On the advice of someone from counseling services here, I’ve been studying for 20 minutes on, 10 minutes off. This has greatly reduced my study anxiety, since if I get distracted, I just write it down and say ‘will do it at the next break.’ And then I get back to being focused. This has been tremendous; the last week or so has been one of the most productive I can remember- low stress, high focus.
Anyway, that means I’ve been doing some web surfing in the breaks- some quick thoughts from those periods:
- Right after reviewing Fontainebleu in property (a case where a Miami Beach hotel sued another Miami Beach hotel for obstructing their sunlight with a big wall), I took a break and came across this post at BldgBlog on Britain’s solution to the sunlight problem- “Ancient Lights”. As is typical of BldgBlog, it is just awesome. Go read it, even if you don’t care anything at all about property :)
- Over the summer, I will be writing a lot (I hope) about property rights in uploaded data. Nutshell I’ll be pushing: users should probably have legal rights to their uploaded data, and vendors should be actively excited to give them such rights and scrap the insulting TOSs people sign right now. Trust and verifiability build economies- and right now the online data world does not allow for that trust, at all. I’ve seen very little about this, but John Battelle took a stab at it yesterday which is worth reading. (Online Desktop folks and Mugshot folks in particular need to read ASAP. Googlers too :)
- Mark has posted about the trademark thing. I’ve not had time to do more than skim the policy or think about it in depth, but in the post he seems to understand the issues better than most, and regardless of whether or not he is right, everything he says and does is influential and important. Now, Mark, what about that patent policy? :)
- I continue to subscribe to EDGE, even though I’ve never once had time to read through an entire issue. This week’s promises to also go unread, but it looks awesome- ponderings on expertise and knowledge. I aspire to become so hyperefficient that I actually have time to read EDGE regularly some day ;)
The way I see it, data “rights” are built on top of a more difficult issue to grapple with (which you briefly touch upon)… which is how do you establish a “Trust” system given the constraints of the Internet. Rights and rules only work if you have built a system of “trust” so you can verify and enforce. Without it, I don’t see how communities/economies that are needed can be erected.
The stumbling block is that anonymity is an essential part of what facilitates online interaction, and I can’t see how anonymity and trust can coexist in the same system. I don’t think its just the “online data world,” I think it extends to the complete “online world.”
Writing things down as soon as you think of them but not doing them straight away is a nice “Getting Things Done” technique. I hadn’t thought of the 20-on-10-off thing though – I’ll try it the next time I have a long boring job to do.
the bldgbldg post is very delirious new york. “ancient lights” is such a good name, too, makes me think of will o’ the wisps and lovecraft.
Had never heard of delirious new york- you mean the Koolhaas book? Will definitely look at that- thankfully available used at the bookstore next door.
Oh, and I’ve been meaning to reply to this once the semester is done. Nutshell: New York is very much myth, but in the Barthes sense, with all the messiness (good and bad) that entails.
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