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Mar

The Battle Of Two Fake Flying Machines

In this corner we have a man who make wings that let him fly like a bird.
And in this corner we have tacos delivered to your location by autonomous helicopter.

Both of these miracles of aviation were unveiled last week, and both are fake.

Why did the first one infuriate me and the second bring a smile to my face even after all hope was dashed?

1) TacoCopter lies a whole lot less. Unlike the bird wings, TacoCopter didn’t mock up a fake non-working prototype. They didn’t even photoshop a logo onto the stock photo of the drone it used. The “private beta” on the site indicated that this was something they were trying to do, but you know, the nature of startups… They also don’t fabricate media quotes or go out of their way to mislead you into thinking that this is real. If you do your research you’ll find out quickly that it’s probably not real.

Floris Kaayk on the other hand lied a lot about his bord wings. Not only did he spend a lot of time and effort producing mockups and fake mockups, he produced a video showing the object apparently working. To further bolster his claims he created a fake persona who had fake education and work history to try and bolster his claims and hide from his previous projects where he also presented false claims as fact. In the creative world this goes well beyond suspension of disbelief and well into the territory known as “being a con-artist”.

2) TacoCopter is trying to promote and idea, not an individual. The idea behind it is simple: Remote drones deliver fresh food to you wherever you are. Even if it’s not real, it’s still a great idea. There isn’t even an individual to credit with the idea.

The birdman videos on the other hand are obviously there to promote the individual. There is a great idea there, flying like a bird, and it’s hard to show a human-powered flight without a human, but the presentation of all the materials makes it clear is a promotional stunt for the individual. Holding on to his admission that it was fake until he was on a national TV interview is the act of someone looking for attention.

3) The creator of TacoCopter hasn’t tried to claim it’s “art” and therefore he should be able to mislead you as much as he wants. Floris Kaayk on the other hand calls his bird wings an “exciting fictional online storytelling project“. Which could possibly be true if it wasn’t for the part about fabricating a fictitious identity with fake LinkedIn profiles, schooling, and employment history. It’s simply unneeded to enjoy a work of fiction, but is required to perpetuate a hoax. And contrary to some ideas, fiction isn’t simply lying, it’s telling a story. And in this case the story is about the hoax, not about flight.

Ironically TactoCopter is better art than the Bird Man. It’s evocative and thought provoking. It makes us feel for possibilities, even after we realize it’s not true. Bird Man tried so hard to convince me that all I can think about is how I’ve been lied to, not how great the idea is.

We need to get Floris Kaayk and Mike Daisey to work on a project together.

Feb

Privacy Has Never Been What You Think It Is

That’s pretty presumptuous of me, isn’t it? I have no idea what you think. Or who you are.

But maybe I do know a little bit about you. At least I can find out. When you visit any web site that site knows what browser and operating system you’re using, and can probably figure out what city you’re in. That squicks some people out. However when you drive your car everyone you drive by can see the make and model, what state you live in, and the general condition of the car. The judgements that come from that information are huge. See a family in a rusted out ’82 VW Rabbit? Man, that family has fallen on hard times. See a shiny new Prius with California plates? Some eco-nut. A 4×4 with a gun rack in the back and Tennessee plates? Redneck.

Doesn’t that feel invasive? And the internet has nothing to do with it.

Here’s a story that probably dates back to the dawn of time:

In a small town a young man was accosted by an old woman. “I know what you’re up to and its disgusting! You should be ashamed!” The young man was taken aback and pleaded ignorance. The old woman persisted “I’ll have you know that I saw your car parked in front of young Miss Smith’s house last night and it was still there this morning! Shameful behavior – I expected better from both of you! Whatever will the neigborhood think? Scandalous!”

So that night he left his car parked in front of the old woman’s house.

Three important lessons from this story:

1) It’s not about technology. The story could have been told 500 years ago replacing the car with a horse. People will notice what you’re up to no mater where you are. Small towns are notorious for it but even in bustling metropolises see people you know all the time. I can’t count the number of times I’ve crossed paths with someone I know in Tokyo and San Francisco.

And in fact the Internet is great at combatting rumor. It’s a brilliant fact checker. Sure, it’s good at spreading chaos as well, but that’s mostly because most users are unused to real-time fact checking that the internet provides. The internet is a great information equalizer, everyone (more or less) has access to the same information.

Don't be a jerk

2) It’s not the information, it’s what others do with it that maters to you. The problem wasn’t with the young man, it wasn’t with the car, and it wasn’t with Miss Smith. The problem was the old lady. Most people simply keep their mouth shut when they see stuff. The old woman was being a busybody and a jerk. The problem is Target telling you you’re pregnant. That’s busybody, jerky behavior. Call them out on when they do it. Either they’ll stop being jerks or they’ll be universally shunned.

3) You can control that information. Not completely, but you can take the lead. You can either try obfuscation by parking your car in front of the old lady’s house. Or you can take the lead and put a sign on your car that says exactly what you’re up to.

Miss_Smith (@mjsmith88) 3 hours ago:

“Thanks to my vet, @Young_Man who went above and beyond by staying up all night to help my dog Mittens through a difficult birth! Puppies and mom doing great! #OMGPuppies”

Despite what you've heard, we're just friends.

And this is why it’s important to contribute to your online persona. There is information about you out there, there always has been. You can’t stop it, you never could. But you can make sure that when people find information about you, you’re in control of most of it. If you search for my name on the internet you get a page full of information about me.* All of the information you’ll find on the first page of results was written by me.** You’ll be hard pressed to find that police report about the… confusion with me and that cement truck full of raccoons. Or that scandalous (and totally false) claim about me and the archipelago of Zanzibar. The information got there because I put it there. That’s part of the reason I have this blog. (And my other one.) These are places that I control 100% what goes on. They are the authority on me. If you’re concerned about “privacy” I recommend you do the same. Share what you want people to know.

If you don’t Tweet about your new puppies, the angry old woman across the street will Tweet about you sleeping with the vet.

* And also some information about that other Steve Hoefer who directs children’s TV shows.
** Or again, about that other guy with the same name. Pretty easy to tell us apart, though.

Feb

Leaving Money On The Table

Depending on which end of the Internet you hang out on you may not be familiar with the meme from the above photo. It has become a meme for a reason: There are a number of people with the belief that making it difficult for people to pay you is good business.

This sounds like madness, of course. There is a certain logic to it, though not one that lines up with the modern world. You’ve probably encountered this if you like to take your popular culture other places than over broadcast TV or radio. Disney is the biggest perpetrator keeping their movies in the vault for years. Years before they’ll let you pay for them.

Long ago this may have been reasonable. It created pent-up demand for the movies and makes sure that they sell out of whatever they’re releasing. If you don’t buy it now you’ll have to wait 8 years for it to come out again! Or, since it’s 2012, you can simply download a pirate copy off the internet.

Research has shown that people would prefer to pay for movies rather than pirate them. But if there is no pay option they will pirate them, because piracy is also an option and people are not, as a rule, unreasonable. Consumers know that Disney has the movies, we’ve seen them before. They’re simply not selling them to us to spite us. Well spite can go two directions.

Soon the customer isn’t even going to bother looking for a legitimate solution. Disney is training a generation of pirates.

And this isn’t limited to Disney movies. Film, music, books… If it can be published people will pay for access. And the publishers are responding with a loud “Take a hike!” They’re holding off on releases for arbitrary reasons.

Lets take a publishing example. For casual reading and paperbacks ebooks are vastly superior to paper. (We can debate that in another post.) I’m constantly amazed by how non-fiction books that talk about the future, technology and other subjects related to the future don’t offer electronic versions. Just today I found out that This Will Make You Smarter was now on sale! It’s a collection of 165 answers from notable thinkers to the question of what can improve an individual’s “cognitive toolkit” from Edge.org which is something of a think tank of forward thinking individuals.

I jumped to the Amazon link looking for the “Buy and send it to your Kindle with 1 click” button. And it wasn’t there. No electronic version. It seems impossible to me that these forward thinking luminaries wouldn’t have an electronic version.

There is no lack of things to read on an electronic reader. I’ve had one for several years and it has successfully trained me out of the habit of buying physical books, particularly paperbacks. I click a button, wait a few seconds, and it’s there where I can read it. If I am not committed to buying I can get a free sample just as easy. Acquiring a physical paperback can’t compete.

Man, I wanted that book though. Or rather I wanted to read it comfortably.

I gave it some thought and I half remembered that they might have published the content on the web a year ago… 10 seconds of Googling later I found out that indeed they did. Another 30 seconds using a simple online tool that packages up a web page and sends it to my Kindle and I’m set.

And they lost a $10 sale.

Publishers are regularly violating basic rules of business: No one will buy what you offer if they can get it elsewhere better, cheaper, and/or easier.

Publishers have failed on each and every one of these simply out of stubbornness. All publishers have to do is say “yeah, I’ll let you pay me to do what you’re doing already”.

But they’re not. And consumers, being the savvy beasts they are, are finding other solutions.

Coming soon: Leaving Money On The Table Part 2: The Rebirth Of Patronage.

Edited: February 14, 2012

Photo Credit: Futurama, Season 6 Episode 3

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Posted on February 14th, 2012
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Filed: Business
Tagged: book • movies • music • publishing

Feb

Let’s Stop Calling It 3D Printing. Lets Call It Materializing.

What’s wrong with “3d printing”?

The first image when searching Google for "Automatic Weasel"

1) It’s not a useful name. It does have some things in common with traditional printing such as putting down a layer of material to create something new and being able to do it repeatedly. And people know what printers are. But attach the word “3D” to the font of it and it’s like you just said “automatic weasel”. It takes two things that makes sense together and turns them into nonsense for most people. My printer already is in 3D, right? Do I need those special glasses? It doesn’t communicate the idea effectively.

2) It’s an unpleasant association. Printers were a wonder back in Gutenberg’s day but now they’re just a pain. They’re an ugly lump of plastic that gets jammed, the drivers never seem to work quite right (why do I even need drivers?) the cost of ink bleeds you dry, and after all that it ends up making something you’re probably only going to use for a few minutes and discard or file away forever. Not only don’t I don’t want another printer I want to get rid of the one I have.

3) It’s uninspiring. ”3D printing” associates it with printing, which is so 15th century. It’s so common we line birdcages with it, and it’s going out of style. Newspapers declaring bankruptcy and the post office hemorrhaging billions. Let’s not associate it with a dying technology.

Why call it “Materializing?”

1) It’s accurate. ”Material” + “ize” (the latin suffix for To make into). Pretty hard to explain it better than that. Someone who has never encountered it before will still have some idea what it means.

2) It’s inspiring. It’s a little bit science fiction, which is exactly what the technology is. It’s always good if an emerging technology associates its self with something wonderful.

3) It covers diverse technologies. The most popular materializer is from MakerBot Industries which uses an extruder to melt plastic filament and lay out layers, one after another. (Perhaps “3d plotting” would be more accurate?) Anyway, that’s not the only method used for materializing. There is laser sintering which uses lasers to melt powdered material into shape. There is stereolithography which uses a laser to cure resin, and it has a cousin which uses a projector to do the same. (Neat because it pulls solid objects out of a pool of liquid.) Other methods which lay down powder and then spray glue on it. Still further methods involve laying down wood veneer and trimming off the excess with a whirling blade. There’s even one that uses a lens to focus the sun to melt sand into predetermined shapes. And that doesn’t take into account technology of tomorrow. Now I suppose you could call these all printers, but materializer is more fitting.

These used to be called “rapid prototyping” machines which isn’t bad, but they’ve moved on from the high end design studio and no longer make prototypes but actual things you can use daily. Then again the supercomputer in my pocket is still called a “phone”.

Photo credits: Bre Pettis and MakerBot on Flickr.

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Posted on February 13th, 2012
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Filed: Technology
Tagged: 3d printing • materializing • rant

Feb

On Deleting My Facebook Account

I quite like the Facebook service. But Facebook the company, they’re something different.

You may have read that they’re going public soon. When a company ”goes public” they sell stock to the public in order to raise money. Companies raise money this way to do things you didn’t have the resources to do, things that would grow the company. Like build a new factory or expand into a new market.

How does Facebook stack up to this? Let’s see… Facebook has $3.5 Billion in cash. They also were expected to have more than $1,000,000,000 in profit for the last 12 months. (I added the zeros just so we can get a feel for how much money that is.) And they’re looking for another $5 Billion US Dollars from their IPO.

$8.5 Billion and counting. That’s a lot of money. What are they planning to do with it? Party on the moon? Cure for cancer? Money fight? Happily the answer it’s right in their SEC filing:

We intend to use the net proceeds to us from our initial public offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes; however, we do not currently have any specific uses of the net proceeds planned.

(Emphasis mine) So… No moon parties. They don’t really know what they want the money for. You, know, just billions lying around for… whatever. In case they loose their walle on the way to Burger King and need to buy the company in order to get a Whopper.

The real answer is “We’ll be cashing out.” Facebook’s growth has leveled off and there’s very little they can do to expand their business when 1 in 8 people in the entire world are already members. It’s unlikely they will be worth substantially more than they are now. So, in the finest traditions of the Dot Com Boom and Bust of the late 90?s, they’re cashing out while the cashing is good. They are going to take the money and run.

“Fine” one might say “They worked hard and have a popular product, they should make tons of money.” And I agree with that sentiment. People should be rewarded if they do good things. So what if they cash out and the people who made the company what it is move on to greener pastures. What will the company do then? Maybe there’s something else in the SEC filing that will help.

We have a culture that encourages employees to quickly develop and launch new and innovative products. As our business grows and becomes more complex, our cultural emphasis on moving quickly may result in unintended outcomes or decisions that are poorly received by users, developers, or advertisers.

(Emphasis mine again.) This is a long-winded way to say “We’re in such a hurry to make money off you we don’t care if we destroy their users, developers or advertisers.” These are the same people who made them a billion dollars last year and they say, right there in plain language, they don’t give a damn about any of them.

So they’re going to take the money and run and leave Facebook to destroy its self. They’ve said as much in their own words.

And I just don’t want to give people who will behave like that the time of day, much less the details of my social life for the last several years. Who know what havoc they could wreck for me personally?

So my account will be deleted. Or maybe it won’t. (Facebook doesn’t have a great track record on following through with that.) I’ll miss it, but something tells me I won’t regret it.

If I knew you on Facebook, shoot me an email or give me a call. Let’s have a more personal conversation. I like that much better than being a stream voyeur anyway. Or if you prefer the social media voyeurism, you can look at Twitter and Google+ pages where you can either watch from a distance or join in. And you can always follow me anonymously on my blogs. I don’t really mind having my stuff shared hither and yon, I would just prefer it wasn’t done by jerks.

Feb

Hi there!

You’ve come to the end. Or the beginning, depending on which way you’re headed.

Don’t forget your hat on the way out/in.

(Sign from Harajuku station, Tokyo.)

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Posted on February 12th, 2012
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Filed: Notice