meta-roj

I’ve seen several people blog on the subject of trust and networks lately. My thoughts in this post are not direct – i’m trying to sythesize some common threads here. Perhaps my readers will enjoy parts of the journey i’ve taken myself. if not… skip ahead a bit…

Joi comments about developing trust and networks and finding a job. Antoin discusses trusting the voting system (and i dropped a couple links into a comment there). Digging way back in the archive (because it’s related to more recent material), Tim Oren talks about “venture capital, trust networks, and information theory.” Ross Mayfield has some thoughts on Joi’s thoughts.
Also, in the weblog way-back machine, there is a set of comments i made over at the Venture Blog on the subject of “getting to know” a potential business partner (and quite possibly shooting myself in the foot in the process).

outside the realm of the link-i-verse, i’ve recently discussed or read material on the subjects of id systems, contracts for cd baby, record label cartels, diamond cartels, the commercialization of blogs and the growth of “social networking” websites.

finally, well outside the blog-i-verse there was a recent piece in the New Scientist about personal information floating around in the dimly-lit corners of the web.

which, handily brings me to the metaphor i wanted to discuss. diogenes. diogenes is a metaphor today because he carried a lantern in broad daylight, and looked into the faces of his fellow greeks, in search of “an honest man.” now, whether diogenes himself was up to his own standards (and, really, who among us are?) is an open question. (ok, so the truth is he was probably a complete nutball, but i know his name a couple thousand years later, and that’s saying something.

now fortified with linkage and metaphor, i’m going to ask the question:

with all this technology, and these expanding human networks that literally span the globe and the clock, is there, today, enough “light” to find an honest man?

today’s edition of the business model of the hour comes with heavy credit to Don Park. may he get to japan someday.

this edition is also brought to you by the letters “o” and “h” and the number “5.”

in our story, we envision a cell phone, much like any other cell phone, but with a couple key innovations.

the first is the “save me” mode. in this mode, the phone is pre-programmed to recognize a certain speaker, wait a few seconds and ring. the use case: i want to go to this party, but lisa might be there. and i really, REALLY don’t want to talk to her. well, good customer. fear not. simply tell the phone to listen for lisa from your pocket, and when lisa starts talking anywhere within phone-shot, it will ring, and you can make up some bogus excuse to run away.

the second is the “save me now” mode. in this mode, the phone listens to your own voice, waiting for a key word or phrase. upon detecting the key word or phrase, it rings, giving you a chance to make up a bogus excuse and run away. use case is similar to the first example, but you didn’t think lisa would be at the party. program the phone to respond to “so nice to see you” and simply saying “lisa, it’s SO NICE TO SEE YOU” triggers the “save me” ring.

the third is the “get this” mode. in this mode, the phone waits for a set of triggering keywords, then begins recording and/or dials a number and/or connects to a distribution server and records/transmits/broadcasts whatever it picks up. the use case here is industrial espionage (or porn. ok it’s porn.). program the phone to respond to “great idea, tell me more” and go take a tour of your competitors manufacturing plant. this obviously works great for picture and video-enabled phones too (i told you it was porn).

of course, we’re talking about a phone with some brains here. so, multiple commands can trigger multiple modes, and each action can be annotated for content and situation. add gps, and tag everything by location. then you can trigger the streaming video of the really cute… uh. puppy. yeah. puppy that you see walking down the street. and broadcast live, with voice annotation, to all your friends who haven’t made it into the Big Blue Room this month – and they’ll know where to find the… uh. puppy.

or, they can sit at home and write mapping applications to plot the locations of puppies all over the world. after all, if you can program it, it’s even better then being there.

so, thanks don. and thank you, dear reader.

this week just seems to be a week to pick pieces of the blog up and smash them into headines. first, i found a vc headline that resonated with social capital… and now, the subject of todays redux is friendster

the headline is “Attack of the Smartasses” – a wonderfully catchy headline appearing in the sf weekly. and the meta-roj-blog-post of the moment is “on determinism” from a bit over a week ago.

nevermind, for a moment, that it’s a “dot-ster” and we’ve got plenty of those.

this is actually interesting. it seems that management at friendster has come to the awful awakening that the users aren’t using the tools in precisely the manner that they (management) envisioned. even more interesting, because it’s a highly-networked tool, attempts to “enforce” the original intent are being met with [distributed] resistance.

so who will triumph in the ultimate battle of wills? will management beat the smartasses into submission? will the smartasses infiltrate friendster to the point that there’s nothing “real” left? will all the “real” people be chased away? will the system be redesigned to make life hard on smartasses? will anyone care when the dust settles?

tune in next week, or month, or remind me i should follow this up some day, for more exciting episodes of They did WHAT with my baby?

(and, by the way, i’m roj isan at friendster, so stop in and say hi, but only if you’re friendly.

last week, “browser stats” for rojisan.com were 56.517% MSIE / 29.454% Mozilla. this week it’s 44.119% MSIE / 45.540% Mozilla.

there’s probably some bias in here with the blog and syndication-readers dropping in but… it was interesting to notice.

some days ago, i made a very brief post that included what i think is a very insightful and multi-faceted quote (the kind i like best). unfortunately, i haven’t found the source of the quote (google is no help, maybe it was radio, or maybe i bastardized it just enough to make it my own). in any case, it resonated with some of my current thinking enough for me to jot it down and eventually blog it, and today i found an interesting expansion on the subject.

Tim Oren comments on the unintended consequences of the push for disclosure of information in the business of venture capital.

since i’m flirting with venture capital, it’s a Very Good Thing for me to know more about how this works. i’m the guy with the Next Big Idea (which you may or may not know already from the content of this blog), but just a little bit of [not so great] experience sitting across the table from vc investors, so i do like the idea of being able to better dissect a few living examples. i’ll even admit that there’s a little part of me that says “hey, if you’ve got that kind of money, you get little sympathy from me. if only i had your problems…” while i try find a way to make rice interesting. again.

on the other hand, i appreciate the concepts of trust and delegation – they are, in fact, key to my Big Idea. there are issues of due diligence and “know thyself” well enough to survive the heartburn episodes. if you don’t do your homework, and the guy from “nigeria” runs off with your bank account, well… you shouldn’t be playing the game. and if you don’t have the stomach for the risks, then you shouldn’t be playing the game either. and maybe all of us are due a scam or two just for good measure and to keep us humble. that said, a fund manager is a fund manager (with a track record), because they understand managing a fund. at some point, as an investor in a fund, you just have to trust that you have picked a good manager (or team), sit back, take your blood pressure medication, and enjoy the ride.

Oren’s point is that disclosure of the process, and broad public scrutiny of the “work in progress” is not necessarily a good thing, and the consequences only begin with the initial public “oh my!” reaction – it ripples through layer after layer of social capital.

forcing open the books is a decline in social capital, and it increases the costs of doing business. MORE diligence. MORE lawyers. MORE FOIA lawsuits. and, as Oren points out, the consequences stifle opportunity for everyone involved. entire classes of funding sources (those subject to even the potential of public-disclosure suits) may vanish under the new reality. VC firms may be compelled to limit their funding sources. and on the other side of the table, entrepreneurs (and struggling entrepreneurs like myself) may be forced to work under the hot lights of public exposure (which can kill), or simply have fewer “quiet” options for funding.

if there’s one thing i’ve heard from vc investors over and over in public statements and casual conversations, it’s “trust us.” trust us with your life, your work, your economic well-being. in a world increasingly dominated by you-can-use-it-but-you-don’t-own-it end user licensing agreements, six-page non-disclosure agreements, and other arcane legalspeak, it’s almost refreshing that there still exists a segment of financial and human endeavor where trust is a key part of doing business. there’s a very solid, practical reason trust plays a huge role in venture capital. (that said, i disagree with a lot of the way the business is done, because i think proclamations of trust are insufficient, but that’s a subject for another day…)

in the end, i think the consequences outweigh the benefits. i’ve been getting my education in “vc mindset” the hard, tedious way, and that’s fine. i haven’t learned anything really useful from an investigative reporter on the subject. this is probably inevitable in the wake of the “scandals of the early 2000’s”- the public wants someone digging up the dirt on the next corporate scandal before it becomes a corporate scandal, and venture capital is the “high drama” end of the investment universe. does this eventually slip down to the level of “Star Search 2005: Who Wants To Marry A VC”? pick up your touch-tone phone, america, and pick the Next Big Idea….

a corner of the social network has been torn, and that means things will be more expensive for everyone, including me.

The Baltimore Sun reports (along with many other sources) – the LovSan worm has taken out an entire state government agency. this is comforting.

Under the leadership of CEO, Jack Valenti, the MPAA represents the business of theatrical film, and claims to “serve as leader and advocate for major producers and distributors of entertainment programming for television, cable, home video and future delivery systems not yet imagined.” (source).

The MPAA board of directors consists of the Chairmen and Presidents of the seven major studios (Disney, Sony. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal and Warner Brothers). These are big companies with diverse interests. Disney, for example, does a bit of business in theme parks. Sony makes electronic gadgets. But they all come together under the umbrella of the MPAA to protect and defend their film studio businesses.

So, I was just sitting around enjoying a bit of online banter, and then I made an off the cuff comment. Today, I will do a bit of homework. I leave it to my good readers and motivated commenters to do more homework if so desired.

According to MPAA statistics, the average US resident saw 5.7 movies in theaters during 2002, with an average ticket price of $5.81. This means the average person spent $33.12 to see movies in theaters in 2002. The same report (but different original source) claims that the average spending per person on home video in 2002 was $119.23.

This means the film industry received $152.35 from every person in the United States, 21.7% at the box office and 78.3% from home video.

Admittedly, these are very broad strokes, but the same report also reveals that 1185.8 million units of prerecorded VHS and DVD material were sold in 2002. VHS prices are not indicated, but the 702.4 million DVD units apparently had an average price of $20.78. This represents gross sales on DVD of $14.6 billion, compared to gross box office receipts of $9.5 billion. That means the film industry received $1.54 from DVD sales for every dollar of box office reciepts (and some additional pennies from VHS sales…).

The way I read this, the VCR (and the sequel, VCR2: The DVD) now constitute the majority of revenue for the film industry, and thus the majority of the seven-figure salary (and piles of perks) for the MPAA CEO, Jack Valenti. (Yes, yes, there’s a big difference between revenue and the net profits used to fund the multi-million-dollar payroll and lobbying efforts of the MPAA, but I did say you could do more homework…)

Jack Valenti, Congressional Hearings on Home Recording, Before the Subcommittee of Courts, Civil Liberties and the Administration of Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 97th Congress, Second Session, April 12, 1982.

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

So tell me, Jack, 20 years later, how does it feel to be on the strangler’s payroll?

i’m really curious about what a 150-ish-candidate debate would look like… and what kinds of rules they’d use for the televised version.

“…each candidate will have one syllable to respond.”

dancer and mentor.

thanks for the steps

dennis kucinich apparently has a proposal to create a department of peace in the united states federal government.

is ‘peace’ compatible with ‘bureaucracy’? is this a case of creating a bureaucracy, because that’s just what politicians know how to do? or is there value buried in this somewhere?

update 2007.06.12: title changed to avoid distributed blog-spam attack