Jason Prini .com

18 months ago if you told someone the hottest niche in mobile computing in 2008/09 would be sub $500 mini notebooks called NETBOOKS they’d call you crazy. Subnotebooks typically cost a hefty premium over typically larger notebooks. I still remember ooohing and awwwing over those first $4000 Sony 505 notebooks in the late 90s.

Netbooks (Asus EeePC, MSI Wind, etc) are not as feature-rich as those high-end subnotebooks. But for most “typical” people netbooks will fill 80% of their needs. Plus they’re really cheap. Perfect second computers.

But my dream second computer is still yet to appear. My iPhone handles most of my comms needs, but I still would like an A5 sized, touch/wacom-digitizer screen that has a browser and an Alias Sketch like app to replace my Macbook. Oh, and it should cost less than $500.

I don’t know if there are enough people like me (who go through at least 4 sketchbooks a year) to support a device like this. So I might have to wait another 10-15 years for on-demand custom designed gadget printing to appear. Or maybe if the Techcrunch gadget takes off, enough people like me will get together and crowd-source it into existence.

Techcrunch is reporting that soon, maybe as soon as this week, Facebook will open source it’s code.

This would be a good move for Facebook, who has to constantly be aware that they can lose their users even faster than they got them. Facebook use in Canada is down from last fall when it was just exploding.

Social networks are ephemeral. They are not static and must be nurtured to grow. As these systems mature there will be a point where the “Parents” have to let them go out on their own, turning the private platform network inside-out and letting it grow free online.

This WILL happen. It must. MySpace was too overprotective of it’s network and refused to let it go free when it should have, now it’s not nearly as popular as it was when it was ready to leave the nest. MySpace is a 40 year old living at his parents house technologically.

I’m excited to see how opening Facebook might affect the social media wars in the coming months.

Monsanto has been suing Canadian Farmers for years now. You see the wind, insects and birds all naturally spread plant genetics. Some of Mosanto’s patented genetics (what kind of dystopian world do we live in where genes can be patented?) have naturally spread to non-Monsanto farms and so the corporation is looking to collect on those “losses”. This is a good example of where tighter copyright laws might very well take us.

Just like Mosanto pays legions of lawyers and lobbyists to try and shape public opinion that they have a right to profit from natural process, the entertainment industry is doing everything it can to ensure that it has the control to profit from the natural sharing of culture.

You can do something. Write to Jim Prentice, Steven Harper and your local MP. Tell them that culture is public domain and you don’t want to hand over more control of it to corporations.

Of course my biggest question of copyright debate is this:

Why is the debate almost completely about controlling data that must be shared to work (like music), and almost not at all about data that MUST be controlled at all cost (like my social insurance number).

If you’re looking for a review of how we got where we are, click on to watch Larry Lessig’s BRILLIANT corruption lecture: Read the rest of this entry »