Rough notes for J.P. Rangaswami — Keynote

His blog’s Con­fused of Cal­cut­ta.

Pays homage to Doc Searls et. al. for the mar­kets are con­ver­sa­tions concept.

He’s not yet stu­pid enough to believe in his own propaganda.

He’ll take a grave­yard approach — things that should die. And then show things that should live.

Bor­der-less World: glob­al­iza­tion, dis­in­ter-medi­a­tion and internet.

Ini­tial­ly lan­guage was word of mouth. This was tricky because there was no per­sis­tence, that came with writ­ing, then with print­ing came repro­duc­tion. The inter­net brought sharing.

Met­calfe’s Law, and such have had an impact on the things we’re doing know.

He prefers think­ing about infor­ma­tion as opposed to technology.

Work of Engel­bart and oth­ers allow us to con­sume information.

Then came Word­star and Visi­calc to allow us to cre­ate struc­tured data. The brows­er allowed us to start con­sum­ing unstruc­tured data.

The web became live (Doc’s words) with intro­duc­tion of blogs and such.

Empow­er­ment of people.

Assem­bly line pro­duc­tion approach to human­i­ty is bull­shit and does­n’t skill.

We were denied the dri­ve to bond.

Inter­net as source of neutrality

Iden­ti­ty is not of the indi­vid­ual but of the group (e.g. old-style pass­port: “I know this per­son would you please look after him”

Things that are dead: 

  1. Device lock­ing — you should be able to use the device you’re com­fort­able with for communication
<li>Marketing - move from CRM (customer exploitation), invert pyramid move from selling to buying, make it easier to buy something don't enforce a sale</li>
<li>Privacy - semantic web will kill privacy? BS - concept of personal space is culturally determined, DRM is pushed to create walled gardens around digital content we would rather have be free "if you want to keep a secret, don't tell anyone!"</li>
<li>Copyright & IPR - priests didn't like printing, the idea to start closed is not what humans are about, it should be the other way around</li>

Star­bucks exist because of the web, because they need­ed to do some­thing with the high street shop­ping space.

Tay­lorism & McLuhanism are evil!

Con­tent is an evil word!

We have to start claim­ing back things we have lost.

Liti­gious soci­ety should die too, con­tracts are evil by nature. Please don’t get mar­ried. Covenant rela­tion­ships are much bet­ter, you want to fix them not look for blame.

Longevi­ty has­n’t changed — we have to sim­pli­fy, enfran­chise peo­ple to pre­vent info over­load. A basic com­put­er should for instance have a bat­tery by default. 

Our world has already gone virtual. 

What hap­pens to a per­son­’s blog when he dies?

One should be free to choose whether to use social software.

If you want good to be said about you — do good.

Don’t stop and sen­sor peo­ple, it’s about rela­tion­ships, do the right thing.

Exam­ple: rateyourteacher.co.uk

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Kars Alfrink

Kars is a designer, researcher and educator focused on emerging technologies, social progress and the built environment.