A day made of glass

It's a Corning commercial.  But it is an interesting view of what the near future might look like.



Unfortunately, I expect to see lots more advertisements.

Netflix feature requests and parental controls

We get Netflix now.  The kids are loving Netflix streaming on the Wii.  We haven't watched as many big people movies as I had expected.  But, overall, it is a neat service.  And the value per entertainment dollar spent is fantastic.

But I'm a software guy.  And Netflix is a software service.  So, of course, I have ideas on how to improve it.

I've scoured Netflix's website and I cannot find any way to submit a feature request or give unstructured feedback.  This is a mistake, both for their business model and the software itself.  Companies today have to engage clients and digest the feedback.  They have a blog, and comments are allowed.  But there is no way to contact anyone directly or engage with the company.

I'll link this blog post in the comments of their latest blog posts.  I'm also going to post it on their wall on Facebook.  But I doubt it will get noticed.

With that all said, I've got two feature requests/suggestions for Netflix.

1. A General Feedback Mechanism
Duh!  There are thousands of users out there who have ideas they would like to share.  Just listening to their ideas makes your brand more engaging and sticky.  Some percentage of those ideas are good or great.  Those ideas will genuinely make your service better.

As a baby-step you can just implement one of the general-purpose feedback websites, like Suggestionbox.com.  (Suggestionbox created that site for them as a teaser to try to engage Netflix.  Netflix isn't actively using it yet.  I have no affiliation with Suggestionbox.)

But you already have a platform where you are engaging with people.  So I would suggest that you build a 'Netflix feature queue' right into your service.  Give people the ability to write up feature requests (like this one) and place them in the queue.  Let others read and prioritize those features.  I'm sure that you have an agile development team (or three).  Put their scrum backlog in there and let clients interact with it.

You will have to moderate the content, obviously.  You will have tons of 'I got a DVD of Teen Wolf 2 that was scratched.'  Some of your customer service people will have to review every incoming post and filter out the stuff that doesn't fit.  And they will have to merge similar requests.

But when you build a feature that was customer-designed you should scream it from the rooftops.  Send someone out to get a picture of the person who wrote up the idea.  Give them a free month of service and a shirt.


2. Granular Parental Controls
I haven't seen anything from Netflix that suggests they want people to sign up for more than one account per household.  That means parents and children are sharing queues and streaming devices.  We have 4 kids--a large-ish family by modern American standards.  But I would suggest that our usage patterns are probably fairly typical.

In our house this means that the 'Suggested for Randy' queue is:
* Clifford
* Angelina Ballerina
* Se7en
* Salt
* Ben-10
* The Shawshank Redemption
* Blues Clues
* Dexter
* Cake Boss
* Shaun the Sheep
* The Blues Brothers
* Enter the Dragon
* Zombieland

This is disconcerting for me as a parent, because so many of my shows appear at the top of the queue when my kids are picking shows.  I don't need my kids watching even a few minutes of Se7en or Dexter while they know that I'm busy doing something else.

We have a Wii with Netflix streaming on our main TV.  We have Netflix streaming on the adult's computers, but we don't want to watch movies at our desks.  Everyone basically shares the main TV for Netflix.

We have 2 preschoolers (who can navigate the Netflix menu on the Wii and pick their shows.)  We have a 9 year old, a 13 year old, and two adults.  In a perfect world that's 5 separate instant queues on this device.  In reality, though, if each of the big kids got a personal queue then both of the little ones would demand their own queues, too.  So that's 6 separate instant queues on the Wii.

Each queue needs an optional password.

When I'm in a queue, I need to see the name of the queue at the top of the screen.  (On the Wii, the queues should each have a Mii.)

If I have several streaming devices (Wii, iPad, computer, streaming Blue-Ray player, etc.), then I should be able to pick which queues appear on which devices  The default should be for all queues to appear as options on all devices.  Some devices won't be able to handle multiple queues, especially at first, so they will have to default to just the first queue.

Each queue needs to have it's own settings for what's allowed.

There is a sticky problem on content that is not rated--old movies and TV shows.  So I would base the parental controls on a combination of Common Sense ratings and MPAA ratings.  And for the shows that are not rated by either service, I would control by genre.

So my parental control options would look like this:

---

Little Jenny's queue allows:
* All shows
* R and below
* PG-13 and below
* PG and below
* G and below

For shows that are not rated by the MPAA, allow:
* All shows
* Common Sense age 17 and below
* Common Sense age 14 and below
* Common Sense age 11 and below
* Common Sense age 8 and below
* Common Sense age 4 and below
* No shows not rated by the MPAA 

For shows that are not rated by the MPAA or Common Sense, allow:
# Action & Adventure
# Anime & Animation
# Children & Family
# Classics
# Comedy
# Documentary
# Drama
# Faith & Spirituality
# Foreign
# Gay & Lesbian
# Horror
# Independent
# Music & Musicals
# Romance
# Sci-Fi & Fantasy
# Special Interest
# Sports & Fitness
# Television
# Thrillers

---

For that last category the interface is checkboxes, not a single select.  A movie that is categorized as both 'Documentary' and 'Gay & Lesbian' would be blocked unless both categories are checked here.

Few parents are going to select 'Gay & Lesbian' or 'Horror', but the control settings should simply include all genres for simplicity's sake.  Any new genre that gets added to the system should show up here, and be unchecked for everyone who has already set up their parental controls.

What's in a name?

I thought I coined the term "Democracy 2.0".  That was in early 2004, according to a quick search through my old notes.  I didn't write that term on the internet until September 11, 2005.

I've run across the term in lots of places recently.  A Google search returns hundreds of hits--I got to page 20 without ever finding this blog.  A quick scan through those hits indicates that there is not one agreed-upon meaning of the term--beyond the most general idea that it is an upgrade of the process of Democracy.

I recently read Accelerando, by Charlie Stross.  He used the term late in the book.  The book was written as short stories, and that particular section was published in December of 2003.

Stross's "Democracy 2.0" was very innovative.  It was in a very different future where money was nonexistent.  Everything you wanted was free, because technology had progressed to the point that everything was so cheap to make that it wasn't worth the overhead burden of doing the accounting.  The only traded currencies were bandwidth and reputations futures--a futures market that traded reputations.

Control of the government was handled through the reputations futures market.  Everyone who wanted to be the president registered their candidacy.  A separate pool was created in the futures market for the reputations of the various candidates.  Anyone who wished to participate would buy or sell any of the candidates' futures.  And at a certain time the candidate with the highest-trading reputation future was declared the winner.

That's not what I was thinking of when I started using the term.

When I started using the term it was the title for a book I was writing.  The book was addressed to people who live under dictatorships.  The point of the book was to explain why we were waiting for them to free themselves, and to give them a vision for doing Democracy on their own terms.  Learn from our successes.  Don't repeat our mistakes.

I've since figured out that someone beat me to the whole "this is why we are waiting for you to free yourself, and this is how you can do it" book.  That book is Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp.  It's a free PDF that has been translated into dozens of languages and sneaked into just about every country in the world.  Every underground rebel faction has a well-worn copy.

When the dust clears Gene Sharp is going to win a Nobel Peace Prize for that book.

Dictatorship to Democracy is 93 pages.  The first 72 pages are dedicated to nonviolently overthrowing a dictator.  The last chapter covers establishing a democratic government that can last--4.5 pages.  The rest of the book is appendix and endnotes--14 pages.

I think that building a democratic government is harder than that.  These people are going to need more than 4.5 pages.

I wrote a long blog post the other day that had a reasonable outline of what I think a democratic government needs.  The central ideas are:
* equality under the law
* freedom
* capitalism
* goal-oriented
* measure your success
* experiment and innovate

Those last three points are unique to me.  I don't see anyone else out there, including the whole Democracy 2.0 crowd, talking about experimentation, adaption, and learning.  I call that evolution.  So I've started calling my particular brand of democracy "Evolving Democracy."

I'm coming back around to my original book idea.  Now I know that the first half of the battle is covered, I am free to focus on the second half:
* What are the key features of a democracy?
* How do you keep the people in control?
* What goals should you set?
* What should you teach your people?
* How should your government services operate?
* Who writes the laws?
* Who enforces the laws?

So much of what we do has evolved, and we don't ever think about things like why or how the judges and the police are kept separate.  You can't observe life in the US (or UK, or wherever) and figure out the first principles that democracy is built upon.

That's the book that I'm going to write.  I just need a name for it.

Unprincipled

The Independent is reporting that the Obama administration is asking King Saud to arm the Libyan rebels.  It seems that the Obama administration isn't reading my blog.  If they were reading my blog they would know that King Saud is opposed to the rebels in all of the countries of his region.  Arming Libyan rebels provides moral support to the rebels in his own borders.

If this report is true--and I'm assuming that it is--then this signifies a new low for the administration.  They are hopelessly out of touch.  They do not understand which way the wind blows for their allies or their enemies.  King Saud has surely dismissed the administration as clueless imbeciles.

The administration has failed to form a coherent strategy for dealing with the uprisings.  Do we support them?  Do we support them within the borders of our allies?  Do we support them when the likely new government will be less friendly than the existing government?  And how do we express our support or opposition?

This series of uprisings is the most important event of this administration, and they have utterly failed.

More good news from Egypt

Women have been suffering under the Egyptian regime.  It's no secret that women and children suffer more under dictators and other totalitarian regimes.

CNN is reporting that women in Egypt are feeling more free to express themselves, and feel more optimistic about their prospects for better treatment.  In one example, a lady was recently verbally sexually harassed by an army officer.  She slapped him and drove away.  She would never have gotten away with that a month ago.

Inception in C

I loved the movie Inception.  Someone loved it more than I did.

This person wrote a program that mimics the movie and implants the idea into Fischer.  I wish I could read C code.

Some people have action figures.  Some people have posters.  The Inception crew is now the first movie cast to be recreated as C code.

My life's work

I'm unemployed right now.  I've been unemployed for a while now.  I've been trying to figure out what I'm good for and what I want to do.

I have some experience and some skills in the software industry.  Unfortunately, those skills are not in demand right now, and there are very many people with the same skills out looking.  Software companies like to hire people who have computer science degrees or MBAs, and I don't.  That puts me near the bottom of the pile for any job that comes up.

I've done some coding.  There are a ton of openings for software developers right now.  I could probably take a few coding classes and reinvent myself as a coder.  With my non-CS degree I would probably only get a junior position.  But there are so many positions that I think I could eventually land one.  And I wouldn't be miserable writing code all day.

But that's not what I want to do.

I want to redesign democracy.  Or maybe I should say that I want to design a new form of democracy.

There are many problems with the forms of democracy that we have today.  There are many new features that I want to install in my new form of democracy.  (I'm not going to detail all of that here, but you can find much of it elsewhere on my blog.)

My problem is that I can't figure out how to get there from here.  How do I go back and get a PhD in political science at this point?  Or is there some other path?

My new hero: Dr. Gene Sharp

Gene Sharp is a retired college professor.  He is an introvert, thinker, and writer.  His field of study is the non-violent overthrow of dictators and establishment of democratic governments.

His seminal work is called 'From Dictatorship to Democracy'.  It is available as a PDF for free.

The New York Times has a nice article describing his life and writings, and explaining how his writings ended up in the hands of the protesters in Egypt.  (I can't link it here because they have hidden it behind their paywall.)

Dr. Sharp's writings are primarily focused on the first half of the struggle--toppling the dictator.  My interest is in the second half of the struggle--building a democracy.

If I ever achieve my life's goal, it will only be because I was able to stand on this man's shoulders.

Told you so

The Independent is reporting that Mubarak ordered in the tanks and the army refused; and that this confrontation was the moment that the army decided Mubarak would have to go:

"But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters."

This is what I wrote on Monday the 31st, before that story broke:

"If I were a gambling man then I would place my money on the military reporting that they received the order to massacre, refusing the order, arresting Mubarak, and then seizing control.  This gives the military control and a large measure of goodwill.  Notice that they don't have to actually get the order to massacre, they just have to say they got it.  There will be no way for Mubarak to prove otherwise once he is in jail."

At this point I haven't heard enough promises from the military for democratic elections.  I would not wager on how long it will be before that happens.

More on Egypt and the revolutions in the Middle East

Of course there are a ton of articles floating by about Egypt and the Middle East.  Here are the four biggest, in my opinion:

1. 20 reasons why the world is burning
This article is required reading to understand why this is happening now.

2. The Muslim Brotherhood is saying it will not run a candidate in democratic elections in Egypt
I can't decide if this is genuine good news, or if the Muslim Brotherhood is simply biding their time.  On it's face, though, this is fantastic news.  If democratic elections happen in Egypt, and if the Muslim Brotherhood keeps this promise, then the next government of Egypt will almost certainly be secular (read: not radical Islamic jihadist.)

3. Saudi King Saud pressured Obama to support Mubarak
I predicted this one.  It is vitally important to Saud for Mubarak to not fall.

Welcome to the future! The skin gun!

Get that man a Nobel!

The real story in Egypt

I found a fascinating article by a western-educated Egyptian.  Click, read, and cry for all that they have lost.