Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
 
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Good by Google Reader (which I use a lot):
.. and a host of others in this year's Spring Cleaning http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.htmlI will give them this: they have an export stunt, and I apparently can move to others. I don't use the google front page they killed off, Yahoo instead.
But seriously, does anyone have a crystal ball? I just can't figure Google out!
- Are they consolidating? .. i.e. converting everything to G+?
- What's next to go? .. Google Docs? It gets use by digerati, but few others. - Is GMail safe? .. It gets a lot of use, but its easy to scrape off the ads, so can't be a profit center.
I'd certainly pay for many of google services .. although I doubt this would stop them from randomly killing off ones I care about.
Is there some obvious trend, like I mentioned above, for example .. moving everything to G+? Damn! -- Owen
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Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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I agree, Owen. I don't understand this strategy either. Can anyone explain how, once something is up and apparently solid, it requires a lot of money to maintain it?
All in all, Google seems to be trying to disassociate itself from its community(ies). I would be glad to pay for some of its apps and gadgets, but not if I can't count on them being around. -tj On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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Oh come on guys, Google never makes a mistake. Ever. --Doug On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote: I agree, Owen. I don't understand this strategy either. Can anyone explain how, once something is up and apparently solid, it requires a lot of money to maintain it?
Doug Roberts
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Re: [EXTERNAL] Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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Maybe they'll get rid of Maps next spring cleaning?
Ray Parks
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On Mar 14, 2013, at 11:14 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:
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Re: [EXTERNAL] Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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No, I bet it will be the Nexus 4. On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:31 AM, Parks, Raymond <[hidden email]> wrote:
Doug Roberts
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Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:
OK, how's this for specific. Try these on: Do you think Android will last? I don't mean "will it completely go away" but will google, for example, drop out of the Android consortium and let the handset makers carry the load?
Will G+ be dropped? After all, it mainly gives a Facebook-like world for most folks. G+ is "better" from our standpoint, but I use twitter 100x more than either FB or G+ and FB has the masses and will never loose them. So G+ is just catch up and niche.
How about Chrome? I think that is the more likely to remain stable forever simply because they depend on a browser as the root of all that they do. Ditto the Dev Tools which are superb. Hopefully solid.
How about Chrome OS? The twitter world is betting on Mozilla over Google in the browser-as-OS world. Possibly because Brenden Eich became CTO recently. Also their phone promises a way to have "responsive design" webapps become universal, getting rid of the need for customized android/iphone/windows apps. That's a pretty big win for perplexed companies moving into mobile.
How about Dart? Consider ASM.js vs Dart. Which would you bet on? I'm still betting on Mozilla's ASM.js because its simply more fundamental and understandable and even is part of a C++ to JS translation effort.
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Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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Replies in-line, below.
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On Mar 14, 2013, at 11:43 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote: If Google drops Android, then it will not last - the handset makers will fragment it in order to have distinguishing features/selling points. If Google sets up the Open Handset Alliance with funding, it might be able to keep the handset fragmentation
at bay.
Probably not - Google seems to be pushing single sign on through G+ in order to better track people for targeted advertisement.
I agree - Chrome is probably a long-term investment. Especially since it is their vehicle to get users to single-signon through G+.
Unless Mozilla can get out of their cruft rut, their browser-as-OS will be really slow and unresponsive. As much as I like Firefox and its security plug-ins, I've had to give up on it on my Android phone - it's a memory and processing hog. Firefox has
grown bigger and slower with every version. Also, Mozilla doesn't have desktop applications ready.
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Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
I'm very interested in the desire to and the frustration surrounding _not_ being able to "figure Google out". I wonder if different people (people ensconced in other domains, other fora) feel this same desire/frustration around, say, Unilever or General Electric? I can certainly see it from a single tightly focused quantifiable predictibility measure ... like whether to buy a company's stock. But without that tight use case, and with a large multi-national beast with layers of varying liability, impact, presentation, etc., they strike me as complex beasts. Each aspect from which you measure them will present different, perhaps even incommensurate results. I know this was the case while I was working for Lockheed Martin. It was especially vivid to me since I was on loan to Vought systems at an old air base working on aircraft avionics, on loan from the missiles division, which recently bought Vought and which had been recently bought by Loral, which was soon to be bought by Lockheed Martin. I could no more imagine "figuring Lockheed Martin out" than I could imagine "figuring out C. Elegans". Because of this, it strikes me that what you're expressing is some sort of deep seated pattern recognition bias towards centralized planning. You're looking for a homunculus inside a machine. And that leads me to my fundamental gripe with web services. The whole point of the open source movement was to put upstream causal power into the hands of more people, to make the producer-consumer relationship more symmetric. In web services, it seems like we, as consumers, _still_ want asymmetric producer-consumer relationships. GMail is a great example. I hate GMail simply because I can't download the software and run my _own_ GMail server on my own hardware ... similar to SparkleShare, Tor, Wordpress, Drupal, etc. If they allowed that, then I'd love GMail. And, if they did that, you wouldn't have to worry about Google abandoning it, as long as it had a sufficiently pure free agent following (like the role Debian plays for Linux). Why? Oh why? Do we insist on these soft paternalist producer-consumer relationships? What's the underlying cause for people to prefer the Raspberry Pie over Arduino? GMail over postfix? [sigh] Owen Densmore wrote at 03/14/2013 09:34 AM: > Good by Google Reader (which I use a lot): > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371725 > .. and a host of others in this year's Spring Cleaning > http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html > > I will give them this: they have an export stunt, and I apparently can > move to others. I don't use the google front page they killed off, > Yahoo instead. > > But seriously, does anyone have a crystal ball? I just can't figure > Google out! > > - Are they consolidating? .. i.e. converting everything to G+? > - What's next to go? .. Google Docs? It gets use by digerati, but few > others. > - Is GMail safe? .. It gets a lot of use, but its easy to scrape off the > ads, so can't be a profit center. > > I'd certainly pay for many of google services .. although I doubt this > would stop them from randomly killing off ones I care about. > > Is there some obvious trend, like I mentioned above, for example .. > moving everything to G+? > > Damn! -- =><= glen e. p. ropella The dog is dead and the sacrifice is done ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
Like many others I use Google Reader daily, it is hard to understand how they can kill such a good and useful product. Apparently it has to do with G+, see http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/03/14/former-google-reader-product-manager-confirms-our-suspicions-its-demise-is-all-about-google/ -J. Sent from Android Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote: Good by Google Reader (which I use a lot):
.. and a host of others in this year's Spring Cleaning http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.htmlI will give them this: they have an export stunt, and I apparently can move to others. I don't use the google front page they killed off, Yahoo instead.
But seriously, does anyone have a crystal ball? I just can't figure Google out!
- Are they consolidating? .. i.e. converting everything to G+?
- What's next to go? .. Google Docs? It gets use by digerati, but few others. - Is GMail safe? .. It gets a lot of use, but its easy to scrape off the ads, so can't be a profit center.
I'd certainly pay for many of google services .. although I doubt this would stop them from randomly killing off ones I care about.
Is there some obvious trend, like I mentioned above, for example .. moving everything to G+? Damn! -- Owen
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Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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Yeah. Do no Evil, except, of course if you feel like it. N From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm Like many others I use Google Reader daily, it is hard to understand how they can kill such a good and useful product. Apparently it has to do with G+, see -J. Sent from Android
Good by Google Reader (which I use a lot): .. and a host of others in this year's Spring Cleaning http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html I will give them this: they have an export stunt, and I apparently can move to others. I don't use the google front page they killed off, Yahoo instead. But seriously, does anyone have a crystal ball? I just can't figure Google out! - Are they consolidating? .. i.e. converting everything to G+? - What's next to go? .. Google Docs? It gets use by digerati, but few others. - Is GMail safe? .. It gets a lot of use, but its easy to scrape off the ads, so can't be a profit center. I'd certainly pay for many of google services .. although I doubt this would stop them from randomly killing off ones I care about. Is there some obvious trend, like I mentioned above, for example .. moving everything to G+? Damn! -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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In reply to this post by glen ropella
Glen -
I appreciate your analysis here at several levels (assuming I actually sorted it correctly), it is nicely dense and layered, appropriate for my particular palate at least. It *is* entertaining.I'm very interested in the desire to and the frustration surrounding _not_ being able to "figure Google out". Obviously (to me?) Owen's (and the others discussing such things) stake is not whether to buy GOOG but rather whether to invest one's personal/professional energy and attention in learning/using/integrating their tools into one's workflow (or Digital Ecology as Owen is wont to say).I can certainly see it from a single tightly focused quantifiable predictibility measure ... like whether to buy a company's stock. Absolutely... and secondarily to considering Google and how/when/if/why you might integrate their products/systems into your workflow/ecology, there is the more speculative questions of "what would I develop if I were GOOG" or "since I am not GOOG but the ARE the 800lb gorilla, where do the tools I might develop fit into whatever oddly shaped phase-space is left after GOOG takes theirs?"But without that tight use case, and with a large multi-national beast with layers of varying liability, impact, presentation, etc., they strike me as complex beasts. Each aspect from which you measure them will present different, perhaps even incommensurate results. This is a moderately apt analogy. My daughter (PhD microbiology living in your neck of the woods... Portland/OHSU) were just using C. Elegans as an example in another discussion over the weekend. In this case, C. Elegans relative simplicity and ancient roots are roughly opposite Google's complexity and very recent roots. Despite the gray hair contributed by Andy Bechtolsheim, their *intellectual* roots are pretty shallow compared to say... Lockheed or Martin (both established 1912?). On the other hand, GOOG *is* highly studied by many, though arguably maybe less than AAPL or the ancient IBM.I know this was the case while I was working for Lockheed Martin. It was especially vivid to me since I was on loan to Vought systems at an old air base working on aircraft avionics, on loan from the missiles division, which recently bought Vought and which had been recently bought by Loral, which was soon to be bought by Lockheed Martin. I could no more imagine "figuring Lockheed Martin out" than I could imagine "figuring out C. Elegans". I'm not quite clear on this point. It sounds as if you are identifying corporations such as LockMart and Google as being more like evolved organisms than machines?Because of this, it strikes me that what you're expressing is some sort of deep seated pattern recognition bias towards centralized planning. You're looking for a homunculus inside a machine. This fits my biases as well... but apparently in a different way. There are many services I am happy (smug) to provide for myself (heat and water) and/or at least lust after being able to provide for myself (electricity). There are others I suppose I am happy to defer to "the cloud". While I *likely* am able to rebuild my starter motor or alternator, I probably wouldn't be able to fabricate a good enough bearing or brushes to do the rebuild and therefore depend on the "cloud" including AC/Delco and many other industrials of that ilk to supply me with such things. I definitely am happy that we have a Michelin and Yokohama in the cloud, I can't imagine making tyres that would be useful to me. Having a public/common Internet or even a private/common telecomm or private electrical grid (cloud) are almost required... I'm still holding out for a fully distributed mesh network to grow together from it's many tiny patches (see the recent posting on Mesh networks here) or a fully distributed electrical grid (home/neighborhood solar/wind/???) but there are good (non political, non-social) reasons that we didn't get broadly scalable infrastructure until it came from one or a small handful of entities (public or private), behaving in a "paternalistic" way for the most part.And that leads me to my fundamental gripe with web services. The whole point of the open source movement was to put upstream causal power into the hands of more people, to make the producer-consumer relationship more symmetric. In web services, it seems like we, as consumers, _still_ want asymmetric producer-consumer relationships. GMail is a great example. I hate GMail simply because I can't download the software and run my _own_ GMail server on my own hardware ... similar to SparkleShare, Tor, Wordpress, Drupal, etc. Ma Bell used to provide handsets with phone service but eventually gave over and allowed customers to procure their own, but I don't think they ever offered customers the option of setting up their own switch downtown (although I suppose the did allow/require big customers to set up their own switchboards, etc). So maybe your example *does* apply here... Ma Bell established the designs and standards for old-school telephony (and telegraphy) as well as providing the actual service and infrastructure itself, but eventually the actual hardware and services got replaced by a myriad of cooperative/competitive providers. I'm not sure *that* follows... I suspect they could *still* abandon it on a whim. You may be arguing that it would not be in their (obvious) best interest but then you'd be up on the same soapbox as Doug (and no matter how big, I'm sure that soapbox isn't big enough for the two of you) who argues that delivering a smartphone whose firmware/configuration won't allow BT and WiFi to run simultaneously is a patently stupid move at many levels.If they allowed that, then I'd love GMail. And, if they did that, you wouldn't have to worry about Google abandoning it, as long as it had a sufficiently pure free agent following (like the role Debian plays for Linux). Or maybe I'm missing your point? Because we are Consumers? Why do Serfs defer to Lords who defer to Kings?Why? Oh why? Do we insist on these soft paternalist producer-consumer relationships? What's the underlying cause for people to prefer the Raspberry Pie over Arduino? GMail over postfix? IMO the very best rants do end in a [sigh]. As with Dennis Miller back in the day when he started with "Don't let me get off on a rant here" and ended with[sigh] "Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong." Carry On, - Steve Owen Densmore wrote at 03/14/2013 09:34 AM: ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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In reply to this post by glen ropella
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 2:57 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:
I use Google Stuff. So I want to know when it is likely to actually do what it appears it is going to do. When it goes away, I'm naive enough to be surprised. So would like at least a hint of WTF is going on. Normal. Human. Me. I can certainly see it from a single tightly focused quantifiable Er.. IMAP? You have complete control over gmail. I uploaded 20+ years of mail to it over a day or so and have it all cached on my IMAP clients (thunderbird and mail.app) .. yes one needs > 1 and I'm positive you have multiple clients.
Protocols. Formats. That they get and I can use to my advantage. If they allowed that, then I'd love GMail. And, if they did that, you Generally our use of them. I actually used Goog Reader so now will look for a replacement. Now I do have to admit its generally fun! We get enough time to look at great replacements. Flipboard is really quite good as a media consumer and reader is basically that. But FB is tablet only. Might want something for laptop/desktop.
I may however spend a bit of time trying to figure out why G+ is so popular. I do think Google is a fail in "social", don't you? But if they can make G+ a replacement for skype, facebook, reader and others, so much the better. They haven't a chance with twitter however, but they can use twitter's open formats and protocols to integrate twitter into G+. I suspect they already have .. or someone has.
There is one other bitch I have over killing reader: Minimalist is a nifty chrome extension that lets you modify sites to your liking. Started with gmail but then generalized into others including reader. I sorta hate seeing innovative engineers get screwed by Google.
But like the demise of delicious, I ended up with Pinboard which is so vastly superior, I'm extremely thankful delicious failed. What a weird world we live in. And yes, I still want to "get" google. Sorry!
-- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Funny. Going back to Hamming's lectures, again, in one of the early ones he lays out the case that scientific knowledge is growing exponentially, that most scientific researchers who ever lived are alive now, and that keeping current is "a very awkward problem" both personally and institutionally. It was true in the 50's when they made up the argument at Bell Labs, it was truer in the 90's when Hamming was giving the lectures, and it's still truer now.
I started ignorant, I'm getting exponentially more ignorant all the time, and I'm never going to the reverse the trend -- now, go back to work and do something really smart.
So, Google the search is an attempt to ameliorate this problem: if you can guess what the answer is called, then maybe Google can find it for you, and maybe you can figure out if it's really what you wanted. And Google the company is a place founded on the same principle: its projects and knowledge grow exponentially, no one person can ever know what it's doing, all they can do is occasionally kill some of it off to make some empty space for the rest of it to grow into.
So, why is progress supposed to make sense? -- rec -- On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 9:50 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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In reply to this post by glen ropella
[email composed 5 messages back]
There is a lot I don't know about Google, and considering it's complexity I agree that some aspects may be unknowable. But it is not going to drop Gmail soon. Although it may not be as much of a money maker as it was when ads were more prominent, it is the main way for drawing people into the Google pantheon, aside from maybe the search service itself. In fact, many people conflate Gmail and Google because of this. I think many (though maybe not most) of Google's decisions are generated at least in part because of public appearance - for instance, many of it's services were cut a few years back when Page & Brin took a more executive role again, because (according to them) the company was getting 'cluttered'. At the time I was a little disappointed, as some of my favorite projects were Google's quirkiest (GOOG-411, for instance) and therefore at the top of the list to be cut. But I could see what the reasoning behind it was. And Reader had already been cut before now, when they removed social sharing so that it would not compete with Google Plus (Google seems touchy about social things; both Buzz and Wave were cut, for reasons that were predictable if not acceptable at the time). Now, there are many things Google does that could be considered evil (or at least heading that way; all that foofaraw with Verizon?), but not providing service previously provided for free is not one of them. It is merely annoying, or at worst (if all your workflow is locked into the service) frustrating/infuriating. As for opening Gmail, didn't they try that with Gears when that was still a thing? I don't recall. -Arlo James Barnes ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
Against Kierkegaard (was Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services)
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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
On 03/14/2013 09:16 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> Er.. IMAP? You have complete control over gmail. I uploaded 20+ years > of mail to it over a day or so and have it all cached on my IMAP clients > (thunderbird and mail.app) .. yes one needs > 1 and I'm positive you > have multiple clients. I have to respond to this first and separately because my response is simultaneously ideological and practical! Woohoo! ;-) No, not IMAP. I want my own cloud. The analog from GMail to my own cloud-based e-mail would be more like the combination of DNS failover with a grid of SMTP+dovecot+sparkleshare. Why do I want my own cloud? I don't really have a good answer for that. I just like a) to be able to change things I want changed when I want them changed and b) I like to know what's happening underneath. I don't know how GMail works underneath, but I would like to. But if I were forced to _guess_ why using another company's infrastructure to store my data offends me, I'd probably guess that the trend toward a single identity, single e-mail, use of real names in social nets, single sign-on, etc. ... that general trend indicates that this string ... e.g. "[hidden email]" will eventually _actually_ be my name, my unique ID ... the primary hook by which people communicate with me (or throw me in jail, accuse me of terrorism, ... whatever). And if that's the case, then I want to know what's happening in and around that unique ID... just like I want to understand DNA, or biological mechanisms in the meat-space cloud around me ... like how to maintain healthy living soil in my garden. How can someone ever say they understand their self if they don't really, practically understand the cloud surrounding their self? p.s. Yes, were you so inclined, you might read this as a categorical rejection of the word "cloud" as business-speak idiocy. >8^) -- glen =><= Hail Eris! ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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> No, not IMAP. I want my own cloud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvKj8lTuVtk inevitably will lead to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq3YdpB6N9M ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
Re: Against Kierkegaard (was Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services)
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In reply to this post by glen ropella
I love it! I agree this is the limit to which we're headed.
I just bought a Synology Network Attached Storage unit: two server grade 2TB disks in RAID configuration. I got it mainly for backup and redundancy but when it came, it mentioned many services it has and shows how to set it up securely for remote access. And it has a surprisingly sophisticated web console and with a 5Gb wifi Airport extreme does backups in reasonable time. It also comes with the Transmission torrent engine. And yes an IMAP server too.
Its early days, but I wouldn't be surprised if critters like this replace your basic home servers.
-- Owen
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 7:38 AM, glen ropella <[hidden email]> wrote: On 03/14/2013 09:16 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
Re: Against Kierkegaard (was Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services)
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In reply to this post by glen ropella
Glen wrote:
> ... that general trend indicates that this string ... e.g. [hidden email] will eventually _actually_ be my name, my unique ID ... the primary hook by which people communicate with me (or throw me in jail, accuse me of terrorism, ... whatever). This sounds like a theme from a Max Barry Novel > How can someone ever say they understand their self if they don't really, practically understand the cloud surrounding their self? \ Using your own reference, that sounds like asking if C. Elegans can understand itself. I suppose one can say that this IS what life is, the perpetual search for "self" through perception of the environment. "We" are whatever is left after we percieve and discount everything else? This is perhaps why I prefer to consider my "Digital Ecology" as a "Digital Swamp".... the first supposes that we somehow *can* understand it in a scientific sense while the latter acknowledges that at best we can obtain an elaborate *working knowledge* but never an explanatory knowledge really. Carry On, - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2
REC -
Most excellent... thanks! I think "progress" itself is highly over-rated or at least mis-apprehended. It isn't necessarily what we think it is! - SAS
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Re: Google Reader and More: Google Abandoning of Apps/Services
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Steve Smith wrote at 03/14/2013 08:50 PM:
> Obviously (to me?) Owen's (and the others discussing such things) stake > is not whether to buy GOOG but rather whether to invest one's > personal/professional energy and attention in learning/using/integrating > their tools into one's workflow (or Digital Ecology as Owen is wont to say). Yeah, I get that. And I suppose there's a lot of inter-individual variability as to how much variability (or uncertainty) each individual sees (expects) in their tools ecology. I think it was RA Wilson who claimed that all it took was 20 years to turn a liberal into a conservative. Perhaps it's natural that, as we grow older, we want a more stable tools ecology? But, in general, I reject that. I think it's mostly a matter of focus. When I'm tightly focused on a single objective, interference like a broken tool really frustrates me. But being mostly a simulant, my focus goes tight-loose-tight-loose all day long every day. So, perhaps it's my domain that prevents me from becoming frustrated at the ability to predict the stability of my tools ecology. > Absolutely... and secondarily to considering Google and how/when/if/why > you might integrate their products/systems into your workflow/ecology, > there is the more speculative questions of "what would I develop if I > were GOOG" or "since I am not GOOG but the ARE the 800lb gorilla, where > do the tools I might develop fit into whatever oddly shaped phase-space > is left after GOOG takes theirs?" This is also a good point. I'm privileged that my produce tends to be stand-alone. I'm not usually coerced into negotiating a large, highly connected tools ecology, and finding a reliable place to plug in my products. But that's partly because I force those around me to think in terms of stand-alone produce (hence my fascination with closure). It makes me a less desirable contractor to some because they've committed to an ecology that I readily criticize. > In this case, C. > Elegans relative simplicity and ancient roots are roughly opposite > Google's complexity and very recent roots. I'm not convinced that the worm is relatively simple compared to Google. The closure between layers for Google seems pretty clear: machines vs. humans vs. corporate structures. While it's true that there is some fuzziness between the layers, it's nothing like the fuzziness between, say, the neuronal network and the vasculature in the worm. But, to some extent, the higher level of modularity in a system like Google does make it more logically deep. It's difficult to poke your leads into the Googlebots to find out why they behave the way they do. So, I could say that while the complexity of the worm and Google are probably ontologically similar, the apparent complexity of the two will be quite stark depending on how they're measured. > gepr said: >> Because of this, it strikes me that what you're expressing is some sort >> of deep seated pattern recognition bias towards centralized planning. >> You're looking for a homunculus inside a machine. > > I'm not quite clear on this point. It sounds as if you are identifying > corporations such as LockMart and Google as being more like evolved > organisms than machines? Sorry. I'm asserting that organisms like Owen are pattern recognizing machines evolved to find patterns (even when there are none). I speak reflectively, here. I'm arguably the most biased pattern recognizer I know, despite my Devil's Advocacy of arbitrary decision making within Google. I find patterns everywhere, which is why I'm a fan of conspiracy theories. > This fits my biases as well... but apparently in a different way. > There are many services I am happy (smug) to provide for myself (heat > and water) and/or at least lust after being able to provide for myself > (electricity). There are others I suppose I am happy to defer to "the > cloud". While I *likely* am able to rebuild my starter motor or > alternator, I probably wouldn't be able to fabricate a good enough > bearing or brushes to do the rebuild and therefore depend on the "cloud" > including AC/Delco and many other industrials of that ilk to supply me > with such things. I definitely am happy that we have a Michelin and > Yokohama in the cloud, I can't imagine making tyres that would be useful > to me. Having a public/common Internet or even a private/common > telecomm or private electrical grid (cloud) are almost required... I'm > still holding out for a fully distributed mesh network to grow together > from it's many tiny patches (see the recent posting on Mesh networks > here) or a fully distributed electrical grid (home/neighborhood > solar/wind/???) but there are good (non political, non-social) reasons > that we didn't get broadly scalable infrastructure until it came from > one or a small handful of entities (public or private), behaving in a > "paternalistic" way for the most part. Yeah, you took that in a different direction, which is why I have to quote it whole. My focus is on the frustration at not being able to grok a sub-system and/or the desire to do so in the first place. Here, you seem to be talking about an absolute/ontological benefit or cost of various structures in the ecology. To me, there's only one reason for frustration and that is when I hit a blockage I don't want (or didn't expect) to hit. I wouldn't care if my home-made tires didn't work as well as tight tolerance, robot made tires. I still might make and use them. But I _would_ care if I couldn't find out how those robot made tires are made, even if just to satisfy my curiosity as to whether or not I should buy/steal my own robot ... or perhaps to be able to parse the gobbledygook coming out of the mouth of a professed tire robot maker. It's the lack of access that frustrates me, not the lack of any particular extant structure. Hence, i don't care if Google Reader exists. But I do care if I can't (pretend to) figure out how it works. > gepr said: >> If they allowed that, then I'd love GMail. And, if they did that, you >> wouldn't have to worry about Google abandoning it, as long as it had a >> sufficiently pure free agent following (like the role Debian plays for >> Linux). > I'm not sure *that* follows... I suspect they could *still* abandon it > on a whim. Sorry. No, I did NOT mean to imply that if they distributed the GMail server software, they'd be less likely to abandon it. I meant to imply that I would care much less because I could either fork their code or use it to design my own based on what they did if they abandoned it. To me, this is what Debian does for us with Linux. It's a very good base distribution. > IMO the very best rants do end in a [sigh]. As with Dennis Miller > back in the day when he started with "Don't let me get off on a rant > here" and ended with > "Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong." OT: I used to love Dennis Miller. I'm not sure what happened, but all of a sudden, he started sounding like a right-wing wacko to me. -- =><= glen e. p. ropella I got an itch in my cosmic pocket and it won't go away, ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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