Sarah Davies

Thanks to everyone who saw my Gnomedex talk and gave me positive feedback. I really enjoyed watching the other presenters as well. I’ll put up the video when I get it, but for now, here are the slides and the (intended) transcript. Much of the original content got cut on the fly to save on time.

This presentation is dedicated to the Public Domain. It may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.

So, last week I donated $8.34 some guy running for state congress in Kansas. I’ve never been to Kansas. I don’t much care about what happens in Kansas, but this guy, Sean Tevis made a webcomic that got carried on a blog that I read. You might have heard of it. It’s called BoingBoing.

When I read the comic, I knew that it could only have been made by a geek; it was clear that Sean Tevis and I shared common sacred knowledge as citizens of cyberspace. I knew he must be part of my tribe, and if he shares the values of my tribe, then by god, that man is qualified to fix Kansas.

Sean Tevis raised nearly $100,000 from more than 5,000 people (only about 6,000 people voted in his district last year). And this made me think that we as geeks need to own our buying power, we need to own our political and technological power, and we need to take over the world.

We must employ Tevisian economics throughout the square states and the bible belt, infiltrating decision-making bodies nationwide with our gold-farming, youtube making kin. The economic power of the tech-savvy coasts will woo the votes of the advertising-addicted drones in the middle states.

It is common geek knowledge that lotteries are merely a tax on those who can’t do math. So once we have a geek majority firmly in place, we must repeal all gambling laws and drain the wallets of all statistics challenged Americans, of whom I have been informed there are a large number.

This will provide a huge budget surplus for our new geektatorship, our glorious geekocracy. With these enormous piles of cash, we will wage a global battle, an epic game of risk, pitting luddite against linux programmer, corn farmer against gold farmer. Human casualties are a very serious matter,

so the first step in the plan is to pick select non-geeky cities across the globe and send in an army of remote controlled lego robots. Each robot will have a spy cam and gps for remote navigation, as well as multiple processor-motor nodes throughout their body, so that even if they are dismantled, the individual parts can still be controlled autonomously.

Toward the end of this phase, we are basically expecting a swarm of various robot parts, which even if unarmed, will be able to climb to tall heights and then land on unsuspecting and now unconscious passers-by. We are confident that this will cause all people incapable of reprogramming the robots to flee for their lives.

With the people gone, we will need to clear a large flat area. This can be accomplished by printing out thousands of copies of the DMCA and using them as kindling to burn down the city. This has the added benefit of obscuring our location in smoke. Infrared googles will be provided.

Once we have cleared a secure a base, we’ll bring in Jimmy Wales to build wiki-barracks that can be quickly put up and taken down. Any buildings not considered “notable” or suspected of being built based on original research will have to be demolished.

Communications between bases must be dual key encrypted. Public keys will be projected onto the copious clouds of smoke via big green lasers. Disclosure of private keys will be punishable by a 24-hour suspension from both Twitter and GMail, certainly not something to be attempted by the faint of heart.

We will need Adrian from the RepRap project to create self replicating wifi routers which will spread themselves over the earth, providing infinite high bandwidth internet. We’ll have to lock down the network of course, SSID:fabulousbitches password:pwning your town.

Dan Kaminsky will be a double agent, pretending to secure enemy networks while in actuality causing all of their DNS information to point to a fail whale.Then it’s time for the attack! Ariana Huffington will swing into the enemy camp from the north on a cat5 cable and blog to death as many enemy combatants as possible,

but we’ll need some diversions so they don’t see her coming. To the east will be a text-message coordinated flashmob of cosplayers, to the south will be Randall Monroe publicly performing acts from his mistranslated Kama Sutra, and to the west will be Sarah Lacy in hot pants.

Now if this mission should fail because someone is too busy flirting with Mark Zuckerberg, Ted Stevens will be on hand to lead us through the underground tubes. At the end of the tubes will be Ron Paul’s blimp. It should have sufficient fuel on board, but in an emergency, we can fill it with Michael Arrington’s ego and escape unharmed.

There are always casualties associated with battle, and death from over-blogging is tragic. To ease the trauma, we will have chaplains available from the church of Richard Stallman. Burial expenses will be covered, or the family may opt to have a sculpture created from the ashes in the shape of Wil Wheaton’s head.

Compensation for bereaved loved ones will consist of free passes to Foo Camp and a linkback from Slashdot. You may not voluntarily sacrifice family members. You may however, sacrifice yourself for the pagerank of others.

Once we have captured the enemy, we will place them in a humane Matrix-like environment, where they will be under the impression that they have a larger SUV than all their neighbors. And THEN the geeks will inherit the earth.

Thank you very much. I’m Sarah Davies. You can read more of my work at sarahdavies.cc and freedomforip.org. I also have a panel proposal up at SxSW.

Feedback from the backchat:

<Elk> Sarah Davis?
<aPpLe_CiDeR> wow, one breath
<tsparks> I worked with her
<Elk> Woo! Public domain!
<Bouddha> Yay !!!
<Zeph> Yay open source
<MeLoveMe> fast…
<ustreamer-66034> you can’t say “happy” on this?
<Hammy> AWESOME
<Dmitri> someone had some coffee
<Fort> haha
<Kyle_vdk> hahaha
<Hammy> shes fast
<SuperPC> Yay
<McAppleMan> wow talks really fast
<MeLoveMe> i only understood a few words,lol
* Elk likes Ms. Davis already.
<eggy> yeah, lol
<Elk> “Geeks FTW!” lol
<Kyle_vdk> haha!
<MeLoveMe> yay for drawings
<SuperPC> lol
<Hammy> thats a drawing of chris i think
<Bouddha> lolll
<Bouddha> hahahah
<Kyle_vdk> hahahah
<Kyle_vdk> hahah!
* Elk doesn’t see anything on Arizona..
<Dmitri> sadly, I can’t even draw that well free hand
<Kyle_vdk> this is good.
<Hammy> d’oh!
<Kyle_vdk> hah!
<Bouddha> east coast and west coast must conquer Texas !!! XD
<Fort> woohoo
<SuperPC> D’OH
<Fort> She’s got my vote.
<Hammy> o.O
<Dmitri> humans..pfft
<Elk> This is being recorded, correct?
<Kyle_vdk> haha! she should go for president.
<SuperPC> She’s good
<Fort> Awesome, Lego robots!
<Hammy> nenotech
<McAppleMan> lol
<ustreamer-66034> (”’\(o;.;@)/”’)
<Bouddha> *Xkcd*
<moyoy> The uprising! Finally!
<Kyle_vdk> It is recorded.
<Fort> Go, Mighty Voltron!
<Hammy> haha
<Zeph> Kat, please upload this video first when you get home >.>
<Bouddha> this is so cool
<ustreamer-77144> what is this ?
<Bouddha> this is awsome
<Hammy> I want this to happen!
<Dmitri> this is Gnomedex
<moyoy> Oh, no!
<Kyle_vdk> Hahahah!
<Bouddha> yes
<MeLoveMe> Aplha squad form up and waypoint charley
<ustreamer-77144> Is this live ?
<Elk> lol, internet slang
<iConnor3G> she is really funny lol
<Bouddha> lets start a group on facebook
<Elk> ustreamer, yes
<Hammy> ROFL
<Bouddha> XD
<ustreamer-59963> yes ustreamer
<moyoy> I wouldn’t live
<Fort> Oh, that’s harsh!
<Kyle_vdk> hahha~
<Fort> 24 hours from GMail!
<Dmitri> I’m down for that
<iConnor3G> omg 24 hour suspension
<Elk> “Infinite High-Bandwidth Internet”?
<Bouddha> hehe
<ustreamer-59963> <censored>, why am i not logged in?
<Elle> When the chat is moderated only trusted (voiced) users may chat. Please see this link to learn how to become a voiced user: http://www.wyldryde.org/a/001217.php
<CCMike> ustreamer-59963 please stop that
<Hammy> people would kill themselves if they cant twitter for 24hrs
<iConnor3G> password = alpine
<Hammy> lol
<iConnor3G> lol
<SkyForce6> low volume…
<moyoy> rofl
<Elk> Woo! Cosplayers
<Hammy> YAAY
<Bouddha> i’m still not getting what Twitter is
<Hammy> hahahahaha
<Dmitri> I love this woman’s spunk
<ACE> What?!?!?
<Bouddha> hahaha
<Elk> Dang!
<Hammy> ouch!
<drisley> she’s awesome
<Elk> I flippin’ love Sarah
<Dmitri> yes she is
<Kyle_vdk> shes awesome!!!
<MeLoveMe> lol
<Hammy> yuppers
<Fort> <giggle>
<MeLoveMe> i like her idea
<JimBo>
<Bouddha> ghfa
<JimBo> kool
<MeLoveMe> lol
<Hammy> i wouldnt XD
<Fort> What about other people’s family members?
<Hammy> woot
<Bouddha> Yay !!
<Dmitri> amen sista!
<Bouddha> nice
<moyoy> yea!
<Elk> Sarah Davis for President!
* Hammy claps and cheers
<Kyle_vdk> Yes!
<Fort> Vote early, vote often!
* Kyle_vdk claps
<Elk> [Emphesis on 'Often']
<urmom> hi
<iConnor3G> lol
<urmom> hehe

I have accepted an invitation to speak this Friday at the Best of Ignite Seattle portion of Gnomedex 2008.

“Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility”

- Attention & Ambiguity: The Non-Paradox of Creative Work | 43 Folders

I will be giving a playful geeky talk called “The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth”. It will be a lightning talk, which means I will have five minutes on stage and my slides will autoforward every 15 seconds. It will involve a lot of me talking very quickly and trying not to laugh.

Here’s a video of my first Ignite Seattle talk in February 2007:

I will be posting my slides and a transcript of the presentation directly afterward.

I greatly enjoyed this video because Wesch explores the value of participatory culture from an unusual point of view.

In my field, we use the term “transactional cost” to gauge the level of work required to complete a task. Writing a novel has a high transactional cost. Baking a cake has a medium transactional cost. Twittering about the latest news has a low transactional cost.

Traditionally, transactional cost has correlated with value. A novel has more value to society than a cake. A cake has more value to society than a tweet. Work goes in, value comes out.

In Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky talks about the concept of the “Coasian floor”. Coase, in his day, reduced the transactional cost of running a business by creating a hierarchical management structure, reducing the amount of communication required to make decisions and get work done. The Coasian floor is the point at which the transactional cost of a task outweighs the value. As much as they would like to, no one sends a letter to each of their friends every day. That behavior is below the Coasian floor.

The role of technology in our society is to lower transactional costs. Technology has made it easier to do many things that were extremely hard work for folks in the 1800s. This has certainly had an impact on value. The value of doing many types of work has evaporated. I don’t need a scribe or a printing press or a copy machine to distribute my writing.

Technology also lowers the Coasian floor, and that’s where things get interesting. Below the Coasian floor are things that were traditionally considered of such a low value that they weren’t worth doing. This creates a generational divide. Older folks worked harder and were limited to completing tasks of high value.

The internet has practically put the Coasian floor into free fall. Startups are doing a great job of exploring the vast number of tasks that were formerly too much work. The Coasian floor has gotten so low in fact that many of those tasks are commonly considered trivial. Most people don’t understand YouTube because the value of watching teens in Kansas dancing seems so extremely low to them.

Hearing from Michael Wesch is refreshing because he puts a high value in YouTube. In those dancing teens, he sees a global shared culture. He sees the kids of the world singing the same song. He sees ideas and cultural concepts spreading throughout humanity in ways that have until now been absolutely unfathomable.

So is the free fall of the Coasian floor causing us to waste our days on trivialities, or is it allowing us to actively participate in building a common global culture? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

If you’re coming to SxSW, then you are allowed to vote at their oh-so-democratic panel picker.

My panel is called Start to Finish Drupal Redesign, and you can vote for it now!

Bug fighting Drupal drop by Senpai

ACLU of Washington is currently in the thick of a Drupal redesign, made all the more complicated by the fact that we’re nuts about privacy and accessibility, so we’re going to have to modify Drupal quite a bit to account for those things. We’ve put resources into creating a very technical detailed case study of how this project was (will have been?) accomplished, so that others may learn from our vast wisdom (many more others if you go vote for the panel. See those stars at the top? Click on the fifth one. Tell your friends!).

[Edited to add: Also give some love to my friend Tim Hwang of ROFLCon fame, and the fabulous nonprofit tech folks!]