The reason things are so sparse here the last week or so is that there's a new version of Scripting News coming, and all my energies are focused there. #

It'll have the linkblog and the river on the same page with the blog posts in a tabbed interface.#

It'll be using all the latest JavaScript technology. Radio3, River4, Fargo, Little Card Editor etc.#

It's time that things start rolling up. #

Still diggin as someone said once a long time ago.#

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United States#

In today's piece I wrote about how the previous generation of technologists wanted the young techies to come work for them, and we mostly wanted to make cool stuff on our own. We were happy to use their systems, for me the PDP-11 was like a first love. It was a real step backward for us to use the Motorola 6502 that was in the Apple II, or the Z80 that was in CP/M or 8080 in PC-DOS machines. Eventually microprocessors caught up, and the Motorola 68000 that the Mac shipped with was very much like the PDP-11. #

Anyway. I remember going to the National Computer Conference in 1979 in Anaheim, as a person from the personal computer world. Now, I spoke the language of the bigger computers, so when we went over to the main hall to visit, to try to tell them about how cool our microcomputers were, they told us they used real computers, that ours were just toys. We should come work for them, on their operating systems and applications. But they were nothing like the stuff we wanted to make. They thought we were kidding around. #

A few years later, they were coming to our conferences looking for jobs. They all got them, too -- the PC industry was booming, and eventually sucked in what was left of the previous industry. Mainframes were repositioned as resources for LANs that had lots of PCs on them. But the software was flaky and complicated and if they ever got the kinks out it was after the next shakeup, which turned any box that could do HTTP into a resource, and it wasn't just over a local network, it was the world! #

The only things that can move fast enough to keep up are the ones that lots of people can move. So we kept the best operating system from the large-computer world that preceded the PCs, even though the companies are gone. You know what I'm talking about -- Unix. OSes come and go, but somehow at the bottom of the stack it's still Unix. That's not to say people don't use Windows, they do. But evolution went with the just-bad-enough answer, the one that no one owned. As it always does. #

BTW, one thing I've noticed that's really cool is that Facebook people use Twitter and vice versa. What I do is make that easier and make it work better. And add RSS so that new networks can boot up, for growth in the tech world. It's all part of an emerging ecosystem. Not what the press would predict, they predict war. I predict new ideas. #

There are still people in tech who see RSS as a mistake that must be undone. I am in awe of their commitment.#

They remember a time before RSS, and think if they just don't use it, they can create new things to do what RSS does as if RSS doesn't exist. But every time they introduce these things, the run up against the wall that RSS is. It already does it well enough. And people resist having two systems in place to do the same thing. It's one more thing that will eventually break.#

It's a feature of evolution, that it preserves the path it took, even if "better" paths are discovered later. I learned about this watching the latest Cosmos, where Tyson talks about how our eyes evolved under water when were still fish, and haven't been updated since we no longer live in water.#

If you've ever had hemorrhoids, you know about the cost of evolution. They say we created that problem when we stood upright. Every step has a cost, and better ways of doing it are discovered later. But we are a species whose product is progress. We are ourselves forces for evolution. Our minds are at least.#

Ann says "So experience matters?"#

Todd Lappin, a colleague of mine at Wired in 1995, explained what DaveNet meant to him.Yes. Why do you think all the managers in MLB are our age? Not because experience doesn't matter. Why did it take Microsoft three tries to get a product right? Even when they were copying someone else. What were they doing the first two times? Getting experience.#

When people pontificate about Facebook, on Facebook, they are doing something rude, and most of them probably don't even know it.#

The way it feels is they're talking over my head at some invisible diety. If only they would hear me, they would love me so much better. It's a prayer to the Algorithm God. But the only people who can really hear you are your friends, who are mortal, and are subject to the same constraints as you.#

It's sad. We could be sharing our gifts with each other, instead our fists wave at the sky, like grandpa cursing the cloud!#

Tom Foremski said yesterday on Twitter: "Unfortunately the silos are winning." I thought about that for a while, and I don't think it's right. Let me explain.#

1. Sure there are more silos all the time. Places that force you to give them your ideas on an exclusive basis, so that people in other silos, or on the open web, can't see them. Unless they visit the silo of course. An example. Yesterday my friend Jay Rosen posted a great essay to Ello. If you want to read it you have to go there. If you follow Jay on Twitter or Facebook, or read his blog, the only way you can find out about it is if someone posts a link to it there. And if Ello goes kaput, so does Jay's post. All record of his judgement, gone. Not a good way for an academic to work, imho. #

2. But the open web is bigger than any of the silos. This post, for example, is on the open web. What that means is that it is included in my feed. The source code for the post is public, it could be rendered in any context. Especially if I post a pointer to it. A smart CMS could load in all the text from the feed itself! And render it in its own way.#

3. I can innovate out here on the open web. But if this post were in a silo, only the silo-maker could innovate. So things creak along slowly in SiloLand. Limits tend to stay limits, for years, years become decades, and we all grow old, and then a new generation comes along, and says why the fuck does it work this way, and they make something new. Where? Well, it'll have to be on the open web. Because new stuff can't happen in a silo. #

4. Ultimately that's how change happens in tech. People get all comfy and bored in their little nests, and then boom, everyone goes somewhere else. If it's yet another boring and nesty silo, only a few people will go there. But if it's open, eventually, everyone is there. (Yes, some people still use typewriters, no doubt. They don't count.)#

So my friend Tom, as wise as he sounds, is wrong. If it's open it's everything. It's winning because it's always winning. It's an illusion to think it's all wrapped up in tech. Every generation thinks it is, until the next one comes along and renders all its assumptions moot. #

It seems Digg has adapted its feed reader to handle items that don't have titles. Here's a screen shot of the Scripting News feed. No "untitled items" where there are no titles. Let the feed item speak for itself. Pretty simple. Glad they fixed this. #

Thanks to David Osolkowski for the good news. #

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The reason things are so sparse here the last week or so is that there's a new version of Scripting News coming, and all my energies are focused there. #

It'll have the linkblog and the river on the same page with the blog posts in a tabbed interface.#

It'll be using all the latest JavaScript technology. Radio3, River4, Fargo, Little Card Editor etc.#

It's time that things start rolling up. #

Still diggin as someone said once a long time ago.#

#

United States#

The reason things are so sparse here the last week or so is that there's a new version of Scripting News coming, and all my energies are focused there. #

It'll have the linkblog and the river on the same page with the blog posts in a tabbed interface.#

It'll be using all the latest JavaScript technology. Radio3, River4, Fargo, Little Card Editor etc.#

It's time that things start rolling up. #

Still diggin as someone said once a long time ago.#

#

United States#