PlaNetwork Conference 2004 in San Francisco

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

The 2004 PlaNetwork Conference is next weekend, June 5-7, 2004, at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco. This will be the place to gather to talk about the upcoming election, Online Activism, Environmental Sustainability, Social Justice, and applying technology towards furthering all of these causes. Joan Blades of MoveOn and Ben Cohen (the “Ben” in Ben & Jerry’s) of TrueMajority will be keynoting this year.    (1FT)

As I mentioned previously, Blue Oxen Associates is codesigning this year’s event with Tomorrow Makers. The InterActive component is going to be a great place for people to gather, learn, and make connections (both the personal and the knowledge kinds). It will also be a great demonstration of some of the hybrid collaborative processes I’ve talked about so often in this blog and elsewhere.    (1FU)

We’ll also be demonstrating the first prototypes of the Identity Commons system. More on this later.    (1FV)

We’ve set up a conference Wiki for the event itself and also for conversing before and after the event. We also have an IRC channel on Freenode (irc.freenode.net, #planetwork) with logs. I’ll be on that channel a lot over the next week or so, so be sure to drop by and say hello. Finally, if you plan to blog about the conference yourself, please see Planetwork:BloggingTheConference.    (1FW)

I hope to see many of you there. It will be a great opportunity to meet, organize, have fun, and do lots of good.    (1FX)

Manifesto Summit; More Responses

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

In the two weeks since I last responded to feedback about my manifesto, there have been several other interesting comments. Before I respond to those, I want to make a couple of announcements. First, this Thursday (April 29), I’m presenting the manifesto at SRI‘s Artificial Intelligence Center at 4pm in Menlo Park, California. The talk is free and open to the public.    (1E2)

Second, Blue Oxen Associates is once again helping design this June’s Planetwork Conference in San Francisco. In addition to the usual lineup of great speakers, including TrueMajority‘s Ben Cohen (the “Ben” in Ben & Jerry’s), there will be a parallel interactive component. The format will be self-organizing, in some ways resembling Open Space, and is being designed by Tomorrow Makers (Gail Taylor and company) and Blue Oxen Associates. The purpose of the interactive component is to give people some basic infrastructure to discuss and work on topics of interest and also to enable different groups to connect and intertwingle.    (1E3)

I want to build on some of the interest that the manifesto has generated, and the Planetwork Conference offers a perfect venue to do so. I’d like to propose a summit at this June’s conference for everyone interested in pursuing greater interoperability between collaborative tools. If you’d like to attend, drop me an email, register for the conference at the web site, and rank the topic. I’ll followup later with more details.    (1E4)

On to the comments.    (1E5)

Empowering the Programmer    (1E6)

Several people forwarded Bill De Hora’s response to my manifesto. Bill quoted Chris Ferris:    (1E7)

“Interoperability is an unnatural act for a vendor. If they (the customer) want/need interoperability, they need to demand it. They simply cannot assume that the vendors will deliver interoperable solutions out of some altruistic motivation. The vendors are primarily motivated by profit, not good will.”    (1E8)

then added:    (1E9)

There’s a class of articles that tend to look to assign blame to programmers for what’s wrong with software…. I find them ferociously, willfully, ignorant on how software actually is conceived, designed, marketed, built and sold. Blaming programmers is intellectually slothful. We are, and let’s be clear about this, decades past the time the blame could be laid squarely at the programmers feet.    (1EA)

A Manifesto for Collaborative Tools veered close to that, while never quite getting there – exhorting developers, with only token gesture as to how decisions about software are made. Software is a complete commercial ecosystem that extends far beyond hacking code. Ironically like its observation of the semantic web, this manifesto is unlikely to take hold because it does not address the real issue, which is the marketplace and not technique. This failure in analysis is all the more frustrating as I agree with the essential sentiment expressed (we need better tools, now). Plus the writing is wonderful.    (1EB)

My essay isn’t about blame, it’s about empowerment. Bill is right in that I didn’t thoroughly discuss the role of the marketplace. That comes next. The first step, though, is awareness. I’ve learned a lot from Doug Engelbart over the past four years, but the two lessons that stand out most in my mind are: 1. Making the world a better place is a reasonable career goal; and 2. The first step towards achieving this is to think bigger. Very few people — least of all, programmers — understand or want to understand collaboration well. Start with this problem first, then we can talk about the marketplace.    (1EC)

Okay, so the cat’s out of the bag. I’m a closeted idealist. But the reason my idealist side is in the closet is that I’m also a realist. Less (or at least, as much as necessary) talking, more walking. I founded Blue Oxen Associates to help achieve this goal, and so in some ways, our continued existence and progress will be a measure of whether or not this vision can be achieved.    (1ED)

So, how do we deal with the vagaries of the marketplace when it comes to interoperability, especially in light of Chris’s comments? Chris provides the solution. The solution has to start from the bottom-up — the users.    (1EE)

The Identity Commons model (which fits right into the overall framework I describe) is a good example of this approach. These folks want to take on Microsoft Passport and Liberty Alliance. The goal is to provide an alternative digital identity infrastructure where individuals retain control over their information. Realistically, Identity Commons will not be successful by marching into the offices of various vendors with a technical spec in hand and pleading for it to be implemented. Their approach is to target a market sector that isn’t currently being addressed — civil society. Once users there recognize the utility and desirability of the infrastructure, they’ll demand it elsewhere.    (1EF)

Beyond Collaborative Tools    (1EG)

A few people observed that the principles espoused in the manifesto applied to areas beyond collaborative tools. Jamais Cascio said:    (1EH)

Replace “tools” with “movements” (and “tool builders” with “activists”) and Kim’s argument clearly applies to not just to those who are making the technology, but also to those who are using the technology to build a better world.    (1EI)

In his OLDaily newsletter, Stephen Downes suggested that the principles “are as applicable to e-learning software as collaboration tools.”    (1EJ)

There’s a good reason for this. The steps I described apply to almost any collaborative scenario, be it activism or learning. I was especially happy to see Jamais’s comments, because that is ultimately what this is all about.    (1EK)

Semantic Web Evangelists    (1EL)

A few people who read early drafts thought that some Semantic Web folks might take offense at some of the things I said. For the most part, folks have been very positive. W3C’s Dan Connolly, however, expressed some frustration on the #rdfig IRC channel about my claim that Semantic Web evangelists are more machine- than human-centric in their pitches.    (1EM)

Argh! Which evangelists? I’m certainly spending 99.9% of my time working on the balance between effort and reward for people.    (1EN)

Tim Berners Lee for one. Tim and coauthors James Hendler and Ora Lassila opened their May 2001 piece in Scientific American on the Semantic Web with a science fiction scenario where automated agents collaborated with each other to schedule a doctor’s appointment. That scenario echoed tales of Artificial Intelligence’s past.    (1EO)

Now I realize I just said that we need to think bigger, that the audience for this article was broad, and that the authors wanted to open with something sexy. I also don’t mean to pass say that Tim or James or Ora are not people-centric in their philosophy or work. I’m saying that these scenarios are not actually people-centric, even though they might seem that way on the surface, for reasons cited in the manifesto. That’s a problem, because a lot of people missed the point. This is less the case today than it was three years ago, but I worry that the damage has already been done, and the end result was that some of the outstanding work that has happened over the past three years (work to which I refer in the manifesto) hasn’t gotten the credit it deserves.    (1EP)

Italian Translation    (1EQ)

Luigi Bertuzzi is currently working on an Italian translation of the manifesto. You can read the email he sent to me and follow his work.    (1ER)

George Lakoff on Shared Language and the Rockridge Institute

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

George Lakoff, professor of linguistics and cognitive sciences at U.C. Berkeley, is an intellectual whose work I have admired for several years now. He is the author of many books, including Philosophy in the Flesh and Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think.    (AD)

My friend Alex brought an interview with Lakoff to my attention. Lakoff, along with seven other professors from Berkeley and U.C. Davis, recently founded the Rockridge Institute, a progressive think tank.    (AE)

One of Rockridge’s goal is to develop a shared “moral language,” and to unify progressives around that language. In the interview, Lakoff explains how conservatives invested heavily in infrastructure beginning in the 1970s, creating a network of think tanks, scholars, and media outlets devoted to pushing a conservative ideology and agenda. The result was a shared language that framed public issues from a conservative perspective.    (AF)

Lakoff wants to do the same for progressives. He says:    (AG)

The background for Rockridge is that conservatives, especially conservative think tanks, have framed virtually every issue from their perspective. They have put a huge amount of money into creating the language for their worldview and getting it out there. Progressives have done virtually nothing. Even the new Center for American Progress, the think tank that John Podesta [former chief of staff for the Clinton administration] is setting up, is not dedicated to this at all. I asked Podesta who was going to do the Center’s framing. He got a blank look, thought for a second and then said, “You!” Which meant they haven’t thought about it at all. And that’s the problem. Liberals don’t get it. They don’t understand what it is they have to be doing.    (AH)

Rockridge’s job is to reframe public debate, to create balance from a progressive perspective. It’s one thing to analyze language and thought, it’s another thing to create it. That’s what we’re about. It’s a matter of asking ‘What are the central ideas of progressive thought from a moral perspective?’    (AI)

Lakoff cites several examples of how conservatives have framed language to subvert public opinion. For example, “tax relief” implies that taxation is an affliction from which we should be relieved. However, taxes could also be viewed as the enabler for what makes this country great. They enable our infrastructure, they fund research that leads to innovations, they cover law enforcement and defense, they preserve our national parks. We ought to be patriotic about paying taxes! The problem is that the conservatives have taken the initiative in framing the language for public issues, and progressives are playing into their hands by using their language.    (AJ)

A Shared Language for Collaboration and Communities    (AK)

Developing Shared Language is a fundamental prerequisite for effective collaboration, and it is one of Blue Oxen Associates‘ primary goals. The Lakoff interview does a beautiful job of explaining why language is so important for framing ideas and unifying a community.    (AL)

One of my aha moments while working with Doug Engelbart on Bootstrap Alliance was that there were many, many people out there working on essentially the same thing. Most of these folks were blissfully unaware of others, but when they learned of each other’s existence, nothing would happen. They couldn’t figure out how to work with each other. The problems were that there was no Shared Language to begin with, and that there was no motivation to develop that Shared Language. Lakoff touches upon the reason for the latter: People simply don’t appreciate the importance of Shared Language.    (AM)

I’ve mentioned MGTaylor many times in this blog. Blue Oxen Associates has partnered with Tomorrow Makers, an MGTaylor spinoff, on one of its initiatives. MGTaylor’s facilitation process begins with a series of exercises designed to develop shared language among the group. The process often frustrates participants, because they feel like they’re not “doing anything,” or they’re not being productive. The reality is, without going through that stage, it is impossible for groups to accomplish anything or to be productive. Most participants realize this in the end. Shared Language is what makes collaboration possible.    (AN)