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| Wednesday, February 6, 2002 |
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Another kind of link 
More on why
Radio blog fight!
Social software
| | After reading Mike's latest (which is deep and helpful, as always), I think that's the best answer to the question Why do we blog? is another question: Why do we talk? |
| | This came to me, as things often do, while reading Mike. I realized that I probably blog for a single reason: I work alone, and I need to talk about something other than work — and work too — with somebody. Or anybody. And I'm probably not alone in this regard. That's why I think a lot of programmers blog. And fellow journalists. We're all cave workers. |
| | And most of us can't help talking anyway. It's a highly human condition. |
| | The "markets are conversations" line from Cluetrain actually began with conversations I used to have (and still miss) with Farallon founder Reese Jones in the late 80's. In '86 or so I had made something of a splash with a white paper I wrote for Motorola about "workgroup computing." It cranked up the buzz level on "groupware" for awhile there, and had some good things to say. Or so I thought. |
| | But Reese read it carefully and told me it was fulla shit. Not only would groupware go nowhere, but my fundamental assumptions were wrong. |
| | All human communication, he said, is one-to-one. It's personal. Even in groups, we're only paying close attention to what one person says at a time. Reese was working towards a Ph.D. in some brain research specialty when he paused to found Farallon (inventing those nifty PhoneNet connectors that ran AppleTalk over phone wiring), and added a bunch of brainy facts I don't remember to this obvious but overlooked fact: our brains are purposefully restricted in their ability to listen. We may think we can hear two conversations at once, but we can't. Our brains only hear one conversation clearly. And to some degree they suck at that, because they're also built to forget most specifics after a few seconds and retain only meaning. When we compare what we remember verbatim to what we forget, the former rounds out to zero. What make quotes compelling is that they stand as exceptions to the forget-everything rule. |
| | So maybe the Web's most social software — Google and blogs — are how as social beings we overcome our individual short-term memory problems. What she said and what he said are backed by persistent evidence. This is where I get to tip my hat to Dr.Weinberger for another Cluetrain one-liner: "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy." (And to plug his new book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, which goes rather deeply into why that's so, among other things.) |
| | Reese so believed in the foundational importance of conversation that he made it Farallon's calling to produce "software for telephones." To him telephony's century-wide seniority over computing made it the more fundamental technology. He said a lot more than that, but I do't have time to go into it. (And besides, I forget too much of what he said, if you know what I mean.) |
| | In respect to John Dvorak, I suggest we're addicted to talking as well as blogging. And that the reticent among us — those for whom the entirety of life is something like a Quaker meeting, where you don't talk unless you can improve on the silence — aren't likely to blog. Which is too bad, because we'd probably like to know what they're not saying. |
DIY tech support
| | I'm writing this on the desktop box, because the laptop can't get on the Net. It's weird. It always knows if it's on Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and adjusts accordingly. I just came from the wireless part of the house, where it worked, to Ethernet on the desk, where it works in every way other than seeing the Net. It sees the router, and can operate it over the browser interface. The router has assigned it an IP address by DHCP. The control panel for Ethernet looks just the same as on this machine, which has the adjacent IP address. Both machines can see each other over the LAN. But the laptop can't do anything on the Net. "The specified server cannot be found." Sounds like a DNS issue to me, but doesn't the router just pass along the DNS server addresses? They don't show up in the control panel, so... I dunno. I'll go to bed and try to figure it out in the morning. I'm sure it's something obvious. |
| | I have the Network Utility up on both machines now. It's a pretty cool piece of software. Across the top are tabs: Info, Netstat, Ping, Lookup, Traceroute, Whois, Finger, Port Scan. Nice set of all-in-one utilities. Under Info I see I have one Ethernet interface (en0) on the desktop and two (en0, en1) on the laptop. The second, en1, is the 802.11 wireless adapter. It shows a link speed of zero, although it does seem to be able to send and receive a few packets. Over the wired Ethernet it's 100 Mb. |
| | So I just turned the wireless off, forcing the machine to return to hardwired Ethernet. Problem solved (though I still don't know how it could see the router, even after I cleared browser cache). At least I found the automatic switching between wireless and wired conditions isn't quite perfect. The other mystery will remain unsolved, because it doesn't matter. |
Enron end run
| | I don't think so. I believe there is such a thing as group soul, or we wouldn't have bands and orchestras. Companies at their best have whatever it is that puts a good band in a groove. But others just sing a tune while they're busy running scams. That's we had with Enron and its Bush Campaign subsidiary. |
| | So now Dubya is deep in the mode Nixon's creepiest advisors called "plausible deniability." Still, I think the answers to "What did he know and when did he know it" are both "Jack Shit." He's not a dumb guy — no matter how badly he talks without a speechwriter — but he's not smart enough to know what Enron was really up to. Neither were most of the truly smart people at Enron (which bragged about its aggregate brainpower almost as much as Microsoft). But Ken Lay knew. God help that man after what he did (and didn't do) gets real clear to a shitload of deeply fucked Texans. |
| | As for HP, I think it's still a pretty good company, as big companies go. Which makes its RIFs even harder to take. You expect to get screwed by assholes. Not by your friends. |
Birth goes on
| | It's my older son's birthday. He's 29 today. It's Ronald Reagen's birthday too. Also Babe Ruth. My younger son turned 5 last fall. My wife found out she was pregnant with the little guy on the big guy's birthday, six years ago today. It's still a surprise. |
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