For those that missed it, here’s a video of Ballmer talking about Bing at D7.
it's clear to me...
I’m Ben McInnis.
I live in downtown Seattle.
I work at Microsoft.
I love the Internet.
I love economics.
I love art.
You can reach me at [first name] dot [last name] at gmail.com.
Also, the opinions expressed here are my own and don't reflect the views of my employer.
Don Dodge is on This Week in Startups — Watch it.
crackpot prediction: globally unique person names by 2059
I see a few long-term trends potentially colliding in an interesting outcome—individually unique names for each person worldwide.
I know, I know…hear me out.
Some trends and long-term predictions:
1. The Internet is absorbing nearly every network-dependent aspect of society. 50 years from now all education, civic engagement, communication, and non-convenience or entertainment-based commerce will occur via the Internet
2. The globalization of cultures and commerce continues relatively unchecked. 50 years from now everyone will speak a single global language—probably English—with most speaking others too. This will make communicating with everyone around the world possible.
3. Open data and authentication standards continue to erode the “walls” that previously isolated communications services from one another. 50 years from now all communications services will be fully and automatically interoperable—real unified communications.
4. Mobile connectivity and communications will continue to saturate society at exponential rates. 50 years from now data connections will be so pervasive that the concept of mobile will have faded away.
So, assuming my predictions are roughly correct, it’s 2059 and we’re living in a world where every conceivable aspect of daily life is, at some point, dependent on your connection to an infinitely ubiquitous network. You do your job on the network. You do your shopping on the network. You vote on the network. You go to school on the network. And, very certainly, literally all of your non-face-to-face communication will flow over the network.
I would argue that you now live in a world where your identity on the network is as or more important than your identity in the physical world. So, at what point do the names for the biological you (the you that walks around your hover-apartment eating soylent green) and the network you (the you that votes, works, shops, etc) converge into a single you with a single and distinct name?
In some ways this is already happening. If you Google or Bing (plug!) my name, I’m the first entry and most of the first few pages. In very real terms, I’m the version of the words “Ben McInnis” the Internet cares about. That’s fine for now, the other Ben McInnis’ out there probably don’t care but, if they had to really live on the Internet, it would become intolerable pretty fast and, at some point, having your friends call you “Ben McInnis 122” might make sense.
My friend Brian’s Internet video series is currently in its second season.
The concept is that Brian, and his two buddies Rob and Matt, travel the globe with the money they made after a few months working minimum wage jobs in Seattle—finding odd jobs along the way to bootstrap the adventure. So far they’ve been to Vietnam and Japan…and I think South Korea.
It is certainly entertaining and the social experiment angle is a unique take.
Watch it.
Gentrification at a small scale is just blind speculation.
For example, this amazing Pb Elemental designed house, recently built in Seattle’s Central District, was initially listed for over $600,000. However, the Central District is “upcoming” at best. So, any potential point of comparison, although clearly apples-to-oranges, would suggest that, given it’s size and location, it should cost about $60,000. In fact, Zillow suggests that exactly.
Clearly the $60,000 figure is automatically generated and anyone could see that this house was worth more than the houses next door, but obviously, at some point, the $600,000 figure came out of the air.
So the issue is, as ever, one of location. Do you think any house is worth $600,000 if it comes with sweeping views of public housing and boarded up abandoned businesses?
Google’s data center secrets are apparently, 12-volt batteries, shipping container enclosures, and commodity hardware. Makes sense.
This Qwest ad is from 1999. When I first saw it I was in Junior High School. Back then I, like many, found the vision truly amazing but, comfortingly plausible. It seemed to me that this utopia would really happen because demand had so neatly lined up with the technology and the supply. However, as I write this, it is over ten years later, nearly every facet of every industry and culture has been materially and irreversibly altered by the progress the Internet Age has brought, yet this specific vision, which was once so easy to picture, still eludes us.
Why?
I think the culprit, practically speaking, is the difficulty faced by the mainstream media around clearing rights to the discreet pieces of content that comprise the eventual works we view as movies and TV shows. But this excuse is far too easy and, in my mind, a symptom of larger issues. I would argue that the real disease is media owners so afraid of change (and piracy?) that they forego promising opportunity. Happily we live within a free market system that, although bemoaned of late, eventually self-corrects. We will have this vision, probably very soon, but it will come via YouTube, Netflix, Britecove and other new ventures instead of directly from the traditional media powers for whom, apparently, a decade’s head-start just wasn’t enough.
Out of curiosity I pulled the data on the top 1000 movies of all time by revenue. As you can see, and perhaps as you suspected, the long-tail/power law distribution remains constant with blockbuster movies too.
What I found most striking as I mined through the list was the sheer number of computer animated movies like Finding Nemo, Kung-Fu Panda, and the like that were at the top of the list. Similarly, any film starring Will Smith—even Hancock—was pretty near the top.
If I were running a studio I’d try and bankroll as many CGI movies starring Will Smith as I had budget for.
notes on tardiness
As most of my friends and colleagues know, punctuality is a big deal for me. I try to recognize that I’m generally a bit more anal about it than most, and give people some leeway, but it still upsets me fairly regularly.
Two manifestations of tardiness irritate me more than the rest; the “power play” and the “starbucks.”
The power play is when the offending party excuses their lateness by simply referencing their busy schedule or some similarly trivial aspect of their life. This circumstance is especially infuriating because the sub-text is so very clear. This person is actually saying, perhaps not in so many words, that the trivial minutia of their daily schedule takes precedent over anything that you might have had scheduled. This is, of course, insulting, absurd, and the pinnacle of passive aggressive moves.
The Starbucks is a similar variant in which the offending party is late to a meeting—usually a morning meeting—and walks in sipping a freshly purchased cup of coffee, or a muffin, or whatever. In this instance the person is actually communicating that the coffee is more important than your time. This is outrageous.
Our first home brew is finally done and I’m pleased to report it appears to be 100% not poisonous or rotten. It even looks, smells, AND tastes just like an actual beer.
