Connecting the Dots

Bye-Bye Northwest Airlines

No question that there are too many airlines and, with fuel costs a negative impact to the bottom line, consolidation was inevitable. Delta and Northwest Airlines merging to become the world's largest carrier makes complete sense.

Took a moment this morning to head over to the Minnesota Historical Society web site and search the photograph collection for Northwest Airlines and found these. It's always fun to look back and see what times were like in the early days, and force myself to compare-n-contrast it with what I'm doing right now and what it will be like for my kids to look back on 2008.

No question it will seem quaint that Mom and Dad struggled with finding wireless internet access; that we used that silly Twitter thing; that Second Life avatars were what we used to represent ourselves; that we didn't have machine augmentation allowing our thoughts to just jack into the 'net and connect with others with our thoughts.

Though it's easy to brush off, this development is a melancholy one for many of us here in Minnesota. We've seen many brands go away (e.g., Dayton's, Norwest Bank) and others explode (Sound of Music turning into Best Buy Company) but it doesn't make it any easier to watch.

I doubt we'll see any improvements in leg room, seat width or less crowded planes. Air travel truly is a Greyhound bus in the sky and is one of my least favorite activities...though one I (and everyone, I'd guess) will put up with since it beats driving, the train, an actual bus or not going at all.

Quit whining and let's appreciate how far we've come...

On our last day in New York, my son and I had fully intended to head to Ellis Island but alas, timing didn't work out (Northwest Airlines cancelled our flight and other issues). Now facing a six hour adventure to get home (vs. just over three hours) has put my 13 year old in a foul mood, "Dad...I'll be so BORED!" he cries as we talk about ways to keep our minds occupied in the airport, on the flights and the one hour layover until we finally get home.

Oh....we poor babies! A six hour, relatively comfortable flight with nothing to read or DVD's to watch...how can we manage?

Imagine being one of the 12 million immigrants that spent WEEKS on a journey that culminated in arriving in New York and going through Ellis Island (unless you were wealthy or 'upper class' and then you were automatically in). Arduous? To say the least. Boring? Undoubtedly. Smelly, dirty and infested? Yep.

I think about stuff like this whenever I complain about technology: slow, expensive Wifi (like I experienced in our New York hotel); lack of 3G in my iPhone and that I can't use it as a bluetooth modem; or that it's challenging to integrate free, open source software projects. At least I'm not in the middle of the Atlantic with nothing and coming to a land of opportunity and unknown challenges.

Am I grateful for what I (and we) have today? Oh my God yes. I'm also aware how 'soft' we are as a nation and a people since most of us haven't lived through true hardship like our immigrant ancestors (though we may now if the economy continues its downward trend!). I'm aware often that I come from quite modest means and my maternal grandparents, for example, were as close to the poverty line as I'll ever experience (hopefully) and were the salt of the earth...teaching me early the meaning and importance of love over anything else...especially the material. The guidance from them, my parents and the people I've gravitated toward over the years have reinforced this perspective.

The flip side is that whining and complaints is the market speaking and actually is a good thing. We're telling the creators, the vendors and the service providers what is NOT working and what needs to be improved. It's the only way that progress occurs and the inefficient is made efficient.

It's just that whining and complaining works best if it's balanced with appreciation on how far we've come and we approach our suggestions, criticisms and feedback in the spirit of making it better.

I've been invited in to dozens of 'private beta' Web offerings as well as sit on the advisory boards of two companies. Why? I really appreciate where we've been in the space they're attacking (usually one that desperately needs improvement), where we are now (the current offerings in the market), where they're headed, and that my positive whining, complaining, guidance and insight -- if offered in the true spirit of improvement -- is deeply appreciated and results in positive change.

Give it a try the next time you're mad, frustrated or befuddled by some product or service that you think needs to be made more efficient. I'll wager it will be accepted well if it's offered with appreciation and your positive feedback.

Freeconomics: What about MY cost for YOUR free?

Am somewhat amazed by the backlash against Chris Anderson's new Wired piece, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business". Charges that he wrote a "communist manifesto" were probably the harshest ones, but many people I've been talking with, both in person and virtually, share somewhat of that same opinion: "something is wrong if you have to give away your value" and "we can't all make money by grabbing mass numbers of eyeballs in order to deliver advertising to them."

They're missing his point and he missed one I think he shouldn't have.

Anderson's "it's the falling costs, stupid" premise can be summed up in this paragraph taken, ironically, from his article in the Economist magazine:

The dominant business model on the internet today is making money by giving things away. Much of that is merely the traditional media model of using free content to build audiences and selling access to them to advertisers. But an increasing amount of it falls into the free-sample model: because it is so cheap to offer digital services online, it doesn’t matter if 99% of your customers are using the free version of your services so long as 1% are paying for the “premium version”. After all, 1% of a big number can also be a big number.

Free is a major shift and a huge trend, especially with any sort of online service. If you thoroughly read Anderson's article in Wired you may or may not buy into the argument he makes, and may even accept his premise that free is driven primarily by the fall in producer costs as the costs associated with delivering them continue to drop online.

But wait just a minute.

Acceleration of the Surveillance Society

As a former registered Republican who hasn't yet decided on whom I will trust to be my elected representation in government, my conservative friends often are appalled with my emerging libertarian leanings, increasingly progressive stance on social issues, and downright dismay over my outrage at the volume of vacuum surveillance that has accelerated in the last seven years.

If you have any awareness of current affairs, the warrantless wiretapping issue is continuing to go unresolved. I don't care about your politics, whether or not you believe that the undefined, classified, private and hidden threat of "terrorism" -- one that is at the heart of the justifications for war, increased security and surveillance post-9/11, and a trillion dollars of spending -- is valid or whether or not you think our current Administration is doing the right thing and can be trusted.

The fact remains that the current Administration has accelerated procedures, technologies and law breaking without much hue-and-cry (or even questioning!) from people like you. Though we don't know to what extent the basic foundational premises of our country have already been breeched since everything is classified, what is certain is that all of these shifts will certainly be available to a future demagogue or fascist who'd gleefully  appreciate how the skids were greased over the last several years.

As noted security expert, Bruce Schneier, once said, "It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state."

Stop the Spying reached out to me today after a post I did about their efforts and those of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The video below is of people like you who've taken the time to participate. Again, whether you agree with them or would even consider doing it yourself, the fact remains that accepting, just going along, and not even asking the tough questions is not an option.

Economic Effect on Tech

If you have a job, retirement assets, are looking to spend or invest in anything, or have a company that relies on discretionary consumer spending (or a Web startup that is dependent on equally volatile discretionary ad spending), then listen up.

Woke up this morning to this article in the Minneapolis StarTribune entitled, "Retailers Hit 40-Year Low" which said in part, "On Thursday, the nation's retailers turned in their worst January in almost four decades, as high fuel and food prices, a slumping housing market, tighter credit and a tougher job market pushed consumers to the edge."

It's no wonder that Apple cut its production of (what is mostly) discretionary purchases. From that StarTribune article, "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says that its shoppers are redeeming their holiday gift cards for basic items -- pasta sauce, diapers, laundry detergent -- instead of iPods or DVDs."

But it gets worse than consumers buying staples instead of tech.

Reality of One Laptop Per Child?

So much has been written about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project that I won't rehash it in this post, but will say that my position has always been that the primary value in the OLPC project is that the Internet is the biggest shift in human communications and knowledge storage ever, and ideas, innovations and human connection now move at the speed of electrons. Denying anyone, any kid, from being a part of that shift -- no matter how small and regardless of the technology used to participate in it -- is relegating them to a future of intellectual and knowledge poverty.

When I was invited to join the Institute of Distributed Creativity mailing list (comprised of many academics and thought leaders in education, learning, social media and more), I was part of a very spirited discussion about the OLPC with people's opinions being slanted toward it being "male created technology" or that we Americans (OLPC head Nicholas Negroponte in specific) were acting as "imperalists" or "capitalists" within the context of OLPC, pushing our way and consumerism on the third world.

After participating in this OLPC discussion, I then ranted on the list that I'd expected the list members would be comprised of deep thinkers and those who appreciate vision and are trying to move the world forward. People who push against the membrane of the future rather than pull back from it as critics (and I felt I was seeing more criticism than critical thinking). I've been accused of being a happy-assed optimist (my words) in the list with respect to technology and am guilty as charged, but at least Negronponte was doing something while the list members pontificated about their views of such a project and how it should be done or not done at all.

Then the thread went silent....until today when a man named Martin Lucas weighed in with such a well written counter-point to my optimism -- and the varying perspectives about OLPC -- that I asked him if I could publish it on my blog in total as it's too good to leave on a closed list.

Continue on to read Martin Lucas' "One Slate per Child" paper that gives a dose of reality -- from someone on the ground in the African state of Malawi -- about the reality of introducing the OLPC and obstacles faced in one country ostensibly a perfect target for OLPC...

New York Times is now in (and leading) the conversation

In September of 2007, The New York Times made a monumental decision to stop charging for TimesSelect (the NYTimes online) as well as opening up their archives searchable back into the 1800's. Big risk but was a brilliant strategic move in my opinion.

I've been noticing the Times showing up more frequently as the thought leader blog on the memetracker (blogosphere conversation tracker) Techmeme. Today is a great example (and yes, I understand Sunday is the most in-depth article day), but I've never seen FOUR of them above-the-fold previously.

Why is this such a brilliant strategic move? As evidenced by not only being IN the conversation on Techmeme, they're also LEADING many of the conversations. Very smart, heh?

With more of us consuming news and information on the Web -- and now video and full TV shows -- there is no question that any organization wishing for relevancy going forward needs to be 100% immersed in Internet-centric media and the attention being paid there vs. traditional media. It's the only way to quickly shift, modify, and embrace emergent new media forms as well as be a leading provider right smack-dab-in-the-middle of where our attention is increasingly being focused.

Why we need a tech-savvy president

Whether or not you believe that there is an inexorable and exponential growth in business, communications, social, cultural and political processes being mapped to the Internet -- and a simultaneous disruption along with innovation occurring worldwide -- one thing is clear: we're living in an unprecedented time of accelerating change and the global network called the internet is at the heart of it.

This accelerating change is why we must have someone in the oval office that has an intuitive understanding of how the internet is shifting much of what we do, exploding knowledge and providing the building blocks of innovation, bringing a level of transparency to governmental and corporate actions never before seen, while flattening the world faster than you can say "Thomas Friedman".

John McCain seems to be rising in the polls for the GOP nomination and yet I'm troubled by several instances where he's made it clear he's a neo-Luddite or just plain clueless.  This Fortune archived article entitled, "How I Work" from March of 2006 is one of those:

I read my e-mails, but I don't write any. I'm a Neanderthal--I don't even type. I do have rudimentary capabilities to call up some websites, like the New York Times online, that sort of stuff. No laptop. No PalmPilot. I prefer my schedule on notecards, which I keep in my jacket pocket. But my wife has enormous capability. Whenever I want something I ask her to do it. She's just a wizard. She even does my boarding passes--people can do that now. When we go to the movies, she gets the tickets ahead of time. It's incredible.

Wow! You mean she can go to an airline web site, check in and print a boarding pass? Buy movie tickets online? I'll bet she can even use that there Google thingy. Wizard indeed.

Digg + Techmeme/Blogrunner + Newsvine = Wikio

Grabbed lunch in a coffee shop so I could followup on some emails and surf Google Reader and leech off use their free wifi.  Like you probably do as well, I use tabs in Firefox to create "tabbed workspaces" that let me use different browser windows to load my oft-used sites so they're at my fingertips just a tab-click away.

Four I check constantly are Google Reader (GR), Newsvine as well as the memetrackers (probably THE most powerful automated conversation tracking mechanism on the Web) TechMeme and Blogrunner. With the 1,000 or so articles popping up in GR that I skim/read each day -- cross-referenced in the memetrackers so I make certain I've seen all the hot stuff of the day bloggers are "conversing" about by linking to one another -- I really have a handle on what I need to stay appraised of daily.

While reading Mashable just now I came across this breaking news on the US launch of Wikio, an offering that I describe as sort of a Digg, Techmeme, Blogrunner and Newsvine combined. I dropped my sandwich as I realized that maybe, just maybe, I might be able to combine my use of these four sites within just this one!

As Mashable's Adam Ostrow states in his opening, "Wikio, which already claims 5 million unique users in Europe, is officially launching their memetracker in the US today. “Memetracker” is probably too narrow a description for Wikio, as it attempts to be much more than services like TechMeme, BlogRunner, and the new Technorati."

Wikio describes their site like this: Wikio is a personalised page of news, including a news search engine that searches media sites, blogs and member publications. Even without signing up or personalizing Wikio for myself and my own interests -- which I just did -- I can really see the potential here.

You can vote and promote articles you find interesting ala Digg. It acts as a memetracker, like TechMeme and Blogrunner (though I think that capability looks weak....but I haven't yet formed an opinion). It allows submission like Digg does -- and Newsvine before Digg appeared -- but with a twist: since you can complete a profile like a social network, it allows someone who is willing to invest in article submission with the capability to build a reputation on the site which Newsvine pioneered with news gathering.

The bad news? I can't export my OPML file from Google Reader (which I've painstakingly invested in categorizing over a couple of years) and then import it into Wikio. Maybe I'm missing something and I can do this, but if not it's a deal-killer for me using Wikio as my primary hub.

The good news? I've broken into huge grins several times as I've bumped across articles and blog posts that I've *never* seen before. THAT sort of experience will be the acid-test for acceptance of this tool: if the value delivered by Wikio is higher than figuring out how to really use it effectively (which isn't too tough) and if it provides more of us with the ability to consume and parse high volumes of information, than Wikio is a winner which it already looks to be.

How are these related? Google rats out a blogger. House passes HR1955.

After learning about Google turning over the IP address of an anonymous Israeli blogger, I realized I needed to understand the facts before forging an opinion and went out in search of other articles and more information. Within hours I had also came across the passage in the House of Representatives of a bill, HR1955, entitled the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" -- which, curiously, I've seen absolutely nothing about in the mainstream media and it's on its way to the Senate where it will undoubtedly pass immediately.

How are these two connected?

First go and read the bill (it's quite short) and pay special attention to Sec 899B wherein "Congress finds the following:". If you don't come away with the impression that all of these points are amazingly vague and that this bill could easily be gamed by any current or future Administration that, for example, severely compromised habeas corpus or wiretapped domestically without warrants, I'll eat my hat.

One passage has caused uproar amongst geeks and the blogosphere. Sec 899B, #3, states, "The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens." I don't know about you, but I never see "streams of propaganda" and this smacks of how some in the Justice Department seem to use child pornography as a catch-all for moves to control cyberspace and accelerate tracking mechanisms (who among you could possibly be for child porn? Or terrorism, for that matter? Got something to hide?).

While the outrage over Yahoo turning over a Chinese dissident and now Google turning over an anonymous Israeli blogger's IP address is understandable, unlike what Yahoo did and AT&T did (by actually first violating the law by implementing wiretapping without a warrant), Google at least waited until an Israeli court order was given.

Here's what I think is really going on... 

Washington D.C. "amusements" are not what they seem...

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my wife, kids and I headed to Washington D.C. for a family vacation to do what we do best: cram our brains full of information and knowledge while having fun and great family bonding time. The side benefit was to enlighten our 19 and 13 year olds about the history of the United States.

What I absolutely did not expect was that this would be an educational event for my wife and I too and one of the most troubling trips I've taken since Germany in 1997 to connect with my ancestry and realizing my extended family were Nazi soldiers -- albeit grunts brought into service as infantry -- but needing to at least consider what my grandfather and father would've done had my great, great grandparents stayed in Germany.

We saw many things and experienced more -- the Mall memorials: Lincoln, Washington, WWII, Vietnam were especially impactful -- but there were four that turned out to be profound events:

1) National Archives: Viewing the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and the Bill of Rights. To gaze upon these documents, deepen our understanding of what our Founding Fathers went through to create this Republic, the people who've fought and died sense to preserve our freedoms and rights and how our current age of so-called "terrorism" has allowed the amazing erosion of both through, for example, warrantless wiretapping, brought home to me the absolute imperative that we all stay alert and take steps to ensure we elect representation that will fight for and protect our freedoms...and win the battles.

2) Holocaust museum. I'm sad to report that I rolled my eyes in disgust when this museum was first announced since -- at the time before I was "more awake" as I am now -- I thought there was no need for such a remembrance on American soil. I'm a student of World War II history and especially Germany as I've grappled for years with how the citizenry of this cultured country could have ever allowed the Nazi's to gain power.

After touring this place and experiencing the step-by-step methods the Nazi's used to seize power from a slumbering citizenry, dehumanize the Jews and support the coming genocide, instill such fear in to the people that millions felt powerless to resist, I sadly realized how simple it would be to do the same sort of thing in this country since most of my fellow American's are fat, dumb and happy and not yet fully awakened to the slippery slope we're sliding down as a nation. If we the people don't stay vigilant, the powerful will continue to seize and wield power in ways I view as counter to the Constitution.

The last two places we went to were, however, the biggest surprises...

Molding and Shaping Perception in an Internet Age

My daughter had a college paper to do and ended up doing it on, "Old and New Media Influence on Anti-American Sentiment".

What was fascinating was to read this report (PDF) from May, 2007 entitled, "The Communication of Anti-Americanism: Media Influence and Anti-American Sentiment” by the Department of Communications at Cornell University and see that this massive research study focused on traditional media and completely left out new media!

They examined all sorts of statistics and variables in the report: country, age, income, media habits, and much more. The problem in leaving out new media is that  most people under 30 have radically reduced their consumption of old media and instead are having their perceptions molded and shaped by exposure to all sorts of opinions and alternative new media forms.

Her argument was that negative perceptions of America were being molded and shaped by all media, not just traditional media. In an age when many globally are eschewing broadcast media for social network's, YouTube, SMS, blogs, and shows like The Daily Show or even Al Jazeera offerings, there is no doubt that any thoughtful consideration and examination of public opinion and cross-cultural perception must include new media forms.

As I wrote this looking at that goofy picture of Ze Frank (which must frighten children and small animals), I thought about how tough it would've been for Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbel's, to have done what he did for perception-controlling had the Internet existed in the 1930's.

Will Steger and Global Warming 101

Was at a fundraiser this afternoon and evening for the Will Steger Foundation and to learn more about some of the foundation's efforts like GlobalWarming101 while also breaking out my checkbook to help fund it.

Wikipedia says that this amazing explorer "...joins Amelia Earhart, Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen and Jacques-Yves Cousteau in receiving the National Geographic Society's John Oliver La Gorce Medal for "accomplishments in geographic exploration, in the sciences, and for public service to advance international understanding" in 1995."

Being a Minnesota boy myself with a love for this State and especially the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and my beloved, two feet down in water level Lake Superior's north shore, I've long admired Steger and his exploratory path in life. This admiration was always tinged with thoughts like, "Geez it's damn cold in those places...how can he do that?" when reading up on his latest adventure.

It's now become fashionable to be "green" and care about global warming but only someone like Steger -- who truly loves these places, the earth in general as well as the people and animals out of sight of most of us who are already impacted by it -- can forget about fashion and just charge ahead to raise awareness.

This man isn't the most eloquent, charismatic speaker nor does he seem comfortable pitching or marketing himself, but his drive to carry the message outweighs his reticence. This is a message that the world is finally ready for and I can't think of anyone better to be the bearer of it. He's focusing on delivering it to everyone regardless of political, ethnic, religious or corporate affiliation. We all live here on this planet and Steger emphasized tonight how we're in this together which is why he, a progressive, is also keen on carrying the message to conservatives. He's seen first hand the warming of our world, has the street cred to be completely credible and I can't think of anyone in a better position to keep the fashionable focused on global warming.

Where's the outrage?

I'll bet that if the FBI went through your neighborhood and community house-by-house conducting searches without warrants, you'd be the first one to scream bloody murder and call the newspaper, your elected representatives and tell everyone you know how you'd been violated.

Further, I'll submit that if you discovered that some miscellaneous US intelligence agency opened all your mail while it was at the post office, scanned it and stored it, you'd raise holy hell.

Lastly, imagine driving home after work and instead of the legally sanctioned random highway stops, your State Patrol stopped and searched every single car? I'll bet you'd go ballistic as would everyone else on that highway and it would be a major incident covered nationally.

Then why aren't people outraged over something that is actually happening and is on a scale bigger than any of those three hypothetical examples? The revelation that the National Security Agency is doing exactly that and domestically (which they've always been mandated not to do) allegedly on all internet traffic without anyone's approval or oversight is deeply troubling, but I'm wondering why people aren't in the streets protesting and filled with rage.

Real vs. Virtual Nature. A Blog Action Day post

Today is Blog Action Day and the 2007 topic is the environment. As my tiny contribution to this effort, I'm going to point out an opportunity and a danger to consider if you have kids, are involved in building the Web, or are partaking of any of the virtual offerings that already exist.

The photo at the left is atop Carlton Peak on the North Shore of Lake Superior. My 13 year old son and I hiked to the top and it overlooks a great expanse of forest and to the left is the massive lake. The rock was warmed by the Sun and you could lay down on it and feel the warmth as the cool breeze off the lake chilled our sweaty bodies. This was a great experience since my son lives in his head (he's a bright kid, an incredible gamer, and has read hundreds of books already) and is fairly out of touch with nature and the elements.

In the photo at the right, you'll see a Second Life avatar atop a hill overlooking a faux ocean. When I think about all the people I know that are absorbed in SL, World of Warcraft and are investing themselves in hours of online interactions, they're living in their heads. I live in my head often but have grown up spending a lot of time outdoors and it feeds my soul and I understand its vital importance to our psyche and well being.

Opportunities abound but one key imperative is to ensure our kids are in touch with the earth. As I've grown up aware and involved in wilderness -- and even saddened by the paving over of previously pristine areas near Minneapolis/ St. Paul -- I'm aware that it's harder and harder to get kids to experience wilderness and deeply understand how important it is to our well being as a people and our role as stewards of the earth. Without that intuitive understanding of the cycles of nature and the impact humans make and are making, why will future generations care, or even be aware, of negative impacts we're making on the environment and how to solve problems?

The danger lies in increasing resolution and reality being built in to virtual worlds. They're becoming more and more compelling as the days pass and I'm convinced that increasing numbers of people will not only continue to migrate to urban areas devoid of wilderness, they'll stay indoors and continue to withdraw into their heads as virtual connections and fluid communications become more attractive and rich. It's something I guard against for myself since it's too easy to do and I can see the intrinsic value of virtual anything. My bride and I also put a foot in my son's butt to get him outside and I take every opportunity I can to introduce him to the wonders, the beauty and the spiritual lift one gets when in nature.

Google "doing evil" by invisibly observing?

Google is known for it's internal guiding phrase "Do No Evil". What I've never seen is a strict definition of what "doing evil" really means to the folks at Google. Have you? Should you care? What data is Google looking at when you're online?

An article in SLATE yesterday entitled, "Google's Evil Eye" about summed up what I've talked about previously (a key post is here and another handful are here, here and here) and all of this should at least make you stop and think about all the Google services you're using and how much you're simply handing over to them:

Google's fingerprints aren't just on your e-mail. Last week, the Senate held hearings regarding Google's proposed acquisition of Doubleclick. Google dominates the micro-end of Internet advertising with its text ads. Doubleclick is the leading provider of banner ads, like the one at the top of this page. A combined Googleclick would be a force in Internet advertising—Google makes 99 percent of its profits from ads—and have an awesome ability to track your online behavior. Google will be able to inform advertisers what sites your browser has visited, what ads have been clicked on, what search terms have been used. The company can also get a good idea of your physical location from your computer's IP address. And that's just the tip of the data iceberg. If Sony wants to target teenage PlayStation 3 owners in Southern California with a special promotion on flatscreen TVs, who do you think they are going to call?

When I was at Vignette during the dotcom heyday, I recall the Doubleclick controversy in 1999 that showed, for the first time, the unprecedented capability of tracking and measuring. From Wikipedia:

"In 1999, at a cost of US $1.7 billion, DoubleClick merged with the data-collection agency, Abacus Direct, which works with offline catalog companies. This raised fears that the combined company would link anonymous Web-surfing profiles with personally identifiable information (name, address, telephone number, e-mail, address, etc.) collected by Abacus. This merger made waves and was heavily criticized by privacy organizations. Controversy grew when it was discovered that sensitive financial information users entered on a popular Web site that offered financial software was being sent to DoubleClick, which delivered the ads."

That was over seven years ago which is an eternity in internet time.

1 Billion U.S. Air Travelers by 2010

What will you do when the major commercial airports (among the 5,177 airports in the United States) demand that dozens or hundreds of flights per day are diverted to smaller general aviation airports? Imagine the traffic acceleration, noise and pollution you'll experience in your community or one near you.

Those among us who don't think beyond this coming weekend pooh-pooh the idea that a sudden shift will occur driving corporate jets and smaller planes away from international/major airports and toward these smaller ones. To that I say, "Breathe deeply, my friend, and enjoy that fragrance of jet fuel" because it's going to happen. It may not be sudden and will likely play out over several years but there isn't a choice and here's one example: 55 planes an hour trying to depart New York's LaGuardia airport when only 45 slots are available (and some slots have smaller planes or corporate jets in line) and this can't continue. Especially when that number balloons to 65, 75 or 100 an hour.

This article says it all about our air traffic gridlock and the composition of the aircraft exacerbating the problem: "At La Guardia, half of all flights now involve smaller planes: regional jets and turboprops. It's the same at Chicago's O'Hare, which is spending billions to expand runways. At New Jersey's Newark Liberty and New York's John F. Kennedy, 40 percent of traffic involves smaller planes, according to Eclat Consulting in Reston, Va. Aircraft numbers tell the tale: U.S. airlines grounded a net 385 large planes from 2000 through 2006 - but they added 1,029 regional jets - says data firm Airline Monitor."

Do you rely on electricity? Roads & bridges? The Internet?

This weekend I've had a lot of time to reflect on how fragile and dependent we all are on infrastructure and distribution. All of these thoughts have also had me remember being a kid during the 1970's energy crisis (with lines at gas stations) and times when pending blizzards caused people to make a run on grocery stores stripping the shelves of certain foods, water and other staples.

We're far too dependent on so much infrastructure and distribution systems that most of us either take for granted or simply expect will always be there.

The Interstate 35W bridge collapse two weeks ago was the first stunning blow about the frailty of infrastructure and a wake-up call for all of us. I've been reading a tremendous amount about needed bridge and roadway repairs in the US and it seems as though every state (as well as the Federal government) is suddenly taking action.

Yesterday morning's storm here in Minnesota knocked out our power at 3am Saturday and it's expected to fixed by close-of-business on Tuesday!  It's only affecting 45,000 people here now, so this is a local story. But what a pain in the butt it is to be without power and, thank goodness, my neighbors behind us have power so I've run a contractor grade extension cord so I can plug in my refrigerator and sump pump.

When there have been huge electrical outages there have been outcries (and I wrote about it here and you can read more about our crumbling power grid here). But since these outages have yet to be in the same horrific category as a catastrophic bridge collapse tragedy, not much is being done. I also remember Reddy Killowatt, the electric industry spokescartoon who encouraged us to use electricity. He's retired now having outlived his usefulness in a time of energy conservation.

I'm sitting here in a restaurant this morning with free Wifi since my Internet access at home is out (no electricity...no working cable modem). Thankfully I have an office a short drive away with power so it's not too horrible and I can still get work done, but my 12 year old son keeps asking me how he can get on the 'net from home. There are some silver linings to having all the electrical stuff off, but I'm not too interested in living off the grid just yet.

Yesterday afternoon I almost purchased a portable generator. Instead, I'll be buying a standby generator (which runs on natural gas) that I can plug into my home circuit system and prioritize my heat and air conditioning; sump pump (critical since my basement flooded last year when the power went out!); refrigerator; and a few other items so I'm not at the mercy of Xcel Energy or a kind neighbor. The cost will be roughly $5k installed and a whole house generator (instead of a limited number of items) is about $13k. What's enlightening to me has been the exercise of adding up all the watts I pull in my house and realizing how tough (and expensive) it is to be self sufficient with energy!

The small outage of Internet hosting I referenced in my post is so laughingly small that it went almost unnoticed by the general public. But as more and more of us map our businesses, our social networks and our communications on the 'net, the potential for horrific and catastrophic outages -- though unlikely to take lives -- may finally get people to wake up to our dependency on bridges, our distribution system, electricity, the Internet, and all the other systems and processes we now take for granted.

Scarcity of Water in the Great Lakes

Posting this week is light as I'm on my 8th Annual Dad & Son Adventure with my 12 year old son. We are in Door County, WI (in between Green Bay and the main body of Lake Michigan) and will be hugging the south shore of Lake Superior on our return.

The picture you see in this post is the tip of the Door peninsula jutting out in to Lake Michigan. Since the water level is three feet lower than normal all the white rocks you see are normally covered with water and up several feet up the rock cliff. The stress of the drought on the trees we hiked through and the lake itself is quite obvious and very disconcerting.

Parasailing, jet skiing, swimming and hiking are some of the activities we've been engaged in this week so we've been in close contact with the lake and I've been seeing first hand the impact this water drop is having.

With my beloved Lake Superior down two feet -- along with all the buzz about global warming -- makes it easy to leap to the conclusion this water drop is due to that clear trend of human powered warming. But is that the reason? Others believe it could be part of normal hydrological cycles.

I've long suspected that as we pump water out of the acquifers underneath major sections of the United States, water will flow or drip in to fill them. Will that come from the system that may be fed by the great lakes thus causing them to drop quickly? Smarter people than I are looking at this exact question and no one knows yet.

Relying on scientific evidence of long term effects is the only way to measure all the macro effects. But I go to formerly wild places that I went to decades ago as a kid and I can see so many changes. Algae that has caused the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to designate lakes I used to swim in as "swimming not supported." Fields of wildflowers with butterflies now covered with condos. Trees in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness that look like the stressed-from-pollution trees I saw on the tollways and in the parks when I lived in Chicago.

Maybe this stuff is part of normal cycles or global warming related, but anyone with any observational skills and half-a-brain must realize humans are making one helluva impact on this planet.

What if a 1% increase in broadband penetration equaled 300,000 jobs?

Often I take Robert X. Cringely's columns with a grain-of-salt, but this one entitled, "Game Over: The U.S. is unlikely to ever regain its broadband leadership" really hit me since I make my living on Internet-centric management consulting and view broadband as the key enabler of business going forward. Cringely's article is an important one to read if you care about US competitiveness in the future.

Back in the mid-1990's I had an ISDN line with a whopping 128kbps access for $69 per month. Incredibly fast at the time, I even considered their bonded option for 256kbps (well over $100 per month) but I wanted to stay married. Today I have 8mbps per second downstream and 768kbps upstream for essentially the same price.

I have friends in San Francisco with 10mbps symmetrical (both upload and download) for under $100 a month. Others using Verizon's fiber (FIOS) and getting 15mbps down, 2mbps up for $50 per month.

But Cringely talks about the 100mbps speeds in Japan, others have complained about them being ahead of us too and the OECD's April, 2007 report (which showed the US at 25th in global broadband penetration and speed) is open to debate. So is it important for us to have competitiveness in broadband speeds and why aren't we -- the inventor and creator of the Internet -- in the world's leading position for broadband speed and penetration?

When you think about the relative sizes of countries vs. US states, you begin to get a feel for the enormity of the problem. Japan is roughly the size of Montana, for example, and (as of 2001), 79% of the population lived in urban areas with ~20% in Tokyo alone. That makes it considerably easier to provide a high speed broadband infrastructure for the overwhelming majority of Japanese. It's a lot tougher to do so across the vast geography that is the United States.

The stakes are too high, however, to NOT solve this accelerating need for true broadband. ArsTechnica has a good article on House Democrats and discussions about 'true' broadband. I'm not even going to get into the lobbying and politics of broadband, telephony and wireless, but suffice to say there are alot of complexities on why we're NOT the world's leader. What most discussions don't focus on, however, is that broadband is viewed as a driver of gross domestic product (GDP) output and we need to be accelerating the Internet -- both in speed and penetration -- now.

What if a 1% increase in broadband penetration equaled 300,000 jobs? Read on for a very interesting set of data...

Accelerating speed of information delivery and communications

A lot has changed since the civil war in the United States when the principal means of long distance communications was the telegraph. Newspapers took days to get the news into the hands of the citizenry and information traveled slowly.

Compare that with what we're dealing with today: hundreds of TV channels; newspapers; magazines; web sites; and now the river of news and information that is streaming toward us helped along by the Internet and really simple syndication (RSS).

Most of yesterday I was tied up and got back to my office about 5:30pm and discovered 1,749 feeds in my RSS reader! Not all of these posts and articles are relevant or interesting, but scanning them is still important since every single day I pull a dozen or so into my saved articles for future reference or because they inform something.

Add to that email, SMS, instant messaging, voicemails, the newspapers I read and the shows I TiVo, the DVD's I receive by mail, the podcasts I subscribe to, the music I own and continue to purchase, the five or six books I have going at any given time, and even *I* start to chuckle at the deluge of information that comes my way.

This is after I've been pretty rigorous about unsubscribing to feeds, podcasts and email newsletters, letting print publication subscriptions lapse, and deleting the recording of TV content I don't care about any longer.

Here's the kicker: about as fast as I push stuff away, new opportunities pop up. There are new online video sites I want to go to, Facebook apps to try out, new communications methods to explore and other bloggers with interesting things to say. More and more of my friends and colleagues want to reach out to me with alternative forms of communications and are asking me to join all sorts of new offerings.

How are you managing your tsunami of accelerating communications? This is only going to become a bigger issue and I need to figure out better ways to manage my information delivery and communications with better tools and approaches.

What if there is no equilibrium?

One result of an increasingly interconnected world -- and we humans who are leveraging this network, adding ourselves as nodes to it -- is that hundreds of thousands or millions of changes are occurring everywhere. Change is being accelerated because people can help people; ideas are propagated at the speed electrons can traverse the 'net; and thoughts inform others thoughts which build upon one another quickly.

New companies are popping up all over, industries are being disrupted globally, and the fear most status quo holders have is about the disruption we will NOT see.

I've been observing this massive change enabled, in no small part, by the Internet-as-a-platform, Web/Enterprise 2.0 space and have slowly realized that no one, no analyst organization or set of thought leaders is going to be able to track and even identify disruption and emergence everywhere on our planet.

When I think about industries that have been disrupted by quickly emerging competitors in the past: railroads; vacuum tube companies; minicomputer makers; today's newspaper and television providers; or even the printing industry my 94 year old father-in-law worked in for his entire career; I see now that disruption occurred but there was ample time for adaption. Companies adapted, industries figured out how to stay relevant or go away, economies discovered new revenue streams, and equilibrium was reached.

But what would happen if equilibrium is no longer within reach?

Choosy thieves choose Dell....or do they prefer Apple?

Was delighted to have breakfast this morning with an old friend I haven't seen in several years since he moved to Michigan. It was great catching up and sharing stories and some context around our lives currently.

One anecdote I'd like to share -- with an appropriate dash of empathy for he and his bride -- was his story about the two of them going out to dinner last night here in Minneapolis with a friend and they left her MacBook Pro and his Dell laptop in the car (I assume) partially covered up in the back seat.

When they came out after dinner, the back window of the car was smashed and her MacBook Pro was gone! You guessed it....they left Tom's Dell laptop on the seat.

The World is Awakening...

What happens when everyone becomes awake? I don't mean from sleep, but rather have fully developed a level of consciousness that ensures they're aware of human connection, ideas and possibilities in new and radical ways?

If you're a C-level executive, strategist, marketer, in product development, sales, are a teacher or small businessperson (or frankly anyone), the accelerating shifts in consciousness will impact what you do or deliver...and probably already is whether you're aware of it or not.

My work in Web/Enterprise 2.0, community and communications through the Internet-as-a-platform means that I am seeing and experiencing this awakening on a daily basis. Simple things like watching people come together in a collaborative space and discovering how important it is to have everyone see the same vision of a product so they're in sync; understanding the importance of ritual in a virtual meeting (e.g., how to lead a session and ensure everyone has a voice); deepening their understanding of markets and the people within them; and the inner drive people are exhibiting to move toward a vision for humanity that they live by. Businesses ignore this at their own peril.

This article in Fast Company (a publication I'm respecting more than ever as they push against the membrane of the future with articles like this one) is kinda, sorta a mashup about new concepts in 'green', activist capitalism, and open source and is one of the most fascinating examples I've seen for some time about strategies and concepts tapping into this awakening world and an ever-expanding human consciousness.

It starts out, "Somewhere between the Oscar for Al Gore's planetary-disaster epic, An Inconvenient Truth, and the canonization of Angelina Jolie by the United Nations (in association with People (NYSE:TWX) magazine), the message started sinking in: The cultural conversation around the environment, social change, and human rights is approaching maximum velocity. What is arguably urgent has become inarguably hip." To me, the operative words are "cultural conversation", "maximum velocity" and "inarguably hip" in that paragraph and it is blatantly obvious to me that the company discussed in this feature couldn't have happened until now.

As I read I realized that all that I've been seeing and experiencing recently -- both on and offline -- is but a tip-of-the-iceberg of this global awakening.

Tech and the Desert

Just returned from Scottsdale this morning and water has been on my mind. Two years ago when I wrote Could Water be the Oil of the 21st Century?, I was thinking pretty hard about the possibility that the current growth rates in the desert Southwest weren't sustainable and the wisdom of a potential second home investment in that region.

No one knows, but I'm reading a lot about water and the desert. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) includes a sobering prediction that temperatures in the American West will increase by an average of nine degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. For more read Denial in the Desert which discusses drought, the draining of the aquifers under the desert, this report and more.

My bride and I looked once again for a second home there but came away without moving forward. Each time we return, the traffic is worse; there are more roads being built; newspapers discuss a far off but looming crisis in water, heat and smog; and the crush of humanity just feels oppressive at times.

Makes me wonder if technology might be the answer.

EFF Pioneer Awards

Last night I attended the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Awards. Just simply being at this event and absorbing the vibe was meaningful for me and I'll bring forth a perspective that may be atypical and worth putting into the conversation about EFF.

Nearly four years ago was the first time that I donated to EFF and began my support of this organization. Though I look like "a suit", a Republican and a mainstream sort of guy, I'm an independent, a closet liberal, enjoy some Libertarian leanings and am quite open to growing in my perspective as I learn -- especially legally and politically -- as we all push against the membrane of the future.

Five or so years ago I became more enlightened. I was stunned by the multiple, parallel, onrush of efforts by copyright holders, Congress, world intellectual capital bodies, governments globally as well as intelligence communities, to command, control and infiltrate all aspects of the Internet.  As I started to try getting my head wrapped around even a few of the issues, I realized that there was NO way that I could be competently informed about even ONE of these issues shaping our future....let alone dozens of them at a time!

Enter the EFF. I learned that here was an organization whose mission was to be that competent, informed entity who'd act to intervene, stop or shape the debate about the most important issues facing us in our digital future. With more and more of our relationships, commerce, free speech, entertainment -- you name it -- being created or delivered digitally, I (and you) could either pull the covers over our collective heads or get involved...and support those who've rolled up their sleeves, dug their hands in the muck and are in the fray.

So that's what I did.  Last night was great for a lot of reasons and validated (in spades) the vital importance of this organization and the people who've dedicated money, support and all or part of their lives to the mission.

World Population to Hit 9.2 Billion by 2050

If there were ever a reason to work toward reducing our carbon footprint, building Web applications, online virtual spaces and other activities that allow humans to minimize our impact on the Earth, it's the report from the United Nations that, "The world population continues its path towards population ageing and is on track to surpass 9 billion persons by 2050, as revealed by the newly released 2006 Revision of the official United Nations population estimates and projections." (More detailed data is here as both a PDF and Excel spreadsheet).

Holy crap. Over 9 BILLION?

To give you some perspective on how population change is ACCELERATING, this quaint little map from the British Empire Atlas from 1918 that you see above says in part, "The population of the World is 1600 millions, the bulk of which is settled in two regions: the Indo-China-Japanese region about 800 millions (half the population of the world), and the Central European region about 360 millions. The only other densely populated region is the Eastern side of the United States and Canada with about 90 millions." (More here).

Though population estimates are significantly more accurate today, 1.6 billion to 9.2 billion in 89 years is a pretty frightening increase.

• As I think about these numbers, the sustainability questions flood my brain: How can the Earth sustain this number of humans? What will we eat and drink? As industrialized nations move from growing food to growing renewable energy resources, is there enough to go around? Since most of the population growth is in developing nations, will the pressure on richer nations mean more wars, negative economic impacts or, God forbid, ways to accelerate genocides like what's happening in Darfur?

• A continual migration from real-world to virtual questions abound: What happens as we disconnect from the natural world and move online?  Will all of us move into our heads and be less in touch with the natural world?  Even though I've shared many experiences with them in wilderness, I've found that my kids already are pretty unaware of the subtelties and nuances of the shift in seasons, how to align with nature and even their expectations as we travel down an Interstate highway in a remote area that a few miles off the highway there is....no one.

• Lastly, the enormity of the problem, the strategic political and governmental necessities, and the moral ambiguities between cultures and religions exacerbate attempts at controlling the problem. I wonder how those who consider themselves religious ignore these realities and object to birth control (no....I'm not going to discuss abortion) as a means of population control?

Remember last year when physicist Stephen Hawking proclaimed that humans *must* colonize other planets -- he believes global warming, nuclear war or a genetically engineered virus could wipe out the earth --in order to survive as a species and he was ridiculed in many circles? I read dozens of blog posts, news articles (like this one) and opinion pieces that missed the point of his central argument: humans all settled in one place (i.e., our planet Earth) are vulnerable to mass extinction.

He didn't even get in to a discussion that we might breed ourselves into extinction.

An Embarrassment of Riches in Digital Content

As I get ready for a trip, I found myself in front of my computer this evening picking-n-choosing podcasts to subscribe to and load on my iPod. Since I'm so busy and have so much content to prioritize and consume -- and generate myself with my blog and podcast -- that it's been a few months since I really took the time to poke around iTunes and see what's there.

Holy Schnikey! I hadn't realized that there was such an enormous wealth of new stuff. TV news, public radio and more has flooded the iTunes podcast section. Though I should probably pay closer attention, I hadn't and was a bit stunned.

Since I usually like thought provoking podcasts, public radio is more to my taste than alot of other content. IT Conversations is another favorite as is the Social Innovation network.

This reminded me of my post from January of last year entitled, "Information Overload: Can You See What's Coming?" that said in part:

The river of content is flowing faster and faster. This river of content available on the internet is reaching flood stage and is in a variey of media types. As newspapers, magazines, radio and television lose eyeballs to the internet and become ever more desperate to cling to their advertisers, they are finding increasingly garish and dumbed down methods of getting the attention of the eyeball owners back (which, in my view, will only push people away faster).

As broadband continues its adoption and more people get on the internet and attempt to connect their own dots, it's becoming exponentially more difficult to see or tap in to the collective consciousness and stay on top of changes in an industry, area of interest, or even to stay relevant in the workplace. Primarily it's more difficult to understand change and to see disruptive technologies or business models coming...and having time to act.

Even entertainment options are accelerating. There are more DirecTV channels than I could ever watch. I've pared down the number of shows I TiVo since I could barely keep up with what I really wanted to watch. I recently took out a machete to my RSS aggregator to cut down the number of blogs I track (currently over 200) and news sources (35). It was becoming too much and I just felt anxiety over all of it.

In his book "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less", Barry Schwartz argues that the proliferation of choices essentially causes us to be paralyzed with indecision.

Would you like RFID's with your burger?

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is becoming increasingly ubiquitous due to its advantages to allow physical goods to be tracked in a supply chain. This has enormous implications for manufacturers, shippers and resellers to wring out inefficiencies in the supply chain and thus reduce costs and increase product availability.

But what if this tracking extended to you?

By way the Institute of the Future comes this very good post that is at once exciting and at the same time deeply troubling...especially when it describes the Kodak patent for an edible RFID tag and the New Scientist sums that patent up thusly:

The tags would be covered with soft gelatin that takes a while to dissolve in the stomach. After swallowing a tag a patient need only sit next to a radio source and receiver.

They stop working when exposed to gastric acid for a specific period of time, providing a subtle way to monitor a patient's digestive tract.

Kodak says that similar radio tags could also be embedded in an artificial knee or hip joint in such a way that they disintegrate as the joint does, warning of the need for more surgery. Attaching tags to ordinary pills could also help nurses confirm that a patient has really taken their medicine as ordered.

Great benefits for health matters...but just like the governmental justification for tightened security (the war on terror) or accelerating surveillance on the Internet (we're combatting child porn...if you protest you must be FOR child porn, heh?) those of us with knowledge of the possible downsides, privacy and security implications of an ingestible tracking device -- which will eventually be incredibly small -- is indeed troubling.

If you don't think that tracking or even hacking an RFID tag -- and probably even one ingested -- is too tough and probably a non-issue, read this Wired article.

Do you love spam too?

Before you get the wrong idea, I do NOT love email, comment or trackback spam...or even the one made by Hormel. When it comes to the digital kind I wonder often, "Who are all the knuckleheads or newbies that actually click on the links in spam and/or buy stuff to keep the spammers interested?" I don't get it.

Just for grins, I took moment over lunch to look at just a few of the hundreds of spams per day that I get sent to my several email addresses:

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...and on and on.  All of us get the "Bigger boobs today!" or "Male erection enhancement" or "Come see me naked" spams. Again, who clicks on these and if they do, why would they buy? Someone has to be falling for these or spammers wouldn't keep sending 'em.

I've had a couple of experiences in the past few years where I was able to track down an actual human associated with a spam email (he was advertising on a web site and was stupid enough not to buy the private setting for his domain name at Network Solutions...so I called him) but it didn't go anywhere. Most of these are sent from other countries so I suppose that if ANYONE bites on an email it's a positive reinforcement and -- for someone who probably earns little per month -- one transaction is probably a huge payoff.

Tapping in to Crowd Media

With the acceleration of the participation culture, enabling tools (cameras, camcorders, smartphones, software for media creation) and people that know how to use them, it was inevitable that some strategic, forward looking media organization would take steps to leverage the collective capab