Open Wiki Blog Planet

The True Story of the Telephone

2009-01-05T21:51:02+00:00

I grew up in Highland Park, Illinois, just down the street from where the telephone was invented. I now live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just down the street from where it was stolen. Seth Shulman’s recent book The Telephone Gambit lays out the clearest case yet of how it all happened. Here’s the summary:

Alexander Graham Bell (or Aleck Bell, as he was then called) was the son of Alexander Melville Bell, the inventor of a system of phonic notation called Visible Speech. The elder Bell would use Aleck as an assistant in his demonstrations: After sending Aleck to wait in another room, Mr. Bell would ask the audience for a word or strange noise then write it in Visible Speech. Aleck would return and reproduce the sound from the writing alone. Voila.

As a child growing up like this, he played at inventing machines that could talk and telegraphs that could listen. But he found his career in tutoring the deaf — by teaching them to pronounce the phonemes of Visible Speech, he eventually succeeded in teaching them to talk and read lips.

One of his students was Mabel Hubbard, daughter of prominent Boston lawyer Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Son of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice, Hubbard established water and gas and trolley utilities for Cambridge, Mass. — some of the first in the nation. He also fervently lobbied Congress to replace Western Union’s monopoly on the telegraph with a new corporation, the US Postal Telegraph Company, that would contract with the government Post Office.

At the time, telegraph wires blanketed the skies of Boston, hanging in a dense web above the buildings. Many desperately wished for someone to develop a telegraph that could send multiple messages over the same wire, so that many wires could be replaced with just one. The theory was that if one could transmit the messages using different tones, they would “harmonize” instead of interfere, leading the idea to be called the “harmonic telegraph”. Naturally, Alexander Graham Bell turned his tinkering to this problem and persuaded Hubbard (as well as Thomas Sanders, another father of a Bell student) to finance his research in exchange for a share of any future US profits. Further complicating matters, Bell had fallen in love with his student, Mabel Hubbard. Mr. Hubbard made it clear he did not approve of such a marriage unless Bell made a profitable discovery.

But Bell was simply a hobbyist, the real research was being done by a man named Elisha Gray. Gray ran Western Electric, the leading supplier of technical expertise to telegraph monopoly Western Union. From his lab in Highland Park, Illinois, he and his assistants worked feverishly at new discoveries. Bell was well aware of this and considered himself to be in a race with Gray to invent the harmonic telegraph first.

In 1875, Bell made a breakthrough in his work on the harmonic telegraph. But he was a crafty fellow — his deal with Gardiner and Sanders was only about splitting US profits; it said nothing about profits overseas. British law at the time granted patents only to inventions not patented elsewhere first, so Bell drew up several copies of his harmonic telegraph patent and sent some to be filed in Britain first. The rest were sent to DC to be filed as soon as word got back from Britain.

On February 14, 1876, while the lawyers were waiting in DC to file Bell’s patent, Gray filed a patent of his own. Bell’s lawyers were close to the patent officers and had asked to be tipped off if Gray tried to file something, so they could file Bell’s patent first. When Gray’s patent was placed in the patent office’s inbox, Bell’s lawyers hand-delivered Bell’s patent to the examiner, so they could claim he’d received Bell’s first.

The patent examiner, Zenas Fisk Wilber, had fought in the civil war with Bell’s attorney, Marcellus Bailey. Wilber was an alcoholic and owed Bailey money (a serious Patent Office ethics violation). To pay his friend back, he showed him Gray’s application. Bailey was startled to find it wasn’t a patent on a harmonic telegraph at all — it was a patent for a telephone, capable of transmitting all the sounds of human speech and music. He called for Bell to come to DC at once.

Bell did, and examiner Wilber showed him Gray’s patent as well, taking time to explain how it worked. Bell thanked him and returned that afternoon with $100 for his trouble. Bell then quickly scribbled an addition to his patent in the margin, adding that it should also cover “transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically” (this addition does not appear in any of the other copies).

Contravening much standard practice at the time, Bell’s (modified) patent was quickly granted, while Gray’s was denied. It was issued the same day Bell returned home from DC, March 7, 1876. The following day, Bell drew in his lab notebook a copy of the diagram he had seen in Elisha Gray’s patent:

It took Bell several days of tinkering, but soon he was able to replicate Gray’s device. On March 10, he made that now-famous call: “Watson — come here — I want to see you.” Both Bell and his assistant Watson recorded the event that night in their notebooks.

But Bell didn’t want to simply duplicate Gray’s work; he wanted to invent a telephone of his own. He spent many months trying to develop a telephone that worked on a different principle, but never succeeded in getting it to clearly transmit audible speech. Bell was always extraordinarily reluctant to demonstrate his telephone, for fear that Gray would learn it was a simple copy. Mabel had to trick him into attending the Centennial Exposition, where he was supposed to demonstrate his work to a group of engineers, including Elisha Gray. On one occasion, Bell’s telephone patent was set to be annulled unless Bell would swear under oath that the invention was truly his. Bell fled the country, testifying only at the last minute after desperate pleading from Mabel.

The legal conniving a success, Bell and Mabel were soon married. Feeling guilty, Bell gave all but ten of his shares in the Bell Telephone Company to her and swore to never work in telephony again. The company was operated by Gardiner and others while Bell went back to working with the deaf. He always said he was more proud of his work for the deaf than of the telephone.

It took Gray a long time to realize that Bell’s patent was a fraud. For one thing, he was still focused on the harmonic telegraph; his customers at Western Union couldn’t imagine running telephone wires to every house and thus couldn’t see how talking over wires was particularly useful. For another, it took years for the story to leak out, through numerous court battles and Congressional hearings. Zenas Fisk Wilber’s affidavit confessing to what he’d done did not appear until 1886, a decade later. Bell’s notebooks, making clear the blatant copy, were not made public until the 1990s.

Bell’s biographers have gone to heroic lengths to explain away all the evidence. Refusing credit for the telephone just showed Bell’s humility; not being involved in the corporation showed his dedication to pure research. The fact that both patents were filed on the same day is a grand historic coincidence — or perhaps Gray stole the idea from Bell.

As a result, Gray is forgotten and Bell is remembered as one of history’s great inventors — not as he should be: a hobbyist and a fraud, forced by love into stealing one of the greatest inventions of all time.

Now playing: Regina Spector - “On The Radio”

Sand Hill Group and Neochange: Effective User Adoption #1 Factor for Enterprise Software Success

2009-01-05T21:17:49+00:00

This is from Jason Rothbart of GroupSwim. Be sure to check out their on-demand collaboration tool. It includes a wiki, groups, discussions, and file sharing, and will help you better organize and manage projects, streamline collaboration, and inform & involve your team. Jason and I recently conducted a webinar on how to Improve Business Productivity Using Wikis. - Stewart

According to a study done by the Sand Hill Group and Neochange, the most critical factor (70% listed as number 1) for software success and return-on-investment is effective user adoption. Software functionality came in at 1% surprisingly, with organization change at 16% and process alignment at 13%. This is a remarkable result.

You can have the best software in the world, with the most sophisticated features, analytics and integration, blah blah blah, but if people don’t use it, it isn’t going to add value. I can’t tell you how many RFPs and software selection processes I’ve been involved with in prior lives that focus almost exclusively on tiny little, “knat’s ass” features that few people if at all will ever use. This study shows that focusing so much on features is missing the boat entirely.

There are several factors contributing to effective user adoption that include:

Training
Change management strategies and tactics
Executive support
Software ease-of-use
Etc.

I’m very encouraged by this as a predictor for GroupSwim’s success. We have built an incredibly easy-to-use application that is fun to use. Our customers and analysts have told us this time and time again. It is a fact that GroupSwim is easy to use and requires no training. If you believe this, we have half the requirements covered without spending a dime. If our customers and prospects use the application to change how they work or interact with their customers and partners, they get LOTS of value while expending very little effort or capital. I hope to see more studies like this in the future

The software industry has fundamentally changed - services is a growing part of software company revenue, whether they like it or not. Customers expect solutions these days and aren’t interested in having a disk shipped to them and wishes for good luck. While this is interesting, the key takeaway for me was that statistic on achieving enterprise software success.

How to Improve Weekly Sales Reporting With a Wiki

2009-01-05T18:42:24+00:00

In Enterprise social media: Don’t forget, users are people too, Scott Schnaars of Socialtext makes the distinction between referring to those who use tools like wikis, blogs, social networks, etc. as people, instead of users:

People, on the other hand, have names. People share ideas and information. People form communities. People, are the backbone of your organization and their ideas, especially in a crumbling economy, are the ones that will make or break your company. People, not employees and certainly not users.

I’ve been making a conscious effort recently to use “people” instead of “users”, so Scott’s post hit home for me. It humanizes technology usage, and is a good reminder that paying attention to the real, specific needs of the people in your organization is the key to success when you introduce new tools. To wit:

Your enterprise social media strategy needs a similar level of specificity in order for it to succeed. It is great to ‘want to collaborate’, but for an implementation to really succeed and in order to get the highest level of adoption, what ails you has to be very clearly defined.

This is precisely what I work on with clients. Identify the specific things that can be simplified, shortened, enhanced, and you have the measurable framework for a good and successful start.

Here’s Scott’s specific example:

Case in point, I spoke with a firm last week whose collaboration strategy on weekly sales reports was for the VP of Sales to send an emailed report to her 30 reps. Each rep had a specific window in which they had to fill out the report and mail it back to her. At the end of the week, she would compile the report and roll it up to her CEO. The process took each rep about an hour to do and was more complex than what could be completed in a traditional SFA. The VP of Sales was spending a measurable part of her week on this report.

What if one of those sales reps is out sick, in a meeting, on the phone with a customer, or distracted in any one of countless other important ways, during their “specific window” in which to complete the report. Oops! The process breaks down.

This is where a tool like a wiki can help:

Instead of the linear, easily disrupted chain of “specific windows”, the VP can simply create a wiki page with the report template, and ask all the sales reps to complete the report by the end of the week. Same overall timeframe as before - but now it’s a shared timeframe instead of the linear one - and less prone to a breakdown that holds up the whole process.

After a week or two, the VP will likely find that the timeframe can be reduced from a week to few days, or even hours. Now, instead of once weekly reports, sales can be analyzed more frequently - perhaps twice a week - and smaller, more iterative changes can be made to fix small problems, instead of waiting for a much larger warning sign that’s the tip of a much bigger problem.

Look at your daily work processes: What are you doing right now? Are you doing it as efficiently as possible? Can a wiki help? Let’s hear your stories of how you’re making everyday work processes easier for your team, and yourself. Comments welcome!

Lisa Levy, Little Man and DS to appear on The People's Court

2009-01-05T18:39:46+00:00

Yesterday morning former model and downtown lounge chanteuse Lisa Levy (of Psychotherapy Live! ), Little Man and I were on The People's Court. I thought to bring my camera to do photography for Wikipedia, but then decided against it. I assumed that the use of any recording devices and cameras is verboten. That doesn't usually stop me from trying, but I also had Little Man with me and I didn't want to worry about him, expensive camera equipment and my part on the TV show.

The Case - Claire Lieb vs. Waggytail Rescue

Waggytail Rescue is a Chihuahua rescue organization that I fostered and adopted dogs through. It's run by one of my best friends, Holly DeRito, who is well known in New York City dog circles for tireless and selfless dedication to saving dogs. The dogs Waggytail takes in--mostly Chihuahua mixes--are rescued from kill shelters. There is a flat $250 adoption fee that is a donation. Waggytail barely makes ends meet. They often cover gargantuan medical bills to get animals to a point where they are healthy and can be adopted. The dogs are traumatized if not by abuse, then certainly by the experience at the shelter, which reeks of death and sounds of anguish to a dog. When a person adopts a dog, it is not a commercial transaction. Most people get this.

Claire Lieb adopted Waggytail dog Chiquita, and signed an adoption agreement with short, easy to understand representations. One stipulated she was making a donation, not buying a dog. A dog rescue is a place people go to find a pet that somebody else hurt, didn't love or irretrievably lost. Ms. Lieb and Chiquita didn't work out, so two weeks later Ms. Lieb returned the dog and wanted her donation back. Waggytail refused, Ms. Lieb sued.

The People's Court scene

Ms. Lieb was a sight to behold. I would not have been surprised if she didn't make it through the night. Her ill-fitting wig was gray and bulbous, like a hair hat. The crackling sparkle of the polyester was jarringly juxtaposed atop a face so chaotically caked with make-up that it didn't look as if Ms. Lieb applied it, but instead fell face-first into it. The woman she was accompanied with, though, wore none and had the figure of a hockey player.

The most fascinating part of this Anthropology project was her eye-make up. Large swathes both under and over each eye, as if she had taken 1960's robin's egg blue eye shadow on the her index finger and thumb and then rubbed at her eyes to smash the make-up into her face. At one point when she looked up quickly, angered, she resembled a celestial baglady raccoon.

Ms. Lieb was also not the only Lady of the People's Court with an ill-fitting wig. It was a great discovery: People still wear wigs! It was awesome!

Lisa Levy, who is heavily involved in Waggytail, had Holly's Power of Attorney and represented our side. Little Man was there as a Waggytail dog on behalf of Chiquita (the dog Claire Lieb did not want). I was a witness, but there was no need to call me to testify about the adoption process. It was an open-and-shut case: you can't ask for a donation back. A dog rescue is not a commercial enterprise, but a charitable one.

The one dramatic episode in our case was that we didn't have the signed adoption agreement that she signed - it was at Holly's mother's house in Pennsylvania where she stored Waggytail records last month, not thinking she would need any of them urgently. So Judge Marilyn Milian was angry about that. She even called a recess!

When we went back, I told Lisa we have to give them some more theater. "Give them some crazy" and "think Ricki Lake" and "nobody's watching daytime TV". It's supposed to be entertainment as well as arbitration. So Lisa went back and started bang-bang-banging her hand on the podium when she spoke with an emotionally shaky voice! It was excellent. Judge Marilyn told her to "take it down a notch." It was great.

People in the audience were asking whether Little Man is available for adoption. And the bailiff, Douglas Macintosh was really hot.

Nine Blogs to Watch in 2009: Part 1 - The First Four

2009-01-05T16:45:51+00:00

Kate Brodock’s tweet about Mitch Joel’s 09 Blogs to Watch in ‘09 got me thinking about the blogs I’m watching most frequently these days. Here are the first four:

The Altimeter by Charlene Li - Charlene co-authored Groundswell, and launched her own company, Altimeter Group, to provide advisory and consulting on emerging and social technologies. She has a calm, authoritative, hype-free approach that makes her one of the strongest thinkers you can pay attention to.
Transparent Office by Michael Idinopulos - Michael is writing some excellent articles on wiki & social software adoption in the enterprise. Well worth reading.
The Heymarci Blog by Marci Alboher - I first started following Marci’s Shifting Careers column in the New York Times, but it was discontinued in late 2008. I like the New York Times, but this was a bad decision. Marci is an expert on building slash/careers - she wrote the book on it: One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success. Her advice has definitely helped me with my own career, and I highly recommend paying attention to her in 2009.
The Gig by Nadira A. Hira - Nadira covers the Gen Y workforce from a first-person perspective. She’s a Gen Y-er, and does a great job both as a voice for Gen Y workers, and as an ambassador to other generations learning to embrace and understand how younger people work, and how it can mutually benefit them.

Looking for more? Check out my Blogroll, in the sidebar to the right of this article. You’ll find my favorite blogs covering topics like: Career & Workforce, Design & Branding, Digital Content & Publishing, Education Technology, Enterprise 2.0 & Wiki in Business, Marketing Insight, News, Social Media, and Wired Government & Society.

Rebecca the exotic dancer moves into the paper mache room

2009-01-05T14:31:05+00:00

While I am in Colorado my friend Rebecca, an exotic dancer from Las Vegas, will be staying in the paper-mache room I built. I've been meaning to blog about the paper-mache room, which I made out of a wood loft bed, vellum, wood glue, doors, duct tape and paper. Then I painted it over. It measures 12 ft. x 7 ft., and has a window that overlooks a garden.

Rebecca is a lot of fun. First, she's gorgeous. Asian, she's from North Carolina and has a southern twang. She's vegan, makes her own food, and moved to New York City to hit it big.

Second, she pays in cash!

Gay Days in the Middle East

2009-01-05T14:19:27+00:00

With all the news about Israel and Gaza, I thought I'd try to highlight a different side to all the fighting and show how religious extremists, both Jewish and Muslims, can at least agree on their contempt for gays, lesbians, and transexuals, even from their own communities ... especially from their own communities.

Saar Netanel, who features in the first part of this clip, is an openly gay member of Jerusalem's City Council (and someone I once knew socially). Here he is visiting the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Meah Shearim. An escape like that only happens in the movies, but you'd hardly expect it in a documentary.

I don't know Bodi, the Palestinian drag performer, and there is no footage of the Hamas sticking a gun in his mouth and threatening to kill him. I can only wonder if they realized how phallic that actually is. His performance, however, is ... well ... something else.

I am showing this to highlight one simple point. After all the fighting is over, and the fundamentalist Jews and Muslims finish killing each other, you can be sure that they will end up turning on their own people.

I could be trite and quote Bonhoeffer here about how first they came for this group and that, but instead I'll quote this lesser known poem by him:

A friend is a gift to a friend,
Not from the heavy soil where blood and
Race and oaths are mighty and holy,
Where the earth itself watches over the sacred,
Hallowed, and ancient ordinances,
And defends and avenges them,
Not from the heavy soil of the earth,
But from free choice and the free desire
Of the heart, which are not in need of
An oath or a law.

Take that, Rick Warren!

Wikipedia Fundraising: the real truth

2009-01-05T13:32:14+00:00

Image via CrunchBase

So it's official - the Wikimedia project has now achieved its $6 million USD fundraising target, even overshooting by $200,000. But how did they manage to do it, what will it be spent on, and what's in the store for the future? I take a look...

How did they do it?

It's clear that Jimbo Wales' personal appeal made all the difference. Look at the graph above - those big spikes correlate to the time when Wales published his open letter encouraging people to appeal. And the letter was well-publicized itself - massive, ugly messages glared at every user from the top of every page, irritating seasoned editors and casual users alike. Valleywag pointed out that these messages were actually advertisements (albeit for Wikipedia's owner, the Wikimedia Foundation), thereby violating Wales' main promise that there would never be any commercial content on Wikipedia, and indeed why the reason the foundation relies on donations from the public.

Another interesting tactic that the foundation employed is to make the minimum donation 30 USD. I'm not going say that this tactic is a silly one, as it certainly worked, but it's a far cry from Obama's election campaign that raised a giddying amount of money from the belief that "Every Little Helps", and accepting any donation, no matter how small. The thought behind this minimum donation level probably rise in donation statistics that the WMF have collected from many years in fundraising. The 2008 drive, as in previous years, attracted an average donation of $25 - $30. If they set the bar at $30, then those people who donated around $25 (as the majority of donors did), would probably be prepared to spend those $5 extra in order to make a donation. This year the average donation was around $33.

The truly remarkable thing about the campaign, however, is how it managed to coerce so much money out of people during difficult financial times for nearly the entire world. Perhaps donors were under the illusion that the fundraiser was a one-off, or the more they gave now the less frequently they would be hassled for their cash in the future. In any case, can the WMF rely on donors rushing to save them year after year, especially with economic climates scheduled to get worse? I discuss this later in the article.

What will it be spent on?

Wikimedia is a charity, which means it has to make its budget available to the public. As you can see from the chart above, the biggest spend is into the technology that keeps one of the biggest sites on the Internet constantly up and running. Here is the official explanation as to what each segments actually means:

What expenses fall under the 'Office of the ED'?

In 07-08, the expenses of the Executive Director included the salaries for the Executive Director and Deputy Director, as well as miscellaneous costs including travel, some fundraising expenses and the costs of the annual staff meeting. In 08-09, the budget included those costs and increased spending for staff and volunteer development.

What expenses fall under 'Technology'?

In 07-08, the expenses of the Technology department included salaries for tech staff, an allocation for contractors, and bandwidth and hardware costs. In 08-09, the budget included those costs and increased spending for bandwidth, equipment and additional software developers.

What expenses fall under 'Finance & Administration'?

In 07-08, the expenses of Finance & Administration included salaries for all finance and administrative staff; the Chief Financial and Operating Officer, the Accountant, the Head of Business Development, the Office Manager, and the Assistant to the ED and DD. It also included staff development and staff meeting expenses, recruiting fees, the fees for the annual audit and some consultant costs. In 08-09, the budget included those costs and the salaries of the fundraising team as well as consulting costs related to donation record-keeping and streamlining the online fundraiser.

What expenses fall under 'Programs'?

In 07-08, the expenses of the Programs department included salaries for the Chapters Coordinator, the Volunteer Coordinator, and the Head of Communications as well as the costs for the annual chapters meeting in April and communication materials such as brochures and promotional products. In 08-09, the budget included those costs and funding for the Chief Program Officer, the Head of Public Outreach, outreach activities such as the Wikipedia Academies and volunteer development.

What expenses fall under 'Legal'?

In 07-08 and 08-09, the Legal expenses and budget include the salary for our in-house Counsel, business and legal-related costs for business registrations, state-by-state fundraising registrations, domain names, trademark registration and defense, employment and immigration support and external litigation fees.

What expenses fall under 'Wikimania'?

In 07-08 and 08-09, these expenses represent the cost of travel for the Foundation Board/Advisory Board/staff which is not covered by the sponsorship revenues.

Can the Foundation keep this sort of activity up in the long run?

This a very good question, I'm glad you asked. In my 2009 predictions for Wikimedia, which I made earlier in the year, I said that the WMF will be forced to look at other revenue options, and this could include advertising, something that has been adamently refused to be an option by both Wales and several high-profile Wikipedians in the past on several occasions.

Certainly there is a lot of call for Wikipedia (and other foundation projects, such as Wiktionary) to sport advertising in some form or another - if successful it could completely eliminate the need for an annual fundraiser. Wikipedia is one of the most highly-visited websites on the Internet, imagine how attractive it would be for advertisers. But what about the world's other big site for user-generated content, YouTube? Hasn't that been struggling to make ends meet on the advertising front? Indeed it has, and this is because advertisers are scared to put their adverts and brand name next to content that they have no control over. They don't have any control over it, but in fact immediately, neither does YouTube. Take-down notices for videos take time to process, and in the mean time, lawsuits could be filed against the company advertising, and millions of websurfers could have negative connotations associated with that company. This problem is worsened on Wikipedia, where there is no Google to change unsuitable content - this job is given to volunteers and robots. So even if the WMF looks at a different revenue model which includes any type of advertising, their problems may still not be over.

French Wikipedia sells posters

However, a piece of news from the Wikipedia Signpost cheered me up the other day, as it offered another possible revenue source for Wikimedia projects. French Wikipedia have started making their images available in hard copy through a poster service, with some of the profits donated to Wikipedia FR. There is one slight problem, however, as the Signpost reports that in fact, there is no financial contract or obligation on the company that provides the posters to give some of the money to the project.

Conclusion

This year's Wikimedia Foundation Fundraiser has certainly been a successful one, with the target exceeded by a significant amount of cash. However, it's not clear how long the Foundation can continue to raise money in this manner. There are several options available to them, such as selling images as posters and advertising, but the problem-free golden solution has yet to be found.

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Collaboration with Megapixie

2009-01-05T12:51:00+00:00

I rarely touch up my photography, although I did bend to the wish of one cross-eyed author who apparently ensures she never appears cross-eyed in photographs. Lighting, color, contrast and tone are all fair game, however, and necessary. I was with Peter Palladino on a photoshoot of Lypsinka, and he agreed that it's easy to be less than perfect about lighting and the model, because it can always be fixed later.

I still make an amateur mistake with my photography, and oversaturate the skin tones instead of getting them to be more accurate. I recognized this when I started to compare my Tribeca photographs with the ones from other photographers at the events. I think I have an eye for framing and finding a good shot, but I haven't developed the essential eye for color.

Lately I've been collaborating with Megapixie on Wikimedia Commons to redo some of my more high-profile shots that never looked right to me the way that I had done them. Here are befores (mine) and afters (Megapixie's). Note, Megapixie's is correct, when compared to the same shots at the same events from the professionals at Getty or Wire Image.

Michael Bloomberg

Will Arnett

Julianne Moore

Eliza Dushku

Pictures of the Day - January 05

2009-01-05T06:03:01+00:00

commons.wikimedia.org:

Convolvulus arvenvis with mites.jpg from commons.wikimedia.org, provided by Alvesgaspar

de.wikipedia.org:

Eis Bach.jpg from commons.wikimedia.org, provided by Aconcagua

en.wikipedia.org:

Ocean currents 1943 (borderless)3.png from commons.wikimedia.org, provided by Mahahahaneapneap

Future Changes in 2009 - Part 1: About the New Name

2009-01-05T02:28:42+00:00

This is the first in a series about the changes taking place on this blog in 2009. First, the new name: Future Changes. It has two tightly intertwined and complementary meanings:

1. A Play on Wikis

First, it is a play on the recent changes/revision history feature in wikis that keeps track of every revision made to each page. I wanted to take a forward looking spin on it, and emphasize that when you put information in a wiki, it becomes more easily found by others, diverse viewpoints are more easily incorporated, and as a result, it will be more relevant and useful.

2. Change as a Theme

Second, change is an important theme right now. In Things that change Seth Godin writes:

The best stories change over time. They change in ways that fascinate the consumer, and more important, they change in ways that are fun or important to talk about.

The 2008 US elections, presidential transition, and current economic conditions all spell significant and deep change. Government needs to become more transparent, businesses need to run more efficiently, and education needs to equip people with skills to cultivate what Marci Alboher calls slash careers.

In one of the most significant examples so far, Barack Obama’s transition team has signaled that technology will play a major role in communication, citizen involvement in government, and transparency in government meetings and processes.

The team is using a blog to inform the public on their progress, and has already given the weekly radio address a much-needed update by producing videos and posting them on YouTube.
His campaign used a wiki to organize volunteers and precinct captains.
The transition team also announced that, “all policy documents from official meetings with outside organizations will be publicly available for review and discussion on Change.gov.” Take that a step further, and his administration could use a wiki to build their legislative agenda and get public input on it.

This is an opportunity to explore how technology can power these changes, and how you can apply examples like this in your own team or organization. My writing will continue to focus on wikis, but I’ll also be looking at some other topics, including how some of my wiki adoption strategies can be applied to other technology tools, how wikis and blogs can be used to improve internal productivity, then taken a step further to draw in and actively involve external audiences.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know. Just leave a comment and I’ll reply as soon as I can.

Next: Industry Coverage

Aims for this Blog

2009-01-04T20:19:37+00:00

I've decided that this blog has attracted enough attraction to be worth pursuing as one of main commitments. Good news for guys, as this will (hopefully!) mean regular updates and more thorough posts.

Before I fully launch into a blog dedicated to following Wikipedia/Wikimedia, I thought that I should post some of my aims for this blog. This is for a couple of reasons: for my benefit, so I know where I'm going with the project and to have some guidelines to refer to, and for my readers to see whether the blog is worth subscribing to. I'll stick this up as an about page, so people can refer to it for some quick information.

So, this is what I want WikiLog to become:

A place where all posts are well-written and fair.
A news source for Wikimedia projects, an external, regular Wikizine or "Wikimedia Blogoscoped".
A blog where people who are not regular contributors to any Wikimedia projects can find out happenings in its wikis (inevitably mostly Wikipedia) in bite-sized, easy to read articles. This will save them having to trawl through the hundreds of internal Wikipedia pages and the many, many Wikipedia news sources I find myself wading through to write content for this blog!
A blog where, by contrast, regular contributors of one or more Wikimedia project can take a break from the heavy discussions on the project and get relaxed a digest of related news, with references to thoughts from the "outside world".
A place where problems relative to Wikipedia (et. al) can be discussed in an easy, fair fashion. Not banged on about endlessly, but debated in clear language with arguments from both sizes.
Off-topic posts will be no more than 20% of the number of total posts.

I think that's about all for now, but if I think of anything further, I'll update accordingly.

Wales not sacked, after all

2009-01-04T19:55:09+00:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Late last night (UK time) a story surfaced that the Wikimedia Foundation had sacked Jimmy Wales. The story was from Valleywag, and, even though I was slightly suspicious of the article's validity, I tweeted the news.

Well, this may not come as a shock, but the story turned out to be complete and utter rubbish. Jimbo Wales tweeted me personally to correct me. Thanks, Jimmy - and I'm sorry that I fell for the story!

Sites like Valleywag would be the first to complain if Wikipedia reached a high level of factual inaccuracy, let their own blog is full of lies.

Do deaf schizophrenic people hear voices ??

2009-01-04T18:16:00+00:00

The text says: "I've never asked them"

So I asked the people on the SignWriting mailing list. I was told by someone who has interpreted for schizophrenic deaf people, that some do hear voices and others SEE voices..
Thanks,
GerardM

Writing in an extinct language

2009-01-04T16:01:00+00:00

When new texts are written in an extinct language, it is highly academic if what is written is correct, useful and understandable. Often there are several ways of writing a language because languages evolve over time and the orthography change with it. It may even be that the script changed as well. Given that there are no living people who use the language for their daily communications, there is no final word on what is right or wrong.

There are several Wikipedias in truly extinct languages and I am not impressed with what I have seen so far. I recently learned about a dispute in the "Anglo Saxon" Wikipedia where people are fighting about the use of specific characters. When you read about this, you learn that the language used a different script anyway. it is also about the validity of a book on the subject from the 1970's.

With a transliteration to another script, with the use of extended Latin script, I wonder if people who read the texts of the Anglo Saxon Wikipedia actually learn something that helps them understand old original texts.
Thanks,
GerardM

Will the Stanton usability grant stop Wikipedia community atrophy?

2009-01-04T15:36:04+00:00

The recent Stanton Foundation grant to improve MediaWiki's usability hopefully will lower the barrier for computer novices to get started on Wikipedia editing. This comes at an opportune time: we recently learned that the size of the Wikipedia community has not only stopped growing exponentially, it actually has been gradually shrinking since early 2007. The most likely causes of the decline include:

lack of "low-hanging fruit"
lack of new potential editors who are just discovering Wikipedia
Wikipedia's scope gradually narrowing to mirror that of traditional encyclopedias (a.k.a., deletionism run amok)
Wikipedia's occasionally expert-unfriendly culture that turns off those with the most to contribute
a Wikipedia culture that gives little priority (or even respect) to activities focused on the community itself rather than the encyclopedia
the natural decline in participation of early community members; according to Meatball Wiki, users of any online community generally say GoodBye after between 6 months and 3 years unless that community is connected to their offline lives

Usability improvements, it is hoped, will open editing opportunities to people who are scared off by the intimidating and sometimes overwhelming markup that appears when one clicks "edit".

Whether or not this will halt or reverse the decline in editing activity on English Wikipedia is tied up with several conflicting currents of thought in the community. As Liam Wyatt and Andrew Lih have been pointing out in recent Wikipedia Weekly podcasts (66 and 68 are both very astute discussions), the standards for what is and is not valuable content have been shifting consistently towards the convential encyclopedia definition of valid topics. Quirky lists, small organizations that don't meet the ever-harsher notability standards, obscure books and concepts, anything ScienceApologist finds to be an illegitimate invocation of scientific authority, anything deemed too 'mere news', and, increasingly, simply anything that wouldn't be found in tradional encyclopedias--these are candidates for deletion.

The implications of deletion trends for community health are not entirely straightforward. Overzealous deletion leaves a sour taste in the mouths of many editors who have spent a lot of time adding the kinds of content that now gets deleted regularly. Some leave because of it, or lose their enthusiasm. On the other hand, a lot of what gets deleted is simply weak, unsourced content; removing it the article pool means that new editors will not base their own contributions on such bad examples. Deleting content on the borderline of notability, or better yet, downright notable and significant topics, also replenishes the supply of low-hanging fruit. If someone thought a topic deserved an article, someone in the future may think the same thing and recreate it in better form. Citizendium recognized the advantage of redlinks early on, and decided to start from scratch rather than from a Wikipedia dump.

And while about two-thirds of those polled want to see Flagged Revisions implemented, the other third think it would be too much of a dilution of the "anyone can edit" ethos. Although I'm in favor of Flagged Revisions, it's not clear to me whether it would improve or worsen the problem of commnity atrophy. It's a question of balance: some people are drawn in by 'instant edit gratification', while others are turned off by the perceived free-for-all nature of Wikipedia and assume their contributions would simply be swept away in the chaos. So the lure of stability might or might not outweigh the immediate thrill of seeing one's edits go live. (I suspect the waiting, and the tacit acknowledgement of good work when someone approves a newbie's edit, would do more to draw in new users to the community than the instant, impersonal status quo.)

So how would improved usability shake things up? On the one hand, it might spark a wave of naive article creation followed immediately by a wave of deletion of new content produced by newbies with no grasp of the community's standards. If someone can't figure or won't figure out how to use basic wiki markup (says the cynic), how can we expect them to use proper sourcing and adhere to Wikpedia's core policies of NPOV and Verifiability? Lowering the barriers to entry might just exacerbate the us-versus-them mentality of deletionism. On the other hand, maybe a host of new users would integrate well with the community and restore some of its past vitality while pulling the philosophical center back a bit from the deletionist brink. (Of course, it's an open question how much usability improvements could actually affect the influx of new users; the difference might be rather small, if lack of tech savvy is highly correlated with other factors that make people unlikely to edit.)

As Erik Zachte has pointed out (in the earlier version of this post), many Wikipedias are still growing; English Wikipedia is not the be-all, end-all. It is not clear whether each language will follow a similar pattern in the rise and peak of community (accounting for number of speakers, connectivity, and economic issues) or whether different languages can develop sufficiently different Wikipedia cultures to avoid the failings of English Wikipedia (or perhaps generate unique problems of their own).

Chris Dane Owens - Shine On Me - It's 1985 in Narnia

2009-01-04T12:50:46+00:00

Geoff Chadsey posted a link to Sasha Frere-Jones's blog at the New Yorker about the "Best Music Video of the Year" - Chris Dane Owens's "Shine on Me". Geoff cracked in his Facebook link that, "It will take me hours to recover from the disorientation this video has induced. It's like it's 1985 all over again. In Narnia." Frere-Jones herself wrote:

What you need to know is that Mr. Owens will live forever—until the dragons rule the earth again (or the first time, whatever)—and that you are going to watch this video more times than you can imagine. You may dream of this video, but the dream won’t be as good because it won’t be this video.

And now, let the enchantment begin...imagine the way the creative meetings went down when they were hammering out the "vision" of this video.

What if someone you were dating sent you a link to that video with the lone note, "Makes me think of us"?

Supporting languages in Betawiki itself

2009-01-04T11:07:00+00:00

The people who localise for their language at Betawiki, all have an ability to understand English. In many ways, the first person to start the process of localisation is a pioneer. The objective is often simply to meet the requirement for a new project. For new languages, when 50% of the "most used messages" are done, the user interface becomes available in the Incubator and all other WMF projects.

For some languages the localisation has become a continuous process; the usability for these languages becomes as good as it gets. When more and more work is done, a need arises for other activities. Proof reading, the use of consistent terminology require other skills, different skills. English is for these people not as much a requirement as it is for the people who do the primary localisation work and Betawiki needs to provide great support for the other languages.

A good example of a well supported language is Persian. The language has had consistent support for quite some time. It is of a quality where MediaWiki is usable for use in education or where native hosting in Persian can be offered. Betawiki allows its users to change the interface to right to left support, a gadget still missing for Commons.

To support the people who are not comfortable with English, the Betawiki user interface itself has to be localised. When the most basic localisation is completed, proof reading and improved terminology are activities that become increasingly important. The Persian effort demonstrates how good it can get..
Thanks,
GerardM

Pictures of the Day - January 04

2009-01-04T06:03:02+00:00

commons.wikimedia.org:

Canada goose flight cropped and NR.jpg from commons.wikimedia.org, provided by Dori

de.wikipedia.org:

Feuerzangenbowle 2.jpg from commons.wikimedia.org, provided by Thgoiter

en.wikipedia.org:

Cabot Square, Canary Wharf - June 2008.jpg from commons.wikimedia.org, provided by Diliff

2008 Review of Books

2009-01-04T01:44:46+00:00

Previously: 2007 Review of Books, Books I recommend Without Reservation: 2006

I read exactly 100 books this year. I mistakenly told someone over the summer that I read a hundred books a year (I only read 70 last year, although 120 the year before that) and as the new year approached I felt duty-bound to make that true. (This led to spending a lot of New Year’s Eve in a corner reading, as this list may suggest.)

Here are the books (in chronological order), with occasional short comments. Books I’m happy to have read are linked. Books I recommend are in bold.

Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Seemed decent for the format.
Gecan, Going Public
The Activist’s Handbook. Could be better written, but probably the best of its type. I’ve definitely thought back to this one a lot this year.
Poundstone, How Would You Move Mount Fuji?
Poundstone, Labyrinths of Reason
Lodge, Changing Places.

Typical campus novel fun, but with some great People’s Park stories.
Elster, Political Psychology. Short Elster essay collection. Probably for Elster fans only.
Lords of Poverty (skipped parts)
On Being Nonprofit. Completely unmemorable.
How to Do Things with Words. Important in its time, but mostly overtaken by Searle’s later work.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Campaign Finance Reform and the Future of the Democratic Party
The Visible Hand.

Tough sledding, but important points. Read my summary.
Thaler, The Winner’s Curse
Poundstone, Fortune’s Formula

Fantastic fun. Math, mafiosi, movies.
Freeman, Rawls (parts)
MacKenzie, An Engine Not a Camera.

I recommend starting with his LRB stuff.
Fitch, Solidarity for Sale. For leftists who really love unions. You need to know the flaws to make them better.
Maisel, From Obscurity to Oblivion: Running in the Congressional Primary. Not a lot of books on the inside of campaigns, but this is one of the few.
Segaran, Programming Collective Intelligence. Terrible title, but a good book on how to do data mining.
Willis, Learning to Labor. Not as great as the excerpts I’d read had led me to think.
The Brain: A Very Short Introduction
Peck, Hatchet Jobs. Fun stuff.
Sloan, My Years with General Motors (skipped second half). I read this to understand how modern management was invented. It did not help.
Hoopes, False Prophets

A wonderful series of profiles of the most prominent management theorists going back to slavery and Taylor. The book’s editorial line is a bit marred by the inability of the author (a B-School prof and manager) to reconcile his belief that management power is unjust and that it is necessary. But solid history and good takedowns of some important figures.
Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? (lent by Henry Farrell). A good book, but not for general readers.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Mixed feelings.
Wilson, To The Finland Station.

Really, really good. Edmund Wilson was the incredible writer you’d expect and this is his masterpiece.
Maurer, The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man

Luc Sante’s intro alone is worth the price of the book, but the rest of the book is fantastic as well. Everyone should know about con men. (The BBC’s Hustle is obviously a television adaptation of the book.)
A Choice Not an Echo: The Inside Story of How American Presidents Are Chosen. Still crazy after all these years, although the whole anti-backroom thing is interesting. I read it to see what you could airdrop on college kids.
Khurana, Searching for a Corporate Savior

Really, truly great.
Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? (skimmed)
Debunking Economics. Quite good, although not perfect.
Men and Women of the Corporation.
Carlson, Executive Behavior. Worthless
Elster, Explaining Social Behavior

Magical, magisterial masterpiece. (my review; more on Elster)
Piven, Challenging Authority. Kind of thin; I glazed over portions.
Rosen, The World Split Open
Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think. Terrible.
From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend
Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences
Brook, The Trap
Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men
Khurana, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands
Glymour, The Mind’s Arrows
Pearl, Causality. I wish everyone understood this.
Elster, Strong Feelings
Gelman et. al., Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State (sent by Andrew Gelman). Lots of great empirical work, but little theory or story to back it up.
Lodge, Nice Work

Typical campus novel fun, but with deeper thoughts about business and finance.
Armstrong and Moulitsas, Crashing the Gate
Menand, American Studies
Galbraith, The Predator State

My summary.
Watchmen

Brilliant. Wanted to see it before the movie came out.
Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons
Mann, Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1

Tough reading, but really fascinating stuff.
Frank, The Wrecking Crew. Lots of good dirt, but not exactly the most rigorous theoretical argument.
Perry, Spectrum. Perry is great — the autoinvestigatorial last chapter alone is worth it.
Bearman et. al., Doormen. I read this because I now have a doorman and am uncomfortable about it. This helped.
Teles, Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement. Good stuff, although narrow.
DFW, McCain’s Promise. Brilliant, naturally. I’d read Up, Simba! before, of course, but I read this out loud to a friend and it was just a joy to do.
Ken Silverstein, Turkmeniscam.

Great fun. Not just a great story of investigative journalism, but lots of interesting and important background as well. I’m a huge Silverstein fan.
DFW, Everything and More.

This book is an interesting, but, I think, ultimately unsuccessful experiment. DFW tries to teach math by channelling his favorite math teacher — writing in the style of an excitable lecturer, completely with verbal tics and backtracking (which, in printed form, becomes kind of a running gag).

It’s certainly not a bad book by any means, but I don’t think it’s really a successful model for how books can teach math.
Wodehouse, Psmith in the City. Hilarious. Psmith is a delight. I want to hear him acted but the recent BBC version is dreadful.
Clark, Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours (skimmed parts)
How Wikipedia Works (skimmed parts)
Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory Life. Delightful. I apologize humbly and abjectly for ever criticizing the strong programme of science. Sokal and Bricmont led me badly astray on that one.
DFW, Consider the Lobster

DFW’s suicide hit me very hard. I ended up coping by reading every piece of nonfiction he’d ever published. He was a brilliant, tortured man and I see so much of myself in him. His nonfiction was fantastic and I will consider my life a success if I can do half of what he did.

If you want to get started, I recommend (best work first):
1. Federer as Religious Experience [B/W PDF]
2. “David Lynch Keeps His Head”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (there’s a severely abbreviated version printed in Premiere; read the real thing instead)
3. “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (the Harper’s version [PDF] preserves most of the good stuff but is shorter)
Krugman, Peddling Prosperity

Probably Krugman’s best book, it provides a throughly enjoyable and enlightening intellectual overview of the economics of the 1980s and 1990s. The delicious takedown of supplysiders is worth the book alone, but the rest is great too.
Tough, Whatever It Takes. A great read; a bit overly credulous — doesn’t address Keynesian critics of intervention or betray much skepticism about tests. (my review)
Wolfe, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. Great fun.
The Homework Myth. Sometimes it seems like Kohn just gets narrower and narrower (via email, he disputes this).
Savage Mules. A good antidote for faith in the Democratic Party. (dsquared’s review)
Beam, Great Idea at the Time. A fun historical take down of the Great Books. Probably more fun if you know what the Great Books are.
A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Borderline unreadable. Why did everyone rave about this book?
Love at Goon Park.

The first section is a (confessed!) retread of Becoming Attached, one of my very favorite books (a 2006 highlight). But after that it gets much better and the interplay of animal and human stories is a lot of fun. I’ve been reading it to the five-year-old, who loves animal stories of all sorts, and she just laps it up. (I skip the incredibly dark parts, of course.)
Newsweek, Secrets of the 2008 Campaign (full text online). For campaign junkies only.
Perlstein, Tested.

Very good. (my review)
Keynes, Economic Consequences of the Peace (full text online).

Wow, Keynes knows how to write. The first section is a must-read for any diplomat. Chapters 4 and 5 (which unfortunately are the bulk of the book) are only worth skipping or skimming for modern readers.
Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York (scripts). What a movie! There were a lot of script reviews that said things along the lines of “I don’t know if movies can capture a script this complex.” Reading the script now, you see the exact opposite is the case. The script is a pale imitation of the film, missing most of what made the film magical. Which just underscores what a great movie it was.
Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America.

Not the easiest read, but brilliant. One of the very very few books I want to read again (in this case, because I am sure I didn’t get it all the first time). The definitive Marxist take on education.
Smile When You’re Lying

Tons of fun. I hate traveling and have never cracked a travel book, but this angry and profane insider’s evisceration of the industry was still a complete joy. Read Ezra’s review — with a comment from the author!.
DFW, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Keynes, Essays in Persuasion.
Douthat, Privilege (lent by Rick Perlstein).

What is wrong with Ross Douthat? This book is eminently mockable, but I have to say I could see writing most of it myself. Which is weird, since Douthat is a staunch conservative and I’m a crazy-far-leftist. Is Douthat a double-agent? Or is he really this confused about what conservatism is about? I wrote this summary for Rick:
- Prologue: Harvard is actually an education in the ruling class. [Ross didn’t like Harvard so much.]
- 1: Diversity policies ensure all sorts of ethnicities get accepted but they all come from the upper class. [Big black homeless guy starts living in Ross’s dorm.]
- 2: The real ruling class gets tapped for private clubs where they get connected to wealthy alumni and rape attractive coeds. [Ross gets invited to apply at various clubs and rejected.]
- 3: Students are aggressive social climbers, calibrating who they talk to and what activities they join to maximize their resume. [Ross’s friend’s friend gets arrested for embezzling.]
- 4: Persuaded that the market is God and academia is a sideshow, professors give students easy grades to help them get good jobs and be rich (thus proving the professors’ worth). Courses are poorly taught and maddeningly specific — its very difficult to get a solid general education. [Ross doesn’t like his classes and gets mediocre grades.]
- 5: Random drunken hookups are so common that the only way to get any kind of commitment is to fall into a college marriage (of which, I must say, there is a beautiful description pp. 145-147). [Ross falls head-over-heels for a totally agonizing tease, only to have her give it up months later to a preppy sailing kid who gets her drunk.]
- 6: Most harvard students arrive virgins and have a hards time getting any while they’re there, out of awkwardness and fear of threatening their spot in the overclass. [Ross can’t even get laid at an all-girls school.]
- 7: The student body is primarily New Democrat, with a smattering of vocal leftist protestors. [Ross supports the living wage movement. [ed. note: wtf?]]
- 8: Harvard students spend summers at elite internships acclimating to their future careers. [Ross goes sailing with William F. Buckley!]
- 9: 9/11 sucked. [Ross laps up the patriotic spirit and the Summers presidency.]
- …and then a tearfelt ending.
Sorry, did I end up mocking it a little?
Gore, Sammy’s Hill. Yes, I have a weakness for chick lit.
What Motivates Bureaucrats? A genuine investigation (as opposed to the typical social science arms-length thinking) into how Reagan affected the civil service. In short, our civil service is the opposite of what you see on Yes, Minister — they were practically falling over themselves to kneecap their own agency in response to the President. Kind of sad, but hopefully this means that Obama will also have wide lattitude.
DFW and Mark Costello, Signifying Rappers.

A great book, although surprisingly the best parts are written by Costello. A dense intermixed weave of music, history, race, law, fantasia, and brilliant writing.
The Telephone Gambit. Decently researched, mixed in with self-indulgent (and just plain bad) autobiography about writing the book. I wrote up a summary of the story which I’ll be publishing soon and you should probably just read that instead. But everybody should agree that Bell stole the telephone from Gray after this book.
Krugman, The Age of Diminished Expectations (1st ed). Bleh. Krugman’s first book, back before he knew how to write.
Bartels, Unequal Democracy. I’m also going to publish a summary of this.
Beam, Gracefully Insane. Like all good residents of Cambridge, being institutionalized in McLean has long been a dream. After enjoying Beam’s other book (Great Idea at the Time) this seemed right up my alley, but it was nowhere near as good.
Gore, Sammy’s House. The Gore books were bothering me because I could never figure out who Wye and RG were supposed to be — all the other characters mapped pretty obviously onto current politicians, but the candidates were a mystery. I’d somehow forgotten my first instinct: RG is AG, which means that you have to think back two decades or so. Once you realize that, everything falls into place.
Wodehouse, Mike: A Public School Story. The first Psmith story. Cricket, cricket, cricket, cricket. Sigh.
Ice Cream Man. Good fun for Tosci’s fans.
Kuttner, Obama’s Challenge
V for Vendetta. Moore’s whole story about how the movie softened the fascism and anarchism seems completely bogus. That said, the movie did change some fantastic parts, including V’s televised speech and the brilliantly convoluted Hamlet-esque ending. Also, the movie’s whole virus attack subplot was stupid. On the other hand, the movie added some great stuff too. So see both, I guess.
Krugman, Pop Internationalism. The essays Krugman wrote before Peddling Prosperity, meaning it discusses the same stuff but much more disjointed and poorly edited. I was hoping it’d explain the mystery of his animus towards Laura D’A, but no such luck.
First-Time Manager. A much better book than I expected, but enough tin-ear corporate silliness that I can’t thoroughly recommend it.
Searle, The Campus War (full text online).

Actually, a really good book on the campus uprisings of the 1960s. First, there’s some terrific first-hand reporting from Searle’s experience at Berkeley (in which he participated in all three sides: the uprising, the faculty response, and the administration counterattack!). Second, there’s some good secondhand summarizing about the experience at other campuses. Third, there’s some good analysis about why campus uprisings happen and what they mean. Fourth, there are some interesting proposals for reforming the university. (I, too, want to get rid of the trustee system.) Makes me wish Searle did more non-philosophy books!
Haggis-on-Whey, Animals of the Ocean (In Particular, the Giant Squid). Not as good as the original (now in its third edition!).

Happy new year!