I caught on that there was a conference in NYC as it was happening called Hacking Society, put on by Union Square Ventures. They invited a lot of famous Internet thinkers and the CEOs of some tech companies, and people from Washington.

I only listened to the end of the audio feed, so I only know what was discussed through people's summation. So I don't know if what I am about to say was said. If it was, it bears repeating.

The best way to preserve Internet freedom is to use it.

That means creating a network that is of the Internet, only. Without any corporate ownership of rights to individual people's content. As nice as the VCs are that ran this show, and the execs who were there, and they certainly are very nice people, it doesn't matter. Corporations behave like corporations. And freedom and corporate ownership are two things that don't mix well.

It also means creating a network of people who vote.

That's the main way to get lawmaker's respect, I hear. From a pretty good source. Sure they need to raise money, but their opportunities to make money are greatly enhanced by being in office. And votes is what puts them in office and keeps them there.

That means, esp if you are a Republican, fighting the voter suppression efforts of the Republican Party.

 4/24/2012; 7:50:24 PM.

I downloaded and installed Google Drive right away of course.

I can share a folder publicly, which is useful.

You can also link to an individual file in Drive.

This link should take you to a picture of the White House if it's working. Only sort of. It tkes you to a page that includes the picture. I'd like to link to just the picture. Let's see if this link lasts.

The picture of Carlos Boozer to the right was being served from the Public folder of my Google Drive folder, but then the link broke. So you can't point directly to a file. The link isn't persistent. That's an advantage that Dropbox has. Here's the link to the small picture of Carlos Boozer on Dropbox. It won't break.

Drive begins with the same two letters as Dropbox. So when you're typing the name of one into the browser's address bar you'll see the name of the other, if you've been to their website.

Question -- will Google's search engine go into folders that are marked public. I don't see why it shouldn't. I think they want to go in there.

Gotta wonder how long before Google-Plus features show up when you view a folder or a file.

Update: Here's a place for comments.

 4/24/2012; 5:51:29 PM.

Fred Wilson really started an interesting thread.

It continues over on Rex Hammock's blog.

He says that everything is programming. That you have TV itself and you have shows. People may have thought I Love Lucy or Johnny Carson were bigger than a TV show, but in the end they weren't. Are the companies Fred helps get started really companies, or are they really shows? To which I said -- they're rock bands.

But there's more to it.

Sometimes things that are TV shows have features which are sucked down into the medium. It's how there's a continuity between the TV of Lucy and the TV of Linsanity (which is thoroughly captivating TV, even though Lin himself has been sidelined). The platform is shifting and adopting features from its programming.

Podcasting, RSS, blogging, YouTube, I would argue Angry Birds and Twitter -- all become part of what the Internet is, but they started out as programming. Before that Compuserve, MCI Mail, AOL. AppleLink. Craig's List. MySpace. And on and on. Each came out as a program, then became part of the platform.

Look at how magazines as a platform have changed. It used to be a gatekeeper model. Now lists like Time's 100 most influential are revealing because they have become jokes, anachronisms. Why did we care who influenced the editors of Time? Becuase that was the only path to fame. Now there are so many other paths to fame.

Postel said be liberal in what you understand and conservative in what you say. You could think of that as the law of platforms as much as it is about interop.

McLuhan said The Medium Is The Message. It's really the same idea.

Said another way...

We're paving cow paths.

 4/24/2012; 12:25:02 PM.

I've been doing a lot of writing and thinking about computer education these last few years, and it seems this is what it comes down to.

"It's not enough to understand how computers work, because you have to understand people too."

http://twitter.com/#!/davewiner/status/194806183851339778

So far we've had the software created by young minds for the needs of young bodies. And mostly young male minds. If you get what I mean.

The next step is to make software from more depth.

 4/24/2012; 12:15:11 PM.