OneMind

Jack Myers over at Mediapost.com asked in his weekend column whether mainstream media are missing a big bet by not paying more attention to and udnerstanding SecondLife. I posted an answer to his blog, which I summarize here in case you don’t want to read my entire response (which I wish, of course, that you’d do).

There is no question in my mind that virtual worlds are more than just A wave of the future; they are THE wave of the future.

Unless SecondLife gets a LOT better at the user experience, it will not be the big winner it might otherwise deserve to be. As you point out, becoming just comfortable with navigating around in SL is a demanding task.

Still, SL is a great experiment and its astounding success at attracting not just substantial numbers of users despite its poor UI but also impressive business and governmental participation is a testament less to the value of SL per se than it is to the seductive nature of virtual-world experience and the pent-up demand that exists for them among a large minority of current Netizens.

It seems to me like it might be a good time for Google to split its stock. (Caveat: I own some Google.) As the price has flirted with $500 over the last few weeks (it’s at $469 as I write this), I have been thinking about how much more likely the stock would be to gain value if more people could buy it.

At its current price point, casual investors with a few thousand dollars to spread around can’t even be tempted by it. Yet it is and has been a highly attractive stock for some time.

I hope Google’s officers and directors see their way clear to considering a sizable split some time in the near future.

I’ve been a TiVo fanatic and user from the beginning. I bought five machines with lifetime service on three of them in the first wave of sales, giving three of them to family as gifts. I used to think Tivo’s support was among the best in the world of consumer electronics.

Frankly, it now sucks. A significant number of reports of a networking error (code 126) have been reported on Tivo’s board and lots of other places since at least December. No fix in sight. No response from Tivo. When I called support, they gave me the usual “restart the Tivo” which does work but never lasts longer than a few days at most.

This ain’t rocket science, folks. It’s a straightforward wireless network. No excuse. They need to get on the stick and fix this problem and download the fix in firmware to our machines. Now.

Google’s announcement today of Google Apps Premier was not a surprise, but I suspect the low cost of use may have caused a few wide-eyed looks in various board rooms and stock analysts’ offices.

For $50 per year per worker, a company can give its employees access to the full and growing suite of Google Apps including mail, word processing, spreadsheet, calendaring, messaging and mobile access via Blackberry. Some big name companies like Procter & Gamble and General Electric have already jumped on the bandwagon (though they are certainly not abandoning Microsoft…yet).

I think this is going to be huge. Want to know why? Click on “Read More” below.

As one GE official said in the press release, “Given its consumer experience, Google has a natural advantage in understanding how people interact together over the web.” And therein lies the real warning for Microsoft and others who plan to play in this space. The expertise businesses are going to look for here isn’t so much application software design but understanding of and support for collaboration.

If you want to get a glimpse of where Google may well be headed, just contemplate for a few moments the combination of Google Apps Premier Edition with other cool tools and technologies like GoogleBase and Google Maps for Enterprise. Focus briefly on the potential for 3D data visualization and navigation represented by the core technology of the latter.

For years, I’ve been touting the notion of the “Zero Pound Computer”, a usage scenario in which all of my applications and data live in the cloud and I can access them from anywhere I happen to be in front of anyone’s computer. Whenever I wax enthusiastic about this concept, skeptics and critics often respond with the notion that people don’t want their data and applications in someone else’s hands. I’ve always seen that as specious.

Google can say at least two very accurate and convincing things to potential buyers who hesitate to accept the notion of shared software & data on the Cloud. First, they can say, “You don’t want to be in the infrastructure business.” As a spokesman for a major medical practice in San Francisco said in the press release, “With Google Apps Premier Edition we don’t have to worry about downloading the latest spam filters or navigating unwieldy servers. This is where we let Google do what it does best, so we can do what we do best – help our patients.” Exactly.

The second key point they can make is that in an increasingly collaborative world of global business, the ability to build, morph, manage and adapt supply chain and other lines of communication is crucial. If you have your data and programs locked behind firewalls and in hardened basement rooms, sharing becomes a rare exception only agreed to grudgingly by an IT department under constant security threats and sieges.

I used to think Google would someday buy Amazon.com and Ebay.com and become a juggernaut. Now I don’t think they need either of those companies to be formally part of Google. Rather, they will learn and teach interoperation as the “Meshverse” (as my buddy Laurence Rozier calls it) emerges and simply obsoletes companies doing business in the “old fashioned” island-like model of the current decade.

My good friend Sandy Golden sent me this link to a send-up video at YouTube done by another good frend, Danny Goodman. Danny’s been spending a good bit of time of late in the spam wars world and this video is a cool viral way of promoting himself there. It’s also pretty darned funny.

Thanks, Sandy. I needed that!

Using a flavor of MRI and some sophisticated software, scientists have been able to read the minds of subjects, determining in advance their intentions. Subjects were asked to decide before being shown two numbers whether they would choose to add or subtract them. Using complex brain-mapping techniques and evolving algorithms, researchers achieved 70% accuracy, well outside the bounds of random chance.

For people like myself who are convinced of the reality of the Zero Point Field, this is not news, simply confirmation. Lynn McTaggart is in the process of preparing to conduct a massive online series of experiments in intentionality, a topic she discusses at length in her latest book, The Intention Experiment.

I am aware that this whole concept is debunked by scientific skeptics. I’m also aware that most of the major scientific revolutions that have taken place in the hundreds of years that science has been a field of human interest have initially experienced the same sort of skepticism. Being a student of spiritual energy and one who spends a lot of time thinking and reading about energy related topics, this one feels like a natural extension to me.

If you are a subscriber to this blog, you had the unfortunate experience yesterday of receiving a comment that was nothing more than a list of horrible pornography links. I aplogize for that. I didn’t send it, of course, and I had no knowledge of it having been sent until I got it. I did all I could to track down the source but like all such cowards, this criminal covered his or her tracks well enough that I was unable to do so.

I have previously set up comments here so that only a registered user could post. In this case, the user wasn’t registered and managed to post anyway. I have no idea how but I assume there must be an exploit in Drupal, the software I use for this blog, that this sicko used to get through to you.

Effective immediately, posts to this blog will not be posted without my moderation. I have no way of knowing if this will stop the next such attack but I can hope. The only other alternative is simply to turn off comments. I’m loath to do that but I will if it becomes necessary.

Once again, a minority of people bound and determined to destroy the freedom the rest of us grant them has ruined it for the rest of us.

I’ve had it up to here with forwarded emails from well-intentioned friends that contain wonderful, helpful and often sage advice accompanied by warnings like this:

Do not keep this message.

This must leave your hands in 6 MINUTES. Otherwise you will get a very
unpleasant surprise. This is true, even if you are not superstitious,
agnostic, or otherwise faith impaired.

The Universe doesn’t work this way. Spirit doesn’t work this way. God doesn’t work this way. And anyone who believes it/they do is at least misguided but never “faith impaired.”

The Universe is a benevolent place. I repeat. The Universe wants you to have happiness and joy and love and wonder in your heart and in your life. It will not curse you with an unpleasant surprise regardless of your behavior. Even if you don’t forward that email message within six minutes.

I guess I’m more annoyed than usual at that this morning because of the vulnerable place I’m in spiritually. But it needed to be said, so I said it.

Have a nice day. You almost can’t help it.

Well, the formal part of the celebration of my best friend Rory Elder’s life and light is now beind me. We held a Celebration of Life for him at an overflowing Unity of Monterey Bay yesterday afternoon. More than 250 people showed up, stood at the back, sat outside on the porch and the lawn, to recall this great white bear of a man, Rory Nitatohbi (White Bear) Elder.

It was a perfect service. It was a fitting tribute. It took us through the gamut of emotions and gave us a chance to share memories and lessons from his bigger-than-life life.

Now comes the hard part. Living without him day to day. But I know it will get easier. And I know he is still very much with me. I’ll miss his physicality, but not his essence.

It is time for me to put into practice the advice he gave me once when I sought counseling. “It’s not about what you do,” he told me, “it’s about how you show up.” I’m going to shift the way I show up in memory of my wonderful, loving friend.

One of my other best friends, Don Huntington, sent me a note this morning after finding it impossible to post a reply to my note about Rory Elder’s passing. He cited these lines from the wondrous pen of Edna St. Vincent Millay. They seemed universally appropriate. And he concluded his note to me, “I’m not either. Probably neither of us is. At least right now.”

You’re so right, my friend.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,— but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, —
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave,
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.