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Lessig's Modest Crusade
information, politics
May 16, 2003, 06:18 PM
Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford, advocate of free speech and the public domain, fellow Movable Type weblogger, and all-around good guy, has a modest proposal for undoing the major damage of the Sonny Bono Mickey Mouse Protection Copyright Extension Act. He is trying to get a bill proposed to Congress that will require copyright holders to pay a 1$ tax on their copyrights after the first 50 years. If the tax is paid the owner keeps the copyright but must provide a contact point for requests to license the copyright (though the copyright holder need not actually grant any of these requests). The reasoning behind this move is that the vast majority of works are no longer economically valuable after 50 years, and thus they should enter the public domain so that anyone can make use of them without having to license the copyright or worry about litigation. So Disney can keep Mickey, but the rest of us will have access to the countless numbers of works that are locked up by copyright even though they are not available on the market and aren't making anyone any money.
Unfortunately, Lessig is encountering resistance even to this seemingly very reasonable law from lobbyists on Capitol Hill. He attributes it to content creation companies like Disney's willingness to stomp out any form of public domain competition at any cost. Perhaps they are just afraid to let him get his foot in the door. But regardless of the reason, this is a law that could provide a lot of benefit for revitalizing the public domain and can't be even vaguely construed as hurting anyone. It's just a good idea. So write your Congresspersons a quick email asking them to please sponser the Eric Eldred Act, or at least support it if someone else does. It's the least we can do for a good cause.
End-User Participation in Open Source Development
processes & methodologies, software development, usability
May 16, 2003, 03:57 PM
I talked to Jim Herbsleb today about my idea for doing an independent study on Open Source and Usability. He was interested in my ideas and provided some great feedback, so I think the project is a go.
I talked about the ideas I've already mentioned in my earlier post and added Andy's comments about usability logging and feedback. Jim mentioned a system he'd heard of at Bell Labs that was similar to the usability talkback idea Andy posted about awhile back. He thought this would fit well into an open source development process since it would involve the users more in the development of the application. He suggested I consider usability techniques that would take advantage of the unique qualities of open source development, such as open development processes and user participation. Specifically he wondered if there was a way to involve nontechnical users in the development of the software system so they could feel that they were involved with the project and contributing to its advancement.
I think this is a great idea and something I hadn't thought of, but it's also a difficult challenge. The main obstacle to getting real "end-user" participation in the open source development process is that developers tend to have all the power in an open source process. As Scott says, "He who writes the code gets the last word". Developers tend to fix their own problems, and since end users can't write code, their needs may wind up at a much lower priority. However, there may be something to learn from the participatory design tradition which has always made user involvement an integral part of the usability process. Maybe some of the incentives present there will also apply to open source.
These are just a few thoughts; I'm flying blind on this issue right now. Any comments or feedback that could help lead me in the right direction would be much appreciated.
Posted by Andyed on May 17, 2003 at 10:43 AM
I'll offer some insight from the Mozilla project, as it's what I'm familiar with. Gnome and KDE have some established communities as well with explicity usability oriented projects.
One of the biggest issues for Mozilla end user feedback is the challenge of identifying whether an issue is already known or a suggestion already made. Simply identifying what component an issue should be filed under is problematic for a novice.
So, perhaps a useful "critical incident" infrastructure would include a mapping of event traces or screen locations to the developer language of components/modules/etc.
In the Mozilla case, this would not overload bugzilla with user comments but would allow bugs to be augmented to pointers with user feedback on specific features and behavior.
I've ranted a bit more on this at: http://www.surfmind.com/musings/2003/03/22/index.cfm#newNote
Alas, in the case of the issue already being known in the Mozilla tracking system, there's little the user can do to express their opinion. Votes in bugzilla require registration and are ignored. Providing a repository for end-user feedback and some tools for slicing/aggregating it could be really helpful, in any project.
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Corporations are Plural Nouns
language, society & sociology
May 15, 2003, 11:30 PM
From reading K5, I've noticed an interesting difference between Standard American English (SAE) and Standard British English (SBE) that I believe runs deeper than a mere syntactic curiousity. It's this: in SAE, the names of corporations are considered singular nouns. In SBE, they are considered plural nouns. So whereas an American would say "Microsoft has come out with a new version of Office." a Brit would say "Microsoft have come out with a new version of Office." Upon reflection, I'm of the strong opinion that the Brits have this one right.
To Americans, a corporation is usually viewed as a singular entity with singular goals, desires, and motives. Moreover, it's frequently conceptualized as an entity "separate" from the people who make it up, even when it comes to unethical behavior. Here's a classic example: say I know that a car I own has bad brakes and is unsafe to drive. Yet I sell you this car anyway without telling you about the bad brakes. On the way home from your purchase you get into an accident as a result of brake failure and die. Due to my negligence, I can and should be held criminally accountable for your death, right? Yet in the 1970s this exact scenario played out with Ford Motor Company; due to a design flaw their initial Pinto line of cars were prone to burst into flames during an accident. A Center for Auto Safety article reports:
In 1977, Mark Dowie of Mother Jones Magazine, using documents in the Center files, published an article reporting the dangers of the fuel tank design, and cited internal Ford Motor Company documents that proved that Ford knew of the weakness in the fuel tank before the vehicle was placed on the market but that a cost/benefit study was done which suggested that it would be "cheaper" for Ford to pay liability for burn deaths and injuries rather than modify the fuel tank to prevent the fires in the first place. Dowie showed that Ford owned a patent on a better designed gas tank at that time, but that cost and styling considerations ruled out any changes in the gas tank design of the Pinto.
Ford was sued for millions and eventually issued a recall. But no legal action was brought against the executives who made the decision. "Ford the corporation" was the culprit, said society, not them.
This, of course, is a myth. Corporations don't really exist; they are just convenient abstractions for dealing with groups of people who come together for a common business purpose. Everyone knows this intellectually, but they talk, act, and reason as if the abstraction were a real entity, even in situations as dire as manslaughter due to gross negligence.
Although I'm not claiming that our use of corporation names as singular nouns is wholly responsible for this fallacy, I think it contributes. The way we talk and the way we think are inseparably intertwined, some have even gone so far as to suggest they are the same thing. Singular corporate names hide the fact that corporations are just a whole bunch of flawed human beings with conflicting goals and values; a fact that is important not to forget. So to help see the people behind the "corporation" abstraction, I'm making a conscious effort to incorporate plural corporate names into my common discourse, for I'm convinced America have the worse of the two conventions on this one.
Email Rob:
The Spread of Misinformation
information, internet
May 13, 2003, 10:05 PM
There was an article on Slashdot yesterday that makes an interesting case study in how easily the truth can get warped as information propogates from person to person (or website to website), and should make us all very cautious of blindly believing what we read, online or off.
The article was titled "Google To Create "Blog" Search; Potentially Remove From Main". The upthrust of the writeup was that Google had announced that (1) they were planning on creating a special "blog" search engine and (2) this means they would be removing all weblog posts from their main index.
(1) is not too surprising; after acquiring Blogger this is the logical next step for Google to take. But (2) is a big deal, especially to webloggers like me who are fairly fond of having Google index our writings. From the comments, it appears most people took this point at face value and produced reams of commentary about it (mostly in favor of Google's supposed decision, I might add).
The problem is Google has decided no such thing. They haven't even hinted that they are considering removing weblogs from their main search index. So where did this idea come from?
The story links to an article by Andrew Orlowski, who is known to have some issues with the whole weblog concept. Andrew links to a Reuters story on Yahoo News, which contains the following comments from Google's CEO:
Google allows people to search Web pages, as well as search specific types of content such as news sources, shopping sites through its "Froogle" service, Usenet groups. Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as "blogs," Schmidt said.
That's the only reference the original article makes to weblogs. But over at the Register, Andrew adds:
It isn't clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be. After Google acquired Usenet groups from Deja.com, it developed a unique user interface and a refined search engine, and removed the groups from the main index.
He provides no further evidence for this hunch than what appears above; that based on a "precedent" of one very different situation, web-accessible usenet news, Google's mention of a weblog search tool meant that they were removing weblogs from their main index.
What's amazing is how quickly Slashdot's readers took his words at face value, even though the original source material that would have thrown doubt on these claims was only a couple of clicks away. The sad fact is that most people don't bother to check the facts too carefully on most of what they read, even when checking the facts isn't onerously difficult. And I include myself in that statement; I frequently don't bother to follow the links in a K5 story, or do a quick Google search on a meme mentioned on Slashdot.
And this isn't just limited to online, collaborative media like Slasdot, either. K5 has a story on the Klingon language interpreter myth that gives an example of this principle in a traditional media setting.
In today's world, where we experience an enormous information influx as the result of advanced communications technologies, it's more important than ever to reserve a certain amount of skepticism for every new fact we read about, and try to check up on the facts when possible even when we would like to believe what's being said.
Email Rob:
Multitasking Projects by Days
personal
May 12, 2003, 07:36 PM
One of the things I both love and hate about my life here at CMU is that I constantly have several different projects that I am working on simultaneously. For example, at the moment I'm:
- Working on U&SA with Bonnie and Len.
- Finishing up the TCinC independent study with Matt and Joe.
- Redesigning my web site (no really, I'm actually doing it! Stop laughing at me!).
- Working for my old company to document the software system I worked on last year.
- Trying to start an independent study on open source and usability.
Not to mention all the little things that crop up as a result of trying to have a social life, trying to have an intellectual life, maintaining a server, maintaining a car, eating, bathing, etc., etc.
Having all these projects is a good thing because I get to develop several of my many areas of interest at once, plus it keeps me from getting bored from working on the same sorts of problems day in and day out. On the other hand, this is a bad thing because I find it tends to scatter my attention; I can't give my full concentration to any one project because I have a million other ideas, concerns, thoughts, etc. floating around in my head about the several other ones I'm working on.
Last year, when I was only working on EE, I didn't have this problem since I could devote 100% of my attention to the one project I was then working on. This is, in a sense, an ideal situation, but my interests were also quite a bit narrower, I didn't have a chance to meet and work with as many interesting people, etc. So given that working on a bazillion projects at once is a fact of life, what can we do to help keep ourselves focused so we can give each one our best?
I find that it helps to plan your time so that you can devote entire days to individual projects. It doesn't have to be consistent, just don't try to accomplish something on more than one project in any given day. Give yourself entirely to the day's project of choice, this way you can focus on the many important concerns of that one project for an entire eight hour period (or however long you consider your workday to be) and push everything else from your mind. I find the daily cycle to be an affective time quantum for my own personal multitasker. In non-geek speak, that means that the natural rhythm of the days can work for us to split our work across; it seems to be somehow in tune with the way our bodies and minds are built to work.
I plan to incorporate this idea more into my own work schedule in the future.
Email Rob:
A Pattern for Distributed Work
patterns, society & sociology
May 12, 2003, 05:36 PM
Earlier I wrote a post on technology and life in the future and mentioned the Community of 7000 pattern from "A Pattern Language". Alexander mentions another pattern that fits even closer with the ideas I expressed in that post; in Scattered Work he describes the many downsides that the strict separation between work-life and home-life does to a society, and recommends organizing towns so that work and home life are intertwined by decentralizing workplaces so they can be moved closer to homes and modifying the daily schedule so that workers can easily move between their homes and workplaces, work from home, take half-days, etc. This was commonplace in traditional societies, and Alexander believes that it is a viable pattern in modern societies as well.
There were barriers to implementing this pattern when "A Pattern Language" was written (early 1970s) but I believe that the advent of distributed information technologies, coupled with improvements in personal transportation systems, will tear down many if not all of these. Read Alexander's pattern and my post and see if you don't agree.
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Drawing Work Over Time
processes & methodologies, teaching & learning, writing & communication
May 11, 2003, 09:02 AM
For our TCinC work, Matt and I are interviewing the students who just completed the course to get a picture of how they worked, what they learned, etc. We plan on performing this exercise again after Joe incorporates our redesigned lesson plans into his curriculum to hopefully show that our changes brought about real improvement.
I'm currently trying to develop a notation for mapping out what the students did through the course of the semester, what information or materials they used to do it, and what they learned at each phase. For our initial contextual inquiries, we built the "five faces of work" diagrams from Contextual Design. But for our problem, we found the diagrams contained a lot of repeated information and split important aspects of the students' experience across diagrams, for example, we would like the interaction of people and documents from the Work Flow diagram to be mixed with the sense of linear work-over-time from the Sequence diagram.
What we basically want to know is whether the concepts Joe teaches in class were used by the consultants at site, and how the overall process could be streamlined and improved both to facilitate the students learning and improve their work with their community partners. Thus, our diagramming notation needs to express the following concepts:
- What students did at each stage of the process (class periods, meetings with their community partners, etc.).
- What knowledge they internalized at each stage of the process and how this knowledge changed over time.
- What artifacts they created and how these artifacts changed over time.
- What opinions and thoughts they had at each stage and how these changed over time.
To try to address these issues, I've developed the following notation:
Since real user data is confidential, this is, of course, a mockup of a real diagram.
I'm hoping this diagram will address these issues at a glance. (1) should be addressed by the student activities which are mapped onto a timeline (you can even make the activities wider to indicate the relative lengths) which comes from the Sequence models. (2) and (4) should be addressed by the "thought bubbles" which come out of activities and can influence future activities, as well as morph into other thought bubbles as the student's understanding changes. (3) should be addressed by the document boxes that can be produced and used in activities. People and outcomes are important to include to see who was influencing the students and what they actually accomplished at each meeting.
I am concerned that cramming all this information onto a single diagram will make it appear cramped and difficult to use to get an overall picture as intended. But if I split some of this across multiple diagrams, I worry we'll have the same problem we did with the CI/CD models where a lack of a consistent process view made it hard to get a handle on the whole system being studied. I'm also concerned that comparing the "before and after" diagrams at the end of our studies will be less effective with something this complex; the improvements may not jump out at you as much as they would with a simpler notation.
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Email Rob: