Reality is Relative

I left a response for Jason Calacanus here on feedback. No, I am not angry at Jason, but I don’t need to thank him for what I, and others have been blasting on about for several years…in the trenches fighting some very, very bad stuff. Search engine spammers and good content taking over ranks? I have a collection of busts that make SERP spam child’s play. Nor do I need to benchmark myself- but feel free. I open sourced myself awhile ago. Painful to do, but I did it.

What I really want to do is to be able to thank Jason, Mike Arrington, Robert S, and all the other technical evangelists in the valley, for getting involved and dialing up the pressure- but doing so in a way that preserves those who act with integrity, and not wiping them out because they are “small”. We can usually spot spam right away, but the idea that people can define the quality of my aesthetic is not where we are going. The leaders need to lead and smaller is fine.

I also see no problem with Mahalo and as noted below, and blogged here somewhere, it passed my annual “malware” around “game cheats” stress test. Admirable. I even offered up Caledon at Revenews as a prototypical community of curators and content makers. Sam Harrelson notes the challenges and I simply say Jason- don’t forget community. Community is content. It might be hard to grok, but you have my digits now- happy to explain what I discovered.

I didn’t make it to the keynote, nor did we get a chance to speak at the dinner, which is a shame…what you said is nothing new to me however. Actually, in many ways it seemed to be naive….e.g. “but also the FTC, which doesn’t take nicely to covert marketing.”

Really? I was on the Spyware Panel with MSFT, AT&T, MIT and Webroot…two or three years later, at Esther Dysan’s summit, I sat in line with Eric Howells and said “WTF? Why are we still playing this game of semantics? Three years later?” No- the government is not going to stop it.

At any rate I am preparing a blog post on what Sam archived, plus some additional rambling stuff…but obviously I just don’t have as much social capital as you and that is ok- my job is to influence the influencer here. You can help by listening because I know the core of the problem far better and if a strong influencer, like you, and others in your sphere would talk with the right people, work with the “affiliates” (btw- merchants are my affiliates- that is how I see it.) and understand the issues on a very granular level- we might win this war. Because as one who started very small and has been all over the major press for years, at panels, summits even speaking at RSA. I feel I have failed…and I am worn out.

This is why I hate the A list label and think it is bad. Basic network theory says elitist groups becomes cliquish and homogeneous and there are no bridges for carriers of new ideas or viewpoints to enter. (Network gets too big- you can’t control it.)

Hopefully I can stay up long enough to finish it at Revenews. Creating Mahalo is nice, and hey it passed my malware test for gaming cheats, but it isn’t enough. I expect more from you and I think you are missing a core component.

If you and other tech. evangelists, etc do not step up TOGETHER and work with others- it will be toast or the reaction is going to be full of collateral damage that really sucks because there is nothing wrong with starting out small and working hard and doing it on your own dime. Every giant company was small once.

This is beyond money, this is Snowcrash, this is a digital society in decay.

Old books show us the pattern and we are at an inflection point- pay attention at the very least, but I am asking for action instead of apathy. It isn’t all about search and content and how timely for Esther Dyson to invest in the social- the same Esther I spoke with years ago. I don’t need to search and click as much if I have a community of trusted peers to ask. Steve Boyd notes “years ago” and we are about to pass over that horizon. The pattern was written long ago:

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (Tor Books): Ender Wiggin battles it out with the Formics in this Hugo-Award-winning novel that is perhaps the quintessential guide for the new blogging metaphor. Pay special attention to Peter and Valentine as they control the nets through alternate personas. Make special note of the protagonist’s psychological development and monitoring by the “Mind Fantasy Game.”

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson (Putnam Adult): The science of pattern recognition aims to classify data based on previous experience and through statistical mining of patterns. In this contemporary novel, the readers explore the concept of “cool spotting,” which has been in use in marketing for many years, through the eyes of Cayce Pollard. Pollard is an incredibly intuitive market-research consultant. Marketers should get an idea for new metrics and perhaps new ways to measure the efficacy of campaigns as well as the importance of looking ahead for future trends.

And it is…all in the context of a virtual world experiencing a state of rapid decay. Who do you blame?

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