I’m in Cambridge, Mass., today to visit various folks at MIT’s Media Lab. More on this later…
Tomorrow I’m speaking on a panel at Harvard Law School, at a symposium on Copyright and Fair Use sponsored by the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology.As a result, postings may be somewhat light during the next two days.
New York Observer: Bush Eats the Press. The press corps seemed mainly to serve as a prop, providing Mr. Bush with an opportunity to deliver another pro-war speech while appearing to bravely face the music. The White House sprung it on them at the last minute: The press conference was announced that very day, giving reporters little time to prepare.
New York Times: Software Pioneer Quits Board of Groove. Mitchell D. Kapor, a personal computer industry software pioneer and a civil liberties activist, has resigned from the board of Groove Networks after learning that the company’s software was being used by the Pentagon as part of its development of a domestic surveillance system.
As the technology industry turns more and more into a tool of the surveillance state and other control freaks, it’s good to know that honor and liberty still matter to some people.
UPDATE: On reflection, I think I’m being somewhat unfair to the people at Groove. Ray and Jack Ozzie (and the others I’ve met from the company) are not bad people; far from it. And the toolmaker can’t choose who buys his tools.
Yet I’m troubled by Groove’s increasingly government-oriented business thrust, and deeply unhappy that the company is acting as a willing accomplice in the formation of the surveillance state. Maybe that’s where the money is, but it’s not socially responsible in my book.
Dave Winer: Like MacArthur. And today I’m heading east, and in many ways it feels like a return to home.
We have had our agreements, differences and everything in between. Through it all, my respect for Dave’s achievements and intellectual fire has grown. Even if temporary, his departure is a milestone for Silicon Valley — and not a positive one.
Dave’s unhappiness with the state of technology and the valley reflects a wider angst. I don’t fully agree with his comparison of the valley to Japan, where political and economic paralysis prevail, but it’s not entirely unfair. Civic and industry leaders should reflect on this.
Now he’s off to Cambridge, where I expect Dave and Harvard to shake each other up and teach each other new tricks. It’ll be fun to watch, from afar.
Godspeed.
Economist: Terrorism and civil liberties. Far from establishing new checks and balances, the government has moved repeatedly to quash those that exist.
Is there a more arrogant corporate chief in American than SBC Communication’s Ed Whitacre? Not if this interview in today’s San Francisco Chronicle is any indication.
Example: Whitacre says SBC’s shareholders paid for the copper-line infrastructure. Bull. The customers paid for it. And they had no choice but to buy from the government-granted monopolies controlled by SBC and its predecessors.
Give the man credit for sheer gall.
This modem bug appears to have hit my TiBook with the installation of OS 10.2.4, but the alleged workaround doesn’t work for me.
I called AppleCare this morning to see if there was anything else I could do. The guy on the phone was working from a script, and had no idea that Apple even knows there’s a problem.
Earth to Apple: Inform your support staff of things you already know about. Sheesh.
The prospect of the phone and cable companies owning broadband to our homes is pretty depressing, given their anticompetitive histories. That’s why wireless looks like the last, best hope for real competition and choice.
Last week I visited a Motorola subsidiary, Canopy Wireless Broadband Products, and was dazzled by what I saw. This could be one of the ways around the monopolists’ roadblocks.
More in my Sunday column.
Joho the Blog author David Weinberger is holding forth in a semi-keynote at SXSW, and (as he told me earlier today) he’s put some new material in his always entertaining riff.
Key thought: The analog world is messy and imprecise. The digital world is unambiguous, a good and bad thing.
“We’re beginning to miss ambiguity,” he says. Yes.
What does the Web remind us of? “Ourselves, when we’re at our best.”
He should record this, slides and all, and make it available on a streaming site and for download.
Zoe Lofgren, who represents the heart of Silicon Valley in Congress, has introduced legislation designed to restore some balance in the copyright arena. Good luck. She’ll need it.
Naturally, the entertainment cartel hates this. Less naturally, but more depressingly, the software industry is pushing back, too.
