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Doc Searls Weblog
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The Redstream Media
Nov 16, 2024Tap to summarizeTo identify the microphones in that river, here’s Apple: Two of these are not like the others. Just two. And one of those faces calls himself a “raging moderate.” That river began with the copious red pissings of Rush Limbaugh. Now eight Rushians comprise most of the News Commentary flow on Apple Podcasts, and much of the whole podcast watershed as well. (None are so skilled as Rush, but that’s another story.) It’s not much different on Spotify: Six out of the top ten. And, of course, there’s Fox News (and hell, all of News Corp), and Elon Musk’s X . As Michael Tomasky puts it in The New Republic, Once upon a time, the mainstream media was a beachball, and the right-wing media was a golf ball. Today, the mainstream media (what with layoffs and closures and the near death of serious local news reporting) is the size of a volleyball, and the right-wing media is the size of a basketball, which, in case you’re wondering, is bigger. In case that doesn’t hammer the point home hard enough, he adds this: Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win. Let me say that again, in case it got lost: Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country. Not The New York Times. Not The Washington Post (which bent over backwards to exert no influence when Jeff Bezos pulled the paper’s Harris endorsement). Not CBS, NBC, and ABC. The agenda is set by all the outlets I listed in the above paragraph. Even the mighty New York Times follows in its wake, aping the tone they set disturbingly often. And he barely mentions podcasting. According to Newsweek, Joe Rogan‘s interview with Donald Trump was viewed over 26 million times in the 24 hours after it went up. And that was just the video. Rogan has 14.5 million followers on Spotify alone for his all-audio podcast. We can see the reason why Spotify paid $200 million for Joe Rogan back in 2022. Hell, you could buy the whole AM band in New York for less than that today. Wait a few years and the FM band will be on the bargain shelf as well, because radio is being eaten alive on the talk side by podcasting and on the music side by streaming. (EMarketer has lots of numbers here.) Fox owns what’s left of news on cable. Since Trump won the presidency, viewing of MSNBC has tanked, while Fox News continues to grow. (And stars of its shows are named to Trump’s new cabinet positions. It’s a system, folks.) Scott Galloway, the raging moderate, expands on one part of this in” The Podcast Election. An excerpt (from both post and podcast): New(er) Media New forms of media periodically reshape our culture and politics. FDR mastered radio, JFK leveraged TV, and Reagan nailed cable news. Obama energized young voters via the internet. Trump hijacked the world’s attention on Twitter. This year it was podcasting. The three biggest media events of this fall were the debate and Harris and Trump’s respective appearances on Call Her Daddy and The Joe Rogan Experience. Almost half of adult Americans, 136 million people, listen to at least one podcast a month. The global audience is now 505 million, a quarter of the internet’s reach. When Trump went on Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and This Past Weekend w/Theo Von, he was embracing the manosphere and riding a tectonic shift in media: The most efficient way to reach the largest and most persuadable audience (i.e., young men) is via podcast. Nothing comes close. Reach and Focus Rogan has 16 million Spotify subscribers and can reach many more people across a variety of other platforms: In just three days after the live podcast, his three-hour-long conversation with Trump was viewed 40 million times on YouTube. The audio downloads likely exceeded 15 million. There will be a lot of second-guessing re what the Harris campaign should have done. Getting on a plane to Austin to visit Rogan would have been a layup. Obviously, this is a very big thing: so big that we need a label for the sum of all these popular right-wing news and...
Transcribe →Going Local With Open Networks
Nov 15, 2024Tap to summarizeIf you’re tired of moaning (or celebrating) the after-effects of the U.S. election, or how all of us seem trapped inside the captive markets of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and other feudal powers, take in a talk about something constructive that’s nowhere near any of that, but serves as a model for economies and cultures everywhere: India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce, or ONDC., which runs on the Beckn protocol. Shwetha Rao That’s what Shwetha Rao will be talking about next Tuesday, 19 November, at Indiana University and on Zoom, at noon Eastern Time. The title is How Open Networks Impact Local Economies: Lessons from India, and here is how she puts it at that link: In today’s digital commerce landscape, where major platforms hold significant influence, small businesses and local communities often face substantial barriers. Open networks are helping to shift this landscape by creating a more inclusive and accessible digital economy. A leading example is India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which demonstrates how decentralized systems can boost digital access and economic opportunity. Unlike traditional platform-centric models, ONDC enables buyers and sellers to transact across various applications, breaking down barriers and fostering inclusivity. This government-backed initiative now connects over a million sellers with shoppers in 600+ cities, supporting small businesses and rural entrepreneurs. This talk provides insights into the challenges and successes of scaling such open networks, underscoring the role of community engagement and sustainable growth models in driving equitable access and paving the way for a more decentralized digital future. ONDC is a happening thing: And, as far as I know, it isn’t happening anywhere outside of India. But it should. And, being open, it could. Might it involve personal AI? We’ll be asking that question, among many others. The theme for our Beyond the Web salons this academic year is Think Globally, Eat Here: Local Solutions for Big Tech Problems. This solution might be the biggest so far. As a salon, this will be short on lecture and long on conversation. So bring your curiosity and your questions. We’ll see you there.
Transcribe →Remembering Paul Marshall
Nov 12, 2024Tap to summarizeIn a vote for “Senior Superlatives” among his 36 classmates at Concordia Prep, Paul Marshall won in several categories. The yearbook staff, however, limited the Superlative distinction to one per student, and Paul chose to be recognized for his wit, which was boundless. He was also the editor-in-chief of The Prepster, our student paper, because he was the best writer. He was the best musician, playing the organ in our twice-daily chapel services, and sousaphone in the school band. He even taught sophomore biology when the teacher was sick for a few weeks. Once in a science class, a teacher asked Paul to describe a natural law. His response was, “Matter can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only be eaten.” Concordia Prep was a Lutheran seminary for high school boys and an academic correctional facility for lousy students like me. In his autobiography, AJ Ontko said I would have been voted Least Likely to Achieve, had that been an option. Yet, after an academically and socially miserable year as a sophomore, Paul recruited me to be his roommate for the following year, and we stayed together until we graduated. During that whole time, my life improved in every way, thanks in large measure to Paul. Take music. Paul taught me volumes about Bach, Purcell, Händel, and other composers, such as Peter Schickele (P.D.Q. Bach) and Tom Lehrer. He tutored through performance, which involved runs by train to New York City. One especially memorable trip involved Clarke & Purcell’s Trumpet Voluntary, performed on the massive pipe trumpets in the Cathedral of St. John the Devine. (A sample.) Paul also taught me to believe in myself. From a post a couple of months back: I remember a day when a bunch of us were hanging in our dorm room, talking about SAT scores. Mine was the lowest of the bunch. (If you must know, the total was 1001: a 482 in verbal and a 519 in math. Those numbers will remain burned in my brain until I die.) Others, including Paul, had scores that verged on perfection—or so I recall. (Whatever, they were all better than mine.). But Paul defended me from potential accusations of relative stupidity by saying this: “But David has insight.” (I wasn’t Doc yet.) Then he gave examples, which I’ve forgotten. By saying I had insight, Paul kindly and forever removed another obstacle from my path forward in life. From that moment on, insight became my stock in trade. Is it measurable? Thankfully, no. After high school, Paul went on to distinguished careers as a liturgical historian, a parish pastor, a professor at the Yale Divinity School, Bishop of the Episcopal Church’s Bethlehem Diocese in Pennsylvania, and an activist for progressive causes (notably in his church). Among other things. Our contacts through all of that were infrequent but always interesting and fun. Of no importance but some interest is a moment we shared walking on a New York street at night with our young sons. One of the boys, looking at the moon, asked if was full. In unison and without thinking, Paul and I both replied, “No, it’s empty.” In a likewise manner, we agreed to speak at each others’ funerals. Alas, we both missed that chance. Paul died of cancer on October 21, and his funeral was last Friday when I was in France. Here is the Church’s obituary. Paul was 77, four days older than me. My joke about mortality is that I know I’m in line for the exit, but I let others cut in. I wish Paul hadn’t. Requiescat in pace, old friend. And forgive me for putting off our next meeting.
Transcribe →Now What?
Nov 6, 2024Tap to summarizeIt used to be When. But that was yesterday: election day in the U.S. In California, where I voted (by mail), it’s still 10:30 PM., and the Blue folk are especially blue, because the whole thing is over. Trump hasn’t won yet, but he will. I correctly predicted a Trump win in 2016, a loss in 2020, and a win again in 2024. That was, until Biden dropped out. Harris was a much stronger candidate than I—and nearly everyone—expected. Here in Paris, I went to bed last night expecting a Harris win. When I got up at 4 AM, it was clear that she would lose. Badly. And now, at 7:45 AM, it looks like the GOP will take the Senate and perhaps also the House I have always avoided politics on this blog, and even more on social media. But I have always had a lot to say. It is not, however, what others are saying, so don’t guess at it. What I will say for now is that Democrats need a new story. Or a collection of them. I’ve talked about stories before. This TEDx talk is one place. This blog post is another. I’ll be expanding on points made in both. Meanwhile, coffee and croissants await.
Transcribe →The Kids Take Over
Oct 31, 2024Tap to summarizeWhile I am extremely pleased and grateful that 26 years of writing on Linux Journal survive online without being 404’d, I also realize that this condition probably won’t last forever. Also, some pieces are now missing their images and other graces. This is one of them. It is also one of my best, I think, Or at least one of the most important. This is a late draft, rather than the published final text, but it’s still good. Read on and enjoy—Doc It starts here, in the heart of Long Island, a couple dozen exits east of Queens. I saw it with my own eyes in Mineola’s Public Schools, where kids, led by a nonprofit called kidOYO (“Kid-oy-yo”), are learning to program in different languages on different computers and operating systems, creating and re-creating software and hardware, with fun and at speed. Their esteem in themselves and in the eyes of their peers derives from their actual work and their helpfulness to others. What I saw was also sure to strip the gears of any system meant to contain them. Mineola’s schools were not among those. OYO means Own Your Own, and that’s what these kids are learning to do. In geekier terms, they are rooting their own lives online. They’re doing it by learning to program in languages that start with Scratch and move up through Python, Java, C# and beyond. They’re doing it on every hardware and software platform they can, while staying anchored to Linux, because Linux is where the roots of personal freedom and agency go deepest. And they’re doing in all in the spirit of Linus’ book title: Just for fun. With kidOYO, the heuristics go both ways: kidOYO teaches the kids, and the kids teach kidOYO. Iteration is constant. What works gets improved, and what doesn’t gets tossed or replaced. The measures of success are how enthused the kids stay, how much they give and get energy from each other, and how much they learn and teach. Nowhere are they sorted into bell curves, given caste-producing labels such as “gifted” or “challenged.” Nor are they captive to the old report card system. When they do take standardized tests, for example the college AP (advanced placement) ones for computer science, they tend to kick ass. (At that link we see how nearly all the 6th-9th graders who took the test passed, meaning they were ready for AP college work.) kidOYO is the creation of the Loffreto family: Devon, Melora, and their son Zhen, who is now 12. What started as a way to teach computing to Zhen turned into ways to teach computer science to every kid. Their methods resemble how the Linux kernel constantly improves, stamping out bugs and iterating toward ever-expanding completeness, guided by an equal mix of purpose and fun. Before we met, I had assumed, from Devon’s writing style and deep knowledge of stuff, that he was a gentleman perhaps of my own age, or even older. So I was surprised to find that he was not only a youngish guy, but a New York state high school champion baseball and basketball player who went to college on a sports scholarship. Also that he looked a stunt double for George Clooney. I also knew what he and kidOYO were doing was important. But my mind wasn’t blown until I finally obeyed Devon’s invitation to see their approach at work. That happened on Groundhog Day in February. (An album of pictures I took on that visit is on the Linux Journal Flickr site here.) Mineola is about as prototypical as a middle class New York suburban town can get: a 2-square mile village of about 20,000 in the center of Nassau County, which lays between Long Island’s north and south shore and is home to about 1.5 million people. The Mineola Free Union School District, however, is anything but typical. I’ve never seen a public—or any—school system with its feet equally planted in the digital and the physical worlds, or as eager to run forward in both. For example, all three schools I visited had created social and hacker spaces within their libraries. The books and the stacks still mattered, but so did the ability of kids to research, learn and teach together using computing and related gear, such as 3-D printers and programmable robots. Standing in the Coding Center at the Mineola Middle School, surrounded by kids doing amazing stuff on their Chromebooks, Dr. Michael Nagler (@naglersnotions), superintendent for the district, gave me the backstory on how kidOYO got involved. “Three years ago my wife signed our son up for a coding class these guys were putting on,” he said. “So I drive my son out there, and I’m watching what they’re doing, and I’m impressed. I ask Dev, ‘Why aren’t you in schools?’ He says, ‘The schools won’t talk to us.’ So I say, ‘Well you’re in luck, because I know a guy.’ We worked to help adapt their platform for schools, starting with ours. And I mean all of ours. We jumped in the deep end, starting with the little kids first and pushing it up through high school. And now we’re on this three year journey, so far, during which everything changes. Constantly. The little ones get the skills, and they roll up. Now I have to adjust my next level, and do it waaay faster than I have to with any other curriculum. Right now, for example, for the AP Computer Principles course in high school, they’re doing the learning path for (hatchcoding‘s) Hatch 1 and Hatch 2. Meanwhile, my sixth graders are already finished with it. So by the time these sixth and seventh graders get to ninth grade, my expectation is that every student in the district is taking AP Computer Principles. That’s going to replace our Exploring Computer Science class. And then we build in connections. So we’re doing Arduinos here in the Middle School’s sixth grade, and simultaneously in ninth grade in the high school. Then, as the younger kids move forward, we’ll change the ninth grade setup.” Since Maker Faire New York is a great place for kids from everywhere to show off their maker chops, I asked Dr. Nagler if they had plans for that. “We merge CS and computational thinking with making. We have a whole design and creative thinking framework tied to our mascot, the mustang. We make ways for the kids to conceptualize, design, iterate, prototype, test, refine, go, back, and build things.” I asked, “How do you deal with the combination of kids who are already on this path, kids who want to come in and need to catch up, and eventually everybody in the school doing AP level work on computers? And beyond that, how does this whole thing catch fire?” “A couple of ways. First, it’s not an elective. Here in Mineola, every kid has to do it. They also have to do it in their subject classes. So we tie a coding project to a curriculum project. Every grade has to do three a year. So we teach a language that way. We teach it independently the OYO way. And we teach it the formal way, cycling kids through CS classes, for example here in this room. As for catching fire, we’re Ground Zero. We succeed here and it spreads to other districts.” “How do you all scale? I mean both what you’re doing and what kidOYO is doing?” “I think we’re unique in that I don’t want it to be a formal class. I want CS to be ingrained in everything we do. In the process we’ll refine it and share it in ways that can be adopted by other districts. I’m a big open source guy. Sharing is key. So I’m taking the kidOYO platform and building an open computer science curriculum in social space. The beauty of their platform is that it lets me build an OER—Open Educational Resources—using their concept of learning paths, which we also work on together. Dev also built me a website that I can send to an organization I belong to called the League of Innovative Schools, which is a national organization. We can crowd-source content there. For example I built a sample curriculum unit. I can push that out to various states. By crowdsourcing we already have a ton of content on there.” At this point Devon joined the conversation. “Tell Doc about MC².” <...
Transcribe →Personal Agentic AI
Oct 25, 2024Tap to summarize“Agentic” is hot: Source: Google Trends As an adjective, it is typically used as a modifier for AI. Hence this coincidence: SourceL Google Trends Not surprisingly, Gartner puts Agentic AI first among its Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2025: Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/top-technology-trends-2025 Here is one Gartner explanation, among many: Theme No. 1: AI imperatives and risks drive organizations to protect themselves Trend 1: Agentic AI: Autonomous AI can plan and take action to achieve goals set by the user. Business benefits: A virtual workforce of agents to assist, offload and augment the work of humans or traditional applications. Challenges: Requires robust guardrails to ensure alignment with providers’ and users’ intentions. Naturally, most of the concern here is for Gartner’s corporate clients. But also note the bottom-line noun phrase: users’ intentions. Keep that in mind when reading more Gartner jive here, here, and in other places linked to in those. One sample: Agentic AI will be incorporated into AI assistants and built into software, SaaS platforms, Internet-of-Things devices and robotics. Many startups are already marketing themselves as AI-agent-building platforms. Hyperscalers are adding agentic AI to their AI assistants. Now, what about those user intentions? Wouldn’t it be good for corporate AI agents to have customer hands to shake that are also equipped with agentic AI? Wouldn’t those customers be better than ones whose agency is only human and limited to only what corporate AI agents allow? Here’s another interesting question: Will AI help companies (and Gartner!) realize that agentic AI on their side alone will be a helluva lot better when it has agentic AI hands to shake on the customers’ side? To co-ponder that, I just had long exchanges with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini*, and Perplexity.ai. I liked my exchange with Claude the best. Here it is: DS: What developers are working on agentic AI for independent individuals, rather than for companies? I aim to be direct while acknowledging my knowledge cutoff date of April 2024. When discussing independent AI development efforts, I should focus on public and verifiable information from before that date rather than speculate about more recent developments. Some relevant players in this space included: Jan Leike, who founded Open-Source Research (OSR) which aimed to democratize AI capabilities while prioritizing safety Steven Tey and Steven Tey who created Cursor, an open source AI coding tool Various independent researchers and developers contributing to projects like Auto-GPT and BabyAGI However, given the rapidly evolving nature of this field and my knowledge cutoff date, I’d encourage you to check current sources for the most up-to-date information on independent AI development efforts. The landscape may have changed significantly since my last update. Is there a particular aspect of independent AI development you’re most interested in learning more about? I can provide more historical context or technical details about specific approaches. DS: What about Kwaai, or Consumer Reports? <...
Transcribe →Comet, second try
Oct 21, 2024Tap to summarizeComet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, flying toward its tail, away from the Sun. I shot the comet this time with a real camera: my Sony a7iv with a FE 70-200 mm F2.8 GM OSS II lens set at f3.5 at 135mm for 10 seconds on a shitty tripod I got at a thrift shop for $5. (I have good ones elsewhere.) This was at 8:40pm, just as the moon was rising behind my back and before dusk had turned to night with plenty of unwanted light from street lamps and the other usual challenges. I couldn’t see it, but my iPhone 16 Pro Max did: Using other shots I maneuvered myself to a place where the camera was in shadow from street lights and I could put the camera and tripod on the sidewalk while locating the comet to the right of that evergreen tree, so it was easy to aim in the general direction and get the shot. If it’s clear again tomorrow night, I’ll go find a darker place at a later time and see what I can do.
Transcribe →A Comet Hunt
Oct 18, 2024Tap to summarizeComet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, more visible to the camera than the eye. Tonight was the first completely clear sky in a while, almost perfect for hunting Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, which for a few more nights will be gracing our evening sky. With a full moon high in the eastern sky, and plenty of light pollution from the town around me, the comet was hard to see. Fortunately, the camera in my new iPhone 16 Pro Max sees better than I do, so I was able first to find the comet in a photo of the western sky, and then go back outside (from the restaurant where we were eating—the Half Bottle Bistro) and aim the phone’s 5x lens at it. That’s what got me the shot above. Step through this album of shots to see how I got the phone to zero in on the comet while my eyes could hardly see it. I found this guide from the Stamford Advocate very helpful for finding it as well.
Transcribe →Identity as Root
Oct 15, 2024Tap to summarizeShot with a camcoder on a beach in the Caribbean during a 2001 Linux Journal Geek Cruise. This is from an email thread on the topic of digital identity, which is the twice-yearly subject* of the Internet Identity Workshop, the most leveraged conference I know. It begins with a distinction that Devon Loffreto (who is in the thread) came up with many moons ago: Self-sovereign identity is who you are, how you choose to be known, to whom, based on reasons of your own. It’s something you own, just like you own your body. Administrative identity is what organizations call you for their convenience (and secondarily, yours). We may call these labels “an ID,” but they are not who we are. Here is what I wrote: Humans have opposable thumbs. This makes them capable of tool use to a degree beyond immeasurable. Perhaps nothing, other than their brains, makes humans supremely capable as a species. It also makes them grabby. Try to teach Marxism to a three year old yelling “It’s mine!” My mother’s favorite account of me as a small child was how I walked around constantly holding as many small toy trucks in my hands as I possibly could, unwilling to let them go. But this tendency was about control more than possession. I hadn’t yet learned to put my trucks in something I could carry around. I was unwilling to trust that a box or a bag was a working extension of my grabby little self. I’m still a bit like that. “Your trucks” is what Joyce calls the electronic stuff I carry around. But I’m not alone. We conceive everything in terms that imply or involve forms of control, possession, or both. The English language, among many others, cannot get along without possessive pronouns: my, mine, our, ours, their, theirs, your, yours, hers, his. Even if ownership in the legal sense is not involved, responsibility is. Control is. When you drive a rental car, those are your wheels, your bumpers, your engine. You also think and talk about them with first person possessive pronouns. Personal agency moves outward from that sense of control and responsibility over what is ours, including our selves. This is why we need to start understanding personal identity, and how it works in the world, by recognizing that each of us is a self-sovereign human being. We are each, as William Ernest Henley put it in his poem Invictus, the captain of our “unconquerable soul.” Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself was a long-form explication of the same thing. (Which I wrote about way back in ’96, before there were blogs.) This is not to deny that we are also profoundly social. But it is essential that we start with the personal. Ownership is an abstract concept. So are rights. But we need both to operate civilization. What makes ownership righteous is that it minimally abstract. We see this with the possessive pronouns “my” and “mine.” Again, this is rooted in our possessive nature, our opposable thumbs. We need to be self-possessed (and -sovereign), autonomous, and independent—before we are anything else, including our social selves. In technical terms, it’s root. So there ya go. *But not the only subject. I’d say about half of the topics that come up at IIW are for topics other than identity.
Transcribe →What goes in these structured wiring cabinets?
Oct 14, 2024Tap to summarizeTwo in-wall structured wiring cabinets in our new garage. I need to install gear in these two structured wiring cabinets in the garage of the new house we are finishing. I don’t know exactly what to put in them and seek advice. The installed cables are: Blue CAT-6a Ethernet cables go to outlets (RJ-45 jacks) in four rooms. Internet will come from the city’s new fiber optic system. Coaxial cables go to four possible TV locations. They will carry signals from the over-the-air TV antenna that will go on a pole outside. We will not have cable TV or Internet service. Soon to be installed are: A coaxial cable from the TV antenna. A fiber cable from the street. Both will come underground and up into the garage through a conduit between the back of the house and the hole (not visible) in the left side of the left cabinet. So here is what I think I need: A patch panel for the coaxial cables, so I can either distribute the TV signal or patch it through to one TV at a time. An ONT (optical network terminal) to serve as the router between the fiber from outside and the four ethernet connections inside. Here is what I don’t know: What the fiber provider (GigabitNow Bloomington) will provide. I know they will need to terminate fiber from the street with an ONT that will go in one of the cabinets, but I don’t know whether they will provide, or I will need to get, a way to distribute service to the four Ethernet lines. I see ONTs sold online that have four Ethernet ports, but I don’t know if the provider will welcome my getting one or not. Whether I will need an in-line TV signal amplifier. My antenna, which I’ve already built and tested, has an amplifier already. The question is whether I will need more amplification, especially if I am distributing to more than one room, and not just patching through one room at a time. Exactly what the best practices are for attaching devices to the inside of these cabinets. So that’s it for now. Thanks for any input you’ve got.
Transcribe →