I’ve just been reading a book by George Packer about the war in Iraq called “The Assassins’ Gate.” This is a terrible name for the book, but after the first three chapters, which are dry but important background, the book is quite good. The penultimate chapter is one of the best descriptions of the war that I’ve read. One paragraph particularly struck me:

In the media, Iraq generated words as bitter as any event in modern American history. But most Americans didn’t turn against other citizens, any more than they joined together in a common cause. Iraq was a strangely distant war. It was always hard to picture the place; the war didn’t enter the popular imagination in songs that everyone soon knew by heart, in the manner of previous wars. The one slender American novel that the war has inspired so far, “Checkpoint,” by Nicholson Baker—a dialogue over lunch in a Washington hotel room between two old friends, one of whom is preparing to assassinate President Bush—has nothing to do with Iraq and everything to do with the ugliness of politics in this country. Michael Moore, the left’s answer to Rush Limbaugh, made a hugely successful movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” in which Saddam’s Iraq was portrayed in a crudely fantastical light—a happy place where children flew kites. Iraq provided a blank screen onto which Americans projected anything they wanted, in part because so few Americans had anything directly at stake there. The war’s proponents and detractors spoke of the conflict largely in theoretical terms: imperialism, democracy, unilateralism, weapons of mass destruction, preëmption, terrorism, totalitarianism, neoconservatism, appeasement. The exceptions were the soldiers and their families, who carried almost the entire weight of the war.

I was both excited and slightly disappointed to learn that the chapter originally appeared in the New Yorker last summer.

I think that the core of the problem is described very well by the sentence, “Iraq provided a blank screen onto which Americans projected anything they wanted, in part because so few Americans had anything directly at stake there.”

I think that’s why the US is so divided over the war– we mostly don’t know what is happening there, so we pull together scraps that support our instincts.

What a mess.

Chris Lott has a great post responding to my last post about this gatekeeper business.

As I commented on his blog:

Well said, Chris Lott.org! I know you used my blog post as a example of disagreement, but you have stated my central point quite well: “The issue here is that many in this debate use the term ‘Gatekeeper’ when what they mean is ‘powerful connector’ or something of that ilk.”

I’m not disputing the shape of the long tail or the influence of Doc’s link love– the question is just who, in your metaphor, is driving the Ferrari.

I claim that the drivers are Dave Sifry of Technorati and Page and Brin of Google, not Doc Searls. I also agree with your description of the desire behind the argument, the desire to have Searls (for example) “recognize the influential power they have and the amount to which they tend to link inside their circle and that other worthy people don’t get that link love.”

I was just drinking some cocoa at the old Darwin’s with the translation-obsessed SJ Klein, and we talked over the gatekeeper business. I suggested an idea I had recently:a Wordpress plugin that presents your blogroll in reverse order of Technorati rank. SJ suggested an even more amusing possibility– sorting by reverse Technorati authority.

When this gets written, you’ll see the news here first (unless someone else writes it).

Seth Finkelstein and an unknown vendor of Algerian scarves responded to my last post with a few counter-arguments.
Seth claims that my comparison of the Boston Globe’s letters section in 1995 to blogs today “exemplifies a tendency to talk-down all the avenues that do exist, but we know are ineffective in practice (going around to various other publications), and talk-up an avenue that’s favored, but also seems ineffective overall (random related Google searches).”

I agree that I was talking down the 1995 alternatives to the Globe, like the Herald and the Phoenix. However, I was doing that because I thought that using them would be, as Seth says, “ineffective in practice.” I have actually tried doing things like that (sending letters to the Phoenix about the Globe’s poor reporting), and it was definitely ineffective. The other possibility is that I’m a ranting madman who deserves his place on the tip of the long tail, but if so, I submit that all of my arguments are always right because, hey, I’m a ranting madman.

Also, Seth is right that I was talking up Google, but I don’t think that Google is “ineffective overall.” I’m not arguing that Google is perfect. I’d like to say, “Here, look at how short this list of ‘things I can’t find on Google’ is,” but I don’t know how to generate that list. All I can say is that I regularly find my searching needs satisfied by Google. I would definitely be interested in hearing of counter-examples, though. (I’m not talking about net censorship here– a crippled Google is obviously less effective. What I mean is something like, “Here’s this brilliant analysis of X that Google could index, but due to reason Y, you can’t find it.”)

Seth goes on to say “That Doc Searls is a gatekeeper is shown unarguably by the fact that so many people talked about and linked to my post after he was kind enough to put it through his blog-gate.” I would say that it is shown arguably, rather than unarguably, and here is my argument. The letters editor for the Boston Globe is a gatekeeper– we all agree about that. He or she decides which letters get published, in the same way that an actual gatekeeper decides which Algerian scarf vendors get let through the gate to the castle and which are prodded with spears until they retreat.

Doc Searls, on the other hand, flies from conference to conference and writes about things that interest him. Google indexes his pages, and as a result of the link structure of the web and Google’s PageRank algorithm, pages that he links to end up higher in the Google search results. Doc Searls isn’t actively deciding who gets on the first page of Google. If Google changed their algorithm to use BrinRank, in which pages are sorted by length and links are ignored, then Doc Searls would do exactly the same thing, and entirely different pages would get the top results on Google. If Searls is the gatekeeper, rather than *Rank, what’s going on?

The second commenter, Monsieur Lheureux, characterizes Doc Searls as having the ability to drown me out in the Google listings, making my post “effectively inaccessible.” Unfortunately, this brings me back to the Boston Globe letter and 1995 again. When the Globe decides not to publish my letter, it is inaccessible. Nobody can ever get it, not even me. That’s different from being the 7 billionth result on Google. My blog post is still accessible from the internet, and I can tell everyone I communicate with how to get there.

I think the real complaint here should be about Google’s algorithm. To some extent, it is unreasonable to complain about a search engine’s algorithm. It’s like complaining about bad commercials on TV. Their intent is to make money, and they’ve figured out a good way to do it. I’m not saying that making money is an excuse for immorality, but I don’t think Google has a moral responsibility to popularize Z-listers such as myself.

One last note: anyone have any good suggestions for how PageRank could be improved? Simply ignoring links doesn’t work so well (Remember Yahoo in 1997? It sucked.). Anyone?

I know, I know, it’s sooo February 11th to discuss the gatekeeper issue, but Z-listers such as myself don’t spend all their time blogging.

Seth Finkelstein responded to my Stephen Kurkjian example my last post with this point, “You only have one such result because nobody with higher ‘gatekeeperness’ wants them - not because of any great ability to reply.”

This highlights the point at which Seth and I disagree. He’s right that were someone with a highly popular blog (Doc Searls, for example) to start blogging extensively about Kurkjian, my result would soon be bumped down the list of Google results into oblivion. However, I don’t think “gatekeeper” is the right name for that situation. Doc Searls’ intent would probably not be to drown me out– he’s just adding his statements to the pile of available material on Kurkjian.

Viewed through the lens of Google, the effect is similar. Viewed from a perspective of information propagation, Doc Searls is just the reverse of a gatekeeper– he can’t blog about something without propagating the ideas that he mentions. Take Scoble’s brrreeeport meme. Nobody, not even Scoble himself, could stop that once it was started.

Compare that to the example I used in my last post of me sending a letter to the Boston Globe in 1995. The Globe acted like a gatekeeper. Some editor there decided not to publish my letter. As far as I know, that left the ocean of Globe readers exactly zero ways to find other public responses to the news. My best bet might have been standing in the middle of the Boston Common with a sign promoting my cause. Even then, there is no search engine that indexes placards found in public spaces.

That’s why I claim that Doc Searls isn’t a gatekeeper. On the other hand, I strongly agree with Seth’s criticism of the recent Technorati authority feature. I sent the following feedback to Technorati:

“Your new authority filter feature is a bad idea. It lets you find that which is already easy to find, while obscuring that which is already obscure. It might be a useful tool for establishing what blogs are popular, but popularity is very different from authority.”

“Perhaps you could call it the “mainstream” filter. It’s more accurate but less appealing than “authority.” Unfortunately, that’s what it really is.”

I think that it’s the algorithms of the Technoratis and Googles that are the real gatekeepers. So then the question is what is a good substitute for variations on “most links” or “most readers”?

Suggestion to Doc Searls: remove every “A-lister” from your blogroll. Divest your A-list links today!

Doc Searls and Seth Finkelstein have been discussing the hierarchy in the blogosphere. Doc Searls is claiming that, “the Internet blew away the porches of membership. You don’t need to bark at a door you can just as easily walk around.” He’s claiming that there are no gatekeepers regulating the popularity of blogs.

Seth contends that when an A-lister slags a Z-lister, the Z-lister has no effective means of response.

I contend that there is no A-list or Z-list. I have Seth’s blog and Doc Searl’s blog in my RSS reader (Sage, an extension to Firefox). Until a recent post from Seth, I couldn’t have told you who had more readers. I read about 30 blogs on a regular basis, and only 4 or 5 are in the Technorati Top 100. As far as I’m concerned, Seth and I are sitting at the top of the Pingswepterati. Seth Finkelstein, you are on my A-list.

Contrast this with the situation 10 years ago: me versus the Boston Globe. I had an English teacher in high school who was arrested for some depravity involving kids. The Boston Globe ran an article that printed the lurid details of the accusations against him, before any trial had occurred. They failed to mention that he was a monolith of English teaching for 20 years at my high school.

I wrote a letter to the Globe saying something along the lines of, “If he’s a child molester, he should go to jail, but so far these are just accusations. He was a great teacher; don’t ignore his brilliant history just to sell papers.” They didn’t print the letter, and I felt like I had no recourse. (Incidentally, he did go to jail, and he was still one of the best teachers I’ve ever had.) In this case, I was such a Z-lister that literally nobody heard my complaint. I couldn’t even find out if the Globe received my letter, never mind printing it.

Compare that to Stephen Kurkjian’s recent smear campaign against former Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn. I’m as much of a Z-lister as you can get (Technorati rank: 843,855 and rising, baby!), but if you Google his name, the third result is my response to his shameful article about Peter Quinn. It’s tailed off a bit now, but for a while, a large fraction of the traffic to my site was from that link.

I think that’s a great change. Sure, we still have the echo effects of top 100 lists reinforcing the popularity of the top 100, but that doesn’t make the top 100 gatekeepers. It sounds trite, but blogs have actually given a soapbox to the unwashed millions with internet access. It could be better, but it’s still only 2006. (Hey, I even have a hotline to the NSA installed in my house, thanks to Mr. Bush and his illiterate assistant, Michael Hayden!)

I’d love to hear a suggestion of how we could spread people’s attention away from the “A-listers,” but so far, I don’t find my attention too strongly drawn to them.

I was listening to a recording of Chris Messina talking about building infrastructure for the open source community at BarCamp Dallas; in the middle of the recording, a discussion started about the new version of the GNU General Public License.

Someone in the crowd claims the GPL is a “viral” license. This is a claim that has been repeated for years; unfortunately, it’s a ridiculous metaphor. The GPL says that if you download code under the GPL, change the source code, and release a new version, you have to release your changes to the source as well.

A virus, on the other hand is something that infects you, despite your best efforts to avoid it. The measles virus, for example, is passed through airborne particles. Nobody gets the measles on purpose.

The GPL may seem viral—if you include GPL’d code in your proprietary program, then you have to release your entire program under the GPL. The misleading part is that while you might contract the measles despite your best efforts to avoid it, it is unreasonable to say that you will inadvertently introduce GPL code into your program.

“Oh, I accidentally went to Sourceforge, downloaded a tarball, opened it, and copied code with the exact functionality I was looking for into the correct part of my program! Oh no! Help! I’m infected with the GPL virus!”

A recent exchange with Mike that he has posted on my blog against my will:

What do you make of the fact that tonight’s State of the Union speech did not address the recent controversy over GPL v3? This is an issue that has divided the open source community, with Linus and Stallman practically at each other’s throats, and the president did not even mention it! Instead, he talked about issues like health care, which are only of interest to a small number of sick people who are probably still using the 0.11 kernel anyway.

This just goes to show how out of touch our politicians are with mainstream America. It’s outrageous and it disgusts me.

Mike W. Goelzer

P.S. This message is protected under the “GPL v2 or later.” In other words, if you have read this far, you need to send me all of your private signing keys. Please send me your blog password as well.

For the love of Gahweb (GHWB), will you please stop over-simplifying the situation. You know damn well that Linus and Stallman are not at each other’s throats!

The reality is that Linus was at Stallman’s throat, Stallman was after Eben Moglen, and it was Moglen who was at the throat of Mr. Torvalds. Ooh, and there is Simon Phipps! Phipps drops the hammer on Moglen while the diminutive Red Sea pedestrian is laying into Helsinki’s finest. Out in the hallway, it’s Bob Sutor with Chris diBona in a headlock! Wait, is that Chris diBona? No, it’s Darl McBride wearing a Chris diBona mask! This could get ugly! Oh no, it’s William Leibzon mixing it up with Vixie! What are they doing here? The NANOG conference isn’t until April! Leibzon’s got a gun! Noooooooooo!!!! Vixie is dead.

Alright, I have to go eat breakfast. Damn you.

Brndn McBride

How can you mention Darl McBride in the same digital breath as those other open source luminaries? McBride is like their antithesis; he is a black hole that absorbs the light emitted by the luminaries, thus paradoxically rendering them invisible. Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to see Richard Stallman clearly, even in broad daylight? It’s because all he emits is Hawking radiation accounting for less than 1 x 10^-100 of his total luminosity.

(Notice how I put one over Googol there. Suckers!)

Seriously, though, remind me never again to challenge you on your own turf — “your stuff,” as some call it. I thought I was such an open source sophisticate because I knew that Linus had raised some objections to v3, but then you go and write back with a message listing a bunch of open source guys so fancy-pants that I’ve never even heard of them. I mean, Vixie, ok, fine, everyone knows that his name is on the crontab man page, but as for the rest of them… well, I guess I should stick to exchange-traded funds.

Mike

OK, fine, have it your way, dude, but here’s my point. McBride was wearing a Chris diBona mask, suggesting that he was using subterfuge to infiltrate an open source cultists’ event. You know of subterfuge, no? Misdirection? Michael Milken? Hello?

I didn’t get your googol joke the first time I read it, as I had been set to evaluate all expressions, and my registers roll at 10^-64. Fortunately, it was flagged, and I got an SMS to my cello phane warning me of the error. Then I reread the joke, parsing it with evaluation turned off. Gahweb, that was a hilarious joke. I laughed all over the place. I Laughed Out Loud. Then I Read The Fucking Manual. Did I mention that I Am Not A Lawyer?

Brndn

Oh, Mike Milken! Now I get it. You should have just used metaphors I can understand the first time around.

Also, nice one with the registers. I think this whole Googol joke thing is shaping up to be one of the funniest exchanges we’ve ever had. I may publish it; can you send me the admin password for your blog so I can get all the proper legal paperwork squared away to secure the copyrights? Thanks.

Mike