No SOPA for you (What I Learned This Week)

• Wednesday's internet blackout and "protests" succeeded in stopping SOPA/PIPA. For now. 

• Despite what looks like a very aggressive EULA, Apple's new (and free) iBook Author has a lot of potential for portfolios, case studies, annual reports and other kinds of publications beyond textbooks. 

• Twitter bought Summify, a very useful service I use that summarizes your twitter stream. I am concerned that the purchase will de-evolve the service in the same way that the fantastic Twettie app became the current Twitter app without any of the great features remaining. 

Elementary, My Dear SOPA

Last night the second episode of the second series of Sherlock aired in the UK. It was very good, though technically I'm not supposed to know that first hand. Like the first series, created by the imaginative Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the second series consists of three ninety-minute movies that probably had a collective budget lesser than the two recent Holmes-inspired Hollywood blockbusters. The tv series, a reimagined and modernized version of the classic Doyle stories, is creative, clever and certainly entertaining. And if you live outside of the UK you have to wait until they come to a television near you.

Over the holidays there were many UK tv series with vast worldwide followings premiering episodes, including Downton Abbey, the return of Absolutely Fabulous and let's not forget Doctor Who. They were all great, really great. There is a kind of British television storytelling that you can not find anywhere else. Again, technically I'm not supposed to know that.

Well, I'm okay on the Doctor Who, also under the creative direction of Stephen Moffat, because the BBC, BBC Worldwide and BBC America realized it is one of the most sought-after pieces of digital content on the internet and managed to work out a process by which the episodes premiere in the UK and the US on the same day.

This pursuit of quality art and entertainment, and my support of companies that make it easy for me to consume their products, keeps resonating in my head every time I have a conversation about the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA).

[Let's pause for a surreal aside. In Spanish sopa means soup, so every time I see SOPA on the news I think of soup, specifically the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld yelling "No soup for you!" which seems very fitting.]

It is clear once you see the list of backers and opponents of SOPA it's hard not to identify the generational differences between the two. The majority of the opponents are those businesses that have adopted the new economic value system that emerged from the original propagation of the Internet. To understand its value origins you simply need to spend some time with Steven Levy’s Hackers and the ethos of MIT’s model railroad club. The backers of SOPA clearly come from a more traditional economic reality fixated on managing scarcity – a problem that Copyrights and Intellectual Property (IP) was created to manage. (via SOPA - A symptom of something much bigger)

Current US law extends copyright protection for 70 years after the date of the author’s death. (Corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication.) But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years (an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years). Under those laws, works published in 1955 would be passing into the public domain on January 1, 2012. (via What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2012? )

At the same time the 1976 Copyright Act was coming into existence and influencing the creation of content the corporation was going through its own transformation, shifting towards a focus on maximizing the return to shareholders. Roger L. Martin, in his book "Fixing The Game," considers this paradigm shift "the dumbest idea in the world."

Martin says that the trouble began in 1976 when finance professor Michael Jensen and Dean William Meckling of the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester published a seemingly innocuous paper in the Journal of Financial Economics entitled “Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure.”

The article performed the old academic trick of creating a problem and then proposing a solution to the supposed problem that the article itself had created. The article identified the principal-agent problem as being that the shareholders are the principals of the firm—i.e., they own it and benefit from its prosperity, while the executives are agents who are hired by the principals to work on their behalf.

The principal-agent problem occurs, the article argued, because agents have an inherent incentive to optimize activities and resources for themselves rather than for their principals. Ignoring Peter Drucker’s foundational insight of 1973 that the only valid purpose of a firm is to create a customer, Jensen and Meckling argued that the singular goal of a company should be to maximize the return to shareholders.

To achieve that goal, they academics argued, the company should give executives a compelling reason to place shareholder value maximization ahead of their own nest-feathering. Unfortunately, as often happens with bad ideas that make some people a lot of money, the idea caught on and has even become the conventional wisdom. (via The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value )

The road to SOPA began in the mid 70s. The corporation, the creator of product, began to focus on how to maximize return on investment and how to protect said investment through IP. At the same time the internet was also emerging.

Today the internet is a catalyst for political unrest, leads to progressive changes in education, and content creators are bypassing corporations talking directly to the people interested in their product, their art. For younger generations, by which I mean generations growing up so completely comfortable with technology they have an intuitive understanding of smart phones, tablets, and the internet, there are no borders. They can connect with friends in other countries in the same way they connect with the friends they see in "real life." These internet users feel the same way about digital content, if they can communicate with their friends all over the world why can't they consume the same content. Why can't corporations figure out a way to make this happen.

Instead we get SOPA, with copyright not as a resource for content creators but as a weapon used to fight a growing open internet culture. Copyright as a resource to help creators is important, that's why Fair Use and Creative Commons exist, but so is works becoming part of the public domain.

Kevin Kelly, futurist, editor of Wired magazine and former editor of Whole Earth Catalog (of Steve Jobs "Stay hungry. Stay foolish" fame,) explains:

It is in the interest of culture to have a large and dynamic public domain. The greatest classics of Disney were all based on stories in the public domain, and Walt Disney showed how public domain ideas and characters could be leveraged by others to bring enjoyment and money. But ironically, after Walt died, the Disney corporation became the major backer of the extended copyright laws, in order to keep the very few original ideas they had — like Mickey Mouse — from going into the public domain. Also ironically, just as Disney was smothering the public domain, their own great fortunes waned because they were strangling the main source of their own creativity, which was public domain material. They were unable to generate their own new material, so they had to buy Pixar. (via What the Public Commons Is Missing )

The last episode of the the current series of Sherlock airs in the UK next Sunday. It is worth pointing out that this series would probably not exist if it wasn't for the fact that the large majority of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes works are in the public domain.

IQ Doesn't Always Measure Intelligence: What I Learned This Week

• Two words: Carrier IQ.

• It is possible for Grand Central Terminal to get even more crowded. 

• I am really enjoying two things I discovered this week: Alec Baldwin's Here's The Thing and Anthony Bourdain's The Layover. You should give them a go. 

• It's a good thing holiday treats are only available during the holidays, all those gingerbready, pumpkiny, pepperminty things mocking my discipline. 

"Stay hungry. Stay foolish." Steve Jobs

For those of us passionate about technology and art, for those of us who thrive creatively because of technology and art, for those of us that continue to pursue education and make a living because of technology and art, the day began with much discussion about iPhones, iOS, Android, Google, Facebook, Siri, Amazon, Kindles, this one is better, that one is awesome, where is the iPhone 5 that I so wanted, this system is better than that system, my patents can beat up your patents, all in a frenzy of strong opinions.

Then as the day ends, all that passion, all those opinions, get shaken to the core with an incredibly profound sense of sadness. It's surprising, shocking even, how truly, deeply sad we feel. 

At this moment this is all I know for sure.

When I wrote my university applications and essays on a Mac I didn't know who Steve Jobs was, all I knew was that this device, this computer, it gave me the keys to the American Dream.

The American Dream looks very different now, feels very different now. We use technology and art to help us endure the vicissitudes of surviving our daily lives. 

Last night I sat in a small room waiting for a board meeting to start. A board meeting for an organization I volunteer my time and energy towards, spending countless hours in front of Macs creating things out of nothing to help a dear friend fulfill his vision of an exceptional concert series.

While waiting I had a quick Skype chat with one of my oldest friends, a friend who knew me when I was a child and now lives on the other side of the world. It was 1:30am where he lives and we commiserated about insomnia and made plans to connect soon again. 

After he said good bye I looked at my iPad, the technology I was going to use to talk about music and art, and stared at my iPhone. My New Jersey friend walked into the room and I told him how I just had a casual conversation with my Saudi Arabia friend like it was nothing, like geography, time and space weren't an obstacle at all. 

Your tools may be different than mine, your technology may be different than mine, and if we pause for long enough to notice, they are awe-inspiring.

It is that feeling, that awe, that I think about when I think of Steve Jobs. 

He led many brilliant people to create tools that helped me get an education, get a career. That help me keep up with my family, connect with my friends, derive joy from the things I love. 

For that I am grateful.  

A chicken and egg thing

During meetings, on phone calls, while casually talking in the hallway, someone utters the phrase "it's a chicken and egg thing." It is usually uttered to describe a challenge where determining what should happen first is hard to ascertain. In reality the whole chicken and the egg metaphor is just an easy way to not make a decision. By hiding behind an aphorism a decision is postponed, the conversation put on hold.

Well, the answer is the egg. So there.

Now you can't say "what came first?" because you know the answer. So, don't postpone the decision, keep the conversation going.

Yes, the egg.

The chicken evolved from another animal. Maybe a dinosaur, maybe a bird, maybe some other creature we have yet to discover. Chickens are mutants. Some animal laid an egg, inside that egg was a mutation and when it hatched, a chicken was born.

Except, once I started writing this and went searching for the scientific evidence that I held as truth I learned British scientists had discovered a protein they claim unequivocally proves the chicken came first.

The scientists found that a protein found only in a chicken's ovaries is necessary for the formation of the egg. The egg can therefore only exist if it has been created inside a chicken. The protein speeds up the development of the hard shell, which is essential in protecting the delicate yolk and fluids while the chick grows inside the egg, the report said.  "It had long been suspected that the egg came first but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first," said Dr. Colin Freeman, from Sheffield University's Department of Engineering Materials, according to the Mail." The protein had been identified before and it was linked to egg formation, but by examining it closely we have been able to see how it controls the process," he said.

Well, the answer is the chicken. So there.

Every day you have the capacity to know more than the day before. Every day the potential exists for you to realize that something you held as absolute truth it's not.

Next time someone says it's a chicken and egg thing, just say the chicken came first, make a decision, move the conversation, question your assumptions, get the thing done, and go learn something new.