stargeek
Why Linux is the stuff of bad dreams for Sun's SchwartzWhy Linux is the stuff of bad dreams for
|
 Last
night I had a strange and vivid dream. I was invited by a future
unnamed president of the US (why he/she chose a Canadian was not
clear)
to work as part of a special team to save the world. I was ushered
into
a huge room filled with books where the president's aides (all female,
for some reason) began to brief me about why I had been selected and
what was expected of me. The conversation went something like
this:Aide: We are very impressed with your creative thinking, and your ability to transplant ideas from one area of intellectual exploration or study to another, but we're concerned that you're a bit of a defeatist, or perhaps you're too tired to really think things through because of your insomnia. Second Aide: And you seem to use your idealism as an easy way out, an excuse for inaction. Basically we think you're on to something with your systems-thinking chart about how nature works and why civilization doesn't, but you need to pull it together with your ideas about The Cost of Not Knowing, both insofar as they relate to our failure to prevent catastrophes and our imaginative failure at not being able to conceive of better answers or better ways of living. Since you quoted him on your weblog, we assume you accept Lakoff's thesis that we are incapable of thinking beyond what our embodied brains permit. But we need -- you need -- to do your utmost to synthesize all of the ideas you have been kicking around and apply the result to coming up with some truly practical ideas that we can implement to save the world. Aide: You have a tendency to let everyone down after some hugely creative mental leaps, by leaving your reader with suggestions for action that are just plain inadequate, such as your terribly modest 'What You Can Do' article on saving the world, which you certainly must realize is just not enough to bring about the enormous changes needed, or alternatively, suggestions for action that are hopelessly fatalistic, cop-outs, we would suggest, such as your hysterical 'Plan B' post that advocated sabotage. Surely a mind like yours can do better than that? Me: Well I did say that what we need is some biotech wizard to develop some airborne substance that would reduce humans' ability to conceive drastically but in a non-discriminatory manner and not affect other life species... Aide: Oh, come now, Mr. Pollard, there you go again. Surely you must realize that we already have a phalanx of scientists working on just such a virus, but the science isn't there, and probably won't be for another century, by which time it will be too late. And with respect to your related idea, we're also working on a virus that will make livestock unpalatable or dangerous to eat, that won't hurt the host animals but will encourage people to become vegetarian, and hence free up the 75% of arable land that's now used for grazing and animal feed -- that will take just as long to develop. There must be some better answers, some more practical answers that we can implement now? Me: To reduce per-capita consumption we could do several things. We could create a new, responsible, sustainable economy that would undermine and destroy the old, wasteful one, and which would improve upon and use solar and wind energy and similar renewable energy sources... Second Aide: This is exactly what we're getting at when we say your thinking is initially brilliant but finally fuzzy, even, dare we say, lazy. Let us make this clear. We have billions of dollars that can be galvanized in moments to implement any bold, practical idea that warrants it. But to warrant it, an idea must be doable, now, without having to invent difficult new technology, without political upheaval or dismantling of economic or social systems. So use your imagination. We have lots of money but very little time. Tell us what to do. Me: I think we have to start with the children, to teach them that the way we live is unsustainable, that there is a better way. Second Aide: Let's take a look at what you, yourself, have already written about how change occurs. You've acknowledged that the political system, the tax system and the legal system are basically designed to maintain the status quo, and that trying to bring about dramatic change in a short period through political or legal means is a waste of time. You have also acknowledged that educational and social change is cultural change, and that culture changes slowly. Unless, of course, something extraordinary happens that everyone can see -- as you've said, you teach people by showing, not by telling. What are you going to show billions of children that's so extraordinary it will get their attention, and change their behaviour from that of previous generations, quickly? Me: Well, I've talked about building Model Intentional Communities that could show children a better way to live. Aide: Good, we like that. It's concrete, its globally translatable and it has a potential memetic, viral quality that could pick up steam and spread fast. We're quietly funding several such Communities already, and we're going to expand the program. It's actually very inexpensive, as government programs go, and these programs can therefore operate well under the political and media radar screens. By the way, we also like your Save the World Think-Tank idea, and we've acted on it as well. You'll meet the other Think-Tank members soon. And we like your novel, The Only World We Know, with the stories set in an ideal future world that teach people how to live better and more peacefully. [With a wink, she added] Something quite similar was tried about two thousand years ago, and worked exceedingly well at bringing about major social change. Perhaps too well. Imaginative, well-developed models and collaboratories and stories that develop and demonstrate radically different, viable alternatives to the status quo are the most effective means to achieve major social change. So we like some of your ideas. What else do you have? Me: If you're going to limit me to new technologies, and social change programs propelled by radical models and revelations, then I have to go back to my Plan B stuff that you've already dismissed. Second Aide: What we didn't like about some of your Plan B ideas is not that they were too radical but that that they were ineffective -- blowing up dams and pipelines won't get people to lessen their reliance on these technologies, and such petulant acts tend merely to entrench people's thinking, make them change-resistant, and undermine your credibility. What do you have that will work, big time, fast? Me: OK, then we're back to disruptive technologies. How about new drugs that make it easier not to conceive and easier to die? Like an abortion drug or self-sterilization drug that you can take that works painlessly, instantly, anytime? Or a suicide pill that's simple, cheap and painless? Or some drugs that feel really good but aren't addictive, expensive, or dangerous. If people can feel good easily, they'll be less prone to violence, jealousy, greed and all the other negative emotions behind many of today's problems, and less preoccupied and paranoid about personal possessions, most of which are extravagant wastes of the planet's natural resources. Of course these drugs would never be approved by any government, but my experience is that if a technology is invented and made available affordably and people want it, it will find its way around. Second Aide: Now you're rolling. Some ethical and tactical issues there, but go on. Me: How about a very cheap, tiny camera that anyone can plant anywhere and broadcast wirelessly on the Internet to show the world what goes on in backrooms, in abusive homes, in factory farms, in old age homes and prisons and refugee camps and war zones and other places where atrocities depend on restricted access or closed doors and privacy. Not government controlled, but something anyone could buy at Radio Shack, or at least over the Internet. It would of course mean the end of privacy, but perhaps if the world could see what goes on in these places of horror they just wouldn't tolerate the atrocities and would cede their privacy as a difficult but fair trade-off -- to deter and drastically reduce human violence and crime everywhere. Second Aide: Everyman as Big Brother. Terrifying but fascinating. Could backfire but perhaps not. Don't let me stop you. Me: And how about a technology that lets people understand what animals are saying, so that we could realize that our fellow creatures live lives as rich, emotional, sentient as we do, and that they therefore have every bit as much right to a fair share of the planet's land and resources and a life free from harassment and suffering as we do. That might convince a lot of people of the intrinsic value of biodiversity and of wilderness, and the need to use land much more carefully, delicately, sparingly. Or how about an inexpensive technology that jams electromagnetic fields, so that we could literally take back the air from the internal combustion engine, and the airwaves from the oligopolistic media, by rendering these technologies sporadic and unreliable, and hence cause the vast majority of people to abandon them for cleaner, more reliable, less oligopolistic alternatives. Second Aide: Now you're wandering dangerously close to science fiction. These last two ideas are intriguing, and might work, but they would probably take longer to develop than we have. But you're on the right track -- disruptive technologies that don't rely on political will or laws to make them effective, that are essentially voluntary technologies (which people can choose to adopt without coercion), and that yield drastic, rapid, healthy social change. Aide: OK, so we have Model Intentional Communities, the Save the World Think Tank, The Only World We Know, instant and cheap abortion, self-sterilization, suicide and feel-good drugs, and mini-cameras to blow the lid off nasty behaviour. Three social and five technological ideas to save the world. Not bad for a start. Let me show you your quarters so you can rest up for tomorrow's session. [At this point, I'm ushered through the library's huge doors into an incredible forest full of life and colour, but the light is blinding, and... I wake up].  I have rarely had vivid dreams, and when I do they are never this intellectual in focus and content -- they usually depict wondrous, deeply emotional and stimulating, memorable environments and events. When I awoke I started scribbling down what I remembered, but it wasn't necessary -- it's like the image and text of the dream is semi-permanently etched in my brain. The ideas described above, both those that I've talked about on these pages and those that I've never conceived of, were all present in the dream. Gotta get more sleep -- I feel like I've been channelling aliens of the third kind. And all day I've been thinking about "disruptive technologies that don't rely on political will or laws to make them effective, that are essentially voluntary technologies (which people can choose to adopt without coercion), and that yield drastic, rapid, healthy social change" -- the first words I wrote down, verbatim, when I awoke. (Iris photo courtesy the inestimable and still blogless Steve Raker) |
But the cool stuff just continues: Programmable matter and quantum dots by Wil McCarthy just blew me (and probably everyone else) away with the visions of windows that move according to sunlight, wires that grow inside the walls as needed, walls that can produce any sort of light at command, quantum wells and artifical atoms, but especially the palm-sized, paper-thin über-PDA, which does *everything*, including cooling your drinks. And it all works on "ambient energy" - harvesting stray photons, sound and movement. When any physical object can have any functionality you desire, you get into some pretty interesting scenarios...
High sci-fi, mindblowing stuff - but the theory says it should work.
I just asked Jonathan
Schwartz a question about Eclipse and SWT and what Sun thought of
that.
He said that Java 1.5 was teh solution. He admitted that Sun had dropped the ball on the client side - but that there were 350M cell phone out there running Java.
I say "Right On!" get Java to
work!
Since yesterday morning I've been hanging around at Supernova and I've been taking some fairly intensive notes, but I've not yet had the opportunity to write any of it up. Over the next hour or so, I hope to put up some of my reactions from the last day and a half of the conference. I'm a little unclear as yet whether I'll be posting the full notes that I've been making for each part of the conference. I guess we'll see. They're not always of the most enormous value.
For people who don't know, the core idea behind Supernova and the concept of the conference i decentralisation and the effects of network. I guess the metaphor is of the aftermath of the exploded centre, where top-down governance and control gives up its power (by choice or by force) to the new many-to-many network where power and agency operates at the edges. The conference takes that fundamental concept and looks at its application across a whole range of different subject areas - from social software and personal publishing, search, telecoms, gaming, business, media as well as around meta-areas like how individuals deal with this radically different vision of the world. I think by necessity this creates a kind of weirdly diverse conference that attracts radically different types of people whose relationship to each other isn't always easy. So you've got the business people, the alpha geeks, the legislators, the military, the policy people and the academics talking about things from very different angles. Which means that any individual part of the audience is likely to be frustrated at some points, bored at other points and insanely fascinated for the rest of the time.
I'm going to start with a brief bit of coverage of a discussion between Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems and Kevin Werbach of Supernova. The two major areas of this discussion were really about about whether or not Web 2.0 was a reality (the answers to which were relatively anodyne) and a much more interesting discussion about future business communication with weblogs.
I kind of take my life in my hands a bit every time I go off on a discussion about weblogs after six years of writing this site, but sometimes it really does seem that there genuinely still more that can still be said around the edges. Here are a few really telling quotes (probably mistranscribed) from Schwartz that I noted down during his piece:
I've learned a lot of things. If you think about what a leader does, you're fundamentally a communicator. You have to be able to communicate to the marketplace to the people who report to you - there is no efficient way of doing that than using the network - using the internet. If you want to be a leader, I can't see you surviving without a blog. It's like being a leader without having e-mail or a mobile phone. You still find them very occasionally, but it's moving away. It's very rare.
Authenticity is absolutely paramount. Getting poeple to write your blogs is ridiculous. It's like hiring people to read your e-mail. You might be able to get away with it, but it's kind of like pushing a rock up a hill...
When I first heard Schwartz talking in these directions, I genuinely didn't know what I thought about it. In my experience weblogs inside organisations don't tend to be terribly interesting or useful and only a limited number of people participate with them. I was going ready to treat his comments with a similar scepticism (particularly given some of his earlier comments about authentication and the future of the web which were pretty banal), but he blew my suspions out of the water with some of his later comments. When challenged about whether he was only talking about communicating with the company internally or doing it in full view of the public, he said something really interesting.
For a start, he said that in the near future he wanted to start doing all his communications via his weblog. Then he moved on to addressing this internal / external dichotomy. He mentioned a particular case where particularly good employees had their names and photos put up on an intranet celebrating their achievements. Instead of this he suggested that it should be done completely in public. He said that some people had suggested that this might mean that the staff concerned would just be poached by other companies but he responded that good people would always be open for poaching. And here's the interesting bit - he said he had no interest in an internal weblog, that he wants it to be completely transparent and that while he was aware that this approach and celebrating his employees achievements in public might to his competitors knowing what he was doing, it also meant that their employees could see it too - and they can then use that to decide if he's a more attractive leader with better policies and a vetter vision of the future.
This is a view of the world that I really like - it doesn't limit your ability to have particular specific projects operating under the radar, but it's an acceptance that large-scale strategy and communications about your company as a whole is never secret. And rather than treating that as a weakness or as a problem, it turns and faces it directly. It let's people see the way you run your company and encourages people to question and interrogate it - creating a virtuous circle of improvement and self-awareness inside organisations that raises the whole level of the debate. For everything else you might say about Sun, this is a noble idealistic and inspiring aspiration. Very cool.
[You can read my very rough notes on this interview as it happened her e.]
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