Dana Blankenhorn

The Open Source World

Regular readers may notice that I have changed the sub-title of this blog.

That's because I want to follow a story closely, and eventually turn the blog into a book. Other blogs which have done this in the past include The Long Tail, Global Guerillas and Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory.

I'm also hoping focus can lead to discipline and knowledge.

I have found, over the last months, that the open source story I first tackled for ZDNet  18 months ago actually has much deeper implications than I imagined. Open source software, an open Internet, and open spectrum are not only the major challenge to our present political dynamic, but to our economic system as well.

By holding basics in common, and having everyone build on top of those basics (while also letting them expand the definition of basic) enormous innovation is unleashed. The resulting solutions are far ahead of what any company can do on its own.

The Open Source Purpose of Patents

The patent system is designed to encourage replacement of the patented technology.

Think back to when patents started. The requirement was that the invention be detailed, that directions for its construction and use be given, in clear language others could follow.

The whole idea was to get improvements into the patent office.

This was natural at a time where patents were filed by individuals. But now that patents are filed by corporations, this has been turned on its head.

Today, patents are designed to prevent advance. Anything that emerges which is similar in technology intent to what was patented by a corporation or a patent troll is brought to court.
This is what is wrong with software and business methods patents. They don't protect a how of something. They protect a what. They don't encourage innovation, as the original patent system did. They try to prevent it.

This Week's Clue: The Great Lesson of History

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The purpose of a military is to gain and hold territory.

That purpose is obsolete.

No military power, no matter how great its weapons or how dedicated its people, can control any land without at least the acquiescence of those who live there.

This acquiescence may be grudging. It may be a devil's bargain, freedom exchanged for comfort or opportunity. But that acquiescence must be won. Without it nothing else is possible.

This basic lesson has been building in history for centuries.

Simple Steps Toward Better Healthcare

This decade has been marked by a complete lack of real jobs.

Real jobs include health benefits.

Instead we have had an enormous rise in non-job jobs. Wal-Mart jobs are non-job jobs. Immigrant jobs are non-job jobs. Freelance jobs are non-job jobs. You can't really live on a non-job job, only survive.

This is not because businessmen are bad people. They just can't afford to offer health benefits under our present system.  In fact, I'm certain most businesses would love to offer real jobs, because real jobs offer stability, and let the business raise its stock of human capital over time.

Why are there no longer any real jobs?

Two words -- preventive care.

Preventive care used to mean simple check-ups. No more. Now preventive care means pills, lots and lots of expensive pills. I, for instance, currently take three different prescription medicines to deal with a family history of hypertension and high cholesterol. None were available in my father's time.  Where his "preventive" medicine costs were about $25/year, mine come to $80/month -- and that's just for co-pays.

We have wondrous medicines that can prevent many illnesses, and give relief for many conditions.  But they cost too much.

There is a second problem, of course. Technology, or the lack of it. The HIPAA Law, meant to improve patient privacy, has instead caused doctors to refuse technology. They won't even use e-mail, fearing the liability. The liability laws also prevent use of new Always-On technology, for such things as  monitoring conditions, delivering medicine, alerting caregivers. The industry won't touch this stuff -- what if it breaks?

The ultimate solution is a single-payer health plan. But such plans, worldwide, are under incredible financial strain right now, because of the two problems I have just described.

So let's address those now.

The 1966 Game: Who's Robert Kennedy Now?

Recently I began a game here called The 1966 Game. The idea is that our present political myths, which emerged from the Nixon Era, are in the process of dying out. Thus, the question, who today has the roles played in 1966?

We first identified John McCain as akin to Hubert Humphrey, because he is the most obvious heir to the incumbent of today, George W. Bush. We next identified Hillary Clinton as Nixon, because she is hated, steeped in past history, and a likely unifier of the "outside" party for the next election.

We left with the question, Who is Robert Kennedy now?

This is a poser, because the candidates are non-obvious. While Lyndon Johnson chose not to run in 1968, George W. Bush is term-limited, and can't.  The correct answer would be someone who seeks to extend the current Nixon-Reagan-Bush thesis, not just embrace it but extend it further, as Kennedy sought to extend liberalism.

Robert Kennedy was very popular in his party's grassroots. He would have been the obvious candidate to challenge Johnson, but felt 1972 would be his main chance, and did not enter the race until Eugene McCarthy pushed Johnson off the stage.

I know what you're doing, and it's a mistake. You're thinking up Democrats. Don't. The Robert Kennedy character is in the incumbent party, and wildly popular with the conservative grassroots. What we're talking about, then, is the conservatives' Dream Candidate.

This Week's Clue: Integration

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Who wants to revisit electronic commerce?

God knows I do.

Let's review our problem set, shall we?

• There's no valid business model for Web content.
• Every bit on a mobile network is a service, charged for and controlled by the carrier.

How can we take advantage of this?

• Communities can be created free on the Web.
  Bits can be sold for money on mobiles. But only the right bits, the ones with the highest value.

Over time, the mobile Internet will become more-and-more like the laptop Internet. But right now the economics are quite different. It's time to take advantage of this.

No one has yet succeeded in this, but here's the trick.

1. Create a vertical community on the Web, database-driven, filled with interaction, free but requesting PII (personally identifiable information). 
2. Deliver mobile services aimed at that community, advertised on the Web site (and elsewhere online).

This is not an easy dollar. It takes an immense amount of free content to build a community, along with software that scales this intimacy, that enables people to create their own worlds based on the free content. Only after you've engaged in such a world will you gladly pay to put parts of it in your hand.

Harry Potter and the Great Loon

Meet Laura Mallory. She wants to ban the Harry Potter series from libraries in Gwinnett County, 10 miles northeast of where I am writing.

I doubt she has read the books. She calls them anti-Christian. In fact, Harry Potter may be the most christian (small c) series ever written.

The overall story is of a child's growth in an English Boarding School. Hogwarts stands in for Eton. Magic stands in for technology, for the complexity of the world, and wizards are those who know and manipulate it.

Any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic.  If Button Gwinnett himself, signer of the Declaration of Independence and namesake of Gwinnett County, walked into the hearing room where Mallory railed last week, he would feel himself in the presence of magic.

He would see the flourescent lights, feel the conditioned air. He could touch the large, hard windows, the plastic venetian blinds. He would hear a cellphone or PC and think, no doubt -- magic! wizards! (God knows what he would think if he saw the parking lot.)

And he would be right.

The Swiftboating of Juan Cole

What began as the rude end of an Anti-Thesis may come back later as Thesis in a period of excess.

McCarthyism, in other words, is back. Only now it's called "Swiftboating." It's the hammering of public figures with lies aimed at destroying criticisms of failed policy.

The term comes from what happened with John Kerry, but it's a technique, not an event. It combines Big Media, Big Money, and the Big Political Stick. Its aim is to drive out dissent.

And right now it's hitting Middle East expert Juan Cole. Cole is presently at the University of Michigan, he has a powerful blog, and he's up for a big new position at Yale. Thus, the White House is desperate to destroy him, and sent one of its most loyal hatchetmen, the Wall Street Journal editorial writer John Fund, to do the dirty work.

Fund made up quotes, attributed them to Cole, and now Cole is spitting-mad. I don't blame him.
But, in a wondrous proof that the times they are a changin', Cole has a megaphone of his own. Had this happened in 1966 he could not have fought back. Now he not only has his own blog, but every blogger who has read him. The simple message -- John Fund is a Lying Weasel --  will now be repeated hundreds, maybe thousands of times throughout the blogosphere.

Why Blogs Are A Threat

It's the links.

Doc Searls sort of hits it on the head.

It's the giving of links that makes blogging so dangerous to journalism.  The room with the most exits wins by letting in the most light.

I found this to be the case in launching voic.us over the last few months. It's designed as a political super-site, but until it gets budgeted it's mostly me blogging about Georgia politics and the Georgia legislature.

I learned something early on. All the facts you need to do great coverage are there, through links.

• You can link to a current version of a bill each time you mention it.
• You can link to the campaign reports of any candidate.
• You can link to both blogs and news stories.

All these outbound links have value, enormous value. It's by sending traffic out that you get traffic in.

But, as I noted more recently, the state's journalism organizations explicitly reject this reality. They prefer to hide their content behind subscription firewalls. They seldom link out. They never once -- not once -- used the resources I just mentioned above.

A Solution to the Energy Problem

A floor price.

Plenty of energy sources are ready to come onstream right now if the producers could be assured of long-term profits.

Tar sands. Coal. Wind. Geothermal. Solar.

It's all there for the taking, but only if the producers can be assured of a market.

The problem with oil, as we learned 25 years ago, is that the actual cost to produce it is extremely low. Once it's found, drilled, and hooked up, the per-barrel cost of oil can undercut any of the supplies just mentioned.  And if we don't do something then, within a few years, it will. And we'll be right back where we started.

Thus, a floor price. Anything coming in at a price below a set level gets taxed to that level. Excess profits of existing sources are taxed so they come in at that level -- that's how you get out of oil.