Berkman
-
Curing the commercial Web blues
Last week we spent a lot of time here, in Venice: The triangular marble plaza on the edge of the Grand Canal of Venice is known informally as Bancogiro, once one of Italy’s landmark banks, and now the name of an osteria there. The plaza is part of Rialto Mercado, the marketplace where Marco Polo Continue reading
-
Why not link to sources?
A few minutes ago I saw Stephen Hawking trending on Twitter, clicked on the link, and found myself on the Twitter Search page, where the two top tweets from news organizations were these: HuffPo’s link goes to a brief story with no links to any sources. I see there’s a tiny AP symbol next to the Continue reading
-
IIW: Investors Invitational Workshop
We’re doing something different at next week’s IIW: inviting investors. So here’s a pitch that should resonate with investors — especially in Silicon Valley, where IIW happens (appropriately, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View)… Here’s a chance to check in on development work on a huge new disruptive market play: empowering customers as Continue reading
-
World Wide Catacombs
What started as plain old Web search has now been marginalized as “organic”. That’s because the plain old Web — the one Tim Berners-Lee created as a way to hyperlink documents — has become commercialized to such an extent that the about the only “organic” result reliably rising to first-page status is Wikipedia. Let’s say Continue reading
-
World wide puddle
Nicholas Carr is ahead of his time again. The Big Switch nailed computing as a utility, long before “the cloud” came to mean pretty much the same thing. His latest book, The Shallows, explored the changes in our lives and minds caused by moving too much of both online, again, before others began noticing how much Continue reading
-
Bring on The Live Web
I first heard about the “World Live Web” when my son Allen dropped the phrase casually in conversation, back in 2003. His case was simple: the Web we had then was underdeveloped and inadequate. Specifically, it was static. Yes, it changed over time, but not in a real-time way. For example, we could search in Continue reading
-
Make Your Own Zombies
Tim Hwang, (aka Broseph Stalin, aka @TimHwang) father of ROFLCon, mother of The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences (in which I hold a chair, mostly for other people), commissioner of The U.S. Bureau of Fabulous Bitches, god of The Web Ecology Project (aka @WebEcology), former Berkman Center researcher and partner in the firm Continue reading
-
Geography forever
When I was walking to school in the second grade, I found myself behind a group of older kids, arguing about what subjects they hated most. The consensus was geography. At the time I didn’t know what geography was, but I became determined to find out. When I did, two things happened. First, I realized Continue reading
-
The Internet doesn’t do this
The above, in order (1,2,3) is what I went through this morning when I searched for “emancipay” on Twitter. Not knocking Twitter here. I am knocking the fact that we haven’t come up with the open Internet-based (rather than silo-based) way of microblogging. Yet. But that’s what I’m hanging out in New York talking to Continue reading
-
Curing High School
So I’m in the midst of my first encounter with PeerIndex, which I found through this Petervan’s Blog post. I’d been pointed to PeerIndex before, and to other services like it, and have always found them aversive. But this time the lead came from a friend and business associate, so I thought I’d check it out. Continue reading
-
A new path
Sitting in the Harvard Law Library, where John Palfrey is about to give what I sense will be a landmark lecture, on the occasion of his chair appointment as Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. So I’m taking notes here. [Later… John’s own notes — the abstract for his talk Continue reading
-
Networds
Live blogging Barbara van Schewick’s talk at Maxwell Dworkin here at Harvard. (That’s the building from which Mark Zuckerberg’s movie character stumbles through the snow in his jammies. Filmed elsewhere, by the way.) All the text is what Barbara says, or as close as I can make it. My remarks are in parentheses. The talk Continue reading
-
I was overheard to have said…
Nice interview with Dan Levy of Sparksheet: From Part I: What opportunities does the widespread adoption of mobile smartphones present for VRM? This is the limitless sweet spot for VRM. Humans are mobile animals. We were not built only to sit at desks and type on machines, or even to drive cars. We were built to walk Continue reading
-
CRM+VRM 2010 Follow-up
It’s been a week since VRM+CRM 2010, and there have been many conversations on private channels (emails, face-to-face, phone-to-phone, face-to-faces), all “processing,” as they say. Meanwhile we also have some very interesting postings to chew on. (Note: This is cross-posted here.) First, Bill Wendell‘s RealEstateCafe wiki has a nice outline of sessions at the workshop. Better than Continue reading
-
The Data Bubble
The tide turned today. Mark it: 31 July 2010. That’s when The Wall Street Journal published The Web’s Gold Mine: Your Secrets, subtitled A Journal investigation finds that one of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet is the business of spying on consumers. First in a series. It has ten links to other sections of Continue reading
-
Opening new common ground
So that’s the logo for the first VRM+CRM workshop, which will happen on 26-27 August, at Harvard Law School. It’s free. You can register here. ProjectVRM, which I’ve been running as a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center has been growing nicely over the past four years, and is on its way toward becoming an independent entity. (It Continue reading
-
Futures of the Internet
Earlier this year the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University conducted research toward The Future of the Internet IV, the latest in their survey series, which began with Future of the Internet I – 2004. This latest report includes guided input from subjects such as myself (a “thoughtful analyst,” they Continue reading