What's up?
In a word, everything.

The article led off with this little vignette about 4-year old Multimedia Masters of the Universe, part of a Global Surge re-inventing education. Or should I say, better yet by far, re-inventing LEARNING & LIVING:

"In Blackburn, four-year-olds are making podcasts. In Suffolk, the sometimes tedious and impractical ritual of morning Assembly has been replaced in one school by a news video compiled by pupils; posting it on YouTube means parents can watch as well—and they do. ... Learners at all stages and ages, from all over the world, are downloading free tutorials while they replenish their iPods, courtesy of iTunes U. ..."

Among many other things, the key ideas are hyper-creative group collaboration on the one hand—and, on the other, completely customized, "user driven" learning, starting by, uh, age 4. (Or less?)

Other examples are more "ordinary" (by the standards of the distant past, say 2007 or 2008). Consider:

"MirandaNet is pioneering the concept of 'braided learning'—digital exchanges using instant messaging and social networking where members contribute their comments, judgments and evidence to create shared insights to influence current professional thinking. ... Braided learning allows professionals to create their own knowledge that can be used locally, regionally and nationally; they become activist professionals."

Again group-crowd sourcing-learning and production and 100% customized knowledge are the keystones.

Naturally, some education systems are way ahead (parts of the UK are at the front of the front of the line), and others trail miserably, even if their scores on national technological sophistication are high. Our British friends see the chance for global leadership in an enormous industry ticketed for fast growth over the next 10–20 years.

As I prepare for a seminar tomorrow to a company involved in and dependent upon information collection, analysis, and dissemination, I find that the kids, wee kids in part, from Blackburn and Suffolk are my principal source of inspiration. Dear God, do they have a lot to teach us!

Right now!

There are many facets to the story of FDR's first 100 days, but the one I want to focus on here is FDR's interest in creating an intimate conversation with the American people. Alter tells the story of Roosevelt sitting in the Oval Office writing his radio address, his first "Fireside Chat," less than a week after his 1933 inauguration. He looked out his window and saw a worker taking down the inauguration platform, and said to himself, "I want to give a speech that worker will understand." Then, while on the air, he imagined he was speaking one-on-one with this person. Often, just before giving a radio address, FDR would visualize a construction worker, an office worker, or a girl working in a store. The White House received thousands of letters from people who said they felt like the president was speaking directly to them as they sat by their radios.

For centuries, before the invention of microphones and public address systems, orators had to speak very loudly to reach large audiences. This stentorian style carried over into the early days of radio, with announcers using their booming voices in the only way they knew how. FDR was among the first to recognize the opportunity for intimacy that the new technology afforded, and he used this opportunity masterfully.

I believe that there are two kinds of technological innovations (which I describe in Chapter 1 of We): those that put barriers between you and your customers ("please enter your 16-digit credit card number") and those that bring you closer to your customers (the Apple Genius Bar reservation system). FDR taught us an important lesson. Instead of looking at the new tool of radio as a way to talk to 60 million people at one time, he looked at it as a chance to talk to one person, 60 million at a time.

[Read more by Steve Yastrow at yastrow.com.—CM]

That is: 50th!!

In 1958, spooked by Russia's Sputnik, the Department of Defense created ARPA—the Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPA, in turn, sired the Web, no ifs, ands, or buts. In this marvelous recounting, virtually all the key players have been tracked down—and contribute to what VF calls the first oral history of the Web.

(For those of us who are Avowed Capitalist Pigs, it's amusing to see that all the initial funding, decades' worth, for Web-related activities came from the Feds—so much for only-the-private-sector-matters!)

But as the article points out, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who wouldn't even comment on the BusinessWeek story, may not be that anxious to get the grey flannel business. Why? Because a corporate sales strategy would require both an expensive sales & support staff and a willingness to modify Mac product designs to suit the conflicting demands of corporate buyers. Apple is doing just fine without these hassles, making high margins catering to students and artists who will pay extra for the Apple cool. Budget-conscious CIOs may not be as accommodating.

If you were Steve Jobs, what would YOU do?

If you buy the journalists' story—and I can't see why one wouldn't—this was indeed WWI, and we are woefully unprepared, and in fact uninterested in being prepared on an appropriate scale, for what will doubtless be a Dark Black Swan in our collective futures, tomorrow at dawn or a decade from now. The results of said failure to prepare on an appropriate (BIG!) scale could be calamitous.

Sad to say, the lack of attentiveness to the cyberassault problem, like the ineffectualness of many of our anti-terrorist measures, heats up the "survivalist" in me—which ain't so pretty.

I do love that. Thanks, Googlers one and all.

Headline, right column, page 1, Wall Street Journal, 27 November 2006: "Seeking an Edge, Big Investors Turn to Network of Informants. Mark Gerson Assembles Web of Moonlighting Managers."

I suppose in the old days (pre-1995, say) investors or investors' reps could have hung out at bars near plants to ask hair-down workers or even bosses what was going on inside. In fact, there's no doubt they did just that. So "this" is not new—but as usual these days, "Internet Scale" dwarfs all that came before.

In this case it's Mark Gerson, "a networking wizard who has done for professional investors something akin to what Match.com has done for the nation's singles. He hooks up current and former middle managers from hundreds of companies with professional investors desperate for an investing edge." (The Journal reports that Mr G's network includes 180,000 members!)

Needless to say, some employers are duly concerned ... but this is one more genie out of one more bottle that, no matter how intense immediate pushback, is not going to be re-stuffed into said bottle.

Yes, this sort of thing is becoming commonplace. Still, every time I read a story like this, and see yet another barrier to transparency fall, I am both amused and amazed.

Welcome to Web 2.0.
Or Web 3.0.
Or Web 9.83.
What fun it all is!

(NB: Speaking of "transparency," I felt its bite a few days ago. I wrote an email that, I grudgingly admit, contained a "little white lie." Before pushing the send button, I realized that my likely Blog postings would give me away. Fortunately, the hovering finger was withdrawn in time. Yet another "lesson learned, circa 2006.")

When you are sitting on the can with a computer on your lap, attached to All Known Things (the Internet), and reading the Wall Street Journal online at 3 a.m.—and the subject is new cell phones dedicated purely to Skype ... which can cut one's (my!) mega-int'l phone bill upwards of 95%. New product idea, guys division: airport & restaurant urinals with embedded wi-fi/email capability.

(NB: Speaking of urinals, Urinetown may be the funniest-saddest-best play I've seen in a long time. Incidentally, I/we saw it at the Weston Playhouse in Weston, VT—one of those handful of amazing regional theaters where the quality of productions literally equals Broadway's.) (NB: Speaking of TechTime, our new puppy has an implanted chip.)

Speaking again of TechWorld, on a flight from San Francisco, I ran into my pal Kevin Kelly, tech uber-guru and founding Wired editor and, far more important, incredibly good guy. It's nice to see someone who's not as young as he used to be still waaaay ahead of most everybody in what's been declared (by me, among others) a "young man's/woman's game." Kevin is also "one of those people" with whom, even though you haven't seen 'em in 10 years, you take up the last conversation you had with them mid-sentence from where you left off.

"As long as there were no roads, you had to interrupt a journey at nightfall. Then, you had all the leisure in the world to recite psalms at the inn, to open a book and to have a good talk with one another. But nowadays you can ride on these roads day and night and there is no peace anymore."

In our age of 24 hour connectivity, the road really never closes. (As I write this at 12:15 A.M. in San Francisco.) Does it interrupt peace of mind? What would Mendel say today?

A+ in Usability. Motley Fool. I wanted to dig pretty deep, and as is often the case (and fair, as I see it) I had to register to make an archival search. The registration and confirmation process took less than 30 seconds—and I'm a very slow typist. Kudos!

Re PowerPoint discussion of a couple of days ago, fonts.com is very cool.

Web = Ubiquitous = Duh.

The entire way home I heard about poor play from the Bears' cornerback, missed calls by inept refs, and the unfortunate interception near the end of the game. And then he told me the worst part: "Now the Bears are going to be rated low in Madden 2007." "Why does that matter so much?" I asked. "Now when I want to be the Bears they won't win very often."

Then people dropped their hands from their headsets, assuming you'd know they were on the phone because of the cord dangling from their ear. After a while, the introduction of the bluetooth headset took away that cord, but by then nobody was self-conscious anymore, and it became commonplace to see people walking through airline terminals talking without shame to an unseen companion.

But now, at least for men, social norms have relaxed to a new level. Many times in the past year I've walked into an airport men's room and seen a lone man standing at a bank of urinals, actively engaged in a hands-free conversation with someone hundreds of miles away, presumably with a hidden bluetooth headset in his ear. These people inevitably speak in extra loud voices, as people speaking on cell phones in public often do. So, it's hard not to hear about the latest deal they're trying to close, or the new investment idea they're discussing.

I guess the call of the greenback makes it difficult to wait two minutes to make the call. After all, cash is king. But, I personally refuse to take part in this latest cultural development. And, I'll hang up on anyone who calls me if I hear the sounds of the airport bathroom in the background.

There's not a damn thing I can do, as far as I know, but it did send literal chills up & down my back ...

But as Jesse Sullivan says, "The Wright brothers' first flight didn't go that far, either." Jesse is one of Todd's research patients. He was a lineman who lost both arms at the shoulders when he touched a 7200 volt power line. The guy is an inspiration. Very funny. He's from Tennessee, and when Dr. Kuiken mentioned that one of his other research subjects was from the same state, Jesse replied, "I guess we're just accident prone there." More about Jesse and his work with Dr. Kuiken is here.

In a section of the conference called "Big Fixes" Cameron Sinclair, a Scottish architect spoke about Architecture for Humanity, a non-profit organization he founded that promotes architecture and design solutions to humanitarian crises around the world. Powerful speaker, and unlike a number of the speakers before him, he had really good slides. But we don't have access to them. One thing I'm going to suggest is that speakers' slides be made available to the audience. (Hey! That's what we do here at tp.com, right?) The current project he spoke about is the Siyathemba Soccer Club project.

The challenge is to create the "perfect pitch," a soccer field/outreach center for the youth of Somkhele, South Africa, who are three times more likely to become HIV positive than youth in other parts of the world. The field will be home to the area's first girls' football league.

Talk about passion. The way this guy talks about the projects they're doing around the world makes you want to drop everything you're doing to volunteer to work on one of these life-saving projects.