Startup Journal Why It Can Be Wise To Work by Moonlight

"At any given time, about 7.8 million or 6.2% of American workers moonlight at a second job in addition to a primary job, according to a 1997 report by the U.S. Census Bureau. Given that more than one-fourth are self-employed in their secondary occupation, according to the Census study, Dr. Buchanan has around 2 million moonlighters for company.

Self-employed moonlighters are doing more than picking up a few extra dollars and, like Dr. Buchanan, having a good time in their after-hours occupations. They're increasing the likelihood that their ventures will succeed, according to Ron Mitchell, a business professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Most businesses fail because the owners run out of cash before mastering the skills necessary to generate self-sustaining profits, Dr. Mitchell says. The small-business incubators that many universities operate increase survival rates, in part, by sheltering and protecting young enterprises during the learning period of no or low profits, he says."

redux [05.20.02]
The New York Times Entrepreneurship Is Fun. Then There's the Day Job.
[requires 'free' registration]

"A growing number of people are poised to take that chance. Last year, roughly 8 percent of working-age Americans, or 13.5 million people, started businesses, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, an index of entrepreneurial activity in 40 countries that is compiled by Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., and the London School of Business. In 1993, about 4.5 percent of working-age Americans started businesses, according to Paul D. Reynolds, a professor of entrepreneurship at the two institutions and coordinator of the project, which last year surveyed 3,000 Americans ages 20 to 64.

During the start-up stage, about 65 percent of entrepreneurs have full- or part-time jobs, Mr. Reynolds said."

Seattle PI A prof delves into the mind of the entrepreneur

""It was very clear in my mind that entrepreneurs think differently," said Sarasvathy. "Anybody who has worked with entrepreneurs to any extent knows that there is something different or funny about them. So I started with that premise.""

"After analysis of transcripts from each individual, a common theme appeared. Entrepreneurs were not goal-oriented, rather they used the materials at hand to create opportunities. Sarasvathy compares this to a chef, who instead of working from a set recipe, combs the cupboards looking for ingredients in hopes that something tasty can be created."

Saras D. Sarasvathy What makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial?

"Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurial, as differentiated from managerial or strategic, because they think effectually; they believe in a yet-to-be-made future that can substantially be shaped by human action; and they realize that to the extent that this human action can control the future, they need not expend energies trying to predict it.".

The New York Times Saudi Censorship of Web Ranges Far Beyond Tenets of Islam, Study Finds
[requires 'free' registration]

"THE Saudi government is censoring public Internet access to a degree that goes significantly but haphazardly beyond its stated central goal of blocking sexually explicit content that violates the values of Islam, according to a recent study by Harvard Law School researchers.

The study's detailed list of blocked sites offers a glimpse into the areas that the Saudi government has deemed most troubling. Among them are sites related to pornography, women's rights, gays and lesbians, non-Islamic religions and criticism of political restrictions. Many humor and entertainment sites have also been blocked."

The device has been the kind of purchase people imagined someone else might enjoy."

redux [06.25.02]
News.Com Russia poised to restrict Net activities

""This version of the bill still allows the ability to prevent Internet activities without any necessity," said Kovalev, a 72-year old civil libertarian and member of the liberal "soyuz peravikh sil" faction.

Kovalev cited the portion of the bill that says it is "forbidden to use computer networks for extremism" and pledges a vague punishment that may "take into consideration" existing Russian criminal laws."

Wired News Egyptians Flock to New Net Plan

"Unlike the less-populated but richer countries Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which only last year overtook Egypt as having the largest Arab Internet population, Egypt is not trying to restrict the Internet.

But security police are monitoring chat rooms and local sites deemed immoral or damaging to the state or religion have been shut down. A few people have been imprisoned for soliciting sex on the Net."

redux [06.06.02]
BBC China loses grip on internet

""Without the internet the story may still have got out," said Mr Zheng. "With so many people killed it would have been hard to keep it a secret for ever, but it would have been much more difficult."

The internet is changing China in subtle but profound ways. Information is now being spread and exchanged in ways unthinkable just a few years ago.

The Chinese state's once total control on information has been broken and hard as it may try it has little hope of regaining that control."

redux [04.16.02]
Online Journalism Review Censorship Wins Out

"A decade or so ago, it was all clear: the Internet was believed to be such a revolutionary new medium, so inherently empowering and democratizing, that old authoritarian regimes would crumble before it. What we've learned in the intervening years is that the Internet does not inevitably lead to democracy any more than it inevitably leads to great wealth.

The idea that the Internet itself is a threat to authoritarian regimes was a bit of delusional post-Cold War optimism."

redux [03.21.02]
Salon Will the Net save China?

"Mao once said, "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun." The entrepreneurs in China Dawn seem to want to change the last phrase to "ISP access."

But their enthusiasm betrays a streak of naivete. As Tiananmen so amply demonstrated, in China today, political power still grows from the barrel of a gun. And the prediction that the rise of the Internet will liberate Chinese from authoritarian rule is far from certain."

South China Morning Post Who let the blogs out?

"One notable loophole in the content watch list are weblogs. Weblogs are content websites maintained by ordinary users that can act as introspective online diaries, soapboxes to rant opinions, and a vehicle guide the horde of Internet users to swarm to other obscure links to be found on the net. They are easy to update, cheap to maintain, and difficult to block because so many new ones appear each day. They utilize a client relationship with a server and can be updated with a simple browser."

The bureaucrats and censors in China who block and monitor websites will be hard pressed to try and control the future flow of weblogs both in and out of China due to the number and diversity of this new information platform. Having met actual Internet content censors from China, they are decent people but come from a different time and different place in terms of technology. They don't really get it yet since weblogs remain a concept difficult for them to understand for now."

redux [08.08.01]
First Monday The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution

"It is widely believed that the Internet poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. But political science scholarship has provided little support for this conventional wisdom, and a number of case studies from around the world show that authoritarian regimes are finding ways to control and counter the political impact of Internet use. While the long-term political impact of the Internet remains an open question, we argue that these strategies for control may continue to be viable in the short to medium term."

"In this paper we illustrate how two authoritarian regimes, China and Cuba, are maintainng control over the Internet's political impact through different combinations of reactive and proactive strategies. These cases illustrate that, contrary to assumptions, different types of authoritarian regimes may be able to control and profit from the Internet. Examining the experiences of these two countries may help to shed light on other authoritarian regimes' strategies for Internet development, as well as help to develop generalizable conclusions about the impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule."

redux [06.19.01]
Ananova Political heavyweight warns of 'web threat to democracy'

"Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister has warned the internet threatens democracy and people's sense of patriotism.

Lee Hsien Loong says governments must find new ways to build a consensus on national issues and strengthen national identities."

"The internet "opens up societies and helps individuals link up with like-minded souls anywhere in cyberspace," he said.

But it "may weaken the bonds of place and circumstance that have always tied citizens to their home and nation," he added."

redux [10.26.00]
Center for Strategic and International Studies Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age

"The world is changing fundamentally. Images and information respect neither time nor borders. Hierarchy is giving way to networking. Openness is crowding out secrecy and exclusivity. Ideas and capital move swiftly and unimpeded across a global network of governments, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations. In this world of instantaneous information, traditional diplomacy struggles to sustain its relevance."

"Nations once connected by foreign ministries and traders are now linked through millions of individuals by fiber optics, satellite, wireless, and cable in a complex network without central control. The Internet, with 100 million users today, will reach one billion people by 2005 and will be available to half the world's population by 2010. The network will become the central nervous system of international relations."

redux [10.10.00]
MediaChannel.Org A Tower Aflame: Media, Metaphor and Revolution

"Metaphors, symbols and sayings are mighty mind-setters. They captivate our minds and focus our attention to one main point, effectively excluding others. Putin used the burning of the Ostankino television tower, once hailed as a symbol of Soviet supremacy, as a metaphor for the desperate economic need of Russia. The global media played along with this tune, once again showcasing images of Russia's decay. But there is another largely untold story to be extracted from Putin's metaphor: TV towers are more than symbols - indeed they are very concrete centers of mind control, distributing the flow of information and entertainment."

"Who chose the crumbling Berlin Wall as the icon and metaphor for the breakdown of communism and the end of the Cold War? Wouldn't a TV tower in flames be more accurate? It wasn't about the free flow of capital. It was about the free flow of information."

Internet.Com Smart Homes Inch Closer To Reality

"The home of the future will look like a page from a sci-fi movie or a Popular Mechanics magazine, but is still a few years away from being commonplace. So says a consortium of companies showcasing the so-called "smart home" in Germany this week.

The idea is to be able to use the Internet to lock or unlock doors; operate the security system, thermostats or lights; and use a Web cam to view the home's interior."

redux [02.18.02]
MSNBC Networked dream home still a dream

"You're on your way to work when you realize you forgot to switch on the washing machine you loaded earlier that morning. No problem. You use your cellphone to send a text message to your personal computer. It transmits the order to your washer, which whirrs into life. Later that day you get stuck at the office. You're in danger of missing the big soccer match on TV so you e-mail your PC and tell it to switch on your video recorder at kick-off time. Match saved. It's a glimpse of a sleek technology-driven world which has been promised for a while but, according to industry experts, is still some way off.

"THE INTEGRATED HOME is at least five years out from here," says Ian Keene, chief analyst of the European Telecommunications Group at research company Gartner Dataquest."

redux [02.05.02]
BusinessWeek Technology without a Cause

"My mom had a couple of questions after being presented with this glimpse of the digital future, and because I cover technology, she thought I might be able to answer them. She knows why AOL Time Warner wants to keep pushing itself into her life -- and pocketbook. But why would she buy everything the media giant wants to sell her?"

"All too often, technology isn't applied to a real problem. It's just thrown at a supposed need. And not just any mundane need, but one that's affecting a mind-bogglingly large market. The urge to foist new technology (or new uses of existing technology) on people becomes more intense when adoption rates for a technology plateau."

Business 2.0 Apple vs. Sony: An Entertainment Smackdown

" In most debates about the future of home entertainment, the real question is not whether homes will become digitized, but how, and who'll profit from it. Like the Betamax/VHS battle, there's a split developing right now between the two main companies vying to rule the digital entertainment roost: Apple (AAPL) and Sony (SNE ). The two have different strategies and different technologies, but truly reinventing the consumer electronics market may require a combination of their approaches."

redux [01.25.02]
BBC News Smart homes on trial

""Houses are already moving to online meter-reading, appliances have microprocessors in them," said Mr Devlin.

"It is inevitable that every home will be a smart home."

The Internet Home Alliance brings together a group of diverse companies, such as General Motors, Invensys, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard and ADT Security Services."

redux [10.10.01]
The McKinsey Quarterly Home is where the network is

"Ever since the Internet entered the popular culture, futurists and technophiles have been telling the world that the new medium would transform homes into information-rich hubs of activity. Refrigerators, they predicted, would someday monitor the expiration dates on milk cartons. The family room would double as a videoconferencing theater. The toaster and the microwave would engage in endless Socratic debate.

Three or four years on, none of this has happened, and some of it may never happen, since consumers are likely to see many gee-whiz applications as more trouble than they are worth. Yet home networking is far from dead: in the past three years, the underlying technology has undergone its own quiet revolution. Big interests are at stake, and companies such as Intel, Microsoft, and 3Com have been diligently working out the bugs; others, including Cisco, Ericsson, and Pace, have been testing the new technology in homes to see how consumers react."

redux [07.28.01]
USAToday IBM's fridge doesn't just hum, it knows the words

"Imagine being paged with word that the milk in the refrigerator has spoiled. Imagine turning off the porch light at home while vacationing at the beach. In the future, when the words "home computer" take on new meaning, it might be possible. That future is on display now at an IBM lab, where researchers are testing new technology in a fully furnished living room, kitchen and garage. In the kitchen, a screen on the refrigerator tells what's inside - without opening the door. Digital stoves and microwaves cook automatically, following recipes downloaded from the Internet."

redux [01.03.01]
Feed No Place Like the Future

"IF THE JETSONS expressed post-war America's subconscious desire to live in an effortless, gadget-filled future, the Microsoft house is today's Internet economy version. Filled with PCs, wireless gizmos, and digital music players (all networked together) the Microsoft Home sets the stage "for families to begin adopting technologies into their homes that simplify daily tasks, enhance their entertainment experiences, and increase communication at home and away." At least that's what the press release says."

"This bit of publicist theater feels like nothing so much as a weirdly flawed version of those kitschy fifties industrial films that heralded the "House of Tomorrow" -- magical, futuristic places where hausfraus in pastel dresses prance around praising the inherent liberation of the robotic kitchen. But where the older films perfectly captured the mix of consumer desire and social anxiety that characterized the newly modern home, Redmond's vision of the future gives the viewer a bad case of cognitive dissonance."

redux [12.18.00]
Context Magazine Smart Homes? A Stupid Idea

"A blind enthusiasm for technological advances is a very costly habit to indulge. It ignores the real nature of peoples? busy lives, the scarcity of their attention, and the rising irritation we all have with devices that clutter our homes and confuse us. Yet, periodically, companies manage to convince one another that some big new trend is simply unstoppable. The last time this happened was in the postwar period when the hot theme was convenience. So, firms rushed to sell us electric knives and can openers, mixers, ice cream makers, electric knife sharpeners, and popcorn poppers. Did this deliver on the promise of convenience? No way.

"Smart homes" aren't inevitable. Homes will continue to get smarter, of course. But they will do so by being more responsive to our activities - directly, respectfully, gently, in ways that amuse and beguile. Above all else, in ways that are gracefully accommodating. If you want to build a really hot product, start there."

The Standard Home on the Web

"Home networking is nothing new. Homes are already thoroughly wired for lighting, security, phones and more. The Internet home will connect all of the in-home networks, then connect each with any number of outside networks. For the fridge to talk to the computer, at least two networks ? the home electrical network into which the fridge is plugged, and the telephone, firewire or wireless network into which the computer is connected ? need some way of interfacing. And if the fridge needs to send you e-mail at work, it needs some way to communicate outside the home network.

But the obvious question is, do consumers want all this interconnectivity? Will we ever really need our fridge to e-mail us that our milk is past its prime?"

"After IBM ran a series of ads in which a dishwasher repairman shows up at a home because the dishwasher contacted him for service, Parks Associates held focus groups to gauge reaction to the commercial. "Consumers absolutely hated that," says Scherf. "People want more control of their lives, not less; they want to be the one to make the call, not the dishwasher."

redux [06.27.00]
O'Reilly.Com Dialog with an Internet Toaster

""Why haven't you given me any new scripts to run for the past two months?" whined my toaster.

I was so surprised I almost dropped my Wheaties on the floor. It didn't bother me that the toaster spoke out of turn; I had installed the adaptive interface as a lark when I got the thing six months ago. What threw me was simply how many months had passed since I became bored with writing scripts to rotate English muffins or adjust the top-brown feature to the thickness of the cheese.

"Hardware problems," I said to gain time. Jeez, what was the world coming to--how could I let my own toaster make me feel guilty?"

SFGate Furor over MBA study by Stanford researchers

"For many would-be executives and entrepreneurs, an MBA degree is supposed be the ticket to career success. Two researchers at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business are turning that notion on its head.

A master's degree in business administration won't necessarily have the impact students expect, say Professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Christina Fong. In fact, the researchers contend that America's business schools aren't effective in preparing students for the real world of business."

Boston.Com Business schools rush to counter MBA study

""The harsh reality is the demand for the MBA is incredibly strong, it's a hundred years old and it isn't a fad,'' said Dave Wilson, president of the GMAC.

" The article notes how many top executives don't have MBAs. But critics say that's not the point. Sure, some people succeed without MBAs, they say, but think how many use an MBA to go further than they otherwise could."

Business 2.0 What's an MBA Really Worth?

"Still more pointed is an upcoming study by Jeffrey Pfeffer, a management professor at Glauthier's own business alma mater, Stanford. In it Pfeffer challenges the bedrock assumption of business school: that those who make the effort to get an MBA degree have more successful careers than those who don't. Pfeffer combs through 40 years' worth of data for evidence that this is true -- and uncovers almost none. He quotes Ronald Burt, a University of Chicago business professor and the researcher behind two of the studies in Pfeffer's paper, who says, "I have never found benefits for the MBA degree. Usually it just makes you a couple years older than non-MBA peers.""

The Chronicle of Higher Education Students Complain About Devices for Reading E-Books, Study Finds

"E-book technology needs some improvement before students will be willing to use e-books instead of textbooks, according to a report on a study conducted at Ball State University.

The researchers hoped to find out how using e-books compared with using textbooks, and how e-book use affected students' learning. Although the researchers started with the assumption that e-books would be just as easy to use as textbooks, they soon found that students had various complaints about the performance of the e-book devices. But students who used e-books did just as well on quizzes as those who used printed texts."

redux [07.08.02]
Washington Post E-Books Not Exactly Flying Off The Shelves

"There are those in the industry who continue to emote about the e-book and praise its capabilities, but the plain old reading public -- on the beaches, in the coffee shops, at the Metro stations -- just aren't buying into e-books. You don't see a horde of people devouring Huck Finn on a handheld or "Ulysses" on a laptop.

"So much about e-books was about simulating paper on the screen," says Mark Bernstein. "It's like vinyl siding. People rarely like simulations as much as they like the real thing.""

Tim O'Reilly Repeated Misconceptions About eBooks

"Yes, of course paper is a good technology for providing word-based information. But that is to confuse the delivery mechanism for a book with what is being delivered. A book is a wonderful artifact, to be sure, and I have more than 5000 of them in my house. But what does a book contain? Stories, ideas, facts, interpretations, the voices of people long dead or from a faraway land. A book is a user interface to the world of the mind. As Edwin Schlossberg once said, "The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." Or imagine. Or find out what they need to know.

The eBook that simply mimics the print book on screen is a transitional form, just like the early "moving pictures" that simply pointed a camera at actors on a stage."

The Shifted Librarian Ebooks Don't Need To Fly Off Shelves

"Can someone please explain to me when it was decided that ebooks would completely replace printed books? Why is it so difficult for the media (let alone publishers) to view them as a complementary instead? (That's a rhetorical question.

Here's a novel idea - let's think of ebooks the same way we think of audiobooks. No one believes that audiobooks will replace printed material and as a result, the format carries far less pressure for market penetration and sales figures. In fact, this is one area where libraries are recognized as a valuable market. So let's all agree here and now to apply these same principles to ebooks, both text and audio. Growing sales figures and markets are a good thing. Not everyone will choose to use them, and that's okay. And libraries are a valuable market for ebooks, a fact publishers and manufacturers should acknowledge."

redux [01.22.02]
MSNBC Oprah, Bill Gates and the Future of Books

"How primitive is the current system? Later this century, kids will be amazed to learn how we used to distribute books. Think about it. We grow entire forests, chop them down, flatten them out, spread ink on them, turn them into bricks of wood pulp, which we then drive around the country on trucks. Our children won't be amazed because we were primitive--they'll be amazed that we were so rich. Current-day book publishing is a tremendously wasteful way of moving information around: while paper is a terrific display mechanism, it's a terrible transport device. Publishers take huge risks when they print and ship large quantities of books--and that's why gatekeepers like Oprah so utterly control the fate of books and authors."

"While consumers have been quick to buy MP3 players for online audio--not much different, really, than a Walkman that plays cassettes--there's simply nothing in our retail genes that drives us to buy "book players." So the e-book may have to sneak in disguised as something else."

redux [08.28.01]
The New York Times Forecasts of an E-Book Era Were, It Seems, Premature
[requires 'free' registration]

"A year later, however, the main advantage of electronic books appears to be that they gather no dust. Almost no one is buying. Publishers and online bookstores say only the very few best-selling electronic editions have sold more than a thousand copies, and most sell far fewer. Only a handful have generated enough revenue to cover the few hundred dollars it costs to convert their texts to digital formats."

"Consumers appear confused, Mr. Arland said, because the devices are neither computers nor hand-held organizers, nor do they connect to the Internet. The appliances download electronic books over phone lines directly from a central server.

The device has been the kind of purchase people imagined someone else might enjoy."

redux [08.12.00]
SiliconValley.Com Forget the hype, e-books still hard on the eyes

"The publishing industry has gotten very excited about electronic books lately. Random House, Time Warner and just about every other publishing giant has put out a flurry of announcements outlining grand plans for digital distribution.

Adding to the hype, Microsoft last week released its Microsoft Reader 1.5 software for the PC, and Barnesandnoble.com released 2,000 e-book titles, while promising to release 150 more each week.

Ignore all this stuff. E-book technology is just not ready. It's too hard to read on the screen."

redux [03.09.00]
Alertbox Electronic Books - A Bad Idea

"Even when electronic books gain the same reading speed as print, they will still be a bad idea. Electronic text should not mimic the old medium and its linear ways. Page turning remains a bad interface, even when it can be done more conveniently than by clicking the mouse on a "next page" button. It is an insufficient goal to make computerized text as fast as print: we need to improve on the past, not simply match it.

The basic problem is that the book is too strong a metaphor: it tends to lead designers and writers astray. Electronic text should be based on interaction, hypertext linking, navigation, search, and connections to online services and continuous updates. These new-media capabilities allow for much more powerful user experiences than a linear flow of text. Linear text may have ruled the world since the Egyptians learned to produce arbitrarily long scrolls of papyrus, but it's time to end this tradition. Nobody has time to read long reports any more: information must be dynamic and under direct control of the reader, not the author."

Xerox Research and Technology A Comparison of Reading Paper and On-Line Documents

"We report on a laboratory study that compares reading from paper to reading on-line. Critical differences have to do with the major advantages paper offers in supporting annotation while reading, quick navigation, and flexibility of spatial layout. These, in turn, allow readers to deepen their understanding of the text, extract a sense of its structure, create a plan for writing, cross-refer to other documents, and interleave reading and writing. We discuss the design implications of these findings for the development of better reading technologies."

redux [03.28.00]
Salon The revolution that wasn't

"The news that Stephen King would release a story exclusively in digital form and exclusively via the Web rode the media mountain like an intermediate skier on a black-diamond trail -- tentatively at first, then with a little more confidence and, finally, hurtling out of control, crashing into unexpected territory. The trade press gave its imprimatur, and within a few days the story spread like a virus over Web and wire. Television and radio chugged behind.

For those who've watched digital content come into its own, the frenzy was nothing short of remarkable."

"...[Publisher Simon & Schuster] seems to be proclaiming something more insidious with the publication of "Riding the Bullet": that not only can it drag us kicking and screaming into the next era of digital entertainment but that, as a traditional content provider, it can control how and when that will happen. For the consumer, it seemed to say, cyberspace offers much that is new -- speed, efficiency, lower costs. But it also reminded us that, for the moment, Old Media and traditional entertainment still rule."

Online Journalism Review Afghan's Thirst for Web Access

"Basic concepts of proper sourcing, balance, accuracy and fairness are the most essential lessons that need to be learned here. But with a bit of luck -- or, as they say in Afghanistan, "insha'Allah" (by the will of God) -- Bakhtar's Web site will soon be up and running. In any case, it will very likely be the first Web site hosted from within Afghanistan, thus finally bringing some light to an information blackout and connecting a country that has for too long been separated from the rest of the world -- and with disastrous results.

The dirt track of Afghan online publishing is ready to merge with the world's information super-highway."

redux [07.27.02]
Fast Company La Dolce Vita, Internet Style

"For seven centuries, Colletta had endured attack, famine, plague, and earthquake. The only force it couldn't repel was the economic progress of the 20th century. But Florenzo's departure was not the end of life in Colletta. Today, along the village's cobbled streets, Kieran, an Irish tax adviser, greets Olly, a Norwegian architect, with a hearty Buon giorno. Marco, a university professor from Torino, has an espresso with cafe owner Vincenzo before returning to his laptop to email his publisher. In Colletta, everything old is new again.

Built on a rugged spur some 1,000 feet above sea level, the 13th-century village is about to complete a remarkable renaissance. Colletta has been restored as a haven for mobile knowledge workers who want to live in medieval Italy but also want to remain connected to the rest of the world. No urban congestion, no suburban sprawl. Just a view of the maritime Alps that hasn't changed in more than a thousand years -- plus a lightning-fast Internet connection."

redux [04.11.02]
MSNBC Tibetan culture gets a tech boost

"At a gala recently at the opulent Russian Tea Room in New York City, serene looking Tibetan monks rubbed elbows with suited clients of a Silicon Valley company that boasts about having survived the tech bust. This is a story about an unlikely marriage between philanthropy and capitalism, and how it could very well help preserve the culture of the people of Tibet.

SCATTERED across Northern India, Nepal and Bhutan are 32 settlement camps, home to more than 122,000 Tibetan exiles displaced from their native land by Chinese troops, who invaded the country 50 years ago. Just last month, action was begun in earnest to install a computer in each of these settlements, and to wire each for Internet access."

redux [10.22.01]
BBC Village in the clouds embraces computers

"I have seen that even a small village like mine can benefit a lot from the internet.

We can use it to generate money for the village, to provide quality education for our children, to provide information about our culture to children all over the world, and to invite volunteers to come to our village.

If everything goes well, I plan to build a college in my village and provide computer courses to the students. This will open a door for us to produce computer programmers in the village, and produce software for the big firms around the world."

redux [09.13.01]
The New York Times When Villages Go Global: How a Byte of Knowledge Can Be Dangerous, Too
[requires 'free' registration]

"The prospects seemed bright when the Internet was recently introduced in a remote part of the mountainous Cotopoxi region in Ecuador. Under the guidance of aid workers, Quichua-speaking peasants planned to gather crop information and sell their crafts over the Web.

Soon, though, it was discovered that some of the men were using the computer to visit pornographic sites."

"Dismayed, the women began to question how the men were treating them, and a debate ensued over the common practice of beating women. Although use of the Internet was later curtailed, its introduction unexpectedly generated discussion on a once taboo topic.

"The changes created by the Internet in rich industrialized nations are well known, affecting everything from how people date to how they work. But less is known about the impact on societies with limited contact with the rest of the world. As such experiments multiply, at least one outcome seems certain: the way people in these communities relate to each other and with the world is likely to be altered forever."

redux [04.23.00]
Netfuture I'm Glad The Internet 'Corrodes' My Culture

"I have spent my whole life in Corrientes, Argentina. Even as it is a state-capital and my family is relatively well-off, there are tons of cultural treasures that I couldn't have known if it wasn't for the Net, and not only knowledge or information, but whole mental frames: a passionate, whole-hearted love for science and philosophy, self-respect as a computer geek, excellent non-contemporary thinking (like Chesterton's, Voltaire's or Shaw's), non-hispanoameric poetry, enlightenment values and, yes, all kinds of erotic information and art (OK, pornography, too :), along with lots of other things.

Those things, althought mostly intellectual in nature, have, as you have pointed, corroded my "native" culture, to the point that I feel more at ease with Scientific American, the Need to Know e-zine, the Linux scene or the Discordian(-like) humor|philosophy. I still have my friends, my girlfriend and my family here, but I don't think I share my culture with them anymore (not that this started wholly with the Net; I have read Asimov from age 6, programmed from age 7, &c., but the richness of the Net has deepened it to the point of making myself councious of it).

It has its social and psychological side effects, but I wouldn't go back for all the group status of the world. I like this culture a lot more than my "native" one, for sheer deepness, meaning and beauty."

redux [08.07.00]
First Monday Negotiating the Global and the Local: How Thai Culture Co-opts the Internet

"As the Internet is spreading around the globe, a problem is created concerning its impact on the local cultures. This paper argues that the relation between computer-mediated communication technologies and local cultures is characterized neither by a homogenizing effect, where the technologies bring about one global monolithic culture, nor by an erecting of barriers separating one culture from another, where there is no impact at all. Instead, local cultures usually find ways to cope with the impact and are resilient enough to absorb it without losing some kind of identity. A case study is presented on a local Internet scene in Thailand to see how Thai culture co-opts the Internet and how its identity is being constantly negotiated."

redux [04.10.01]
Feed The Three Stooges Play Zunil

"Can Mayan culture stand up to the global culture? Sure, says Audelino Sac. "First, we have to strengthen our own culture. Then, once we have established our own identity, we can receive from, but also give to, the process of globalization. Mayan culture shouldn't be against technology. We have always adopted new technologies." The example he uses is the corn mill. I guess you could add rayon and artificially dyed threads.

Then this Mayan priest -- dressed in green jeans, thick-soled black shoes, and an open-necked striped shirt -- says something that, in my view, cuts to the heart of the issue here: "All cultures," he states, "are dynamic and able to take positive things from other cultures."

Dynamic, yes -- a thousand times yes. If there's one thing I've learned on my trip so far, it's that cultures are not, and never were, inert."

News.Com Free speech, free beer and free software

"The experience of Sun and others is that open source provides ideal development and business models for today's Net Effect economy. It's not about free stuff; it's about enfranchising every user and development community member. Today's software innovations need this model more than ever before. With an open foundation, companies can gain their just compensation for their innovations "above the line," but the subtle lock-in offered by our traditional understanding of "standards" is largely avoided.

Most importantly, open source is not just about code; it is about community. You don't make a project open source just with a license. It takes the costly and time-consuming birthing of a community of code, a trusted gatekeeper function and a series of symbiotic commercial enterprises to make true open source. 21st century open source is not free."

redux [07.31.02]
Salon Same job. Different cubicle

""The way a lot of people see it is we were doing open-source before [VA Linux] and we've continued doing open source after VA Linux for the exact same reason: because we love to do it," Jennings says. "It was nice to get paid for it, but getting paid was always viewed as kind of a perk."

That many ex-VA Linux employees still get to hack for pay is probably the top reason so few complain when it comes to the former company. As the old high-tech saying goes, it's the pioneers who usually end up with the most arrows in their backs."

redux [05.17.02]
BusinessWeek Giant Steps for a Software Upstart

"A lot has changed for Linux in the past two years. True, the basic tenets of the rebellious open-source software-development movement popularized by coder Linus Torvalds remain largely intact. Loosely organized collectives, often from competing companies, collaborate to build software products that no one owns, with source code that anyone can view and alter. Any changes in the code are held by the community at large.

While such idealism worked fine in academia and among uber-geeks, it wasn't immune to market economics as the movement matured."

redux [12.09.01]
First Monday Code, Culture and Cash: The Fading Altruism of Open Source Development

"The nexus of open source development appears to have shifted to Europe over the last ten years. This paper explains why this trend undermines cultural arguments about "hacker ethics" and "post-scarcity" gift economies. It suggests that classical economic theory offers a more succinct explanation for the peculiar international distribution of open source development: hacking rises and falls inversely to its opportunity cost. This finding throws doubt on the Schumpeterian assumption that the efficiency of industrial systems can be measured without reference to the social institutions that bind them."

redux [11.21.00]
News.Com Open-source approach fades in tough times

"The ideological purity of the open-source software business is being diluted by a new era of pragmatism as start-ups adjust to the economic slump."

"Where is our business model if everyone else can copy it?" asked Holger Dyroff, former CEO and now director of sales for Linux software seller SuSE. "The question is where we can make money now. Nobody cared about profitability two years ago."

"The new thinking often involves a proprietary product that has been built on top of an open-source foundation--a situation that could be considered the best, or worst, of both worlds."

winterspeak.com Interview with Sleepycat President and CEO, Michael Olson

"How to make money with the GPL. How to promote and spread free software. How open source's experience advantage with developers gives companies a competitive edge. Sleepycat President and CEO Michael Olson shows us what happens when free software meets intelligent business strategy."

Andre Durand Commercially OPEN for Business

"I love open source. I love what it stands for and I love the fact that as a connected society we've perfected the concepts surrounding 'division of labor' to such a degree that we're now afforded both the luxuries and opportunity to do what we want for the sheer enjoyment of it, even if that means coding into the wee hours of the night! I love business, I love creating them and working with people to run and fine-tune them. I especially love making money, whether it be for business, myself or others. Money has afforded me the freedom to pursue my other passions in life: travel, thinking, writing, creating and oh yea, partying! Most of all, I love it when I get to put all my loves together... all at the same time!

Must all mis amores live separate lives? Can't they just get along? I think they can. I think they will."

IBM developerWorks Interview: The Eclipse code donation

"On November 5, 2001, IBM announced its donation of $40 million worth of tools to the Eclipse project. Eclipse, a fully functional software development environment that is written in Java, and that runs on both Linux and Windows, is intended to solve many of the problems of tool interoperability faced by developers of conventional tools."

"As analysts from the Hurwitz Group concluded, the move is consistent with IBM's commitment to Linux and growing tradition of incorporating open source code into its product lines: "With its experience with the open source application server Apache, and the Linux operating system, it makes sense that IBM would now move to provide the developer community with an open source development platform. The challenge for IBM and the Eclipse organization will be to draw strong and broad tool-vendor support to advance the platform, and to demonstrate that it is truly an open platform that enables straightforward tool integration to make it worthwhile for organizations to adopt. In addition, Eclipse needs to capture and enlist the efforts of the developer community at large, to test and refine the platform and add their innovation."

Eric S. Raymond The Magic Cauldron

"This paper analyzes the evolving economic substrate of the open-source phenomenon. We first explode some prevalent myths about the funding of program development and the price structure of software. We present a game-theory analysis of the stability of open-source cooperation. We present nine models for sustainable funding of open-source development; two non-profit, seven for-profit. We continue to develop a qualitative theory of when it is economically rational to be closed. We then examine some novel additional mechanisms the market is now inventing to fund for-profit open-source development, including the reinvention of the patronage system and task markets. We conclude with some tentative predictions of the future."

redux [04.02.00]
News.Com Singing hosannas for Linux

" Open source is good for business. Now I should add that open source is not for everything in software. We have a very large and successful software business, and we're going to retain that. But open source is great for infrastructure code. The reason is that to make open source work, there has to be an overlap between the people who care about the software and the people who make the software better. As you get further up the application stack, those two groups become disjointed...so the software that checks you into a hospital will never be open source because the people who care about that can't write software."