Berkeley Blog

Internet Oprah

Salim Ismail is VP of a boot camp for future business leaders called Singularity University. Neither an accredited university nor a place where machines plan to take over the functions of humans, SU, as it's called, brings together 80 Ph.D. students and entrepreneurs from around the world for a ten-week summer session in Mountain View, where they listen to more than 100 experts in bleeding edge technologies, from robotics to space exploration and clean tech. After the lecture immersion, small, self-selected teams work in on solving a problem that will affect one billion people in the next ten years. Although Ismail, who was born in India but educated here, was the founding executive director of SU, the concept originated with Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPrize, and Ray Kurzweil, creator of the eponymous electronic keyboard and author of The Singularity Is Near.

SU's premise is that technology is advancing at an accelerating rate; thus, future leaders need to understand a broad range of emerging technologies in order to create solutions (and make money). The fact that some of the problems the world is now facing -- such as climate change -- result from the very same accelerating rate of technology development and deployment somehow doesn't seem to enter into the spin SU and its proponents, including board member and VC Vinod Khosla, place on high-tech as the panacea for all mortal ills.

Ismail is one of the best speakers I've ever heard, and I was trying to figure out why after he spoke at the February 14  INFUSION lunch I host monthly at the Berkeley Rep Theater in partnership with the Berkeley Startup Cluster (www.berkeleystartupcluster.net/events). Like all good speakers, he tells stories, so that he engages the listener in the process of discovery. One is eager to hear the outcome. He also speaks so quickly and with such passion, no one in the room seemed able to take their eyes off him even for a half second to check a text message, as if they'd lose a great kernel of truth about to emerge from his mouth.

The MatterNet is a project that was  prototyped by one of the SU teams last summer: the Matternet is a drone that delivers critical supplies like medicine to rural communities in Africa, where for much of the year roads are washed out by torrential rains. Simple to produce locally, cheaply made, and effective over short distances, the Matternet could provide the perfect transportation system for more than a billion people without access to goods for much of their lives. And to think it was conceived by a few students at SU in a matter of weeks.

Ismail is like an Internet Oprah, delivering good news about people collaborating on technological solutions to end poverty, war, ignorance, sexism, hunger, illness, and whatever else ails the inhabitants of planet Earth. I said, not in jest, at the end of his talk, that SU could be the new United Nations, but in a way, with its business contests already taking place in Brazil, Africa, Israel, and India, SU is already assuming its singular goal.

 

Artist Supports Food Sovereignty of World's Small Farmers

Fernando Garcia-Dory is on a conquistadorial quest: to transform the thousands of abandoned villages in rural Spain from wastelands into cultural sites, whether edible landscapes or artistic reconstructions of past agrarian cultures such as sheepherding. Last night he spoke at the David Brower Center in Berkeley -- named after the enviro-activist -- as part of a series of lectures on art and technology hosted by the Center for New Media at UC Berkeley, under the aegis of Ken Goldberg. Through a project in Spain called Inland, he is engaging artists and landscapers to reconstruct these villages in creative ways.

Garcia-Dory says we are in danger of losing our links with land, and he believes the human relationship with land has defined culture, or cultures. An artist and what's called an agroecologist, he said that more than 40 percent of food today is still produced by small farmers, whereas 30 percent is produced by agribusiness. His art projects tend to support the work of  La Via Campesinos, a global organization of farmers who seek food sovereignty over what they grow and raise. By using art to create awareness of the importance of land -- even so-called wasteland or abandoned lands --  Garcia-Dory hopes to preserve what makes us human.

It was interesting that during the lecture, the agroecologist had lots of difficulty managing his digital presentation -- he was using a Mac portable -- and I wondered if he'd be more at home with a hoe or rake. During the question period, someone asked the audience if they had been raised in a rural area, and Garcia-Dory smiled and raised in hand.

I couldn't help thinking that being an artist-agroecologist is a lot more fun if not more rewarding than being a sheepherder or small farmer. What is culture and whether it needs to be preserved are far larger issues, though, and ones that the Spanish artist is boldly addressing.

Bay Area Media Merger Needs To Add One More Player

Today, the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley announced a preliminary merger with The Bay Citizen in San Francisco, with Phil Bronstein taking over temporarily as CEO of the ersatz media operation. The force behind this merger seems to be Warren Hellman, now deceased, but while alive, a philanthropic founder and ongoing supporter of The Bay Citizen and a close friend of Bronstein. It seems to me these nonprofits can leverage the combined talents of their journalists, photographers, web architects, operators, and funders to become the dominant media provider for citizens in the San Francisco Bay Area, if not for all northern Californians. 

I'd like to see Berkeleyside.com joining the mix as a feeder for local news from one of the greatest university towns in the world. Berkeley is also a global leader in initiating social, political, economic, agronomic, educational, and other memes that are well covered by the savvy editorial triumvirate at Berkeleyside.com (consisting of two Brits and one Hellman dynasty offspring). Merging CIR with The Bay Citizen and Berkeleyside.com would be a northern California media lover's wet dream.

And I think it makes perfect sense. Berkeley has always been a cultural oasis, with probably more citizens here subscribing to The New York Times than to the San Francisco Chronicle (fact checker, anyone?). A merger of CIR, The Bay Citizen, and Berkeleyside could provide a west coast equivalent of The Times sans international and sports coverage. Eventually, we might even have our own Bay Citizen-CIR-Berkeleyside Sunday magazine. 

Thank you, Warren.

What's a University? Don't Ask a Sociologist

The other day I went to hear the first in a series of three Clark Kerr Lectures on the role of higher education in society by UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus of Sociology Neil J. Smelser. I went because I thought I'd learn something about how the university might play a role in social change. What I learned was just the opposite: whatever happens in the rest of the world, according to Smelser, the only changes in the university as an institution include the accretion of more courses, more nonacademic functions (such as sports), and more academic conflicts over fiefdoms. 

I felt as if I were sitting in a lecture hall circa 1912, not 2012. Smelser never mentioned the word "students" until the question period, when someone pointed out the omission. He never referred to the Occupy movement, the budgetary crisis in education (and elsewhere), and the role of open digital technologies in education. During the question period, he said he would get to these issues in his third lecture, which is two weeks from the first one. 

Universities have been one of the slowest changing institutions in our society -- outside of government and the Church. However, I don't think Smelser, among other likeminded academics, realize the tsunami of change that's about to transform education at all levels, not only in America but also globally. The underpinnings of what is a 700-year-old institution are being disrupted by many forces, from availability of knowledge online, to trends toward self-learning and peer-based learning and the demand for equal access to high-quality education as a basic human right. 

Indeed, in 2013, instead of a one-way Clark Kerr lecture delivered to a few dozen gray-haired professors and administrators by a retired professor, UC Berkeley could host a videoconferenced discussion with students and professors around the world to discuss the role of higher education in the 21st century. It could take place in Zellerbach Hall, which can seat up to 4,000. It could include Robert Reich, who keynoted the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture last fall, plus the kid who led the strike of university students in Chile recently, and administrators, teachers, and students from newly shaken-up countries, like Tunisia, Egypt, and Myanmar.

I think former UC President Clark Kerr might have been pleased with an eponymous lecture that deals with the morphing of his concept of the multiversity to the notion of an open, participatory, and global university.

He Was a HELLuva MAN

There are events in your life that you will never forget. The memorial put on for Warren Hellman in San Francisco's Emanu-El temple yesterday was like going to heaven with all your friends only everyone except the one we mourned was all very much alive. We stood in long lines -- one for friends and family and the other, just as long, for people who had some connection to Warren through his love of music, the outdoors, sports, education, business, and just people. 

Great people are like children. They never grow up. In many ways, Warren refused to grow up, even denying the authority role fatherhood gave him. His eldest daughter Frances related how when she called him from the police station after committing a minor crime, his response was to laugh. We discovered from his sister, Nancy Bechtle, that Warren was a teenage "hoodlum" and arrested several times for crimes such as drag racing. Yet he was responsible to the world around him. One of the speakers said that the city of San Francisco was his family. I think he felt very much part of the family of man.

Who were the people who called themselves friends of Warren? Standing in line, I met a cellist for the SF Symphony whose son was best friends with Warren's grandson. Inside, on my left was an older woman who worked at Point Reyes National Seashore and stopped Warren early one morning because he was trail running in tattered clothes. She thought he was a homeless person, but then discovered who he was and became friends. On my right sat a young woman, African American, who beamed as the speakers told humorous tales about the man we all loved. 

"How did you know Warren?" I asked. "I'm a lawyer and represent his firm," she said, still smiling. 

Later, at the reception -- into which at least 30 banjo players came a'strumming to honor Warren's love of bluegrass banjo -- I met a one-eyed man who said Warren paid for his medical care through the SF Free Clinic. I talked to Jerry Brown -- our repeat governor -- and reminded him of the interview I did with him the first time he was governor. He acted as if he remembered me. He's a far better actor than his predecessor, for sure. 

Senator Dianne Feinstein made an error when commending Warren for his "zest for winning." Instead, she said he had a "zest for women," to which everyone laughed with great relief because we were all on the verge of tears. 

I thought he had a zest for women. When I was sharing the house of Green Party State Assemblyperson Audie Bock in Piedmont, I brought her to a talk at which Warren was a speaker and introduced her to him (I met him years ago at some tech event and have since stayed in touch through the Bay Citizen, the digital newspaper he funded).

Audie had just lost her second bid for State Assembly but Warren was intrigued by her and asked her to lunch. I thought he found her attractive (and she was), but she said at lunch, he just pumped her for information about Ralph Nader and the Green Party. He wanted to know everything he didn't know. I only found out yesterday that he was a Republican, although I never equated that party with humanism.

A musician friend -- manager of the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley -- drove me home in his van, and he complained of the way Emmy Lou Harris was miked at the temple. I don't think Warren would have cared. For him, music was whatever sounds moved you. For him all people -- like all music -- deserved to be listened to and loved.

 

New Media Nomenclature

I was trying to describe the machinations of new media to a friend who still reads only print. Once started, the dictionary of new media began to flow. Below is a sampling of terms, which might strike some as exaggerated and others as all too true. Thanks to Make magazine writer William Abernathy for adding his tweaks.

New Media Nomenclature

Confused about social media, new media, and whatever happened to your daily newspaper? Here’s a dictionary of new media terminology that might help you distinguish a Facebook friend from a Citizen Reporter.

Aggregation – unpaid reprinting of original writing; replaces paid syndication.

Blogger – an unpaid commentator, whether a former journalist or journalist manqué.

Citizen Reporter – an unpaid reporter, with or without training in journalism.

Cloud, the – The expertly managed corporate data storage facility into which you should move all your personal data. See “Thin air.”

Comments from the Crowd – formerly known as Letters to the Editor.

Content – The thing that keeps ads from bumping into each other. What writers, photographers, and other artists used to be paid for.

Content Everywhere – the same content repurposed in different publications regardless of the content’s origin.

Copyeditor – an extinct job title for a person who corrects grammatical, typographic, and stylistic crimes against language. This job has been outsourced to readers, and its arcane strictures are unknown to twitterati and texters.

Copyright – An antiquated practice of paying creators by preventing content from being repurposed for free.

Editor – A marketing professional, preferably with an advertising background. Also a publisher.

Facebook – a place for sharing personal gossip and happenings with the rest of the world; serves as prime bait for advertisers.

Facebook friend –

1) Someone you knew once.

2) Someone you hope to impress.

3) Someone you actually know.

Freelancer– An unpaid blogger. If a former journalist, a blogger paid minimum wage plus a fraction of the click-through.

Google+ – A way to keep Facebook from finding out about your life by telling it to Google instead.

Hyperlinks – Footnotes Gone Wild!

Investigative Journalism – now available as the result of  successful digital fundraising.

Journalist – Someone trained in writing for print media who expects to get paid $1 per written word. Nearly extinct.

Kindle Fire – If Savanarola had only lived so long.

LinkedIn – Reid Hoffman’s personal cash generator and the bane of all headhunters not operating in the highlands of New Guinea.

London – Where I have been held up at GUN POINT and you must send me money for an air fair at once dear friend.

New Media – any form of digital content that includes news, opinion, and entertainment, which are often indistinguishable.

New media intern –

1) An undergraduate who works for college credit instead of money.
2) A recent graduate who works for resume experience instead of money.
3) Why undergraduates and recent graduates can’t find paid work.

News – repurposed content reported by tweeters, bloggers, or in some cases, actual journalists.

Open source – free software, whose source code you pretend to know how to review and inspect. What you gain in freedom you give up in usability, which is often on a par with that of Stone Age agricultural implements.

Paid content – news and commentary written by people whose insights are held in such high esteem that their readers are willing to pay to see it. The most successful paid content providers impress their discerning readership by removing their pants.

Personalized content – enhanced method for making targeted advertising even more annoying.

Photojournalist – extinct occupation. All journalists/reporters are now expected to take their own photos. Guess who pockets the savings?

Social media – unpaid advertising in which friends are expected to push content onto their friends.

Thin air – Where all your cloud data goes when your password is sniffed. See “London.”

Tweet – High technology’s answer to the haiku. A short-form message that presumes to replace the sentence, the tweet disproves the adage that brevity is the soul of wit.

Video content – A method by which YouTube and phone manufacturers promote worldwide illiteracy and stamp out excess bandwidth.

 

Big Ideas Fest Lived Up to Its Name

I'm not a conference-going person. In fact, I'd rather spend three days in solitary confinement at a high-risk prison (which I've never done...yet) than three days trapped in a conference with hundreds of people I don't know or necessarily want to know and listen to boring speeches.

The Big Ideas Fest (www.bigideasfest.org), an education-solutions-oriented conference organized by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (www.ISKME.org), held Dec. 4-7 at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, blew my mind. It was a conference I didn't want to end, and in fact, lots of the participants seemed to feel the same way because they lingered after the final session until the hotel staff almost had to pepper spray us to unOccupy the Ritz.

Only 180 people attended this third annual event, but what people! William Ayers, cofounder of the Weather Underground and a recently retired Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois who received Chicago's top award for urban education reform, gave a feisty talk about doing away with educational inequality. His most tweeted comment was the exhortation to "Open your eyes. Be astonished. And do something." Wearing a blue, woolen sailor's cap and scuffed bluejeans, Ayers looked as if he were still protesting, and indeed he mentioned he had participated in recent Occupy Wall Street actions.

From the frontlines of education reform was speaker Kaycee Eckhardt, who teaches high school students in a FEMA trailer in New Orleans. Sporting black tattoos on both or her bared arms, she described the sometimes useless methods she tried to get her students to learn to read so they could go to college. She would slip the cover for a Steinbeck novel onto a Harry Potter book, so that her students wouldn't be embarrassed for reading only at the fourth grade level.

Eckhart was on one of the four winning teams that received an award for its so-called Big Ideas in Beta. Nine teams worked for six hours over the course of three days to solve one of three major educational challenges, such as open access to learning resources, and universal literacy and math competence.  For a video of Kaycee's talk on how to make learning resources as quickly accessible to a teacher as a snap of a finger, see www.bigideasfest.org or check out Half Moon Bay Patch, which featured her earlier, tear-inducing talk on post- Katrina trailer teaching.

All in all, nine teams presented their prototypes for solving major educational challenges. The presentations were anything but PowerPoint. The teams used cardboard models, funny hats, improv, thematic music, and humor to demonstrate their solutions; the process borrowed heavily from Maker Faire and also reflected the influence of Jonah Houston, a facilitator who works for the design firm IDEO. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a $50,000 matching grant to ISKME to help the winners develop full working models of their ideas.

The conference ended with Danny Hillis, cofounder of Applied Minds and a supernerd co-creator of parallel computing systems,  talk about his Gates Foundation-funded project to create a personalized learning search tool that would match an individual's skills and knowledge base to her or his passions. The tool (no name yet) would also suggest further areas of interest that might engage the student, much like a recommendation engine. Hillis is now identifying what he calls a "learning map," or a categorized map of everything that is to be learned. It's like a digital Diderot for the 21st century.

Looking around the ballroom at the ritzy Ritz, I realized we had a real- time learning map right in the room, with a mix of educators, students, policy makers, funders, and what the conference organizer Lisa Petrides calls "edupreneurs." Everyone was talking about plans for next year's conference and how they couldn't wait to import what they'd learned in these three days into their classrooms and workplaces.

 

Computer-Free Zone in Chez Panisse

Last week I met with a client of mine -- Seymour Rubinstein, founder of the company that created WordStar, the pioneering word processor, and the inventor of what became QuattroPro -- and Larry Magid, ubiquitous tech reporter, at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Larry's wife, Patti, also came. Seymour has been working on a new content discovery system for a couple of years, and he wanted to talk to Larry about it. 

We had an incredibly delicious lunch -- everything was perfectly cooked and served with panache. "We're here with the 1 percent today," I joked, and the normally stone-faced waiter couldn't hold back a smile. Actually, Seymour was once in the 1 percent, but he took a fall during the aughts and is working his way back out again. With software inventions.

After the lunch, Larry pulled out his MacBook Air (after voicing notes into his Siri iPhone) to get a demo of Seymour's latest invention. I was talking with Patti -- i've seen the demo several times already -- when the maitre d' sailed in, leaning into our benched table like the masthead of a warship, and announced, "We don't permit computers in Chez Panisse." 

Larry apologized and said he was about to close his computer. By that time, we'd been at the table for more than two hours, and I could see why they wanted us to make room for new diners. I'm sure Chez Panisse's orders are run by computers, but for those who dine there, personal computers are out.

Yesterday, I went to a talk by David Weinberger, who is with the Harvard Library Innovation Lab and the Harvard Berkman Center, and who is coming out with a new book about information overload called "Too Big To Know." Weinberger attributes the hyperlink as the destroyer of our traditional cultural institutions, such as newspapers, encyclopedias, and music recording. He didn't mention the progenitor of hyperlinking -- Ted Nelson. He just noted the consequences. 

Weinberger made three points, and they all reflected more of his background as a philosopher rather than as a technologist (he has a Ph.D. in Philosophy but also was the VP of Technology for the search company that Yahoo eventually bought). He said knowledge is now messy because things don't fit into neat categories anymore (did they ever?). Secondly, he said that knowledge can be inconsistent because the web is a web of differences. The net, he said, is exposing the truth that humans don't agree about anything, even facts. (That's true: Larry Ellison doesn't even think we will die, or at least his head won't die forever.) The third way knowledge has changed is that it no longer has an arbitrary, logical form because people can hyperlink while viewing anything and choose whatever form they like.

All these observations seem rather obvious, but when put into this format, they make one appreciate the advantages of life and work on the net versus what life used to be like when there were just print newspapers and magazines, print books, and vinyl records. Says Weinberger, "The net is far more like the world than print media. That's why it's more appealing. It's closer to the truth. For me, the web has felt like a release. It feels so familiar."

 

 

Way To Revive Oakland's Economy: Occupy Oakland

Everywhere we marched last night, from the Oakland Commune, with its tents, free food stalls, library, media center, first aid center, and a private bookstore fronting works by Noam Chomsky, Karl Marx, and Edward Said in communal proximity, to the Port of Oakland, a good hour's walk away from city hall, businesses were open and marchers were buying food and drinks along the way. It was the first time I've seen downtown Oakland and parts of West Oakland along the route so vibrant (and safe) at night. 

Oakland should be lucky it's being occupied at all. Otherwise, downtown is usually a wasteland after 5 p.m. Last night, I saw Gray Panthers marching next to toddlers and infants in strollers; transvestites next to heterosexual and gay couples; people in wheelchairs and on bicycles, skateboards, and rollerblades; and people in unions representing teachers, health care workers, and government workers. I even saw a State Senator, Loni Hancock, although she only marched for a couple of blocks. There were the usual suspects from Code Pink, the Green Party, and Marxists of all factions, but mostly there were people who came because they were mad and they want change from the unregulated capitalism that permeates the politics and economics of this country today.

Although people don't seem to have particular answers -- or solutions, as we call them in high-tech -- they know there is a problem when health care, education, housing, and work are no longer accessible for most Americans. The American dream has become the American nightmare.

The mood was festive and hopeful. Spurred on by live music -- from drums to trumpets, clarinets, and vocalists -- the marchers carried clever signs, "We Need To Set a Maximum Wage," and climbed up on cargo containers at the port to wave on the rest of the crowd. News trucks with satellites bordered the marchers at the final stretch, and organizers with hand speakers moved the crowd along with time-worn political chants.

If I were mayor of Oakland, I'd harness that great good energy and have the marchers occupy Oakland forever. Open up abandoned buildings and fill the deserted streets at night with life, when the daytime bankers and lawyers have gone home to the hills or the suburbs. Occuping a city has far more potential for recreating our society than abandoning our cities, the way our government has abandoned us.  

Steve Jobs Memorial

Last night, Raines Cohen, cofounder of the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, and I hosted a Berkeley Cybersalon to commemorate Steve Jobs. About three dozen of us sat around in a circle at the Hillside Club in Berkeley and talked about how the product lines from Apple had changed our lives.

Most of us had never met Steve Jobs -- although two of our attendees knew him well from Reed College days, when Steve still in search of Steve -- but we felt his presence in his products, and these products had profoundly touched all of our lives, even a pre-teen who attended with her parents and who said she couldn't imagine her life without Apple.

One of those who knew Jobs the best kept saying he acted like an asshole but that there were reasons for it. He had to fight against the behemoths of business who were always trying to keep him and his radical ideas about computing in line. And he had to fight his own demons about having been given away at birth by his own mother and raised by his adopted (albeit loving) parents. And mostly, he wanted to pursue a vision of his: to transform our most basic communication tools into objects of beauty. 

Had he lived in the age of the emergent television, tv sets of yore might have become art pieces instead of banal boxes.

Here's what people found through Apple: love, work, passion, respect, friends, comfort, and voice. Kaliya Hamlin, the identity expert, said that before the Macintosh, a computer was just a computer. The Mac is a joy to work with, she said. The beauty of its design and ease of use inspired her to get into computing. Eleanor Freed, who used to work at Apple as a design engineer, said that for the first time in her professional life, no one cared about her gender...they cared about her ideas. And her husband, Adrian Freed, who works at the Center for New Music at UC Berkeley, said that Jobs's interest in perfecting sound -- the NeXT cube had no fan -- led to his collaboration with French musicians in Paris long before the iPod was created.

Rarely do one person's ideas impact the world so powerfully. But as last night's memorial indicated, many of us have been affected profoundly by the beauty that Steve Jobs brought into our lives.