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Is the holy grail of computer and cognitive science.

Reality? Whose? None, only one.

There are four types of people when it comes to AI.  The majority of people have never heard of the term (think of rural and third world areas where poverty reigns and there is a vast digital divide).  They've never seen books, let alone a computer;  they seldom have running water and electricity;  this is a world that is hidden from most western civilized societies.

Civilized society, on the other hand, may have heard of the concept, perhaps even seen it in a science fiction movie, television series or read about it in a novel, but they think of AI only as an idea, not a reality.

Then there is the computing community.  Within this community are people who know that AI is a reality and can identify its' on-going influence in our society.

Only a few people know how difficult AI really is.  We have barely scratched the surface in knowing and understanding reality and how we accomplish things in that reality.  You can't automate what you don't understand.

Others believe that we can create an AI that will surpass our intelligence, the singularity.  When artificial intelligence exceeds our own.  Where will that lead?

I'm reading a book by Frank Tipler, "The Physics of Immortality," who argues that our only hope to survive forever, is to record as much data about our reality and scattering it throughout the universe. Self-replicating itself from the raw materials available on each planet, moon or asteroid the vonNeuman probes.

In this publishing experiment, author Todd Sattersten compares the process of publishing a book to the process of starting a new company. In both situations, the author (or founder), makes a series of assumptions that guides their efforts to deliver a book (product) that consumers want.  "Every Book Is a Startup" builds upon the work of Eric Ries and Steve Blank, where each proposes building products (books) in a cyclical fashion that allows real customers to give direct feedback. Each cycle is expected to improve the product until it fills a "felt need" of the customer.

The basic comparison between writing/publishing books and startups is that they are both risky endeavors.  Todd successfully completes the analogy and anyone familiar with the world of high-technology startups will recognize the similarities.  Drawing from the lean (agile) programming process, Todd illustrates how using short iterations of writing, publishing, and collecting feedback substantially reduces the risk of the publishing process.  This connection between lean programming and thinking of a book as a startup, has led many to call this new process, "lean publishing."

In this vain, "Every Book Is a Startup" is a work in progress.  Three versions have been published so far. The latest version contains six chapters.  This iterative approach encourages early buyers of the book, and then promises them each update, as the book evolves and matures. Unfortunately, at this stage of the book's progress, it is more theoretical than practical.  Anyone looking for how to implement a lean publishing process will have to wait until Todd fleshes those topics out in future updates.

In general, I love the concept of this book. As an entrepreneur, this approach resonates with me.  I'm especially looking forward to a more complete examination of developing a minimal viable product for books. I think my favorite section of the book is the discussion of how to construct a book pitch. That said, I was disappointed that that the book wasn't more complete.  However, if you lack any startup experience, then I would definitely recommend jumping on this bandwagon early.  I believe that this technique will become more dominant in the future and veteran publishers will definitely benefit from exposing themselves to the entrepreneurial spirit.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my max-strategy theory. Even after watching the livestream of this year's O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, I still think it is valid. However, I do have a confession.

If you follow a max-strategy out to its' ultimate convergence point, it concludes in only one observation. By trying to be everywhere, all the time, you will eventually just clog up all of the user-generated content (UGC) and social media sites with a message so ubiquitous, it will become indistinguishable to spam.

One of the Ignite sessions examined the curious phenomen of @Horse_Ebooks. During the Ignite session, I saw a comment that quickly dismissed Horse Ebooks as a spam account. As an early adopter of technologies and hacking, I've even fallen into that categorization myself.

Who decides what is a spam Twitter account? Unless the account is reported and suspended by Twitter,  I guess spam is in the eye of the recipient.

Conclusion

I think the future of max-strategy will have to be more selective. Instead of a massive blast that blanket carpets every social media and UGC site, it will have to use some variant of sentiment analysis. It will have to choose the locations most likely to receive the marketing message. I'm not the only one who thinks sentiment analysis is an important technology, recently Google announced they were buying the sentiment analysis engine, fflick.

Hallelujah. Can a brother get an "Amen?"

Here's an interview of Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" from this year's O'Reilly Tools of Change For Publishing Conference:



Seems like I've been telling everyone Eric's last point for ever, well at least for the last 18 months. Every publishing company is now in the software business. Every content company, (TV, Music, Movie, Web, etc.) is now in the software business.

I'll go even farther. Any company who wants to know what people think about: them, their products, their ads, their employees,etc. (isn't that every company?) is in the software business. It's all out there.

Remember? Markets are conversations, and they're taking place on the Internet. Therefore, you must mine the Internet for those conversations, determine what the market is saying, and then join the conversation. Every company is a bigdata company. You've got to suck-in as much of the Internet as possible, and spit out information to support decision making.

I'm sorry you see it differently, but the longer you delay making peace with this shift, the lesser your chances are for survival.

Found this little gem in the archive of video generated from this year's Grammy Awards, Social Media Rockstars Highlights:


I found D. Wallach's comments particularly interesting. At about 2:30 he brings up the growing dilemma of the artist in the Social Media Age. He shares his annoyance with: "As a recording artist, being told to promote your music with everything but your music." As any content producer will tell you, blogging, Tweeting, using social media are probably not part of your core competency. Solving this challenge is the key problem for the emerging artist. Do you produce content or do you market?

It has become a paradox. If the artist isn't going to engage with potential customers on social media, then someone has to do it for them. Doing nothing is not an option.

I think one of the reasons Lady Gaga has been so successful on Twitter is because she has been able to incorporate it into her life. It's not an afterthought. Through her mobile phone she shares, interacts, and engages as she lives. I'm sorry  Margaret, but she has become a product. Every aspect of her life is a product, her process, her Twitter stream, her conversation is a product.

Sobering implications of this presentation. Regardless of the accuracy of one slide, the rest of the conclusions here are very believable.



This is a thought provoking video by Marc Goodman, "The Business Of Illegal Data: Innovation From The Criminal Underground."

I think an underlying observation here Marc is suggesting is: "it is difficult to anticipate how anyone (criminal, governemental, or individual) might use the massive amounts of data we generate."

Certainly something to consider more carefully.

- Tough competition from video and music

Been thinking a lot over the holidays. Words are too plentiful and can only generate deep engagement with a small percentage of people. As culture continues to converge, we are surrounded by media much more engaging than words on a screen. With a strong push by an increasingly SMS dependent culture, we are consuming words with shorter and shorter attention spans.

It's really no surprise that micro-blogging has become so successful. With Pinterest, we've reduced micro-blogging to a caption and a title. The photo replaces the text. I pity the fool that is hoping to earn a living writing words for screens, because all signs point to ADD-centric populous.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting the death of words or reading. Technology, especially one that has been with us for over 500 years, never dies. No, the fate authors face is much worse, it's  irrelevance. that's what happens to technology, it becomes irrelevant, that is, unless it has some un-reproducible value. What quality does a book have that will keep it relevant?

Image via Wikipedia

- Huge gap between what people are willing to do and what they are "allowed" to.

With the rate of people joining the Internet growing exponentially, we are way beyond being able to anticipate just what someone is willing to do. Whether it is a transmedia story, an open source project, an alternate reality game, or any other crowd sourced activity. Heck let's add revolution and regime change into the mix, while we're being honest.

Transmedia

Culture convergence forces us to look at all of these people-powered initiatives as being essentially the same challenge. Each becomes a simple problem: How can we tell a consistent story across multiple mediums, that inspires people to care.

The Rub

Unfortunately for content producers the most common currency on the web is attention. For me, I have to tell you, I can't deposit attention into my company's account and spend it to buy the services I need to grow my company. But I digress...

Honestly that would be a nice problem to have, first we have to generate the attention first. For it seems backwards, to think about getting more attention than revenue, when you don't really even have the attention. Heady times indeed!