Ross Mayfield's Weblog

The Terror of the Internet in the Middle East

As we watch the most incredible of events unfold in the Middle East, we certainly don't know how they will conclude and it may take longer to understand them. Social Media, nay, the Internet, didn't cause the revolution in Egypt. They underlying cause is more likely ineffective and unjust totalitarian rule. We can dismiss how Milennials are shaping the first world today. But whenever you have the largest demographic bubble in history at the peak of youth, and they don't have a just role to play in an unjust society, they tend to find one.

Democracies look back fondly at student revolutions, from 1968 and beyond. But what is happening in the developing world today could hope to end so well. About 15 years ago there was an article in the Economist that I can't access now that predicted the large concentration of impoverished youth in the Middle East would push thing to the brink. Were it not for the aggressive growth policies of Bejing subsidizing the poor in the Chinese hinterlands there would have been bread riots in a civilization predisposed to revolution. 

Revolutions happen when circumstances are unjust, there is enough of a body to form a politic and they have the ability to organize. The internet certainly reduced coordination costs to bring #jan25 together. But perhaps we have reached a point across the world where enough connections have happened that people expect the ability to communicate with a high degree of freedom. Even when forbid by dictatorial or oligarchical rules of law.

I believe in Egypt enough people had just enough of a taste of free communication to know what it means. The ability to communicate across distances, groups, openly published or with a semblance of privacy. And when you have that, it is hard to picture going back.

I believe where Mubarak failed was not in his believe in his own power. But they way he wielded it in the end within this new environment. He let the internet become a terrorist.

While that word may spark a strong reaction, let me explain. Since the time of the Zealots, terrorism has always been a series of tactics deployed by the minority to provoke change by the group in power by turning the people they have power over against them. Terrorists cause terror to provoke an overreaction by the State against them. As the State's countermeasures trend towards abusing their own norms and laws, and take away the civil liberties of the people, the people turn against them.

The protestor's use of the internet served to coordinate their actions. But it was also an act of publishing. One the state was not prepared for, let alone accustomed to. By the time it was amplified and coopted by traditional foreign media it had something it new it had to react to as a second order. But not how to deal with the first order. So it shut it down. 

When Mubarak shut down the internet, the people found ways to route around points of control. But the people also I believed realized that the state was acting unjustly towards them in an extreme way. It took away something they had learn to value if not expect.

The US administration has recently grouped net freedom into universal values, and is taking a stand to support them. I can't tell you how proud I am that they are taking this stand. This isn't US chauvinism that projects unilateral power and by direct consequence dismantles the greatest multilateral system of foreign relationships ever. That happened with the last administration. This one knows that in the balance of information arbitrage, the state with information values, Wikileaks or not, will prevail if it holds true.

This new foreign plank is what we used to be good at. Taking a stand upon a right or value and building alliances upon which it stands. It is foreign policy with the most modern purpose. For progression doesn't stop at your shores when you want to build your future instead of cower in someone else's past.

I wrote most of this on the day Mubarak stepped down to mark it for myself.

The Catastrophe Constant and Fear Multiple

I was having dinner with my family last night, enjoying a quiet moment, when the TV that was left on in the next room hissed with static.  You know that feeling, wondering if you have picked up on a weak signal to a catastrophe.  Knowing that at anytime peace could be disturbed with senseless horror.  And we have been sensitized that now is the greatest time of risk.

Some people obsess about suitcase bombs, terrorism and viral disease.  There seems to be a more common belief, perhaps furthered by the current Administration, that the risk of catastrophe is greater than ever.  But if you look at catastrophe being damage done through technology, accidental or with purpose, I'm not sure this is true.

The Cold War made us fear how wide-spread the impact of a single incident could be.  Of course, such technology was only in the hands of a few governments.  Now we have super-empowered individuals and social networks.  Theoretically the odds of incidents, their frequency and scale, have increased. Regardless, society has evolved over time as well as technologies of saftey.

In the early days of the industrial revolution, I'd suggest that you had incidents of greater frequency but smaller scale.  Most of them accidental, steam engines exploding and mines collapsing, and at a time when medical and safety technology and practices were less developed.

The media has changed both the measurement, distance of awareness, memory and amplification of catastrophes as stories.  We fear things that don't threaten us directly, have our fears framed by others and it is fear itself that is the story.

I just want to offer up a small theory that I don't have time to test.  The net impact of technological catastrophes is a relative constant from the industrial to information eras, but fear in the information era compounds.

UPDATE: Thanks for letting me share this half-baked theory. Upon reflection, technological catastrophe compounds with second order effects, like global warming.  More baking to come.

Abundance, and Five Years of Blogging

When I sat down in my first economics class at UCLA, the professor wrote on the blackboard all we would learn, in really big letters:

SCARCITY

I've been blogging for five years as of this month, and here's what I've learned:

ABUNDANCE

I have discovered I have a lot to give.  And when I give, I notice others give more.  Some of them I've formed relationships with, and trust opens giving, but I have also learned to trust strangers to share in abundance.  Life is iterative, markets are not transactions and scarcity of attention is false. Our learnings compound abundance and there may be no limit to what we can produce.

David Hornik strikes again with Chris Anderson Strikes Again: The Economy of Abundance:

The basic idea is that incredible advances in technology have driven the cost of things like transistors, storage, bandwidth, to zero. And when the elements that make up a business are sufficiently abundant as to approach free, companies appropriately should view their businesses differently than when resources were scarce (the Economy of Scarcity). They should use those resources with abandon, without concern for waste. That is the overriding attitude of the Economy of Abundance -- don't do one thing, do it all; don't sell one piece of content, sell it all; don't store one piece of data, store it all. The Economy of Abundance is about doing everything and throwing away the stuff that doesn't work. In the Economy of Abundance you can have it all.

I trace a lot of my thinking about abundance to Jerry Michalski's, here's a small chunk of it:

It drives me nuts that scarcity is seen as such a fundamental requirement for creating a business. Sure, there are plenty of businesses built around scarce resources, and sure, Dave's time and my time are scarce, but that's no proof that businesses can't cruise along profitably creating voluntary loyalty by knowing their customers better, never betraying them, always being available and fixing problems, responding more quickly than others.... you get the picture. But go to business school and what they teach you is how to create artificial scarcity. That's the kind of thinking that got us into the present mess.

Digging deeper, Howard Reingold is fostering a discipline of cooperation studies. You can also find this wiki page, with a link to a 1994 essay by Flemming Funch who I used to blog alongside a lot in the early days.

I suppose that abundance economics would include giving one's ideas and actions freely, because one feels like it, because one sees the need for it, and because one understands that when you contribute to the whole, we all benefit.

The Internet is a good example of some of the principles of giving freely and of abundance. So many resources here are given freely, without expecting anything directly in return. So many people are willing to help each other, even though they don't really have to and they don't get "paid" for it.

I think there are many times more power in actions that are done freely, because one sees a need for improvement, than in actions that are done reluctantly, because one is forced by lack.

I believe that abundance thinking, and actions, trumps the minds and greed of the scarce.  That the one overarching pattern in the present wave of innovation is share control to create value.  That what powers it isn't Moore's Law processessing infinite supply or Metcalfe's networking choice and collective wisdom.  It is the capacity of people to produce when old frameworks don't in the way of each other.

So much of this is about how we envision the future.  Not in the grand sense that the rules are changing.  But when two or more people can believe in an opportunity, they can share cost and risk to get there together, in the process reduce them -- and learn so they and others can build upon it.

Personal Computing is Social, and Rotten Apples

Apple was built on piracy.  The first personal computer was social.  Computer clubs sharing 5 1/4 floppies I, II, Lisa.  Like Post-It notes, the invention relied on innovative use by users.

Apple has grown out of the garage since then.  Lately they have provided the simply the best in computing.  But my recent experience is the epitome of Apple's plight. 

The casing broke on my 15' Powerbook and I upgraded to the 17'.  The one constant in computing is change, and perhaps the greatest user challenge is grappling with it -- be it transitions, upgrades, positive and negative network effects.  Apple does this really well.  The transition was seamless, my desktop reappeared -- even with unsaved email drafts as open windows.  Sure, Mail.app and other things were are slower with Tiger, you can sense the cruft creep -- but it is one of the best experiences I have ever had as a prosumer.

That is, until, I started using iTunes.  Paul Okenfold's Bunkka and other albums I purchased from the iTunes store now require DRM re-authorization.  They reached back in to my otherwise personal computer to remind me that I don't really own what I bought, can't play it elsewhere and certainly can't share. 

Bunk.  Immediately I remembered that Apple sues bloggers and my love for their innovation goes unrequited.  Steve, my good neighbor, pay attention to this plight.

Random Rants

Grrr: Tiger is pretty cool, but man, Mail.app and a few other things are slow.

Grrreat: Spotlight and Dashboards are seemingly designed to keep our love faithful to Apple before Google takethaway.

Define Social Software: Tools that do not require heavy use of the TAB key.  Or at least only do at setup, for your profile. 

Pinky Constraint-Based Innovation: Discovered this phenomenon when my kid broke the TAB key.

Going Physical: Before heading off for a round trip red eye to the East Coast, Pete and I went office hunting.  Knowing full well that Real Estate is the leading cause of death for startups. 

Staying Virtual: We set up a branch office in Lubbock, Texas.  Yee haaw!

Research as Marketing: Congrats to Lili and the Microsoft Research Social Computing team on finally admitting they were more product developers than researchers, and moving over to work on Longhorn.  See you in ten years!

Reader's Greatest Friend: The space bar, for scrolling.  That is, until the Automator can detect my "bullshit" command.  When I want to move on to the next chunk of micro-content, I just want to utter it, under my breath repeatedly.