ADD America

Are we that sure the first A in ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) doesn't also stand for America (American Distraction Disease?). We have created a political and economic colossus that has the attention span of a flea. Specifically we have created an environment where:
1) Thanks to the public stock market, corporations can't do things that make sense for a long term strategic horizon, because the investors, who only care about this quarter's numbers, have interests opposed to those of the company, which should be seeking to be successful over a much longer period
2) Thanks to two and four year election cycles, elected officials have no interest in solving any problems that can't show definitive results within their known term of office.
The biggest problems in industry have to do with innovation and the well documented innovators dilemma; that incumbents are almost guaranteed to be killed by the next big thing, even when they see it coming. This is because these companies are forced to obey the public market's obsession with 90 day performance. Even if a company in an innovation industry (is there another kind?)  is smart enough to recognize that they must cannibalize their own sales to introduce the next big thing, after their IPO this is not an option. Some "rock star" hedge fund idiot will "protect" this short term performance by buying majority control and replacing any member of the management team with the nerve to do what's right for long term survival.
Even worse, the biggest problems on the planet extend way beyond the survival of high flying corporations. What's at stake is the survival of nations, the human species and possibly the planet. Education, energy, food supply, health care, climate change, and the like are not problems that can be solved in a two or four year term. As a result they are not problems that make sense to spend political capital and opportunity cost on according the the arithmetic of western politics.
As a nation, America is ruled by wall street and the politicians that successful corporations are allowed to buy through our fabulous system of lobbyists and elections decided by advertising spend. With our current cultural priority, making lots of money is admirable - don't bore me with the details -  the best and brightest are increasingly applying their talents to creating companies with massive paper worth and zero redeeming qualities or substantive contribution to humanity. Do we need to advance the state of the art for allowing the self absorbed to broadcast their "status" more effectively?  These new tools help politicians pour all of their energy into trendy distractions (which Twitter is kind enough to prioritize and quantify - "trending now") while the planet becomes hotter, flatter and more crowded (Thanks Mr. Friedman, for attempting a wake-up call).   Although it is obvious to anyone who was able to comprehend high school science and has paid attention in recent decades that a NASA-like initiative to solve climate change, create alternative fuel sources or increase agricultural output would rapidly lead to game changing new inventions, there is zero chance that politicians will execute this. They are owned by special interests such as dirty energy and corporate food production and will be thrown out of office long before they can use the success that would result from long term investments to get re-elected. When I was in school, being too stupid to understand high school science made you one of the cool kids. Today it makes you a danger to the human species, as evidenced by the climate change denier movement. I suspect the ring leaders are actually smart enough to understand the science, but have sold out our species for their own short term comfort. This makes it really scary that we need to compete globally in a world that includes a massive centrally planned economy driven by leaders who understood high school science (No climate deniers in the Chinese politburo) and have the ability to sponsor long term, strategic initiatives to allow their nation to dominate the world.
I wish I knew how to be the agent for change that would allow American's to stop thinking about the next payment on their McMansion and fix our political and economic systems. We may or may not have the best system of government in the world (the bar is set pretty low by others), but that doesn't mean it works worth a damn. The weasels have had 200 years to find the loopholes and hijack the system and they have done so. I would be happy to be part of a generation of realists who are willing to make some short term sacrifices and have fewer useless possessions in order to save humanity. I just can't seem to find where the line is forming to join that movement. The fact that Dick Cheney is pontificating on election strategy while still being enriched by the oil companies he served as an elected official, instead of serving hard time as a war criminal, is all the proof I need that the folks running our democracy love money more than they love America. At lease Dubya had the decency to withdraw from the public eye after the experiment of having an anti-intellectual (i.e. stupid guy) for president (TWICE!!!!)  failed. Please don't "mis-underestimate" me, I'm still out there working hard to "put food on my family".
Until we can cure the institutional ADD built into our system and work over the long term on hard problems, we are caught up in the process of slipping into the abyss.

Species Traitors

There was a time when the most heinous and hated individuals in society were people who were traitors to their country. They allowed selfishness and cowardice to motivate and justify betrayal of their fellow countrymen, who typically trusted, cared for and supported them. Often, like the rats and the snitches of the criminal world, they were drawn from the very bottom of society; compromised people who could be turned by blackmailing them with the threat to expose their perversions, addictions, crimes or cruelty. As we moved into the modern era of American politics the most despicable traitors came to be our elected officials. Selfless civil servants and patriots were replaced by cynical, selfish professional politicians who perverted the good intentions of the framers of our constitution. These frauds made the primary goals of elected office to enrich and further empower themselves and their friends, and to remain in office. It appeared that this disastrous trend had peaked during the bush administration when the executive branch and most of the republican party betrayed the trust of the common people in order to enrich petroleum executives at the expense of our nations standing in the world and the personal security of the American people.
Shockingly, yet not surprisingly for those paying attention, the professional politicians of the democratic party were no better and took the opportunity to feather their nests by selling out to whatever special interests had not already bought the republicans (or in some case to those who had and were hedging by owning politicians on either side of the aisle). The American people were miraculously able to express their disappointment with the state of our government and elect a president who did not appear interested in selling out. In spite of the best efforts of the leaders of the two major parties and the professional politicians in Washington, a man came to office who was actually a patriot and interested in the common good of the nation and its citizens. Unfortunately, our political system is so broken, our government so infested with self interested traitors, and our pathetic media so disinterested in communicating reality, that this fine and reasonable man looks like he will be able to accomplish little or nothing to save the nation. Traitors are running our government and media, and our nation is sinking rapidly with little chance of being saved.

That seems sad and depressing, and yet pales in comparison to the fact that there is a new kind of traitor loose on the planet who can't be bothered with applying his selfishness, laziness and ignorance to destroying individual nations. We now have a huge group of climate change deniers who are traitors to their species. Not all climate deniers are so sick that they are willingly destroying our species to enrich themselves in the short term or to cling to some foolish political philosophy. Many are simply ignorant; too stupid to understand simple scientific concepts and susceptible to the lies, distortions and denial of the traitors who know better and don't care if our children, grandchildren, and in fact our entire species perish. No doubt the planet will continue to exist and some forms of life will likely carry on. It is well known that cockroaches as a species are virtually indestructible. Perhaps the human cockroaches who are perpetrating this travesty are under the mistaken impression that cockroach is their species, rather than a pejorative referring to their intelligence and absent morality. Conservative talk show hosts on Fox TV invite dedicated and accomplished scientists, people who are actually smart and knowledgeable about climate, on their shows, ask them biased questions and then interrupt and shout them down or turn off their microphone when they are able to provide factual and convincing answers that contradict the positions that these sold-out actors, pretending to be journalists, have been paid to take. It is almost impossible for a decent person to comprehend how an individual can sell out their species for wealth, comfort or celebrity, and yet there are people in positions of leadership and influence doing exactly that. Through-out history, betraying one's nation has generally been punishable by death. One can only hope there is something much worse than death to which the criminals who are betraying our species will be sentenced in the very near future. This is not a drill. This is really happening. Good and decent people are making enormous sacrifices and working heroically to save our species and traitors are doing all they can to undermine this process for reasons that are incomprehensible. God help us all is a total cop-out. We must help us all.

Fair use Rant

This posting grew out of a conversation with a buddy about the morality of file sharing, etc. He was buying music from Apple and feeling morally superior to me because I download MP3s from bit torrent for music or video I already purchased previously. Here are a few thoughts on why I'm equally righteous and why I can't stand the following groovy cultural icons of the digital age:

• Steve Jobs, iPod, ITunes
  
• Media companies and content owners
  

More specifically, here is why I ain't buying digital media from the content kings any time soon...

I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I have spent some time researching and thinking about it professionally for a consumer audio device I designed.

When both the audio cassette recorder and the VCR were being introduced, the content owners tried to have the devices outlawed, and then to have the use of them for recording previously purchased media outlawed. The courts ruled that recording vinyl onto tape is perfectly legal, although mass producing tapes for resale is illegal. Similar rulings say one can record broadcast audio/video for personal non-commercial (re)use.

Nested within these decisions was the assumption that when you buy e.g. vinyl records, you pay COGS (vinyl, cardboard, printing), something to the distribution channel, and (a shockingly small) something to the artist as a one-time right to use. (See this Artist Rant: http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/ ).

Along comes mp3 ripping/burning and file sharing.

If I buy from itunes I am paying their COGS (zero!), something to the channel (Apple), and a one-time right to use to the artist.

If I bought it on vinyl when I was 14, don't use a commercial distribution channel, get a zero-COGS mp3 file off the internet, I have perfectly and fairly compensated the whole value chain. If the artist would just make it available to me over the internet for one cent per track, I would be happy to pay them even if I already bought the right to use and they would make more than they are making with the label! In fact, I've been paying ten cents per track to AllofMP3 and feeling like their time ripping the CDs is worth the cost.

I bought the following on vinyl, eight track, cassette, CD, already:
*Everything by CSN, Stones, Beatles, Clapton, The Band, Little Feat, Eagles, Neil Young, Creedence, Aerosmith, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Marley, Santana, etc.
* Lots of Grateful Dead, Clash, Elvis costello, police, pretenders, (you get the idea)

I ain't paying again, and certainly ain't paying with all kinds of dumb ass technology that prevents the tracks from working on 3 of my 4 MP3 players!!! And I have to use Apple software and devices and do special stuff if I want to move it to another player. Hello??

I hate Apple and itunes for bringing zero innovation, tons of artificial, monopolistic restrictions, and a style-over-substance product line to digital music.

Zen players aren't as pretty, but they support a free (as in freedom) digital music scene, which is not necessarily a free (as in beer) scene, and are priced competitively for the COGS represented.

Steve Jobs is rich and famous, is a mean and ill-mannered person in my experience, and has brought as much value to us as the tobacco company executives (albeit without the medical harm).

The whole thing is annoying because our media has made Jobs/Apple the good-guy foil to Gates/MS evil act, when they are similar in deed, with Steve the bigger hypocrite by virtue of his marketing. Now he's becoming the anti-DRM convert, but only if position favoring freedom doesn't cost him a cent. This is mostly disingenuous, as Apple has been using their proprietary DRM (which they won't license to others) as their primary lever to try and monopolize the market with products that aren't cost-competitive. You are probably aware that the EU is trying hard to resist this, but the market-momentum to date makes it hard to slow Apple down. Audio posers will bootleg iPods if the government outlaws them. They have been taught that their too stupid to click on download buttons without Apple's UI genius.

Indulging Them More and Less

Technology has changed the ways in which we control and influence the inputs to our childs development and where kid's thinking is at any given moment. Think about it, our generation, who are parents now, had one primary form of "content" if we weren't allowed to watch TV; our imaginations. This form of content was stored locally inside an individual childs head, or shared among a group of kids minds, as they played together outdoors, largely beyond the direct supervision of any adult. Todays content is digital and can be burned, downloaded, or just purchased in an entertainment/edutainment appliance. There are increasing levels of discretion applied to filtering kids access to content ranging from "I refuse to buy you that on developmental and moral principals" to NetNanny and "we don't allow games (movies/songs/etc.) with violence and sex into our home. As a result, it is possible to delude oneself into thinking that we are shaping or directly controlling our children's emerging values, interestests, and behavior patterns by micro-managing their acquisition and exposure to digital content.

It is odd that we have such a well developed understanding of the potential negative impact of kids spending huge chunks of their lives with digital playmates, yet so little appreciation of the activities that are losing time to computers, iPods and gameBoys. From the age of about 7 to 13 I spent as much time playing world war II, cowboys and indians, colonials against the British, and other imagination games with heavy fighting, combat and weaponry as I did playing football, baseball, kickball, volleyball, etc. We didn't spend all day doing digital stuff, but we did spend all day outside the range of parental censorship, and thus gravitated to:

1. The things we were naturally interested int
2. Things that the current generation of parents think are guaranteed to breed a generation of homicidal maniacs (e.g. guns, knives, spears, shooting, fighting, blowing up)

Many kids I know are so digitally absorbed that they have effectively zero time spent doing unsupervised activities, and occupy all of the downtime that was traditionally filled with imaginary play with tube-time instead. Interestingly, this makes it possible to prevent kids from doing stuff like violent play, but only by treating their natural interests and inclinations as the enemy. It has been my experience that:

• Millions of people who grew up playing Army or whatever, are not homicidal maniacs
• Kids will be interested in whatever they are interested in regardless of how we try to control their influences.

There is, of course, no simple conclusion to take away. It may not be a complete waste of time to try to shape the content your kids are exposed to, and there are certainly some down-sides to the change in how the human species will spend their time, given Moore's law and it's effect in the digital generation(s). Sex is another whole dimension that has clearly been moved front and center by the increasing exposure to produced media. Of the two big bogey-men of modern parenting, violence and sex, I know I spent most of my day doing imaginary violence that my wife would never let my son fantasize about, but I have no memory of being aware that sex existed until I was maybe twelve. Today my 9 year old asked me why someone would want to take Viagra to make their Penis big.

P.S. Last I checked, I am not a homicidal maniac.

Medical Admin Insanity

More thoughts from my recent visit to the eye doctor. I only saw one doctor, but expect that there may have been as many as three working in this facility based on the number of patients cranking through. THERE WERE 8 RECEPTIONIST TYPES.

What these people did was mostly greeting new patients, typing in their personal and insurance info, and filling out insurance paperwork to go to their insurance company, as well as haggling with folks at insurance companies about paperwork mistakes. I was amused to find that the person who spent half an hour doing this for me could not say definitively whether or not I had a $5 copay for my visit and allowed me to choose whether I would copay with possible refund or not pay with possible invoice. Oh yeah, they also personally escort each patient to an exam room, where a physician or technician will eventually work with them.

Here's how we eliminate most if not all of those nice and well meaning 8 people. I walk into the eye clinic. I wave a RFID tag at a reader or type in the URL for my patient record and insurance info wiki (http://radlook.blogspot.com/2006/08/patient-record-is-wiki.html). I type in my person PIN number. I sit in the waiting room (the half hour of data entry and confusion about copay were done when my medical record wiki was accessed). When it is time to go into an exam room, my name is displayed on a monitor in the waiting room along with a map showing how to get to the room I am assigned. Above the door is a panel displaying my name. I go inside and wait for the technician/doctor.

There is no paperwork, and thus no paperwork errors. A claim for my medical services is added to my patient wiki and my insurance company is digitally notified that they need to access the wiki and process the claim. All of the administrative work that is currently required to run my eye doctors office is eliminated and we're all better off for it.

While we're at it why not give real-time insight into a doctors patient queue? I usually sit for an hour or more in the doctors office because his schedule took an unforeseen hit. I suspect in 90% of cases, someone could have let me know that I could arrive an hour later and still see the doctor at the same time. We could save money by eliminating the waiting room and patients could walk into the doctors office at the moment that the doctor was ready to see them. But perhaps doctors haven't noticed that other people's time is also important to them...

Patient Record is Wiki

When I think about what a patient medical record is, I picture a wiki. It is a thing that gets passed among a (closed) group of interested parties who have a need to read, change, or add to it. The elements added are as diverse as office equipment allows; printed documents, photographs, medical images, speech for physicians notes, etc. This record needs to be perpetually available to a wide audience with the ability to understand what changes were made, when and by whom. The thing would live in the web/Internet cloud on a wiki server, but could also go off-line;being carried around by a patient and then synchronized with the "master" copy on the server. Hosting this entity would include a damned reliable backup/restore capability. If the patient owned this entity (or was provided such a trusted digital service), changing medical providers would seemlessly transfer a complete medical history to the new doctor.

At this point, I look at how current wiki technology would support the diverse role-based authorization requirements for medical records. Defining the group of folks allowed to access one's records becomes more critical as the physical barriers to access are erased by the Internet. Unlike a community development project, where the organization is flat and all contribute equally, there is a regulated, and well defined set of roles and actions they are allowed to perform in medical record management. I am not aware of "carrier class" wiki implementations that include sufficient richness of authentication and access control to enable the mapping of a digital patient record via this technology. This is unfortunate given that the mapping is so natural and clean, and the benefits so compelling.

As I think of the software development required to build a wiki server capable of protecting suc h critical data, it is clear to me that many other business records would map nicely onto the wiki format and would also require rich AAA capabilities and think there is a business here.