America's Internet Giveaway: Dumbest Idea in the World ... Ever?

Who in the world could possibly think this was a good idea?

"Let's give away oversight and regulatory authority over the Internet to other countries," they must have shrieked with élan.

I'm wondering who first said those words. (And why their career trajectory wasn't an immediate, supersonic nosedive resulting in a big, smoldering crater.) It sounds so stupid. I wouldn't need any Power Points or Gantt charts to quickly recognize it for what it is: idiotic.

And not just any 'plain vanilla' type of idiotic either, but the really dangerous kind.

Perhaps it is I who am the idiot? I've been wrong so many times before.


A map of the Internet Backbone: "Each line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses. This is a small look at the backbone of the Internet."

None of us ... and I mean no human being on Earth has any idea of how big this thing is; how enormous, complicated and complex the Internet has become. Give it away? Hell, we don't even understand it yet.

I'm wondering how the idea first came about, how it was surfaced and discussed. Were administration people searching for new "progressive ideas," or what? Was there a task force assigned? Who were the principals involved?

This is insane: the pure and simple idea of ceding fundamental control of the Internet--an American creation, development project and asset--to a quasi-UN type governing committee made up of as President Obama's Commerce Department shilled, "a global multi-stakeholder community," must be stopped. It cannot happen under America's crucial 'national security interests.' That's only one reason but there are oh! so many more.





For anyone not paying attention yet: As the insufferably tech-clueless Washington Post said with obfuscated glee, "U.S. officials announced plans Friday (March 14, 2014) to relinquish federal government control over the administration of the Internet." There it is ... BAM.

The newspaper then went on to opine, "Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade and was supercharged by the backlash last year to revelations about National Security Agency surveillance." What pressure? Where? And from whom? The Yemenis?

And what "final vestiges?" Why don't we still have all the vestiges? Who's been giving these important vestiges away without informing the American people?

From my recollection, there was nothing "supercharged" at all about how the NSA should effect the Internet; rather, what the NSA fiasco did and should still be doing is supercharging the strong public' outcry against the U. S. government's use of the NSA to spy on Americans. And, the Big Tech companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and others' unconstitutional giveaway to illegal government requests for OUR INFORMATION without a proper warrant, is absolutely unacceptable and outrageous.

So WashPo is not the Internet's friend. The Washington Times had a much more worried piece that was more aligned with my viewpoint. Critical articles of this dopey idea can be found here, here and here. 113,000 people have signed a petition opposing the Obama plan. Even Bill Clinton criticized President Obama on this one, a very rare activity for Presidents indeed.

But there's another core principle involved here: Intellectual Property Rights and America protecting its national assets. Would anybody even mutter under their breath the idea that we give up American control of our "Strategic Petroleum Reserve?" Of course not, because it would ruin the US national security and put Americans in jeopardy. And it's ours. We own it.

There can be no argument whatsoever that the Internet is the single, most important and valuable asset on planet Earth. The Internet gives a voice to suffering people around the world when they are in danger and need for others to know. The Internet has been under attack since the beginning from China, especially; but also Russia; and most of the Middle East countries where the populace is silenced and lethally controlled for political fun and profit. The 'Arab Spring' phenomena were born on the Internet; though ultimately miscarried it still highlighted the superb power of this great, global communications system. And some idiot(s) wants to give the rest of this crazy world control over it?

And the Internet is increasingly, the center of all commerce. To even consider giving away or relaxing or "transitioning" or whatever they're calling it today, the controls, regulations, oversight, policy-making or America's tight reins on the Internet is inconceivable. Though, apparently, somebody has conceived it and it looks like "Rosemary's Baby."



Who in the current US government is smoking something funny? What elected official, patronage employee or presidential adviser could possibly think this was a clever idea? And what about the "notion" that they should be instantaneously and irreversibly fired? How about that little notion?

Look here: no matter our political proclivities; whether you the American reader are a Conservative/Liberal, Marxist/Leninist, Independent, Libertarian or whatever, we have to agree that the Internet is American property that we've been exceedingly liberal and generous with up until this point. But we retain full possession and control over our property and are willing to die for our rights.

So who was it that had this singularly worst idea of all time?

For all outward appearances, it looks like it might be the President's hand-selected, fellow-Chicagoan, Lawrence Strickling who is responsible for this grand idea. Strickling said, "The timing is right to start the transition process." Although, the President surely had to give his stamp of approval; this smells very much like the floating of a 'test kite' to see how it's received by Americans. If we have any sense at all (and I believe we do!), then we will tell this administration to 'go fly a kite' on this one and have them backpedaling at warp speed.



Let us take a look at Mr. Strickling's title, shall we? Should be simple enough. Wait, it's not. His title is "Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and Administrator, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), U.S. Department of Commerce." Well, I'm impressed but how does that all fit on his business card? This gobbledygook could be part of the problem with transitioning the Internet into others' hands: there are so many unintelligible titles and acronyms for myriad organizations involved in this issue, nobody can make any sense of it much less reach a rational decision. USDOC, NTIA, ICANN, IANA and that title would confuse anybody to death. I've found, that where this rampant use of acronyms and titles is present, there is not--and cannot be--a government with a laser-like focus on efficiency. Quite the opposite.

Another task in Strickling's job description is, to me, highly suspicious because of the possibility for misfeasance. He's given away another valuable government gift: $4.7 billion in "broadband stimulus funding." The inclusion of Strickling on the list of "Most Powerful People in Wireless" also worries me. Why is a government bureaucrat and old friend of the President on a list of most powerful people? Oh, I guess that's obvious; it's because he's given away $4.7 billion dollars and is likely to give away more.

And, is the timing really right as Strickling says? Coming right on the heels of the FCC "Ending Net Neutrality?" Is it really a good idea to go racing ahead with more dreadful decisions? And aren't there more pressing "transition" processes that need to be made on the Internet first?


Right now, the Internet is being dominated by the big tech brands. When will the "little guys" ... small businesses be able to have their brands noticed?

Up until now dear reader, these have been my own, personal opinions. Well, no more.

There are two people in the world who are the most qualified to comment cogently on what I am calling this "fiendishness": Esther Dyson & Vint Cerf.

Esther Dyson ("TechStar Interview" 12/28/11), a revered investor, energetic entrepreneur, board-member and tech guru is well-respected for her role in the early development of the Internet and through her board membership of ICANN. Dyson has been a longtime 'minder of the Net' at ICANN having been the founding chairwoman there, and it is this Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers which is at the very center of the current maelstrom.



When I asked Dyson about what I'm calling the "Internet Giveaway," she disagreed. "It's not ours to giveaway. We were protecting it. It's ours to protect. The whole point is to avoid oversight. The ICANN that governs least, governs best."

"The problem is that governments are trying to use the Internet to exert control rather than protect it from control. The Internet is too vulnerable to government and corporate interests, and it needs to be more for the broader public."

Though Dyson and I disagree on some details and I would always defer to her greater Internet wisdom, we do agree fundamentally that this is a bad idea and must be stopped. "Listening to public comments was never a great strength at ICANN. It depends on whom we give it to and who might grab it," the former ICANN chair told me. And the worst scenario? "Can somebody in China prevent us from seeing something on the Internet here in the U. S.?" she warned provocatively. "What is that 'something else' that could get control over the Internet? Could it prevent people from getting to certain domains? I want it to be world-centric," Dyson said, "the UN often has a record of supporting or being influenced by governments against their people. Like China."

Vint Cerf (my three columns on Cerf for The Register Part One, Part Two. Part Three), is also a longtime ICANN leader who when I informed him of my thinking and the thrust of this article, didn't hesitate for an instant, telling me, "Bill, you're dead wrong." When Vint Cerf says that you're wrong about something, one must rethink.


Photo Credit: James Martin

"NTIA has offered a path towards allowing ICANN to operate the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) functions without the need for a contract with the U. S. government. It urges that a multistakeholder solution for accountability is needed and it is very clear that a purely multilateral solution for such accountability is not acceptable. ICANN has in place a number of accountability mechanisms including the Independent Review Panel, Ombudsman, Reconsideration etc. These can and will almost certainly be strengthened. It has already walled off the IANA team from policy-making. Some argue for separating IANA from ICANN but this has two serious deficiencies:

1. You would have to create all the overhead of a new organization, new board, new business model for support, etc. A multistakeholder model of accountability for a separated IANA is no different than one created for ICANN - same actors, same objectives.

2. A separated IANA would be more vulnerable to threats from nation states

"If the termination of the unique U. S. government involvement in ICANN is to succeed, then ICANN needs to implement powerful, multistakeholder-based protections to assure accountability and transparency and also to defend against inimical nation state influence or private sector capture."

"I believe this is possible and I believe that it would remove the burr under the saddle of even friendly states that are not comfortable with a unique role for the U. S. government despite the fact that this role has been beneficial during the early stages of ICANN's operation. Please keep in mind that it was the U. S. government that proposed the creation of a private sector entity in the first place. It could have simply retained more direct operation of this aspect of the Internet but wisely set a course for eventual privatization in a multi-stakeholder setting." There is Cerf's analysis.

Steve Crocker is the current CEO of ICANN. As if that's not enough, Crocker was also at UCLA as a grad student in the late 1960's when he, Vint Cerf and the late Jon Postel installed the first node of the Internet for DARPA ... and the ARPANET/Internet was born.




Asking me at the start, "What can I say to convince you how wrong you are about this?' Crocker laid out his thinking on the matter. "The US is not giving up control of the Internet. It's never had control of the Internet. Originally, we set it up to be a grouping of networks," the other "Father of the Internet" told me. So Mr. Crocker and I disagree about the Internet being American property. Not to put too fine a point on it, but with Crocker, Cerf and Dyson all disagreeing with me on whether the Internet is American property, I'm not liking my odds.

Crocker gave me some very interesting insights into how ICANN has been operating for the last 16 years since its inception. "The explicit function for ICANN was to coordinate how the names and numbers (of the Internet) were managed. IANA received a zero-dollar contract from the US Department of Commerce and has never been paid anything." Wait just a minute sir, did you just say a "zero-dollar contract?" As in the numeral 0? "Yes," Crocker continued, "the only way ICANN makes money is when we're paid by Go Daddy, Network Solutions or other domain-name providers." So I'm confused. Isn't a "zero dollar" government contract just being forced by the government to do something for free? Or, having the government get you to do something for free with somebody else paying (in this case, the domain-name sellers)?

How do Crocker and ICANN feel about losing their contract with the US/DOC? "We're very happy the contract is ending," he said, "part of the March 14th announcement was that ICANN had achieved everything it was supposed to do." I'd still prefer to keep ICANN on the job and under contract. But who am I to question forces greater than mine?

Let's get something straight right now reader, we are not going to let this happen, are we? But if by some perverse, bizarre stretch of the imagination it did happen, just speaking hypothetically mind you, what would the people look like who would exercise command and control over our Internet? The UN? As Esther Dyson so astutely asked, "What is that 'something else' that could get control over the Internet?

Among the many reasons this ugly, perilous idea must be stopped include:

**Tyrannical or dictatorship control of what people see here in the US or around the world about freedom of speech, religion or assembly to protest and the way that can be harmed or diminished completely. Think China on Nepal or Taiwan.

**The way evil governments might use their new-found access to the Internet's backbone to hack into enemy (peaceful, friendly and democratic) governments' networks and spreading propaganda to harm the public's informational and knowledge bases. In wartime, this would be lethal. Think a professional-grade, hacking Joseph Goebbels.

**The way this idea will empower global criminals, organized crime like the Mafia of all flavors and terrorist organizations. Again, lethal.

**Imagine the harm that could be done to innocent consumers through phishing, hacking and other illegal technical intrusions into the globe's asset base. Privacy would cease to exist. Identity fraud would consume the Internet. The American economy could be brought down by a geek in Bulgaria or Novosibirsk. The global economy would die.

**Imagine the global financial institutions. Think about how much money they and their depositors could lose. Right down the drain because the banks' couldn't possibly protect or insure anybody's money--no FDIC here.

**Perhaps most potentially lethal: most of the world's governments' defense, missile and civilian response networks are connected, accessed, initiated and controlled by the Internet. What then?

I certainly hope that whoever first asked this question about the "Internet Giveaway" was also thinking about these potential harms. I fear they were not.

So again, I ask: Who in the world could possibly think this was a good idea? And what could go wrong?

Perhaps it is I who am the idiot? I've been wrong so many times before.

'Basic Skills' or 'Soft Skills:' What Should Be Taught and Tested?

Tom Friedman's New York Times column on February 23 How to Get a Job at Google is a wake-up call for students in or graduates of America's elite colleges and universities. And, from my humble perspective, it's a wake-up call for Pre-K-to-high school students, teachers, and parents too. Why? Because a universal assessment of what it will take to succeed in any workplace applies to all job-seekers of this generation, and Friedman's column offers particular encouragement to those who fall short of the top grades or who attend less highly ranked colleges, or none at all.


Gary Burnison, CEO Korn/Ferry International, posted a blog response to Friedman on LinkedIn on March 13 highlighting "this is how to get a job anywhere." (Graphic: Max Griboedov / shutterstock)


Is creative brain power more valuable than formal education? Google's Brin, Page, and Schmidt seem to belong to a school of thought that is quite familiar to me and my MIT Media Lab's heritage led by Papert, Minsky, Negroponte, and now Ito, and even Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge;" "learning-by-making rules;" and "learning to learn is more important than memorizing information."

Don't get me or Friedman or Media Lab folks or Google's hiring practices wrong: To the extent that grades reflect certain expertise in the skills today's organizations and companies require, some test scores are still valid. Grades indicate either natural talent or the ability to apply oneself to learning certain skills that may not come naturally, and playing the game of school -- all are desirable qualities in one way or another.

Mastery of the so called 'basic skills' (on which America's children are currently being tested) are assumed in today's workplace, whether taught in K12, college, or learned on the job later in order to keep up. However, I believe that for any job, that is even vaguely technical, in all fields -- business, health, government, education, entertainment -- that will also mean new scores on "new knowledge and skills," including inventive thinking, digital literacy, fluency in digital participation, digital communication, coding and making digital stuff. And that's where I'm heading with this essay.

Friedman clearly notes how Googlers have found that "the old basic skills are not enough," the more important advantage is ability or capacity to "learn above" the basic skills. That means, the ability to ask big questions, see connections, draw parallels and distinctions, think originally and follow leads, and do it objectively, creatively and collaboratively. The reason this is absolutely essential to Google, and to all organizations that are shaping the new economy, is that innovation and learning to learn new-stuff-on-the-fly are key to their success, and innovation demands perceiving what was not there before and doing whatever you can to learn it.

That is why I think Google's articulation of the 'soft skills' of leadership, innovation, humility, teamwork, and ownership is so right-on. Soft they may be, but these skills constitute a combination that is essential to the core work of innovation, which rarely happens in instantaneous individual breakthroughs but rather evolves through collaborative group endeavors in which personal adaptability is a necessity.

From my own experience working in R&D and tech organizations in academia and industry, and being involved in intense futuristic R&D efforts and entrepreneurship over the past three decades, I know that the difficult part is learning how to work in teams in which you may find yourself playing a contributor role one day, a leadership role the next day, and find you have no role at all on yet another day. Knowing when and how to step forward, when to question, when and how to step back, and when and how to exercise influence and teach or direct are the key skills to what Google's Senior VP of Operations, Laszlo Bock, calls "emergent leadership as opposed to traditional leadership."

This absolutely requires humility, for successful innovation can only be driven by learning, imagination, and by data, never by ego. Therefore, it is extremely important to create learning environments where learners get to stimulate their brains, through brainstorming, thinking imaginatively, researching big questions and innovative ideas that result in new learning processes and learning outcomes (e.g., new data, problem visualization, long-term projects, new products, original digital artifacts that represent new thinking).

In fact, our Globaloria results from the past seven years in America's schools demonstrate that successful ideas come not so much from students with the highest grades or test scores, but rather from "average" or "below" kids. They don't know what they don't know, and they are not afraid to put their thinking and creative ideas "out there" for others (in the class and on the learning network) to respond to and collaborate on.

(Photo: Globaloria Students / Globaloria Flickr).


Of course, innovation (at all levels of expertise) also has a high failure rate, so in addition to humility, you need a relentless belief that you can get stuff to work, that you can build something with your ideas (that they do not remain ideas), and you need to take ownership of that belief so it becomes self-motivating.

So, yes, Google has got this right and Tom Friedman too. But the attributes we need to cultivate in youth these days so they can grow into getting a job at Google, or any job in the coming economy (NYC School System, Uber, Cisco, Twitter, Electronic Arts, Ford Foundation, Mount Sinai Hospital, NASA, GAP, the Obama administration, or their newly-created start-up), are attributes that in no way belong exclusively to the elite and can be achieved by everyone, if we give them engaging opportunities, starting young.

And in this spirit, here's a tale from the field:

Like many principals in our network, Mr. Kamar Samuels, Principal of the Bronx Writing Academy in NYC, has been recently inspired by the 'soft skills' we've been explaining and teaching his Globaloria students this year, 283 of them in 6-7-8 grades. So much so, that he recently called my team to a meeting to talk about "expanding into a school-wide Globaloria strategy of a 3-year plan to offer it to every teacher and every student in BWA middle school." Mr. Samuels says he sees it as "a way to transform learning and thinking across my school in everything we do and teach." He told us he is super motivated for every teacher and every student to do Globaloria, not just for learning computer science and engineering skills, but also to cultivate these special 'soft skills' he have seen emerging among his students, sensing that doing it school-wide can make it even more impactful for the culture he is building (and yes, he also cares about test scores, being part of the NYC public school system, but seem to select another route to get there--by engaging his students in STEM & Computational Inventiveness and thinking about learning in a new way).

Here's a video clip from EACPA, a 5-year-old charter school in East Austin, where education leaders Dr. Sanchez and Dr. Gonzales believe just the same: that these fuzzy 'soft skills' Friedman is talking about are the ones they want each and every student in their schools to experience every day and hone for life.

Unfortunately, our intuition says this is the way forward, but many in our society tell us we still have a long way to go. It's not yet intuitive that inventing and making stuff such as designing, coding and building video games can address these specific 'soft skills' -- though not implausible either. As important as these 'soft skills' are, the real breakthroughs will be in identifying their specific epistemology (the process in which they're acquired) and their impacts on livelihood and success once acquired.

I work with administrators and leaders in many communities across the nation who are making me realize a tipping point. Still, understanding methods for teaching these soft skills requires a society's serious shift in mindset. Some of us have been at it for three decades prior to Friedman's great op-ed, doing R&D, publishing, winning awards for papers, books and learning products. The "Google's hiring principles" are getting us somewhat closer to being embraced by mainstream school administrators to include these practices as part of their core curriculum as well as in state/national standards. No doubt ed-tech investing AND testing reform must follow.

Facebook Chooses Profits Over Not-For-Profits

Recently, Facebook decided to change the way they populate user's newsfeeds. Many of you have probably noticed items in your feed that you haven't subscribed to or liked, and other things that used to show up in your homepage all the time now very rarely appear or never show up at all. Those of you who haven't noticed, it's time to come home from Farmville and complete the Candy Crush Saga already. Experts claim this is the first step in the move towards making Facebook "pay-to-play," and this may be true. Unfortunately, while most companies may be able to afford this new model, there is one group that has relied on Facebook's organic approach to homepage advertising for years to bring their message to the public without much expenditure. Some might claim that the messages espoused by this group may be some of the most important to maintaining our societal wellbeing and keeping our moral compass pointing straight and true. Of course, I'm referring to 501c charities and not-for-profit corporations, the people who are going to be especially hard hit by the new Facebook news feed algorithm.

The first question that I have before we even begin to dissect the mechanics of how not-for-profits are getting the royal screw job, there is a question I have to ask: Why am I the only one who has raised this question? For many years, Facebook has been a very important tool for getting the message out about disease, poverty, tragedy, natural disaster, and has become an invaluable resource for allowing people to turn their desire to assist into actual, factual help. Be it financial donations, volunteering time, or simply helping to share stories and information about illnesses and events that help others cope with their personal tragedies every single day, the organic nature of "The Social Network" has been a boon for anyone asking for help. Without any request for remuneration or compensation, "The Facebook" has allowed their services to be used by every not-for-profit advocacy group and charity out there who can find someone tech-savvy enough to create a simple page, and it didn't take much Internet acumen to do to so -- so, really, anyone who needed to could make their own Facebook page where users could click "like," and add the posts of that particular organization to their home page newsfeed.

Now, though, the new algorithm has created a situation where users don't necessarily see posts from the pages they have clicked like on, but they do see posts from other pages that Facebook has deemed "interesting." It's a funny word, "interesting." Standing alone with nothing to qualify it, the word's meaning can be defined so broadly that it can pretty much encompass any topic at all. The Facebook page that attempts to explain the new homepage setup asks, "How does my newsfeed determine which content is most interesting?" Well, to that I ask, most interesting to whom? Me, or a sheep farmer in rural Greece? While I'm sure that a post about the playing music for goats to make them give more milk will skyrocket in popularity in pastoral Greek areas, it isn't exactly going to burn up the charts here in my New York Metro community.

Even though Facebook claims to use the number of comments, who posted the story, and what type of post it is (video, image, update), the simple fact is that the term "interesting" leaves way too much undefined for it to be a useful way to describe the new inner works of homepage advertising. Useful to us end users, that is. The situation is quite the opposite for Facebook and its corporate customers, they absolutely love ambiguity. In addition, I'm quite sure that this word "interesting" was created specifically to provide a handy explanation as to why the latest post from the local food store chain about their sale on salisbury steak made it into your personal newsfeed. Let's be honest here folks, this new setup has given Facebook a way to engage in that most American of practices -- payola.

Ironically, I'm usually the first to defend capitalism and the free market system in all its greedy glory, and there are many times that the old Gordon Gekko axiom holds true -- greed is good. In this situation, though, I think there is something at risk of being lost that is more valuable than money, gasp! Here in the U.S. we pride ourselves on being purveyors of truth, justice, and freedom, a.k.a. the American way, and we never hesitate to patrol the world like the cops that we have become, on the lookout for human rights abuses and the spread of terrorism. (It used to be communism but we fought that foe and won, or so they tell me. Mr. Putin? Thoughts?) This policy is, in part, what fuels that wonderfully unique American sense of morality, and we wield it like a sword whenever we want to look down our noses at some Banana Republic dictator who has just made the mistake of killing a few hundred thousand people outside of his own backyard. After a while, we won't stand for that, no, we're the U.S. of A! Well, folks, why do you think we have the ability to get away with having such a high opinion of ourselves on the world stage? It's because we always help those who need it, and Americans, on the whole, give more money to charities per capita than just about any other country. This is in no small part due to Facebook, who has made it exponentially easier for not-for-profit organizations and charities to reach their target audience.

Many charities have upped their exposure, and thus donations, by running Facebook campaigns, and the social site has become a necessary step in any not-for-profit's playbook. Now, we are in serious danger of losing this essential tool that helps even orphan diseases and lesser-known causes get their message out. More than donations, though, we are going to lose something much more intangible if these organizations get swallowed up by the corporations who can afford the payola scheme Facebook has now set up: we are going to lose an essential part of our American moral fiber, and that's a loss that's irreparable.

Up until now, Facebook has mainly been a meritocracy. If your page and the posts you made on that page were worthy of notice, then people would like them, and those likes would translate into more views, which would generate even more likes, and so on, ad nauseam. In other words, if people liked your stuff, then you'd get more popular, thus rewarding those who deserved it. Even charities and not-for-profits with less than universal messages were able to get Facebook airtime by coming up with clever or controversial posts that got shared so much that they went viral. It was a microcosm of the American Dream, where a poor, non-tech-savvy retiree who created a Facebook page about the berets she made for house cats had the same chance of becoming popular as did the multi-millionaire who wanted to sell his talking toasters for $19.99 a pop. It was a point of pride for Zuckerberg and his crew, and if it wasn't, it should have been. Now, though, Facebook has taken the meritocracy and turned it into a dictatorship, almost overnight. Now an "algorithm" created by the people who run Facebook will control what it is that you should find interesting, and those who have the ability to pay for play will see a boost in their pages, while the elderly cat beret saleswoman has to fold up her knitting table and drown her cat models in the local stream. No longer will not-for-profits and charities that survive on donations and usually have little or no money to spend on marketing be able to grab equal footing on Facebook. We are, quite literally, taking one of the best things about America and relegating it to the back of the bus because it cannot afford a first-class ticket.

Folks, I don't have to tell you that the U.S. is not what it once was, and we are drowning in Honey-Boo-Boos and teenage daughters who sue their parents for support. With this new move, Facebook is taking one of the few things we have left to show off as a point of pride in this aging country, and effectively sounding its death knell. We need something to balance the scales against the likes of the Kardashians, and although it seems like a small shift, know that Facebook now has control of what you and all the other users see in their newsfeeds, and that's a scary thought considering that Facebook has more than 1/6th of the world worth of users. Yes, those 1.2 billion accounts include one for my cat and one for a melted snowman named Chad, but many of them reach real people. The company claims it gives "people the power to share," but, unfortunately, those people now reside at the Facebook corporate headquarters.

Facebook's mission statement:

Founded in 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

For more of Daniel P. Malito's work, check out http://www.danielpmalito.com

I Deleted My FourSquare Account and Why You Should Too

If you know me and my work, you know I'm an advocate for social media and networking. I've long been a champion for sharing and helping others. I can't begin to list all the instances where I've been helped, good fortune has found me, and I've developed deep personal friendships with very smart and engaging people.



For a few years, I resisted joining FourSquare (4sq) because I was spooked by stories of people being stalked, houses being robbed, and oversharing, in general. My understanding at the time, was that all checkins were public checkins. I even referred to the service as "FourScare." But, then I realized I was wrong, and you could configure your settings so that ONLY your friends could see your checkins. So I gave it a try. Since I joined 4sq, I've only friended people I know in person and completely trust. I've enjoyed the perks of checking in at local venues and earning free beverages, appetizers, $5.00 off haircuts, and more.



Today, however, I will be deleting my 4sq account. In early December, FourSquare announced that the 4sq iOS 7.0 update removes private check-ins with all previous private check-ins to remain private. 4sq encourages users to use 4sq to discover new places if they don't want to publicly share check-ins.

...and this is why I deleted my FourSquare account. 

By seeing someone's checkins, you can easily figure out where they spend their time, what time of day they typically frequent certain places, potentially where they work and live. When I lost my one and only mayorship at a local Starbucks to another user, I was curious if I've ever seen this person there, so I did some investigating. Although this user has a cartoon avatar and screen name (let's say his name is "Cheeky"), I discovered this user's real name and FaceBook profile (with actual photo) by clicking on the FaceBook icon under his name. 

...and this is why I deleted my FourSquare account. 

then:

I identified venues he frequents, because he holds the "Mayorship" at these places:

...and this is why I deleted my FourSquare account. 

I can see this user's "friends," and then click through to see their interactions:

So what?

If I choose, I can look for this person next time I'm in my favorite place and strike up a conversation. If I have a personal interest in this person, I can drop a few comments about our common interests, or even "coincidentally" just "happen to" see this person again in a variety of local places. The rest is yours to imagine. 

...and this is why I deleted my FourSquare account. 

This transparency is not just limited to FourSquare. All public posts (on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) are potential stalking avenues. 

Creepy Willy Wonka

Read The Circle by Dave Eggers, if you want to get creeped out even more. 

...and this is why I deleted my FourSquare account. 

Some things you can do (in addition to stopping your use of FourSquare):

If you look at my personal Facebook page, you will see LOTS of public posts. What you WON'T see are my private posts that are intended only for my friends. I try to stay aware of the intended audience for each of my posts. I posted about FaceBook privacy here. 

Before you comment on, or add yourself, to an update, check the privacy:

Same for Twitter. You can control what people see on Twitter, even if your timeline is set to Public. If you previously allowed location information on Twitter, you can delete all location information now. Whether or not that really removes your data from Twitter's database, I doubt. It's something, at least.

If the information in this post creeps you out, reconsider what information you share publicly. 

Now you know why...

 I deleted my FourSquare account. 

Originally posted in Dec. 2013 here

STEM Contest Inspires Kids to Invent Our Future

"The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs." -- Nikola Tesla, Inventor

The act of creating something is one of the most empowering states a human can experience. Unfortunately, our education system doesn't promote this simple notion and instead focuses on testing our kids on their ability to memorize information and facts, a significant amount of which is rendered inaccurate, obsolete or irrelevant by the time they leave school and enter the workforce. Aside from the basic skills kids learn in school such as reading, writing, and math, the important life skills, such as learning how to conceive and create something of value, is completely overlooked.

However, there is hope!

I recently had the honor of speaking at NASA's Johnson Space Center and what I saw was incredible!

A space pump inspired by parasites that minimizes the need for electro-mechanical parts so we can send a man to Mars. A new compound that can absorb oil at over 200 times its own weight to help clean up oceanic oil spills significantly faster and cheaper than current methods. A bionic hand that allows amputees to reclaim normal hand and finger functionality. A device for water collection that condenses clean water directly out of the atmosphere to be used for farming, drinking and cooling.

However, none of these inventions are from NASA. These products are conceived and developed by high school kids from around the world who compete in the Conrad Foundation's annual Spirit of Innovation Challenge (SOIC).



Every year, over 1,000 high school kids from 72 countries and all 50 states submit to the Conrad Foundation their ideas, inventions and solutions to real-world problems in one of four categories - aviation and aerospace, cyber-technology and security, energy and environment, and health and nutrition. The SOIC committee narrows the submissions from over 500 teams down to 20 teams who will compete in a Shark Tank style STEM competition for kids. These final 20 teams come to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to do their venture pitch to a panel of highly credentialed judges ranging from NASA scientists and engineers to successful businessmen and entrepreneurs. This year the winning teams (one for each category) walked away with $47,500 in awards along with access to mentors, potential clients, and other resources to help them commercialize their product or idea, including access to a portion of NASA's patent portfolio.



What happens when kids are inspired and encouraged to exercise their ideas and creativity to solve real world problems?

Innovation from teams like PuzzleBot who created an online security program that replaces CAPTCHAs with picture puzzles that are faster to validate and web bot hack resistant. Team XC Walking Watts, developed a shoe that can store the piezo-electric energy derived from walking so you can charge your phone or other device while on the go. The Green Barriers team created the HydroBucket that allows trees to grow in harsh vegetation-deprived areas to help fight off the effects of global warming and desertification in regions like Africa.

However, these teams didn't stop just with their product idea or prototype. I was one of the judges for the energy and environment category, and these kids came in with a full market analysis, go-to market strategy and in some cases a source and use of funds comparable to any proper venture pitch. We asked one team, who were all high school juniors, what they would do if their final prototype was successful. They responded they would take a gap year after high school to focus on taking their idea to market. Now that's passion!



The Conrad Foundation was founded in 2008 by Nancy Conrad in honor of her late husband Charles "Pete" Conrad, commander for the Apollo 12 mission and the third man to walk on the moon. The STEM entrepreneurship contest was inspired by Pete's personal story who failed out of 11th grade due to dyslexia, which was not recognized or understood at the time. However, Pete's mother did not give up on him and found a school headmaster that would take him on and teach him through a systems learning approach. Pete did so well that he graduated from high school, and was admitted to Princeton University with a full Navy ROTC scholarship. After graduating from Princeton with his B.S. in aeronautical engineering, Pete was immediately commissioned to the Navy where he later became a naval aviator and fighter pilot, and ultimately a NASA astronaut. After many years of risky space exploration, Pete turned his talents and experience towards entrepreneurship and founded four companies devoted to the commercialization of space travel.

Pete's ideals to inspire and empower kids to invent and innovate still lives on today through the foundation. Previous winners have garnered significant support and recognition such as Daniel and Issac who obtained two patents for their invention and were recognized by the Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Another team duo, Mikayla and Shannon, created a nutritional bar for astronauts which flew on the Space Shuttle STS-134 flight and was profiled by Fox News, CNN, and MTV Geek. They were later commissioned as student spokeswomen for Texas Instrument. Another team developed the ULTRApod Water Filter and began manufacturing their prototype after attending the 2012 USA Science and Engineering Festival as guests of Lockheed Martin.



Conrad Foundation is one of several high-profile STEM competitions focused on encouraging high school kids to think differently. A couple years ago, I met Jack Andraka who was a 15 year old high school sophomore when he won the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for developing a new diagnostic test for early detection of pancreatic cancer, the very disease Steve Jobs passed away from. Jack's testing approach is 90 percent accurate and also 168 times faster, 400 times more sensitive, and 27,000 times cheaper (3 cents per dipstick) than previous testing methods.

However, even the most revolutionary ideas are not enough on their own. There are big leaps that must take place to take these ideas and inventions to market and gain market acceptance and ultimately become financially solvent. As Nikola Tesla discovered in his epic journey to bring electricity to the world, the technical problems were relatively easy to resolve. The bigger hurdles were timing, competition, politics, finance, customer acquisition, team chemistry, relationships, greed, ego, fear, envy, public perception, expectations and all things human. Yet as every successful entrepreneur learns, we never get it completely right on the first try. Entrepreneurship is an on-going iterative learning process and the sooner one starts, the more they learn and the better their chances to create viable solutions that can gain wide-spread market adoption. The kids in these high school STEM contests are between the ages of 13 and 18 years, so they're off to a really good start.



How can we apply this approach to our education system and engage millions of kids to think differently and truly foster a culture of inventors and innovators?

To start, we must restructure our current high school educational approach to reflect how the real-world operates. Instead of vertical subjects, the curriculum should be reorganized into civilization based themes such as Energy, Environment, Food, Water, Health, Communication, Education, Transportation, Finance, Government, Infrastructure and other important societal systems. Each theme could be developed into a nine-week quarter with a set of over-arching humanity serving goals and limitations the sector is facing. During this time the students would form teams and learn about the subjects relevant to the theme such as its history, science, technology, law, governmental policies, finance, politics, international relations, economics, and more. In this process, each team can divide the workload to do a deeper dive into the subjects so they can teach each other faster than a single subject teacher could teach a class. Then the teams would identify problems for which they would develop innovative solutions. These solutions would then be presented in class initially and the best ideas and presentations would be presented to the entire school, so other students can learn from their approach thus setting a higher bar. This could also be expanded to the region, state and nation through some sort of competitive evaluation process with real financial awards, incentives and scholarships.

There are significant benefits to this theme-centric approach. First, our kids would transform their learned information into actual knowledge by applying it towards tangible goals, instead of turning themselves into a human database of useless facts with no practical application. By practicing how to think through and create solutions to real-world issues, the kids would learn how to be resourceful and feel more empowered to make a difference in the world. This would result in higher student engagement and our kids would gain a much deeper understanding of what they enjoy and want to focus on after school. Most importantly, our kids would have an immediate value contribution to society with real-world economic impact thus generating a significantly better return on our educational tax dollars.

As our governments, banking systems and industrial complexes continue to confound our future by exploiting our energy, environment, health, food supply, water, education, finance, transportation and other societal systems, our only hope to save and evolve humanity is for our future generations to clean up our backwash. If we can develop a better system to engage, empower and enable our children to innovate faster than our world systems decay, then our kids could not only save our world, they could reinvent our future!

10 Reasons to Smash Your Cell Phone Right Now!

I want to smash my cell phone. Seriously. I want to smash it into hundreds of pieces. And then, I want to mix those jagged pieces of broken electronics with C4 and blow them up just to be 100% certain they can't be reassembled by a team of savvy forensic engineers. Or, the on-air talent from CNET.

Why do I want to smash my cell phone? Is it because my cell service sucks? Nope. In fact, my cell service is just fine. Sure, my phone drops calls when I'm in an elevator, a mountain pass or an underground garage... but, sometimes I do get four bars in a crowded elevator and I think to myself, "Amaze-balls. I'm in an elevator. On the phone. Talking to my doctor about my bowel movements!"

Do I want to smash the phone because AT&T, my carrier, has terrible customer service? No. I mean, AT&T does have terrible customer service, but if the standard by which I determine whether or not to crush something I own is "terrible customer service" I'm going to need a lot more C4... and probably a second pair of Nike's new cross-training / steel-toed smashing-stuff boots.

No. The reason I want to smash my phone is that its magical utility has made my life entirely frictionless, its 24/7 connectivity has made my experiences trite to those I choose to share them with, and even worse, and it has made me the flight attendant of my own life, instead of the passenger. Here. I'll explain.

10 Reasons to Smash Your Cell Phone Right Now!



1. Just like with sex, if you're not doing stuff that makes you nervous sometimes, you're doing it wrong.

The awesome bbq pit at The Salt Lick (San Antonio, Texas)


This past weekend, I was in San Antonio, Texas. 72 miles away from where I was staying is a place called The Salt Lick, it's one of the best BBQ joints in the world. I used my iPhone's map program and in about three seconds, I had turn by turn directions from where I was standing... along with an estimated time of arrival. So, off I went. And no surprise, I made the 72 mile drive in 97 minutes, just like the map program said. After I'd eaten a plate of the absolute best brisket and ribs I thought about my 72 mile drive. It started on one highway, switched to another, then another, then to a two lane road with traffic lights, then to a long series of rural roads, multiple turns, etc.

Fifteen years ago, if I had wanted to make this 72 mile journey, the concierge at my hotel would have written down directions for me... and 15 minutes into the trip, I'd have been lost. Then, I would have seen something I didn't expect to see. I would have had an experience I hadn't planned for. I'd have gotten lost. I might have run out of gas or peed on the edge of a cow pasture... then run like hell when I heard a "moooo." I'd have pulled over at a gas station to get directions and would have bought a bag of the locally grown, hand-made tortilla chips, or rolled down a window to ask a farmer "Where am I?" I would have laughed with my cousin -- who's sitting in the passenger seat -- when we couldn't remember if the farmer said make a left or right when we drive past the third gun range. Or, if we were supposed to turn at the fireworks stand... or keep going straight.

2. Don't be the flight attendant in your life. Be the passenger.

Not more than five minutes after I had arrived at The Salt Lick, I got a series of texts from my wife demanding to know: "Are you there yet?" "What's the brisket like?" "Is it amazing?" and "What are you wearing?" OK. I made that last one up. Anyway -- long before I have a chance to actually have the experience of arriving at what is perhaps the world's best BBQ joint, before I figure out if I'm supposed to order at the counter or wait to be seated and before I have an opportunity to enjoy perfectly cooked brisket, ribs and sausage -- I'm asked to explain via text where the life rafts are, how to put the seat belt on, and where to stow your carry-on bags. While staring at The Salt Lick's indoor BBQ, which played home to nearly 50 full sized briskets, several dozen 3 foot long sausages, dozens of chicken breasts and countless center-cut smoked ribs, I realized if I answer the texts or make a call or send an email right now, I stop being the passenger in my life... and I become the flight attendant.

I want to be the one to hear the instructions... or, in this case, to hear that use center cut ribs, not baby backs, which they smoke for just three hours or if I ask nicely, the BBQ pit master will let me flip some of the meat while my cousin takes a photo or that for $15 bucks, I can get one plate that will have brisket, ribs and sausage... But, for just $5 bucks more, I can have as much of that meat as I can pack away. I ignored the texts, took a bunch of photos and bought my wife a Salt Lick hat and when I arrived back at the resort where we were staying, we had a lovely 20 minute conversation about the world's best brisket and ribs -- all of which was new to her, because she hadn't heard it all two hours earlier, via text.

3. Your phone is making you more stupidly.

According to several recent scientific studies, you are less likely to recall and or learn material that you read on your cell phone or laptop or tablet. Meaning, material or content that is presented to you digitally, rather than in a traditional paper book or magazine, is not going to be stored in your brain in the same way as the same material would be were it printed on paper. Digital material is often read more quickly, more casually and in less than idea circumstances, for instance, while driving on the highway. Or sitting on the subway. Or while having sex. OK. I made that last one up. Or, did I?

4. Your cell phone is plotting your sudden and tragic death.

One in five automobile crashes result from a distracted driver. HOWEVER -- texting while driving isn't the only incredibly stupid thing people do with their cell phones. Instead of talking to the friend you're having lunch with, you're sitting across from the friend you're having lunch with... while checking your phone to see what the stock market is doing or who Lindsey Lohan is doing. Anyway, although all of us engage in one activity or another during the day, we simultaneously are engaged in a parallel activity on our phone. Texting, reading, game playing, etc. What's going on on the phone is robbing us of the experience we are currently not having.

5. Everyone's life is better than yours. And your life sucks.

According to a recent scientific study, Facebook could be making you miserable. Or worse, clinically depressed. As you watch the Facebook timeline scroll down your computer screen, you are inundated with images of your friends, acquaintances and people you went to high school with -- and they are having an awesome time. They are celebrating a birthday. They are taking a selfie with P. Diddy. They just got a promotion. Their kid just came in 2nd in a soap box derby. They're headed to Vegas. Without their spouse. They caught the possum that's been living under their house.

Meanwhile, you're sitting at your kitchen table in your feetie pajamas, crying into a bowl of Cap'n Crunch for the fourth night in a row, because you got laid off from your job and you can only afford to eat meat twice a week now. Turns out, seeing people having fun, living it up, and being successful will depress the hell out of a person. Even if we know that the other person is really a liar and that their life is also shitty and that their wife is cheating on them with the gardener. Seeing photos of success just makes people feel bad about their own lives.

6. You know that email that you must. Respond. To. Right. This. Instance? Yeah. It can wait.

Fifteen years ago, if you worked on the west coast, and someone on the east coast needed some drawings you had put together, it would take about three or four days to get those drawings across the country. And that was good. The person who had the drawings could figure out where they are, then wrap them up, get them to the post office and send them on their way. The person who needed the drawings would do some other work until the drawings showed up.

Now, if you need to see the drawings the person who has the drawings better fucking be at their desk when you call, and their internet better fucking work, and they better be available on Skype to talk, and they better have a scanner that captures images in a high resolution because that's what the boss damn well wants, and the software better not have a bug, and it better be in color, and the file better not be too big... Oh, you get the idea. All of this 24/7 connectivity turns a job that used to be nine to six... into a job that's 24/7. I don't have a study to point to, but it can't be good if you're thinking about work all the time.

7. Cancer

A debate that previously seemed settled -- that there is no link between cancer and cell phone use -- now appears to be ever so slightly less settled. What to believe? I don't know. HOWEVER -- on a list of reasons to smash your cell phone, I'd be remiss if I didn't at least bring this debate to your attention.

8. Yes. The brain seems to have an infinite ability to process information. However...

If you're spending all day on your phone playing games, reading gossip, studying sport's scores, or looking at porn, your brain is forced to take in a lot of information... and while it's doing all of the ultimately useless tasks you're asking it to do -- it's having a harder time doing the things you need it to do, like recall the facts and figures the boss needs for his presentation, or the time you are supposed to leave work to pick your kids up from school and take them to dance. Oh, you get the idea. If you give your brain candy all day... don't be surprised when you suddenly feed it meat and potatoes and it files away the information as if it were porn.

9. Posting on your Facebook timeline is not the same as actually seeing your friends.

You know why it seems like you haven't seen your friends in person in a long time? Because you haven't seen your friends in person in a long time. Too often we think we are interacting with people whose company we enjoy when when we send them a text, or click "like" on their Facebook post. However, there is a simple and key ingredient missing from this "friendship equation." And that missing ingredient is actually seeing and doing something with your friend. Think about this -- which conversation is more likely to happen while you stand over your friend's death bed?

1. You: "Hey, remember that time we went to that NASCAR race? And we got those great seats in the front row? We sat next to those hotties? And then there was that crash? And that piece of the windshield flew into the stands and nearly killed you?"



2. You: "Hey, remember that time you posted that picture of your cat? And I clicked "like." Yeah. Good times."

10. Why do I need to know that Courtney Love thinks she sees airplane debris in the Indian Ocean?

Courtney-Love-Malaysia-Flight-370-Found. I now believe with 100% certainty that the internet has two and only two purposes. The first purpose, as we all know, is that it's a worldwide delivery system for photos of people's cats. And yes, that is a good use of time, effort and resources. However, the internet has a second function, as well. And that function is to fill your head with crap you will never need to know, stuff that you wish you didn't know, and stuff that you will never be able to forget you know, that you will never need.

And what is the device you use to access this information that you don't need to know? Your cell phone. And yes. I want very much to smash mine into a million pieces. And I am planning on doing it. I swear I am. I'm going to get a hammer and some C4...

Just as soon as my wife texts me a list of stuff she needs me to pick up at CVS.

___________________


Jon Hotchkiss is the creator of the new 6-hour science series, This vs That, featured on NBC News with Brian WIlliams & called "Hilarious" and "Revolutionary." You can see the 1-hour series premiere, FREE.

The Bitcoin "Crisis" Explained and 5 Reasons It Can't Be Killed

Near the end of last year, Bitcoin was being gobbled up at an unbelievable $1100 per coin. With a cursory glance, at today's price ($500), you'd think that the Coca-Cola of cryptos is careening toward disaster. In order to understand why that's not the case, you might need a quick recap on how we got to this juncture.

For Bitcoin, early 2014 was a PR nightmare. The crypto was constantly being linked to drugs and money laundering, most infamously in the case of The Silk Road. But, the most damning sequence of events was due to a known security vulnerability and good-old-fashioned ineptness.

Enter Hurricane Gox.

By February, major (but known to be sketchy) Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox had been having problems for quite awhile. Because of that aforementioned security issue, Mt. Gox halted some of their user's ability to withdraw Bitcoin while they fixed the hiccup. Other more legit companies came forward to show that this wasn't a problem with Bitcoin at large, but with the implementation method of certain exchanges. Unfortunately, Mt.Gox still wasn't able to get their act together. They went into full damage control mode, preventing their users from making withdrawals altogether. That's when people really started freaking out. A shit-storm of downright apocalyptic press ensued, contributing to a big dip in the price of Bitcoin.




In light of this Mt. Gox debacle, other big players in the Bitcoin community banded together to say enough is enough. This cryotocurrency coterie further demonized Mt. Gox, strongly implying they could no longer be trusted. Meanwhile, reports were circulating that over $400 million worth of Bitcoin had been "stolen" from Mt. Gox customers due to exploitation of the very same bug they'd been battling. By the end of February, Gox went dark completely, along with all that missing Bitcoin.

As if that weren't enough to shake people's confidence, in late March, the government of China slapped some really restrictive rules on banks with regard to Bitcoin, essentially putting it in a legal gray area. Some are also reacting negatively to the IRS's recent ruling on Bitcoin.

Now, while all of these phenomena are certainly not good news, they are not issues that have to do with Bitcoin in and of itself. They are simply cases of external forces grappling with an unprecedented new technology.

So, now that we've trudged through the (highly-simplified) negative muck and mire of the last few months, let's take a look at the 5 reasons Bitcoin is not only here for the long haul, but may seriously impact the world in a litany of positive ways.

5.The Spread




For cryptos to really wield a lot of power, they need to be easy to use. That means merchants must accept it on a wider scale -- and that they are. There are thousands of local restaurants, bars and businesses primed to take your sweet coin. On the web, significant players like Square, Stripe, Overstock, and Tiger Direct are a few of the latest to pick it up. No, it's not at Target or Amazon yet, but if it ever is expect another bump in interest, price and media hype.

It's also worth mentioning that services like Bitcoin ATMs, sites like Gyft and Cheap Air are bringing Bitcoin's learning curve down to earth, allowing people to spend their coin more directly and conveniently.

4.The Progeny




Whenever a successful, novel piece of technology hits, pretenders are inevitable. Because of Bitcoin's coding is available to the public, there's been a rabbit-like reproduction rate of cryptocurrencies. Literally hundreds of Bitcoin spinoffs, or "forks" have sprouted up and dozens of them are quite successful, with market caps well into the millions of dollars. Some even argue that certain more nimble cryptos like Litecoin, Feathercoin, or (my favorite) Dogecoin, actually improve upon what Bitcoin started. Perhaps down the line, Bitcoin will take a backseat to another crypto. But as of now, it's not even close in terms of value, infrastructure or user-friendliness.




3.The Philosophy




"Price is the least interesting thing about Bitcoin... At first, almost everyone who got involved did so for philosophical reasons. We saw Bitcoin as a great idea, as a way to separate money from the state." -- Roger Ver, The New York Times. One of the most attractive things about Bitcoin is the philosophy behind it. It's designed to be completely decentralized, anonymous, egalitarian, and free from external or internal manipulation. It's neither liberal nor conservative. There's no Federal Reserve sending down mandates from on high. It is, 100 percent, a digital manifestation of the consensus of its users.

There's also been a lot of talk lately regarding potentially huge implications for the developing world. According to the World Bank, migrant workers are paying $14 billion a year in remittance fees. That's money that isn't going to their families. Imagine what a profound impact that cash would have for struggling, or downright poor families. On the other hand, the fee for transferring Bitcoin is minuscule, so nearly all of that lost money would be going directly into the pockets of families, not banks. On top of the remittance issue, there are dozens of weak currencies around the world, yet struggling populations have no choice but to use them. Bitcoin offers an easily obtainable, far more valuable alternative that wasn't available just a couple of years ago.

2.The numbers

Let's start with the cryptography and coding. Don't worry, I'm not going to get technical on you. But, consider this -- of the hundreds of cryptocurriences out there, basically all of them use Bitcoin's backbone. Because the king of cryptos is open-source, everyone has worked together to create something highly-functional and thus far, unhackable. As Bitcoin continues to mature, so do the exchanges and wallets, making them safer. As we've seen from the Mt. Gox snafu, companies that aren't backed by a strong team of properly qualified people simply cease to exist, leaving the strong to take the reigns.




Every day, people are sinking insane amounts of money into Bitcoin and we're not just talking about investing and trading. (Speaking of which, there's been over $6.5 billion worth issued.) Bitcoin miners are pushing raw computing power to an unheard of level. We're talking eight times more than the world's top 500 supercomputers combined. This has created an arms race of processing prowess that has spawned a whole industry of mining gear. As a result, crazy computing power is shrinking into smaller spaces. Who knows what implications this may end up having for other industries.

1.The Community

Ultimately, the power of Bitcoin is, and always will be, in the hands of the people that use it. This community is more than just a bunch of nerds (I say that with love) getting together on message boards clickity-clacking away at their ergonomic keyboards. Thousands of people in over 60 countries are gathering in meat space to learn, discuss and philosophize about Bitcoin. While attendees definitely run the gamut in terms demographics, experience and degree of technical knowledge, many are deeply involved in shaping how the technology will be used and experienced going forward. Because of this passionate, highly engaged grassroots community, literally hundreds of startups with an average value of nearly $4 million have cropped up in just a couple of years.




Given the fact that this technology and its implementation is still so young, we don't know what these companies, coders, meet-up groups, miners and just flat-out curious people will eventually accomplish. But, when you diminish or scoff at Bitcoin at this point, you're essentially deriding hundreds of thousands of tech-savvy, hungry, young people -- not a great group to bet against.

Despite all the misinformation, resistance and doomsday prognostication along the way, Bitcoin has and will continue to defiantly weather the storm. Though speculation and hyperbole will surely continue as the price inevitably waxes and wanes, the technology, infrastructure and tenacious group of humans pushing this thing forward aren't simply going to stop.


Twitter: @midwestmike

Digital Marketing In The Era Of The Empowered Consumer

The marketing function will undergo the greatest IT-driven business transformation, research per IDC which I referenced this week during my presentation at Interop. The main point of my presentation was to strongly emphasize the need for collaboration between CIOs and CMOs in order to successfully champion digital marketing initiatives. In my presentation, I pointed to a marketing technology supergraphic that was developed by Scott Brinker, highlighting nearly 1,000 marketing technology companies. Spanning a career that sat at the intersection of marketing and technology, Scott Brinker, CTO of ion interactive is one of the most knowledge marketing technology experts that we have had on our weekly CXOTalk show. Brinker is the blogger of the Chief Marketing Technology blog chiefmartec.com, author of an eBook on the history of the empowered consumer and the state of technology today.



Scott Brinker

Even though Brinker's passion is marketing tools he says at the end of the day they are but a means to an end. The real focus is how marketing is changing to deliver a better customer experience with digital technologies, which comes down to the people and process. According to Brinker, "You can have a mediocre set of technologies but if you have really good people and a really good process you can get tremendous results."



Brinker gives great advice to CMOs for using digital marketing to deliver an exceptional customer experience in this era of the empowered consumer, one touch point at a time.

5 Ways to Grow Marketing in the Era of the Empowered Consumer:

1. Use digital to improve things over a specific period of time - Brinker has a slightly different opinion of "digital transformation". It's a term that sounds so big, yet for a lot of companies digital transformation is not about having the fundamental business changed overnight by digital. He thinks that people would be better served if when they hear digital transformation they think about how they can use digital to improve things over the next quarter or two rather than getting overwhelmed with thinking that their whole industry is going to fall out from beneath them.

For most companies, digital transformation is about the steps a company needs to take to respond to customers who have come to expect a certain level of interactions at the digital level. Companies need to think about how to start to incorporate all this data into making better decisions incrementally and at a better pace.

2. Employ a point person in marketing for leveraging technology - At the end of the day the point of technology is not the technology itself, but how to leverage it to deliver remarkable customer experiences. To help the CMO accomplish that objective, the role of the "Chief Marketing Technologist" (CMT) comes in. Brinker says that the title is not important; what is important is to have a point person in marketing for organizing how marketing is leveraging technology. This person reports to the CMO and acts as the right hand to the CTO for how technology can accomplish specific marketing missions.

Brinker does not advocate for the need of a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) to help make the digital transformation. He believes it is better if can be accomplished with a strong partnership of the CIO and CMO because "digital doesn't stay in a box". He advises that the CIO and CMO sit down regularly to collaborate regarding the priorities of the organization and leverage the role of the CMT to act as a liaison to operationalize their plans at the next level.

Analyst Laura McLellan of Gartner recently published the study, "How the Presence of a Chief Marketing Technologist Impacts Marketing." The report shows that in 2013, 81% of organizations surveyed had the equivalent of a chief marketing technologist, compared to 70 percent in 2012. Another 8% of organizations plan to add a chief marketing technologist during the next two years.

3. Deliver a consistent converged media experience - In the digital age we live in, customers are able to quickly and seamlessly move between marketing touch points and they expect consistency in their interactions. From the customer perspective the forms of media in which we interact with them are converged, challenging marketers to work on living up to that expectation. Marketers know that a converged media content strategy that includes earned, paid and owned content is needed to connect to customers in today's digitally-savvy world, but many marketers struggle with how to connect the data that comes in through the various media channels back to the sales organization. This dilemma demonstrates why technology alone is not sufficient to drive the type of digital transformation that many companies want to take. There needs to be a set of organization and process changes and someone to needs to act as the steward to drive this set of coordinated responses to the converged media. The good news is that the technology does exist for that to happen as long as you have the right process and right people to capture those buying signals.

At Extreme Networks, we are using social listening tools (Radian6), social CRM tools (Salesforce.com) and social collaboration tools (Chatter) to deliver a consistent, converged media experience for our customers. Our community manager is able to pick up customer comments in real-time with Radian6, then use Chatter to let the right sales team know so they are in the loop.

4. Hone the skills needed for digital success - Technology is always changing and evolving and this is especially true with digital. People who have an orientation toward being willing to try new things, learn, experiment with new capabilities and embrace change will have a huge advantage.

Another useful skill for marketers, says Brinker, will be analytics. Apart from having an analytical specialist or data scientist, CMOs should work to develop the analytical capabilities within the marketing team. Brinker says it is more valuable to have the marketing team as a whole get comfortable with managing with those numbers, knowing what to optimize and what questions to ask.

The bottom line is that marketing in an organization of any real size is a team sport. As more and more things get put under the umbrella of marketing, marketing it is getting very large. Brinker says that each person does not need to be brilliant at everything, what's important is that the team as a whole collectively has all of these capabilities and is organized in a way where they can tap into the strengths of each one at the right time.


5. Get past the Zero Moment of Truth - The rise of search has put so much information at the consumers fingertips that by the time a prospect calls sales they often know more about the product than the salesperson. And thanks to social, their experience can be shared to influence others and their choice of whether to engage the company or not. Brinker talks about "moments of truth" in his must-read eBook, "A NEW BRAND OF MARKETING: The 7 Meta-Trends of Modern Marketing as a Technology-Powered Discipline".


Brinker explains that there are moments of truth in purchasing a product, using the product, etc. But in the age of the empowered customer, customers won't even make it to the first moment of truth if they don't get past what Google's Jim Lecinski calls the "Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)". The zero moment of truth is when someone has an interest in a brand and goes online to google it and the impression they get from all these online touch points will influence if they even make it to the first moment of truth - choosing your brand. Content marketing may be the holy grail of marketing these days, but what matters most is what content consumers are finding, because that heavily influences their decision making process.

In this era of the empowered consumer, organizations have to be smart and find the right technologies and employ them to deliver great customer experiences. With high customer expectations of the quality and sophistication of customer experiences with marketing, success in digital transformation will come from bringing together the right culture, people, process and technology. I encourage all CMOs or anyone in Marketing to follow Scott Brinker.

You can watch the full interview with Scott Brinker here. Please join me and Michael Krigsman every Friday at 3PM EST as we host CXOTalk - connecting with thought leaders and innovative executives who are pushing the boundaries within their companies and their fields.