Why we need librarians and information scientists

“I have watched as hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested to re-invent the wheel – often badly. Everybody understands and takes for granted that there is an expertise needed for the application and use of technology. Unfortunately, many Web entrepreneurs fail to recognize that there is a parallel expertise needed about information – collecting it, organizing it, embedding it successfully in information systems, presenting it intelligently in interfaces, and providing search capabilities that effectively exploit the statistical characteristics of information and human information seeking behavior.

“Content” has been treated like a kind of soup that “content providers” scoop out of pots and dump wholesale into information systems. But it does not work that way. Good information retrieval design requires just as much expertise about information and systems of information organization as it does about the technical aspects of systems….”. [more].

My Observer column about the threat to Web radio from the Librarian of Congress’s adjudication on royalties is now on the Net.

Rethinking the AOL-Time Warner merger
“NYT” article.

“Were Time Warner to have acquired America Online and simply called it another division, there would be no crisis of confidence today. But in January 2000, when the deal was struck, that was not possible. That was at the peak of the Internet stock boom, and America Online was worth $200 billion, more that double the value of Time Warner, a far larger company by every other measure….”

[…]

The deal gave Time Warner shareholders only 45 percent of the combined stock in the company, even though Time Warner represented some 80 percent of the revenue and 70 percent of the operating cash flow. Talk of how the deal would create the “world’s first Internet-age media and communications company,” as the announcement said, was meant to convince investors that AOL’s sky-high stock market multiple should be applied to the combined company.

How to run a company (not)

Conventional wisdom these days is to hire the smartest folks and give them their heads. Guess which company pursued this strategy most fanatically? Yep, you guessed it — Enron. Fascinating piece by Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point fame.

Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt

But James Fallows’s July 1982 article on how he came to love his obsolete computer is wonderful. Extract:

My system of writing was to type my way through successive drafts until their ungainliness quotient declined. This consumed much paper and time. In the case of that article, it consumed so much time that, as the deadline day drew near, I knew I had no chance of retyping a legible copy to send to the home office.

I turned hopefully to the services sector of our economy. I picked a temporary-secretary agency out of the phone book and was greeted the next morning by a gum-chewing young woman named Darlene. I escorted her to my basement office and explained the challenge. The manuscript had to leave my house by 6:30 the following evening. No sweat, I thought, now that a professional is on hand.

But five hours after Darlene’s arrival, I glanced at the product of her efforts. Stacked in a neat pile next to the typewriter were eight completed pages. This worked out to a typing rate of about six and a half words per minute. In fairness to Darlene, she had come to a near-total halt on first encountering the word “Brzezinski” and never fully regained her stride. Still, at this pace Darlene and I would both be dead — first I’d kill her, then I’d kill myself — before she came close to finishing the piece. Hustling her out the door at the end of the day, with $49 in wages in her pocket and eleven pages of finished manuscript left behind, I trudged downstairs to face the typewriter myself. Twenty-four hours later, I handed the bulky parcel to the Federal Express man and said, “Never again.”

This brings back memories. I used to type my newspaper column over and over again, then cycle to the station, send the piece by Red Star to London on the next available train. It would then be collected from King’s Cross station by a truculent youth on a motor-cycle who would ferry it to the office….

Webcasters appeal Copyright Office ruling on royalties
Wired report.

Cod sayings, No. 13465

“If I could drop dead right now, I’d be the happiest man alive.”

-Samuel Goldwyn, movie producer (1882-1974)

He is also reputed to have said: “A lot of water’s been passed under that bridge”, and: “That hydrogen bomb — boy, it’s dynamite!”

Bruce Schneier’s first comment on Palladium

~”For now, I leave you with my three main questions. One: security for who? Looks like this system is more about security for Microsoft and Disney than security for the owner of the computer. Two: Does Microsoft realize that fancy crypto hardware doesn’t automatically fix software bugs? Do they remember the bugs that plagued their last attempt at code signing: ActiveX? Three: what are the antitrust issues surrounding taking public protocols and replacing them with Microsoft-owned protocols? Still, there are a lot of really good ideas in Palladium, if we can ensure that they’re used in the right ways.”

Web radio stations appeal fees ruling
“NYT” report.

Thoughtful piece by John Patrick on the implications of Spam

A sobering essay on Spam and its implications. It’s the equivalent of cybervandalism gone mad, and of course the only way of stopping it probably involves authentication. ;-(