Quoderat

Today, I explored the bleeding edge of open source and mobile, to see what might be normal in 5+ years.

The open-source Android application Andor’s Trail is a top-down role-playing game, sort of like Colossal Cave or Zork with pictures (for my fellow old-timers). I tried it out on my Nexus 7 tablet and enjoyed it — the story line isn’t finished yet, but over two years, the community has built a strong and engaging game. But that’s not the point of this post (we already know how open source works).

This morning, I was in a coffee shop with just my phone, and decided to do the following:

• Found Andor’s Trail on GitHub
• Cloned it using AIDE (an Android-based IDE)
• Tapped “Open Project”
• Tapped “Run”
• Opened the compiled app

Building open-source apps didn’t used to be this easy. In Linux, you generally install a long list of library dependencies first, then run some kind of configuration, then do a make, figure out what went wrong/is missing, do another make, go on a mailing list to find out what went wrong, download a different version of some of the build tools or libraries, try again, etc. until eventually (maybe a few hours or days later) you raise your arms in triumph and shout that you’ve succeeded in building the app. After that, you’ve earned the right to be smug on mailing lists and tell the noobs to RTFM when they have the same problems you did.

Is this a glimpse at the future of open source? Cloning, building, and installing a dev build (7.1dev) was so easy that a non-developer could do it; on the difficulty scale, I’d say that it’s easier than figuring out how to upload a video or picture to Facebook.

Right now — despite the fact that Android itself is released under the Apache 2.0 license — open source in the mobile world is still in its infancy. We do have the F-Droid app store for Android, stocking only open-source apps. However, what if mobile itself became the predominant open-source development platform, with new types of tools, collaboration, and social cultures? Keep your eyes on this one.

The US government has two major problems right now:

1. Out-of-control debt
2. Bad PR around PRISM

Maybe it’s time to start thinking like a business, and figure out how to turn those liabilities into assets. If PRISM brought real benefit to citizens’ lives, would they look on it more favourably? Would they, perhaps, even be willing to give money to the program?

prism-suggests.gov

With that in mind, I’d like to propose a new, pay-for-use government web site named prism-suggests.gov. The web site will have a natural-language interface where people can ask questions about themselves or their friends and family, and get suggestions back. Here are some examples:

Q: What book should I read next?
PRISM: You bought Infinite Jest three months ago, but I’ve noticed that you always fall asleep when you try to read it on the subway on your way home. Perhaps something lighter, like Fifty Shades of Grey, would be better, especially since you go out of your way to read Facebook comments about it.

Q: What kinds of clothes should I buy Maria for her birthday?
PRISM: Maria’s credit-card and Google-search history suggest that it’s 87.3% likely she has a bladder control problem, so it would be best to buy things that fit loosely around the hips, to leave room for an adult diaper.

Q: Is Phillip going to ask me out on a date?
PRISM: Unless Phillip has been doing a “research project” for the last 3 years, the type of porn he views on his smartphone suggests that yours is not the gender that interests him.

Q: How can I get a promotion at work?
PRISM: Casually mention the phrases “St Lucia,” “offshore investment,” and “IRS” loudly in hearing range of your boss, then come back a week later and ask for the promotion.

If the site charged $5 for each question, imagine how fast the US federal deficit would shrink! And, of course, all those people whining about “privacy rights” and the so-called “Constitution” would be drowned out by billions of satisfied customers.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2013/06/language-borrowing

The Economist wonders why English has borrowed so few new words from China over the past 30 years, despite the country’s rise as a major world economic power. The Hermit Kingdom isn’t a hermit any more — Chinese government and business are everywhere, not only trading money for influence and business opportunities in the developing world, but also buying up American companies in sectors like general aviation.

Unlike the European colonial powers of 150 years ago, however, China does not seem interested in exporting its cultural values; for example, Beijing may donate a fleet of Chinese-made cars to a Latin-American government, but it doesn’t also set up missionary schools to try to teach the country’s elite to speak Mandarin and follow Confusian principles.

Can Chinese language and culture spread on its own, without a deliberate attempt to promote it, the way Europeans once promoted English, Spanish, Dutch, French, or Portuguese language and culture in the Americas, Africa, and Asia?  Would China even want its culture to spread (beyond just cuisine)?

One interesting model is Japan, which has also made little attempt to promote its language outside its borders.  For decades, while Japan rose as a world economic power, little happened.  Then, suddenly, Japanese culture exploded on the rest of the world.  American students, for example, not only eat sushi, but read manga, sleep on futons, and use Japanese terms like “panchira” to classify their pornography. And they’re often prone to take Japanese language classes, despite the complete lack of Japanese-sponsored missionary schools. 

Now, we’re starting to see the same thing happen with South Korean culture.  We might not be borrowing many new Mandarin words into English right now, but will that still be true in 20 years?

(I wrote this in 2011 as a draft and then forgot about it. It still reads OK, so here it is, basically unchanged, and without the extra sections I’d probably originally planned to add.)

Even though big web sites use lots of so-called “enterprise” technology, and big companies and government departments create browser-based applications, there’s still a huge chasm between web developers and enterprise developers.

We’ve been flooded with clichés and stereotypes about both sides — enterprise developers do everything the hard way, web developers don’t understand security and reliability, etc. — but it’s best not to take that too seriously. A lot of my consulting work and personal projects straddle the line between Enterprise and Web, so I’ve had a decade and a half to observe people and processes on both sides.

I’ll post more about this later, but here are two differences that strike me right away:

1. Enterprise does a lot of integration
2. Enterprise doesn’t have many rock stars

«Pure science research drops sharply at National Research Council» (Ottawa Citizen, 2013-05-08)

We’re learning the danger in Canada of having let too many sectors become dependent on federal money. When the arts, NGOs, scientific research, many kinds of R&D business, and even our main national broadcaster all rely on government subsidies or funding, they’re all immediately vulnerable to any ideological shift in the government that doles out their money.

The Liberals created this dependency to ensure that the sectors would reflect their (central-Canadian, urban, moderate left) values in the 1990s, 70s, 60s, and earlier, but in doing so, they’ve handed a powerful weapon to their (western, suburban/rural, moderate right) successors and ideological opponents.

The US system has many problems of its own, but its relatively-independent arts sector — especially film, TV, and music — and the widespread existence of private universities and foundations, ensures that their government can’t entirely turn off the tap for arts, research, or NGO work that it doesn’t like.

How do you declare a conflict of interest in Twitter, when you have only 140 characters for your whole message?