The Working Network

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Read more about this title...

A while back I read the The Black Swan. I could have sworn I reviewed it, but I can't seem to find it. Given that it's been out for a while now, and plenty of quality reviews are available (better than I could have produced) I probably won't be rectifying that situation. Here a link worth checking out that I picked up recently from a DL I'm still on.

Chaos Is Underrated

And this one from Everything2, a community I've just joined that looks promising.

If you like to listen, I found this podcast, done by EconTalk, covered many of the key points that are detailed in the book.

It's relevant to me at the moment because I'm engaged in a planning exercise. The traditional means of pursuing that activity, and of executing, treats the world as if "Mediocristan" was the only game in town. And of course, not only is it not the only game, in this case it's most definitely the wrong game. Additionally, Taleb makes explicit his views about the primacy of confirmation bias. He's not afraid of saying scary, and counter intuitive things -- things like "the more information you consume, the less you know". Confirmation bias, incidentally, is behind that observation. Nevertheless, planning must be done, and Taleb does provide some interesting thoughts on that score. Personally, I've adapted his "dumbbell" approach to several different planning problems I face.

Mediocristan, Extremistan, "dumbbell" approach? You'll just have to read the book.

I have to admit that I find email rather tedious when it comes to a host of tasks -- like sharing information in a corporate environment. But dead? I don't think so. Though with any luck at all, it's role will diminish with time.

Here's a personal story. I'm secretary of my local home owners association. At a recent meeting one of the board members pointed out how in the last year an organization of which he is a part finally gave in to the push towards email. Now they're using email more and more. To be clear, this person, and the org in question, are not alone. There were nods and murmurs of agreement around the room (including a sizeable number of slack jaws and incredulous stares -- this, after all, is Microsoft land). I didn't mention to them that my family uses Twitter to stay in touch throughout the day. It would have taken too long to explain why we don't just call.

I've tried to maintain an internal blog with only mixed success. I'm going to try again. Principally because I believe it's important the new social tools are adopted in-house, and there's no substitute for leading by example.

Practical experience is a necessary element in any innovative effort. I'm reminded of an experience I had when I was very young. I was small, skinny, and must have looked as much like a victim as I felt. One day I picked up a self-help self-defense book. I still remember the author's name: Bruce Tegner. I think this was the actual book. I read the thing cover to cover, imagined my new moves, and for a few weeks I felt like a lion. I bet you can guess what happened next.

Also, I'm inspired by Seth.

Astonishing. I believe the term of art is confirmation bias. I plead guilty and to a degree I would not have believed possible.

I saw the announcements, listened, and watched. I then went and read - but didn't actually understand - the OpenSocial API Documentation. The disconnect was that I so badly want to believe that customers own their own data, that I understood the phrase "social applications across multiple websites" to mean any websites. Dumb. And naive.

I didn't actually get it until about 48-hours ago.

I reread the API. It seems more clear to me now that rather than giving me "open" access to social information, what's actually happening is that I'm getting access to social data that I may use only in the context of the offering application. If in fact I have it right this time, that means I can write the same trivial Facebook style app in several places.

That's better than nothing, and does offer some possibilities around a more distributed service experience. But it's not what I was looking for.

In hindsight, it's obvious to me that it could hardly have been otherwise? Who would ever think that a user would actually own his own social information and be able to use it as he liked. I suppose in fairness, we users wouldn't have digital versions of our social information if it weren't for the social apps that collected it for us. And why would they ever give any of that away? But, are we satisfied with that? Do we have a choice?

Licensing the data might work as Mark Cuban suggested in a recent post of his. As a user, I'd be willing to pay something for access to my own data. The ability to apply it to a new service, and thereby enrich my experience therein, would be worth something. Is that a business model idea?

I believe O'Reilly was expressing similar lamentations last Wednesday:

Would OpenSocial let developers build a personal CRM system, a console where I could manage my social network, exporting friends lists to various social networks? No. Would OpenSocial let developers build a social search application like the one that Mark Cuban was looking for? No.

We don't want to build more applications that look like Facebook applications. It isn't about a social UI. It's about deeper re-use of social data to enliven any application.

Amen.

Live and learn.

First, study the hype-curve for all it's worth.

(http://static7.userland.com/oracle/gems/reynolds/hypecycle.png)

There, that should be about all it's worth -- useful, but no longer a new idea.

Now here's the formula:

1. When you find an idea gaining early mind share -- talk it up. You can afford to back a number of horses here, as long as you couch everything in phrases like "it's still early" and "potential to change you business" and "a new paradigm", or "2.0 or 3.0 anything".
2. Next, you wait until one or more of your darlings starts gaining majority attention -- usually shortly after Business Week spots it. Not too soon -- you need to bask in the "I-told-you-so" glow. But shortly thereafter, you start to back off. It's important to use phrases like "drunk on kool-aid" and "repeating history" and "another bubble" and my personal favorite "echo chamber". At this point you're going for sober, reflective, and cautious.
3. Here's the best part, once you've been cool as the edge guy, then cool as the mature-risk-adverse-guy-with-the-historical-perspective, you can be cool yet again with the "this is how it will actually play out gig". In fact, having some evidence that you've been through the first two can give you clout for the third phase. (Cautionary note hopeful technology pundits, this is also the place where all the "ignore it it's all crap" people turn into "we always believed it, we'll take it from here" types crash your party. They can cramp your style.)

The theme is probably obvious, but I'll spell it out: technology pundits always challenge the late majority. When they don't believe, you believe; when they get excited, you sober up; when they become disillusioned, you cheer them up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Want a great recent example? Check this out:

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture by Andrew Keen Read more about this title...

I read it a while back and it left a bad vibe. It's not that the author doesn't make some fine points, he does. I suffered because it was so obviously a book from a marketing minded guy with an agenda unrelated to the point of the book. I don't believe for a minute he buys his own argument -- not a minute. I know he knows that what has value will survive and what does not will not. "Culture" is not at risk -- that is absurd, and frankly, not even possible. I am confident he was trying, and for a time succeeded, in capturing the anti-web20 chair at PMU (Popular Mindshare University -- which I hope does not actually exist). I admit, part of me wished I'd thought of it.

I've not heard much about him lately, so I suspect he couldn't sustain it. Why? Because he's being joined by so many other capable "mature-risk-adverse-guys-with-the-historical-perspectives". And, of course, they're just waiting for everyone to join in that chorus/dirge, and then they'll change their tune again.

Now, go forth aspiring technology pundit.

Epilogue: The unreasonable men make bets and move early; the fearful change direction in the downturn, or in the face of any apparent challenge; and the real explorers press on up the "slope of enlightenment". Fortunes come and go. Good technology pundits profit at every phase.

It's not a big thing, but it is a first step and it was done in record time. The Office Live Workspace community property is up and running.

Here's a link to my first post.

Generally speaking, OpenSocial is amazing news. The social layer I've been prattling on about for, well, a very long time, is really shaping up.

Though I still believe we've yet to do more than scratch the surface of social user experiences. Though that surface, to stretch the analogy too far, is so wide it's been enough to get us all in a lather. Who now can say how deep it goes? And I believe there's a technical angle, or component, that's not addressed yet -- perhaps even a keystone technology or two.

Regardless, the barriers to entry just got lower to anyone interested in the application of a social layer to their core business value proposition -- and it applies to many existing core value propositions. More interesting, it's impossible to predict what new core value propositions will appear in the next few years, though very safe to predict that some, perhaps many, will. Which of those will demonstrate lasting value is another question. Ahhh, Darwin, you'd have loved the internet.

And what a lovely disruption it is. There's so much low hanging fruit. Web companies that stick to business as usual will be vulnerable. So will some traditional businesses, retailers in particular (many are already engaged). The analogy is rough, but I'm reminded of the mistake WordPerfect made so long ago when they elected to take a wait and see approach to Windows, while Microsoft moved to a graphical version of Word. It was, as they say, the beginning of the end for the then king of word processing. So it will go for businesses that fail to appropriately re-vision their services in light of the social aspect of computing. That is, assuming competition appears that moves intelligently in that direction.

If business runs in cycles analogous to the concept of punctuated equilibrium, it must be clear to just about everyone by now that this be the punctuation.

Bubble? Perhaps. I'm not an economist, so I won't risk an opinion. Opportunity? Clearly. Here to stay? Like breathing.

... a recent survey by consumer feedback network Bizrate revealed 59 percent of users consider customer reviews to be more valuable than those from experts.

...is further reinforced by a JupiterResearch study in which 77 percent of online shoppers indicated that they rely on consumer-initiated reviews and ratings.

tap into the wisdom of the crowd made up of consumers who are "just like them" to inform their purchasing decisions.

Tip of the iceberg, tip of the iceberg.

The article is fine, though the advice is rudimentary. Essentially, it says companies should pursue blogs, and look into social networks. Okay, fine. What it leaves out are the internal activities a company has to pick up in order to be able to do anything with what they learn from getting in the conversation.

This article is not the only one to leave people with the impression that the new "social" is an external phenomenon -- something you can hire somebody to deal with, or repurpose one of the marketing guys to look into. Sometimes called enterprise 2.0, the new "social" layer transforms not only the way people make buying decisions, but offers us the possibility of redefining the way we work altogether.

Dana Farber and Larry Dignan succinctly state the whole point behind my old Microsoft.com Community Technology Team strategy. Horse, water, drink, whatever.

Identity graph? Yes, but to be clear, it consists of three components; what you know, who you know, and the activities you participate in.

I wonder when they'll start talking about affinity engines? Of course, some smart folks are already working it. As I've been saying, keep an eye on this guy.