Infreemation

The (copy)fight against digital culture, and intellectual privelege

It takes (sci-fi) author Cory Doctorow to put it sufficiently lucidly: the internet is designed  to efficiently and inexpensively copy information and has flourished as a result, therefore traditional copyright in the age of the web is a direct attack on the digital culture which has given rise the web. Due to this huge shift in constraints, the legal framework we had is maladapted to the medium. The balances are out of whack.

Take, for example, the concept of the “free rider,” one who benefits from but does not contribute to a common good. Tim Lee points out that the economics of these scenarios is vastly changed by the scale of the internet. This has big implications for intellectual property, as Mark Lemly discusses in his fascinating paper.

Which segues into some broader, and enormous, problems with intellectual property in the age of the web. Never have there been so many people with such high levels of education had access to so much information. Most good ideas occur to many simultaneously, the challenge tends to be execution (with some rare exceptions).  So I was recently intrigued by an alternative way of looking at IP: “Intellectual privelege.” Consider that for a moment. Any originality I have is predicated on some influences: education, peers, priveleged information…

More on this when I get another micro-sabbatical, but bottom line is, society needs to re-evaluate the incentives and rewards for intellectual productivity to ensure they don’t have the effect of stifling innovation and worse yet, benefiting a vanishingly tiny fraction of the population.

Posted in news | No Comments »

What a month - I have a new boss

September was a great month. BitNorth was awesome, videos of content to come soon at Bitcurrent. Akoha had a great launch at TechCrunch and will hopefully inspire a new generation to “play it forward.” Syntenic hired a new Ops manager who brings some great unix and virtualization chops. 

September is also yielding excitement with general elections in North America, and has generated economic uncertainty with the collapse of Wall Street’s pyramid scheme. However, the BIG NEWS is that I “spawned a child process” (as a colleague likes to put it) - a beautiful daughter process. For those who don’t have access to my Facebook photo albums you can see some pics at her mother’s and my best friend’s blog: AlioFish.

Nothing I have done compares to the excitement and fulfillment of being a dad. It refocuses, inspires and is an intense source of joy. I thought as an entrepreneur I would be my own boss, but no longer now that my daughter is here. And for some reason I’m ok with that.

Posted in personal | No Comments »

A cartoon guide to new Google web browser

Well I was thinking Amazon’s SAN in the cloud was going to be the biggest web application news of 2008. But that just got trumped by Google’s new web browser, touted by many as an “operating system for the web.” Wow. Open source, heavily influenced by popular web technologies such as Mozilla Firefox and webkit, with a particular focus on improving javascript performance and browser security and stability. There is going to be a lot of information to sort through on this, but it certainly looks extremely promising. Check out the excellent cartoon guide!

Posted in news | No Comments »

Personal update

Heri at Montreal Tech Watch broke the news that my web infrastructure services company Syntenic has a new (beta) webpage. I have no doubt that my amazing wife’s blog pulls in more visitors than I do, so I am hoping to reverse that trend with a slick new design!

I also eked out a Shakespeare-inspired article on cloud computing for BitCurrent, an Alistair Croll initiative to which I contribute sporadically but enthusiastically (witness the awesome graphics here).

Speaking of collaboration with Alistair, the made-in-Montreal BitNorth conference will soon be upon us, a unique group investigation of the intersections of technology, social issues, policy and - most fittingly given the amazing location of the event - music (can revelry be far behind?). I can’t say enough good things about the location, the topics, or the people who will be there. You can still register here , if you’re lucky :)

Posted in news | No Comments »

Search gets smarter, we get stupider

A lot has been written lately on how intelligent search will solve all kinds of problems, most recently in The End of Theory, Chris Anderson of “long tail” fame confuses the abundance of low hanging fruit that “big search” and biotechnologies provide with the ability to really understand and extract meaning, pose and falsify or support hypothesies. Mathew Ingram takes issue with the Wired article in Google and the end of everything and Alistair Croll piles on in Does Big Search change science? emphasizing the familiar scientific refrain: correlation does not necessitate causation.

To be fair to Chris, it seems that he does understand Mathew’s point that correlation is not causation, rather his thesis seems to be that with sufficiently large datasets and powerful computational algorithms, correlation approaches causation. However I side with Mathew and Alistair, I don’t think Chris understands what Google or Rapid gene sequencing bring to scientific analysis, or he has written an excellent satirical article:

Petabytes allow us to say: “Correlation is enough.” We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.

It sounds like we should be able to just sit back and feed the raw data into a massive cloud computer, grab a few coffees, live a few lifetimes and get some answers (Deep Thought anyone?). As the search technology gets smarter we can all afford to get a lot stupider, as we are no longer required to solve scientific problems.

In actuality Google’s pagerank algorithm(s) and Craig Venter’s DNA shotgun sequencing techniques are successful because they are overly simplistic, designed to capture low hanging fruit as quickly as possible, they don’t solve the hard problems - rather they get us faster down a road that leads to more questions. Questions that are likely too complicated for either search engines or cute biotech tricks to answer. Requiring experiments and analyses that are too intricate and error-sensitive…that need to be hand-held, coaxed and cajoled. Science in the real world is so different from the platonic model that is taught in schoolbooks. Failure is important, errors are crucial and we progress because human thought is remarkably adaptable and resilient in the face of this. Contrast this to the types of problems we will get when our analysis is guided by bug ridden computer algorithms, infested with worms, and the data is riddled with errors and spam.

Until the computing power and the algorithms which guide it, are truly evolutionarily designed, I don’t think science will learn much from the computer. When we do get the kind of AI that Chris and the Google founders are looking for, I suspect that they will find it impossible to clock that type of artificial intelligence at Gigahertz speeds, and that we may end up re-evolving a computer that looks and acts very similar to the human brain. At which point we may regret not using the ones we already have instead.

For the next stop on this train of thought, read the excellent article Is Google Making us Stupid? I’ve got one foot in the YES camp.

Addendum: the Wired article bothered me as an epitome of reductionist scientific thought. Reductionism by nature tends to focus on the simple problems, hard problems which are complex and expensive to tackle are avoided which leads to the amplification of reductionist techniques and causes. Sooner or later you might be convinced that all knowledge is within the reach of such reductionist approaches. There is a disturbing correlated trend for industry funding of scientific research to further skew science by leaving problems without obvious economic payoffs by the wayside. I would suggest that both industrial and reductionist science are represented in the Wired hypothesis.

Posted in news | 1 Comment »

Cloud computing - linear utility or complex ecosystem?

Reuven of Enomaly speculates on whether there will be an analogue of Moore’s law for cloud computing, looking to coin “Ruv’s law.” I would like to see more detail on what it would postulate, presumably a linear relationship between growth in cloud computation and time. I think we would also agree this would need to stand the test of time before it would be considered “law.” Moore referred to a rather simple relationship between the number of transistors that can economically be used in electronic chips and time. The cloud is likely to become a very complex ecosystem, and defy simple linear rules of productivity. Rather I would expect the cloud to both behave in unexpected ways and exhibit emergent properties. On that note I am much more interested in the phase transitions, critical junctures where the properties of the system change radically, and what the underlying causes might be (technological breakthroughs, human behaviour, power shortages). I wouldn’t be shocked if the behaviour of clouds was as hard to predict as the weather (”5 day forecast calls for a 200 msec second standard deviation in latency with 10% probability of the jitters”) or the stock markets. I’m only slightly joking - my early experiences with sharing hosted grid computing resources have been variable (Mediatemple and Mosso have low cost plans). In any case I look forward to more clarity on cloud structure, composition, performance, any potential “laws” and above all the likelihood of rain… Anyone interested in a lively string of Q&A surrounding the much hyped “cloud computing” revolution should look in on the Google group for cloud computing and check what the insightful Alistair Croll of Bitcurrent has to say. Lots of folks are trying to define cloud computing these days (check out defogging the cloud for a nice simple explanation), and its hard to do partly due to a Cambrian explosion of diversity which makes the cloud(s) a fast moving target. As for me, I’m embracing the trend from the web operations trenches while keeping my sense of humour about the hype:

Posted in news | 2 Comments »

Awesome Magnetic Visualization

Semiconductor’s Magnetic Movie is a stunning, if questionably accurate visualization of magnetic fields and their interactions. Worth a watch:

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Posted in news | No Comments »

Goaltender, Bitcurrent, and Miscelania

Finally got www.goalr.net into the Heroku private beta which will allow the private domain and e-mail functionality that our “Goaltender” application relies upon to both gather our weekly goals and followup on them.

Just posted to Bitcurrent on the future of cloud computing.

Business has been moderately insane (in a good way) and we’ll be moving offices downtown shortly. Somewhere in the last few weeks a house was purchased, Alio blogged about it on our new blog “now we are three“.

Posted in news | 1 Comment »

Blitzweekend project: getting real with GoalR

Ever since I attended 37 signals “Getting Real” workshop I’ve want to put some of their design principles to the test. My company is Syntenic, a boutique consulting and services shop primarily focused on web operations, performance optimization via application delivery controllers (load balancing and server offload) and 24×7 high availability geographically distributed architecture. What this means is that we are usually helping enhance the performance and reliability of our customers applications instead of building our own. Recently this has been changing as we increasingly are redesigning or developing applications from scratch for our customers.

CodeBlitz
Blitzweekend in Montreal has given us the opportunity to give the getting real approach and Ruby on Rails in particular a whirl. Our challenge was to come up with a project idea that was feasible in one weekend including conception and coding. It didn’t take much to convince our web codemonkey extraordinaire Will Stevens to take on the challenge. Lucky for us since he has to do all the real work (including learning rails on the fly)! Alistair Croll joined on as our resident marketing genius. The onus was on me to come up with a simple enough project, which ultimately was inspired by an article I read several years ago about one of Google’s management approaches: employees were asked to list their objectives at the start of every week and report at the end of the week which of their objectives have been obtained. I’m not a fan of task management, listing and tracking to-dos can take more time than getting them done. The big challenge I have from a management perspective is keeping all my objectives or in my sights, the tasks required to complete the higher level goals seem to follow easily as long as I can keep focused on the goal. You don’t become a great goal scorer by looking at the puck, thinking about stick handling or ball dribbling. Great players keep their head up and keep their eyes on where the puck or the ball needs to go.

Aren’t you a little short for a goaltender?
Perhaps the sports analogy isn’t perfect but I’m going to run with it. The application is codenamed “goaltender” shortened to GoalR (www.goalr.net) because all the other domains were taken. GoalR e-mails you at the start of the week asking you what your objectives for week are, the goals in question. At the end of the week you are prompted to indicate which goals you managed to “score,” or worse yet admit defeat. We are looking to allow the user to score. If we have time we will introduce the concept of teams and rosters, allow team members to track, encourage even heckle their fellows in pursuit of their goals. We’d love to introduce the concept of assists, if we can figure out how that would work.

First goal of the game…
Alistair’s here, back to work (an no doubt 100 digressions a minute). Our objective, “goal” if you will, is to build a working goal management application (not another task manager!). It needs to be functional and useful by the end of this weekend, despite attending Steph’s 30th birthday party tonight. We’re keeping it real and trying to make management fun. Might be an unrealistic goal but hey, if you don’t take shots you’ll never score a goal.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Algorithmic efficiency in the face of inelegance

Seed magazine published a wonderful crossover article between the worlds of biology and engineering “Algorithmic Inelegance”

The complexity of developmental regulation isn’t a product of design at all, and it’s the antithesis of what human designers would consider good planning or an elegant algorithm. It is, however, exactly what you’d expect as the result of cobbling together fortuitous accidents, stringing together helpful scraps into an outcome that may not be pretty, but it works. That’s all evolution needs from developmental processes: something that works well enough, no matter how awkward or needlessly complex it may seem.

Biological solutions can be remarkably efficient (well adapted thanks to evolution by natural selection) while being absurdly backwards in design. Nerves in the mammalian eye pass on top of the rods and cones that collect light yet I can’t complain about my eyesight (other than the need for contacts but that’s another story). Cephalopods apparently have more accurate vision thanks to happier circumstances:

The vertebrate retina is wired “backwards”. That is the photoreceptors point to back of the retina, away from incoming light, and the nerves and blood vessels are on the side of the incoming light, this means that any image formed on the vertebrate retina has to pass though layers of blood vessels and ganglion cells, absorbing and distorting the image….Now consider the eye of squids, cuttlefish and octopi. Their retinas are “rightway round”, that is the photoreceptors face the light, and the wiring and the blood vessels facing the back (1). Squid and octopi have no blind spot; they can also have high visual acuity. The octopus also has a fovea-equivalent structure, which it makes by packing more (or longer) photoreceptors into a given area (1). Because it doesn’t have to create a hole in the supporting tissue it can have arbitrarily large “fovea”, and greater visual acuity. Cuttlefish have better visual acuity than cats (2) and because of their “rightway round” retinas; this level of acuity covers nearly the entire retina (1,2) unlike vertebrates where it is confined to the small spot of the fovea.

More on this fascinating story here.

The author seems to indicate that human engineers would shy away from the needless complexity that evolution by historical accident seems to create. However, today’s leading engineers faced with shifting requirements, overwhelming problem complexity, or incomplete understanding of the science behind the solution may well adopt an evolutionary strategy toward solving a problem, as many circuit and drug designers have already done successfully. (I’ll try and dig up some references). They start with a modular design with lots of simple parts that can be tweaked and rearranged quickly, set up replication with random modification and a process for selecting the best fitted solutions. Like artificial selection, or breeding, you can achieve results quickly. This is similar to what successful organisms do, molded by the evolutionary process of natural selection working hand in hand with mutation and reproduction. And it explains why we burn brightly on this earth, have sex, and above all why we are programmed to die.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

The legal limits of creativity explored: Recut Reframe Recycle

Danah Boyd points out that the center for social media has released an informative paper entitled Recut Reframe Recycle concerning the boundaries of fair use (fair dealing in Canada) in digital media.

Types of use they point out:
• Parody and satire
• Negative or critical commentary
• Positive commentary
• Quoting to trigger discussion
• Illustration or example
• Incidental use
• Personal reportage or diaries
• Archiving of vulnerable or revealing materials
• Pastiche or collage

Some of these can push the limits of fair use, take for example D.J. Danger Mouse’s Grey Album (a mix of the Beatle’s White Album and Jay-Z’s The Black Album) which I discussed in Mashups: from hobby to art form to controversy.

The report concludes:

Some of these practices also fit comfortably into the evolving pattern of fair use jurisprudence. By contrast, other video makers appropriate material wholesale and without context or comment, in ways that clearly are not fair use. In all these cases, informed judgment on fair use, following established precedent, should be relatively straightforward. Many times, however, for instance within the category that our researchers called “pastiche or collage,” creators are developing practices that are at or near the boundaries of contemporary fair use analysis. Traditional fair use analysis would neither definitively exclude nor include them—at least until there is a better understanding of motive, context, circulation, and use of the new works. Since fair use doctrine evolves with creative practice, these borderline cases provide important areas for future research and analysis.

They call for “a code of best practices around fair use in online video needs to be articulated, both to educate new makers and to provide guidance for regulators private and public.” It will be a contentious process to push for more definition in the massive legal grey areas that exist in copyright law regarding fair dealing but it has such big implications for the (legal) limits of creativity that creators everywhere should be pushing hard for clarity. Unfortunately the effect of the law thus far has been largely the reverse: Danah gives a good background on why this is such a critical issue in the USA currently:

fair use is quite tricky because courts address it on a case by case basis after someone is sued. There is no list of what constitutes fair use. Thus, remixers engaging in practices that would collectively be viewed as fair use never have certainty that what they’re doing is legal. Because court cases are extremely costly (especially for the lone defendant in the face of Big Mega Corp), corporations can wield a lot of power through the egregious use of “Cease and Desist” letters. Most creators bow down in the face of them even if what they’re doing is totally legit because they are terrified of being sued. In legal terms, a “chilling effect” is when practices are squelched by fear of persecution. Right now, when it comes to remix, we’re in the middle of an ice age. The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse website attempts to counteract some of this effect by collecting and publishing Cease and Desists and other nefarious attempts by corporations to silence fans and critics.

This problem is increasingly relevant to Canadians as a US-corporation sympathetic government in Canada enables and encourages such business practices.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Android - one step closer to freedom of communication

Like most heavy cellphone users I have a love hate relationship with both the device and the wireless service. Love because it gives me freedom from a physical location and thus is an essential business enabler for entrepreneurs. Hate because it restricts my freedom in many ways that are designed solely to make more money for the handset and communications provider:

So thanks to Google and others for supporting the development of an “open” platform for phones which threatens to transform the market:

Next step: we need openly accessible wireless networks for such phones. Currently the only really open network is the internet and only if you can afford an unfiltered and reasonably symmetrical last mile which rules out many consumer internet products including wireless data (which is cost prohibitive in Canada). Widespread internet access is only somewhat accessible if you are a hotspot hacker extraordinaire.

Maybe, just maybe Google’s plan to bid for the former UHF 700Mhz spectrum and make it accessible to 3rd parties is connected with Android project. Just maybe ;)

To be fair, Android is getting a lot of hype almost a year before we can expect to see anything, while there are other mobile phone operating systems vying for a place as relatively open mobile internet platforms. Om Malick just published a review of the market for mobile platforms pointing out alternative mobile Linux platforms, and recently Alistair introduced us to Nokia’s N810 tablet which shows potential as an open mobile communications platform even if it doesn’t have an integrated cellphone. It will be interesting to see the next platform moves of Microsoft, currently with a relatively open platform as mobile platforms go, and RIM, whose tightly restricted Blackberry platform is a favorite with enterprise and e-mail junkies.

Posted in news | No Comments »