You Can't Make Mistakes.

For all of those of you out there who are interested in owning your information again, please check out a new project being developed by four NYU students called diaspora*.

Diaspora will allow you to take back control of your social networking data by allowing you to run your own instance of its service on your personal computer/home server. For more information about what it will do, check their project page. You have to give these guys credit for using a Back to the Future reference in their prospectus.

As you might know, I am an ever bigger advocate for open source projects that actually serve to put control into users’ hands and to sate that DIY spirit that so many people have. This is a project that I am very enthused about. If you have ten bucks lying around and want to help out a project that has the potential to change the way we do social networking online, then give it to these guys. Click on their project below to get involved through Kickstarter.

“A series of pipes.”

My dad has been hosting his origami site at Geocities for the past several years. I spoke to him yesterday about acquiring a domain name and self hosting the site as Geocities—presently owned and operated by Yahoo—will close its electronic doors very soon. He will move from there to a self-hosted site with its own independent address, which is inherently better because of greater control over the back-end of things. He rightly said that this was a good thing anyway, because this is how we keep these things—websites, the Internet—alive. This started me thinking about the Internet and how different a place it is from when I first started using it over a decade ago.

Thinking about Geocities in particular made me a bit reminiscent about all of the one-off, special interest sites that sprang up in the late 1990s. Usenet aside, you could find almost any information—be it quality or not—in single column pages with colored text and often over a bright—sometimes obnoxious—background. In those days, the big Internet companies had sites that were complex, multi-column affairs with boxes and ads, but the real Internet was the domain of the people writing whatever they wanted in center-aligned pages.

It was a great time to be a conspiracy theorist. Or really into Wicca.

Searching the Internet in the 90s was fantastic and weird. Democracy at its finest. All things change with time, some for worse some for better. There are reasonable arguments in either direction for the changes evident in the Internet over the last decade and a half. For some applications, the Internet has made life easier, obviously. Communication is fantastic. I live in Egypt and communicate with friends readily all over the world in an inexpensive and effective way. This is due to greater ubiquity of broadband Internet coverage in Egypt and elsewhere.

Websites have also become easier to create and maintain. I use WordPress to generate this site and have been for several years. The first version of the site, however, was written in PHP by yours truly. It was an exercise in basics which has made working with and customizing WordPress much easier for me in subsequent years. That said, it is really easy now to have a site that looks more or less professional, and everyone does. The downside is that now everything on the Internet seems to be a blog and sites grow stagnant as soon as the writer gets a book deal—which seems inevitable for many upstart bloggers these days.

The information which used to be so readily available on the Internet is now relegated to the All Thing¹ of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great tool as a first-reference: it democratizes basic reference, particularly for those who already have experience with traditional encyclopedias. It also contains vastly more information on a much wider variety of topics than do traditional encyclopedias. That said, it is still only a first reference, and the “peer-review” to which the information is subjected to is conducted by experts and non-experts alike.

My brother and I grew up with a set—two actually—of encyclopedia in the house. It was a great first- or quick-reference for almost anything that we wondered about or were writing about for school. As I got older and learned more about doing research, the references and bibliography proved perfect guides to more and deeper information on a given topic. That was how it was done.

The Internet changed all that. I cannot count the times that I heard college professors tell students that they had to use books and journal articles rather than online references. I was always confused. Did college students really not know how to use a library? It turns out that, no, they did—and do—not. Library usage seems to be, more and more, a thing of the past. The library at my present University is not expanding its collection very rapidly because they are exploring electronic alternatives—none of which work very well.

We used to go to the library with my mom almost every weekend. We had library cards by the time we were six or seven years old. I was—and am still—an avid reader because of this level of access to books. I am like a ship without a rudder—or more aptly, a ship without water—when I have no access to a library. This is not to say that I do not now primarily access academic journals via the Internet while conducting research. I do. It is easier, and saves me the time of sifting through stacks of journals in the basement in order to photocopy endless pages from them. This is an improvement.

Additionally, Google Books and the Internet Archive are becoming ever more useful resources for finding out-of-print and public-domain works written before the current copyright cutoff. They do not, however, replace the public or research library. Instances of false information being reported elsewhere in the media based on a Wikipedia article as an authoritative source are a good argument for returning to more rigorous forms of research on the part of journalists and academics alike.

Also, the above-mentioned one-off specialist sites seem to be going by the wayside as the Internet evolves into an archive of photoshopped pictures of cats and funny/stupid things. It used to be the case that the top of the search engine output would be a number of websites with a vast amount of—potentially questionable—data on almost any topic.

Now, on the other hand, Wikipedia is at the top of the list for almost anything that you can search for. That is unless you are accustomed to advance searching and particularly adept at using keywords. Most of the students who I help at the reference desk are not. They typically begin their research by going to Google and typing their topic or a full sentence (e.g. – “Mongolia” or “why is there domestic violence in the middle east?.” These are two recent examples of searches which students were having trouble with). To get to much of the real information that is available on the Internet these days you have to sift through hundreds of entries in blogs or advertisements. Monetizing the Internet proves to be primarily a tool for obfuscating it rather than improving user-as-content-generator experience.

This is one of the primary reasons that I am an advocate of net-neutrality and online rights—including, but not limited to, file-sharing, digitized books, and un-filtered/un-traffic-shaped Internet service, not to mention open-source/open-licensing. The Internet has the potential to be a tool for posterity, and indeed it is already serving us in this manner to some degree. It has the potential to be so much more. The moment that corporate interests became more important than the needs of Internet users, the system broke. It will limp though, but it will not recover fully and become the repository of information that it should be until corporate money-making interests are set aside.

This will not happen anytime soon, and indeed, Yahoo’s decision to discontinue Geocities in order to promote their new web-hosting platform—which is pay to play—is a step in the wrong direction. The Internet is not about closing things down in order that they might not be in conflict with business interests: it is about information being freely and readily available the world over and even beyond. This used to be a purpose of libraries as well.

It seems, however, that we have lost sight of this, lulled into contented complacence by cute pictures of talking cats and repositories of awkward family photos. This does not bode well at all. It will eventually change, though. Economies and finance online are not, and never have been stable. The one thing that is stable at this stage is the ability of one computer to connect to another. As long as we have that, when the corporate hegemony Internet collapses, we will simply start over, one node at a time.

Until then, if anyone needs me I’ll be reading online comics and looking at pictures of sandwiches.

———
¹ A reference to the progeny of the blogosphere presented in Dan Simmons’ Hyperion and Endymion.

Happy Birthday

Today is, as some reckon, the 17th birthday of Linux, the open-source UNIX-like operating system which has become increasingly popular in recent years. I adopted Linux about 2 years ago, first dual-booting (having 2 operating systems installed on the same machine and choosing at startup) Fedora, and then Ubuntu. Then I got brave and removed Windows from my last laptop. Then I got a new laptop and nuked the drive the moment I got it with a fresh Linux install. Then I installed 64 bit. Then I started compiling my own kernel. After that, it was all downhill, or uphill, depending on which way you were looking.

I became a Linux enthusiast, then an evangelical. “There is this operating system that is freely available, you can download it, and then you can install software by searching for it and selecting it (if you are in a package-managed distro, that is),” I would say. “Why does one become evangelical for an operating system,” you ask? Here is why:

Now, I am running my own Debian server: a tiny little ARM-processor-based wonder-device, 4 watts/10 under load. That is less than most energy efficient lightbulbs. Right now it just houses my digital media, my backups (which is makes without my ever having to know), and acts as a print server on our network so that I don’t have to plug the computer in, print, etc. It just works. I just added audio to it via a hardware-hack, USB in-line, jack-spliced audio card cannibalized from an old USB headset. I now have a command-line stereo with music library. Streaming internet radio too. And I can serve my own radio stream, in case the end comes and we have to rebuild the internet with string and tin cans.

I have grand plans for this little guy, the Linksys/Cisco NSLU2, or SLUG as we call the firmware-modded versions. I want about 15 more of them to just do little tasks and coordinate with each other. There is a Mic-in jack that I spliced onto the aforementioned audio card, so I am working now on adding voice-command support. Just simple stuff: “Radio on” or “Backup laptop now.” I have these sci-fi-esque visions of a fully automated house where these little guys talk to me as I walk through, turn lights on and off, report the weather, stock prices, news headlines if asked. I have also been working on a project (currently on hold, too much hardware to move to the Middle-East) to create a group of thin-client picture frames and touch screen interfaces that will be placed around the house. These would display photos, art, whatever. When asked, they could show you websites, play music on the stereo, etc. I dream of an alarm clock which is set by saying, “Jeeves, wake me up at 6:45, NPR on the radio.” “Very well then, good-night Sir.”

I dream of these things, and I will have them. I already am far closer to having these things than I ever was using computers the way that we are taught to do so in out modern age. Even the best average user today really uses their computer no differently than they might use a typewriter and an 8-track. Why is this the case?

It is the case because we are not encouraged to be curious about what is inside of our computers anymore. That, and we have been conditioned to believe that you must pay for software for your computer, which is simply not the case.

I’m not talking about software piracy either, a practice that I am rather ambivalent about these days. I don’t think it should be illegal, because I don’t think that it should be an issue. The best software out there is being developed by the curious, hobbyist, academic interests of developers with a machine and a little know-how. It’s mass peer-review. When the software is not human readable and the source is closed, bugs and weaknesses aren’t found until they are exploited. Enter FOSS: Free/Open Source Software.

Back to my point, these things interest me because they have enabled me, as a hobbyist, to make some really cool things happen. Soon my server will be talking to me, and I to it. Then it will be a server farm, then an integrated system that commands a house, or at least some of the functions in it. It’s cool. I can do it. And it is freely available to me. Sold.

This is why I am a Linux evangelical. I will walk down the street wearing a Linux t-shirt if it gets people to ask me what it is. I also just realized that I am wearing a Linux t-shirt.

Help celebrate this Linux birthday by taking Linux for a spin. There are a number of distributions that allow you to run the operating system from a CD (called a “Live-disk”). Live-disks are slower, because they have to run off of a CD. But try it. If you have an old computer laying around, dig it out, and install Linux on it. In my opinion, Ubuntu is probably going to be the best for first-time users. Here is a list of live-disk distributions which will allow you to install if you would like to:

Ubuntu
Gentoo
Debian
Knoppix
Damn Small Linux

Try it out. Linux has come a long way from its roots in the command-line. Sometimes when I am sitting in public using my laptop people come up wondering what kind of laptop it is and what my “Windows” is. I invite them to sit down for a cup of coffee, and I say “Have you ever heard of something called Linux?”

If you haven’t been using the beta of Firefox 3, then now is your chance to download the full release. As an additional incentive, Firefox is going for the world record in single-day downloads today. Give them a hand and download an installer today.

“Why should I?” you ask.

Well, for starters, it’s free. And I know that Internet Explorer is free, but it’s really not. See, Internet Explorer is closed-source, which means that it is difficult for developers to work with, and we can’t see the source code to fix things if there is a problem. It is also not very extensible.

Firefox, on the other hand, can be made to do almost anything. Don’t like those annoying ads that infiltrate your web content? Firefox has a plugin that removes them. Want to use Firefox to ftp content to a server somewhere? Yep. How about backing your bookmarks up to a secure remote location so that you can use them from anywhere? Already there.

Firefox also gives you complete control over the cookies that it saves, how much data it keeps in the cache when you turn it off (like cookies, login and password info, and download info), and it is the best browser out there for blocking malicious content. Tabbed browsing was first used in Firefox as well.

Plus the logo is cool, isn’t it?

So, download it today and try it out, won’t you? You won’t be disappointed.

PS – This site looks fantastic in Firefox 3. If for no other reason, check it out.

[Update: the official "Download Day" will begin at 1pm EDT today]

Back in the Saddle

Sorry for the recent hiatus in posting. I have been a bit lazy and let-lagged this week. 10 in the evening in Kalamazoo feels like what I have been calling 5 in the morning for the past year. It has been as rough transition, but getting better every day. The best part about this, as I sit and write at 7:50am on a Saturday, is that my increasingly late wake up time in Cairo is nice and early here. I have reclaimed the best part of the day, and I usually have it all to myself.

It’s good to be back… at least for a while.

I suppose that this is why I left in the first place, after all. I could have stayed here in the States and written my thesis. I would have had access to a great many more resources—the university library, easy access to the internet, face time with professors, and much more—but I would have likely been bored stiff, trudged on, written, worked some shitty part-time job: you get the picture.

Had I stayed here for the last year, I would not be writing now about how much I enjoy the air, the trees, the cool 10°C mornings, Taco Bell, Miller Lite, American Chinese food, walking barefoot in the grass: so many things. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate these things before, it is just that I didn’t appreciate them that much. I won’t gush or wax poetic about the joy of mundane things, but I will say that living in a place where everything is difficult makes me appreciate living in a place where everything is easy.

It also makes cake out of those things which before seemed difficult: as in “piece of.”

Regardless of all of that, I am having a blast. It is also stunning to take note of the things that I have learned in the past year. For instance: I went to seen Iron Man last weekend. It was great. I love comic-book movies, I love movie theaters. I didn’t go to the cinema nearly enough while in Cairo. Something to think about for the future. The best part of the film, though, was not the popcorn and bucket of soda that I was endowed with upon stepping into the joint, but that the film had loads of Arabic in it: and I understood every word. Obviously, it wasn’t very sophisticated dialog—certainly no more than the dialog in the primary language of the film—but I got it. I didn’t even notice at first: then I realized that I wasn’t looking at the subtitles when I laughed at some little quip or joke. Suffice it to say that I was very pleased with myself.

Same thing when I noticed what an easy time I was having understanding Ayad—dear friend and former roommate—when he showed up late one night before leaving for Saudi Arabia for the summer. We could always talk before, but it is certainly easier now.

I continue to reflect thus as I sit here and wait for the installer to finish on my new low-energy, headless Linux server. A year ago, I didn’t know what a headless server was. In the past year in learning how to use Linux on my laptop for data analysis, I accidentally learned loads about how it works and how to use it. So, now, rather than just having a slab running Windows crap factory, I have a laptop running a scalable set of software which is tailored to my needs. I was particularly pleased when Jeff asked me to put Ubuntu on his laptop to replace the Windows Vista that it shipped with. It went from being a relatively slow, unresponsive, one-year-old system to being a blindingly fast, extensible, little mobile monster. He was/is very pleased by the improvement. He is still gushing about it, in fact.

But, to think, a year ago I attempted an install of Ubuntu on my old laptop—I have since upgraded in a very serious way—and ended up with a command-line laptop for a month. That was cool and all, but it must be noted that it is very difficult to browse the internet using the command-line terminal. Kind of fun though.

Incidentally, I just converted that laptop back into a command-line laptop, just for kicks.

All in all, though, this year was a complete success: I learned a great deal. Had I stayed home, I might not have. Or, I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself nearly as much while doing it.

Anyone else learn anything this year?

A few months ago, I was sitting on a delayed plane in Albuquerque reading the Economist magazine to pass the time. It happened to be the quarterly technology feature issue, so there was some decent stuff about recycling technologies and holographic data storage. I flipped the page and lo and behold, there was an article about a South African programmer named Mark Shuttleworth and his Linux-distribution-brainchild, Ubuntu.

This was the first that I had ever heard of Ubuntu Linux. I had been dabbling with Fedora Core—another Linux “flavor” or distribution. I really knew nothing about Linux beyond that it was open source, free—in most situations—and pretty difficult to use. I also knew that Linux came along with a great deal of ideology, having developed in a community-based, collaborative, project-oriented way. I had been using all sorts of open source software on my Windows system—stuff like OpenOffice.org, Firefox, etc.—but I had not really delved into open source OS or anything.

As I read this article though, I really began to identify with the cause. This guy, Mark Shuttleworth, and the company that he set up to develop Ubuntu were dedicated to making highly-functional and user-friendly operating systems which are also free and open source. In the article, the word ubuntu is identified as a Zulu and Xhosa word which means “universal bond of sharing between humans.”¹ The idea behind the development of this particular distribution of Linux is to focus less on the ideology of open source software development and focus more on usability. Shuttleworth wanted to create something for people everywhere, and that could be developed by people everywhere.²

Then, recently, I had the good fortune of being invited to attend a talk by the Archbishop Desmond Tutu at Western Michigan University. In his talk, he discussed ubuntu at length. Not the open source operating system, but the concept. It was the basis of his discussion of why people should work together rather than against each other. He describe ubuntu in two ways: first, by saying that “the humanity in me is the humanity in you,” explaining that there is not humanity without other humans. We are only fully human when we are fully engaged in the community of humans around us. He later described ubuntu as “the art of being human.”

Tutu talked endlessly about forgiveness and its importance for bridging gaps between people, countries, places and in creating peace where there has only been war and violence. It struck me as he was talking that he and Shuttleworth had more in common than their country of birth and their choice of buzzwords. They both seek to empower people by encouraging them to embrace their community, whether local or global. In the development of Ubuntu, software developers from all over the world use technologies which allow them to collaborate virtually. In Tutu’s own efforts over the past 40 years, he has encouraged people from vastly different places and cultures to communicate with one another in order to understand each other. This understanding, he believes, will eventually lead to collaboration, which will lead to a sense of joint or group ownership of the world. Perhaps stewardship would be more apt even that ownership. If we get to know and understand each other a little better, we will be more apt to take care of our brothers and sisters, fathers and grandmothers the world over. It would be like living in an open-source world—if I can extend that as a metaphor to this idea. It is this shared care-taking that will save the humanity from destroy ourselves and the world we live in.

Not so strangely, this sentiment is coming not from a gain-focused, monetary-profit-maximizing worldview, but a non-profit, shared-benefit worldview in which more than money is considered when evaluating what it profitable and what is not. It is my hope that we will all start listening to these folks and—better than listening—help them in our everyday behaviors, actions, and interactions. It is only then that the words of visionaries will actually benefit the world. Until then, it feels as though they fall on lots and lots of deaf ears attached to people only waiting for their turn to talk.

———

¹ “Bringing Free Software Down to Earth.” The Economist v 383, no 8532. June 9th-15th, 2007. Permalink to the article.

² Since that time I have been using this operating system on both of my computers. The learning curve was a little steep at first but after a while I got the hang of it. The biggest part of the curve is in learning about how the Linux file system works and why, figuring out how to download and install software. Also, it takes a bit of doing to figure out what the software and file-type cognates are so that I could do cross-platform work. Since installing the OS, I have not gone back. I haven’t booted back into Windows to use familiar software opting instead to use the cognates found in the Linux universe. It has been fantastic. I love the way that it works. I love that it is less resource-intensive for my systems, so that I can use valuable memory and processor speed to do actual work, rather than just running the GUI, like with the newest versions of windows. It’s been great. I suggest trying it out at www.ubuntu.com.