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| Thursday, August 22, 2002 |
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Guess I'd better start prepping that speech. 
| | So I'm sitting by the window in the plane from Denver to DesMoines, fumbling with a magazine, when the woman two seats away says to her friend sitting next to me, "Doc Searls will be there..." |
| | I'm tellin' ya, this is an amazing day. |
| | And yes, I am here at Gnomedex. There's only dial-up in the Marriott here, but I'll try to avoid the room anyway. Too many fun people wandering around. |
O shut up
| | This is just fucking nuts. The Librarian of Congress is saying "We steamrolled a whole new marketplace by regulating the living shit out of it before it even had a chance to establish itself, and we're not gonna let the pioneers we priced out of the proceedings come in and petition their government for a fair shake to exist." |
| | Thanks to AOTC for the link. |
Dead Carpet Club
| | I dunno what it costs to join United Airlines' Red Carpet Club. I got grandfathered with a lifetime membership (a gift from my wife, who was one of United's most frequent fliers at the time) a long time ago. You can't get them anymore. (I told you I love smart wimmin). Anyway, I'm sure it's a lot. |
| | The clubs are always welcome oases for weary travellers: a place to relax on leather, have a free cappuchino (from a shitty machine, but still), deal with friendly and unharried people behind the counter, munch some okay snack food, sit at a bar, make free local calls and jack into a phone for a dial-up Internet connection. |
| | All of which was fine until about an hour ago, when I discovered that the Red Carpet Clubs here in the all-United B Concourse at DIA are the ONLY places I can find where there is no wi-fi signal whatsoever. Not acceptable. |
| | So here I am, back with the rest of the proles, jacked into a power outlet on a roof support column, bathed in full-strength free wi-fi, giving the airport some free PR. |
World to AOL! Come in AOL!
| | There's one company that has a chance to bridge the gap between content and computing. It's AOL Time Warner. Everyone is writing off the merger as a failure, and so far it has been. But the company could rise again if it could somehow make the compomises internally that haven't been made externally between the tech and content industries. Put Jamie Kellner, who knows how to run a profitable content business but holds the laughable view that failing to watch commercials is stealing, in the same room with the Merry Pranksters of Nullsoft, who are great at creating disruptive technology but don't have a business model. See if they can find some common ground. Do the same with the record label, the movie studio, the cable network, and the online service. Maybe we'll get somewhere. |
| | So here's a follow-up, which I'm directing straight at Steve Case: |
| | To help nature along, make Time Warner Cable symmetrical. Let the market move intelligence and resources back out to the ends of the network where they belong. Make broadband two-way. Let the customers produce as well as consume. Cable customers (families, homes, small offices and home offices) have many gigabytes apiece of stuff that would be much more handily served from household systems, and much more inexpensivelly as well. (Think of how many gigs your hard drive is. Now think of what it costs to rent the same from an ISP.) Look at what's happening with home movies and digital photography. That stuff accumulates by the terrorbyte, and there's no practical way to share it over the Net. Every new PC, Mac and Linux system comes with a Web server; but most cable and DSL systems render them useless. Take a look at Apple's new .Mac system. It's nice, but it's also just a way to work around a system that's built to distribute content from producers to consumers (and for just one industry: entertainment), rather than a platform for countless new markets. |
| | Right now, these communities aren't speaking the same language. As far as I'm concerned, Peter Chernin is talking in Swahili. It's not that I think he's wrong, it's that I know his assumptions and definitions are completely different from my own. And as Larry Lessig rightly points out, most members of Congress speak Chernin's language. |
| | When Bob Pittman left AOL/TW, so did the company's biggest employer of the tiresome old producer-to-consumer rhetoric. Steve Case is no bargain in that department; but his heart and mind are a lot closer to the tech community than those of anybody else with power at AOL/TW. Steve has always, somewhere down in his soul, believed in empowering customers, and not just in capturing eyeballs and pumping content. |
| | This is your chance, Steve. You can be a hero to billions. The opportunity is right there in front of you. We're behind you, too. And don't underestimate us. We made this new world. You helped a lot, but got stuck when you married The Media. It's not too late to make that marriage work. Help us finish building this thing out and everybody will win. |
| | And hey, if that doesn't motivate you, maybe this will: There's no way Bill Gates will do it. In fact, there's no way he can. |
Wi-fi fu
| | So I'm sitting here in the Colorado Sports bar & cafe having a Denver omelette at Denver International Airport. Dept of Redudancy Dept, I suppose. |
| | Anyway, thanks to Kevin, I knew there was wi-fi here, and managed to figure a way into the system (it's not quite obvious). |
Redigression
| | Oh: when you get tired of all the male kinda shit that seems to comprise 5/4 of the blog world (techblog or warblog... now there's a sexy selection), wander on over to the smartest babeblogs on the Web: Dawn and Moxie. They both remind me of my favorite line from that great Joni Mitchell song, "You turn me on, I'm a radio": |
| | You don't like weak women
You get bored so quick
And you don't like strong women
'Cause they're hip to your tricks |
Gnomedex finger
| | I'm off to Gnomedex. Regretting not blogging more of the stuff some of you folks have sent me, but I've been max'd out. 2much2do. |
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