is set for the premiere of what will be a nightly stage show. The scale of the operation puts one in mind of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, or a Martian colony, or other things that don't exist in real life. They have trucked in 30,000m cubed of soil and 500 plant species for their rainforest. The speakers which broadcast insect noises are shaped like rocks. And the building itself, it goes without saying, is extraordinary, the biggest inside of anything you will ever see. It makes your head spin. This place doesn't just have a climate. It has weather. As the place fills up, the extra moisture in the air condenses on the roof. It starts to rain a little bit.

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Posted 16:52 by Mark Federman permanent link
What's With These Kids Today?

I'm often asked about "kids" and their use of the Internet. Of course, the only people who would ask me such a question are from what I call the "fogey generation," that essentially comprises everyone for whom a world of instantaneous and ubiquitous communication is an acquired taste. For those born into the world of pervasive proximity and socialized with, and on, the 'net, the question has no meaning. For them, the Internet is not used, it just "is" - it's part of the environment, a ground condition that enables connectivity. We fogeys say, "how did we ever do without [fill in the blank - email, cellphones, the world wide web, etc.] They look at us as quaint to be remembering a world that belongs on the big screen - you know, like the movie Titanic. It's not an issue of getting information, doing research, or even downloading music or that episode of Dead Like Me you missed. Rather, it's part of a way of life that eschews planning, because everything and everyone is just there, right when you need it. And news? News happens continually, and those in the know need to know exactly when it happens - even 24-hour news channels on television are just too... too last hour. One of my favourite comic strips, Zits, seems to have it right:

Now, project that cartoon ahead to your favourite legislature, courtroom or battlefield. Fascinating world we're living in, isn't it?
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Posted 13:02 by Mark Federman permanent link
Museum of Media History - EPIC 2014

What will have happened to the mass-news-media over the next decade? EPIC 2014 is a glimpse into a future that is, indeed, a matter of foretelling the present. This 8-minute video is definitely provocative, and worth both watching and thinking about. Thanks, Carolyn!
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Posted 16:05 by Mark Federman permanent link
Orthodox Anarchist: What Would J.C. Do?

Orthodox Anarchist is having legal fun over a parody of a "Jesus is my homeboy" teeshirt. Orthodox Anarchist explains the reason for the parody as follows:

The shirt was conceived shortly after the release of The Passion Of The Christ and is offered as social commentary on the nature of antisemitism and the irony inherent within the historical persecution of Jewish people on the part of Christian people who obviously have lost sight of the fact that Jesus himself was a Jewish person. Ie., a Christian person who might refer to a Jewish person as a "kike" is oblivious to the fact that Jesus himself was also a "kike." I do not see how making this point harms the reputation of Teenage Millionaire [the maker of the "homeboy" teeshirt] and it is doubtful that a court will either.

This is yet another example of legal beagles yapping at an otherwise unknown individual, group or company over alleged intellectual property infringements, thereby inducing a reversal: The unknown gets tremendous publicity that spurs sales and tarnishes the reputation of the organization claiming infringement (the claim usually being in error).

Such is the effect of instantaneous communications - the ability to effect reversals in out-of-date legal constructs. Since attention is the most valuable asset under conditions of ubiquitous communication and pervasive proximity, the most important weapon in our arsenals is ignorance, literally the selective and critical ability to ignore. It's a tricky one, though - everytime we say, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," we draw attention to that very man, who would otherwise have indeed been ignored, and wither away in anonymity.

Or, in the words of the Orthodox Anarchist, "By the way, I hope you like negative press. Your little IP witchhunt will do more to tarnish the reputation of Teenage Millionaire than any parody ever will."
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Posted 15:42 by Mark Federman permanent link
Buzzing About Marketing

I was recently asked about the possible effects of a Canadian "do not call" list, similar to the one that has been put into effect in the United States. Such a list allows individuals to opt-out of telemarketing calls, and has met with wide-spread sighs of relief for beleaguered consumers frustrated by the cliched interrupted meal-time.

I commented that telemarketing, that is marketing at a distance, has already been obsolesced. We know this because of its ubiquity - it's everywhere, and has thus lost its potency to influence. But telemarketing pronounced another way - "telly-marketing" - is in its obsolescence as well. Conventional television advertising is equally ineffective, made more-so by insisting on a captive audience, either through product placement, paid shills on talk shows, or by disabling the fast-forward button on TiVos. Little wonder that the Advertising Research Foundation in the United States recently concluded that "about $50 billion in U.S. ad spending is wasted."

Pushed beyond the limit of it potential by over-exposure, telemarketing gives way to its reversal, up-close-and-personal marketing. While sexy women in bars paid to coo over the taste of a particular brand of rum to unsuspecting guys looking for a good time may be no different than samples of cocktail wieners handed out in Costco, the latest in guerrilla marketing is less a retrieval of an olde-fashioned medicine show, and more akin to gossip over the back fence. Recently, the New York Times ran a story that focused on "Buzz Marketing" (registration required, or use BugMeNot), a relatively new phenomenon in which unpaid volunteers are organized to spread positive word-of-mouth about new products, services, books, and yes, even... well, not quite cocktail wieners, but sausages. Unpaid, you ask? Except for a free sample of the product in question, yes.

Why would the volunteers work so hard to get other people excited about these products? Another line of research suggests a possible answer. This school of thought would characterize word-of-mouth volunteers as operating not in a traditional money-in-exchange-for-effort ''monetary market,'' but rather in a ''social market.'' A social market is what we engage in when we ask our friends to help us load up the moving van in exchange for pizza. The research suggests that we are likely to get a better effort out of our friends under the social-market scenario than by offering the cash equivalent of the pizza. (A recent article in the journal Psychological Science finds that ''monetizing'' a gift, like the pizza, by announcing how much it is worth, effectively shifts the whole situation from social market to monetary market.) Under some circumstances, we will expend more effort for social rewards than we will for monetary rewards. This suggests that the agents may do more to spread word of mouth precisely because they are not being paid.

Ironically, the NYT article is Buzz Marketing of sorts for a company that organizes such volunteers, BzzAgent. Free barbequed sausages, anyone?

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Posted 14:37 by Mark Federman permanent link
de Kerckhove Interview: Communication in Evolution - Social and Technological Transformation

Alvaro Bermejo recently conducted an interview with McLuhan Program Director, Derrick de Kerckhove. The result is a free-wheeling conversation on Communication in Evolution - Social and Technological Transformation that is well worth the read for Derrick's insights and take on the effects of communication evolution over the past few hundred years. Here's a sample:

The average citizen is always in Neanderthal mode. That is why we get such Neanderthalian politicians. The digital culture is the cognitive phase of electricity. Just as we took the muscular phase (heat, light and energy) for granted, we are taking this new phase for granted. Most people only worry about how their body works when they have a backache, or about their car when they have to bring it to the garage. And even then, they don't want to know. But there is hope. The transformation is happening just as surely and unconsciously as it did at the time of the council of Trent when wise people were trying to put an old order into a religion that was being rapidly undermined by a totally new conception of man. Today, we are literally run over by the globalized and connective condition of humankind without the slightest moment of doubt.

From Neanderthal to the muscular phase of electricity to the Reformation to being run over by globalization. Whew! Go read the rest!
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Posted 13:18 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Beginning of the Reversal of the Reversal of America?

John Perry Barlow had "A Taste of the System" recently when a pre-flight inspection of his luggage - presumably for anything that might threaten an aircraft,

claimed to have discovered this contraband in the bottom of a bottle of Ibuprofen, still three quarters full of its original contents. This bottle had been discovered in the depths of my bag by an employee of Covenant Security, a subcontractor of the TSA, while she was searching it for explosives. ... What they found in the bottom of that bottle was not an incidental discovery during the course of a mandated search for something else. They had dug deep and purposefully. This was no joint in the ashtray casually spotted by the officer while writing a speeding ticket. A closer analogy would be the joint discovered on the floorboards of your car after the officer removed its carpeting while writing a speeding ticket.

The Kafkaesque details of Barlow's relatively brief incarceration, and the wall of supposed secrecy that is effectively denying him his right to a fair trial is worth reading, especially for anyone who still happens to believe in the dual principles of the rule of law, and the legal supremecy of a country's constitution. Barlow is fighting this case with the backing of "John Gilmore ... one of the co-founders of EFF and is, in addition, the peskiest and most obdurate defender of the Constitution I know." The stakes in this particular case are very high. As Barlow says:

We're trying to set a precedent here and the government is determined to prevent one. Only through such solitary struggles as this one can we preserve the dreams of Jefferson and Madison through this period of panicked expediency. On September 11, 2001 I sent out a spam to my mailing list in which I warned that "the control freaks will be dining out on this day for the rest of our lives."

I mean to deny them at least one small course in that terrible meal.

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Posted 10:47 by Mark Federman permanent link
Existential Technology - 2004 Leonardo Award for Excellence

Steve Mann has been awarded the prestigious 2004 Leonardo Award for Excellence, given for "originality, rigor of thought, clarity of expression and effective presentation" for articles published in Leonardo magazine. Steve's article, "Existential Technology," is essentially a retrospective of Steve's various critical performance pieces that meld technology with performance art to probe aspects of surveillance, bureaucratic control and personal freedom and identity throughout our society. Always controversial, and occasionally outrageous, Steve queries what we give up when to purchase our attention, the myth of surveillance for our own security and the effects on the surveiller of himself being surveilled. And what's with being handcuffed to a briefcase that anyone but the owner can open by merely giving up a little bit of privacy?

The article exemplifies aspects of critical design and is worth the read, whether you are new to Steve Mann's work or not. The issue is not that of cutting-edge technology, or even wearable computers (with which Steve is usually associated). The issue instead is one of critically probing the ground of societal norms that we have come to take for granted, and therefore ignore.
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Posted 21:41 by Mark Federman permanent link
(didn't know I was) unamerican

(didn't know I was) unamerican is a song and music video by Ian Rhett. More than that, it's thoughtful and heartfelt, and well worth watching, as it quietly probes the Reversal of America.
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Posted 09:52 by Mark Federman permanent link
Literacy and the Mind

Last evening, Liss Jeffrey visited Twyla Gibson's Comparative Orality and Literacy seminar. Dr. Jeffrey brought with her the results of a now several-years-old, UNESCO-sponsored study done by Alan Bernardo in Philippines that resulted in the book, Literacy and the Mind: The Contexts and Cognitive Consequences of Literacy Practice. The study is a fascinating, if slightly methodologically-flawed, examination of the effects of literacy on cognition and the acquisition and use of knowledge. Modifying one of the core tenets of the Toronto School of Communication, the book maintains that schooling, as opposed to literacy itself, is primarily responsible for many of the cognitive changes attributed to mass literacy in the post-Gutenberg era. From a comprehensive review of the book:

Although Bernardo chose a wrong methodological approach to explore the question he sought to answer, his conclusions are welcome relief to this reader. ... There was no evidence of direct effects of literacy on thinking, and differences between the formal and non-formal literates were such that they pointed to schooling rather than literacy effects. Different cognitive approaches to thinking skills are evident in communities with relatively high degrees of literacy integration, but only when applied to community activities and practices. When literate activities are carried out, not everyone who takes part in the activity has to be literate. It is not literacy acquisition itself that affects thought, but rather the degree to which literacy is integrated into the life of a community. That is, the effects are mediated by the individual's participation in the literate activities of the community. The effects of literacy seem to arise as a result of being a participant in the community activities that incorporate literacy skills.

The results of this study actually support McLuhan's basic notion: The medium is the message. In this specific instance, it is the integration of literacy into the community environment, and the nature of the ensuing effects (messages) that reveals the nature and characteristics of literacy (as a medium) itself.
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Posted 10:04 by Mark Federman permanent link
R.I.P - Pierre Berton, 1920-2004

Icon and iconoclast, Canada's storyteller, Pierre Berton, is dead. I remember Pierre Berton best from his appearances on CBC's Front Page Challenge, a very cool medium for its day that combined the press, television and a game show - television of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s being cool at the time. Among many other things, Burten gave Canada its mythic creation stories, and a sense of pride in our fascinating heritage, history and heroes.

As a tribute of sorts, I'll allow Robert W. Service to provide the eulogy:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd "sooner live in hell".

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows -- O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
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