September 2006 Archives

FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?

CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.

JFK: You're going to put nukes where? I don't fucking think so.

REAGAN: Okay commrade, you've gone and built enough nuclear weapons to radiate the world. You have spies stealing state secrets and minions spreading ideology from one continent to the next. But. ummm, I'm sorry red, you still don't get it. You're the evil empire but that doesn't scare us, we have faith in our system of government, in our people. Sit down with us - negotiate - or show the world the coward you are. Don't even think of attacking us. Put down your guns. Wage peace while you have the chance. Tear down this wall.

US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!

WE GOTTA PUT UP SOME WALLS! HURRY! Anything that stands in our way is pre-9/11 thinking, including that document interpreted by activist judges (I think that's called the Constitution, damned liberals).

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The previous is an expanded take on the brilliant "Wait, Aren't You Scared?" by John Rogers and "Fear itself" by slacktivist. Make sure to read both.

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Politics is an on again, off again subject here, but like Rafe, I found I couldn't help myself. "How can people not get it?" I don't know man. I don't know.

I can't help but begin to think my generation, and the boomer generation that has preceded it, has failed our children, and their children. We build castles in the sky while our foundations beneath our feet become quicksand.

For all our connective technology, are we going to leave the world less free, more uncertain, and divided unlike ever before?

NYTimes: Antiterrorism Bill on Detainees, Geneva Conventions - Rushing Off a Cliff:

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

•There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

It's not too late to call. Susie Madrak has some instructions for who and how and Matt Stoller at MyDD has some political analysis of the fallout here.

Make sure you check out Civil Defense, the latest blog featured at Philly Future. Better yet, spread word and expand the online discussion.

There's lots going on in the world, some terrible, some not. Some outragous, some boring. Some that begs the question, some that just begs to go the hell away. I've been a bit too busy to post. With work yes, but also at home.

I'm sure you'd understand :)

My 6th grade teacher, Mr. Crell, had a yearly tradition where he'd produce a video, by his students, for the entire school. A play or short story would be chosen that his class would act out and he would direct. My class got the educational experience of putting together a production of a Twilight Zone episode titled "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street".

After watching the original, we had a discussion over some of its themes, how they might apply in our lives, and they reflected on our country's history. The take away was that fear and paranoia were dangerous, and could be used to manipulate us. I had the honor of playing Rod Serling. Honestly, I probably got the part because I didn't want to be on camera all that much, and I spoke very clear and deliberate back then, in an effort to overcome a speech impediment.

Like Pax it was a small pleasure hearing it referenced in one of Keith Olbermann's commentaries last week. This one, particularly impassioned, having to do with 9/11's fifth anniversary. It fit well. Sadly.

If you haven't watched yet, well just take a few minutes.

Philly.com: Center City shaken:

A fire in an underground electric cable yesterday spewed smoke, ignited gases that blew manhole covers into the air, and forced the evacuation of about 5,000 workers from two office towers near City Hall.

The ripple effect of the lunchtime drama snarled traffic in Center City and threatened to disrupt the evening rush hour.

But the fire was put out by 3, and power was quickly restored to most of the buildings in the area bounded by 15th and 16th Streets and Market and Chestnut Streets.

Livia was in the area and posted some shots on Flickr.

Whadda day.

Occupants of the office building I work in were evacuated today as underground explosions shook our building and the surrounding neighborhood.

Around 1pm today, a few co-workers and I were giving a send-off, at Nodding Head, to a co-worker who is moving, when a powerful rumble vibrated the building for a split second. It sounded low and deep. At that time, we thought it was an accident involving heavy construction equipment, but as we approached 15th and Chestnut St., it became clear something was very, very wrong.

People were standing looking up. Others were talking of a car explosion nearby. We saw co-workers walking away from our office building. Thoughts of 9/11, of terrorism weighed on my heart. And judging from conversations I could over hear, I wasn't alone.

We traveled up Chestnut to 16th, thinking we could get close to our building from the back. But when we arrived, we found a group of fellow co-workers across the street, outside One Liberty Place. They explained they heard and felt an explosion, and saw smoke from the building windows.

I made a quick call to my wife, to let her know what was going on, and that I was okay. Shortly after there was a bright flash of flame and loud thump as an explosion happened up Ranstead, towards 15th, underneath East Tower - right in front of us. I mentioned to my friends that it was time to leave, and that walking straight to the Parkway was our best bet. A short time later a few other co-workers joined us near JFK Blvd., mentioned that the building was shut down for the night, that we could go home.

I had an urge to stick around, but anything that I could have used to record events was still stuck in the building. So I took the first train out of there and headed home.

CBS3 has video and more information. Philly.com's story has a picture of the street we were looking down when we saw what we thought was the second explosion. More pictures and info at KYW1060.

Crossposted from Philly Future.

Hehe. That's Ed Cone sharing the news about the Daily News's Wendy Warren joining the Inquirer's Daniel Rubin, participating at ConvergeSouth. It already looks to be an interesting gathering, one that I want to make if fates permit.

Speaking of Philly, did you know that YearlyKos might choose our town for the location of next year's convention?

I can't explain why Philly has such a preponderance of great, nationally known bloggers, but we do, that's for sure. Maybe it's the cheesesteaks or water ice? Maybe it's old Ben's legacy. The great blogosphere here, and the new local ownership of our two big papers might herald a new age for media, communications, and civic involvement (yes civic involvement). Check out The Next Mayor or Young Philly Politics.

Speaking of Philly being a great place to blog, and while there's no denying that Philadelphia is facing some huge challenges, it truly is a great place to live and work. Comcast is hiring.

Reuters has donated $100,000 to NewAssignment.Net, enabling it to hire its first editor. Jay Rosen:

It's going to be a fun job. This is editing horizontally amid journalism gone pro-am. The idea is to draw "smart crowds" - a group of people configured to share intelligence - into collaboration at NewAssignment.Net and get stories done that way that aren't getting done now. By pooling their intelligence and dividing up the work, a network of volunteer users can find things out that the larger public needs to know. I think that's most likely to happen in collaboration with editors and reporters who are paid to meet deadines, and to set a consistent standard. Which is the "pro-am" part.

NewAssignment.Net is a not a plan for a company; in fact, it's closer to a charity, an editorial engine anchored in civil society itself, rather than the media industry or journalism profession. As today's announcement shows, New Assignment can be on friendly terms with Big Media, which it is is not trying to destroy or supplant.

Read the rest of Jay Rosen's thoughts about the development over at Comment is free.

I work with the team that develops The Fan and I just wanted to take a second to congratulate my co-workers on winning.

For Arpit, it marks a nice full circle in his life. The team deserves the all the accolades it gets. I'm honored to work with the very, very talented team that I do.

Congrats and kick ass :)

Fate was recently interviewed in Amateur Illustrator. Check it out, and the gallery of some of her terrific work.

Your memory plays tricks on you. It can be so selective. What one remembers, another experiencing the same event, might recall entirely different. For me, well it seems I've already forgotten so much of my past.

But the morning of 9/11, and the following two weeks remain so crystal clear. For me, for my wife, for anyone who I've talked to. The horror, the anger, the realization that life can change in an instant, no matter how many layers of denial we attempt to hide behind.

How many of us swore to change our lives in those following weeks? Resolve to be better citizens? Better family members? Better friends? I did. I know you did.

For many, that day prompted reaching out. Connecting. Making contact. It would emerge as the moment that gave birth to blogging. In the seemingly spontaneous outpouring of grief, anger, support and viewpoint, thousands poured their hearts and souls into this social space of spaces.

That 15th I went to confession. Not knowing that later that day my nephew would pass from S.I.D.S.. I had asked my priest, what should I do? How should I help? I was ready to get in a car and drive to New York City. He told me to stop and think. Be a good husband. Be a good brother. Be a good uncle. Be present and be there for them. The absolute tear in our hearts that would happen that afternoon made clear to me that I needed to withdraw from the web. Shutter Philly Future. Hunter was just three months old when he left us. I didn't get a chance to know him. And that was my fault.

Besides, the web was *already* an integral part of my life. I had put so much of myself into my work, into this, I felt I had to take five steps back to find my footing.

In some ways, the change was for naught. Some moved away. Others disappeared into online gaming. A mailing list of close friends imploaded under personal attacks brought about by political differences that couldn't be bridged. And here I am, back on the web, participating even more then I did prior to 9/11. I guess it's part of who I am. And I guess that's life, it goes on. But I'm still left every day with the question - is this making a difference?

What will Emma, my daughter, think of it all one day?

I'm mirroring The World Mourns here at paradox1x, since its 30 or so pages remind me so vividly of the spirit that rose in the horror of 9/11. A spirit that united the world, in interconnectedness, that lasted until the lead up to the Iraq war.

To me, if anything, it is what needs to be reminded of that day, and of the following days. In the face of so much evil, humanity has the potential to find common ground, to rise above differences, in goals, in minds, in deeds, and in hearts.

Our leadership has failed to bring to justice those that attacked us on 9/11. Instead of encouraging discourse and conversation, optimism and vision, it has encouraged fear and silence.
And we're playing our parts. All too well. Forgotten is that opportunity. That hope.

Our children are watching our example. What are we are teaching? What are we are leaving behind?

A reminder for folks to check out Philly Future's latest featured Philadelphia blogger, "I've Made a Huge Tiny Mistake".

phillyfeaturedblog

TIME.com: What We've Learned -- Sep. 11, 2006:

An American businessman, traveling in India when the planes struck the towers, made his way back to the U.S. the following week as quickly as he could. That meant hopscotching across the Middle East, stopping in Athens overnight to change planes. He spent the evening having supper in a local taverna. No one else in the restaurant spoke English, but when the owner realized he had an American in the house just two nights after 9/11, he asked his guest to stand up, face the other diners and listen to a toast.

And indeed, the entire room stood up, raised their glasses and said, as one, "Shoulder to shoulder, until justice is done."

Five years later, after an invasion of Afghanistan and an occupation of Iraq, and amid talk of war with Iran, it is fair to ask:

Would they say it again tonight?

Would we say it to one another?

This has become the loss with no grave, no chance for mourning, because we still live it every day--the loss of that transcendent unity, global goodwill, common purpose born of righteous anger that wrapped us like a bandage those first months after the attacks: a President with a 90% approval rating, a Congress working as one, expressions of sympathy and offers of help from every corner of the planet. WE ARE ALL AMERICANS, said Le Monde.

That unity was never going to last.

...In the weeks after 9/11, out of the pain and the fear there arose also grace and gratitude, eruptions of intense kindness that occurred everywhere, a sharp resolve to just be better, bigger, to shed the nonsense, rise to the occasion. And yet five years later, more than two-thirds of Americans say they are unhappy with how things are going--exactly the opposite of the weeks after the attacks, when people were crushed, but hopeful. We saw back then what we were capable of at our best, and now find ourselves just moving on, willing to listen to our leaders but not necessarily believe them, supporting the troops but disputing their mission, waiting, more resigned than resolved, for the next twist in the plot.

* NewAssignment.net has launched a blog and is looking for potential stories to cover. Mark Glaser has been surveying folks at MediaShift and it looks like they want to see the U.S. Government as the focus of any investigative reporting. I've been asked to help advise NewAssignment.net. Finding models to pay for acts of investigative journalism is crucial. If, in any way I can help, I am happy to do so.

* keepgoing.org: The Big Fish: The story of Suck.com, it's rise and eventual fall, is chock full of early web publishing lessons. Suck (and Feed) are two efforts that don't get mentioned very often in these conversations, since they no longer exist, but maybe should.

* Mark Glaser: News21 Produces Investigative Reports, But Can Universities Think Different?: Last year the Carnegie Corporation and Knight Foundation joined with five journalism schools in pledging $6 million dollars to create the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Education - News21. It's already producing results and lessons.

* Tom Mohr, formerly of Knight Ridder Digital, has a solution for the newspaper industry's woes: and it sounds suspiciously like recreating the Market Leader CMS platform and Knight Ridder Digital.

* Adrian Holovaty of the Washington Post, describes a fundamental way newspaper sites need to change. It costs money, but the end result is an investment that will help papers be far more flexible in their reporting.

Hey - what's a Norg? And there was an unconference you say? Uhuh. And an ongoing conversation. We need to get our site rolling.

Adrian Holovaty: A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change:

This is a subtle problem, and therein lies the rub. In my experience, when I've tried to explain the error of storing everything as a news article, journalists don't immediately understand why it is bad. To them, a publishing system is just a means to an end: getting information out to the public. They want it to be as fast and streamlined as possible to take information batch X and put it on Web site Y. The goal isn't to have clean data -- it's to publish data quickly, with bonus points for a nice user interface.

But the goal for me, a data person focused more on the long term, is to store information in the most valuable format possible. The problem is particularly frustrating to explain because it's not necessarily obvious; if you store everything on your Web site as a news article, the Web site is not necessarily hard to use. Rather, it's a problem of lost opportunity. If all of your information is stored in the same "news article" bucket, you can't easily pull out just the crimes and plot them on a map of the city. You can't easily grab the events to create an event calendar. You end up settling on the least common denominator: a Web site that knows how to display one type of content, a big blob of text. That Web site cannot do the cool things that readers are beginning to expect.

I left a comment responding to a poster saying this sounded like the Semantic Web, I've been meaning to write Adrian for a while now as well:

Hello Adrian,

I've been meaning to say hello to you for a number of different reasons over the past few years.

I'm an old Knight Ridder Digital developer. One of the folks that helped develop the Cofax CMS that was later replaced by KRD with... something else.

Cofax was a framework as well as a CMS, and in some very positive ways (well *I* think so :)), Django reminds me of it. Cofax was open sourced, but when KRD replaced it, well, work pretty much kept me from going back, refactoring, and taking it where it could still go. It's still in use in many places. Well enough of that...

I definitively agree with you that newspapers are terrific places to work if you are a software engineer. The pace is quick, the work challenging, and you get the rare opportunity to not only practice your profession, but do so building tools and services that connect, inform and empower people.

It's hard to beat.

anonymous - yes, I think Adrian is talking Semantic Web here. But like Adrian's call for newspaper organizations to take a hard look at how they manage information in their publishing systems, Tim Berners-Lee has made the same call to the web developer community. The hard sell has been that that the Semantic Web likewise solves a series of problems of lost opportunity. It requires an investment in time and effort by the developer community to see its potential archived. Adrian, please correct me if that's an incorrect understanding on my part.

Great piece.

Related reading material: Aaron Swartz: "The Semantic Web In Breadth" and Shelley Powers: "The Bottoms Up RDF Tutorial". Then there's "Practical RDF" also by Shelley Powers (which I ummm need to get around to reading, but have always heard good things about).

More at Techdirt.

The folks at ABC are screening comments and mine looks to not appear on their "Path to 9/11" blog. I assure you I posted nothing offensive. It was a pointed question. I guess too pointed. Later I might be able to dig up the comment and post it here.

The more I've read about this "docudrama" the more concern I've felt. While it looks like the findings of the 9/11 Commission need to get out further, as the movie's producers claim this to do, they also admit it is a work of fiction. A work of fiction that lays blame, scorn, and according to those who have written the commision report and were actors in the events, falsehoods, on the Clinton Administration.

There is a good thread on Metafilter. Editor & Publisher has a summary of the film here. And the Washington Post reports here. And lastly, a petition over at Think Progress.

Some folks I know are scratching their heads at the coverage Steve Irwin's death has wrought this week. I'm not. It's because so rarely do we meet someone, and yes, we've met Steve Irwin, who in public life displays so much passion, heart, and faith, and who radiated so much love.

He was real. In a public figure, that's a rarity.

Like Liz Spikol, I found John McManamy's tribute, at BipolarConnect.com a must read.

Now if we could look to those that die everyday in our streets, who we haven't met just yet, maybe the world could be a better place.

Spotted all over the web. Play it all the way to the end. Ouch.

And in other, we're-more-similar-then-we-like-to-admit news: San Jose Mercury News: "Iranian leader targeting secular, liberal professors". If you can't see the echos, ask yourself, why?

Ever wonder why we haven't captured Bin Laden yet? Well according to ABCNews Pakistan has given Bin Laden a free pass. As Will Bunch notes, our policy with Pakistan has long seemed to be one of looking the other way.

I've long thought that this was the case and talked of it in conversation with friends and family. Wouldn't dare post it online because it comes close to conspiracy talk and I don't fancy myself as some kind of expert or pundit. But now it looks like this is seeing daylight.

Democrats should increase the call for answers as to why Bin Laden hasn't been captured or killed yet. Or why those that *currently* harbor his organization have not been touched.

Watch close over the next few days folks. Either this blows up into a political storm, and Bin Laden is finally - finally - taken out. Or the reality of it will get twisted and turned in the news, and it will get downed out, in the ceaseless din of our media-rich days.

Kinda like so many other forgotten stories.

My brother Dante has a blog (hi Dante!).

Howard is posting poetry.

And read the Inquirer's Dan Rubin, who wrote about the passing of his beloved companion, Twinkle. I wish I had the capacity to write so well about one loved so much. It's a moving tribute that will make you cry.

Being there, at the vet's, when Teddy passed, changed Richelle, her mom and me in some indescribable, significant way. If we had the opportunity to change the decision to be there, I don't think the three of us would decide differently, no matter how painful. Teddy is still walking around this house and Richelle's parents. He'll always be with us.

Not a joke. It really is my birthday :)

InfoQ: Bruce Tate: From Java to Ruby: Risk.

That's the composition of speakers at an upcoming Office 2.0 conference.

WTF?!?

Read Shelley Powers and Jeneane Sessum.

Edit: I removed an unfunny reference. This isn't subject matter to take lightly.

Having one woman speaker among so many men seems shortsighted, and honestly - weird. It's especially a shame, because the subject matter being covered is important not only to enterprises, but small and home businesses.

Ummm.... NSFW due to language okay?

Cookie! Cookie! Cookie!

Brahahaha :)

You deserve it.

I nabbed the icon I used for my earlier podcast experiment, from the Tango Desktop Project.

I'm rather disappointed in the round of discussion I'm reading following Ryan Carson's piece at Vitamin: "Why I don't use social software".

It's a thought provoking piece, but along with responses to it I've read, from Phil Edwards, Nick Carr, Mathew Ingram, Kent Newsome, for example, they seem to share the same fallacy - that social software is new. That it is a recent phenomenon. That what Digg, del.icio.us, Netscape.com, and MySpace represent is something fundamentally different then what's come before and that we need to beware the hype.

Just like these writers, I'm tired of the hype as well, but to suggest that these services represent something new, is to fall for it. Even to inflate it. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web, it would appear, agrees. From the article's referenced transcript :

LANINGHAM: You know, with Web 2.0, a common explanation out there is Web 1.0 was about connecting computers and making information available; and Web 2 is about connecting people and facilitating new kinds of collaboration. Is that how you see Web 2.0?

BERNERS-LEE: Totally not. Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.

And in fact, you know, this Web 2.0, quote, it means using the standards which have been produced by all these people working on Web 1.0. It means using the document object model, it means for HTML and SVG and so on, it's using HTTP, so it's building stuff using the Web standards, plus Java script of course.

So Web 2.0 for some people it means moving some of the thinking client side so making it more immediate, but the idea of the Web as interaction between people is really what the Web is. That was what it was designed to be as a collaborative space where people can interact.

To ask if "Social Media" is a passing fancy is to ask if Amazon.com or eBay are passing fancies. To ask if Slashdot is a passing fancy. To ask if the Web itself is a passing fancy.

As I mentioned over in Nick Carr's comment thread, these aren't the examples branded about by the media, or by the digerati these days.

The conversation seems to have no groundings in what's come before, and in what's already been established:

Those who remember the empowering effects of Netscape and the moment email became more than just borrowing your mate's CompuServe account at work will also recognize such blanket assertions of historical revisionism for what they are.

The fact is the most successful web services - since the beginnings of the web - were social software applications. The Web's participatory architecture lends itself to them. It's always been a Two Way web as Dave Winer would say.

We're simply seeing an evolution of what's come before. The revolution is that so much of it has become mainstream (MySpace is mainstream) and the barriers to launching a service that incorporates participation have fallen so low. Not that there is some new fangled set of features that everyone must go out and implement to stay relevant.

Knocking some hot air out of the hype is warranted. Some of these newer services resemble those dot coms that launched in the late nineties that didn't grasp what Amazon.com, eBay, Blogger, and others, were *really* doing. You know, those sites that thought if they had a clever domain name, niche, and a particular set of features, they were on their way to riches.

And it looks like today's media hype resembles that late nineties hysteria in more then a few respects. Just listen to Rob Hersov, then boss of Sportal, in a Guardian look back on the Dot Com Crash:

Those were incredibly heady days," he says. "Fun - absolutely. We thought we were making a difference. We thought we were getting out there, shaking things up, doing something no one had done before. We really were pioneers - buccaneers.

Sounds familiar doesn't it?

But there is something to be concerned about here. That the words "social software" and "social media" become part of a lexicon that represents a massive failure up the road. And that will obscure an important set of truths.

I worked for a company, which was already far ahead of the curve, prior to the Dot Com Crash. It looked at the failures of that era as an indicator that the Web as a whole wasn't a place to continue to invest as heavily.

What a mistake that was. And now it no longer exists.

By and large it was "social media" that survived the original dot com crash. And I expect that, by and large again, the best "social media" will survive whenever next bubble pops.

So when the next time of reckoning comes, and it will, look at what lives on. And think about why.

Burn this in your brain - the Web *is* social software.

And re-read "Small Pieces Loosely Joined" while you're at it.