BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Tag: wwgd

  • The API revolution

    29 comments on The API revolution
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    It soon will be – if it not already is – known as the Twitter revolution in Iran. But I’ll think of it as the API revolution.

    For it’s Twitter’s architecture – which enables anyone to create applications that call and feed into it – that makes it all but impervious from blocking by tyrants’ censors. Twitter is not a site or a blog at an address. You don’t have to go to it. It can come to you (as newspapers should). Twitter is an outpost in the cloud and there can be unlimited points of access from every application and site using its API, so the crowd can always stay ahead of the people formerly known as the authorities. That, I believe, is the keystone in the architecture of the new infrastructure of unstoppable freedom of speech and democracy. That’s what enables Clay Shirky to declare, “This is it – the big one.”

    It isn’t merely “social media” that make this a step-change in the internet’s impact on society and government, as the reporters who’ve been calling me and other pundits want us to say. Sree Sreenivasan tweeted, “on CNN just now, I asked – China quake, Mumbai attacks, US election, Iran… how many times can one technology ‘come of age’?” RIght. See January 16, 2001 when, as Howard Rheinhold recounts in Smart Mobs, tens of thousands of protesters against Philippine president Joseph Estrada were brought to a square with an SMS. See Mark Zuckerberg proudly talking about the Spanish-language Facebook being used to organize Colombians against FARC. Iran is just another example of people organizing themselves online for a cause or a revolution. The people will avail themselves the latest available technology to serve their needs and cause.

    Twitter is different because it’s live and social – the retweet is the shot heard ’round the world – and because that API lets it survive any dictator’s game of whack-a-mole. But it’s by no means the final word in digital revolutions. I know we will soon see witnesses and participants to events such as these broadcasting them live from their mobile phones. We will see people organizing with Google Maps. We can’t imagine what will come next.

    Twitter has been used in many ways in the Iran story:
    * Citizens of Iran are using it to inform each other.
    * They are using it, most importantly, to organize.
    * They are using it to inform the world.
    * We outside Iran are using us to see what people were saying and doing in Iran. Journalists are using it as a tip service to news and a way to find witnesses to interview. I’ve said in Twitter – to respond to the obvious complaint I hear – that, no, Twitter is no more the final source of news in and of itself than Wikipedia is the only source of knowledge. But it is a tip service for journalists who then still need to do their job and report.
    * We can use it to see the interests of at least the Twitter demographic – limited though it may be – and then to use that to beat up CNN, Fox, and MSNBC for their terrible news judgment last weekend as they all but ignored a revolution.

    Of course, Twitter – and Facebook and blogs and camera phones – alone cannot win a revolution. They cannot protect their users from government’s bullets and jails, as we have seen all to tragically in Iran. (This thought led Tom Friedman to the worst line on the New York Times editorial page, worse even than the worst of Maureen Dowd: “Bang-bang beats tweet-tweet.”) Fighting for freedom requires courage and risk we must not underestimate. But at least these tools allow allies to find each other and to let the world know of their plight. For thanks to the fact that anyone in the world – outside of North Korea – now has a printing press and a broadcast tower, they can be assured that the whole world is watching.

    I recorded a Skype video interview for Al Jazeera English that will air at 20000 GMT today and looked at the camera and said, “Despots, beware.” Your days are numbered. This is more than a revolution. It is an evolution in the architecture of speech and freedom.

    : LATER: Note that not just Iran is censoring the internet. Germany wants to, seeking a censorship infrastructure that can be used for one purpose today, another tomorrow. Oh, when will they ever learn?

  • What should Google do?

    5 comments on What should Google do?
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    I’m about to give some WWGD? advice … to Google.

    When I’m asked about Google’s weaknesses – and they do exist – I list its lack of transparency in certain areas of its business, especially advertising (even as we all need to be transparent if we want to be found in search), its policy toward China (where it should be a better defender of free speech), its size (just because government and competitors soon see too much success as a problem), the other frontiers it has not (yet) conquered (the live web, the social web, the local web, the deep web), and its sometimes unilateral power over its ad partners. The fact that Google ad rates are set by auction in the market insulates it fairly well from claims that it could use monopoly power to set prices. But the fact that Google decides who may and may not use AdSense does leave it vulnerable to accusations of misuse of power.

    See Aaron Greenspan’s saga about his $761 small claims fight with Google about canceling his account. There are other such cases in the court. I don’t know the specifics of Greenspan’s others’ claims sufficiently to take sides in the disputes. Doesn’t matter. The point for Google is that it can’t win by holding the power itself. It will be accused of ruining little guys’ businesses (though in many cases, those business are spam blogs — and I wish Google would work harder to get rid of more of them faster) or of wielding a monopoly.

    So what should Google do? What Would Google Do with Google?

    I suggest that Google should hand over the power of adjudication of such disputes to the community of publishers and advertisers. It is in their interests, like Google’s, to maintain a credible marketplace that is not ruined by spammers and click-fraudsters. Google should still use its automated systems to eliminate them, as they pop up like zits on a geek. But when there are disputes, wouldn’t Google be wiser to hand the matter over to a wise council – whose members could be elected by Google’s community of business partners, small and large – to rule? That way, Google cannot be accused of being unfair and acting with unilateral power.

    That, I think, would be the Googley thing to do. To paraphrase some of the rules in my book… It would hand over control to Google’s public. It would exhibit trust in that public. It would rely on the generosity of that public. It would be transparent, doing business in public. It would open-source the process. It would take advantage of the network Google already has and distribute the task. It would be a way to elegantly organize the community and its needs and rules. It would be a recognition that Google can make mistakes. It would be a case of doing what you do best and linking to the rest.

  • The new Detroit isn’t Detroit

    35 comments on The new Detroit isn’t Detroit
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    GM says it is reinventing itself. And what makes them or the government think they can do that on top of old infrastructure and old ways even with our billions? Good fucking luck.

    Last week, I met the man who is really reinventing the car industry, Jay Rogers, founder of Local Motors. He is creating the platform and API for new cars that are designed collaboratively by communities and built in microfactories across the country by staffs of only 41 using almost entirely off-the-shelf parts. He says he will be profitable selling only 500 cars. He plans to build 3-5,000 of each model and he’s months away from delivering his first.

    When I first looked at Local-Motors, I didn’t think it was for me. Its first model is a muscle car being built in and for the Arizona market. In a video, Rogers talks about being able to come into the microfactory to help build your own car. I try everything I can to avoid ever opening a hood or picking up a wrench. That’s why I buy Toyota.

    But over lunch, Rogers made clear that he is building a company and cars in harmony with the vision for a new car company I suggested in What Would Google Do?.

    It’s collaborative. Rogers set the broad goal for the first car but then the community designed and voted on designs for it. What’s fascinating is that (as I predicted could happen) they make economic decisions and trade-offs. Some really wanted an incredible taillight and Rogers said, fine, that’d cost a fortune to tool up to make and would raise the price of every car by $1,000. Nevermind, the community said; they took a $99 Honda lens and designed around it so you’d never know where it came from. This also means that Local Motors does what it does best and links to the rest, a key precept of WWGD?

    The community takes ownership. And the company hands much – but not all – control to them. I wondered how the community defines itself and manages to settle its disputes. The company has to get involved and listen. Rogers said the most important hire a company can make today is a CCO, chief community officer. This isn’t anarchy or democracy. Rogers coins a rather high-fallutin’ phrase for what he advocated: bimodal intelligence. That is, everyone has a voice but at the end of the day, the company has a role to guide the process and product; that is the value the company adds but that works only if the company listens well.

    It’s small. And small is the new big. That is precisely why GM and Chrysler are at a disadvantage against him, like newspapers against online entrepreneurs: The incumbents are saddled with huge infrastructure costs and have to do everything in big ways, including fail. And this means…

    The mass market is dead, replaced by the mass of niches.     I don’t want the same care you want. I want choice. Hundreds of microfactories can give it to me.

    It’s a platform. I saw this more than Rogers did, but it’s clear that because Local Motors publishes its design data openly, I could start a company to provide parts and products for its cars. It enables others to build business on top of its platform. This means that…

    Business is public. The more openly and collaboratively Local Motors does its business, the better it is for its products, customers, and relationships.

    It’s local. I also didn’t understand this at first. But seeing the car being made for Arizona drivers, I get it. A car for New Yorkers will surely be different.

    Middlemen are doomed. Local Motors has no dealers. The factory is the showroom. The customers are the salesmen.

    And on and on….

    I plan to visit Local Motors’ Boston headquarters to learn more. No, I’m not suggesting that this small company with its microfactory will replace GM, not yet. But this car company can innovate and invent and listen to customers far better than GM can. This car company can become profitable far faster.

  • Google Wave and news

    38 comments on Google Wave and news
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    Never underestimate Google. That should have been my 41st WWGD? rule. Just as I was thinking they were behind the curve on the live web – and argued they should buy Twitter – Google attacked it from the left flank with Wave.

    In Wave, I see more than a new generation of email cum wikis cum Twitter cum groupware. Because it can feed blog and web pages and Twitter, I see a new way to create content, collaborative and live. I see a new way to make news.

    Imagine a team of reporters – together with witnesses on the scene – able to contribute photos and news to the same Wave (formerly known as a story or a page). One can write up what is known; a witness can add facts from the scene and photos; an editor or reader can ask questions. And it is all contained under a single address – a permalink for the story – that is constantly updated from a collaborative team.

    Here, I speculated about the topic becoming the new atomic unit of news, supplanting the article with wikis that contained a snapshot of what we know now, blogs that treat news as the process it is, links (do what you do best, link to the rest), discussion, and media of all types, some even live (Twitter, Qik.com). Marissa Mayer also gave journalists advice on the new form of news, telling them they needed to maintain updates under a permalink for the story so it could be searched and found.

    Wave takes this to the next level. It combines the notions of a process as people add and subtract and update; it has the benefit of a wiki – a snapshot of current knowledge; it can be live; it can feed a blog page with the latest; it can feed Twitter with updates; it is itself the collaborative tool that lets participants question each other.

    Wave isn’t just the email we’d invent if email were invented today, as was Google’s goal. Wave is what news can be if we invent it today, as we must.

    Wave is the new news.

    : LATER: I just got email from Jay Parkinson, who is remaking health care at Hello Health. He, too, was impressed with the opportunities in Wave.

    Replace news story with “disease you suffer from” and reporter with primary care doc and editor with specialist and photos with lab results, etc, and you can see its potential.

    What about your line of work?