Ignorance on Fire
In view of comments posted here on my discussion of Flash and videoconferencing, I've written the following, a sort of open letter to Macromedia:
(Note: I hadn’t planned to write more about this topic. Believe it or not, I have a great admiration for Flash as a tool. I am not attempting to outdo anyone’s stream of urine. I imagine what I am about to say will provoke even wider misunderstandings, so I’m going to try to be brief.
Unfortunately, it won’t be easy to be brief. The issue here goes far beyond Flash 6. It has to do with the social contractual relation created by the convergence of smart technology, real time networks, and a broad, technologically naive community of end users. And the issues go well beyond the PC – in a short time, every device, from telephones to HDTVs to GPS systems will be networked.)
A New Techno-Social Contract
The network brings highly sophisticated technologists and their multiple commercial agendas into close proximity to relatively innocent end users, of which I count myself one. There is a vast discrepancy in knowledge and power here, as more and more software, advertisements, marketing surveys, auto-updates, etc. etc. flow from corporate business outfits that aspire to be on every machine, performing multiple tasks, some of which impinge on issues of user control and user privacy. Without a rich grasp of communications challenges, this knowledge gap will foster a climate of distrust and paranoia. What is needed is a clear template, a new social contract to build understanding and trust between sources of technology and non-technical end users.
Your only hope is to communicate up front. Flash is a brilliant program, as I tried to make clear. It is doing major things for creative folks like Fiore et al and those who enjoy their work.
If you want to reside on half a billion computers, if you want your users to update to the latest versions, if you wish to introduce code that might not be ready to use now, but will be later, when we update to Flash 8.4 or whatever, then be up front. Before we download it, tell us what’s in it, what it does, what it can’t do. If it can do something now, but needs a $2 million server, say so. If it is designed to work with bits of code that will come later, so that it will someday darn our socks, say so, UP FRONT.
You are subject to a history of maladjusted geek relations with nongeeks. Microsoft has already poisoned the water for you, along with other companies that assume that the end user is subordinate to their architecture, their control, and their parameters for privacy.
I refuse updates from Microsoft, precisely because they tend to forget to tell me what exactly they are bringing into my machine.
The more you keep us in the dark, the more likely your arse will be burned with the fire from the candle we light trying to see.
Invasion of the Personal Computer Snatchers
You are not only in control by understanding technology that the end user can only accept on trust. You are allied with the most rabidly intrusive partners imaginable - aggressive advertising and marketing outfits who think my desktop, my screen, and my bandwidth, paid for by me, are theirs to use ever more imperialistically.
Whose “personal computer” is it, anyway?
Your valued partners with whom you are strategically allied obstruct my access to information I want by forcing me to endure increasingly invasive pop-ups, and bandwidth-hogging ''rich media'' ads. Expect your alliance with spam meisters to influence how you are perceived.
Humans don’t use Calculus to Talk to Each Other
I’ve always admired engineers. They work in a real world frame, use math and other sophisticated tools to cause things to come into being that actually work. Perhaps it is that truly awesome ability that has caused some in the engineering community forget that human communication, fundamentally, is not an engineering problem.
Every reservation I have expressed about Flash’s videoconferencing facility – and the weaknesses of its permission feature – is extrapolated from the paltry information available through Macromedia sources. Go to the links in my post here. And peruse the Macromedia Flash groups on Google. Time after time, you will find queries from users who work with Flash, curious to know more about two-way videoconferencing. You will find lots of speculation, a few chary hints from Macromedia representatives coupled with a fair amount of coyness.
See, for example, this thread, or this one. Meanwhile, other folks are working on figuring out Flash videoconferencing on their own.
Summing up:
1. You are in two ways virtually ubiquitous – you sit on half a billion machines, and you are an increasing presence as a rich media tool on thousands of sites that use games, animations, flash intros, art, and rich media advertising.
2. You are allied with imperialistic and invasive uses of the network.
3. You have not been upfront, and do not have a clear grasp of what a truly rich communicative environment the tools you are developing need.
This market is yours to lose. You are creating one of the richest communicative tools out there, and communicating very poorly with your end-user community. You just might blow it.
9:32:19 PM 
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