On being Anonymous

I've noticed a trend of late that people in cars with blacked out windows, where you can't really make out the person behind the wheel, tend to be some of the more aggressive drivers around me on the road. They cut you off, change lanes without signaling and, in general are more selfish and less concerned about people around them. I have to think that those blacked out windows, giving those drivers a degree of anonymity, have something to do with the behavior.

If we're not known, somehow, we become a bit less accountable and a little less careful about others around us.

If you know you can do something without anyone knowing it was you, would you do the same thing as you would if everyone knew it was you?

Think about that. I'm pretty sure most humans know exactly what I'm talking about.

I've seen similar behaviors in the online worlds where people can be whoever they want to be. You can see it in sties like 4Chan where everyone is anonymous and some of the things that go on there are undoubtedly entertaining, even hilarious, but also downright evil.

I worked for a large computer company some time ago that had a large companywide intranet that many of the engeineering staff would use to try things out on. One engineer wrote a program that had two fields in it. One field was a scrolling window of text posted, real time, as people typed it into the second field: A small 200 character text field at the bottom. It was totally anonymous (the people entering text were not tracked in any way). Some of the things that came across that program were priceless and it lent itself to endless entertainment, right up until someone posted the married VP of HR was screwing his admin.

There were thousands of people using this program so there was literally no way to figure out who put up this particular post, but you can bet that this Cupertino based company (known for being highly innovative) shut it down and actively went after the engineer who wrote it (and, his manager, who happened to be me at the time).

Was this the right thing to do? I don't really know. I guess you could say: Is Twitter 'right'. It's essentially the same thing but on a global scale.

I'm not saying anonymity is bad. It can be very useful in doing good. The group Anonymous actively went after the Church of Scientology and exposed much of their more questionable practices. They made a point of bringing attention to the financial institutions that said they wouldn't allow monies to be sent to Wikileaks (but had no problem handling finances for the Klu Klux Klan).

I know of a group of people that, by necessity, anonymously ran an underground pirate radio station because they couldn't get a license, wanted to create a locally focused community media resource and were effectively hunted down by a federal agency (the FCC) to stop putting out signal equal in power to a 100watt light bulb. The only thing that protected them was being anonymous.

And there are many larger examples such as the people behind the organization of the uprising in Egypt, or the people that give information to wistleblowers like Wikileaks and news organizations.

But I wonder if it doesn't make for a less civil and a little more chaotic world.

Actually, I think I do know the answer to that: Yes. It does.

It's not really a good thing, and, it's not really a bad thing.

It's a little like a gun. It can be used for good like protection, deterrence or survival in a post-apocalyptic zombie filled world. Or,it can be used to attempt the assassination of a congresswomen.

It depends on who's hands it's in and what inclination those hands have.

Hopefully, it's more often for doing good than doing evil.

Aggregator, Curator, Editor.. it's all the same thing

The NYT wrote an article on Oprah's new network OWN (Oprha Winfrey Network.. surprise) talking about how it's a 'curator' of content.

This got me to thinking about a conversation I had with the managing editor of the Washington Post newspaper back in the early 90's. He said:

"People read our newspaper because of what we don't print".

That's right.

The Washington Post was providing editorial perspective to content. They filtered. They provided context. They aggregated a mass of content, filtered out the chaf, collected it together (curated) and presented the package to a willing to pay for it audience.










That's 1/2 of where the media world is heading.

The other 1/2 is actually kind of new. It's powered more by technology than media and it's that oh so often used word: social . This is also called 'social networking' and used to be called 'community'. It's also been around forever. The draw of your friends providing guidance to what media you consume by recommending TV shows, movies, books and magazines, or driving you through social obligation to play games like World of Warcraft, or Farmville, that's just community turbocharged by technology.

So, it really just comes down to two things driving all this media (and really, consumption in general) stuff:

Editorial Perspective and Community.

I know this seems overly simplistic, but we tend to complicate things far more than needed in todays tech world. My take is to focus primarily on those two things, take the time too figure out what area of all the complexity that underlies them to make them better you should scope in on, and you'll likely come up with something very successful.

Will Oprah's OWN network succeed? Well, does it have an editorial perspective and does it draw on community?

I know one thing; if she's selling stock in OWN, I'd buy it.

Low Power FM just approved by Congress

You gotta love it. LPFM - i.e. Low power FM (100 watt community oriented stations) was just approved by Congress.

This legislation opens up radio spectrum to hundreds, if not thousands, of local independent radio stations (also known as LPFM).

From the Prometheus Project folks:

WASHINGTON, DC – Today a bill to expand community radio nationwide – the Local Community Radio Act – passed the U.S. Senate, thanks to the bipartisan leadership of Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and John McCain (R-AZ). This follows Friday afternoon’s passage of the bill in the House of Representatives, led by Representatives Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Lee Terry (R-NE). The bill now awaits the President's signature.

These Congressional champions for community radio joined with the thousands of grassroots advocates and dozens of public interest groups who have fought for ten years to secure this victory for local media. In response to overwhelming grassroots pressure, Congress has given the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a mandate to license thousands, of new community stations nationwide. This bill marks the first major legislative success for the growing movement for a more democratic media system in the U.S.

What's it mean? It means that your town will have actual local community oriented radio with local DJ's talking about local issues, playing a wide range of music and doing something wonderful with the public airwaves (i.e. FM radio) that we haven't seen in a long long time.

By this time next year, it'll be worth owning a radio again.

Create your very own newspaper

Now this is interesting. www.paper.li takes your twitter feed and creates a newspaper out of it based on the people you follow.

Here's mine: http://paper.li/scottconverse

It's just 3 things...

Hit me in the shower this morning.

It's just 3 things.

That's really all that's important.

We're not talking 3 specific things... it's different for each of us. But it's still just 3 things.

It seems to me that we're made to really focus, best, on 3 things. More than 3 and you start to get scattered in your approach, less than 3, too easy for the human mind.

Of course, there are generally about 30 important things that need your attention at any given time. Can you focus on those 30 things? Nope. You're brain just isn't wired for it. It's aware of them, but it can't focus on all of them. Too many things.

What makes for a highly effective person is the ability to determine, from those 30 important things, which 3 are important right now. Which 3 they should be working on (or making sure others are working on if they're managing people).

Anyone can 'track' 30 things,but only executive thinkers can really see, almost immediately, which 3 of those 30 things they should be focused on. If you're in a big company that's the difference between being an individual contributor or a manager. A director or VP... on up the line.

In a startup company, it's the difference between being the PHP program monkey working on the support forum or the company Architect. The product manager or the CEO. It makes a big difference.

The next 300 things are what really trip us up. We're all dealing with, overall, about 300ish details, just by being alive. Homeless or CEO, the numbers are about the same.

The people that can determine, out of those 300 things, which 30 are important, and which 3 should be the one's they're focused on...

Those guys... they run the place.

So, it's not really about being able to manage dozens of things as many of us believe and, often, what makes our lives so hectic and at times overwhelming.

It's about being able to tell what 3 things should be the primary focus, and not worrying about those important 30 things or those 300 in the back of your mind.. gotta deal with em things...

It's just 3 things.

Are the best start up founders sociopaths?

I've been thinking about this lately and I've concluded that it takes a sort of criminal mindset (disregarding 'the rules') to be a startup founder / Entrepreneur.

This isn't necessarily bad. you can have a criminal mindset and have a positive effect on society (left side of the chart). Of course, most are negative (Right side of the chart).

Maybe it's a case of just a little bit of something that's bad when taken in high quantity (like, say, Caffine) can be a good thing.

Another term you could use in the place of Criminal Mindset might be Sociopath.

Some definitions from Profile of a Sociopath

Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility

Manipulative and Conning

Grandiose Sense of Self

Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt

Need for Stimulation

Callousness/Lack of Empathy

Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature

Any of this sound familiar? Ever seen any high profile tech founders exhibit some level of these behaviors? (Think: Jobs, Gates, Zuckerburg, Ellison)

I"m not saying the 'extreme' edge of sociopathic behavior is good. I am saying that some sociopathic behavior and being an Entrepreneur tend to go hand in hand.

Now, having been a startup founder, I can't say that I'm a sociopath, but, I do have a healthy disregard for the traditional 'rules' and some would say that makes me an outlier when it comes to fitting in.

And to that I say, ok, so be it.

Been a while

Well folks, it's been a while. Almost an entire year, actually, since I blogged. You might have noticed a new URL for this blog (www.scottconverse.com). Apparently Blogger lost my scottconverse.org linkage and all those links back to this blog are now gone. So, starting over.

Check back on occasion if you're so inclined. I'll be writing again now that things are working (reasonably) correctly.