Post Creative Commons

Hacking Matter: Levitating Chairs, Quantum Mirages and the Infinite Weirdness of Programmable Atoms

Sunday, January 1st, 2006

I saw author give a talk at Etech nearly two years ago and read the book shortly after. Now (via Boing Boing) Hacking Matter is available as a free download (under the most restrictive Creative Commons license), so I guess it’s time to post a mini-review.

is any bulk substance that can have its physical properties altered on demand. McCarthy’s focus is on woven into bulk matter and controlled by electricity.

The quantum dots can form arbitrarily sized on demand, radically changing the bulk matter’s properties. Examples (from p. 119 of the PDF):

Transparent ↔ Opaque
Reflective ↔ Absorptive
Electrically Conductive ↔ Electrically Insulative
Thermally Conductive ↔ Thermally Insulative
Magnetic ↔ Nonmagnetic
Flexible ↔ Rigid
Luminous ↔ Nonluminous

Not all of these could be changed arbitrarily and simultaneously, as many are correlated, but the point is “doped” matter becomes practically . Apart from obvious many billion dollar applications in fashion, personal and household goods and industrial processes, cheap bulk programmable matter would enable the conservation bomb to go nuclear (figuratively speaking), producing super efficient heating, cooling, and solar engergy collection. Beyond that, the possibilities quickly go into the realm heretofore of science fiction and magic.

There is a problem of course–making quantum dots in bulk cheaply. Apparently progress is being made, but there’s a long way to go to anything that could be called cheap. As far as I can tell a hot application now is “nanosensing” which isn’t really bulk.

could presumably produce programmable matter with abandon, but MNT may be some ways off. From about as far away from any related field as possible, quantum dots lack the hype and controversy surrounding “” and MNT, though research and small scale applications are well underway. As solid state, programmable matter also shouldn’t scare some people has –no self replication.

Hacking Matter is a popular science book and tries to balance between describing the personalities doing the research, technical information, and wild speculation. I could’ve done without the anecdotes. I’m sorry to admit that the technical parts were at about the right level for me, having a very weak science background, which also leaves me largely unable to pass judgement on the speculative parts. There definitely needs to be a more rigorous but still somewhat accessible treatment.

I was convinced that programmable matter will be an important technology in the not too distant future, though not inspired a la , though that comparison is probably unfair.

I recommend skimming Hacking Matter if you’re interested, and skimming the brief programmable matter FAQ even if you aren’t particularly interested, just for the purpose of being informed.

At Etech I asked McCarthy if he had any easily judged predictions about the development of programmable matter technology (for use as prediction market claims of course). He didn’t have anything concrete on the spot–something about “bulk material should be available” if I recall. The Cheaper Dots story cited above mentions “$2,000 a gram”. Are cost per gram or grams produced good general metrics?

Posted in Books, Creative Commons, Prediction Markets | No Comments »

Outsourcing charity … to Wikipedia

Friday, December 30th, 2005

Giving and asking for recommendations for worthy charitable donations seems to be popular this time of year, so I’ll do both, following my earlier unsolicited financial advice.

Excepting the very laws of nature (see arch anarchy), aging and its resulting suffering and death is the greatest oppressor of humanity. As far as I know Aubrey de Grey‘s Methuselah Mouse Prize/Foundation is the only organization making a direct assault on aging, so I advise giving generously. Fight Aging! is the place to watch for new anti-aging philanthropy.

The most important human-on-human oppression to end, in the U.S. at least, is the drug war (which directly causes oppression in other jurisdictions as well). I’ve only mentioned this in passing here. There’s too much to say. The Drug Reform Coordination Network is saying some of it. The seems to be spearheading state level liberalization initiatives. See MPP’s 2006 plan. I met MPP founder Rob Kampia a year or so ago and was left with a good impression of the organization.

is the current exemplar of the anti-authoritarian age and I love their .

Finally, you could help pay my salary at Creative Commons, more in these letters.

…

I’d really prefer to give entirely outside the U.S. and other wealthy jurisdictions. However, I’m not interested in any organization that gives direct aid (reactionary, low long term impact), supports education (feel good, low long term impact), exhibits economic neanderthalism, has religious or social conservative ties, or is a shill for U.S. foreign policy in the areas of drugs, terror, or intellectual property. I am looking for organizations that support autonomous liberalization or any of the goals exemplified by the organizations I already support above. Suggestions?

I suppose supporting prizes is one means of donating without respect to jurisdiction. In cases were low cost is important, researchers in cheap areas will tend to win.

I’d also prefer to give via some innovative mechanism. We’ll see what the new year brings.

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Wikipedia chief considers taking ads (via Boing Boing) says that at current traffic levels, Wikipedia could generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year by running ads. There are strong objections to running ads from the community, but that is a staggering number for a tiny nonprofit, an annual amount that would be surpassed only by the wealthiest foundations. It could fund a staggering Wikimedia Foundation bureaucracy, or it could fund additional free knowledge projects. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has asked what will be free. Would an annual hundred million dollar budget increase the odds of those predictions? One way to find out before actually trying.

…

Of course I expect all of my donations to have imperceptible impact, almost as imperceptible as voting. But it’s all about expression. I’ve increased my expressive value by including a donor comment — “in loving memory of Άναξιμένης” — with my Wikipedia donation. I got an expressive boost when my comment was chosen for highlighting.

( was a pupil or contemporary of and has a cooler sounding name. As a kid I’d dedicate donations to Alexander the Great, but I now know better.)

Posted in Creative Commons, Economics, Health, Intellectual Protectionism, Open Source, Prediction Markets, Public Goods, Wikipedia | 7 Comments »

Down and Out with the Macxs

Wednesday, December 28th, 2005

I expected to enjoy by and have a really hard time finishing by . The former includes cool stuff like , , and . The latter is set in an incredibly challenging environment (in terms of holding my interest)–a . I experienced the reverse.

Manfred Macx, an open source entrepreneur of the future (very approximately), has a kid with his IRS agent luddite wife. They and their descendents carry their family squabbles across the universe and singularity. As this incredibly non-interesting story unfolds, Accelerando takes every opportunity to reference , , and obscure political cliches and inside jokes, without any real depth.

Accelerando was originally written as ten stories, many of which won awards, and several of which I can imagine being enjoyable as shorts. The book is way too long.

If you can put up with lots of enjoy science fiction, you’ll probably like Accelerando. Everyone else, skim the to pick up any missing memes. Peter McCluskey has a better Accelerando review.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is short and concerns the fate of a theme park ride rather than the fate of the universe. Theme park rides are run by . The only way for an ad hoc to take over a ride is to have such an obviously better plan for it that nobody resists–but not everyone wants to play by the rules.

Much is left unexplained (e.g, how does cleaning bathrooms immediately boost one’s —?), but the core ideas Doctorow explores infect every page, making the book the most thought provoking treatise on Disney theme park rides ever.

What would an economy driven by open source concepts and (post-capitalist but not necessarily post-market?) look like? This is a concern of both books. Neither has concrete answers, but Down and Out does a fair job of toying with the question, cat-like, in its limited domain.

Both authors are trying primitive versions of these ideas in the real world, having released Accelerando and Down and Out under licenses. You can download the books here and here. I commend both authors for this and for even attempting to write human stories about such abstract and interesting topics.

Posted in Books, Creative Commons, Economics, Open Source, Public Goods | 4 Comments »

Darkfox

Tuesday, December 27th, 2005

I hate to write about software that could be vaporware, but AllPeers (via Asa Dotzler) looks like a seriously interesting darknet/media sharing/BitTorrent/and more Firefox extension.

It’s sad, but simply sending a file between computers with no shared authority nor intermediary (e.g, web or ftp server) is still a hassle. IM transfers often fail in my experience, traditional filesharing programs are too heavyweight and are configured to connect to and share with any available host, and previous attempts at clients (e.g., ) were not production quality. Merely solving this problem would make AllPeers very cool.

Assuming AllPeers proves a useful mechanism for sharing media, perhaps it could also become a lightnet bridge– as a Firefox extension.

Do check out AllPeers CTO Matthew Gertner’s musings on the AllPeers blog. I don’t agree with everything he writes, but his is a very well informed and well written take on open source, open content, browser development and business models.

…

Songbird Media Player looks to be another compelling application built on the (though run as a separate program rather than as a Firefox extension), to be released real soon now. 2006 should be another banner year for Firefox and Mozilla technology generally.

…

Lucas Gonze’s original lightnet post is now near the top of results for ‘lightnet’ on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, and related followups fill up much of the next few dozen results, having displaced most of the new age and lighting sites that use the same term.

Posted in Creative Commons, Music, Open Source, P2P, Programming, Semantic Web | No Comments »

God bless this jurisdiction

Sunday, December 25th, 2005

One of my favorite words of late is , used instead of , , or .

This occurs to me because Creative Commons has had to use jurisdiction rather than country, as the former is more neutral, important to some in cases where distinct legal systems exist within one nation state (e.g., and ) or where nation states do not recognize each other as such .

It happens that this use is a good fit for my anti–nationalist agenda. A country or nation is easily anthromorphized as the or , personified in the form of a ‘great’ leader, thought worthy of cultish loyalty and sacrifice, blessed by a diety, and nearly always constitutes a geographic monopoly.

‘Jurisdiction’ by contrast sounds functional, neutral, even neutered. Jurisdictions often overlap. A jurisdiction is something to be arbitraged, a country is something to live, die and kill for. An individual to a jurisdiction is as an employee to an employer, an individual to a nation is as a serf to a lord.

Smash the state, call it a jurisdiction.

Posted in Creative Commons, Peeves, Politics | 8 Comments »

Redefining light and dark

Monday, November 28th, 2005

The wily Lucas Gonze is at it again, defining ‘lightnet’ and ‘darknet’ by example, without explanation. The explanation is so simple that it probably only subtracts from Gonze’s [re]definition, but I’ll play the fool anyhow.

Usually darknet refers to (largely unstoppable) friend-to-friend information sharing. As the name implies, a darknet is underground, or at least under the radar of those who want to prohibit certain kinds of information sharing. (A BlackNet doesn’t require friends and the radar doesn’t work, to horribly abuse that analogy.)

Lightnet, as far as I know, is undefined in this context.*

Anyway, Lucas’ definition-by-example lumps prohibited sharing (friend to friend as well as over filesharing networks) and together as Darknet. Such content is dark to the web. It can’t be linked to, or if it can be, the link will be to a name,** not a location, thus you may not be able to obtain the content (filesharing), or you won’t be able to view the content (DRM).

Lightnet contnet is light to the web. It can be linked to, retrieved, and viewed in the ways you expect (and by extension, searched for in the way you expect), no law breaking or bad law making required.

* Ross Mayfield called iTunes a lightnet back in 2003. Lucas includes iTunes on the dark side. I agree with Lucas’ categorization, though Ross had a good point, and in a slightly different way was contrasting iTunes with both darknets and hidebound content owners.

** Among other things, I like to think of magnet links and as attempting to bridge the gap between the web and otherwise shared content. Obviously that work is unfinished. As is making multimedia work on the web. I think that’s the last time I linked to Lucas Gonze, but he’s had plently of crafty posts between then and now that I highly recommend following.

Posted in Bitzi, Creative Commons, DRM, Intellectual Protectionism, Music, Open Source, P2P | 8 Comments »

Most Rights Denied

Saturday, November 5th, 2005

Ryan King has created a funny spoof of Creative Commons licenses–the Uncreative Uncommons
Humor Link Back Don’t Repeat 0.1beta3 license–compare to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. Can you use hu-lb-dr? Nope:

The UU license is itself availble under the UU license, which means, no. See stipulation #3: “You may not paraphrase, repurpose or in any way retell the content. It is like “telling someone else’s joke” and that’s not cool.”

Ha ha.

Someone ought to create a CC license deed spoof for EULAs and :

See the EFF’s A User’s Guide to EULAs for more ideas.

Posted in Blogs, Creative Commons, DRM, Intellectual Protectionism | No Comments »

Realtime Wiki PileUp

Friday, July 15th, 2005

Although I’ve long thought collaborative realtime editing a useful concept, I’d never tried it hands on until a month ago when Christopher Allen got me to use MoonEdit. Very useful, but not free software and as far as I know no OS X support.

At the iCommons summit someone wanted participants to collaboratively take notes on a wiki. Wikis so far are great for asynchronous distributed collaboration, unworkable for synchronous distributed collaboration. Luis Villa pointed out ☠, an experimental collaborative realtime editor hosted in MediaWiki pages (but not very tightly integrated with MediaWiki–only new chunks of a page may be collaboratively edited in realtime, and the server side of this AJAX application is a separate server written in Java). Great idea, and the whiteboarding sub-application is neat, but I’d really prefer to be able to collaboratively edit an entire page.

In the past week I’ve noticed a couple more addtions to the Wikipedia collaborative realtime editior article, one of them web-based (Oxyd), then yesterday JotSpot Live.

Seems to me that almost any content creation application could benefit from optional realtime collaboration, legacy desktop applications included. Word processors could get their first useful new feature in many years.

Update: Also see ting-wiki for a hybrid web-local editor approach.

Posted in Creative Commons, Open Source | 1 Comment »

Sort of open source economic models

Tuesday, June 14th, 2005

Mark Thoma is building an “open source” repository for economic models. Well, sort of open source. Unfortunately none of the four models included so far, nor the initial post, which Thoma says is open source, say anything about copyright or licenses.

Unfortunately under this default copyright regime, explicit licensing (or dedication to the public domain) is required for an open source project to scale. If five people contribute to a model posted to Thoma’s repository none of the contributors, including the original author, nor anyone else, has any right to distribute the resulting model, or allow others to further modify the model.

That’s why open source projects use explicit open source licenses and open source repositories require each project in the repository to use an explicit license. That’s what an open source economic models repository, or indeed any repository that wants to emulate the open source model, should also do.

NB creators of open source economic models may wish to consider an open source-like license intended for “content” rather than code, e.g., the Free Documentation License (that’s what Wikipedia uses) or a liberal Creative Commons license (e.g., Attribution or Attribution-ShareAlike).

Also see the open access movement, commons-based peer production and Science Commons. I don’t know how familiar the mainstream economics profession is familiar with these concepts, but “they” ought to be.

Via Alex Tabarrok.

Posted in Creative Commons, Economics, Open Access, Open Source | 1 Comment »

Ugly metadata deployed

Friday, June 3rd, 2005

Peter Saint-André, a good person for preferring the public domain and much else, writes about Creative Commons metadata:

It’d be cool if smart search engines could automagically find web pages that are offered under one of the Creative Commons licenses.

I agree, which is why we (I work for Creative Commons, though I do not speak for them in this publication) built a prototype in early 2004 and a more robust beta based on Nutch later that year. March this year brought Yahoo! Search for Creative Commons, very recently also added to Yahoo! Advanced Search. I predict more and better for CC and other potentially metadata-enhanced searches.

For reasons unknown to mere mortals like me, CC recommends placing some RDF in an HTML comment as the proper way to “tag” a web page (Uche explains more here). Well, gosh, who thought that up? Are we not in possession of fine XHTML metadata technologies like the <meta/> tag?

Aaron Swartz thought it up, for good reasons. You can find a brief explanation I believe written by Aaron here (linked at the Wayback machine for reference as the current documentation may change). However, this doesn’t capture the most important reason, which I’ve had the pleasure of explaining a gazillion times, e.g., here

A separate RDF file is a nonstarter for CC. After selecting a license a user gets a block of HTML to put in their web page. That block happens to include RDF (unfortunately embedded in comments). Users don’t have to know or think about metadata. If we need to explain to them that you need to create a separate file, link to it in the head of the document, and by the way the separate file needs to contain an explicit URI in rdf:about … forget about it.

and here

Requiring metadata placed in the HEAD of an HTML page will dramatically decrease metadata adoption. The only reason so much CC metadata is out there now is that including it is a zero-cost operation. When the user selects a license and copies&pastes the HTML with a license statement and button into their web page, they get the embedded RDF without having to know anything about it. Getting people to take extra steps to include or produce metadata is very hard, perhaps futile. I tend to believe that good metadata must either be a side effect of some other process (e.g., selecting a license) or a collaborative effort by an interested community (e.g., Amazon book reviews, Bitzi, DMoz, MusicBrainz) (leaving out the case of $$$ for knowledge workers).

in reply to people who want CC metadata included with web documents in various fashions. On that, see my recent reply to someone else suggesting the same method Peter proposes:

There are zillions of options for sticking metadata into a [X]HTML document. If you must use whatever you prefer. It is my concern to encourage dominant uses so that software can reliably find metadata. IMO there are now three fairly widely deployed schemes for CC licenses, not all mutually exclusive:

1. Embed RDF in HTML comment
2. rel=”license” attribute on <a href=”license-uri”>
3. <link> to an external RDF file

#1 is our legacy format, the default produced by licensing engine, very widely deployed
#2 is also now produced by licensing engine, has support of small-s semantic web/semantic XHTML people, and will be RDF-compatible via GRDDL eventually
#3 is used by other RDF apps and is only non-controversial means of including RDF with an XHTML document. Wikipedia publishes CC compatible metadata using this method

In the future we’ll probably add a fourth, which will replace #1 and #2 in license engine output, when it gets baked into a W3C standard, which is ongoing — http://www.formsplayer.com/notes/rdf-a.html

Yes, RDF embedded in HTML comments is a horribly ugly hack. Eventually it’ll be superseded. In the meantime, massive deployment wins. Sorry.

Posted in Creative Commons, Semantic Web | 1 Comment »

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