Today I have decided to go full force in publicity with my digital identity and the sites I build.

Previously, I thought that the power of the web is in its anonymity. That people are willing to reveal secrets, leave genuine remarks, etc, when they can do so anonymously. Yet we now see that trust building is far more important for lasting legacy. How many long-term digital valuables are anonymous? We build forums that requires identity to gain higher access rights, and respond to personalities that clearly say who they are. When there is no need to hide something, display it will claim a digital identity territory.

Just see how many successful sites are build on anonymity? They may allow anonymity, and benefit from commerce with them. But ultimately that is not the point.

Conversely, when I see that a website belongs to certain individual, with clear vision, I feel a sense of trust, less risk, and a certainty that I can build a trusting online partnership with those sites. e.g. If I use a site that is associated with a clear individual. Then even if that site goes down, I feel I can contact the individual to regain access to the digital goods that I have built on that site.

Previously, I have the common fear that a public site can attract unnecessary and unwanted attention. Yet with GMail, the fear of spamming is no longer an issue. In fact, spammers who send to gmail will likely decrease their effectiveness, since they are dealing with a top player in the antispam camp.

Regarding to publicizing the fact that I own the various public sites that I am building, instead of worrying about people not happy with the fact that I own a public site, (which they would even if I don't publicize this fact), now they will know that it is in good hands, with good intention. Besides, it will spread only by friends. So a growth via trust is required.

Now that weblogs are allowing us to see what the entire planet is thinking about, sort of like the ability of able to read everyone's diary and notebooks, what can we do with it beyond advertising, marketing, and commercialization?

The fact that I am hearing the honest voices of fellow Christians and their true struggles, that I am able to know the preferences, what can we do with it?

Pray for various things? Offer more genuine relationships? Actively help develop people?

What would I do in the last century if I had semi-omniscience?

Just as being in America means that you should be doing ventures and businesses (else why waste space within a capitalistic society?), being part of the Internet era means that people building social communities have an edge.

Personal information management can be done by the PC alone. But social interactions requires a web. So the existence of the Internet will all of a sudden give the social planners an edge!!!

With the intention of giving human the appropriate levels of activity, I should not be building websites that are purely information/content portals, but instead networks of socially constructed collaborative sites.

Various patterns all related to Mark Newman's ideas of social networks: in particular, valuation of node as how many geodesics go through it.

• Reaal estate of intersections between streets or between highways: because many people travel through it.
• Multilevel marketing: have lots of people below your node, meaning they all work for you.
• Job networking: know lots of people.

Traditional networking theory assume that if you know a lot of people, (having many nearest neighbors, or neighbor to important neighbors), then you have lots of value.

Newman's ideas have the following implication: purpose-driven geodesics measure node value.
Take value of a store at an intersection: By itself the intersection have no value. Yet if we think about all the activities that I perform in a year, such as going to work, to store, to school, ... How many times will I pass that intersection? The various activities define various purpose. Each purpose lays out a geodesic for my travel to the corresponding destinations associated with each purpose. The geodesic are the most probably path that I would take (say statistically 80%, with exceptions due to conflicts, emergencies, etc.) So the number of paths passing through the intersection is the value from me. Sum it up for everyone in society would result in the value of the intersection as measurement of the number of opportunities offer to people. One can also easily measure the final amount by simply looking at the amount of traffic going through the intersection. But precisely because people take this latter method, they neglected the implication of how the value come about from each individual.
Now the advent of say a search engine Google would reduce the value of that intersection greatly. With respect to the activity "Shopping", traveling to the intersection demands a long time, thus tremendously cut down in probability given the finite amount of time that I can offer. Instead, Google reduces the geodesic between me and the product: a few clicks to search, compare, decide, and buy. So now Google becomes a much more valuable node, because it sits between me and many many financial transactions.
This simply illustrates the idea that as we build social networks to increase our own "importance" or "social relevant asset", we need to have a purpose-driven/activity-centered strategy in mind. Otherwise, we are simply building a network of lots of people, but not really adding any value.
Of course, traditional networkers are implicitly doing this, as they seek out to network with influential people, because that effectively associate them with all the important activities related to these influential people (by definition, doing socially relevant activities).

Marshall Brain's essay caused me to think deeply about the societal effects as the technological advancements slowly displace various laborers from their earning of a livelihood. Society is slowly moving toward the extremes, where a few who controls the easily replicable automata, (whether robots, software, ...) such as the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford of last century, or Bill Gates of this century, will accumulate most of society's asset, and leaving the crumbs for the rest of society to fight over.
The joblessness of people who cannot effectively turn their labor into jobs will negatively feedback on itself, leaving more supply and hence lowering of their cost. The rich and powerful will continue to increase in their vantage position to leverage more social power over the rest.
Most people are short-sighted, caring only about what will provide for next month's rent or food, and not easily focus onto the long term effects. For example, most of the brain power of this century goes into tech sectors, to make a few fast bucks and own an expensive home in Westchester or near Silicon Valley. But they neglect that they are building the path to destruction for their offsprings, who will face the consequences of a society that does not demand most of the labors offerable by human, but prefer instead the automated nation.
To prepare for the future, one cannot compete on the same grounds with the automata. Physical strength will not do. People has to focus on areas that they have a clear advantage: mind, heart, soul. That means teaching, caring for other people, relating in human emotions and aesthetics, in arts and music. Not in the reproducible arena where, say, a music CD would replace the need for a singer, but in the areas of needs within the activities of human community - teaching, living together, pursue of artistic expressions, ... But will this all be enough to generate enough salary for everyone to create sufficient livelihood?
Schumpeter may argue that technological innovation will pump more into a society. But the faults of capitalism cannot indefinitely defend itself. Innovation can only delay the inevitable. Soon we will see the collapse of capitalism to some degree, forcing innovation in ideas to delay the collapse further, as everyone has selfish motive to prolong the decay. But this will not last.
With an imminant collapse, where society's asset distribution would be negated to force a redistribution, people will have to go back to step 1: what is the purpose of human living? Answer will always be back to the Bible. We will have to embrace the eternal values: to live on the land, to raise and teach the next generation to fear the Lord, and love our neighbors.

Potentially a good Slashdot discussion:
Why is IT a potentially self-limiting practice

In most other sectors, their activities tend to simply accumulate wealth, or set up entry barriers in the name of quality and professionalism, that keeps the goods or services limited, and hence the demand for them.
For IT, the technology allows higher speed connection, improve information, thus lower the cost of the IT components, certainly driving the wages down, enable everyone to learn it, and make it a commodity rather than a highly esteem priesthood.
So in contrast to doctors or lawyers who are safe behind their professional bars, IT are helping their own demise by creating the tools that lead to their downfall. At the end, IT as an enterprise, and most likely owned by a few individuals, will be expanded, but the individuals who help to build the empire will fade.

PS: I found an article How IT Has Outsourced Itself - Computerworld via Slashdot->YahooHotJobs which is similar to my view of the Tech field.

The only free article for guest in Ink "The Well": Inkwell.vue interview Art Kleiner: Who Really Matters?

The concept of The Core Group to understand how organizations behave is extremely insightful. It explains why starting your own company is great, and why everyone in a well-designed organization feels passion (as with NHF - because everyone matters, and everyone is part of the Core Group).

TLC :: Hackers' Hall of Fame History of the early hackers confirm once again the analogy that yesterday's internet was the telephone system. So we have much to learn about this earlier era, to gain prediction power of what to come for the internet.

Corrolary is that IT profession now is analogous to EE grads of yesteryears working on the communication system.

Separately, my hope to build a city can more easily be realized in cyberspace: help to build online communities.

Now a deleted blog, this could be a website, with the following purpose:

Teaching our young children specific skills is easy. The challenge is to communicate to our teenagers and youths about deeper issues in life, such as judgement and decision making, personal goals, career, jobs, aspirations, personality, dating, sex, etc.

This site fosters a collaboration among interested parents to discuss and present life lessons and wisdoms to our youth generation, teenagers, or anyone who would not otherwise listen directly to their own parents, but would perhaps pay attention to this site. So write as if you would to a teenager, or to the parent of a teenager.

While this site presents refined results, and allows limited amount of interaction via comment and tagboard, we hope to foster greater and indepth discussion using Bulletin Boards.

Free as in Freedom: FAIFzilla.org features itself as an open-source book of Richard Stallman's biography.

While reading the first chapter, that Stallman senses the repression of the corporate world to control individual creativity and freedom, and lead toward the revolution that later follows, I see the echo of my own life, of sensing the current oppressive society, where the system itself forces more and more people to the current state of double career families and difficulties in raising children. In fact, this is not anyone's fault, not some rich person. Everybody is trapped within the current system.

The society needs a revolution, perhaps not explicitly, but definitely one that is economic in nature, to change the current oppression, and lead to a system where people are free to pursuit some genuine happiness. Perhaps this requires new lines of work and job opportunities. Perhaps the internet can help. I should look into various books of this topic.