barton's aggregated blog

Patent Awarded for Speech-Enabled Interactive Translation System

barton@netspheres.net — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:00:00 GMT

I am proud to announce that a patent has been awarded for my work on the development of a novel interactive translation system for Berkeley-based startup Spoken Translation, Inc. It was a great pleasure to work on this system and quite rewarding to see that this work has now been formalized in this fashion.

Employee Engagement - not just for breakfast anymore

barton@netspheres.net — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:00:00 GMT

At Luminous we have known for a long time is that employee engagement increases the success of any collaborative business system. We are known by our clients and peers for putting people before computers and for this reason, we always include ethnographic interview, participatory design, and the development measurable and meaningful metrics as services included with any system we build for a customer. It so happens that these services increase employee engagement and we have observed a net positive effect on the organizations we work with.

That's why we are so pleased to see more research being published that confirms what we've known for some time. For example, the paper Engaging for Success: enhancing performance through employee engagement, published in July 2008 and presented to HM Government at the request of the UK Secretary of State takes an in depth look at employee engagement and correlates it with many other critical business outcomes: increased profitability, performance, innovation, all of which are highly prized achievements for any organization.

We submit that if the manner in which the workforce performs is a primary determinant of whether companies or organizations succeed, then whether or not the workforce is positively encouraged to perform at its best should be a fundamental consideration for every leader and manager, and be placed at the core of business strategy.

Another example, The Meaning of Employee Engagement by William Macey and Benjamin Schneider and published in Industrial and Organizational Psychology in 2008 attempts to ascribe the notion of employee engagement with a greater degree of scientific rigor.

We see an impending mainstreaming of employee engagement on the horizon and believe that it will become a centerpiece of strategy for an increasing number of organizations who realize that in the current business climate, only those companies who realize that the quality of service we aspire to – organizations and individuals alike – will only be achieved by placing the enthusiasm, commitment and knowledge of people at the core of business strategies.

Luminous are pleased to offer their proven engagement services as part of our broad range of services.

Barton Friedland interviewed at Webinale / Presentation for Download

barton@netspheres.net — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:00:00 GMT

For those of you who were not able to attend Berlin's Webinale conference or my presentation there entitled "Bringing Web 2.0 Inside: Dynamic Capabilities multiplied", you read an interview about my presentation here: http://bit.ly/hqU0r.

A copy of the slides are available here: http://bit.ly/4HoXA.

Software I am excited about

barton@netspheres.net — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:00:00 GMT

Microsoft recently released for download beta 1 of Visual Studio Team System 2010 and .NET 4.0. There are many new features and lots of improvements, and I have only just started to explore. Many of the capabilities, however useful, are not usable since this is a beta product and will not be RTM for several months. However, there are a couple of gems I've already uncovered that are available for Visual Studio 2008 - so you don't have to wait to use them.

The first is PEX. It is smart analyzer for your methods that generates parameters and will generate unit tests for your code based on that analysis. This tool will really help developers write more useful unit tests quickly. The second is Contracts, an extension to the .NET framework that provides pre-conditions, post-conditions, and object invariants (if you have worked with Eiffel, the "design by contract" approach will be familiar). Contracts extends both static and runtime checking capabilities in very powerful ways that help programmers ensure that the code they write is used as intended.

There is theme emerging here in this wave of technology from Microsoft. .NET has matured now to the state where it is taking on aspects of almost every known language (in .NET 4.0 there is a LISP-like functional language called F# and the DynamicLanguageRuntime is enabling languages like Python to be supported). .NET continues to be a convergence point that takes the best qualities of languages and aligns them to the capabilities of the underlying framework and tooling found in the Visual Studio IDE and Team Foundation Server.

Then there is Google's Waves, the application that redesigns and leverages what we've learned about email, instant messaging, and collaboration in the last 20-odd years and presents a single integrated application that adjusts how messages are delivered based on the contexts of the users involved.

The only other technology innovation that is catching my interest is Stephen Wolfram's new web-based Mathematica-cum-Natural language query engine. WolframAlpha is definitely a new kind of application and I see a bright future for it.

There certainly is no shortage of interesting and helpful new ideas out there, and all of this makes me feel very positive about where we can go from here.

Speaking at Webinale in Berlin on May 27th - Bringing Web 2.0 Inside: Dynamic Capabilities multiplied

barton@netspheres.net — Sun, 10 May 2009 08:00:00 GMT

I am very happy to announce that I have been invited to speak at Webinale, the holistic web conference exploring aspects of business, design, and development for the future of the web in Berlin on May 27th.

This conference is the perfect venue to speak about my most recent research work that addresses the question of the relationship between web 2.0 technologies and the development of dynamic capabilities in the organization.

For some time now, I have been researching the convergence of a number of disciplines on to a central topic of emergence. For example, despite being in very different disciplines, Henry Mintzberg, Ricardo Semler, Margaret Wheatley, Rich Gold, and Kent Beck are all looking at the same issues of emergence, self-organization, transparency, and sustainable growth. Our interest at Luminous is to look at how various disciplines, ranging from management science, computational science, psychology, behavioral sciences, anthropology, and others can inform the design of systems that work better and make people more productive.

For more about my upcoming session at Webinale, click here.

Valentine Lyrics

barton@netspheres.net — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:00:00 GMT

A lot of people have written me and asked for the lyrics to valentine - here they are:

valentine
music and lyrics by barton
©1996 .netspheres. all rights reserved.
published by .netspheres music / PRS

morning comes along and i hear this song on a lonely street
a frozen moment of emptiness where we used to meet
glimmers of your love like rainbows from above are falling to the ground

i try to hold it back
my voice i hear it crack
can you hear me calling?

and will i see your face again?
you see the state i'm in
i cannot hide the pain i'm in,
can you understand?

and so the rain it turns to sky
rivers from my eyes
i pray that you'll come back one day
i hope and pray that...

and now the love is gone
how will i carry on?
and now the love is gone

day turns into night and i've lost the light to guide my way
nothing can become when belief is gone - the decayed remains
i stared into the sky it seems that love has died, is darkness all that matters?

try to hold it back
my voice i hear it crack
can you hear me calling?

and will i see your face again?
you see the state i'm in
i cannot hide the pain i'm in,
can you understand?

and so the rain it turns to sky
rivers from my eyes
i pray that you'll come back one day
i hope and pray that...

and now the love is gone
how will i carry on?
and now the love is gone

FORMATIVELY yours

barton@netspheres.net — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:00:00 GMT

I'm very happy to announce that FORMATIVE, my ninth solo release and first full-length album, is available on CD. The digital release is imminent, but for those of you who like jewel cases, album art, and liner notes, this is the format for you.

FORMATIVE is a collection of songs I wrote and completed before the release of TONIGHT in 2004. An excerpt from the liner notes say it best:

The recording artists that have moved me the most over the years are those who are somehow able to write and produce songs that, regardless of when they are played, don't sound dated and continue to reflect something consistent about the artist. As long as I can remember, I have held my work as a singer, songwriter, and producer to that standard.

When I recorded these songs, between 1994 and 2002, I was still very unsure of my music, probably due to years of insecurities and because I did not immediately attract world attention nor did I have the experience of having a flurry of A&R people try to sign me to their labels. Yet since the release of later material I have written and produced, starting with TONIGHT in 2004, I've come to see, often through the comments of others, that many of these early, formative songs, stand as a historical record that when I am moved to write and produce music, something timeless does happen.

In this blog post, I wanted to go through the songs that I selected for this, my first real full-length album release and share with you a little bit about each one.

Funny (How Things Change): This is the only real cover I’ve ever done that I am in any way satisfied with, because I was able to take the song and reinterpret it in a way that is completely my own. The song is a D-Influence track from their groundbreaking 1992 album Good For We. My across-the street-neighbor at the time, Marts Andrups, who had always helped me with my musical aspirations, played the song for me in April of 1995 suggesting I go in this direction. I remember the moment I heard the song I got goosebumps because the lyrics told a story about a truth of life experience. My reinterpretation of the song took it in a very different direction from the original, but to me, this was what the song was always about - the way that things change and our memory is what we hold on to as a token of what whe experienced. Marts died on my birthday that year, so this song was always, for me, a testament to my memory of him, of his wonderful spirit.

Taker: This song is interesting - I finished it in 2001 and wrote it out of an experience I had with a friend who I felt betrayed me. I had not written anything for a couple of years, and this is the first thing that came out. The song is also notable in that I started to experiment with a more BARTON-recognizable vocal style with the wall of my background vocals framing the lead. There is a lot of power in this song, and while it was partially an expression of frustration and anger, more importantly, it speaks to a notion of universal justice that I see all around me in my own experience.

Valentine: I love this song. It was the first time I ever sat down and consciously tried to write a pop song. It is from the 1995 period, and the inimitable Kathy Sledge was kind enough to do the vocals on it, which was an amazing experience for me. I remember when she came in and recorded her vocals; I could not believe how perfect everything sounded on the first take. Every time. Seeing talent like that gives one something to shoot for. Valentine is about love regretting its loss. As I am with most themes, even when I write about something sad or tragic, I always try to see the bright side, so the chorus ends up happy, with the line “…and so the rain, it turns to sky”, always hoping for a positive outcome and looking toward the future.

Waiting: A simple song, also from the 1995 period, written as a musical mobius strip that expresses a sense of longing and isolation, two of my most endearing qualities. Imagery was stressed here in the lyrics of the verses, but despite my attempts at abstraction, I still come through, revealing myself once again.

Time To Go: Part of the 1995 group, this song was another exploration in feelings I had inside myself. More prophecy than I realized at the time, having written the song when I was happily in a relationship, I remember walking to the airport after having broken up in a strange and sudden sort of way, and was listening to music. This song came on. At the time it made me very sad to be writing my own soundtrack, and a sad one at that, so I vowed not to write sad songs any more in the vain hope that this would keep anything bad from ever happening to me again. Since then, I've heard other songwriters I admire, like Neil Young, acknowledges that songs he has written become “show tune(s) for my movie”, where the movie is his life. I guess it's just part of the playing field when you write songs about your feelings.

Presence: Another in the 1995 group, this was written about a former boyfriend I had that died. Despite the sober subject, it’s not a sad song, focusing instead on the way that people in life impress themselves on you indelibly. My dear friend Felix Howard sang background vocals on this track and I really enjoyed having him be part of this song. It came out very rich, and I especially like the strings that refer to a more classical genre.

Laura: This was a birthday present to my sister on her birthday of 1996. I sang it at her party and messed up the lyrics. Despite this, I still like the song. It talks about possibilities, how we really can be what we want, and how the choices and changes in our lives are the pivot points where our dreams can become real.

Intention (Micky Mix): This was one of the first songs I wrote - co-wrote actually - with Mark White - who was really a significant part of my growth as a technical musician who used synthesizers. I still use an Roland MKS-80 because Mark had one and I love the bass sounds it makes. The song is what the title says it is about. The mix was done by a friend, Micky, in Ladbroke Grove, who I have long lost touch with. The background vocals were done by a session musician named Maxine Gilmore.

Catch Me: This was written in 2001 and I wrote and recorded the whole thing in one sitting. The song was written for my former partner Bruce because he always did everything he possibly could to take care of me and make me feel protected. This is a song I wrote to acknowledge that care.

Love Once Shared: This is another very early track, from the 1995 series. The song is very young, and overdramatic even for my taste, but listening to the song now, there is an earnestness and honesty in the lyrics that is inescapably compelling.

Intention (3AM Mix): This is another mix of intention where I co-produced the mix with Micky. I like this mix a lot.

Valentine (Harvey’s 12” Mix): Closing the circle here, when I was friends with Marts, he had a record company named Narcotic. Heidi Lawden was his assistant, and am amazing talent in her own right. Heidi was managing DJ Harvey at the time and we produced this track at a ”proper” studio. Rollo was in the studio at the same time, and I was completely intimidated, but the mix, 12-13 years later, still holds its own. Harvey and I wanted to style the mix as a “sleaze” track, and I think we hit the mark.

Where We Are Headed

barton@netspheres.net — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT

I have been thinking a lot recently about some of the phenomena that are described and associated with Web 2.0 technologies and the economic forces behind them. In her book “Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide”, Amy Shuen does a great job surveying various features and capabilities found in Web 2.0 companies as well as explaining how these are driven from an economic perspective, sometimes in ways that are essentially redefining economics, or at least permanently changing the landscape.

For example, she discusses how financial analysts calculate the value of Web 2.0 companies using different kinds of metrics than than non-Web 2.0 companies. She explains that financial valuations of Web 2.0 companies are no longer calculated based on earnings multiples but on new models that were originally designed for subscription-based businesses such as cable or cell phone services where revenues are tied to customer fees rather than unit prices. This makes sense, as Web 2.0 companies generally don’t sell products that they make but instead attract customer bases that in many cases do pay subscription fees.

But for most people, there is a general myopia about the origin and nature of the underlying phenomena that are emerging from and being attributed to Web 2.0 companies. That is to say, when ideas become successful, people who are experiencing for the first time naturally associate those ideas with the entities those forces came to their awareness with. But in fact the ideas emerging now and experiencing success are not new in the same way that touch screens and multi-modal interfaces existed before the iPhone became popular or, reaching back a bit but staying within the same theme, Apple did not invent the user interface. There is a often a significant difference between popularizing something and inventing it, and that difference can have the effect of delaying the actualization of the capabilities its inventor(s) intended.

Vanevar Bush’s 1945 “As We May Think” is a canonical vision for the machine that helps us think. Ivan Sutherland’s 1959 thesis entitled “Sketchpad” presented the world’s first graphical user interface did so with the aim of “man and computer to converse rapidly”. In the late 1960’s, when Douglas Englebart had demonstrated the first use of a computer mouse and fully interactive computer interface, it was his research goal to utilize computers to augment human intellect.

Yet ironically, despite these initial visions for the utility such machines would provide, the mass commercialization of computational technology has not, to date, gone in the general direction of stimulating or inspiring people to think better than they did before. In fact, in many cases, as technologies have made it easier to to more things, such as publish typographical documents, make music, or create images, an unfortunate side effect of this additional capability is that people who do not understand typography have created ugly documents, some very poorly crafted music has been created, and, thanks to digital cameras and video, we easily find all sorts of poor quality images.

We now live in a world interacting with people and things, with many of those things being machines that we built and (which some of us) designed to help us perform tasks ever more efficiently and easily, or perhaps to entertain us, or perhaps to help us, as in the case with Web 2.0, leverage our collective and individual intelligence in more powerful ways. But Web 2.0, as well as all of the other technologies that we have designed and built, are not in themselves the source of the changes that we see, but rather one of the means through which the forces of continual improvement are made manifest in the world.

As Amy Shuen explains the value of “leapfrog links” or “multiple network effects” or even the simple value of networks through Reed’s law, it occurs to me that she is describing phenomena of innovation within the frame of Web 2.0 that are essentially grounded in culture. What is particularly interesting about the Web 2.0 technologies to me, especially from the computer science perspective, is that Web 2.0 seems to be the era of the emergence of user and especially community-centric algorithms. Whereas former glory went to the likes of Donald Knuth and his detailed cataloging of all sorts of useful algorithms for sorting and such, our emergence into a high-performance world of distributed computing has not invented a new era of credit card processing systems but instead is reinventing the way we relate to each other as people.

So, while it may have taken awhile, the ideas about augmenting human intellect are appearing in some high-profile places, many of which have nothing to do with Web 2.0. We see it more and more everywhere, from president-elect Obama’s “seat at the table” memo to the recent front-page article of Fast Company describing Cisco’s sweeping organizational changes that emphasize a shift from “me” to “we”. No more do we read ad infinitum about the problems of “information overload” but rather we find headlines like “User Interfaces Rapidly Adjusting to Information Overload”.

For me, the underlying question to ask is not how to we maximize those forces, but rather, in what directions do we see those forces moving in and what new forms do we see taking shape as a result of the changes now in process. This question forces me to consider many possibilities and outcomes and begin to build mental models that describe those forces and the ways I see them interact with one another, with us, and with the world.

I am only beginning to explore what this looks like, but if I were to try to summarize it, we are witnessing both a shift and a convergence. The shift is from man-machine interaction to man-machine-man-community interaction, and as Amy Shuen will tell you, the multiple network effects have an accelerating effect on the benefits of such a system, like a sort of implicit positive reinforcement. The convergence is interdisciplinary, where, for example, many of the ideas embodied in movements like Agile software development such as transparency, adaptability, quality, iterative and continual improvement are now converging with ideas that have been developing in parallel in other domains such as business management in Mintzberg’s notion of emergent strategy, Prahalad and Hamel’s core competencies and Teece, Pisano, and Shuen’s own dynamic capabilities.

It is an exciting, dangerous time, full of possibility and extremes. But perhaps Mintzberg is on to something when he asserts that we are moving toward a “balanced society”. We have the tools in hand and are in the process of forming them into the kinds of tools they need to be to do the job of reshaping our society. Thus, it appears that the ideas of those who invented the technologies we use are actually beginning to take hold in our society. It remains an open question as to whether the world will collectively augment its intellect or how that should be measured. The next-generation tools to take these steps are at the beginning stages of standardization as we see mass adoption of systems like Flickr, Facebook, and other Web 2.0 companies, but the ability to innovate itself remains in my mind primarily a cultural activity.

As I Sit Here Floating Gently in the Sky

barton@netspheres.net — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT

This is genre of blog entry I rarely indulge in: the revealing disclosure. But I have been silent for more than a year on this blog, and some explanation is in order.

As I sit here floating gently in the sky, just making landfall to North America, my fingers are “itchy” to type these words. I have not felt this in a long while and have been waiting for this feeling for a long time.

I am flying back to San Francisco from Berlin, watching the longest sunset one can possibly imagine, one that reeks of California even from here on the Northeastern tip of Canada. The flame red hue banding the edge of the hemisphere I now speed toward, speckled with cloud, dotted with overtones of purple and yellow, diffuses into an innocuous baby blue. And it is getting lighter, as if morning is coming, though I know I am merely crossing the wake of coming nightfall.

I am happy, and happier than I can recall having been in recent memory. Optimistic always, but truly satisfied and happy is not something I have been able to attest to. And while I started off writing this entry with the idea that I wanted to share some of my observations about the German language that I am just beginning to gain a functional understanding of (and I will get to this), it is time to give an update on what is happening with my music, which, as you may or may not realize, is a result of what is happening with me.

I have been in what I would call a “musical hibernation” for little more than a year now. Through this time of gestation, I’ve come to understand that I am one for whom there is little separation between who I am and what I do. I am chameleon-like and can appear to be many things, but above all else I am about making dreams that are meaningful, both to those I care about and myself, come true, through feelings, ideas, communication, and action.

While I have been dormant, I have focused instead on other aspects of my life; my strategy and technology consulting practice, Luminous Group, and research into how to bring an interdisciplinary approach to the explore the relationship between strategy, organization, and process, all of which has been fruitful.

This hinter time began with some revelations, or rather, admissions. I realized that I had been deluding myself, and in the process, others, about what was possible regarding my relationship with Charlie Rogers. Charlie was a catalyst for many things in my life in many ways. But it became apparent to me slowly over five years we shared a close relationship that there were some fundamental incompatibilities and patterns of interaction that served neither of us beyond the initial catalytic stage, and I was just too stubborn to admit it.

Sometimes dreams die, and for my former domestic partner Bruce and I, this was October, 2007. This was the time at which I chose to end my relationship with Charlie was also the point I chose to end my relationship with Bruce. I’m still often haunted by that choice, because despite the fact that I know in my heart that the relationship was not right, I still feel a deep connection to Bruce that I carry with immense pride. I am grateful to have that. Bruce and I were together for 10 years and had many wonderful experiences together, but the upshot of what I felt at that time was that I knew that neither experience – neither Charlie nor Bruce was the right choice for my life going forward - so I did something radical. I ended both relationships simultaneously in order to start fresh. Except that the truth is you can’t really start fresh – nothing in our human experience is completely new once we’ve oriented to time and space, happiness and pain.

I took a risk – the kind of risk that historically I have avoided – the kind that potentially leaves me alone. I knew from past experiences what I did not want and what I liked much better than before and like it or not, life is an ongoing process of trial and error in at least a few areas of anyone’s life. Sure, some people shore up risk by taking fewer chances, but not taking chances, not acting, accepting things just as they are and not moving things toward some idea of what we would like life could be like, but as you may have already surmised, that is not the approach I choose.

It was like taking a double-edged pruning blade to both my arms. In a single decision, I lost the stability of my primary relationship, and any time I tried to even think about doing anything closely related to making music, I simply could not. It was too closely associated with Charlie. It hurt. And while I am sure I could have written many sad songs about this, I learned early on that songs I write and produce hold strong relation and relevance to what I continue to live in my life. “Be careful what subjects you write about...”, I warn myself, having had the dubious privilege of watching songs I wrote transform into haunting soundtracks of my own life.

“Don't Stop”, which commercially, for a number reasons did not have the expected escalated impact of its predecessor “To Call My Own” despite the fact that it is one of my strongest songs, is particularly biopic. It even sports a video that documents the demise of the relationship between Charlie and myself, to which I can fully attest that neither Charlie nor myself were consciously considering such a direction at the time of the filming. It just came out that way, a sort of subconscious expression of how things really were before we could truly admit it ourselves.

I have always come to music with joy, and to lose that joy renders the making of music pointless for me. To sit in front of paper and write words, to feel them flowing through me, to sing spontaneously and feel a melody within me, to let something move me and appear as a song, to hear sounds dance spatially in my head; that is the high point of making music for me, and to wallow in sad feelings, regardless of how attractive that might appear, as a price to pay for making Art is not of interest to me. So I decided to wait until the good feeling came back.

It is a year and two months later now. And it is interesting what happens when you leave yourself no options.

Looking back, I find it ironic that within a few weeks of making my “big decision”, I did in fact meet someone with whom I started a correspondence about Art, who happnes to make very beautiful photographic Art, and who lives very far away from San Francisco in a land I had only briefly visited: Germany. A land of fairy tales, castles, old customs, strong will, and great pride. When the correspondences turned into phone calls the idea of visiting each other came up. “Sure Felix, I’ll come visit you in Germany”, I heard myself saying, thinking at the time how very foolish I was to be considering a 6,000 mile visit to someone I hardly knew. But I went with it. After all, I thought, wasn’t this the whole reason I had cut my arms off in the first place? So that I could try things like this freely?

And after that first visit in February 2008, while we both knew that something magical had happened, I tried (in a manner which I can sincerely say is very much against my nature) my best to keep the pace of our romance under some control. But by June, we came to a clear decision: we wanted to get married.

Now, I’ve been in long-term relationships before, but somehow being married to another man seemed a bit silly to me, and truthfully, when the subject had come up in the past, it made me nervous. I don’t feel that with Felix. I think we met at a time when we were both ready for a step like this.

And it is funny to me that at this particular point in time that the idea of getting married should suddenly become so relevant to me and simultaneously be such an issue in California – and American politics. Isn’t it fascinating that even if we could get married in California that this would not give Felix the right to live and work in America, yet Germany (and 20 other democratic countries in the world) freely offer the right us to enter into a legally recognized union that includes the right for me to live and work in the EU.

I am not getting married in order to make a political statement – but the current political climate environment makes me especially proud to be getting married in a way that says, “I don’t need my country to approve of my choice. I’ll go to another country where I am more welcome”. And believe it or not, we all have these kinds of choices.

Felix and I are planning to have ceremonies in Berlin and in CA. The CA ceremony is set for June 2009 – the Berlin ceremony will likely happen sometime before this, and I am planning to relocate to Berlin in the next year.

It’s even brighter outside now and I am looking forward to landing in San Francisco, getting to my apartment in the Castro, settling in, and getting a good night’s sleep…

Because tomorrow, I am going to my abandoned music studio and cleaning house. I have a significant amount of material that I have sat on since the mid-1990’s that has never been publically released because I have chronically fallen prey to “I do not believe in myself” syndrome. My first order of business: the release of “FORMATIVE”, a collection of work I did before the release of “Tonight” in 2004 and which I still very much enjoy. And on the heels of that, I am announcing that the next BARTON single, “On The Beach”, which is going to be the closing chapter of an album that represents the collection of work I did with Charlie entitled “LESSONS LEARNED”.

I have no time frames at this moment, but wheels are now set into motion. I am alive and happy again, my fingers tingle, my eyes sparkle, and I am very, very happy to be in this world and be able to make contributions to it that are there to uplift, stimulate thought, question, and lead by example.

Rethinking Ourselves

barton@netspheres.net — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT

This interesting overview from Dr. Michael Wesch, a digital ethnographer at Kansas State University, presents some of the fundamental forces at play in "Web 2.0" technologies. In addition to explaining the technology, this video makes the crucial observation that people, not technology, are the drivers, enabled by the technology (see Engelbart). Wesch concludes his video by reminding us that Web 2.0 is causing us (among other things) to rethink copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetorics, governance, privacy, commerce, love, family, and ourselves. Thanks to Amy Shuen in her book "Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide" for this helpful reference.