rare pattern thoughts in a blog

Now it somehow feels more official.

Oh my, not again. Via Elisa's Worker Bees Blog:

A couple of months ago, prompted by Mary Hodder, I blogged about the NY Times and its odd placement of a technology story about girl geeks in the Fashion & Style section.

Well, they're at it again. And this time it is even more egregious. Check the article Diversity Isn’t Rocket Science, Is It? In the Fashion & Style section.

The article itself is quite provocative....

Based on data from 2,493 workers (1,493 women and 1,000 men) polled from March 2006 through October 2007 and hundreds more interviewed in focus groups, the report paints a portrait of a macho culture where women are very much outsiders, and where those who do enter are likely to eventually leave....

The problem isn’t that women aren’t making strides in education in the hard sciences....

And, women enter science engineering and technology (known as the SET professions) in sizable numbers....

An exodus occurs around age 35 to 40. Fifty-two percent drop out, the report warned, with some leaving for “softer” jobs in the sciences human resources rather than lab bench work, for instance, and others for different work entirely. That is twice the rate of men in the SET industries, and higher than the attrition rate of women in law or investment banking....

The 147-page report (which was sponsored by Alcoa, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer and Cisco) is filled with tales of sexual harassment (63 percent of women say they experienced harassment on the job); and dismissive attitudes of male colleagues (53 percent said in order to succeed in their careers they had to “act like a man”); and a lack of mentors (51 percent of engineers say they lack one); and hours that suit men with wives at home but not working mothers (41 percent of technology workers says they need to be available “24/7”).

...which makes one wonder why the New York Times editors felt they had to stick the article in the fashion section and not in the news section or technology or even business section.

Maybe they thought only women would -- or should -- be interested.

As a citizen and computer user, I agree that Apple is wrong to push Safari on Windows users:

Debate is raging today over the news that Steve Jobs has made good on his summertime promise and is now sending Apple's browser Safari along for the ride when Windows users are prompted to update iTunes or Quicktime.

Users can deselect the additional software download, but let's be realistic - there's got to be millions of people unwittingly downloading Safari onto their computers right now. Downloading software has to be opt-in, not opt-out.

As a web developer, however, I am quietly thrilled that there's a real possibility that a significant number of people will stop using the crapware Internet Explorer -- especially IE6, which cannot die a soon enough death, in my book. Microsoft's browser has been a huge sap on productivity in web development, thanks to its continued refusal to adopt CSS standards.

So "boo" to Apple, but a bigger and pre-existing "BOO" to Microsoft. Here I prefer the lesser of two boos.

Seth Godin is worth reading because he so frequently comes up with some interesting insights about this modern world that's evolving and growing before our eyes. But I think here he gets it this wrong:

If I had to pick one word to describe what's new, what's different and what's important about now vs. then, it would be "choice."

The choice of more products.
The choice of more retailers. Many a click away.
The choice of more consumers to ask for an opinion.
The choice by marketers over who to market to (precision increases).
The choice of workers to be virtual or flexible or change careers.

He goes on with some for-instances.

The thing is, I don't see choice as being some "new" 21st-century phenomenon. In fact, in many ways, there's less choice today than there was 25 years ago. There may seem to be more banks around, but what I've been seeing is massive bank consolidations. The local banks in my area are being absorbed by -- or absorbing -- other banks. I can buy insurance for my company from any number of brokers, but they're all selling the same thing, often the same underwriters, especially when it comes to health insurance. There may appear to be more credit card offers out there, but these companies have been consolidating so rapidly, I think I have one single card in my purse that has not merged and changed names in the past 2-3 years.

Bob Warfield takes on Seth's idea and riffs a bit on "scarce," as if it were the opposite of "choice," but then points out:

The web moves in punctuated equilibrium. Most of the time, choice is illusory. It consists of thousands of minor variations on what are just a few common themes. Most people crave consistency, because they can’t handle too many real choices. And yet thousands of minor variations are strangely unsatisfying. We can invest all the time, seek all the answers, work hard to get to depth, and we’re left wanting more, or at least wondering if this is it. Delivering something deeply different to break us out of the drone of all that mundane choice is valuable.

Seth does hit on one thing, though: "More choice in who to listen to (and who to ignore)."

That's true. However, I feel that is only a symptom of the real paradigm shift in our economy and culture today:

Voice.

Every day, in the "old media" of traditional broadcasting and newspapers, we see closed-minded -- and I'd say willfully ignorant -- attitudes expressed about how unimportant blogging and social media are. But they are speaking from platforms that are feeling a bit disempowered by the new media.

The new media are what have given people their voice. And it's not just that now we can hear what people used to just shout back at the television. We (the people) are changing. It's amazing what happens when you get a sense that maybe, this time, when you speak out you will be heard. That's profound. It's revolutionary.

People can talk back. Talk back to companies. Talk back to politicians. And, most important, talk to each other. We have more choices to listen to because we have more people saying things.

We have voice.

What do you say?

While I was laying in bed last night, I found myself questioning my post yesterday and the attitudes reflected in Joe the Peacock's mocking of what appears to be a rather clueless potential client.

He seems to have struck a nerve, judging by Joe's forums:

Yes let us hear the douchebag please!

I think Joe's got to have at least a little bit of masochist in him to be a consultant, especially an Internet consultant. Sir Geek and I did it for several years and listening to the clients blather on about what they think they want/need is enough to make your brain explode.

Freaking hysterical.

Okay, at first reading of Joe's rant, I confess I did laugh a little. It certainly was outrageous enough to inspire me to post a link.

But to publicly share such mean-spirited attitudes towards potential clients strikes me as rather sad, and what I would consider unprofessional. Now maybe the person on the other end of the line was a jerk. I certainly have encountered my share of jerks.

But Joe mocks this "potential client" for his (?) ignorance.

We in web and software development live in a world that is scarcely understood by most of the people who use what we produce. That's all the more true in the corner of that world where I spend my time: open source, which is a community-of-a-commons concept that seems to elude even the majority of folks in Silicon Valley (who are much more attached to that other source, "outsource"). Quite often we are in the business of educating and enlightening the client, sometimes seemingly as much as we are developing for the client. It comes with the territory. After all, clients come to us, in large part, because we are knowledgeable in things which they are not.

Hello?

Jerks have what's coming to them, imho. But calling someone a "dipshit" for simple ignorance? That's ignorance.

I suppose it's natural that such cynical attitudes will bleed into all areas of business, even this "new economy" we're all a part of that's supposed to, you know, change (read: "improve") the way business is conducted in the world. People are people, and cynical contempt is all-too-common a human attitude. Just don't count me among its willing practitioners.

Then again, Joe is a writer so maybe it's all just fiction. If so, never mind. I'll just walk slowly away from the computer and sit down for another viewing of Office Space.

An unordered list of thoughts I had during a conference call with a potential client today. Dear dear!

[Update: I posted some more thoughts here.]

This so-called news tidbit is making the blog rounds lately, but goes back a few years.

Some say it's a hoax. But look at item 19 on CNN Money's 2003 list of the "101 Dumbest Moments in Business":

19| To: Dean Kamen. Re: Vibrating Segway?

Shortly after Mattel releases its Nimbus 2000 broom as part of its line of Harry Potter toys, the vibrating device begins getting the wrong sort of customer raves. "I'm 32 and enjoy riding the broom as much as my 7-year-old," says one enthusiastic mother on Amazon. "My only complaint is, I wish the batteries didn't run out quite so quickly." Mattel stops making the toy, but denies that the unintended value-add is the reason. Says a spokesperson: "It's just not a continued product in our line."

Oh ... and it looks like it was marketed towards boys, too. Mattel thinking those good vibrations....

[Funny aside: Context-sensitive Google Adsense is placing Harry Potter display ads on the Dvorak site's Potter post linked above.]

The Department of Justice has weighed in against Net Neutrality:

The Justice Department said imposing a Net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the "entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers," the agency said in its filing.

Such a result could diminish or delay network expansion and improvement, it added.

Are these the same network providers who already were paid huge government stipends and tax breaks to expand and improve broadband internet?

The agency said providing different levels of service is common, efficient and could satisfy consumers. As an example, it cited that the U.S. Postal Service charges customers different guarantees and speeds for package delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight delivery.

You gotta love that. Really, the USPS as a success story? Tell that to all the dead trees that are mailed every day straight through your mailbox into the garbage can (or, hopefully, recycling bin).

"Whether or not the same type of differentiated products and services will develop on the Internet should be determined by market forces, not regulatory intervention," the agency said in its filing.

This is a disingenuous argument, as people already are paying varying rates for varying levels of service. If you want a fast connection, you pay more. If you have a website that has a lot of media files to serve, you pay more.

What the DOJ seems to be arguing is -- to use their analogy -- much like having the USPS tell you that you cannot get mail from Chicago, but you can get similar mail from another sender in Atlanta. The telecoms who were paid by the taxpayer to build the backbone and make it stronger and faster now want to control the content on that backbone. This does not serve competition. In fact, undermining net neutrality would have the effect of undermining the free market. Not when individual access to information is choked off and controlled by middleman companies who are playing for the big contracts.

I'm very disturbed by this development, but I have to confess I'm not that surprised. We live in a political and business climate that is suspicious of individual expression and freedom of speech -- or at least places very little value on it.

So we learn from Secret Notes:

Apple's stylish stores and computers, all of which feature unrestricted Internet access, have become such the hang-out and gathering place for MySpace junkies that the powers that be have elected to block the popular social networking site from its systems.

By the close of business Thursday, most Apple retail stores will have implemented the block, designed to reduce the level of loitering at the stores.

More likely Apple's design aesthetic just cannot brook dreadful MySpace page designs appearing within their bricks and mortar.

The horror! The horror!

It really is painful to watch, in a way, how prominent members of the old-school news media complain about the internet. Today it's Robert J. Samuelson, who writes:

If the Internet permanently crashed tomorrow, I'd be thrilled.

I kid you not.

When I joined The Washington Post as a reporter in 1969, hardly anyone I knew in the news business considered it a business. We belonged to a craft, a calling or maybe a profession. We didn't worry about the industry's "business model," a term we'd never heard. Economic realities occasionally intruded, usually involving salaries (always too low). But mostly we blissfully ignored the proposition that newspapers aimed to make money. We condescendingly thought that the moneymaking people—advertising salesmen, managers—toiled so that we could pursue our higher purpose, which was to inform the public.

This comes from an award-winning business journalist. Color me naive, but isn't it obvious that a print publication with a cover price, paid subscriptions and loads of advertising is a business? The nature of the business may be changing, what with financial speculators trying to squeeze more and more juice from the melon, but it has always been a business. Right? Right?

We've been disabused of our naiveté and arrogance. All our business models (for newspapers, magazines, network news) are now in retreat, if not rout. The Internet is stealing our audiences and our ads. Few of us imagined ourselves as heirs to textile or steelworkers, disemployed by new competition and technology. But we are.

This, I believe, is a conflation of issues. The internet is bringing a new reality to newspapers (and all other media), but in this age of predatory Wall Street speculation in the news industry, I don't think the layoffs can be laid at the feet of a new technology.

How does a medium "steal" audiences? Especially when newspapers are right here in that new medium? It's not like there's no money in the internet. Why is it that web ventures are able to monetize their websites but newspapers fail at it so terribly? And why do old media folks then demonstrate the bad manners of blaming the messenger? --I mean, if they notice at all.

In Ad Age today, Simon Dumenco has an answer:

Who or what is really killing print? Craig Newmark? Blogs? YouTube, maybe? The internet in general? Or any of the other usual suspects?

Nah, print is killing print. More specifically, a handful of half-wit overlords at many -- if not most -- big print-media companies are killing print.

We see evidence of this every day.

An internet-company executive I know says of his vague and mysterious job: "I create value." That's an M.B.A.-enabled, blowhardy thing to say, of course, but he means it -- and when he says it, it occurs to me new-economy guys like him are at dead odds with many print-media executives these days, who seem to specialize in destroying value, even as they pay lip service to the "convergence of traditional and electronic media."

It's like watching a monkey thrash around, unwilling to let go of the apple in the jar.

So what's happening here, really? Perhaps it's that our taste for news is changing, and the old guard are unwilling to come along.

[Aside: Personally I think the real tragedy is what's been happening in television "news." In the end, Samantha Bee may have the best take. Who knows -- maybe as video penetration and integration in the web increases, we'll see the internet start to do to television news what it has been doing for print: Make it better.]

This kind tectonic economic and cultural shift and resulting backlash is happening across the board. And even small-scale ventures are affected. Look at what has happened at JPG Magazine. I just have to shake my head at how some people just don't get it. As Molly Holzschlag notes:

As soon as I began reading what happened regarding JPG Magazine, I knew that here was even more evidence of my long-held belief that the room for inauthentic, manipulative voices in our wired culture is becoming very small.

And while the internet has provided avenues for alternative means of finding and evaluating information, it's not the internet's fault that old, comfortable oligarchies and would-be manipulators are feeling the pinch as conversations replace PR broadsides. We all know, or should know, that it's not the internet itself that's the issue, it's what people do with it that matters. And forget the gloom and doom voices crying that the sky is falling. The real excitement, in my book, is that, in the end, it's what people can do using the internet that is our greatest hope to make the world just a little (or a lot) better.

Back to Molly:

Authenticity is not a flaw, nor should it be seen as an “act” of transparency. This is courage. These are actions that just might help save the world.

I have always stated that the Web gives the masses the potential to do just that, and it is clear that we can, via our communities and social networks, improve ourselves and gain more enlightened global perspectives that are based in truth and forgiveness rather than lies and manipulation. Idealistic? You bet. Optimistic, well, yes, but it’s not like I believe that this won’t take a very long time or that it will be a successful endeavor. I just feel it terribly, terribly important that we all realize what’s going on. The testing of boundaries and breaking them are part of this shift toward a world where honesty will truly be the best policy. Breaking those boundaries will cause pain and bruising for us all as we go through it, but go through it we must or the chance to better ourselves as individuals and society at large might pass us by.

Indeed.