I don't think we need to be talking about the personhood of the corporation. I think we should be talking about the corporatization of the person. Let's face it. The bureaucratic processes that uphold the sanctity of corporate governance and the oligarcic power structure will never be wiped away with the personhood of the corporation, and always, it is the individual who must interface with the corporate structure by its rules rather than the other way around.
The bureaucratic interface of the individual exists within the services offered by the corporate entities which, presumably, were brought into existence to serve the individual. The corporation serves the individuals who inhabit it by facilitating long term survival goals based on serving the useful function of providing some value to another group of individuals external to the workings of the corporation. The corporation is corrupt only if in serving value it sacrifices values to remain profitably in its business.
How many clothes lines manufacturers would there be if clothes lines were perfect? If they didn't stretch. If they didn't get dirty. If the poles didn't sink, or lean or rot. If they didn't eventually fall out of the track on the wheels at each end. If they never needed to be replaced then once the market became saturated clothes lines would only keep pace with housing starts, eventually dwindling in each market served and ultimately forcing mergers for economic survival as markets became dependent on the ability to be financially secure in maximizing profit with performance.
Transporation, being what it is, and in the Western World the cheaper alternative to decentralized production, performs a vital...
... you know what? Don't even bother. This is an omniblather moment brought to you by the people of omniblather for the betterment of people everywhere. Have an omniblather. It's better.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Go Ask Hollywood - Popular Science
Go Ask Hollywood - Popular Science
Canadian Cory Doctorow has been on the forefront of the intellectual property rights battle in which he, as an author and speaker who now uses the Creative Commons licensing, advocates open standards and licensing. Cory's criticisms of technology and culture within the digital realm have earned him accolades from every camp -- from artists to executives. -- tim
Canadian Cory Doctorow has been on the forefront of the intellectual property rights battle in which he, as an author and speaker who now uses the Creative Commons licensing, advocates open standards and licensing. Cory's criticisms of technology and culture within the digital realm have earned him accolades from every camp -- from artists to executives. -- tim
Sunday, January 09, 2005
the viscous film of science fiction reality
In no other time in history has there been such a rush to proceed with
high-flying visions of nano-scale architecture manufacture, but say just
once that you're going to put a stop to buckeyballs (fullerenes) and
build a 120 metre tall wind turbine out in the middle of the ocean and
people faint with fear that something they can see and that they know to
be benign (especially in comparison to current energy production
realities) will always be on the skyline where they never look except
for weekends and holidays and they have a flippin' bird!
Better to never visit the installation of the local nuclear power plant
or to live close by it for that matter. And to IGNORE that it even
exists. Better to make chemicals or electrical power in sprawling plants
where acreage is swallowed up and contaminated forever by toxic residue
than to admit there is another and a better way...
But you know? It never hurts to question, does it?
-- tim
high-flying visions of nano-scale architecture manufacture, but say just
once that you're going to put a stop to buckeyballs (fullerenes) and
build a 120 metre tall wind turbine out in the middle of the ocean and
people faint with fear that something they can see and that they know to
be benign (especially in comparison to current energy production
realities) will always be on the skyline where they never look except
for weekends and holidays and they have a flippin' bird!
Better to never visit the installation of the local nuclear power plant
or to live close by it for that matter. And to IGNORE that it even
exists. Better to make chemicals or electrical power in sprawling plants
where acreage is swallowed up and contaminated forever by toxic residue
than to admit there is another and a better way...
But you know? It never hurts to question, does it?
-- tim
Thursday, January 06, 2005
... is software is infrastructure is culture is ...
Dammit, dammit, dammit!!!! I didn't say you could charge me for that water heater until the thermostat needed to be cranked all the way to 400 degrees farenheit with a reserve capacity of a half gallon and pin holes to spare!
This is the autocracy of the infrastructure. Gas, electric... dare I say Hydrogen with a Capital and hegemonic 'H' accompanied by a rambunctious desire to afford the same technology that includes a warranty which won't expire before I actually get a return on my capital investment... including tax.
This is the way of culture today. The wired culture carved before us from the remanants of the cyber world between the ears and between the handsets. The electric space of some modulated pulse that pounds our ears and pins the ears back with the squelch of ownership.
But somebody's got to do it. The ownership of the infrastructure has to exist. Co-exist within the ephemera of the culture that got the guy down the street with the interest and the time on his hands to do for the bunch that wanted it and group them all together with the neat stuff he'd introduced to them.
Like all good things the buts and wherefores and howevers crop up eventually and the group, seeing that someone else could get newer, cheaper and better 'stuff', ultimately decides that to hire their man's nephew at a reduced price to do the same job is better. They form the competition that is intended to put their well meaning friend to task on price and service or push him over the edge in an attempt to get something better out of the deal from someone who cares. Of course, in there as well is the actual reduction in price of the equipment the nephew works on. Eventually, unless the infrastructure is special enough to remain costly or forced by regulation into some form of uniqueness serving the public good, the profitability of fixing is outweighed by the price of just chucking it all and replacing it. Perhaps the reason brownfields are now undergoing economic renewal is not because our decision makers are environmentalists, but because the practical financial reality is that the intrinsic value of land is its proximity to infrastructure. The fact that industrial users did not salt enough money away to afford reclamation and that now the public trust must pay for or seek long term partnerships with business for win win solutions in reclamation shows the shortsightedness of the profit motive. As lands became marginalized by pollution and less attractive to use their monetary value diminishes and, in wind swept trailer park fashion, business moves on leaving the mess behind for someone else. This is where infill economics must eventually come into play and why it takes so long for reclamation to take hold. It's the same reason homeowners don't often renovate an entire household all at once but, instead, move from room to room over the course of a lifetime. Cash flow is everything.
In there somewhere there is a lot of talk about the cycle of technology and its long-term usability and then someone who notices sees that a regulatory environment would protect culture, ownership and language (language being a cultural phenomenon, apparently) along with lesser issues such as public access and in the final stages, buy in at all levels to ensure cultural equilibrium.
The technology and its infrastructure become key to culture. Shifts within the original technical infrastructure become the deepening hooks of entrenchment and de facto indicators of infrastructure value.
Culture today is both broadened by technology and saved from upsetting influence largely by those infrastructures that are corporately owned and which receive broad-based market share.
Today's ISP game has moved from ISP supplied web portals to specialized content managers whose role in connectivity is to provide the user experience context. One of those contexts is entertainment and another is access to information.
But wait. A portal and its content co-exist as software programming and content programming, the two being unbreakably linked together. This inseparable relationship in the wireless era makes software, infrastrature and culture all one in the same. The key to it all seems to be who pays for it, who steals it and who just sits there and soaks it all up.
-- tim
This is the autocracy of the infrastructure. Gas, electric... dare I say Hydrogen with a Capital and hegemonic 'H' accompanied by a rambunctious desire to afford the same technology that includes a warranty which won't expire before I actually get a return on my capital investment... including tax.
This is the way of culture today. The wired culture carved before us from the remanants of the cyber world between the ears and between the handsets. The electric space of some modulated pulse that pounds our ears and pins the ears back with the squelch of ownership.
But somebody's got to do it. The ownership of the infrastructure has to exist. Co-exist within the ephemera of the culture that got the guy down the street with the interest and the time on his hands to do for the bunch that wanted it and group them all together with the neat stuff he'd introduced to them.
Like all good things the buts and wherefores and howevers crop up eventually and the group, seeing that someone else could get newer, cheaper and better 'stuff', ultimately decides that to hire their man's nephew at a reduced price to do the same job is better. They form the competition that is intended to put their well meaning friend to task on price and service or push him over the edge in an attempt to get something better out of the deal from someone who cares. Of course, in there as well is the actual reduction in price of the equipment the nephew works on. Eventually, unless the infrastructure is special enough to remain costly or forced by regulation into some form of uniqueness serving the public good, the profitability of fixing is outweighed by the price of just chucking it all and replacing it. Perhaps the reason brownfields are now undergoing economic renewal is not because our decision makers are environmentalists, but because the practical financial reality is that the intrinsic value of land is its proximity to infrastructure. The fact that industrial users did not salt enough money away to afford reclamation and that now the public trust must pay for or seek long term partnerships with business for win win solutions in reclamation shows the shortsightedness of the profit motive. As lands became marginalized by pollution and less attractive to use their monetary value diminishes and, in wind swept trailer park fashion, business moves on leaving the mess behind for someone else. This is where infill economics must eventually come into play and why it takes so long for reclamation to take hold. It's the same reason homeowners don't often renovate an entire household all at once but, instead, move from room to room over the course of a lifetime. Cash flow is everything.
In there somewhere there is a lot of talk about the cycle of technology and its long-term usability and then someone who notices sees that a regulatory environment would protect culture, ownership and language (language being a cultural phenomenon, apparently) along with lesser issues such as public access and in the final stages, buy in at all levels to ensure cultural equilibrium.
The technology and its infrastructure become key to culture. Shifts within the original technical infrastructure become the deepening hooks of entrenchment and de facto indicators of infrastructure value.
Culture today is both broadened by technology and saved from upsetting influence largely by those infrastructures that are corporately owned and which receive broad-based market share.
Today's ISP game has moved from ISP supplied web portals to specialized content managers whose role in connectivity is to provide the user experience context. One of those contexts is entertainment and another is access to information.
But wait. A portal and its content co-exist as software programming and content programming, the two being unbreakably linked together. This inseparable relationship in the wireless era makes software, infrastrature and culture all one in the same. The key to it all seems to be who pays for it, who steals it and who just sits there and soaks it all up.
-- tim
the future is realtime ontologies
The not so distant future holds many wonderous changes and interesting surprises. And none of this news is particularly new or insightful. For anyone with a positive outlook the future is always going to be bright and interesting.
So much for preamble.
I am particularly interested in seeing the future forget the past. I know that sounds strange, but there are some real problems with the benchmark performance objectives inherent in any kind of tracking mechanism that might arise under the single identity future.
Sounds like the backdrop for a science fiction novel, doesn't it?
Well, indeed, with the continued maturation of Tim Berners-Lee's Semantic Web focusing on life sciences there can be no doubt that both human performance objectives and the wide availability of curriculum will see the standardization of an ontological framework that births new disciplines in real time.
As the "knee of the curve" is rounded with advanced materials science and rapid discovery of uses for new science (to name but two areas) language must also evolve to embrace new relationships.
Imagine, as the time between new discoveries and their useful inclusion into daily life gets shorter, how the relationship to the parent discipline that raised it matures. Competition demands that you know how your own node is evolving and whether it is safe to venture out on its tender branches in the hope that its usefulness demands the care and feeding required to make a trunk of its life.
So, to quote the oft quoted... from Bartleby.com
So much for preamble.
I am particularly interested in seeing the future forget the past. I know that sounds strange, but there are some real problems with the benchmark performance objectives inherent in any kind of tracking mechanism that might arise under the single identity future.
Sounds like the backdrop for a science fiction novel, doesn't it?
Well, indeed, with the continued maturation of Tim Berners-Lee's Semantic Web focusing on life sciences there can be no doubt that both human performance objectives and the wide availability of curriculum will see the standardization of an ontological framework that births new disciplines in real time.
As the "knee of the curve" is rounded with advanced materials science and rapid discovery of uses for new science (to name but two areas) language must also evolve to embrace new relationships.
Imagine, as the time between new discoveries and their useful inclusion into daily life gets shorter, how the relationship to the parent discipline that raised it matures. Competition demands that you know how your own node is evolving and whether it is safe to venture out on its tender branches in the hope that its usefulness demands the care and feeding required to make a trunk of its life.
So, to quote the oft quoted... from Bartleby.com
| Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920. |
| 1. The Road Not Taken |
| TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, | |
| And sorry I could not travel both | |
| And be one traveler, long I stood | |
| And looked down one as far as I could | |
| To where it bent in the undergrowth; | 5 |
| Then took the other, as just as fair, | |
| And having perhaps the better claim, | |
| Because it was grassy and wanted wear; | |
| Though as for that the passing there | |
| Had worn them really about the same, | 10 |
| And both that morning equally lay | |
| In leaves no step had trodden black. | |
| Oh, I kept the first for another day! | |
| Yet knowing how way leads on to way, | |
| I doubted if I should ever come back. | 15 |
| I shall be telling this with a sigh | |
| Somewhere ages and ages hence: | |
| Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | |
| I took the one less traveled by, | |
| And that has made all the difference. | 20 |
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