__ Rants & Raves __
__ The Jobs Performance Review __
The Steve Jobs of the present paints a realistic worldview ("Steve Jobs," Wired 4.02, page 102). He acknowledges the "dumbing down" of the species through mass media and presents an impression of the marketplace smattered with ideologies that would make Ayn Rand break into an anticipatory sweat. Gary Wolf seems dismayed by the attitudes of the '90s Jobs and imparts a longing for the optimistic, "Gee, let's change the world" Jobs of the past to tell him that everything's gonna be all right. Wake up, Wolf. We all evolve. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "If you're not a liberal when you're young Š you have no heart. If you're not a conservative when you're old Š you have no brain."
Jobs's consistency is his ability to predict and direct the public's desires and to create the means to fulfill them. He has maintained his status as an industry icon and continues to be one of the true visionaries in a rapidly changing technological atmosphere.
W. Scott Koenig
skoenig@qualcomm.com
Steve Jobs should stick to technology and not make pronouncements on public policy. He lays the blame for problems in education at the door of the National Education Association. With absolutely no evidence, Jobs links the rise in education unions to falling SAT scores. It would be more fruitful to analyze declining education budgets (California in the post-Prop. 13 era is a textbook case), low teacher salaries, rising unemployment, and crumbling social services for both children and parents. On his way home from collecting his daughter from her expensive private school, Jobs should run in to a bookstore and pick up a copy of Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol.
Michael Levy
levyme@info.sims.berkeley.edu
Just as Steve Jobs with his early idealistic, entrepreneurial spirit somewhat incorrectly proclaimed a social revolution when the personal computer penetrated households in the industrialized world, his proclamation that the Web is not going to be a "life-changing event for millions" is equally off the mark. He underestimates the impact broadband networks will have on human behavior. For example, broadband services will foster telecommuting, which in turn will bring about fundamental shifts in transportation patterns.Videoconferencing will begin to replace jet travel. Automobile use will decline. Cars will last longer. And before you know it, the largest single factor in the GNP the automobile industry is impacted.
William Troper
troper@shaysnet.com
__ Webonomic Analysis __
I appreciate your writer's efforts to make some sense of advertising on the Web ("Advertising Webonomics 101," Wired 4.02, page 74). But I don't agree that "on the Web, everything we knew about advertising is out the window" or that "you must throw out all traditional thinking and start from scratch." If anything, it is the exact opposite, because on the Web and only on the Web can the promise of an integrated marketing campaign that is targetable, measurable, and accountable truly exist. The Web fulfills the promise that ad agencies have been making to their clients for years.
Robert Kadar
rkadar@doubleclick.net
I enjoyed the principles of advertising webonomics outlined by Evan I. Schwartz, but I was disappointed to read that he found the cost-per-thousand formula used in advertising to be "confusingly shortened to CPM." Perhaps with the millennium approaching, Schwartz will figure out what the Roman numeral M means.
Laszlo Domjan
ldomjan@home.stlnet.com
__ On Scientology __
In protesting your December 1995 article on Scientology and the Internet, Leisa Goodman does a slick job on behalf of the Church of Scientology (Rants & Raves, Wired 4.03, page 32). She cogently argues the church's prerogative to hold the world at bay using the weapons of copyright and trade secret law the only problem is she sounds more like the defender of a Fortune 500 company's interests than the spokesperson for a church. Then again, maybe that's the point.
Most interesting to me is Ms. Goodman's admission that the Church of Scientology went to the trouble of obtaining the transcript of a 911 call resulting from an incident in which the church purportedly took no part whatsoever. Why bother? As for documenting a "long trail of lies" I have purportedly told, there is nothing of the sort to be gleaned from that transcript, and Ms. Goodman surely knows it. Specifically, Ms. Goodman's unsupportable assertions notwithstanding, I made the initial 911 call, and I never threatened anyone with a gun. Perhaps damage control à la Church of Scientology means deflecting attention from the church whenever the attention is uncomfortable, irrespective of the truth. Perhaps that is another lesson to be learned about Scientology.
Finally, although Ms. Goodman claims the church's interest is rooted in its desire to preserve First Amendment rights, Scientology actually has a demonstrated practice of working to undermine the constitutional rights of those who get in its way. As a California appellate court recently noted in Church of Scientology of California v. Wollersheim (see www.callaw.com/b084686.html), the church has more than shown its willingness to "employ every means, regardless of merit, to frustrate or undermine" constitutional rights when it is being exercised by a Scientology antagonist.
It thus appears that Scientology has a transparent agenda that it seeks to further by use of slick rhetoric, and that glitches caused by critics are not to be tolerated. I consider the battle against the church's bullying to be noble.
Tom Klemesrud
tom.klemesrud@support.com
The Rants & Raves section of Wired's March 1996 issue included a letter from Leisa Goodman of the Church of Scientology mentioning a police report involving Tom Klemesrud. Wired does not vouch for or fact-check the truth of statements made in Rants & Raves, such as those in Goodman's letter and Klemesrud's response; the section is a forum for readers to express their opinions. We do attempt, however, to allow readers to respond to accusations, and we regret not having given Klemesrud a chance to respond to Goodman's letter in an earlier edition of the magazine.
The Editors
__ The "Benefits" of Mortal Kombat __
Kids pump quarters into videogames without any thought of increasing their parallel processing abilities ("Video Baby," Wired 4.02, page 96), even if it is a side effect of extended play.
And for kids who do not happen to have their heads screwed on straight and have difficulty facing up to their problems, videogames can be a downward spiral. I'm not saying that every kid who tries his hand at Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat cannot face up to reality, but extended gameplay can be addictive and ultimately harmful to impressionable kids, causing short attention span syndrome, fiery tempers, a loss of normal everyday communication skills, and an inability to handle real situations, not to mention the effects of continuous play on one's social life. These effects may seem extreme but then so is developing parallel processing abilities.
I have this advice for the author of the piece: Go ahead play all the videogames you want. Just don't let them get to your head and invent "benefits."
Quek Kon Hui
khquek@singnet.com.sg
__ d'Amn the DMV __
I enjoyed Rogier van Bakel's "Manglemania" (Wired 4.02, page 98). Indeed, I am facing a similar problem: the dumb terminals (or dumb bureaucrats?) who don't like the apostrophe in my last name.
I moved to San Francisco in the early '80s. It was in the days when DMV employees still used the great IBM Selectric typewriters, and so it was fairly easy to get "Thierry d'Allant" on my drivers license, with a small d, an apostrophe, and a capital A. Things got more complicated last year when I moved to New Jersey, where the DMV computers don't use apostrophes or lowercase letters. As a result, my last name is DALLANT, whether I like it or not. I don't. Sometimes, I wonder if Senator Alfonse D'Amato is named DAMATO on his license.
Thierry d'Allant
PlanetTdA@aol.com
__ The Silicon Valley of India __
Your recent article "Bangalore" (Wired 4.02, page 110) was long overdue. However, as someone who worked in IT in Bangalore, I thought the piece ignored some crucial issues.
Bangalore's competitive advantage lies in its ability to deliver low-cost, high-quality software. But several critical factors are holding Bangalore back. The region lacks the modern telecommunications infrastructure necessary to compete in the global information economy, any credible or historic global marketing expertise, any significant venture capital participation, and a national over-the counter stock market like Nasdaq. Not to mention the pervading ignorance and disregard of intellectual-property laws. Who can deny the role these things have played in the development of Silicon Valley or Route 128?
I am very positive about my hometown, and it will always remain India's "City of the Future." I look forward to the day when a Bangalore-based software company makes an IPO on Nasdaq.
Thomas Kurian
gofax@ids.net
__ Brinning with Privacy __
It was with great pleasure that I read the short interview with David Brin ("Privacy Is History Get Over It," Wired 4.02, page 124). For too long now the intelligentsia of the digital age has been promulgating the doctrine I think of as "PUG" Privacy, the Ultimate Good (maybe that should be God). Of course, ultimately privacy benefits only those with the power to enforce their own privacy and subvert the privacy of others. Power, especially the power of wealth, needs secrecy.
We like to talk about the new kinds of community that a wired world enables, but we tend to forget that real communities come about through the shared understanding that can arise only in the presence of shared knowledge about ourselves, our work, our lives, our families. Humans evolved as a family-based and tribal species, founded in intimate knowledge about the lives of our neighbors. We still thrive on gossip, and yearn for emotional connections with others, but we are instructed by the purveyors of the "future" to do all we can to prevent our communities from knowing us in any ways but those we purposely present for public consumption.
As Brin points out, secrecy and freedom are opposites. We do not get more free by allowing our society to become more secretive. We do not make more effective communities by striving to make ever-stronger encryption available to everyone. And we do not make ourselves more secure by providing the tools of secrecy to those who would rob, harm, or oppress us.
Ron Myhr
rmyhr@pathcom.com
__ Savior or Sellout __
You were more than a little hard on the EFF ("How Good People Helped Make a Bad Law," Wired 4.02, page 132). It's fair to say that had the group not interceded, there still would have been a Digital Telephony Bill. But that bill would have been far more odious than the version that passed. Political purity may afford armchair theorists a clear conscience, but it has little influence on the world.
Kudos to John Perry Barlow, Jerry Berman, et alia for putting on their hip boots, stepping into the sausage factory, and working to do what they could to ameliorate the inevitable outcome.
Heather Higgins
75322.3415@compuserve.com
So the EFF is dead and ineffectual and an inside-the-Beltway sellout? Gosh, what was your first clue? Mine was Esther Dyson's preposterous interview with Newt Gingrich, as featured on your cover ("Friend and Foe," Wired 3.08, page 106).
Jym Dyer
jym@igc.apc.org
__ Negroponte Lite __
Trees died in vain to bring us Nicholas Negroponte's "The Future of the Book" (Wired 4.02, page 188). Read it again, carefully, and tell me if any of his insights are missing from this edited version:
Books were invented in 1496 by a guy named Aldo in Venice. Things that looked a lot like books for centuries before that must have been something else.
People like to turn pages. Speech and writing use words.
Paper costs money, so books will be irrelevant in 25 years. But they are better than digital appliances. You can stand on a book, but not on a laptop.
Some guy at Nick's Media Lab wants to bind paper-thin electronic screens into the shape of a book and download words onto them. There is not yet a way to do this, but "this is the likely future of books."
Books with small press runs reach fewer people than books with big press runs.
Like trade books, every Web site on Earth will find an audience.
"Some of us in research are working really hard to make them feel good and be readable something you can happily curl up with or take to the john."
My books do this already. Nick, do you need a rest? Ask the nice people at Wired for some time off.
Mike Gordon
mg@istudio.com
__ More Resistance __
A. Lin Neumann's "The Resistance Network" (Wired 4.01, page 108) quotes Cornell University's Michael Koplinka as suggesting that Amnesty International is behind the curve in using the Internet for human rights activism.
Contrary to what Koplinka suggests, the incident he cites the beating of Koigi wa Wamwere's lawyers on the courthouse steps in Nakuru was the subject of an Amnesty news release on August 10, 1995, the day the incident happened.
Amnesty International has been using the Internet since 1987. We distribute full-text urgent actions to an extensive network of human rights activists via electronic mail on a daily basis. We also post partial-text urgent actions, news releases, and bulletins at various Internet sites. Amnesty also has an extensive World Wide Web presence; check out www.amnesty.org/ or www.gatech.edu/amnesty/international.html for links to excellent sites worldwide.
Morton Winston
Chair, Board of Directors Amnesty International USA
mwinston@igc.apc.org
__ Not @Home __
Nice article on cable modems ("The Race for More Bandwidth," Wired 4.01, page 140). As a piece of PR puff it was great; as a piece of intelligent, informed, skeptical journalism (which is what we expect from the educated cynics at Wired) it was sadly lacking. The very real problems with cable modems and with the cable companies trying to get into the ISP business were just ignored. As were the great alternatives.
You seem (surprisingly) generous about the ease that cable companies will have in actually offering these services. After 20 years' experience, my cable TV provider still has difficulty delivering analog broadcast. I get services I didn't order, the billing is wrong more often than it is right, and reliability is atrocious. Given this track record, it's hard to believe they'll find it easy to develop a new, complex network with switching and billing requirements.
More significantly, there are huge technological problems. @Home's network is designed for low-quality, one-way transmission of a fairly forgiving analog signal and not for the two-way transmission of sensitive data. It is arranged in a tree topology, which has serious problems. The first is contention everyone in your neighborhood shares the same bus. That 10 Mbps is in common if you assume only a 10 percent take rate and 500 homes, then each user only gets 200 Kbps, which is not much more than ISDN. The second problem is security that shared bus allows everyone in the neighborhood to listen in on every transaction. Third, there are gross problems with noise ("ingress") on the coax plant. Not only is frequency band ideal for picking up AM radio stations, ham broadcast, and household noise, the tree topology guarantees that the noise from every location is carefully channeled back to the head end, where all the signals meet and the return path is weakest. These are not insurmountable problems, but neither are they trivial, and the article passed over them completely.
The biggest surprise, however, was the complete omission of DSL technology, which virtually all the telcos are planning for. ADSL is high bandwidth (dedicated, not shared), uses existing telephone wiring, ties into the switching fabric and network, and is provided by companies that have a clue about customer service and networks. And the telcos have loads of cash to pay for it! If the 6 Mbps of ADSL isn't enough, then VDSL is being demo'd now 51 Mbps to the home on existing copper.
ADSL gets a lot of grief for being asymmetrical, but it is offering hundreds of K of upstream. I never thought I would see the day Wired would praise a service with 14.4 Kbps upstream. Who needs interactivity or creativity if you can be a digital couch potato using the 14.4 to select a channel or press the Buy button? What is this the Net reduced to the Home Shopping Network? Pathetic.
Rupert Baines
rupes@cris.com
__ Women on the Cutting Edge __
Just flicking through the December issue of Wired, getting all hot and cyberfeminist about the lack of XX-chromosomed individuals featured in your fabulous, international, did-it, done-it, doin'-it-tomorrow, edgier than-anything journal. But after really close inspection, we catalogued, oh, at least a big handful of the aforementioned gracing your pages.
There were the two slightly useful hardbody clones holding up the TVCR in the Samsung ad. Then there was the special, special feature on Shimrit Elisar ("Girl Talk," page 45). She hates men, so we decided that she must be a feminist. We really liked the article on Maja Mataric´, though the title, "Fast, Cheap, and Very Polite" (page 49), was just a wee bit telling, and terribly prefeminist. The Airwalk waif (page 51) is definitely a spunk, and we'd kill for the dress and the shoes, proffered with such a pleasing air of servitude. It's reassuring to know that cherry-blossomed compliance is still with us tomorrow. GTE Interactive Media's Marilyn ("The New Hollywood: Silicon Stars," page 142) looked like a pretty good grid to us Š a 36-24-36 number-crunching template of Future Woman?! Then bonus! On pages 144 and 145, a spread of Hot Hollywood Honchos! And all female! We knew that you couldn't get anywhere without a beard in this town!
Now look here: We've been working in digital media for the past 10 years. We know there are a lot of big-brained codechicks using, innovating, creating, and subverting technologies. If you haven't come across them, then maybe you need new researchers.
t0xicHoney and Gash Girl
barratt@cleo.murdoch.edu.au
gashgirl@sysx.apana.org.au
__ This Is Not a Love Song __
A while ago, I enjoyed reading Wired's favorable review of my novel, Virtual Love ("Shrinks in Love," Wired 2.09, page 133). That's my rave.
My rant? Wired's recent chart/article "Is It Art, Or Is It Appropriation?" (Wired 3.12, page 78) compared Virtual Love with the work of your contributing editor, Paulina Borsook, and implied that one of us appropriated material from the other.
I thought the chart was bizarre, inaccurate, outrageous, and damaging. Whoever dreamed up the far-fetched comparisons ought to have his or her virtual head examined. I can only swear on everything I hold sacred that I never knew of, heard about, read, or had any contact in any form, including the digital and occult, with your editor's titles, typescripts, or other pages during the creation of my novel.
Avodah Offit
virtualove@aol.com
__ Undo __
Spin Cycle: We twisted the numbers for ordering the book Inside the Tornado ("Tech Marketing 201," Wired 4.03, page 166). For a single copy, call (800) 337 3761; call +1 (212) 207 7887 to order more than 25. Any Port in a Storm: The Ditto Easy 800 (Fetish, Wired 4.02, page 55) doesn't connect to the parallel port of your Mac. A Mac doesn't have a parallel port. Spies at the Pearly Gate: To the best of our knowledge, the late Max Thurman no longer sits on the Science Applications International Corp. board of directors ("Spies at the Gate," Wired 4.02, page 72). CorrexOn: The comical program HexOn Exon (Electric Word, Wired 3.12, page 44) was created by Robert Carr (smurfboy @aol.com) and is only available for the Mac.
__ Send your Rants & Raves to: __
E-mail: rants@Wired.com
Snail mail: Wired, PO Box 191826
San Francisco, CA 94109-9866
