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Source: http://partners.userland.com/people/docSearls.xml

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<title>Archives as Commons</title>
<link>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/21/archives-as-commons/</link>
<comments>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/21/archives-as-commons/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Doc Searls]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2024 03:02:25 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Archives]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Bloomington]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Journalism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Santa Barbara]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://doc.searls.com/?p=16749</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The Santa Barbara News-Press was born in 1868 and died in 2023 at age 155. Its glory years ran from 1932 until 2000, when the New York Times sold it to Wendy McCaw, who rode it to hell. That ride began with the Santa Barbara News Press Controversy in 2006 and ended when Ampersand, the company McCaw created […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_16756" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16756" style="width: 652px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-16756" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/222009310_749de189d1_b.jpg" alt="" width="652" height="977" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/222009310_749de189d1_b.jpg 652w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/222009310_749de189d1_b-200x300.jpg 200w " sizes="(max-width: 652px) 100vw, 652px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-16756" class="wp-caption-text">The Santa Barbara library, viewed from the county courthouse. Is this where the dead local paper’s archives will go? How about future archives of all the local news organs?</figcaption></figure>
The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Barbara_News-Press">Santa Barbara News-Press</a> was born in 1868 and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/24/santa-barbara-news-press-bankruptcy">died</a> in 2023 at age 155. Its glory years ran from 1932 until 2000, when the New York Times sold it to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_McCaw">Wendy McCaw</a>, who <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXb53q_kDfc">rode it to hell</a>.
That ride began with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Barbara_News-Press_controversy">Santa Barbara News Press Controversy</a> in 2006 and ended when Ampersand, the company McCaw created to hold the paper’s bag of assets (which did not include its <a href="https://flickr.com/photos/docsearls/252584558/in/album-72157594299505924/">landmark building</a> downtown, which <a href="https://www.independent.com/2024/01/05/bankruptcy-trustee-for-santa-barbara-news-press-attempts-to-claw-back-buildings/">McCaw kept</a>), filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in late July of last year. Here are stories about the death of the paper in three local news journals that have done a great job of taking up the slack left when the News-Press began to collapse, plus one in the LA Times:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.independent.com/2023/07/23/santa-barbara-news-press-files-for-bankruptcy/">‘Santa Barbara News-Press’ Files for Bankruptcy: Publisher Ampersand Claims Few Assets and Many Creditors</a>, by <a href="https://www.independent.com/author/jeanindependent-com/">Jean Yamamura</a> in the <a href="https://www.independent.com/">Santa Barbara Independent</a> (July 23, 2023)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.noozhawk.com/santa-barbara-news-press-staff-told-all-jobs-eliminated-as-newspaper-stopped-publishing/">Santa Barbara News-Press Declares Bankruptcy, Staff Told All Jobs ‘Eliminated’,</a> by <a href="https://www.noozhawk.com/author/joshua-molina/">Joshua Molina</a>, in <a href="https://noozhawk.com">Noozhawk</a> (July 23, 2023)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.edhat.com/news/santa-barbara-news-press-files-for-bankruptcy-staff-fired/">Santa Barbara News-Press Files for Bankruptcy, Staff Fired</a>, by <a href="https://edhat.com">Edhat</a> Staff (July 24, 2023)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-29/santa-barbara-news-press-bankruptcy-closure-newspaper-owner-wendy-mccaw">Santa Barbara News-Press bankruptcy brings uneasy end to an owner’s bitter tenure</a>, by <a href="https://www.latimes.com/people/james-rainey">James Rainey</a>, in the Los Angeles Times. (July 29, 2023)</li>
</ul>
I followed those with this in <a href="https://doc.searls.com/2023/08/18/we-need-deep-news/">We Need Deep News</a>:
<blockquote>From what I’ve read so far (and I’d love to be wrong) none of those news reports touch on the subject of the News-Press‘ archives, which conceivably reach back across the century and a half it was published. There can’t be a better first draft of history for Santa Barbara than that one. If it’s gone, the loss is incalculable. (August 18 2023)</blockquote>
Last month brought bad news about that:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.independent.com/2024/03/08/santa-barbara-news-press-online-assets-nearly-sold/">‘Santa Barbara News-Press’ Online Assets to Be Sold: Bankruptcy Sale for $250,000 Subject to Bids in April</a>, by Jean Yamamura in the Santa Barbara Independent March 8, 2024</li>
<li><a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/91077421/santa-barbara-news-press-bankruptcy-sale-max-noremo">A local paper went bankrupt. Now a faraway buyer wants its assets: The Santa Barbara News-Press’s digital assets are up for sale. Locals worry they could become a farm for AI-generated SEO bait</a>. By Ernie Smith in Fast Company. (March 5, 2024)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.independent.com/2024/03/29/santa-barbaras-collective-memory-sold-for-kindling/">Santa Barbara’s Collective Memory, Sold for Kindling: Will ‘NewsPress.Com’ Become a Zombie Website?</a> by William Belfiore in the Independent. (March 29, 2024)</li>
</ul>
But then, thanks to William Belfiore’s appeal in that last piece, we learned this:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.independent.com/2024/04/09/santa-barbara-news-press-website-goes-to-local-kids/">‘Santa Barbara News-Press’ Website Goes to ‘Local Kids’ Group Fronted by Ben Romo Makes Winning Auction Bid of $285,000</a>, by Jean Yamamura in the Independent (Apr 09, 2024)</li>
</ul>
The only mention of archives was in the closing sentences of that piece:
<blockquote>The purchase of the website included the Santa Barbara News-Press trademark, which would be important to the groups looking at the physical archive of back issues, photographs, and clippings by topic. Romo, who was once a paper boy for the daily, acknowledged that his group was supportive of the archive remaining local, too.</blockquote>
I don’t know what that means, and I haven’t checked. But I am sure that the archives ought to be managed by the community as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-pool_resource">common pool resource</a>.
As it happens, my wife and I are visiting scholars at the <a href="https://ostromworkshop.indiana.edu/">Ostrom Workshop</a> at Indiana University, which is concerned with this kind of thing, because its namesake, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom">Elinor Ostrom</a>, won a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences">Nobel Prize in Economics</a> for her work on how commons are self-governed. In her landmark book, <a href="https://archive.org/details/governingthecommons">Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action</a>, she lists eight principles for managing a commons, which are summarized <a href="https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/index.html">here</a>:
<ol>
<li> Define clear group boundaries.</li>
<li>Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions.</li>
<li>Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules.</li>
<li>Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities.</li>
<li>Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behavior.</li>
<li>Use graduated sanctions for rule violators.</li>
<li>Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.</li>
<li>Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.</li>
</ol>
Journalists, especially those who report news, are not herding animals. They tend to be competitive and territorial by both nature and purpose. So the collection of news entities I wrote about in <a href="https://doc.searls.com/2023/08/31/we-need-wide-news/">We Need Wide News</a> and <a href="https://doc.searls.com/2023/09/15/we-need-whole-news/">We Need Whole News</a> will almost certainly not cohere into a commons such as Lin (her nickname) Ostrom addresses in that list.
But they should cohere around archives—not only because that’s the right thing to do, but because they need those archives. We all do.
So I hope Santa Barbara’s many journals, journalists, friends, supporters, and interested local institutions get together around this challenge. Build a commons around those archives, whatever and wherever they happen to be.
Meanwhile here in Bloomington, my other hometown, we are pushing forward with <a href="https://doc.searls.com/2024/03/19/the-online-local-chronicle/">The Online Local Chronicle</a> that <a href="https://bsquarebulletin.com/">Dave Askins</a> wrote about in the previous installment in <a href="https://doc.searls.com/news-commons/">this series</a>. We might call that a commons interest here.
 
 
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<title>This Thing is Bigger Than Journalism</title>
<link>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/20/this-thing-is-bigger-than-journalism/</link>
<comments>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/20/this-thing-is-bigger-than-journalism/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Doc Searls]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sun, 21 Apr 2024 01:36:55 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Journalism]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://doc.searls.com/?p=16747</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Journalism as we knew it is washing away. But the story is bigger than journalism alone, and bigger than a story alone can tell. (Image borrowed from the brilliant Despair.com.) We who care about journalism are asked to join the Save Journalism Project, and its fight against Big Tech. Their pitch begins, and adds, On the first point, we […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure class="lo lp lq lr ls lt ll lm paragraph-image">
<div class="ll lm ln"><picture><img decoding="async" class="bg kt lu c" role="presentation" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:994/1*zanuWR6qnlATyJW2LOMa2Q.png" alt="" width="497" height="310" /></picture></div><figcaption class="lv lw lx ll lm ly lz be b bf z dw" data-selectable-paragraph="">Journalism as we knew it is washing away. But the story is bigger than journalism alone, and bigger than a story alone can tell. (Image <a class="af ma" href="https://despair.com/products/bitterness" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">borrowed from</a> the brilliant <a class="af ma" href="http://despair.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Despair.com</a>.)</figcaption></figure>
We who care about journalism are asked to join the <a class="af ma" href="https://savejournalism.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Save Journalism Project</a>, and its fight against Big Tech. Their pitch begins,
<figure class="na nb nc nd ne lt ll lm paragraph-image">
<div class="ll lm mz"><picture><source srcset="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/format:webp/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 720w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:750/format:webp/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 750w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:786/format:webp/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 786w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:828/format:webp/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 828w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 1100w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1052/format:webp/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 1052w" type="image/webp" sizes="(min-resolution: 4dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 4) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (min-resolution: 3dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 67vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 3) and (max-width: 700px) 65vw, (min-resolution: 2.5dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2.5) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (min-resolution: 2dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 526px" /><source srcset="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 720w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:750/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 750w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:786/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 786w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:828/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 828w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 1100w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1052/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png 1052w" sizes="(min-resolution: 4dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 4) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (min-resolution: 3dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 67vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 3) and (max-width: 700px) 65vw, (min-resolution: 2.5dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2.5) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (min-resolution: 2dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 526px" data-testid="og" /><img decoding="async" class="bg kt lu c" role="presentation" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1052/1*vZ-hF9cssx6G7W0bI7LmqQ.png" alt="" width="526" height="455" /></picture></div>
</figure>
and adds,
<figure class="na nb nc nd ne lt ll lm paragraph-image">
<div class="ll lm nf"><picture><source srcset="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/format:webp/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 720w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:750/format:webp/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 750w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:786/format:webp/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 786w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:828/format:webp/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 828w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 1100w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1046/format:webp/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 1046w" type="image/webp" sizes="(min-resolution: 4dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 4) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (min-resolution: 3dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 67vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 3) and (max-width: 700px) 65vw, (min-resolution: 2.5dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2.5) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (min-resolution: 2dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 523px" /><source srcset="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 720w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:750/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 750w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:786/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 786w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:828/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 828w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 1100w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1046/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png 1046w" sizes="(min-resolution: 4dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 4) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (min-resolution: 3dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 67vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 3) and (max-width: 700px) 65vw, (min-resolution: 2.5dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2.5) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (min-resolution: 2dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 523px" data-testid="og" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="bg kt lu c" role="presentation" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1046/1*DjcJGbG2ilcZz9RuXJ_iFw.png" alt="" width="523" height="453" /></picture></div>
</figure>
On the first point, we should note that journalists have been working for magazines, broadcasters, newsletters and themselves for many dozens of years. So journalism isn’t just about newspapers. Also, because so many journalists have long made livings in those other media, the loss of work is far greater than the 2,400 gone from newspapers. It’s truly massive. I don’t know any field where the loss of paying jobs is larger on a percentage basis. Not taxi driving, not hospitality, not retail, not manufacturing… not anything I can think of. (Well, maybe nuns. I don’t see many of those these days.)
We should also respect the simple fact that now there is more journalism than ever: in blogs, social media, podcasting, and other places. Most of those kinds of journalism don’t pay, but that doesn’t disqualify the work from the label. Hell, I’m committing journalism here and this doesn’t pay.
“The story of big tech’s threat to journalism” (what the Project wants us all to tell) is also something of a red herring because it distracts our attention from causes much bigger than Big Tech.
Every new technology “works us over completely,” Marshall McLuhan says (in <a class="af ma" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_Is_the_Massage" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">The Medium is the Massage</a>). And no new medium, no new technologies, have ever worked us more than the digital kind. The change began with digital tech and integrated circuits and then went absolute with the Internet. Together, digital technologies and the Internet have radiacally changed our species, our civilization, and our planet.
Not long ago, in a conversation about this with <a class="af ma" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joi_Ito" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Joi Ito</a>, I asked him how big he thought the digital transformation was. Bigger than broadcast? Print? Writing? Speech? Stone tools?
“No,” he replied. “It’s the biggest thing since <a class="af ma" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">oxygenation</a>.” In case you don’t remember, that happened between about two and a half billion years ago. (Joi also writes about it <a class="af ma" href="https://www.wired.com/story/ideas-joi-ito-great-digitization-event/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">here</a>.)
So, while journalism matters enormously, it’s just one casualty of digitalization. And, let’s face it, a beneficiary as well. Either way, we need to understand the whole picture, which is about a lot more than what journalism sees happening in the mirror.
<a class="af ma" href="http://www.digitallife.center/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Here’s one outfit</a> working on that bigger picture. I‘m involved with it.
I also don’t expect most journalists to take much interest in the subject, because it’s too big, and it doesn’t make full sense as a story, which is journalism’s stock in trade. (I explain a bit about journalism’s “story problem” in <a class="af ma" href="https://tedxsantabarbara.com/2018/doc-searls/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">this TEDx talk</a>.)
Still, some journalists are on the case, including me. Love to have others join in. But please don’t bother if you think Big Tech is alone to blame. Because the story is bigger than that, and far more than a story.
<hr />
I just copied and pasted this post from <a href="https://dsearls.medium.com/this-thing-is-bigger-than-journalism-3be89a2cef68">here in Medium</a>, where I posted it in July 2019. It expands on a post now archived <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231206175314/http://my.1999.io/users/dsearls/2019/06/10/thisThingIsBiggerThanJournalism.html">here</a>. It’s kinda sad that not much has changed over all that time.
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<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">16747</post-id> </item>
<item>
<title>Aviation vs. Eclipse</title>
<link>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/08/aviation-vs-eclipse/</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Doc Searls]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 08 Apr 2024 16:04:58 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[astronomy]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://doc.searls.com/?p=16733</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Contrails form behind jet aircraft flying through the stratosphere. Since high-altitude aviation is happening all around the earth more or less constantly, planes are painting the sky everywhere. (Here is one time-lapse. And another. And one of my own.) Many contrails don’t last, of course, but many do, and together they account for much of […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_16734" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16734" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-16734" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FEABC5A2-3EF5-4D2E-9C02-30CACAFA9B5A-1024x768.jpeg" alt="" width="1024" height="768" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FEABC5A2-3EF5-4D2E-9C02-30CACAFA9B5A-1024x768.jpeg 1024w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FEABC5A2-3EF5-4D2E-9C02-30CACAFA9B5A-300x225.jpeg 300w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FEABC5A2-3EF5-4D2E-9C02-30CACAFA9B5A-768x576.jpeg 768w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FEABC5A2-3EF5-4D2E-9C02-30CACAFA9B5A-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FEABC5A2-3EF5-4D2E-9C02-30CACAFA9B5A-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-16734" class="wp-caption-text">Contrails in the stratosphere, smearing sideways into broad cloud cover. This view is toward the place in the sky where a full solar eclipse will happen a few hours later.</figcaption></figure>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrail">Contrails</a> form behind jet aircraft flying through the stratosphere. Since high-altitude aviation is happening all around the earth more or less constantly, planes are painting the sky everywhere. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDeYRRe3E6Q">Here is one time-lapse</a>. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvP4-sVSO-M">And another</a>. <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/infrastructure/53622220849/in/dateposted-public/">And one of my own</a>.)
Many contrails don’t last, of course, but many do, and together they account for much of the cloud cover we see every day. The altocumulus, altostratus, and cirrus clouds that contrails produce are <a href="https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/cloud-atlas-leaps-into-21st-century-with-12-new-cloud-types/80685/">now officially recognized</a> as homogenitus and homomutatus, which are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropogenic_cloud">anthropogenic</a>: owing to human activity.
And today, Eclipse Day, <a href="https://news.delta.com/eclipse-viewing-30000-feet-delta-offer-path-totality-flight">Delta is offering to fly you along the path of totality</a>. Others too? I don’t know. I’m taking a few moments to write this before we walk up to our hilltop cemetery to watch the eclipse for over four minutes, thanks to our lucky location near the very center of Totality.
I’m curious to see and hear contrail reports from others now awaiting their few minutes out of the sun.
1:14pm—The moon’s shadow made landfall in Mexico a short time ago. Here in Bloomington, the sky is well-painted by contrails. Mostly it looks like high-altitude haze, but believe me: if it weren’t for commercial aviation, the sky would be solid blue. Because the contrails today are quickly smeared sideways, losing their form but not their color.
5:00pm—Contrails were aplenty, and a spread-out contrail did slide in front of the sun and the moon… 
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-16739" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-12-at-11.03.29 AM-1024x919.png" alt="eclipse" width="60%" height="image" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-12-at-11.03.29 AM-1024x919.png 1024w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-12-at-11.03.29 AM-300x269.png 300w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-12-at-11.03.29 AM-768x690.png 768w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-12-at-11.03.29 AM-1536x1379.png 1536w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-12-at-11.03.29 AM.png 1704w " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
but it was still a spectacular sight:
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-16740" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-12-at-11.06.13 AM.png" alt="eclipse" width="60%" height="image" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-12-at-11.06.13 AM.png 946w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-12-at-11.06.13 AM-300x266.png 300w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-12-at-11.06.13 AM-768x680.png 768w " sizes="(max-width: 946px) 100vw, 946px" />
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<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">16733</post-id> </item>
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<title>Talking Artificial Intelligence with the Real Don Norman</title>
<link>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/05/talking-artificial-intelligence-with-the-real-don-norman/</link>
<comments>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/05/talking-artificial-intelligence-with-the-real-don-norman/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Doc Searls]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Apr 2024 20:07:56 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[AI]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hamilton Lugar School]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Indiana University]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ostrom Workshop]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Design]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://doc.searls.com/?p=16724</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Artificial is AI’s frst name. And Intelligence is a quality, not a quantity. You can’t measure it with a dipstick, a ruler, or an IQ test. If you could, you’d get the same result every time.* But being artificial doesn’t mean AI isn’t dangerous, fun or both. It is, and will be, what we make […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-16730" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/norman-don.jpg" alt="" width="60%" height="image" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/norman-don.jpg 768w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/norman-don-300x200.jpg 300w " sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />
Artificial is AI’s frst name. And Intelligence is a quality, not a quantity. You can’t measure it with a dipstick, a ruler, or an IQ test. If you could, you’d get the same result every time.*
But being artificial doesn’t mean AI isn’t dangerous, fun or both. It is, and will be, what we make of it.
That’s what <a href="https://jnd.org/about-don-norman/latest-updates/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Don Norman</a> says, and he’s been publishing in AI journals since 1973. His laboratory produced the first multi-layer neural nets in the 1980s. He wrote <a href="https://www.nngroup.com/books/things-that-make-us-smart/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Things that Make us Smart</a> in 1993.
In the opinion of myself and countless others, Don is also the foremost authority on design—of anything and everything. For more on that, check out <a href="ttps://jnd.org/">Don’s Web page</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Norman">his Wikipedia page</a>, and <a href="https://jnd.org/books/">his books</a>. Or, if you just want to sample some of his thoughts on AI, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55IKi7uVuyg">watch this</a>.
Or you can skip all that and come to the good stuff: joining us in a talk with Don in the final salon of this semester on the topic of <a href="https://hls.indiana.edu/human-ai-intelligence/">Artificial +/vs. Human Intelligence</a>. It’s next Tuesday, April 9, at Noon Eastern time. (That’s less than 24 hours after the shadow of the Moon passes over the Indiana University campus. Yes, <a href="https://eclipse.iu.edu/">totality will be local here</a>.)
Also, this won’t be a lecture or a presentation. It will be <a href="https://jnd.org/about-don-norman/discussions-not-talks/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a lively discussion</a> because Don is especially good at that.
It’s also free and online, but you have to register first. Do that <a href="https://events.iu.edu/ostromworkshop/event/1370453-beyond-the-web-speaker-series-ai-is-artificial-so">here</a>.
<hr />
*For what it’s worth, my own known IQ test scores have an 80-point range. I’ve written about that, and the myth of “IQ” <a href="https://doc.searls.com/2010/11/13/iq-and-caste/">here</a>, <a href="https://doc.searls.com/2007/11/04/iq-a-caste-system-that-gets-personal/">here</a>, <a href="https://doc.searls.com/2020/12/14/be-the-hawk/">here</a>, <a href="https://doc.searls.com/2015/12/19/moron-the-iq-myth-pun-intended/">here</a>, and I suppose in too many other places.
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<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">16724</post-id> </item>
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<title>Fishing For Free TV Signals</title>
<link>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/04/fishing-for-free-tv-signals/</link>
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<dc:creator><![CDATA[Doc Searls]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Apr 2024 03:48:57 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Broadcasting]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[tv]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[antenna]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[ota]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://doc.searls.com/?p=16717</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I think I will be the last person in Bloomington to try getting free over-the-air TV from what’s left of all the major networks. But that’s just my style, so roll with me while I explain how I’m hoping to do it, with the antenna above, which I’ll need because here is what the Search […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_16718" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16718" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-16718" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/televes-dat-boss-1024x713.png" alt="" width="1024" height="713" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/televes-dat-boss-1024x713.png 1024w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/televes-dat-boss-300x209.png 300w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/televes-dat-boss-768x535.png 768w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/televes-dat-boss-1536x1069.png 1536w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/televes-dat-boss-2048x1425.png 2048w " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-16718" class="wp-caption-text">By expert acclaim, this is the best antenna for receiving hard-to-get over-the-air (OTA) TV signals</figcaption></figure>
I think I will be the last person in Bloomington to try getting free over-the-air TV from what’s left of all the major networks. But that’s just my style, so roll with me while I explain how I’m hoping to do it, with the antenna above, which I’ll need because here is what the Search Map at RabbitEars.info says we might get here:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-16719" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-02-at-2.20.40 PM-1024x661.png" alt="" width="1024" height="661" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-02-at-2.20.40 PM-1024x661.png 1024w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-02-at-2.20.40 PM-300x194.png 300w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-02-at-2.20.40 PM-768x496.png 768w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-02-at-2.20.40 PM-1536x992.png 1536w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-02-at-2.20.40 PM-2048x1322.png 2048w " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
We live next door right now, and the top station above, WTIU from Indiana University (our PBS affiliate), comes from a tower you can walk to from here. We can get that signal by using a straightened paper clip for an antenna. (You jam the clip into the center hole of the coaxial connector in the back of the TV.) Even a real indoor antenna connected to the same jack gets nothing else, not even the two stations above with “Fair” signal strength.
But <a href="https://www.televes.com/us/149884-dat-boss-mix-lr-antenna-high-vhf-uhf-repack-ready.html">this Televes antenna</a> might do the job because we’re on the slope of a hill that faces the Indianapolis stations that carry CBS (WTTV/4 on 27), ABC (WRTV/6 on 25), NBC (WTHR/13 on 13), and Fox (WRDB/41 on 32)*. These range from 27 to 54 miles away, in roughly the same direction. VHF and UHF signals always gain strength when they hit the faces of hills, similar to how surf builds as it approaches a sand bar or a shore. Also, the <a href="http://Televes Dat Boss">Televes DAT BOSS</a> antenna gets great reviews:
<ul>
<li>TechHive: <a href="https://www.techhive.com/article/1431644/televes-dat-boss-mix-lr-tv-antenna-review.html">Televes Dat Boss Mix LR review: This is a great outdoor antenna</a></li>
<li>Tyler the Antenna Guy: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=795qyfT8CEA">Televes DATBOSS LR Mix Outdoor Antenna Review 149883</a></li>
<li>Solid Signal: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo7zCyLLAS4">ALL NEW Televes DATBOSS Mix LR Antenna TESTED (w/assembly instructions)</a></li>
<li>Amazon: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Televes-DATBOSS-Hi-VHF-Antenna-Replaces/dp/B09JBNDXWD/">Televes DAT Series BOSS Mix LR Outdoor High-VHF/UHF HDTV Antenna</a> (see <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Televes-DATBOSS-Hi-VHF-Antenna-Replaces/product-reviews/B09JBNDXWD">the reviews</a>)</li>
</ul>
I was going to put it in our new attic before the drywall goes up. However, the attic space is low and full of close cross-braces. Worse, the antenna is not small and kinda complicated to fit in a space that’s a web of short 2x4s. Dig:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-16720" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-10.29.23 PM-1024x458.png" alt="" width="1024" height="458" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-10.29.23 PM-1024x458.png 1024w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-10.29.23 PM-300x134.png 300w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-10.29.23 PM-768x343.png 768w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-10.29.23 PM-1536x687.png 1536w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-10.29.23 PM-2048x916.png 2048w " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
So it will go on a pole in the backyard and feed a coaxial line that will tunnel through conduit under the yard and inside to the new living room.
But I would like to test it first, preferably with a tuner gizmo I can plug into my laptop. I had one of those for years: the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid TV Tuner stick, which looked like a fat thumb drive,with USB-A at one end and a coax connector for an antenna at the other. It was sold in the ’00s and picked up both analog and digital TV (the Digital Transition was happening then), on every North American channel, and came with good software that ran on Macs and operating systems that have long been abandoned. Far as I can tell there are no replacements that run on current hardware or operating system, other than <a href="https://www.geniatech.eu/product/eyetv-t2/">this one sold in Europe</a>. Far as I can tell, it only works on TV bands over there. But I could be wrong. If anybody knows of a gizmo/softward combo I can use, please tell me. My only other option is to buy or find a cheap TV and try that out. Any advice is welcome. Thanks!
<hr />
*After the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_television_transition">digital transition</a> in 2008, and again with the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_wireless_spectrum_auction#Repacking">repack” after 2016, </a>most TV stations moved onto channels other than their original ones, using less spectrum overall. All the TV channels above 36 were auctioned off, first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_wireless_spectrum_auction">in 2008</a> and again <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_wireless_spectrum_auction">in 2018</a>. Most buyers were cellular and other short-range wireless carriers, which have been repurposing the old TV spectrum for 5G and other modern uses. The only station in Indianapolis that didn’t move its channel position was WTHR/13. That one is listed in the chart above as one of the “bad” signals for this location. The Televes antenna is designed specifically for “high band” VHF (channels 7-13) and the remaining UHF (14 to 36) TV channels. It also filters out any 5G signals that the antenna might pick up on what used to be the higher UHF channels. By the way, the old “low band” VHF channels (2 to 6) are still in use in some places, but by very few TV stations. So it’s not worth it for Televes to design an antenna to pick those channels up. Such an antenna would also be a lot bigger and longer because the low-band elements of the antenna would be much longer.
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<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">16717</post-id> </item>
<item>
<title>Feed Time</title>
<link>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/04/feed-time/</link>
<comments>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/04/feed-time/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Doc Searls]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2024 19:25:05 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[AI]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Art]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Personal]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[art]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[feedroll]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[feeds]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://doc.searls.com/?p=16710</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Two things worth blogging about that happened this morning. One was getting down and dirty trying to make DALL-E 3 work. That turned into giving up trying to find DALL-E (in any version) on the open Web and biting the $20/month bullet for a Pro account with ChatGPT, which for some reason maintains its DALL-E […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_16711" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16711" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-16711" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/people-eating-blogs.png" alt="" width="1024" height="1024" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/people-eating-blogs.png 1024w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/people-eating-blogs-300x300.png 300w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/people-eating-blogs-150x150.png 150w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/people-eating-blogs-768x768.png 768w " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-16711" class="wp-caption-text">I asked ChatGPT to give me “people eating blogs” and got this after it suggested some details.</figcaption></figure>
Two things worth blogging about that happened this morning.
One was getting down and dirty trying to make DALL-E 3 work. That turned into giving up trying to find DALL-E (in any version) on the open Web and biting the $20/month bullet for a Pro account with ChatGPT, which for some reason maintains its <a href="https://openai.com/dall-e-3">DALL-E 3 Web page</a> while having “<a class="ui-link group f-ui-1 inline-block ui-link--underline relative text-[currentColor]" href="https://chat.openai.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" aria-label="Try in ChatGPT">Try in ChatGPT</a><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/2197.png" alt="↗" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />︎” on that page link to the ChatGPT home page rather than a DALL-E one. I gather that the free version of DALL-E is now the one you get at Microsoft’s <a href="https://copilot.microsoft.com/images/create">Copilot | Designer</a>, while the direct form of DALL-E is what you get when you prompt ChatGPT (now 4.0 for Pro customers… or so I gather) to give you an image that credits nothing to DALL-E.
The other thing was getting some great help from <a href="https://scripting.com">Dave Winer</a> in putting the new Feedroll category of <a href="https://feedland.org/?username=dsearls#">my Feedland feeds</a> placed on this blog, in a way similar stylistically to old-fashioned blogrolls (such as the one <a href="http://weblog.searls.com/">here</a>). You’ll find it in the right column of this blog now. One cool difference from blogrolls is that the feedroll is live. Very cool. I’m gradually expanding it.
Meanwhile, after failing to get ChatGPT or Copilot | Designer to give me the image I needed on another topic (which I’ll visit here later) I prompted them to give me an image that might speak to a feedroll of blogs. ChatGPT gave me the one above, not in response to “people eating blogs” (my first attempt), but instead to “People eating phone, mobile and computer screens of type.” Microsoft | Designer gave me these:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-16712" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-3.16.23 PM-968x1024.png" alt="" width="968" height="1024" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-3.16.23 PM-968x1024.png 968w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-3.16.23 PM-284x300.png 284w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-3.16.23 PM-768x812.png 768w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-04-at-3.16.23 PM.png 1284w " sizes="(max-width: 968px) 100vw, 968px" />
Redraw your own inconclusions.
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<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">16710</post-id> </item>
<item>
<title>Death is a Feature</title>
<link>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/04/death-is-a-feature/</link>
<comments>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/04/death-is-a-feature/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Doc Searls]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2024 14:06:09 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Geology]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[problems]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Space]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://doc.searls.com/?p=16700</guid>
<description><![CDATA[When Parisians got tired of cemeteries during the French Revolution, they conscripted priests to relocate bones of more than six million deceased forebears to empty limestone quarries below the city: a hundred miles of rooms and corridors now called The Catacombes. It was from those quarries that much of the city’s famous structures above—Notre Dame, et. al.—were built […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure class="lo lp lq lr ls lt ll lm paragraph-image">
<div class="ll lm ln"><picture><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="bg kt lu c" role="presentation" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1280/1*OystSeH7CU1WK3kZy9UAtw.jpeg" alt="" width="640" height="427" /></picture></div><figcaption class="lv lw lx ll lm ly lz be b bf z dw" data-selectable-paragraph="">When Parisians got tired of cemeteries during the French Revolution, they <a class="af ma" href="https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2010/07/20/hey-jules-bring-me-another-fifty-skulls/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">conscripted priests to relocate bones </a>of more than six million deceased forebears to empty limestone quarries below the city: a hundred miles of rooms and corridors now called <a class="af ma" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/albums/72157624406795571" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">The Catacombes</a>. It was from those quarries that much of the city’s famous structures above—Notre Dame, et. al.—were built in prior centuries, using a volume of extracted rock rivaling that of Egypt’s Great Pyramids. That rock, like the bones of those who extracted it, was once alive. In the shot above, shadows of future fossils (including moi) shoot the dead with their cell phones.</figcaption></figure>
<a class="af ma" href="https://www.wired.com/2016/09/elon-musk-colonize-mars/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars</a>.
This is a very human thing to want. But before we start following his lead, we might want to ask whether death awaits us there.
Not our deaths. Anything’s. What died there to make life possible for what succeeds it?
From what we can tell so far, the answer is nothing.
To explain why life needs death, answer this: what do plastic, wood, limestone, paint, travertine, marble, asphalt, oil, coal, stalactites, peat, stalagmites, cotton, wool, chert, cement, nearly all food, all gas, and most electric services have in common?
They are all products of death. They are remains of living things or made from them.
Consider this fact: about a quarter of all the world’s sedimentary rock is limestone, dolomite and other carbonate rocks: remains of beings that were once alive. The Dolomites of Italy, the Rock of Gibraltar, the summit of Mt. Everest, all products of death.
Even the iron we mine has a biological source. Here’s how John McPhee explains it in his Pulitzer-winning <a class="af ma" href="http://www.johnmcphee.com/annals.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Annals of the Former World</a>:
<blockquote class="na nb nc">
Although life had begun in the form of anaerobic bacteria early in the Archean Eon, photosynthetic bacteria did not appear until the middle Archean and were not abundant until the start of the Proterozoic. The bacteria emitted oxygen. The atmosphere changed. The oceans changed. The oceans had been rich in dissolved ferrous iron, in large part put into the seas by extruding lavas of two billion years. Now with the added oxygen the iron became ferric, insoluble, and dense. Precipitating out, it sank to the bottom as ferric sludge, where it joined the lime muds and silica muds and other seafloor sediments to form, worldwide, the banded-iron formations that were destined to become rivets, motorcars and cannons. The is the iron of the Mesabi Range, the Australian iron of the Hammerslee Basin, the iron of Michigan, Wisconsin, Brazil. More than ninety percent of the iron ever mined in the world has come from Precambrian banded-iron formations. Their ages date broadly from twenty-five hundred to two thousand million years before the present. The transition that produced them — from a reducing to an oxidizing atmosphere and the associated radical change in the chemistry of the oceans — would be unique. It would never repeat itself. The earth would not go through that experience twice.
</blockquote>
Death produces building and burning materials in an abundance that seems limitless, at least from standpoint of humans in the here and now. But every here and now ends. Realizing that is a vestigial feature of human sensibility.
Take for example, <a class="af ma" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120459389654809159.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">The World Has Plenty of Oil</a>, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal ten years ago. In it, Nansen G. Saleri writes, “As a matter of context, the globe has consumed only one out of a grand total of 12 to 16 trillion barrels underground.” He concludes,
<blockquote class="na nb nc">
The world is not running out of oil any time soon. A gradual transitioning on the global scale away from a fossil-based energy system may in fact happen during the 21st century. The root causes, however, will most likely have less to do with lack of supplies and far more with superior alternatives. The overused observation that “the Stone Age did not end due to a lack of stones” may in fact find its match.
The solutions to global energy needs require an intelligent integration of environmental, geopolitical and technical perspectives each with its own subsets of complexity. On one of these — the oil supply component — the news is positive. Sufficient liquid crude supplies do exist to sustain production rates at or near 100 million barrels per day almost to the end of this century.
Technology matters. The benefits of scientific advancement observable in the production of better mobile phones, TVs and life-extending pharmaceuticals will not, somehow, bypass the extraction of usable oil resources. To argue otherwise distracts from a focused debate on what the correct energy-policy priorities should be, both for the United States and the world community at large.
</blockquote>
In the long view of a planet that can’t replace any of that shit, this is the rationalization of a parasite. That this parasite can move on to consume other irreplaceable substances it calls “resources” does not make its actions any less parasitic.
Or, correctly, saprophytic; since a <a class="af ma" href="https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saprophyte" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">saprophyte</a> is “an organism which gets its energy from dead and decaying organic matter.”
Moving on to coal, the .8 trillion tons of it in Wyoming’s <a class="af ma" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_River_Basin" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Powder River Basin</a> now contributes 40% of the fuel used in coal-fired power plants in the U.S. Here’s the biggest coal mine in <a class="af ma" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/albums/72157613185884418" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">the basin</a>, called <a class="af ma" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/3240380173/in/album-72157613185884418/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Black Thunder</a>, as it looked to my camera in 2009:
<figure class="ne nf ng nh ni lt ll lm paragraph-image">
<div class="nj nk ef nl bg nm" tabindex="0" role="button">
<div class="ll lm nd"><picture><source srcset="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/format:webp/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 640w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 720w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:750/format:webp/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 750w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:786/format:webp/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 786w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:828/format:webp/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 828w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 1100w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 1400w" type="image/webp" sizes="(min-resolution: 4dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 4) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (min-resolution: 3dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 67vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 3) and (max-width: 700px) 65vw, (min-resolution: 2.5dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2.5) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (min-resolution: 2dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" /><source srcset="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 640w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 720w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:750/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 750w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:786/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 786w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:828/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 828w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 1100w, https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg 1400w" sizes="(min-resolution: 4dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 4) and (max-width: 700px) 50vw, (min-resolution: 3dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 67vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 3) and (max-width: 700px) 65vw, (min-resolution: 2.5dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2.5) and (max-width: 700px) 80vw, (min-resolution: 2dppx) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) and (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" data-testid="og" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="bg kt lu c" role="presentation" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*nNsc2WMwVOFPIf4oGoiN3w.jpeg" alt="" width="700" height="395" /></picture></div>
</div>
</figure>
About half the nation’s electricity is produced by coal-fired plants, the largest of which can eat the length of a 1.5-mile long coal train in just 8 hours. In Uncommon Carriers, McPhee says Powder River coal at current rates will last about 200 years.
Then what? Nansen Saleri thinks we’re resourceful enough to get along with other energy sources after we’re done with the irreplaceable kind.
I doubt it.
Wind, tide, and solar are unlikely to fuel aviation, though I suppose fresh biofuel might. Still, at some point, we must take a long view, or join our evolutionary ancestors in the fossil record faster than we might otherwise like.
As I fly in my <a class="af ma" href="http://flickr.com/search/?q=windowseat&w=52614599%40N00" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">window seat</a> from place to place, especially on routes that take me over arctic, near-arctic, and formerly arctic locations, I see more and more of what geologists call “the picture”: a four-dimensional portfolio of scenes in current and former worlds. Thus, when I look at the seashores that arc eastward from New York City— Long Island, Block Island, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Cape Cod—I <a class="af ma" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/4028174592/in/album-72157622499901411/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">see a ridge of half-drowned debris</a> scraped off a continent and deposited at the terminus of an ice cap that began melting back toward the North Pole only <a class="af ma" href="http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/student/martin1/laurentide.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">18,000 years ago</a>—a few moments before the geologic present. Back then, the Great Lakes were still in the future, their basins covered by ice that <a class="af ma" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes#/media/File:Glacial_lakes.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">did not depart from the lakes’ northern edges</a> until about <a class="af ma" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GreatLakeFormation2.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">7,000 years ago</a> or 5,000 B.C.
Most of Canada was still under ice while civilization began in the Middle East and the <a class="af ma" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5000_BC" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">first calendars</a> got carved. Fly over Canada often enough and the lakes appear to be exactly what they are: puddles of a recently melted cap of ice. Same goes for most of the ponds around Boston. Every inland swamp in New England and upstate New York was a pond only a few dozen years ago, and was ice only a dozen or so centuries before that. Go forward a few thousand years and all of today’s ponds will be packed with accumulated humus and haired over by woods or farmland. In the present, we are halfway between those two conditions. Here and now, the last ice age is still ending.
As Canada continues to thaw, one can see human activity spark and spread across barren lands, extracting “resources” from ground made free of permafrost only in the last few years. Doing that is both the economic and the pestilential thing to do.
On the economic side, we spend down the planet’s principal, and fail to invest toward interest that pays off for the planet’s species. That the principal we spend has been in the planet’s vaults for millions or billions of years, and in some cases cannot be replaced, is of little concern to those spending it, which is roughly all of us.
Perhaps the planet looks at our species the same way and cares little that every species is a project that ends. Still, in the meantime, from <a class="af ma" href="https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/robinson-jeffers/the-eye/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">the planet’s own one-eyed perspective</a>, our species takes far more than it gives, and with little regard for consequences. We may know, <a class="af ma" href="http://searls.com/whitman.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">as Whitman put it</a>, the amplitude of time. We also tend to assume in time’s fullness all will work out.
But it won’t.
<a class="af ma" href="http://pbisotopes.ess.sunysb.edu/reports/ny-city/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Manhattan schist</a>, the bedrock anchoring New York City’s tallest buildings, is a little over half a billion years old. In about the same amount of time, our aging Sun, growing hotter, will turn off photosynthesis. A few billion years later, the Sun will swell into a red giant with a diameter wider than Earth’s orbit, roasting the remains of our sweet blue planet and scattering its material out into the cosmos, perhaps for eventual recycling by stars and planets not yet formed.
In a much shorter run, many catastrophes will happen. One clearly is what our species is already doing to the planet during what geologists correctly call the <a class="af ma" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">Anthropocene</a>. I suppose that’s a good reason for Elon and crew to “save” a few members of our vain little species. But why fuck up Mars before we’re done fucking up Earth, when there’s still some leverage with the death we have at home and that Mars won’t begin to have until stuff dies on it?
I’ve always been both an optimist and a realist. Specifically, I’m an optimist for at least the short run, by which I mean the next few dozen years. But I’m a pessimist for our civilization — and our species. Death is always a winning bet.
But hey, maybe nature knows better what to do with us than we do.
<a class="af ma" href="http://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2008/03/04/can-life-keep-up-with-death/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow">The first ancestor of this piece</a> appeared in blogs.harvard.edu on 4 March 2008. The second is <a href="https://dsearls.medium.com/death-is-a-feature-64db3c00cbee">here</a> on Medium.
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<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">16700</post-id> </item>
<item>
<title>Looking for DALL-E 3 Help</title>
<link>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/04/looking-for-dall-e-3-help/</link>
<comments>https://doc.searls.com/2024/04/04/looking-for-dall-e-3-help/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Doc Searls]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2024 13:48:22 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[AI]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Art]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[problems]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://doc.searls.com/?p=16695</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I just returned to DALL-E 3 after using its Microsoft version (currently called Copilot | Designer) for a while. But I can’t get in. See how it says “Try in ChatGPT↗︎?” When I do that, it goes to https://chat.openai.com/. After I log in there, it offers no clue about where DALL-E 3 is. So I […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<center><img decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-16696" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/DALL-E3-header-1024x744.png" alt="dall-e 3 header" width="70%" height="image" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/DALL-E3-header-1024x744.png 1024w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/DALL-E3-header-300x218.png 300w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/DALL-E3-header-768x558.png 768w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/DALL-E3-header-1536x1115.png 1536w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/DALL-E3-header.png 1658w " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></center>I just returned to DALL-E 3 after using its Microsoft version (currently called <a href="https://copilot.microsoft.com/images/create">Copilot | Designer</a>) for a while. But I can’t get in.
See how it says “Try in ChatGPT<img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/2197.png" alt="↗" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />︎?” When I do that, it goes to https://chat.openai.com/. After I log in there, it offers no clue about where DALL-E 3 is. So I asked, “How do I get to the DALL-E 3 page after I’m logged in here?”
ChatGPT answered, “As of my last update in January 2022, DALL-E 3 is a hypothetical iteration of the DALL-E model, and there’s no information about its existence or how to access it. If it were to be released, you might typically find access through OpenAI’s website or platform if they make it available to the public. However, without further updates or announcements, it’s challenging to provide specific instructions. If OpenAI releases DALL-E 3 or any similar model in the future, you can check their official website or announcements for information on how to access it.”
Additional useless dialog followed. So now I’ll ask the Lazyweb. Does anyone know how to get into DALL-E 3?
]]></content:encoded>
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<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">16695</post-id> </item>
<item>
<title>Why selling personal data is a bad idea</title>
<link>https://doc.searls.com/2024/03/27/why-selling-personal-data-is-a-bad-idea/</link>
<comments>https://doc.searls.com/2024/03/27/why-selling-personal-data-is-a-bad-idea/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Doc Searls]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Mar 2024 20:18:43 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[adtech]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[advertising]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[intention economy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[money]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Personal clouds]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[personal data]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[privacy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[regulation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Subscriptions]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[VRM]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://doc.searls.com/?p=16684</guid>
<description><![CDATA[This post is for the benefit of anyone wondering about, researching, or going into business on the proposition that selling one’s own personal data is a good idea. Here are some of my learnings from having studied this proposition myself for the last twenty years or more. The business does exist. See eleven companies in […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_16685" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16685" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-16685" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/people-data-harvesting.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="653" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/people-data-harvesting.jpg 1024w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/people-data-harvesting-300x191.jpg 300w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/people-data-harvesting-768x490.jpg 768w " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-16685" class="wp-caption-text">Prompt: “a field of many different kinds of people being harvested by machines and turned into bales of fertilizer.” Via Microsoft CoPilot | Designer.</figcaption></figure>
This post is for the benefit of anyone wondering about, researching, or going into business on the proposition that selling one’s own personal data is a good idea. Here are some of my learnings from having studied this proposition myself for the last twenty years or more.
<ol>
<li>The business does exist. See eleven companies in <a href="https://cyber.harvard.edu/projectvrm/VRM_Development_Work#Markets_for_personal_data">Markets for personal data</a> listed among <a href="https://cyber.harvard.edu/projectvrm/VRM_Development_Work">many other VRM-ish businesses</a> on the <a href="https://cyber.harvard.edu/projectvrm/">ProjectVRM wiki</a>.</li>
<li>The business category harvesting the most personal data is <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=adtech&ia=web">adtech (aka ad tech</a> and “programmatic”) advertising, which is the surveillance-based side of the advertising business. It is at the heart of what <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshana_Zuboff">Shoshana Zuboff</a> calls <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism">surveillance capitalism</a>, and is now <a href="https://www.marketingcharts.com/advertising-trends/programmatic-and-rtb-111372">most of</a> what advertising has become online. It’s roughly a trillion-dollar business. It is also nothing like advertising of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men">Mad Men</a> kind. (Credit where due: old-fashioned advertising, aimed at whole populations, gave us nearly all the brand names known to the world). As I put it in <a href="https://dsearls.medium.com/separating-advertisings-wheat-and-chaff-47858adfcb20#.i6msx57rv">Separating Advertising’s Wheat and Chaff</a>, Madison Avenue fell asleep, direct response marketing ate its brain, and it woke up as an alien replica of itself.</li>
<li>Adtech pays nothing to people for their data or data about them. Not personally. Google may pay carriers for traffic data harvested from phones, and corporate customers of auctioned personal data may pay publishers for moments in which ads can be placed in front of tracked individuals’ ears or eyeballs. Still, none of that money has ever gone to individuals for any reason, including compensation for the insults and inconveniences the system requires. So there is little if any existing infrastructure on which paying people for personal data can be scaffolded up. Nor are there any policy motivations. In fact,</li>
<li>Regulations have done nothing to slow down the juggernaut of growth in the adtech industry. For Google, Facebook, and other adtech giants, paying huge fines for violations (of the GDPR, the CCPA, the DMA, or whatever) is just the cost of doing business. The GDPR compliance services business is also in the multi-$billion range, and growing fast. In fact,</li>
<li>Regulations have made the experience of using the Web worse for everyone. Thank the GDPR for all the consent notices subtracting value from every website you visit while adding cognitive overhead and other costs to site visitors and operators. In nearly every case, these notices are ways for site operators to obey the letter of the GDPR while violating its spirit. And, although all these agreements are contracts, you have no record of what you’ve agreed to. So they are worse than worthless.</li>
<li>Tracking people without their clear and conscious invitation or a court order is wrong on its face. Period. Full stop. That tracking is The Way Things Are Done online does not make it right, any more than driving drunk or smoking in crowded elevators was just fine in the 1950s. When the Digital Age matures, decades from now, we will look back on our current time as one thick with extreme moral compromises that were finally corrected after the downsides became clear and more ethically sound technologies and economies came along. One of those corrections will be increasing personal agency rather than just corporate capacities. In fact,</li>
<li>Increasing personal independence and agency will be good for markets, because free customers are more valuable than captive ones. Having ways to gather, keep, and make use of personal data is an essential first step toward that goal. We have made very little progress in that direction so far. (Yes, there are lots of good projects listed <a href="https://cyber.harvard.edu/projectvrm/VRM_Development_Work">here</a>, but there we still a long way to go.)</li>
<li>Businesses being “user-centric” will do nothing to increase customers’ value to themselves and the marketplace. First, as long as we remain mere “users” of others’ systems, we will be in a subordinate and dependent role. While there are lots of things we can do in that role, we will be able to do far more if we are free and independent agents. Because of that,</li>
<li>We need technologies that create and increase personal independence and agency. Personal data stores (aka warehouses, vaults, clouds, life management platforms, lockers, and pods) are one step toward doing that. Many have been around for a long time: <a href="http://projectvrm.org">ProjectVRM</a> currently lists thirty-three under the <a href="https://cyber.harvard.edu/projectvrm/VRM_Development_Work#Personal_Data_Stores">Personal Data Stores</a> heading. Some have been there a long time. The problem with all of them is that they are still too focused on what people do as social beings in the Web 2.0 world, rather than on what they can do for themselves, both to become more well-adjusted human beings and more valuable customers in the marketplace. For that,</li>
<li>It will help to have independent personal AIs. These are AI systems that work for us, exclusively. None exist yet. When they do, they will help us manage the personal data that fully matters:
<ul>
<li>Contacts—records and relationships</li>
<li>Calendars—where we’ve been, what we’ve done, with whom, where, and when</li>
<li>Health records and relationships with providers, going back all the way</li>
<li>Financial records and relationships, including past and present obligations</li>
<li>Property we have and where it is, including all the small stuff</li>
<li>Shopping—what we’ve bought, plan to buy, or might be thinking about,</li>
<li>Subscriptions—what we’re paying for, when they end or renew, what kind of deal we’re locked into, and what better ones might be out there.</li>
<li>Travel—Where we’ve been, what we’ve done, with whom, and when</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
Personal AIs are today where personal computers were fifty years ago. Nearly all the AI news today is about modern mainframe businesses: giants with massive data centers churning away on ingested data of all kinds. But some of these models are open sourced and can be made available to any of us for our own purposes, such as dealing with the abundance of data in our own lives that is mostly out of control. Some of it has never been digitized. With AI help it could be.
I’m in a time crunch right now. So, if you’re with me this far, read <a href="https://doc.searls.com/2018/09/18/data/">We can do better than selling our data</a>, which I wrote in 2018 and remains as valid as ever. Or dig <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Intention-Economy-When-Customers-Charge/dp/1422158527">The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge </a>(Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), which Tim Berners Lee says inspired <a href="https://solidproject.org/">Solid</a>. I’m thinking about following it up. If you’re interested in seeing that happen, let me know.
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<item>
<title>The Online Local Chronicle</title>
<link>https://doc.searls.com/2024/03/19/the-online-local-chronicle/</link>
<comments>https://doc.searls.com/2024/03/19/the-online-local-chronicle/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Doc Searls]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 19 Mar 2024 22:00:22 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Bloomington]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Journalism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[News Commons]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://doc.searls.com/?p=16667</guid>
<description><![CDATA[After we came to Bloomington in the summer of 2021, we rented an apartment by Prospect Hill, a quiet dome of old houses just west of downtown. There we were surprised to hear, nearly every night, as many police and ambulance sirens as we’d heard in our Manhattan apartment. Helicopters too. Soon we realized why: […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure id="attachment_16668" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-16668" style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-16668" src="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2022_10_15_bloomington-hospital-demolition-1024x523.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="523" srcset="https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2022_10_15_bloomington-hospital-demolition-1024x523.jpg 1024w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2022_10_15_bloomington-hospital-demolition-300x153.jpg 300w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2022_10_15_bloomington-hospital-demolition-768x392.jpg 768w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2022_10_15_bloomington-hospital-demolition-1536x785.jpg 1536w , https://150108457.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2022_10_15_bloomington-hospital-demolition-2048x1046.jpg 2048w " sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-16668" class="wp-caption-text">Bloomington Hospital on October 15, 2022, right after demolition began.</figcaption></figure>
After we came to Bloomington in the summer of 2021, we rented an apartment by <a href="https://www.prospecthillneighborhood.org/">Prospect Hill</a>, a quiet dome of old houses just west of downtown. There we were surprised to hear, nearly every night, as many police and ambulance sirens as we’d heard in our Manhattan apartment. Helicopters too. Soon we realized why: the city’s hospital was right across 2nd Street, a couple blocks away. In 2022, the beautiful new <a href="https://iuhealth.org/find-locations/iu-health-bloomington-hospital">IU Health Bloomington Hospital</a> opened up on the far side of town, and the sounds of sirens were replaced by the sounds of heavy machinery slowly tearing the old place down.
Being a photographer and a news junkie, I thought it would be a good idea to shoot the place often, to compile a chronicle of demolition and replacement, as I had done for <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/infrastructure/albums/72177720297048648">the transition of Hollywood Park to SoFi Stadium</a> in Inglewood, California. But I was too busy doing other things, and all I got was that photo above, which I think <a href="https://twitter.com/chronicallydave">Dave Askins</a> would <a href="https://thebloomingtonchronicle.org/index.php/Main_Page">categorize</a> as a small contribution to <a href="https://thebloomingtonchronicle.org/index.php/Category:Topical_History">topical history</a>.
Dave is a highly productive local journalist, and—by grace of providence for a lifelong student of journalism such as me—the deepest and most original thinker I know on the topic of what local news needs in our time—and going forward. I’ve shared some of Dave’s other ideas (and work) in the <a href="https://doc.searls.com/news-commons/">News Commons</a> series, but this time I’m turning a whole post over to him. Dig:::::
<hr />
In the same way that every little place in America used to have a printed newspaper, every little place in America could have an online local chronicle.
Broadly speaking, an online local chronicle is a collection of facts organized mostly in chronological order. The “pages” of the chronicle can be thought of as subsets of a community’s universal timeline of events. These online local chronicles could become the backbone of local news operations.
First a word about what a local chronicle is not. It is not an online encyclopedia about the little place. It’s not a comprehensive history of the place in any conventional sense. Why should it not try to be those things? Because those things are too hard to think about building from scratch. Where would you even start?
It is at least conceivable that an online local chronicle could be built from scratch because you start by adding new facts that are newsworthy today. A new fact added to the chronicle is a touchstone, about which anyone can reasonably ask: What came just before that?
A working journalist in a little place with an online local chronicle will be in a good position to do two things: (1) add new facts to the local chronicle (2) help define sets of old facts that would be useful to include in the online local chronicle.
A journalist who is reporting the news for a little place would think not just about writing a report of new facts for readers today. They would keep this question in mind: What collection of old facts, if they were included in the local chronicle, would have made this news report easier to write?
Here’s a concrete example. A recent news report written for The B Square Bulletin included a mention of a planned new jail for Monroe County. It included a final sentence meant to give readers, who might be new to that particular topic, a sense of the basic reason why anyone was thinking about building a new jail: “A consultant’s report from two and a half years ago concluded that the current jail is failing to provide constitutional levels of care.”
About that sentence, a reader left the following comment on the website: “I know it’s the last sentence in an otherwise informative article, but at the risk of nit-picking that sentence seems inadequate to the task of explaining the context of the notion of a new jail and the role of the federal court and the ACLU.”
The comment continues: “It would have been better, Dave, to link to your own excellent previous work: <a href="https://bsquarebulletin.com/2023/02/20/monroe-county-sheriff-commissioners-square-off-at-committee-meeting-aclu-lawyer-says-look-you-need-a-new-jail-everyone-knows-that/">https://bsquarebulletin.com/2023/02/20/monroe-county-sheriff-commissioners-square-off-at-committee-meeting-aclu-lawyer-says-look-you-need-a-new-jail-everyone-knows-that/</a>”
What this reader did was to identify a set of old facts that should be a collection (a page) in Bloomington’s local chronicle.
It’s one thing to identify a need to add a specific collection of facts to the local chronicle. It’s quite another to figure out who might do that. Working journalists might have time to add a new fact or two. But to expect working journalists to add all the old sets of facts would, I think, be too tall an order.
The idea would be to recruit volunteers to do the work of adding old facts to the online local chronicle. They could be drawn from various segments of the community—including groups that have an interest in seeing the old facts about a particular topic not just preserved, but used by working journalists to help report new facts.
I think many community efforts to build a comprehensive community encyclopedia have foundered, because the motivation to make a contribution to the effort is mostly philosophical: History is generally good to preserve.
The motivation for helping to build the online local chronicle is not some general sense of good purpose. Rather it is to help working journalists provide useful facts for anyone who in the community who is trying to make a decision.
That includes elected leaders. They might want to know what the reasons were at the time for building the current jail at the spot where it is now.
Decision makers include voters, who might be trying to decide which candidate to support.
Decision makers also include rank-and-file residents—who might be trying to decide where to go out for dinner and want to know what the history of health inspections for a particular restaurant are.
For the online local chronicle I have set up for Bloomington, there are very few pages so far. They are meant to illustrate the general concept:
<div></div>
<div><a href="https://thebloomingtonchronicle.org/index.php/Main_Page">https://thebloomingtonchronicle.org/index.php/Main_Page</a></div>
<div></div>
<div>
The pages are long on facts that are organized in chronological order, and short on narrative. Here are the categories that include at least one page.
Category: People 
Category: Data 
Category: Boards, Commissions, Councils 
Category: List 
Category: Topical History
==========
–Dave
<hr />
By the way, if you’d like to help local journalism out, read more about what Dave is up to—and what he needs—here: <a href="https://bsquarebulletin.com/about/">https://bsquarebulletin.com/about/</a>
</div>
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