The current technological landscape is obsessed with data. Open data, data API's, walled gardens, data silos, data stores, the semantic web - the list is endless. Gov 2.0 is all about getting access to government data: the US has data.gov, the UK assigned Tim Berners-Lee to kick off data.gov.uk, and similar efforts are underway elsewhere. Data, data, data. Indeed, Tim O'Reilly says the internet OS is a data OS. In reality, all operating systems are data operating systems, and the internet OS is no different.
Data or Process?
So what's wrong? Well, we seem to be confused: we seem to be separating data from the processes which operate on that data. Open data and open software are separate topics right now. Inert data as the next internet frontier is being heralded as a profound observation, and that's a mistake. Sometimes boiling things down so that they're simple and concise shows a superior grasp of both the subject matter and the communication medium. Sometimes it just means you've missed something important.
The processes which operate on data are data. If you look at the bits and bytes of your hard drive, it is impossible to distinguish between Photoshop the application and the Photoshop files. They're just data. Look at it another way - when a developer saves a code file, the code is data to the development environment. And the code for the development environment is data to whatever was used to develop it. Even more philosophically - which came first - data or process? A simple demonstration of how much easier this makes things: transparency in government - we don't just want census 'data' to be made available, we also want the process of census taking to be open. In fact, the latter has significantly greater implications for our ability to participate in the government machine.
From this perspective, the internet OS is just like any other - a magical structure that bootstraps itself from a singularity and delivers a universe of complexity and beauty. How we managed to use the term operating system and forget process is a mystery. We can observe the damage that is caused quite plainly - what would an OS that didn't appreciate process look like? All the applications would be completely different, they would each require separate logins, have different controls, non-standard interfaces, install differently, fail differently, report differently, vary significantly in quality, fail to integrate in most cases, or in ad-hoc manner in a few - we'd have silo's and lack of transparency, lack of trust, poor resource usage, lock-in... what a nightmare! Oh wait... that's the internet - an OS that's way too focussed on a concept of inert data. We are starting to see the open data discussion extend to things like - 'who should maintain this data?', 'how should this data be analysed?', 'what means were used to collect this data?' - Oops! Did we forget something? Time to apply our understanding of how an OS really works. Time to reboot with a new kernel version that better understands process.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlights the emergence of new internet monopolies around points of control. Strangely, they aren't emerging due to clever positioning, supplier agreements, partnerships or high market entry costs. They are emerging because monopoly is the most effective configuration for delivering user benefit. A connective system delivers the greatest convenience and perceived benefit when it is universal. For example, the bigger and more connected the social graph, the more powerful it is. Ubiquity is inevitable. The internet operating system is emerging, not as loosely connected competing components, but as ubiquitous infrastructure.
Our power infrastructure is ubiquitous, our roads, the internet itself - all of them connective systems. There is no competition for the internet - what use would an alternative be? Its unconnected value is too low - no matter how brilliant its engineering. If we look at roads: sure, private companies build roads - but they don’t get to choose what side we drive on, what a stop sign looks like, or what the national speed limit is. The universal nature of the road infrastructure is what drives the incredible competition in the auto industry, and the user benefit is enormous. When such platforms are freely available, we reap the greatest benefit from competition. Ubiquitous infrastructure shouldn’t be what we compete for, but what we compete on. Of course, this doesn't stop companies trying to own the platform, and many succeed in doing so for long periods of time. However, without exception, the greater benefit is derived when the platform is the arena for competition, not the subject of it.
There’s an interesting conclusion to be drawn here - Facebook cannot own the social graph any more than Ford can own the road infrastructure. If Ford could control Toyota's access to the road infrastructure, you would expect a situation similar to that between Google and Facebook. Competition would be severely restricted. Facebook has 'won', but only something that will slip inevitably from its grasp. The social graph must be a platform for competition, not the target of it. Anti-competition litigation seems inevitable.
Facebook losing control of the social graph also highlights the ethereal and necessary companion of ubiquitous infrastructure - benevolent governance. Who should administer the social graph for the good of all? It's not something you're likely to get from a corporate monopoly, but something that is going to become increasingly necessary. Terry Jones observes the following when responding to Tim O’Reilly's question ‘Where is the Web 2.0 address book?’:
‘Relief does not lie in the direction of more applications behind more API’s. It lies instead in allowing related data to co-exist in the same place.’
A call for ubiquitous infrastructure, and the question of governance arises in the article's first comment -
‘But who owns and runs the central datastore? Why should they be trusted? Who foots the bill and how?’
A common shared database would make our lives easier - one might argue, in fact, that the social graph is simply a subset of this.
What we are seeing here is the emergence of new components that belong in the fabric of the web - things that should join HTTP and DNS and perhaps learn lessons from their governance. The social graph and the common database are just the beginning - we are witnessing the formation of the internet operating system - not as a loosely connected set of competing technologies (for that is just the chaotic state prior to equilibrium), but as an emergent, ubiquitous internet infrastructure upon which real competition can thrive. This is not a process that ends - new candidates for inclusion will appear continuously, and it may be the case that the natural emergence of monopolies highlights these candidates for us. The sooner this infrastructure is delivered as an open and level playing field, the sooner we will reap the true rewards of competition in this new age of connectivity.
We've been building a globalbrain for a good while now. From the moment we could grunt at each other, from the moment we could connect the global brain's neurons, we have been looking for ways of increasing and improving those connections. We consume connective opportunity like voracious beasts: cave art, semaphore, music, literature, mail, carrier pigeons, morse code, telegraph, telephone, internet. And now, we are all connected. This is the reality we face: we have formed the largest possible global brain, and strange things are afoot. No longer does it get better by getting bigger. Now it must get better by getting smarter, by getting wiser.
Perhaps if we knew what we were trying to achieve - why we consume connectivity like a junkie consumes heroin - we might be able to help, or hinder, depending on our determination. What is the goal of a brain? Perhaps it is as mundane as maximising the survival chances of the host organism. Perhaps not. One thing is clear: the most awe inspiring elements of our humanity transcend the function of a single human brain. Culture. Morality. Knowledge. Each of these somewhat indistinguishable from the other, a constantly evolving result of endless feedback and filtering over time. What we hold today in our minds is a refinement of that which was held in countless minds before us - minds that have long since turned to dust. Each of us a unique component of a collective that delivers something far greater than the sum of the parts. Perhaps we consume connectivity because we know this inherently: that each connection delivers more than the sum of the end points, and more connections delivers more than the sum of those connections.
Unlike our brains, the global brain transcends time, at least as we know it. The cells of 100 years ago aren't present today, yet there are more cells than ever before, each shaped by those that came before. Perhaps this is why we consume connectivity with so much passion: immortality. The insignificant speck of our existence has meaning in the immortal knowledge of the global brain. What drives us is exactly what the global brain needs. Or is it the other way round?
A human, we are told, will have the greatest number of brain cells at age 3. After that, they die faster than they are created. With human population growth clearly still skyrocketing, perhaps we could say the global brain, in human terms is less than 3 years old. This may not be a silly as it sounds - when we look at the nature of our global brain, the page does seem blank: the connections transient, firing off half-cocked; barely recognising right from wrong; trying to understand the nature of the environment in which they exist; trying to undertand their own nature - trying to build an operating system. Revelation is the norm, and certainty non-existent. Surely Farmville is not the pinacle of global neurological evolution. There is no doubt that as youths, there is the external perception of a blank page, that we could be anything. Yet, as time goes on, the story is written, and the possibilities diminish. Our global brain is a young, unformed child - yet, for the first time, fully connected. What will be its story? It might be said that our global brain has reached a stage where it needs to start using its wiring more effectively, and unless we plan to switch off the internet, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to give it a hand, to deliver a few revelations, a few Eureka moments that will stand it in good stead for the future.
Easier said than done. Perhaps we can start by asking whether our global brain is the only one around. Are we the constituents of a one-off freak? Where should we look for others? Cats? Dogs? Mice? Trees? Dolphins, whales, cephalopods? Maybe all of those places, but let's take whales and dolphins. Perhaps they have a sonar internet - a distributed, wireless communication system. Cool stuff, but different to ours - it's not directed - dedicated links to specific individuals over long distances are not possible. It's a broadcast system, and anyone can listen in. They've had theirs for much longer than us, and seem to be pretty settled as far technological advancement goes. Perhaps their global brain is more mature. We can look elsewhere: how about about birds or fish? They're all pretty bizarre, but there's no doubt ours is uniquely human.
The next thing to consider: what's the point? What does our global brain want to be when it grows up? At this age? Probably a fireman, a doctor, or a ballerina. Certainly not a mechanical engineer, abstract sculptor or neurosurgeon. It's young: looking for some support, some guidance, some nurturing. Sadly, our brain is on its own - it must look to itself for guidance. That's us. And if we are to fill this role, then, as always, we must find the balance between authority, and freedom for the brain to experiment and forge its own path, to make its own mistakes. Man that's weird - a brain being brought up by its own cells. Which are themselves brains. Stranger things there may be, but I wouldn't bet on it.
So then, let's take a stab at it. The global brain is designed for the creation, filtering and preservation of knowledge. The end-goal no clearer than our own. We know how to create, and we know how to preserve - do we know how to filter? What passes through, what is rejected, what is distilled, and to what end?
The strangest thing is that the filter itself is constructed entirely from that which it preserves - the filter for knowledge is knowledge. An endless feedback loop - its job: to build a better filter. We don't know why - we just know how to apply the filter. The brain seeks enlightenment; perfect knowledge; truth. It has no idea what that actually means, for it seeks not only the answer, but also the question. Luckily we have an apparatus designed to solve the problem - a global brain. As Sherlock Holmes said - '...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' The perfect filter delivers perfect knowledge, but when the filter itself is knowledge, how do you get the perfect filter? Very zen.
To this point we have seen us humans as neurons in the global brain, zealously forming connections with each other - some weak, some strong, always changing. When looking at our own brains, we have discovered the existence of neural ensembles - collections of neurons which work together:
Neuronal ensembles encode information in a way somewhat similar to the principle of Wikipedia operation - multiple edits by many participants. Neuroscientists have discovered that individual neurons are very noisy. For example, by examining the activity of only a single neuron in the visual cortex, it is very difficult to reconstruct the visual scene that the owner of the brain is looking at. Like a single Wikipedia participant, an individual neuron does not 'know' everything and is likely to make mistakes. This problem is solved by the brain having billions of neurons. Information processing by the brain is population processing, and it is also distributed - in many cases each neuron knows a little bit about everything, and the more neurons participate in a job, the more precise the information encoding. In the distributed processing scheme, individual neurons may exhibit neuronal noise, but the population as a whole averages this noise out.
An alternative to the ensemble hypothesis is the theory that there exist highly specialized neurons that serve as the mechanism of neuronal encoding. In the visual system, such cells are often referred to as grandmother cells because they would respond in very specific circumstances--such as when a person gazes at a photo of their grandmother. Neuroscientists have indeed found that some neurons provide better information than the others, and a population of such expert neurons has an improved signal to noise ratio. However, the basic principle of ensemble encoding holds: large neuronal populations do better than single neurons. [Wikpedia]
As neurons in the global brain, it would seem that our myriad social groups fill such a role - indeed, the aptness of the analogy is a little disconcerting. We form groups to improve the signal to noise ratio, and groups of experts do an even better job. Here we see another reason why we are so ardent in our connective consumption: improving the quality of the filtering process. From this we might deduce that the filter of our global brain is in fact a mass of more specific filters acting together to deliver the whole. At the finest detail, an individual neuron is a filter, and at the coarsest the entire connected mass is a filter. A brain is a fractal knowledge filter.
Better groups is a better filter, and a better filter is a better brain. If we look at our presence online, we see a huge number of groups of all shapes and sizes, constantly strengthening and weakening their connections. It seems that if we want to help out our global brain, then improving its capacity to form groups of neurons to achieve specific goals would be high on our list, and if we could organise those groups such that they consisted of experts, the results would be significantly better. If we could organise those groups such that they worked in concert, then we're heading for the jackpot. No wonder that stack overflow works so well, and no wonder those guys are developing a process for replicating that success. The global brain likes. There's something else happening here: most of these neurons - us humans - belong to many groups, and in many cases are specialists in multiple fields and groups. In fact, we're pretty free to espouse our expertise wherever we see fit.
So the global brain is a knowledge management machine endlessly filtering its own output to produce a better process for endlessly filtering its own output. Etcetera. If we want to improve the wiring of the global brain, then we need to facilitate better groups. Which is, of course, what we have been doing since we first grunted at the next guy.
