MisEntropy

The missing link in crowdsourcing

From a review of William Rosen's 'The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention':

"The author dismisses the more traditional explanations about why the industrial revolution began in Britain—such as an abundance of coal or the insatiable demands of the Royal Navy—concluding, instead, that it was England’s development of the patent system that was the decisive factor. By aligning the incentives of private individuals with those of society, it transformed invention from a hobby pursued by the idle rich into an opportunity for spectacular commercial gain open to anyone with a bit of skill and a good idea. That allowed England to harness the creative potential of its artisan classes in a way that no other country had managed before."

It's worth noting what makes the patent system tick. It is not primarily an outlet or a mechanism to unleash the creative potential of anyone and everyone, but instead a system that "aligns the incentives of private individuals with those of society."

In my opinion, this is what's missing in most crowdsourced advertising efforts until now. Instead of putting together a system which "aligns the incentives of private individuals with those of the brand," advertisers are hoping that an upwelling of creative expression will pour out - if only an outlet is offered.

Any such alignement of incentives doesn't necessarily have to imitate/recreate the patent system in a brand communication context. Indeed the incentives that individuals seek may differ for each brand and they aren't always monetary.

Instead, merely considering what the incentives are for potential contributors at large and the particular brand in question and how to align them, will give any crowdsourcing effort a fighting chance to be working contraption rather than just a PR-worthy curiosity.

It's an uphill task, but not an impossible one. Until the patent system came out, it's not to hard to imagine ordinary workers in the 18th century "writing" their own version of the open letter that follows (via), urging society and capitalists to leave them alone - to their boring jobs and lives.

Well, many of them are busy inventing now. 

Facebook and Privacy : The Great War of 2010?

Though Europe had been ravaged by notable and protracted wars over the centuries - when the war of 1914 broke out, there was a sense that this was different from everything that was seen before. Which is why it was simply called The Great War. The Second World War called for a relook at the naming strategy and The Great War, only slightly diminished in significance, became The First World War.

In the accounts of historians and journalists and in the ensuing geopolitics, these two wars were/are outliers. They were military conflicts in a never-ending line of military conflicts, but both together have effectively repositioned every war before or hence. There is a sense that everything changed because of them - on a canvas that enveloped the whole world.

In it's short lifespan, Facebook too has battled its users over their privacy a few times. Though almost all of these conflicts have ended in a retraction by Facebook - like the geopolitics of pre-20th century Europe, nothing actually changed. A resolution was only a means to postpone conflict to a later more opportune moment.

So as yet another skirmish has played out and is seemingly resolved, I can't help but wonder if this is the one that's pivotal enough to be seen as the Great War in the conflict over Facebook and data privacy.

Looking at Facebook's past record however, it doesn't really seem so. In a way, winning its first privacy battle over the Newsfeed feature has made Facebook bullish over every subsequent privacy incursion it has initiated. Only when the memory of that (rightful) victory and exoneration fades, will Facebook see that its perseverance and prescience over privacy are often misplaced.

The mother of all conflicts then is not behind us, but ahead of us. 

[Original pic by opensourceway]

The possible negatives of clean energy

In November 2009, Scientific American - with an eye on then upcoming Copenhagen Summit - published a manifesto piece titled "A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030."

It was a bold vision charting out how to get no less than all of the world's energy requirements through wind, water and solar power (WWS.) Eschewing even nuclear power, the authors had an uncompromising vision considering "only technologies that have near-zero emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants over the entire life cycle, including construction, operation and decommissioning."

The piece went into some detail about how to overcome the hurdles that will no doubt present themselves along the way. The authors went as far as to provide projections of the availability of metals that would be required in turbine gearboxes. Smartly they also anticipated and provided for the possibility that "the U.S. could be trading dependence on Middle Eastern oil for dependence on Far Eastern metals."

I am no climate skeptic - but even I found myself believing the plan a bit too far-fetched. Not because it wasn't desirable, but because it was unrealisable.

I also forgot all about it, until I found this letter by Paul Roetling of Grand Island, NY to the editors in this month's edition of Scientific American:

I found it surprising that in “A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030,” Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi do not mention the effects of the suggested energy sources on climate. The authors propose to absorb about six terawatts of energy from about 60 terawatts available in the wind, or about 10 percent of its total energy. Because the winds, at least near the U.S., usually flow around highs or lows, where the speed and related Coriolis force tend to maintain the pressure difference, I can easily envision that absorbing the energy will change the rate at which the pressure centers collapse. How this would change the weather, I do not know, but it must make a change to give us some of the energy. Possibly, the weather change would be an improvement, but as a believer in Murphy’s Law, I would be surprised. About 100 years ago dumping garbage into the ocean was justified because the oceans were infinite compared to the effect, so no one calculated how much was allowable. Let’s be smarter this time! Why not do the calculations before we cause more problems?

Paul's astute observations lends weight to my own belief that we have to reduce our energy consumption as a species rather than just pin our hopes on finding alternatives to all our energy needs.

All of our choices, no matter how carefully we consider and plan for them, will have externalities. Some of them we can surmise - most of them we cannot. Not until it's too late, ie. 

[Original pic by Insight Imaging: John A Ryan Photography]