Technology

Building Platforms for the Future

/ Christopher Parsons

In this post I want to think, just a little bit, about the role of platforms and how I’m attempting to maneuver this space. This is aimed at better clarifying (for me) how this space is used, as well as to render its use more transparent (which is apparently a core facet of building successful platforms *grin*).

A few weeks ago I was linked to a blog page that discussed the role of platforms in opening up future publishing-related avenues. The principles of the post could be boiled down to the follow:

  1. Speak authentically;
  2. Speak regularly;
  3. Speak in an open, transparent fashion;
  4. Speak so that the development of ideas is clear;
  5. Speak so that you are demonstrating your authority.


These are, generally, pretty traditional tropes surrounding Web 2.0. There isn’t anything terrifically new. What interests me, however, at the fourth and fifth items. In rendering transparent the development of ideas, what I think is most helpful is that a final, codified, textual work is opened up to the reader. Should they be sufficiently interested in the work, they can move to see how an argument was, and wasn’t, developed. By seeing how and why a writer has cordoned off particular threads of thought it is possible to open new and interesting approaches to a critique – as a firm advocate that reading theory is greatly assisted by understanding the author’s life and situation, and blogging (or establishing a similarly open platform) gives readers a way of getting to ‘know’ the author beyond the 100 word summary at the end of a book.

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Update: Mobiles and Your Identity

/ Christopher Parsons

Last year I authored a post entitled “Mobiles and Your Identity“, where I attempted to unpack some of the privacy and surveillance concerns that are associated with smart phones, such as RIM’s Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone. In particular, I focused on the dangers that were associated with the theft of a mobile device – vast swathes of both your own personal data, as well as the personal information of your colleagues and friends, can be put at risk by failing to protect your device with passwords, kill switches, and so forth.

Mark Nestmann, over at “Preserving Your Privacy and More” has a couple posts discussing the risks that smart phones pose if a government authority arrests you (in the US). He notes that, in a recent case in Kansas, police examined a suspect’s mobile phone data to collect call records. When the case was brought to the Supreme Court, the Court found that since the smart phone’s records were held in a ‘container’ (i.e. the phone itself) that the police were within their rights to search the phone records. Mark notes that this ruling does not apply to all US states – several have more sensitive privacy laws – but leaves us with the warning that because laws of analogue search are being applied to digital devices that it is best to limit the data stored on smart phones (and mobile digital devices in general).

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Technology: CBC’s Search Engine and Traffic Shaping

/ Christopher Parsons

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The CBC’s Jesse Brown has a nice piece that tries to respond to the question, “Is Throttling Necessary?” I won’t spoil the answer (or possible lack of an answer), but I will note that Jesse incorporated a few pieces of information that I’ve posted about here. If you’re not already subscribed to his Search Engine podcast, you should – it’s amongst the best Canadian tech journalism (that is accessible to non-tech people).

P2P and Complicity in Filesharing

/ Christopher Parsons

I think about peer to peer (P2P) filesharing on a reasonably regular basis, for a variety of reasons (digital surveillance, copyright analysis and infringement, legal cases, value in efficiently mobilizing data, etc.). Something that always nags at me is the defense that P2P websites offer when they are sued by groups like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The defense goes something like this:

“We, the torrent website, are just an search engine. We don’t actually host the infringing files, we are just responsible for directing people to them. We’re no more guilty of copyright infringement than Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft are.”

Let’s set aside the fact that Google has been sued for infringing on copyright on the basis that it scrapes information from other websites, and instead turn our attention to the difference between what are termed ‘public’ and ‘private’ trackers. ‘Public’ trackers are available to anyone with a web connection and a torrent program. These sites do not require users to upload a certain amount of data to access the website – they are public, insofar as there are few/no requirements placed on users to access the torrent search engine and associated index. Registration is rarely required. Good examples at thepiratebay.org, and mininova.org. ‘Private’ trackers require users to sign up and log into the website before they can access the search engine and associated index of .torrent files. Moreover, private trackers usually require users to maintain a particular sharing ration – they must upload a certain amount of data that equals or exceeds the amount of data that they download. Failure to maintain the correct share ratio results in users being kicked off the site – they can no longer log into it and access the engine and index.

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Ownership of Public Clouds

/ Christopher Parsons

I’ve recently been chewing through BlueMountainLab’s podcasts on Cloud Computing. I’ll be honest – I’m a skeptic when it comes to cloud computing, but I’m developing a better understanding of it after listening to ‘casts on this topic for about 2 hours (maybe I’m just been brainwashed?). If you’re not immediately familiar with what this term means, check out the below video – you’ll see some of the biggest and brightest minds in digital technologies explain in simple terms what ‘cloud computing’ is.


Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or away from a digital connection, for the past couple of years you’ve likely experienced cloud computing. Have you hopped into Google docs, Zimbra, or any other environment where you perform standard tasks in a web-based environment? If so, you’ve been ‘in the cloud’. What we’re seeing is a shift away from centrally owned company infrastructure toward infrastructure that is owned and operated by another company. To picture it, rather than host your own mail servers, you shift your corporation over to Google Apps, and at the same time can take advantage of the word processing, chat, and page creation features that accompany the Google solution. Should you need to increase storage, or alter your current feature set, you can have it set up in a few hours – this contrasts with spending corporate resources acquiring a solution, installing it, educating your users, etc. By outsourcing high-cost, high-time-sink operations you can realign your IT staff so that they can focus on corporate issues; designing unique solutions for unique problems, focusing their skill sets in more cost-effective areas, etc.

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Review: Everything is Miscellaneous

/ Christopher Parsons

I recently received David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder and was excited. A great deal of my present work surrounds understanding metadata, and the implications that it has for the reconstitution of knowledge and reordering of political association. Imagine my surprise when I quickly found that Weinberger fails to perform a substantive investigation of the role of metadata in the reconstitution of knowledge and society, in book that emphasizes metadata’s role! At most, he skims the surface of what metadata can affect, glossing over specifics most of the time in favor of generalizations and limited references to Greek philosophers. After you’ve read the first 30-40 pages, the only thing you really have to look forward to are (a) a few interesting discussions about blogging, tagging, and the challenges in monetizing past modes of organizing data in comparison to digital metadata-based information-associations; (b) the end, when you can put the book away or give it to someone you aren’t terribly keen about.

While there are a handful of interesting parts in the book (in particular 2-3 pages on tagging data, and the beginning discussion between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd order data might be a useful conceptual device) I was grossly unimpressed with it on the whole. For a better read and more useful investment of reading time, turn to Negroponte, Sunstein, Lessig, or even Erik Davis. Alternately, just go to Wired’s website and spend the couple hours reading the free articles there that you’d otherwise be spending reading this book. I can almost guarantee your time at Wired will be better spent.

How do I rate it? 1/5 stars.