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Smart People in the News: Rheingold, Gosling
Roland Piquepaille writes "In "How Will "Smart Mobs" Play Out?," BusinessWeek asked questions to Howard Rheingold, who published the "Smart Mobs" book at the end of 2002. Rheingold talks about the emergence of the picturephone, especially outside the U.S. He adds that future business applications for smart mobs might start anywhere in the world, like "finding out about the spot labor market in [an] African village." For his part, James Gosling, the leading guy behind the Java programming language, is interviewed by Red Herring, in Social smarts. He talks about the social implications of the Internet by looking at the Brazilian National Medical System. Gosling also talks about the entertainment industry which deeply hates Internet, and about the open source movement, of which he is a big fan. And of course, that leads him to talk about Microsoft. This summary contains some excerpts of both interviews."
I had the honor of listening to James Gosling's Keynote at Borcon 2001. He gave a stimulating talk about running Java on a gas pump, which didn't actually work.
Then he took Q/A from the audience. He fielded the usual comments about how the Java API was so bloated. His reply to that was just not to use the bloated parts. He, for instance, doesn't use JDBC for anything, but he doesn't advocate removing it.
The previous day, the inventor of Pascal, who now works at Microsoft, did his entire keynote from Notepad because he was forbidden from running Visual Studio at Borcon (too much competition with Borland's IDEs).
Still, for a smart guy, he is easily provoked.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
gosling makes a point that i think is understated by many in the open source community - open source software is great because it is open and you can validate its contents, but the real reason MS hates it is because it is free. they are afraid to lose their cash cow (they practically mint money by selling Windows and Office software).
smd4985
In order to work out the full potential of new technologies, it is important to consider the sex uses first. I'm not joking - the sexual uses of new technologies will always outnumber, and incorporate, all other uses.
There is (apparently) an interesting new sexual practice in the UK called "dogging". This involves using the web to locate people anonymously, and then meeting up in public places (in a park for instance) to have anonymous sex. Other people go along to watch. This is I guess a type of smart mob (although "not very smart mob" might be more a appropriate name when you take sexual diseases into account).
I don't need to mention that the emergence of the picturephone will bring about whole new areas of creative uses of technology...
Gosling also talks [..], and about the open source movement, of which he is a big fan.
Sure, he even caused the GPL into existence.
What a fan!!!
read the emacs bit for a bit of interesting history.
http://www.free-soft.org/gpl_history/
a much less cumbersome method of sharing the photos far and wide
Thats the whole point of the damn things. Its easy and convenient so you so it thus providing an additional revenue stream to the telcoms in situations where normally your phone would be sitting idle in your pocket.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
THAT is what will drive positive social change. And since many projects that present source are themselves confused with what Open Source (not the capital letters) is, such an explanation serves as a reminder that Open Source is more than just making code available but also centers around making change available. Shutting out your community (like PostNuke and others do) and forcing forks fragments the efforts at producing a strong system. We end up with small craplets that do a lot, but do it poorly and in a very restrictive and hardcoded manner instead of the very modular and abstracted traditional UNIX system of first providing a strong and extensible framework then focusing on MANY components that each do their part well and INTEROPERATE. That last part is what is overlooked when zealots decry "but you just said we are too fragmented!"
Many people when justifying or even honestly advocating Open Source point to Apache as the example of how to do any software product right, distributed team or not, or even Open Source or not. Looking at the various "projects" out there now, you are left with the realization that sometimes a closed source (and guaranteed income) system is needed to pull the cart out of the mudhole it made. I am in favor of companies contributing in more than just the source of all their products. I personally would like to see more companies jump on the bandwagon of Open Source, but the kiddies yelling "pig-fucking capitalist" every time that any company does not open ALL of its source does not help.
How can society benefit from a group of immature retards, whom rebel for the sheer sake of rebelling? Simple, (well, not really) just distance yourself from them and try to educate. Distance Open Source from kiddie wanna-be hackers and we all prosper more. Take pride in your work and get rid of the "we don't have to do anything for you" attitude. (you indeed have no "obligation" yet your willingness to shout that out instead of seriously considering criticism makes you 1337)
Working with various companies, even behemoth Evil (tm) corporations can be a way to open up everyone not to just the computing systems benefits of Open Source but the social and economic ones as well. Companies can contribute certain sections of code (tools, compatability layers, etc) while keeping their flag ship products closed and actively working with the Open Source community. Many that do this find themselves able to make a grand ol profit even after converting the majority of their work to Open Source. Many switch more to a service based business model then. However, none of these things happen because the business folks all say, "You know, I was deeply moved by the post/blog of Johnny SnotNose where he called us all tools of the evil Corporate Hegemony."
Don't ever confuse idealism and action with stupidity and laziness!
I've had this crazy idea bouncing in my head for a while about using a mob of cellphone-holding folx to record concerts, etc.
Sure, the fidelity from any one phone sucks, but some filtering (combined with knowledge of the seat placement) would be able to eliminate much of the ambient noise, and produce multipoint surround sound. Probably the same could be done with videophones to create 3D video, if enough source were integrated.
I don't even have the math to try this, but if we can dream it, we can do it, right?
Design for Use, not Construction!
Smart mobs could easily change our perception of public and political figures! How hard is it to imagine that once camera phones get as common in the US as they are in other places of the world, that some politician just got caught in a compromising situation in a coffee house by some other patron with a camera phone who submitted it instantly to the Enquirer and got paid for it before his latte got cold?
This could have a few outcomes - public figures couldn't get reclusive enough to avoid this problem. One possibility is that with more people being caught in the act that the public will care less about such things (just because they can't handle the load of making a big deal about all of them). Another is that the people who are squeaky clean would float to the top more easily.
Rheingold. Gosling. Red Herring.
So, who's next? Razorfish? TheGlobe? The Pets.com sock puppet?
He adds that future business applications for smart mobs might start anywhere in the world, like "finding out about the spot labor market in [an] African village."
These Africans, who are trying to find a day's worth of work here, there, and anywhere they can, who desperately need that day's worth of bread, can afford a Palm or PocketPC or cell phone?
What kind of idiot says stuff like this?
This is what's wrong with tech today: stupid apps for stupid reasons. We're just fortunate that a lot of people using a lot of apps in a lot of situations find some that actually totally kick ass, because if we only had the options inventors and tech reporters gave us, we'd be in a sorry state.