The Long Blonde Tail

CrunchNotes Is Back, In Short Form

Not here. But, here. 

(as Tweeted)

Musical Milestone: Moonalice, First Band to Twitter a Concert in Real-Time

This is big news, and although it was announced yesterday, it's definitely not an April Fools' joke. 

On Friday, April 3rd, Moonalice will become the first band ever to Twitter a concert, in real-time. Here's how it will work:

Moonalice will post their upcoming CD release show and party on April 3rd at Slim's in San Francisco to Twitter. Immediately following each song during the show, Moonalice's sound team will take that song's audio, digitize it, upload it, and "Tweet" about its availabilty—all before the group finishes playing the very next song. This is the first time any artist has broadcast a concert in real-time on the Twitter platform.

It's really very cool, and is getting some nice pickup around the interwebs. I'm proud to have played a small part in it, and will continue to do so on the eve of the show (and beyond). 

If you're in town, one word: GO. You will not be disappointed. You have my word.

Where: Slim's in San Francisco

When: Friday, April 3, 2009, 9pm

What: Celebration of Moonalice's Debut CD, First-Ever Twitter Concert, Suprises, and Amazing Music

Bonus: free posters, giveaways, even cupcakes

If you're not in the area, check them out on tour, across the US, in 2009.

photo credit: Moonalice

Moonalice's Debut Album: Music, Art, Technology, Celebration

As legend has it, it's been almost two years since I first wrote about a band called Moonalice. Right around that time, Chubby Wombat Moonalice (aka, Roger McNamee) and I chatted briefly about getting Moonalice on Twitter and a music social network or two.

Somewhere in the conversation thread, CWM officially welcomed me to the tribe and bestowed me the moniker, Long Blonde Moonalice. A few months later, a miniblog was born.

Fast forward to early '09: I'm back west, and finally find myself at a couple of Moonalice gigs. Before elaborating, a nice summary of the band: 

A perfect example of the proverbial whole being greater than the sum of its parts, Moonalice turns its collective body of experience, ace musicianship, great songs, and love of adventure into live performances as distinct as they are compelling. 

Ace musicianship, indeed. Beginning with guitar hero G.E. Smith (aka, Hardwood Moonalice), from Hidden Track's AJ Crandal:

Remember G.E. Smith? You remember, long blond hair, a jaw line that is kindly referred to as ‘chiseled’ and enough guitar playing talent to be the de facto band leader whenever he plays anything, even the radio. Sure you remember him. He toured for years with Hall & Oates. Led the Saturday Night Live Band for about ten years. ... Played with Dylan, Jagger, and Bowie. He even led the house band at Live Aid back in ’85. Yeah, THAT G.E. Smith.

The rest of the band members are rather legendary, as well: Pete Sears (Jefferson Starship, Hot Tuna), Barry Sless (David Nelson Band, Phil Lesh), Jimmy Sanchez (Boz Scaggs, Bonnie Raitt), Ann McNamee (Flying Other Brothers), Roger McNamee (Flying Other Brothers) and sometimes Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna). 

Music As Art. For each show, there is a highly artistic, custom work of art in the form of a poster which is given away for free (my collection is up to three, so far). As Chubby Wombat Moonalice explains: 

Art has been with Moonalice from the very beginning. ... These posters are as much Moonalice as the music.

You can see some of this astounding artwork in high res pics, here. They're also available to purchase online, as is the Moonalice Legend. 

Music as Technology.  Moonalice's debut release is not only produced by Grammy Award-winning T Bone Burnett, but will feature his own ΧΟΔΕ (CODE) technology. In order to delve into that, I'm afraid a new blog post is required. But, in short, ΧΟΔΕ allows us - the music listener - to hear music as the artist intended us to hear it when it was recorded. In T Bone's words:

Sound is important. It is, as you know, one of the five senses. It is not to be taken lightly. Especially when it comes to music.

The debut release, available on April 14th, will be sold as a DVD audio disc, a CD, and two music videos. Also included are four ΧΟΔΕ audio formats: mp3, WAV, FLAC and AAC files. All in one package. All for the price of a single CD. Very nice.

Music as Celebration.  On the eve of April 3, 2009, in celebration of the new release, the band will perform a special show at Slim's in San Francisco. It promises to be full of surprises, great music, and lots of fun.  

Experiencing Moonalice live is something that I highly recommend. The level of rock hard-iness, hall of fame musicianship, and serious sense of tribal fusion on the Moonalice stage will not only blow you away -- it will rock your soul. 

But don't just take my word for it. Go, and see them live. They are on a whirlwind tour across the US in 2009. In the meantime, here's a clip of a recent show in Felton, CA:

Artwork by Chris Shaw

Video by Guitar Vibe

2008 Singularity Summit: Stellar Lineup

Among many others, I'm incredibly excited about the upcoming 2008 Singularity Summit. This year's theme is Opportunity, Risk, Leadership -- and the speaker lineup, of course, does not disappoint. It includes:

* Vernor Vinge, science fiction author, mathematician and computer scientist
* Esther Dyson, entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist extraordinaire
* Justin Rattner, Intel VP and CTO
* Peter Diamandis, X PRIZE founder and CEO
* Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks and creator of Twine
* Pete Estep, Cofounder and CSO, Intellispace

Previous speakers also featured this year include Ray Kurzweil, Ben Goertzel (if you happen upon him, be ready for a mind-bending conversation with Ben), and Peter Thiel. The full list of speakers may be found here.

For those unfamiliar, some background:

Each year, the Singularity Summit attracts a unique audience to the Bay Area, with visionaries from business, science, technology, philanthropy, the arts, and more. Participants learn where humanity is headed, meet the people leading the way, and leave inspired to create a better future. "The Singularity Summit is the premier conference on the Singularity," Kurzweil said. "As we get closer to the Singularity, each year's conference is better than the last."

The Summit was founded in 2006 by long-term philanthropy executive Tyler Emerson, inventor Ray Kurzweil, and investor Peter Thiel. Its purpose is to bring together and build a visionary community to further dialogue and action on complex, long-term issues that may transform the world.

I attended last year's Summit, and plan to attend this year's as well. Of the intellectually engaging, thought-driven conferences, summits and gatherings in which I've participated over the years, the Singularity Summit sits atop the list.

Best reason for attending? As I tweeted back in July:

You deserve a day to have your mind blown.

Details: October 25, 2008; San Jose, CA. Register here. Blog is here. See you there.

What is VRM?

As described, quite succinctly, by psychologist and management consultant Tom Guarriello , just before heading to VRM Workshop 2008:

What is Vendor Relationship Management?

We live in a time when the information disparity that used to exist between what companies know about products and services, and customers know about those same products and services is decreasing rapidly.So that now, we’re in a position as customers to establish any kind of relationship we want with companies, enabling them to essentially bid on our business.

We’re a long ways away from doing that, but we are much closer than we’ve ever been to setting up conversations between customers and companies, and the conversations in which the customer gets to manage the relationships, and manage the information that exists in that relationship.

So for example, if I’m interested in buying a new video camera, I could essentially put out a proposal – or a Request for Proposals – from camera vendors, and let them know what I’m looking for, something about what my price points might be, and something about my time frame. And, to give those vendors the opportunity to bid on my business.

We’re getting very close to a time when the power will be shifting from the marketer “push marketing” to essentially the customer saying “I’m interested in these things. You guys tell me what you’re going to be able to do for me.”

VRM Workshop 2008 @ Harvard, Live

VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) is something I've been paying attention to over the past months. And certainly I'm not alone. Doc Searls, Adriana Lukas, Christopher Carfi, Kevin Marks, and many others have been discussing it for some time.

To the unfamiliar, and in the simplest of explanations, VRM is CRM flipped. VRM says "give the individual the freedom and the power to own his/her own data". The opposite of the way "relationships" are managed by corporations today.

During a recent event in Amsterdam, Doc further explains:

A free customer is more valuable than a captive customer. Problem is, we still think the opposite way.

We're still in the era of a captive customer. On the sell side we still try to "manage", "control" and otherwise "own" them.

He then asks the following question to clients who inevitably boast about knowing their customer so well, that they own them: 'Really? What's another word for owning a human being?'

Project VRM, a community driven effort spearheaded by Doc (a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society) is conducting VRM Workshop 2008 (VRM08), in fact, live on UStream. For your pleasure, here it is:

This Weekend in NYC: BarCampNYC3 + VRM Meetup

I have a strong suspicion that there will be a lot of happy geeks in NYC this weekend.

On the heels of SXSW comes BarCampNYC3, which will take place at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn. Although it's sold out at this point, you can always hit the wiki to get on the waiting list (or send a convincing email to one of the very cool organizers).

Schedule permitting, I will be there to chat about VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) along with friend and colleague, Adriana Lukas. Described very well by Ian Delaney of New Media Knowledge, VRM is:

about you controlling how organisations/ companies/ brands communicate with you. Giving back the power to the consumer. The implications of the current thinking have as much power as blogs and blogging - they're the end-game of the 'Cluetrain Manifesto' and 'Permission Marketing'.

It's real, and coming soon. It's new media punk rock.

Much more to come on this. In the meantime, if this sounds interesting, there's another chance to talk VRM with Adriana (very sorry to miss this sit-down) during an informal gathering on Friday, March 14th. More details are here.

Further deets:

Informal VRM Gathering
Friday, March 14, 2008
6:30pm - ?
Location: TBD
Sign up on the Wiki

BarCampNYC3
Begins: March 15, 2008 at 11:00 am ET
Ends: March 16, 2008 at 6:00 pm ET
Location: Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY
Proposed Topics

Peter Voss: Increased Intelligence, Improved Life

Peter Voss, founder of Adaptive AI and speaker at this year's Singularity Summit, believes that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) promises unprecedented advances, not only in science and technology, but also in ethics and social systems.

He also believes that businesses (and thus, consumers) will be first to experience some of the enormous benefits of this emerging technology. His talk centered on these improvements, as well as making a case for how increased intelligence leads to improved morality.

Stick with me on this one.

In addition to other Singularity Summit speakers, Voss spoke about the business benefits of AGI, which include:

* dramatically reduced labor costs (one of the largest costs of many businesses)
* improved quality of design in products & services
* reduced workers' risks: this trend will accelerate

This accelerating improvement will come about because many of the systems within companies will have fewer and fewer humans in the critical timing loops.

In this context, humans are often the slowest link in the chain - and the least reliable link in the chain. Therefore, as more and more systems are automated (or, as humans are taken out of the loop), that will lead to an accelerated improvement. Why? Peter Voss quietly, yet matter-of-factly gave this explanation (what may have been the quote of the year) to the audience:

Human intelligence really is a big bottleneck for many of the problems that humanity faces.

Other aspects of industry - and humanity - which will benefit from AGI:

Science and technology
* AGI will accelerate the development of nanotechnology

Environmental technology
* Not only will we have much better models about environmental issues, we'll also have better technology to prevent environmental damage, and to clean it up

Computer science
* If you have systems that approach human-level intelligence, even if they're not generally capable as humans, if they can think and reason and learn like humans - at a certain point in development, they'll be able to improve their own design.

To drive home the point, Voss also read an excerpt from an essay he'd written on AGI and life extension:

Imagine 100,000 PhD-level researchers focusing their total efforts on life extension and anti-aging research. Imagine them working 24/7 with no distraction from grant proposals, office politics, or attractive coworkers. Imagine the fantastic progress we would see in finding solutions for eliminating debilitating disease and reversing the effects of aging. 

If you really think through how intelligent systems, and having hundreds of thousands of Ph.D level brains working 24/7 at solving aging problems and disease, clearly we will see significant progress. These are difficult problems, and we need more brain power to address them.

Now, apply that same theory to education ('now, imagine 100,000 teachers...').

Ethics and morality, and how AGI will make us better people:
* we can also use AGI tools to vastly improve our ability to think and to reason things through: 

A significant proportion of immoral behavior is really irrational behavior; that often when somebody does something bad, how often is it because they didn't think it through properly, they didn't have enough information, or didn't get good advice? A lot of immoral behavior really falls into that category.

 

AGI will get to know us, and become a 'trusted adviser' to us.  It'll help us become better people.

 

In adding his own prediction of how far away we are from AGI, Peter Voss is even more daring than most: he believes it is most certainly 10 years -- and quite likely less than five.

 

Investors, CEOs - Listen Up: AI's Benefits to Business

In continuation of what I've learned, and am beginning to absorb, understand, and evangelize after attending this year's Singularity Summit, I live twittered a few profound thoughts spoken by some of the presenters. One of them was from Neil Jacobstein, CEO of Palo Alto based Teknowledge:

Another belief about AI is that it’s all hype. It’s boom and bust from the 1980’s and although there was a lot of that, early AI is in routine use in many domains. It’s already produced billions, with a ‘b’, worth of value. And writing off AI is a little like writing off ecommerce after the dot com meltdown.

Of the presenters that I heard speak, or had met (note: I attended only Saturday's sessions), Mr. Jacobstein was one who answered the question "So, what does all of this really mean, for me?" ...whether you were asking this question as a CEO, an investor, or practically anyone outside the "singularity circle" of thinkers.

He decided to perform a study on the application domains - or the areas of focus of these AI applications. In particular, Jacobstein studied the ones between 1986 and 2006 (there were a total of 362), and found, unsurprisingly, that the most common area was computers and software engineering. This was followed by manufacturing, military, finance applications, business operations, telecommunications, arts and media, health care, space, ground transportation, airlines, education, sales, biotech, insurance, energy, emergency management, security, law, agriculture, chemical engineering, paleontology and treaty verification.

The tasks that these systems perform are largely focused around planning and scheduling, data interpretation, information retrieval, classification, performance optimization, etc.

Mr. Jacobstein explained:

When we consider the value-added by AI and these applications, they’re in augmenting or replacing human skills, which allows you to:

- improve accuracy and consistency

- decrease costs

- increase productivity

- accelerate process timing

- improve product + service quality

- expand the range of the possible

Now, here's where you want to pay attention:

It doesn’t just do more, faster, better. It helps institutions manage their knowledge.

One early expert system example is BP’s VIDES (visual identification expert system) which does micro fossil identification system associated with rich oil fields to drill in. This system was basically constructed to eliminate delays in the process of figuring out where to drill. One day of delays cost $1 million; BP reported that one particular delay cost the company $15 million. VIDES acts as a ‘member of the team’, and has virtually eliminated identification delays.

"It doesn't do more, faster, better. It helps institutions manage their knowledge." Worth repeating. Do I have your attention yet?

 

 

Machines of Loving Grace: Anticipating Advanced AI

Paul Saffo, Consulting Professor at Stanford University, had a compelling message at the 2007 Singularity Summit - one which really hit home with me (and I would imagine others, like me, who are not scientists, have not been studying and/or practicing AI, and who are most curious about how this will affect our future, and the future of humanity):

A long-anticipated vision of advanced AI is on the verge of arriving late and in utterly unexpected ways. As we approach this event, a quick look through the rear-view mirror at earlier AI visions can do much to reduce the uncertainty around how things may unfold.

Moreover, these earlier visions are a powerful reminder that we are not hapless bystanders, but active participants in what this future should look like. Just as William Gibson once served up the vision of cyberspace that shaped the 1990's Internet revolution, a poet writing almost exactly 40 years ago from San Francisco penned his vision for what a world of advanced AI should be.

The poet Saffo speaks of is one Mr. Richard Brautigan. This poem (1967), read aloud by Saffo at the conference, is well-worthy of being shared, here:

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
     (right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
     (it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

After reading the poem, and driving home his point that what is missing today - for the case of AI - is a positive, compelling vision, Saffo asked the attendees to start a to-do list. Of course this would include talking to VCs, engineers and technologists, designers and so on. But even more importantly, he added:

We need more poets and novelists to explore this field. To think freely about it could be. Just whisper in their ear.

- - -
Bonus: Saffo may have discovered what was the first 'Creative Commons' licensing effort in Brautigan's work:

San Francisco, California: The Communication Company, 1967�
Limited Edition of 1,500 copies, all for free distribution