Escapable Logic

Doc Searls and a few other acolytes of flight were guests of Intel for a ride on the Zero-G flight experience. Here’s Doc, presumably praying to Saint Spew, the patron Saint of Puke, before the flight:

I never knew a military aviator who enjoyed zero or negative G forces. In fact, most engines’ oil pumps are not specified for more than 1 negative G. Not that it kept us from trying zero Gs in a C-130, while otherwise bored, flying from one place in Vietnam to a similar-looking other place. In those halcyon days, each aircraft dashboard sported a quaint plexiglass map holder, about 6″ by 9″. Meant to hold a Jeppesen approach plate book, it was one half of a terrific Zero-G indicator. The other half was a pencil. I kid you not.

The trick was to drop the pencil into the map holder and start the one maneuver that’s obvious after a few moments’ reflection. In order to attain the maximum weightless time, you want to spend as much time as possible pushing the controls forward into the zero G range. You could do this starting from a high altitude and just push the controls forward, but you’ll get more weightless time if you start at a medium altitude at high speed and then pull the aircraft up at a couple of positive Gs to set up for the negative G phase. From the nose-up position, the pilot pushes the controls forward until the Zero G state is reached. That’s where the pencil in its lucite cage came in.

I’m sure the folks at Zero-G Corp have more sophisticated instruments, but none more direct or accurate; or more analogue. But some subtlety is required. Surely unlike the Zero G 727’s instruments, as the pencil rises from the bottom of the holder, one must gently release a bit of the forward pressure, since it obviously required a slightly negative G force to move the pencil off the bottom of the map holder. I describe this distinction so my pilot friends don’t point out my oversights.

That’s it. Just keep the pencil in the center of the map holder as long as possible. In the Zero Gravity Corp’s Boeing 727, that lasts about 30 seconds. In the C-130, we probably pushed the limits a little further, though we did not have the range of airspeed available to their 727. Here’s how the profile looks using their 727:

It’s really a matter of the airspeed and altitude available to you. In an SR-71, I’ll bet you could get close to a minute of weightlessness, by starting at 60,000 feet and Mach 2.5, arcing up to 85,000 feet or so and pulling it out when pointed straight down at about 35,000 feet, which is where most real men would be staining their tutu.

So that’s it. 2/3 of the people “lose it”, literally, on the Vomit Comet. And that’s why I never want to experience Zero Gs again. Few smart people do it twice.

Mitt Romney is talking about his faith and values this morning. I’ve found myself working very closely with some splendid people in Utah for the last several months, so this is of more than casual interest to me.

My friend and partner, Steve Urquhart, who is Chairman of the Rules Committee of the Utah State Legislature, says that Mitt Romney is one of those "perfect" people - the kind who does what his inner guide tells him to do. You know: all those words and deeds that you and I know we should get it together to conceive, plan, do and follow up with. I’ll take Steve’s word for it. They are characteristics that remind me of John Palfrey, Director of the Berkman Center. I wonder if those two fellas from Massachussetts would realize that. I feel lucky to perform that way for an entire morning.

Doc Searls and I were introduced to Steve by Phil Windley, a Utahn who is admired deeply and warmly by scores of East and West coast liberal types who can’t remember the last time they set foot in a flyover state except Colorado. With Doc and Kaliya Hamlin, Phil is just concluding their bi-annual Internet Identity Workshop. Kaliya is an Identity Geek (the "Identity Woman") from Berkeley who’s as liberal as they get, with a passion for non-conferences that most males still regard as airy-fairy, but not Phil and Doc and anyone who’s attended one, having seen how much better they work than the old format. Many of us became aware of Phil in 2001-2 when, as CIO of the state of Utah, he was blogging every day about what it was like to be the CIO of the state of Utah. In June, 2003, Doc Searls and Phil and I attended the O’Reilly Open Source Conference, just as the Howard Dean campaign was the hot topic on the Internet. It was at that conference that we started discussing the idea that grew into the O’Reilly Digital Democracy Teach-in at Etech the following February. Much of my life since then was shaped by that seminal meeting. Our little ORGware band, of which Phil and Doc are key members, is trying to build what was obviouly needed 4-1/2 years ago, and that still is not available.

Last month, I was impressed with Phil Windley’s personal statement, My Faith, where he tells his family background:

[in the first half of the 19th century,] Members of the Church, referred to as Latter-day Saints or Saints, were driven from town to town and state to state. In spite of this persecution and the murder of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Church has flourished and now has over 12 million members around the world in over 160 countries.

My own ancestors joined the church in England and Scandinavia in the mid 1800’s, emigrated to America, and crossed the plains in wagon companies as pioneers. These people were part of the great colonization effort made by the pioneers of the Rocky Mountains, settling in Southeastern Idaho where I was raised. When I read their stories, I’m constantly amazed at the trials they endured.

Mormons are Christians. Christ is the center of my religious life. One of the core beliefs of the Mormon Church is that after the death of Christ’s apostles the church fell into apostasy and the authority to act in God’s name was lost. We believe that the Church is Christ’s restored church on earth.

… the Mormon Church believes in, and is founded upon, the idea that God still speaks to men in the form of visions and revelations to His prophets. Most of Mormon scripture has come through modern revelation. Such revelations continue to guide the church today.

For most of the people I deal with every day, the vocabulary of divine faith and revelation are hard to listen to. Some of them have a hard time with the notion of the invisible hand of the marketplace, so we’re talking about a kind of extremism here. But what if we parse Phil’s description as we would a new Internet protocol? What does the LDSTP (The Latter Day Saint Transport Protocol) really describe? Yeah. I know. "Conestoga Wagon". Enough with the one-liners.

The Latter Day Saint Transport Protocol "LDSTP"

So some people in the US, a couple of hundred years ago, lived in communities which were dominated by the local church, and usually just one. Each of those town churches was run by a guy who was a full-time Religious Authority whose job it was to tell everyone else what sinners they were and to appear better than they were. We must assume that these guys were as fond of money and boys and girls in the same ratios as their counterparts today, perhaps even worse in that repressed society. Some of those devout churchgoers looked on this hypocrisy and decided that it’s better to download their spiritual code base directly from God to each person, rather than through the intermediaries who probably made "The Office" look like a model of competence and sincerity. They used the word "revelation" to describe those downloads. Presumably, they kept the insights that worked and abandoned the ones that didn’t.

It looks a lot like disintermediation to me, and the established clergy surely greeted this independence with the affection that the telecoms feel for David Isenberg and Susan Crawford. The persecuted believers in this new LDSTP protocol for a Spiritual Operating System ("SOS"), had to get out of town, so they headed west, and stopped on the other side of the mountains where it was most beautiful and where the local residents talked funny but were a lot more neighborly than the white folks back home. Life was good.

Forbidden from paying their clergy, every man was allowed to share his insights. Since life was so demanding, I assume they were forced to keep embracing what worked and let go of what didn’t. It sounds like the practicality of the team behind the Linux kernel. By any objective measure, they prospered more than the rest of America. It’s no wonder that their beliefs and vocabulary retain much of their beginnings, since what they kept worked so well.

If Mitt says it as well as Phil does, he’ll comfort the rest of the country.

Please note CORRECTIONS # 1 & 2, below, courtesy David Weinberger.

It was a lovely week, treading water in my gene pool in Denver, and now I’m more determined than ever to save my grandchildren from ourselves.

The Miracle of Flight

Tomorrow, Tamara’s flying to Prague, then Paris, then Amsterdam. Like any of us would be, she’s focused on the mechanics of a 7-hour flight, not on the miracle of the journey.

Forty-one years ago in USAF Pilot Training, my Instructor Pilot asked me to look at our stubby little jet-fighter wings and tell me what I saw. “Don’t see a thing.” I replied. “Think about it,” said 1st Lt. Skip Vara, “That’s all that’s holding us up. Isn’t that amazing?”

As amazing as a fighter pilot finding magic in Bernoulli’s Principle.

The Miracle of Re-Founding Governance

Our little band believes that a good-enough World-Of-Ends solution can redefine US governance. Our challenge is the same as any group with this vision. We try not to get distracted about the general issues that any such project must address. Instead, let’s question our purpose and the components of our particular proposition.

Our Purpose

To tease out and aggregate the inchoate political will of the people; to focus it with enough palpable force that politicians and their stakeholders must listen with the urgency that Jeff Jarvis’ Hell inspired at Dell.

Our Proposition

A week ago, David Weinberger suggested that we not concern ourselves about the specifics of the ORGware platform, since he knows enough about it that he assumes it is reasonably conceived and sufficient to our purposes. Instead, we should focus on the means by which we gain critical mass.

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CORRECTION #1: David wrote to say that it’s not that he knows enough about ORGware to be satisfied about its sufficiency. Rather, he assumes it’s coming along fine because he trusts me. He certainly knows we’re not rushing it to market!

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We’re building a public utility: a federation of hyperlocal sites pre-configured to attract hope and outrage and action around specific issues. That should be enough to catalyze a vibrant enough conversation to grow without much nourishment from the builders. That’s a safe bet: zillions of people blog and kvetch (comment) without a purpose-built environment, and zillions more kvetch in purpose-built environments like Huffington Post and Drudge and RedStates and TPM. As they did with the Dean campaign, legions of kvetchers crosstalk using their favorite authors’ blog comments, and it serves them just as their own blog would - they reach whom they want to with a minimum of hassle. People clearly have something on their minds and need to share it.

Pun intended, we’re in the business of laying eggs. Using ORGware’s ability to spin off sites spontaneously, we provide a protective shell loaded with a temporary supply of nutrients and that’s it - we’re done. Then we cheer from the tiki bar and see who hatches and gets across the beach to safety. That’s more than the weeping tortoises did, abandoning their eggs in Mondo Cane. They really don’t care which of the collective offspring will last long enough to make a difference. Everyone wants to be heard, some want to make a difference and even fewer will. But those are enough.

Leaders emerge. People follow. Some followers become leaders. We’re building a series of promising hierarchies without the ability to lock in anyone when the hierarchy grows to apparent dominance. That’s the difference between a world of ends and a world of means.

Our hyperlocal egg varieties

Yeah. I know. This list is old news to many of us. But, let’s keep it in perspective: It’s amazing that we don’t question whether we can launch these public utilities, or whether the platform will be sufficient.

NewGov.US

A dedicated site for every congressional district and Senate seat, 435 for Congress, styled as http://newgov.us/ma4; 100 for the Senate - http://newgov.us/ma/senatea (or “senateb” - I can’t find a unique identifier for senate seats - amazing)

NewPrez.US

An independent site for supporters of every candidate for President, one of which automatically morphs into a “Master Site” for feedback to the sitting President. As we all hoped DeanForAmerica would.

.govAdvisers.US

Focused citizen oversight of every Federal agency (Defense.govAdvisers.US; FDA.govAdvisers.US, etc.).

Politicopia.com

50 state legislative sites for citizen collaboration on state lawmaking, plus a “Master Site” for citizen collaboration on Federal legislation.

CommunitiesDoneRight.com

100+ sites with the DoneRight moniker, for the 50 largest US cities, all the states and some other places. Ad-supported, with the ferment of urban living and instant social networks for every school, neighborhood association, church and treehouse.

Marketing vs. Self-organization:

• Marketing assumes we can reach people to take actions that they otherwise would not.
• Self-organizing assumes that people will act in ways that scratch whatever itch they’re feeling.
• Marketing assumes we’re smarter than the people we’re persuading. When we stop, they stop.
• Self-organizing networks require us to build obvious-to-use backscratchers.
• When we get it right, they keep scratching, as long as they feel the itch.

SO:

• No half-assed social network can be saved by good marketing.
• A well-provisioned, relevant SN needs no marketing.

What’s wrong with that logic?

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CORRECTION #2: David Weinberger again: “I really don’t believe in a “build it and they will come” strategy. It needs marketing, or at least programs that will build critical mass.”

I should have said “A well-provisioned, relevant SN needs a lot less marketing than you’d think”.

My marketing vs. intrinsic growth opposition was over-the top, but SNs do encourage us to expect growth far in excess of the marketing budget. Take the phenomenon that David and I first bonded over, 4-1/2 years ago: the Dean campaign. Without enough money, staff or lists to mount a “real” campaign, Joe Trippi turned to the Internet. With little more than a Moveable type blog and comments turned on, the campaign was able to attract and hold attention based on Dean’s galvanizing speech to the California Democratic Convention in March, 2003. That much is well documented. It’s happened again this year with the Ron Paul campaign. David’s point here is reinforced by the presence of the free marketing given to a televised speech by a Presidential candidate.

Our viewpoints differ at the margins of sponsored social networks. SNs absolutely cannot grow without a seed crystal powerful enough to crystallize interest and commentary around it. If you have a seductive meme and truly viral mechanisms, you can reduce your marketing efforts. Also, if you attract existing organizations’ members to a site offering immediate benefits, they are likely to invite their associates, providing a multiplier effect.

A great example is the previously cited Jeff Jarvis “Dell Hell” phenomenon. A loosely-coupled social network formed around Jeff’s story and took it from there. But Jeff’s blog is called “Buzz Machine” for good reasons: He generates more marketing before lunch than most of us do all week.

Key Point: For many issues-based networks, there are Jeff Jarvises out there ready to spring into action. If you can awaken them, they can provide most of the marketing you need. So those first-tier infectious vectors can count as part of your marketing effort.

To paraphrase Dan Gillmor, “The audience markets better than I can.”

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Issues and Viewpoints

Issues and viewpoints fuel social networks. The organizer of an ORGware site, or of a group (there is no difference) must assign at least one issue to her new site. If it’s an issue not listed before, it’s added to the tag list. For what it’s worth, it also creates a new public group for anyone to kvetch broadly, separately from the organizer’s more focused group. Tag lists are in order of popularity, to encourage people to gather around the most-used tags.

Aside from its logo, color scheme and “About Us” pages, the only characteristics that make a group what it is are its issues and how well the core members speak about them. We can’t control the speaking, though we can seed it. The Eureka! of the blogosphere is that there are smart, talented writers everywhere and they sprout like mushrooms whenever they discover a place they can make a difference.

Strategic Question

Are there enough compelling voices, in enough cities and states and congressional districts, to demonstrate that a federation of such sites - this public utility - is a viable back-channel for governance? Since nothing is certain, let’s appreciate a probability as stunning as Bernoulli’s Principle:

Our odds of re-founding America are better than the Founding Fathers’

Tactical Questions for Ten Refounders

Our little band is seeking ten Refounders: leaders to act as the Board for the Public Utility that we might call the ORGware Federation of sites. This is like starting a water district in a new town. Leaders of the town pay a lawyer to write and file the magic words to create the district. They serve as the Board of Directors of the non-profit utility. They encumber their property with new taxes to pay for the water district. They do all this in order to provide clean water and to improve the value of their property and businesses. There is no conflict in their non-profit and for-profit roles.

Our challenge to our Ten Refounders:

Please invest significantly in this utility, but not as much as each of us has.
Please lead opinion and sentiment in your world to assure the utility’s success.
Please help us do the right things.

Our ten Refounders will be the leaders who answer yes to:

Are the ORGware public utilities as likely to succeed as the Declaration of Independence?
Is your investment and busy schedule as exposed and precious as the Founders necks?

Operational Question

What’s the best way to spend the ten Refounders’ investment to make all this happen? –>

Doc’s picture here was like a 2×4 to my forehead:

A zillion years ago, I was accustomed to flying USAF tankers from Sacramento to Fairbanks, Alaska, for a couple of weeks of weird weather and flying. On the way and back, we flew over the Brooks Range, where the serious peaks barely rose above the snows that filled the spaces between them:

As a hiker, I knew that it would take a full day to hike between peaks just like these in the Sierras, but only a couple of hours on snowshoes and minutes on a snowmobile.

The Brooks Range is, for some reason, a picture I will carry in my head forever. Thanks, Doc!

What’s the most hated part of broadcast politics?

Easy: Robocalls.

Robocalls have been used to pervert every aspect of representative government and to undermine the free-access voting system which makes a republican democracy possible. Politicians have passed laws to ensure that they can interrupt our dinner in 23 states where businesses cannot.

We know there’s no demand for messages, and that there is deep disdain for robocalls. So here’s the conundrum du jour:

Tonight, in the state of Utah, a well-funded Robocall campaign is launching against the forces of devisiveness. Over the next week, these uninvited calls will exhort voters to . . . read a blog.

WTF? Has the world gone mad? Political interests are paying good money to convince voters to join a conversation? Can representative government be far behind?

Yes, it’s true. Blame it on Stephen Urquhart, whom you might remember from posts by Doc Searls and me last summer. He’s the visionary behind Politicopia.com and he wants us all to go over there and join a conversation among responsible adults to discuss whether the people of Utah should pass a referendum supporting vouchers supporting private education of students curently in public schools.

Because it wouldn’t hurt for a bunch of bloggers and bloggees from other states to join the conversation–not just to sell their personal point of view on school vouchers, but to congratulate the leading-edge Utahpians on yet another contribution to computers and connectivity.

After all, this is the state that brought us WordPerfect, Novell, Evans & Sutherland, and where Alan Kay did his postgraduate work. Who’d guess that they’re leading us again, this time toward a more perfect union?

Yesterday, I provided a chart showing how well the stock prices for the so-called Big Tech Big Ten had done over the last 5 years. I had a couple of complaints that the chart with Google included unfairly overstates the PDSI - Patent Deformers’ Stock Index, yielding a tripling of the conspirators’ combined stock price:

And surely it does, so here’s the same chart with GOOG not included:

Now we see how unrosy the half-decade has been for the remaining nine: a mere doubling of their average stock price.

Thanks to Jim Moore’s example, Tom Stites and I have been exercised recently about “Patent Reform” or, more exactly, Patent Deform as Stephen Wren put it. It turns out that the proponents of the legislation are most of the tech industry which, having been caught as serial infringers by the courts, has proposed the single most probable method for gutting American innovation.

As I mentioned before, America is arguably the world’s innovation leader and we are also the only country with the “First-to-Invent” doctrine: An American inventor is protected who is good at putting inventions into the real world but not so good at filing patent applications. And our patent law provides significant penalties when a company infringes on such patents, whether filed or not.

But the Big Tech Big Ten companies don’t like that so much:

• Apple
• Cisco
• Microsoft
• Intel
• Oracle
• Google
• IBM
• HP
• Dell
• Amazon

We can understand their point. Earlier this year, Microsoft was awarded $1.5 billion for infringing on a patent by the holder, Alcatel-Lucent.

Oops: late-breaking news from last week. A judge disagreed with the jury and overturned the verdict. Could the patent laws be working? Apparently not if you’re forced to defend your actions.

From that viewpoint, the Patent Laws are broken, because Microsoft simply should not have to go to so much trouble to explain itself. Partly because of stock buybacks, their cash reserves dropped below $30 billion late last year for the first time since 2000.

Here’s a graph of the tough times that the Big Tech proponents of Patent Deformation have suffered over the last 5 years, as indicated by their aggregate share value:

Well, 3 years in Google’s case.

So, all this reform turmoil is being driven by the legal teams of the Big Ten Big Tech companies, while it’s adamantly opposed by other, less glamorous companies like Caterpillar, Proctor & Gamble, QualComm, and about 230 other companies and Inventors’ associations. I’ll try to find that list for you.

Time to Leave the Whine Country?

Maybe The Big Tech Big Ten Patent Deformers need to learn that business won’t always be as easy as it was in the early days. Meanwhile, here’s another graphic for them to live by: