Technology

I guess that I’m a Copyleft commie, if you believe Bill Gates. Here’s Bill’s comment that launched a thousand blogs:

Follow this with Michelle Delio’s overview of some of the issues around patents and open source:

• 
  Recently – IBM just gave a few hundred of them [patents] away while other companies are greedily gobbling them up.
• The issue – "The real story here is that we are in the midst of a huge revolution because the patent system hasn’t kept up with technology and changes in society," says Sunstein [an attorney specializing in intellectual property law].

On the other hand, Creative Commons offers creators an option to control their own copyright – With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify here.

There is also a Canadian petition circulating on user’s rights, which gives a different perspective from what one hears from the established media companies. If you want a good (US) historical perspective, then read or listen to Lessig’s book, Free Culture.

Finally, if you think that the movement for copyright and patent reform is just a bunch of radical commies, then you should read Will Shetterly’s Biblical parable to see what happens when an idea/technology, ?ɬ† la McLuhan, "flips or reverses its properties into the opposite effect when pushed to its limits".

Geoffrey Moore’s analogy of “crossing the chasm” is used a lot in information technology. Basically, the premise is that any new technology is quickly adopted by innovators and early adopters, but there is a chasm to cross in order to get the more pragmatic majority to adopt the new technology. For marketing, this is the real challenge – can the new product get widespread acceptance? In many cases (but not all) the development costs can only be recovered if the majority purchase the goods or services.

I previously referred to this model and tried to tie it to Gladwell’s “tipping point” theory. Much of my consulting work is in bridging the chasm

1. I attempt to be an early adopter myself, and use this experience to work with the early pragmatic majority. I also use a broader definition of technology; being the application of organized and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. I spend much of my time watching the innovators, and
2. try to determine which of their ideas and new technologies would make sense for my clients. To do this, I have to keep trying out new tools and processes in my own work.
3. It’s a real balancing act, trying to be on the leading edge but not the bleeding edge.

Some of the technologies that I believe are ready to cross the chasm in the next year [2005] are:

• Blogs (with some difficulties) & RSS
• Workflow Learning (including wider acceptance of performance support instead of training)
• Open Source

… as well as some that probably won’t get across, yet:

• Wikis (partially because of the name)
• Natural Enterprises & Natural Capitalism (unfortunately)

Update March 2006: It’s seems that the use of blogs has exploded, with Technorati’s current count at 29 million. Workflow learning has stalled a bit, while the value of informal learning is catching on. Wikis are also becoming more popular, especially those that replicate word processesors, like Writely. There also seems to be a growing interest in natural enterprises and something to replace corporatism as a guiding model, so I am more optimistic than last year.
[Picture based on Wikipedia entry.]

I recently posted a link to SmartDraw at the bottom left of my website. This is a purely commercial venture on my part, and I receive a small commission for every sale of SmartDraw that occurs as a result of a purchase though this link. Someone purchased SmartDraw7 this month (thank you very much) and I will get some cash (cool). Here are the main reasons I decided to do this:

• I have been using SmartDraw for a couple of years, and I like the product (ask me for details if you like)
• SmartDraw is a small company, with about 25 employees, and I like helping the little guys
• I wanted to experiment with paid ads, and see what happens

I would appreciate any feedback on my e-commerce foray, especially if you think that this detracts from my independent consultant status. I don’t intend to add more products to my nav bar, and no I don’t get any money for the Firefox banner – I just really like the product :-)