March 30, 2003
An Anniversary of Mobile Note
Thirty years ago on Wednesday, Martin Cooper made the first
true cellular phone call, in a demonstration that was the beginning of
massive change in the way we communicate. He's a pioneer, and keeps
pioneering.
More in my Sunday column.
Ed Felten is telling us about proposed state laws that would make you
laugh out loud if they weren't so idiotic -- legislation that effectively
would ban firewalls and other security measures, for instance.
Read it for yourself.
The smaller the group, the more immediate value in the relationship.
That's one notion behind an emerging phenomenon called ``social
software,'' products that help groups work with each other more
effectively.
At the annual PC Forum conference in suburban Phoenix this week, we got a
glimpse of what Clay Shirky, an acute
observer of the technology scene, called the latest in ``lightweight,
bottom-up and Internet-enabled'' tools.
I especially like SocialText, which
is all about a Web you can write on as well as read. It expands on
technologies that have been around for some time, and lets people work
from browsers to collaborate in remarkably efficient ways. The key is
simplicity.
Among the base technologies are online chat and something called a Wiki,
an extremely lightweight but writeable Web page. Once you're inside the
Wiki, you can edit any page yourself, using tools that make it simple to
create new links and annotations. It sounds like potential anarchy, and
it could turn into a mess without limitations on who can participate in a
given group. But I've participated in several of these
conversations/collaborations lately, and I can attest to their potential
effectiveness.
SocialText isn't the only such idea around, and the tools are still
rough-edged. But it illustrates one way toward a goal we all crave -- to
share our ideas, organize ourselves and generally make better use of this
vastly collaborative new space that combines the real and virtual
worlds.
Meetup is a brilliant idea -- using
online technology to get people together and coordinate a real-world
meeting, not the virtual kind. Yes, in person.
People organize everything online first, including voting on where to
meet in some cases. Check out the Web site for the variety of
meetings.
Using the Net to be truly anti-social. I love it. You will, too. (anti
pr)
Name that Invasion
American Military Operation Name Generating Device
(Thanks, David.)
• posted by Dan Gillmor 08:42
AM
• permanent link to this item
