Happy Thanksgiving

And if you haven't received this via email forward, blog, IM, etc.....here it is for your thanksgiving pleasure...

Disco Turkey

And thank you to my family, friends, and all who have made my life such a fantastic journey.

"Non"-Existence of objectivity

From Luke Razzell's blog

Yes, but I'd go further—we can't prove anything by empirical means, just establish useful shared assumptions based on relatively strong hypothesese. Anyone want to argue for a flat earth? Probably not, but if you were to, I couldn't prove you wrong, just establish a near-100% degree of doubt.

How do I know that you "are" your physical body? Meeting you in person, it sure seems that way to my brain, as my innate and learnt perceptual mechanisms tell me that your body is an entity that is discrete from the rest of the physical world; if we didn't make this collective assumption throughout our daily life, we would cease to function. However, a molecular biologist would understand otherwise—there is a constant flow of atoms from "your body" to "not your body".

Mere philosophical distractions from serious tech discussion?

I must say that I am first of all honored that Mr. Razzell would respond to my blog. However, in response...;)

The very idea that philosophicalal "distractions" have no place in "serious" tech discussions is surprising to me. Far be it from me to contend philosophy with an Englishman *g*. Ironically I would contend that it is this very element which is most vital. After all it was those "distracting" philosophers that gave us hard science in the first place. Sometimes it's best to step back from the table and consider the very building blocks from time to time. Sometimes we have to start with "I think, therefore I am" before we can bring a truly impacting and original solution to the table.

To quickly analyze...I would not argue by any means that objectivity in it's truest form exists. If I were to do that I would have to give up human thought as it has developed past the enlightenment. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because there is no definite form of objectivity the fact remains that we can all agree that a chair exists. The probability of it is so strong that it is considered "objective" (by Webster's definition, "Based on observable phenomena").

My contention is merely that we consider the spectrum of probability thresholds. I would hate to have that point thrown out simply because we got in a quibble over empiricism.

What is more, rather than seeing identity as "hard" information, or "true proofs" as I am calling them (driver's license, ssn, etc.) we have to begin to factor in the reality that other quasi-proofs are available to us, which are not as concrete to be sure. They give us a compared collection from which we can create a substantial proof to cross the probability threshold needed to establish "trust" (that so feared word). This would be identity in the form of blogs, flickr, and other perpetually existing information about an entity which can be verified for the point of establishing probability.

Metaphisical Identity: Definitions

Trust - the ultimate goal in establishing metaphysical identity
demonstrable - a testable representatio of an entity

True Proof - a demonstrable or group of demonstrables allowing for empirical, or objective testing

Quasi Proof -- a demonstrable or group of demonstrables not allowing for empirical, or objective testing, but possessing some form of information concerning an identity.

Probability Threshold -- the necessary amount of proofs, or quasi proofs needed to meet a given Trust Need.

Trust Need - the necessary aquisition of trust needed to establish a trusted identity (changes based upon inherent risk of desired action.

Risk - the combination of potential harms as a result of a given action to either party.

Action - the final result of the identity negotion

Metaphysical Identity and Negotiation

There is a curious correlation to metaphysics in the development of identity as we see it on the internet. Before the internet individuals functioned largely on a one to one level of identity negotiation which allowed for the ability to prove one's identity via physical, or empiricist (by the 5 senses) means, from one person to another (or what I'll call True Proofs).

This is the beginning of a discussion of the effects of the internet on identity/ifcation and the means by which we might consider the establishment of trust for the end result of any given electronic transaction. It will examine the metaphisical nature of online identity, and the most reasonable means to search out and verify its trustworthiness.

A New Frontier

The internet has had some rare effects to identity as we know it:

1. An individual's identity has become god-like. (metaphysical Identity)

a. Perpetual Omnipresent Identity

First, The internet has allowed for the storage of information to exist in a perpetual state. Consequently, information that an individual stores on the internet which is available to the public becomes both eternal and omnipresent (or everywhere, always). And so an individual who has stored enough information about themselves online will eventually begin to have a combined collection of information, or online identity.

b. Non-Empirical Identity

Secondly, the internet has created a means for individuals to complete actions via electronic means, rather than needing to be physically present. The result is a form of identity which is not able to be empirically verified (i.e. by the 5 senses). This culminates in a problem of trust. How does one know that the action needing to be accomplished will be completed by an identity that can be trusted to be whom it/s/he has claimed to be. What is more, how can we be sure that claims being made by this non-objective identity are accurate and trust worthy?

2. The means to verify a person's online identity has become a divine discovery

As with a deity, whom we cannot taste touch, feel, etc, we are left to consider such an entity through imperfect means, lesser reason, or perhaps we can call it quasi proofs. There is no one proof that so evidences the undeniable existence, rather a group of quasi proofs, which leads to a stengthened trust in the surety of a claim, person, or identity can lend to a necessary trust.

So we are left to also consider a person's identity should it come to us from electronic (or in the case of the divine, a burning bush), via measurements which are best suited for discovering the divine.

Basecamp Project Management

A few weeks ago I met a friend of a friend who was opening a new Bistro in Seattle. After talking about all that was transpiring with his opening I asked him what the status of his website was. He replied that he had a domain and hosting, but hadn't really approached the site design yet. I volunteered.

Naturally this meant that I would be walking him through the entire design process, including discovery (laying out the concept), planning (laying out the blueprint and deadlines), designing (getting it built and meeting deadlines), testing (working out final details/bugs), rollout/maintenance.

This of course meant that I would need to collaborate.

Up until now I have used NetOffice, a PHP based project management tool. Unfortunately I found that none of my clients really used it much because it was too complicated, even though it worked well for me on the backend collaboration.

This time I thought I would give Basecamp a try. Why not? After all, I've been diggin' Rails and thought I should try the whiteboarding, to-dos, and message board.

Surprisingly it has been wonderful. My client and the other misc. people involved in the project (ISP & graphics designer) have actually logged in (which I can easily confirm on the homepage), have interacted, collaborated and utilized almost every aspect of the Basecamp feature-set.

I should add in the world of freelance web design, where you have to manage disparate designers, asset providers, testers, and ISP's, getting them to use your collaboration software is a nagging difficulty. In a normal web shop you might have everyone in one spot, but not so in my world. That's why their use was such a surprise to me.

Some key benefits over other collaborative tools:

Whiteboards:

The whiteboards made it easy for me to gather the content I needed for the site. For instance, the meta-tag descriptions, general page content, and other misc. info was easily gathered. Not only that, but having the ability to use versioning saved us time since we didn't lose track of which file was where and what was newest. We rolled back a couple of items after we decided that the new content was too wordy.

Message Post/Files:

Allowing for the posting of files with message board content made it easy for me to tell my clients (and designate who should know about the post) what I was posting and why.

My client called me just yesterday looking for a file that he gave me on a CD. I told him that I had posted it to the site. He simply went on and got it. (Keep in mind that my client is a bistro owner, not a programming-IMing-techno-nerd like the rest of us.

ToDo's

I loved the fact that I wasn't assigning tasks, which can be daunting in most software and overbearing to the client. The simplified "todo" list made it easy for my client and the other members to just see a simple task to accomplish without all of the overhead normally found with other tools.

Milestones

Even though this is not a new idea, the simplicity of the milestones made it easy for me to keep us all on the same deadline-page. I loved that I did not have to manage an entire calendar with events, milestones, etc, etc, etc. Just a simple date that kept the project on schedule. After all, it's a milestone, not a gantalicious-chart-monster.

Simply put it was the simplicity that was lovely. It was just easy for everyone.

Seriously, thanks 37signals for a great product!!!