WebMink

For reasons I can't explain I found myself in Grosvenor Square in London yesterday at 1:46pm, in front of the American Embassy. A crowd had spontaneously gathered, and an American voice asked for silence. Instead of the fabricated hoopla of the media, there was silence, even there in the tourist heart of London. Then, at the end of the silence, a single trumpeter played the Last Post. Finally, I wept, for reasons I can't explain.

And again just now. Not actually at the fine post on Samizdata showing the signs around Piccadilly (I too noticed they were everywhere in London yesterday) but at the extraordinary response they have produced in comments.

posted at 8:04 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Wednesday, September 11

Light is streaming across my desk, dragging my mind to New York. One of the things I like in New York is looking down the east-west canyons and seeing the surreal light of amazing sunsets. In late spring this year I finally made the pilgimage to Ground Zero one afternoon after speaking at an event in Mid-town. I'd not been able to bring myself to do it on earlier vists.

One year ago today I was speaking at NetObjectDays in Munich, and the events unfolded in a collage of fragments from the Web, from CNN on airport monitors with the stranded many and from instant messaging conversations late into the night when I finally arrived home, trying to track down friends as so many had tried to track me during the evening. I could have been there - the NY Java SIG had invited me to speak, but I was already booked for Germany - and the knowledge built empathy, and then fear, and then grief, and finally relief as all my friends and colleagues checked in, some from close encounters.

The light. The light was a surprise. I'd walked down Broadway from Times Square, and the encounter with the grief and mementos on the railings was moving. I decided first to go to Battery Park though, and backtracked to the WTC site.What caught me unawares was the light. The void, the immense space blown apart in the fabric and life of the city, nation and networks of souls, allowed the light through. The sunset streamed into the site, reflected of the clouds, the buildings, and there was such beauty.That's the paradox.

The detail of the site, the personal memories, the mementos, the enormity of the losses, the accounts from friends, all were expected burdens. But the light. It seemed that opening up the space had somehow allowed the light in. The paradox of hope overwhelmed me.

posted at 9:29 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Tuesday, September 10

Natalie Solent asks "What did you think of the case where the Iranian child was beheaded by her father?". Well, there was disgust, and outrage that he could not be prosecuted under Sharia law as only the head of the household could avenge a murder and that was him. But the most disgust was reading that the coroner actually checked if she was a virgin, as if that might justify it all.

posted at 4:19 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Monday, September 9

Dan Gillmor's article 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success in Sunday's SJMN makes fascinating reading. To my eyes the summary is that the design philosophy of the Internet was self-similar. The outward design was about creating a system robust enough to 'route around' obstacles and failures, so there is a certain symmetry to the the way that choices were made that avoided corporate or bureaucratic control. Use of TCP/IP instead of OSI, use of Unix, building on top of existing networks rather than competing with them - all choices that avoided the 'helpful' interference of established bodies.

The one factor Dan's source Scott Bradner seems to omit, however, is the fact that all the innovation was done without the creation of intellectual property barriers. If the Internet was being created today, there would be patent barriers to early participation and royalty hurdles to prevent competitive deployment. If that had happened, the 'Net Effect' would never have happened.

If there is one lesson we need to learn today as the next generation of networked protocols is created, it's that all the work on infrastructure needs to be done in a restriction-free zone. Even the apparently benign-sounding "Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Terms" (RAND) being applied by patent holders today will have the effect of constraining participation to those able to escape the terms (which are only 'reasonable' to their authors). We need to insist now that all infrastructure standards are either restriction free or rejected - ideas where the right to exercise restrictions is reserved should be rejected at all costs in the infrastructure.

posted at 10:40 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Sunday, September 8

Friends and colleagues with friends and colleagues in China (you know who you are) may be interested to know that you can test whether web sites are accessible in China [via Scott Rosenberg] without the need either to go there or to endanger your contacts by sending them potentially forbidden links.

posted at 11:18 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Please excuse the American politics for a moment, but it seems that experiments in democracy are afoot over there. In Florida, they have a demonstration of the new on-line voting system they'll be using in the forthcoming congressional elections, which seems to me to be a huge improvement without losing sight of any of the principles under which Florida's last elections were held [via Blah3]. Meanwhile in California they have a new system for deciding which legislation gets put before the state legislature.

posted at 1:32 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |