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July 26, 2002
Infrastructure - why geeks build
Infrastructure - why geeks build it - why Hollywood doesn't understand it - how business can take advantage of it Doc Searls. Everyone's blooging. Sam is here, Lisa is here etc. Doc is the senior editor of linuxjournal, co-author of the cluetrain manifesto and a weblogger.
Doc's adventures: Exploring the infrastructure - dial up in London - no. Found consume.net in an Internet cafe and wireless access points. Walked around London and found wireless access on someone elses network by sitting in a cafe. Met Ben Hammersly who was running the WiFi network. Doc saw that people were not using the telephone but using the WiFi. Later in the evening he meets Matt Jones (the father of warchalking). Doc put it on the blog and from there it takes over. Nature. Craig Burton: The Net is a world. "Technology starts with technologists" - Marc Andreesen. Civilization doesn't move all at the same speed. Hollywood is trying to regulate the Net. The deeper battle is between metaphers. Hollywood sees the Net as a plumbing system for intellectual property and other "content". Geeks see the Net as a place - a commons - where people can make culture and do business. Infrastructure is what goes under a platform. Hollywood doesn't understand infrastructure. They only understand "content" and distribution. They want to control the uncontrollable. Geeks want infrastructure to support business. Think of the Nets infrastructure as a source of natural building resources. Linux is not growing on the trees - it is the trees. The software industry is maturing into something like the construction industry. Infrastructure supports markets. Ubiquity counts and creates infrastructure. It's not infrastructure until it becomes ubiquitous. Doc shows the Burton Matrix: IBM are moving stuff over from being closed and propriatary to being open and open source. Apple is catching on and becoming masterful. They are using Jabber in iChat. Doing Rendevous, FireWire, USB etc. Now RealNetworks are getting into this game. There is a businees in getting companies to move into the open area (such as CollabNet). How do you create ubiquitous infrastructure and make money at the same time - cause anarchy then take advantage of it! Hollywood thinks commerce governs infrastructure. What kind of trouble can the restless natives make? EFF, OSI, FSF, Creative Commons, GeekPAC, AOTC. Apply the logic of anarchistic marketing. Markets are conversations!
Posted by Matthew at July 26, 2002 11:02 PM