Dave Kearns

I do have a Facebook account. And I do have a LinkedIn account. But I’ve never understood the benefit of Twitter. I’m not really that concerned with what my family, or my friends, are doing Right This Second, so why should I care about acquaintances or perfect strangers and their activities?

Houston Tribune columnist Loren Steffy has put a number of my thoughts into his commentary about Twitter. He is a bit over the top, and he does lump together things which really aren’t related, but the essence of his piece accurately reflects my thoughts:

“As I write this, I pull on my beard. My fingers idly find an eyebrow hair that seems inappropriately long. I think they may be getting thicker as I get older. Is that possible? Is it a sign of illness? Do you care? Does the world care? I rest my case.

If this is the future of the Web, then the days of the Pets.com sock puppet were truly a golden age.“

As Doc Searls mentioned this morning in his DIDW keynote, “Web 2.0 is what we’ll call the second crash.“

Refreshingly, it appears that not everyone is a Chicken Luddle when it comes to electronic voting machines. A story in PC World (another fine IDG periodical!) today reports on a new study from “Tech-focused think tank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)” which “…warns that a backup won’t improve electronic voting systems, just increase costs.”

Predictably, the naysayers are all quoted, but none refute the actual conclusions of the report. Instead, they attack the usual strawmen as well as the bona fides of the report’s author! Nothing like a good ad hominem attack if the facts aren’t going your way!

There’s hope for the American musical theater after all. For those of us who feel that Andrew Lloyd Weber was, perhaps, the greatest disaster to strike musical theater, the recent premiere of Emma by the bay area’s venerable TheaterWorks organization, brings hope of good things to come. The style, tone and – most importantly – the writing falls somewhere at the intersection of Cole Porter, the Gershwins and Noel Coward, which is a very heady neighborhood to be in.

But don’t just take my word for it. This delightful loose adaptation from Jane Austen was uniformly praised by the Bay Area drama critics (something that rarely happens, in my experience):

“You may not be swept away or entirely convinced, but even the most skeptical audience member would have to work hard not to be gratified, impressed and entertained.” – Steve Winn, San Francisco Chronicle

“Paul Gordon’s music, lyrics and books are all perfect enhancements of Austen’s 2-century-old romantic comedy novel, and Robert Kelley should be anyone’s director of choice for staging a small-scale musical. But as cute little musicals come and go, the title song is Gordon’s most likely guarantee of staying power, and it’s difficult to sell a good song these days.“ -Colin Seymour, San Jose Mercury News [watch a short video of this song]

“As far as world premieres go, ‘Emma’ is in remarkably good shape. Gordon’s score — an easy-on-the-ears kind of chamber pop orchestrated for violin, cello, oboe/English horn and piano — hits all the right notes and captures both the silliness and earnest romance in Austen’s 1815 novel.” – Chad Jones, the Oakland Tribune

We went to see “Emma” last night, and were thoroughly entertained as was the entire audience. The music, the lyrics, the book, the direction and the performances were all spot-on. Each of the actors created characters that were both believable and enjoyable. Timothy Gulan (Mr. Knightly) gave the performance (a cross between Rex Harrison and Robert Goulet, in my mind) one would expect of so experienced an actor. But Lianne Marie Dobbs, in the title role, was a wonderful surprise. This actress is on stage for, easily, 99% of the show but she was always sparkling, engaging and entertaining with no sign of fatigue or “going through the paces.” I do hope to see more of her at TheaterWorks but fear this success will be just what she needs to send her east to the Great White Way.

Get tickets now, if you can. And, for the rest of the world outside the Bay area, watch for this gem to show up in your regional theater.

Marc Cantor and some others have created “A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web” which, while I can generally support in principle, is (as are most internet-based manifestos) remarkably flawed. For example, the BofR includes:

“users of the social web are entitled to certain fundamental rights, specifically…ownership of their own personal information, including…the activity stream of content they create.”

But the “activity stream” is actually compiled by the web site and includes much more than content. It’s that whole “attention” thing again. At least in the US, you are assumed to maintain ownership of the content you create – it’s called “copyright,” and it’s yours until you specifically forego it. So there’s really no need to restate that, is there?

The bigger problem is in the area of “relationships.”

In the words of the BofR: “Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list…” But friend-ness is a relationship. A two-way relationship. I can claim to be your friend, but unless you reciprocate there is no “friend” relationship between us. Unfortunately, most social networking sites refuse to choose among differing degrees of relationship (friend, acquaintance, lover, parent, actor-that-I-admire-and-want-to-meet, etc.). Given the binary nature of most social networking sites you can choose either “friend” or “stranger” for a relationship equation and most people will be nice, and choose friend when they at least think they may have interacted with the claimant at least once. In the closed world of that particular social network, most understand that the term “friend” has a very loose meaning. But once you can take that list of “friends” elsewhere and install it – even on a site with a much more fine-grained sense of relationships – there is a great deal of risk to the “other parties” in the relationships. Worse, those “other parties” have no idea of (and no veto power over) the type of site to which their name and supposed relationship might be dragged! I might be OK with being associated with someone on the Manx kitty lovers network, but do I also want to be associated with that same person on Witches&Bitches.net?

Let’s revise the Bill of Rights to both acknowledge reality as well as to protect all users – the primary and all their “relations”.

I’ve lost some of my blind faith in the Red Sox, it seems, since I haven’t actually lived in New England in almost 40 years. But the Sox are still leading the league, the division (and, of course, the Yankees) and it’s almost a week into September! It might be too soon to crow, but the Magic Number web site will let us know just when the party can begin. And, hey, how ’bout that no-hitter that the kid, Clay Buchholz, threw the other day? Even those hockey mad folks in Regina, Saskatchewan stopped to pay attention.

I usually admire the stuff my friend Kim Cameron writes, and his posting on Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur, is mostly right on target. But Kim does repeat that truly awful identifier “citizen journalist.”

All journalists are citizens! I know many journalists, and every single one of them is a citizen of some country – most are US, Canadian or UK citizens, but I’ve known French, Italian, Brazilian and Australian journalists, also.

Most are also professional journalists – they make their living as journalists. Some are non-professional journalists – they make their living doing something else. People who do something for fun, or for the love of it rather than getting paid for it are called “amateurs” or, perhaps, “hobbyists.” (usually “hobbyist” is reserved for those things that no one gets paid to do and the “hobbyist” designation denotes some stature for the individual within that community, though)

I’ve never heard of “citizen golfers” or “citizen painters” or even “citizen politicians” they’re all called amateurs and so should those who practice journalism without a paycheck.

“Amateur” can be a term of derision when used by a professional. It shouldn’t be, and we should think less of the professional who uses the term this way. But torturing the fine word “citizen” to mean something entirely beyond it’s definition is not the answer.