Checking in

… and rather late, due to wedding prep taking up most of my spare time. (Was finally prompted by Doc.) The summary: I’m fine, Bob’s fine, everyone I know is fine, several hundred people in my city are not fine, and at least 37 of them are dead. But, compared to New York and Madrid, we got off pretty lightly. Personally, I slept through it all, just like I did on September 11th (I was in Oregon at the time) – Bob woke me up at 11 and told me what was going on. And, once I’d done the phoning and emailing and watched my various networks of friends go through their internal diagnostic routines to satisfaction, we went shopping. (The LJ is where most of my personal rambling will be appearing from now on – I needed a place where I felt more freedom to talk complete bollocks. Oh, you know what I mean.)

This was not our September 11th. This was something we’ve dealt with before, repeatedly, with the various IRA campaigns and the nail bomber. The typical Londoner’s response to an explosion was best summarised by Eddie Izzard: “What? A bomb? Where? Victoria? Shit! No, wait… if I change onto the Metropolitan Line, take the 130 from King’s Cross…” That doesn’t make it less horrific, but nor does it radically change things like 9-11 did. And god, I hope it doesn’t. The American reaction to terrorism was to shout about the freedom and liberties that the enemy was trying to take away, followed by the US Government taking many of those freedoms away instead. (Along with chucking tons of cash at utterly useless countermeasures – Schneier’s message of support is particularly noteworthy) If this gives the government’s stupid and irrelevant ID card campaign a boost, that would be a great way for the terrorists to have fucked our lives over.

The attack today wasn’t about body count – if they’d just wanted to kill people, there are almost certainly more effective routes that could have been taken. It was about infrastructure: immobilisation, inconvenience, massive economic damage. It was about bringing a city to a standstill, making it another blaring distress beacon heard around the world. Fortunately – thanks entirely to the astonishing efforts of the emergency services and those who keep London running – things will be mostly back to normal tomorrow.

Maybe I’m being too flippantly insensitive about what’s happened today. I know I’m not sufficiently communicating the shock that I feel, and I’ve never been good at that. But if we really want to hit back at those who did this to us, one of the best ways is just not to give them the satisfaction of turning our lives upside-down, making their tactics as pointless as possible. We should care, and not try to pretend that we don’t – but we shouldn’t let that change things for the worse. We bury our dead, we fix the damage, we donate some blood, and we go about our business as free and as loud as ever.

A Design For Life – The Red Cross and Israel

Rebranding: always a pain. Throwing huge amounts of cash at pretentious design consultancies with interminable meetings about “core values”, endless iterations with focus groups, worries about brand recognition… then one department folds its arms and refuses to budge, and you have to start all over again. Plus, there’s all the effort you have to put into protection of the trademark and prosecution of infringement – because, for a brand to work, it has to have meaning.

It’s slightly harder when the brand in question is literally designed to save lives.

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“Want to see something cool?”

In a few hours, we get one of the most eagerly-awaited events in the technology calendar: a Steve Jobs keynote. I’ve been watching them since he returned to Apple in 1997, despite the fact that I’ve never owned any Apple gear. I know I’m not the only one hypnotically drawn to his performances. I’m a Windows user, but I don’t watch video presentations from Bill Gates (well, not often) or Andy Grove. Why Steve?

The answer: It’s why we’re here in the first place.

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The Books Baton

Oh, that Rod Begbie! Distracting me so! (Tries to hide gleeful hand-rubbing.) This is one of those pass-it-on blog memes, I’m afraid, and it’s all about books.

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“It must be Thursday…”

The long-awaited, breathlessly-anticipated, much-debated Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy arrives on UK screens today, with the USA following tomorrow.

I recommend that you go see it. After you have done so, please let me know what you think of it.

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Hitchhiker’s movie reviews: Some balance needed, perhaps

Despite there having been several positive reviews of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy movie before his, MJ Simpson’s vitriolic slamming has been getting more linkage than all the rest combined. This is mainly because, as someone who wrote a book about Douglas Adams, it’s generally considered that he should know what he’s talking about. (Oh, and also because it fulfils all the “I knew they’d screw it up!” paranoia which so many fans seem to treasure.)

To redress the balance somewhat from the only negative review that’s appeared, here are some slightly-more-positive ones:

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Thanks, Tim

Yoz: let me see if I’ve got this straight in my head

Yoz: The company that made Tomb Raider has been bought by a company named after a song written for the Tomb Raider movie by the guy who’s on the board of said company

Yoz: have I got it?

Tim: oh, I don’t know

Tim: all I know is

Tim: it’s annoying because it looks like it’s annoying because it’s yoz.

Yoz: Thim.

Tim: Npoz.

Want a line? Here’s a line.

Apparently, some more definitiveness is required. Not only did I get another (email) response from Dave asking me to further clarify things, but several other smart people also seem to be touting the slippery slope argument as well as demanding that their content be delivered to the user’s eyeballs unaltered. “We are on the first step down the road to madness!” they yell. “Where is the line to be drawn?” God knows, I’ve been aching to draw a line under this whole thing since it started (which was the point of my first post).

Dave specifically requested I answer his email publicly: I shall quote it in its entirety with my interspersed responses, and tackle Scoble, Calacanis, Rubel et al at the same time. While eating a banana. (Excellent value for your attention dollar, that’s me.)

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A response to Dave Winer about Google AutoLink

Dave: thank you for your response. And that’s a genuine thank you, not a sarcastic thank you. That said, I had hoped that, despite the satirical tone, my previous post on this topic at least contained enough solid arguments to be considered slightly intelligent. But perhaps not. My tone (and use of the word “obsession”, which I think is at least partially justified since you’ve been repeatedly focusing on this topic for over a week now) came from an exasperation at seeing you and many others drawn in to a pointless and potentially harmful battle.

Sarcasm and its problems aside, the point that I was trying to make was that (as you pointed out to me with the sentence starting “When you take that first step down the slope…”) your prime argument against the AutoLink feature is a slippery slope fallacy. The Google AutoLink feature is a fundamentally useful one now. Since it must be directly activated on each page, it does not defraud the user into fooling them that the content they are seeing is as it was originally created. (Surely they would only press the button if the content was lacking in useful links) It does not remove or replace any existing links or ads. It only does something for which the user has specifically asked.

The argument that you raise in your response to me hinges on what Google/Microsoft/A.N.Other BigCo might do but haven’t. To which I say: well, when they do something that actually is fraudulent or dangerous, we’ll complain about it then. You are saying that AutoLink legitimises the wilful changing of content in its passage between creator and user; I say that it does nothing that the user has not specifically asked for. And if the user has asked for it, there is no reason why they should not have it; after all, they could save the HTML to their hard drive and edit it for exactly the same effect. (In fact, the user could do far more wilful damage to HTML than the AutoLink feature does.) Content creators should not have to provide specific opt-in permission; if they had to do this for every such feature out there, most of them would never work.

You say you care. I agree, you obviously care, and I don’t dispute that. However, we clearly have very different ideas about what is good for the web. My argument is that AutoLink is both harmless to the web and good for users. It is a useful feature and I don’t think it does anything worth pulling out of users’ hands. You say that it breaks a taboo about content modification; I say that taboo has never existed, and useful content modification (by both clients and servers) has been happening since the web began. It is a vital feature of the web that has been implemented in a thousand different ways, most of them useful (pop-up blockers, screen readers and mobile-format filters are just some of the ones that immediately spring to mind). Please don’t devalue this feature by saying that this one harmless user-invoked Google function will somehow lead the web to doom.

I’m not saying that harmful content filters will never appear; they have in the past and doubtless will do again. But, as Cory said, what makes them harmful is not content modification, it’s fraud. This distinction must be made, or it may end up scaring people into disabling much of what makes the web great. And this is why I disagree with your fight: I don’t think that, in this particular case, it’s helping.

UPDATE: Yet another response. (Last one, honest. Really.)

At last, I understand the dangers of Google AutoLink!

Like many others, I had written off Dave Winer’s recent obsession with the new Google toolbar. That was until I actually downloaded and installed the thing, and realised – oh my god! There are some really important points he’s raised, and everyone needs to hear them right now!

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