eBay profits from airport confiscations

The California Department of General Services is taking potentially dangerous items confiscated from passengers at airports in Oakland and Sacramento and putting them up for bids on eBay.com. And plans are underway to start hawking items seized from passengers at airports in Los Angeles, Ontario, California and Orange County....The most common items are probably Swiss Army knives and corkscrews, ... and hatchets" - more...

and Cake guys sing

"They laugh, they make money
He's got a gold watch
She's got a silk dress and healthy breasts
that bounce on his Italian leather sofa."

Gonzo Lawn Ornaments

It would be peculiar to find out from Jennifer how she got us spammed in the first place. I have sent here a friendly letter. Well, one line really "Jennifer, who can I help?" but no replay arrived yet. and Kevin, I did not find the tasteful ornaments but it was Matrullo who shoved it up my inbox. Of course I also need to understand this Power Law distribution so I can construct some crazy arguments to throw at Shirky. Thanks Kevin for doing that... I think we need to set up comments on this blog, hm, and redesign a bit. Need more blood red and more bullet holes. I will get right to it, right after that case study with Lawn Ornaments... Jennifer?!, Jennifer???!!! Reply back or we'll let the state of washington know you are shamelessly engaged in illegal spam manufacturing.

Lawn ornaments and an offtopic question (if such an animal actually exists on this blog)

Re: Lawn Ornaments company. This would be an interesting case study. Compare the profits of the spammer company to the results produced from going "gonzo". It also might be a interesting book - "Lawn Ornaments: from spam to gonzo", or something like that. Gonzo concepts sometimes appear to be somewhat nebulous and hard (if not impossible?) to implement. It would be interesting to see how the Income Statement (real profits and real dollars) would change in a small company such as this one during and after the "transformation".

Offtopically, How doese one search Google News?

I don't understand how to do this and am certain that there's an easy solution. Let's say you want to search the daily news headlines for ALL the news EXCEPT certain topics (i.e. bush, blair, "jesus was a stoner", fish, "saints calling all the little children into ebenezer's netherland"). On the advanced search site, there is a box FIND RESULTS WITHOUT THE WORDS BOX, but when I enter my excluded words into that box, this is what's returns. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! How does one enter the equivilent of *.* star-dot-star into the "Find results with all of the words" Google Box? | Comments/help/suggestions. (Thanks for any help)

Gonzo Lawn Ornaments

Frank, Marek, Denise, Micheal, Tom and I received an odd spam about buying lawn ornaments online. Marek found some more to his taste elsewhere. I looked a bit closer and discovered someone in need of a clue:
We aren't in business without your help!
We need and appriciate your feedback and and comments; Ideas for improvement are always welcome. So, please feel free to contact us by mail, phone or e-mail:
*AAA* Gift Idea
1723 E Mallon
Spokane, WA 99202
1-509-534-5243
e-mail: harshfree@msn.com

I passed this on to the cluetrain mailing list, soliciting marketing clues,and copying the address above. I got a reply at once:

On Wednesday, February 26, 2003, at 09:50 PM, JENNIFER HARSHMAN wrote:
Kevin,

I just received your email. Did I request this information from you? I do like the idea. I have no clue if you are a marketing company or what. I'm sorry I don't recall your name, I spent a lot of time trying to advertise my company. So let me know what's up with this.

So I responded:
Jennifer, you (or someone else employed by you) sent unsolicited commercial email to myself and some colleagues of mine.

This is very rude. Not only that, it is illegal under Washington State law:

http://www.wa.gov/ago/junkemail

But most of all it is not going to help you promote your business, as it just makes people cross with you.

If you are seriously interested in advertising your company on the net, you should do the following:

Sign up for the cluetrain mailing list

send a blank email to: cluetrain-subscribe@topica.com

Read Gonzo Marketing:

http://www.gonzomarkets.com/

And start a weblog:

http://blogger.com

I'll keep you in touch wiht furtehr developments.

Kikkoman. Kikkoman.

Show me. Show you. Kikkoman. Tarakalasu. Tibu Tibu Tibu Didi Didi. Kikkoman. Teki ka. Sharaka. Kikkoman. Show me. Show you. KikkoMaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....nnnn!!! O Right! (via Dave Bary)

.... and then I said

I have been a bad girl. Yeah Baby! B A D. BBBBBaaaaaaD.....BBAAAAA DDAA BING BAD girl.

Good Girl, Bad Girl, but not dirty girl

She had me at hello:

"On one level, I'm absolutely delighted and surprised with the success of these books," Tuttle says. "On another level, there's a part of me that intuitively sensed there was something here and that there would be a lot of women who would respond to an open invitation to unleash their inner wild."

Then came the filter. Tone down that wild. Leash the unleashing.

"...it's not about dressing like a slut and sleeping around. That's pretty unimaginative as far as I'm concerned."

Almost there. Almost.


"It's cool to be able to turn your own neurosis into a cottage industry," she says

Now we are there. Dig your humanity.

Said She, Said He. Said They. Said He. Said I.

Said she: "This day is a day I dreamed about my entire life. I see smiles and laughter. I see babies and grandbabies. I see comfort and safety. I see me in a white dress, and I see it with you…I can now tell you without reservation that I am in love with you."

Said he: "I love you with every ounce of who I am and offer you my hand, my heart and soul and my love, forever, if you’ll have it."

Said ABC: "Oh God, please let us beat American Idol in the ratings tonight."

Said I: "what a show "

on...Your mouth getting washed out with soap

Below Marek's response to Tom's Post concerning language. This nugget popped out:

We need translators. Those shamans of old who speak both the language of the tribe and the language of the gods. We need translators who can live in one language and then shift and live in another. We need language travelers. Language shifters. The world is much richer than the best constructions of English language can ever reveal.

That whole "boy goes away from the village to big city and comes back and village now sucks" thingy comes to mind. Not the message of Marek , yet I wonder. I wonder about this whole thing of change. I have friends who are damn set on keeping their "language" pure. Their God. Their jobs. Their microwave dinners. Don't change things comes the reply when bringing up different languages.

Some of us embrace change/new languages like a needle full of good stuff. We dig. It is our juice. Almost. Don't be raving against our machine though. I suspect many of us that do this danged journal thing are such folk. Where is my f'n point....

How do you inspire people to change? Don't gimme those damned answers that consultants give CEO's. How do you speak to people in their language while bringing them into awareness of something new? Something other. Holy? How do WE get THEM to see it. Shit. That is it.

We already have to much we and them. That guts language (at first). Starts wars. Makes you different than me. You are not. Not in that place where we all run and hide. The place where no one sees. That is the gene they need to find.

I want to throw on a Russian skin and speak the language of Ruskis. Gimme. Yet, I don't know how NOT to be different.

And the point that is

Crazy was the point. Now, not only to I get to suck up what everyone on the redcarpet wears. Now, I get to clothe my avatars. Unbelieveable. Marek wrote a piece about consumption and MTV a while back (would link but yeah). Consume baby or we will force feed you.

Of Anxieties and wanting to be There but not Here

and There we go again. I have no idea what this post from Jscott is about. Was he drinking? I thought he was going to write something brilliant and instead we got this squashed shit. Dude, get a grip man.

Virtual worlds wearing virtual clothes and I hate the word virtual

(editor's note:Because I have been informed by the One they call Precious that my below post sucked I will state what I thought was the obvious. The below is suppose to be in the tone of sarcasm. Hum that note please. Thank you. The reference to the "New New" thing was a clever addition. Thank you again. Thanks.)
The F word comes to mind. Just cause it is so exciting. It is like the movie Lawnmower Boy or whatever it was called. Strap on goggles and a suit and zoom away. Perfect hair and sex and pancakes and shit as that. From what I get from Business 2.0 there is this company called There inc. Indeed there. Gaming and chat on roids. Not any roids. The kind that give you big, fat, nasty bulges. Here is their description:

"There is the first online getaway that gives you the freedom to play and talk naturally while having fun and making friends. Check out the pictures below for just a glimpse of what you'll find in There. Then sign up to be one of our Beta Testers and see it all for yourself!"

Ok, so they have lame wordage. But it ain't. I mean that is like big deal-who cares. What is the Big big (new new) deal is the shit they are doing with other corporations. Apparently, when you sign up (ok I did) you get a near naked human. You choose the sex (I chose a woman cause I wanted to see her naked), skin color, blah blah. BUT....Then they give you these dollars and stuff. You actually buy clothes for em and stuff. Like Nike and what-not (and stuff). So, Nike is making digital gear. Like no friggin way. But yes way.

So that is wild and all but man the wilder stuff is the thinking about your personal identity and virtual reality.

I mean I have secretly longed for a world where I was supermanish or evil supermanish and could be the idol of all those near and dear. Call it a God/god/gawd complex. Whatever. Point being that branding digitally is mucho more than a damn website. I hate the word branding by the way. Reminds me of Branded. That TV series. Reminds me of cows too. So, I hate words branded and virtual. On we go.

PIcture a situation/case flocking study

So, the nerd boy burger flipper next door gets into his virtual suit everyday after work. Slooom slam. He becomes Johnny Blondie. Ladies man. Hunk. Smart guy. Corporate financier sans surfer. He gets chics and money and cool clothes. Hell, dude figures out how to sell e-book/website subscriptions to his "How to be a freakin chic magnet in 7 hours--guide to gettin on the sex and attention you can handle." He makes a fortune. Nike gets him to wear their new sex athletic gear. Ring ring. Money machine.

So, there is not there. However, I am. I mean in my head.

I am tired of brainstorming. Bada bing goes the machine.

Of Language and Bridges Construction

Commenting on Jeneane's post at Tom's new Stir I decided to post it here because I am trying to say something I am not sure what so here we go doing some construction with words.

"We need a bridge somehow across languages through language"

A Bridge? There is a Bridge Tom (I later realized it was Jeneane's post). The Bridge is not Looking for One but realizing The Bridge is when one decides to build it. If I were to speak with someone who grew up speaking Other Language then the first thing I would want to know is 'How does world look like in your language?'. I am quite a Whorfian guy. I see the Language creates reality one lives inside of. The language one speaks one uses to build the world one sees, comments on and lives inside of. In a way we are creatures of Language (not a definite thing of course. We are creatures of many things).

So how do you build language? I think there needs to be some education in American Schools for speaking another language - not 'foreign language' but 'another language'. After all, when children are growing up English Language is quite foreign to them. Then, growing up, they live with it and mold the world around and inside of them. It is the same as playing a musical instrument. It is a language of sound that affords us to see something inaccessible by the language of words. So it may be in Polish. When I live inside Polish language I am one person and when I live inside of English language I am another. But then again when I listen to Rachmaninov I don't know who I am. I am housed in a different placed when Chopin touches my soul. Perhaps the road to Peace on Earth is for us to be open to discover the place we get housed in when we allow a different language to live through us.

We need translators. Those shamans of old who speak both the language of the tribe and the language of the gods. We need translators who can live in one language and then shift and live in another. We need language travelers. Language shifters. The world is much richer than the best constructions of English language can ever reveal.

Breaking news from Radio B.D.B.I.N.G.

HBO, The leading fireplace manufacturing company for the average Global Family and the maker of Bada Bing TV glow fireplace substitute has asked Marek J to cease and desist using the Tradmarked phrase of its award winning boob-tube joyful-hour family warmer. In his statmennt, Tony Soprano, the spokesman for the HBO, mentioned that "it is important to provide warmth and joyfullness to the average Global family gathered in front of our 36 inch fireplace. We are the Producers of one of the best Glows out there and we fill the whole 36 inches with Suspense, Drama and Laugher. We own all 36 inches and we rely on the genuine Glow our fireplace produces to bathe every member of the Global Family". After receiving the cease and desist letter Marek J has turned off his fireplace thus decreasing Glow Production on the Planet.

Breaking news from Radio K.A.O.S.

Radio K.A.O.S. has received a nasty letter tonight from Jonathan regarding the citizenship application of the one they call the Polish Village Idiot who is pretending to be the Agent of Worst Practicies with Titanic Deck Chair Rearrangement Corporation. We will not reveal the contents of the letter since we are aggresively pursuing the financial backing of the HBO to rewrite the next episode of Sopranos to include the aftoresaid accusatory writing. Also, for fears of retaliation and a possibly anonymous phone call to INS we have sent an invitation to Jonathan to spew his rotten opinions on this blog (provided by Ev whom we do not like). We thank your for your attention. We now return to our regural programming from the computers of Clear Channel Communications located on the western shores of the Zambezi river and stretching their tenacles to extend the Mix NOISE FM pollution into Alaskan Wilderness with the blessings of the FCC. God Bless Amerkia.

Number 89

Dear Mr. Presley,

I've always had a feeling that your excessive use of the phrase "bada bing" would lead to trouble with the INS. Regretfully, I failed to convey my concerns to you. However, having recently learned that Yahoo has purchased Geocities and Rocketmail, I thought this would be a good time to utilize the synergies provided by the Yahoo/Geocities/Rocketmail combination and communicate to you in this synergistically enhanced medium.

Seriously though, hope everything goes well with your plight. BTW, I have a call into Agent 86 at Control to see if I can help with matters.

Some bird droppings from MarekJ

Some of you may wonder why this idiot from Poland does not want to blog any more. Well, I am in the process of being investigaged by the FBI. I have shown up at the INS office on Thursday from 12:30 until 3:30 to wait in line holding number 89 to see an outsourced technitian to be fingerprinted for my N400 application for Naturalization. I am presently Un-Natural resident of United States Of Amerika. I have now committed myself to become a citizen so I can vote and enjoy unrestricted access to Latin American countries. Being a Citizen of Poland does not buy you much these days you know. To go anywere you have to apply for Visa and go through bunch of hooplas. Being indoctrinated into the culture of convenience (and that includes convenient Patriotism, meaning - I wave my flag proudly when the shit hits the fan and shout that it's high time to kick somebody's ass to ensure the future inexpesinve access to satellite TV signals and gas in my SUV.) I believe the status of Citizen of Unites States of Amerika will help me increase the access to convenience on many levels (let me now say too much about that now) Having been asked if I want to choose a new name as a citizen I replied joyfully: Elvis Presley. We'll see, we'll see...

And now to my opinions. Blogger purchased by Google. I have no opinion. - I do have one opinion about Ev. I don't like Ev. - My not liking him was born as a suprise to me when he became a martyr in the name of the thousands of people using his software (I fucking hate martyrs). The Martyrdom happened at the time when he said Pyra ran out of money and Ev fired everybody in the company and went solo, Ev the Martyr. In the darkest our of Blogger he alone became Lord Not Jim, saving the ship by himself without any help from anyone. He didn't jump. He pushed everybody else out. - He alone lived in a one room apartment, down in the basement. Lived on raddishes and rotten potatos. As I said, my not liking him is not some kind of strong opinion. I am sure he is a nice guy. That's why it's a surprise to me that I don't like him. I thin he did Jack wrong. So there. No more opinions on that any more. And now I reutrn to my drinking. I hope FBI will not read this post and I will get my citizenship in the next 540 days, as stated on the paperwork I received form the INS last week. So long. I will keep in touch.

In the meantime please straighten me up and tell me what a great guy Ev is. I just might start believing it and then all will be well for me and I won't have to drink any more.
In the end I must say. Pyra has made a great fucking infrastructure for the amplification of diverse voices on this planet. Thank you Ev. Even I don't like you I will beat the shit anyone who dares to say bad shit about you. The freedom of Voice is perhaps the greatest liberty any human being can cherish on this fucked up planet of ours and Blogger has become the best enabler of that liberty. Rock on Fuckers. Let the messiness of Voices drown out the monologues of CNNed news.

An exchange with Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin wrote to me after I wrote this (found below) about the amazing Live from the Blogosphere event which she co-produced, and said this:

For the record, we didn't know anything about the google news until Ev disclosed it on the panel by way of his laptop. Nobody at the event did, to the best of my knowledge.

If the event had been -- as you wonder aloud on your blog -- put together just as a pretext for Google and/or Pyra to make that
announcement, we'd have at least probably had a decent budget to work with. That would have been nice.

As it was, we scraped together a few bucks from our own pockets, then talked friends into begging/borrowing/stealing the equipment and services we needed to put it together.

This was the real deal, not a corporate press conference masquerading as editorial content.

To which, along with asking for permission to quote her, I replied thusly:

I believe you. I probably was unclear in the way I said what I did. The feeling I was trying to convey was that it was in so many ways the too-perfect setting and occasion for such an announcement - had your event not actually been underway, something of the sort would have had to be invented (like Voltaire's God). An uncanny thing.

By the way, that's a wonderful observation on authenticity - any "corporate" event would give itself away with tablecloths or decent chairs. heh

Google + Blogger = the new CNN (only bigger)

And there's more...

after meanwhile

Michael's brainfart has issued another fart here, well worth perusing. Keep those fartlings - fartsprogs? - coming!

Meanwhile

The real reason dear Tom asked Jeneane to ask me to come out and play was something to do with this brainfart, cross-posted from my day blog (as in - happy to be here, but based on that last post, below, best I don't give up the day blog...).

This:

We can't trust CNN this time.

From Friday's Guardian newspaper:

"In 1991 American voters rallied behind President George Bush Sr for the seemingly bloodless confrontation with Saddam Hussein...Neatly hidden from a small army of journalists was the reality of war - a reality that can make these very same voters recoil in disapproval...

"...About 150 American journalists, photographers and film crews were scattered among attacking units. Their reports were supposed to be fed to a rear headquarters and then shared by hundreds of journalists from around the world...Not a single eyewitness account, photograph or strip of video of combat between 400,000 soldiers in the desert was produced by this battalion of professional observers.

"Cheney, brimming with contempt and hostility for the press, saw journalists as critics of the military who must be contained. "Frankly, I looked on it as a problem to be managed," he said after the war. "The information function was extraordinarily important. I did not have a lot of confidence that I could leave that to the press."

This suggests an urgent need to recruit and train an army of Iraqi bloggers, either here in the 'Free West' (*cough*), with strong connections to feet & eyes still resident in their homeland, or preferably right there in the thick of the horror.

We should arm them with satellite WiFi blogging tools and digital cameras to record and publish the unvarnished, un-CNNed truth.

Perhaps some of Ken Nichols' "Human Shields" could be recruited to assist - to get the full, horrific graphic news out past Cheney's attempts to 'manage' the information flow. They've already got the stones to put themselves in harm's way. Asking them to document, in real time, what they witness is a logical next step.

And if we're searching for yet another way to justify the Google/Blogger deal (Bloogle? Bloggle? Glogger?), this could be it. Ponder the combination of Google News + Blogger in a situation like this.

If any communications channel holds the potential to carry the full and complete truth, it's the blogosphere, in all its uncensored glory.

Assuming, of course, that the content at source can be identified and streamed in without interference from either end of the "nexus of terror" that starts in DC and ends in Baghdad.

Think about it: this could become an infinitely more powerful source of real frontline reporting than CNN could ever be. (That's 'reporting', not necessarily 'journalism', btw - I'm not getting into that debate here).

Perhaps verifiably Iraqi blogger Salam Pax could be persuaded to weigh in on this one...

And perhaps Doc could be persuaded to donate the balance of his Chris Pirillo laptop fund to purchase a robust digital camera and deliver it to Salam, or one of his countrymen willing to venture into the combat zone, in the interests of securing at least one unfiltered feed live from the coming obscenity...

Evenin' all

Thanks, Jeneane, for inviting me to play. Can't quite figure out why I've not bugged you about joining before now, but here I am so whatEVah.

This, btw, should be the appropriate, officially-sanctioned means of punctuating any too heated discussion on the topic of the Blogger/Google nuptials.

WhatEVah.

Whenever (whenEVer) two or more blogchums decide that they've reached that ouroboros moment in the debate, and each has ended up reaching the starting position in the argument originally taken by their opposite number, one of the friendly combatants should throw down his/her 'whatEVah' card. At this point all parties can agree that the most precise and useful answer anyone can arrive at is probably 'whaddafuck', and everyone can sod off down the pub for a well-earned shandy.

Example:

First Cove: "Google buying Blogger is a clear signal that the star named Wormwood has indeed fallen from the firmament, the Beast walks the earth, and the end of days is upon us"
Second Cove: "You're so wrong - the sound of Sergey and Ev's high five is a plangent, joyous signal that the rapture is imminent..."
First Cove: "WhatEVah."

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming...

The Fifth Power

My blog is currently not taking posts. This is frustrating, as I finally have a topic I want to flog until it or I drop into a Slough of Despond, where I find Marek, and join him in drinking Vodka with Pepper while listening to Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto #3 seventeen times a day until the crack of Doom.

The floggified topic is the potentiation of the force field that is about to light up as the macrosphere (Google) merges with the microsphere (Pyra) - Sheila Lennon of the Providence Journal picked up on this in what she wrote yesterday. Google has done more to free us from the Flatland of the Fourth Estate than perhaps it has received credit for. It has gotten bad out there - as even Paul Krugman puts it (only he doesn't dare to say that the large print publications, including the one he works for, are barely less wall-eyed):

''For months both major U.S. cable news networks have acted as if the decision to invade Iraq has already been made, and have in effect seen it as their job to prepare the American public for the coming war.'' Krugman

And, there's this:

"Media for a long time was the resource of the citizenry, known as the fourth power, the power to oppose decisions of the government that would have harmful effects on people. The fourth power no longer has this power," says Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique and communications professor at the University of Paris. Now, rather than protecting the people, the "fourth power is now exploiting and oppressing them" for commercial gain, he said. "How can we tackle this when the protector of the people has transformed into its enemy?" Association for Progressive Communication

The fifth power could lie within the toolset to displace corporate broadcast coercion supplied as Google brings awareness to nano-publishing. Think about it.

Further To Teensy Synapses

Mine are all a-tingly.

Deep shite and tree mites

The thing to consider is, how this story plopped into the middle of some celebrity blogfest in LA and exploded onto the net via some of the most A, if not A prime, bloggers out there who just happened to be in the room. It's as if the event itself were merely a pretext for the bombshell that "happened" to drop in. And, it's as if the event occurred outside the sensory realm of the media, even though, as Tony Pierce noted, they were in the same room.

How much more perfect a vehicle for the unveiling of the advent of what we call blogging as something more than a bunch of itchy dorks jacking off behind the woodshed (that quote's straight from Arnold Schwarzenburger, Apemantean Treeslayer and Holy Spliffroller) could there be?

The linking of Google and Pyra fired a teensy synapse felt around the world: The advent of the blog as where events happen and are reported, and travel through the network nervous system that Bill Gates could never quite imagine but once dreamed he could own.

This is deep shite, as Mr. Locke once put it. Anyone bogged down worrying about Google's business model is not seeing either the forest or the trees, but just the little three-eyed tree mites that are left after Sulzenegger erases entire Canadian forests for the sake of underwear ads.

You are all invited to whoop it up. Feel free to think freely. Try to get outside the whining of those who see the merger of Google and Pyra as the kiss of death, the Trojan Horse, the Evil Empire coming home to roost on our forehead and shit in our beers.

Have a look at what Jeneane is saying here and here. See some of the other comments here. And Denise here. And Cory here. And I blogged about it here.

Why is this such a big deal? To me, it's because we have for a moment a linking of large and small, a linking that we have no reason to assume, prejudicially, is nefarious or anything like what such a linking would be if this were AOLTW and the New York Times, or MSN and Rupert Murd. There might be a grand experiment here, one that needs a little room to grow. This could reconfigure mainstream media, or at least shake it up in healthful ways. Let's hope with David Weinberger that it is still possible, at this stage of human evolution, for one large company to not cave to the temptation to become a stupid large company.

We recover who we are.

"While writing Uncle Tungsten, Sacks combed the Science Museum's archives for a photograph of the periodic table that shines in his memory, but he found only teasing near-misses taken a few years before or after the time of his pilgrimages there. In the last couple of decades, the old chemistry galleries have been cleared away to make room for more "kid-friendly" displays and corporate sponsorship events. The day we visited the museum, our quest for the former location of Mendeleev's garden took us to the third floor, where we came to a vacant landing. Sacks put his cushion on a step, sat down, and looked up at the white wall"

"It used to be here," he said. "That blank space is where Ollie Sacks had his revelation of infinity and saw God. I identified Mendeleev with Moses, coming down from Sinai with the tablets of the periodic law. I visualize, and can still see as I talk, the inert gases in their huge hexagonal jars - the jars looked empty, but you knew they were there. There were translucent sticks of phosphorus in water, and a fist-sized lump of iridium. It must have been a pound. I adored it. There was chlorine, green and swirling in the jar. I had seen dirty bits of cesium before, but they had a lot of it; it's the only other golden metal, golden and glinting. Masurium had no atomic weight - it was not clear whether this element had been discovered or not. And crystals of iodine, all sublimed at the top of the bottle.

"That's where it was. As I close my eyes, I see the cabinet and the cubicles. Do I see a little boy standing there, or am I seeing it through the eyes of that little boy? Just yesterday. And it's 55 years ago."

"By sharing the stories of our inner lives, we recover who we are and prepare ourselves for transformation"

~ from Wired April 2002. The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks

more interviews at oliversacks.com

No Patent On Packet Switching - Paul Baran Interview Wired March 2001

"It didn't take very long before we started seeing all sorts of wonderful properties in this model. The network would learn where everybody was. You could chop up the network and within half a second of real-world time it would be routing traffic again. Then we had the realization that if there's an overload in one place, traffic will move around it. ...If somebody tries to hog the network, the traffic routes away from them. Packet switching had all these wonderful properties that weren't invented - they were discovered... Like the realization that by breaking the physical address from the logical address, you could move around the network and your address would follow you"
---
"The story I tell is of the time I went over to AT&T headquarters - one of many, many times - and there's a group of old graybeards. I start describing how this works. One stops me and says, "Wait a minute, son. Are you trying to tell us that you open the switch up in the middle of the conversation?" I say, "Yes." His eyeballs roll as he looks at his associates and shakes his head. We just weren't on the same wavelength.

If you think in analog terms, the signal arrives instantaneously. If you think in digital terms, time moves very, very slowly, and you can do things like change the path while you're in the middle of a syllable. But it was a mental block. They didn't understand digital"
---

"Do you ever wish you owned a patent on packet switching?"
No. First of all, 17 years went by very quickly. Secondly, it would've gotten in the way of people using it. That was one of the objectives: to broaden the access.
What's your sense of when you first thought that this thing you were working on was going to take over the world?

Around December '66, I presented a paper at the American Marketing Association called "Marketing in the Year 2000." I didn't talk about packet switching, but I described push-and-pull communications and how we're going to do our shopping via a television set and a virtual department store. If you want to buy a drill, you click on Hardware and that shows Tools and you click on that and go deeper. In the end, if you have two drills you're interested in, then you hit your Consumers Union button, and their evaluation goes up on the screen..."

from March 2001Wired interview with Paul Baran, the father of packet-switched network.

Never underestimate strangers with blogs

Gary writes: "Self elected representatives of strangers the world over, they sought each other out. Driven only by the instinct to reduce the number of strangers on the planet by a small number, the strangers threw themselves at the scenery of life and stepped out of their stranger free comfort zones. The strangers became friends to one another proving, if nothing else, that they were alive at that same precise moment"

30 page book in two sentences

What most would take up scroll-fulls of browser-screen-pagination to attempt explaining the phenomenon of Corporate's Best Practices lynch marks on our backs Tom delivers in a stamp-sized unlimited wisdom on his blog:

"When the basic operation defaults to the corporate advantage, it slopes to further self-interested micro-defaults at the expense of the customer. Resistance to (ahem) - aggressive marketing strategies - weakens. Fraud, like Justice, is blind - fooling those who use its "best practices" to plunder fools"