Cape Eyes

A chill online wind blows with SOPA

Stop Online Piracy Act

(November 2011)
I LOVE MY FOOD, so when I hear the word sopa on a gray November day I think: mmmm, warm, soup, good. But this week’s political definition of SOPA is giving me the chills.

SOPA, for those of you who don’t live in a world of technology or politics, stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA, the US House bill, and its Senate cousin the PROTECT IP Act, want to tighten and enforce online copyright with a sledge hammer.

Not surprisingly, the film and recording industries are behind the effort. Also, not surprisingly, technology companies are against it.

And, least surprising of all, this week’s House Judiciary Committee hearing has created a frenzy of lobbying so intense you can almost hear the sound of dollar bills flying through the year.

To listen to the sound of the debate, you’d think Congress is either going to create a million jobs by killing off piracy or is about to destroy the very fabric of the Internet.  But it’s worse than either of those: SOPA is half-baked legislation that turns the web into a network of enforcers.

A quick read of the bill summary (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@D&summ2=m&) shows that it creates a somewhat undefined chain of responsibility and pushes the responsibity for enforcing copyright onto those running the mechanics of the web – and if you don’t play enforcer, you’ll be considered guilty too.

SOPA paints a broad sweep of illegal use of copyright material. That cute video of the kindergarten twins singing a pop pop pop hit song that mom posted on YouTube? Criminal activity that must be shut down and prosecuted.

CNET, reporting on this week’s debate (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20128239-38/sopa-hollywoods-latest-effort-to-turn-back-time/) put it very clearly, writing that SOPA:

… creates vague, sweeping new standards for secondary liability, drafted to ensure maximum litigation. It treats all U.S. consumers as guilty until proven innocent. If passed, the bill would give media companies unprecedented new powers to shape the structure and content of the Internet.

No one — proponents or opponents — argue that piracy should get a free pass. Piracy does indeed pull money and jobs from the economy and stealing is wrong. For that matter, it’s also illegal.

Uhm, yeah, it is already illegal! And there are methods for dealing with it on the books. Now. Today. Of course, that process doesn’t turn everyone up and down the Internet food chain into a free enforcer for one industry segment.

Not to mention the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 (http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf), which updated pre-digital era copyright regulations and attempted to balance content producer and web service provider rights. While not perfect, DMCA has been a platform for working through the nuts and bolts of managing content ownership in a world of easily transmitted files, user created content, and the whole reshaping of media as we once knew it.

Years ago, the recording and entertainment industries stuck their collective heads deep into the growing layers of silicon and then took a big business model body slam when the world simply moved past them and adopted different channels for digital music, movie, and TV distribution.These folks have been increasingly and vocally unhappy with DMCA and lobbied hard for SOPA.

It’s big bucks at stake here! To give you a sense of the scale, in 2007, media giant Viacom brought a $1Billion – yes, billion, with a B – copyright suit against YouTube.

Opponents of SOPA, including technology giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as media rights watchdogs like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) say that SOPA is nothing less than a step toward government-backed-corporate censorship and blacklisting.

Various tech-centered sites “celebrated” the first day of the House hearings November 16 with a campaign called “American Censorship Day” posting a “this site has been censored” popup with a call to action to fight back. Campaign (http://americancensorship.org/), supporters include EFF, Public Knowledge, Mozilla, Creative Commons and a number of others.

Mozilla, home of the open source browser Firefox, went black in mourning at midnight, and subsequently ran a black “stop censorship” banner across the site, with links calling for action. (http://www.mozilla.org/sopa)

Corporate copyright vs. censorship sizzles with emotion. But that’s just part of the debate. SOPA makes me shiver because it feels like part of an on-going trend where people with just enough knowledge to be dangerous, fueled with massive mountains of lobbying cash, create solutions somewhat akin to carpet bombing a city to squash a mosquito buzzing around one’s head.

It also should remind us that this thing called the Internet has a life bigger than any one of us, that it was nourished with government funds, invested in by business, turned into an economic engine by entrepreneurial vision, and become the tool for individual expression and civic engagement around the globe.

Is that really something we want mucked about in a half-baked way driven by profit motive on the part of one industry? We – all of us – deserve better than that!

As Congress continues to debate, and the November rain continues to fall, I think that I, for one, will return to the other kind of sopa, the one with chicken broth and chilies and all sorts of good things that you can find (http://www.food.com/recipe-finder/all/sopa) with the click of mouse … because the Internet remains a place where no single interest or bloc of money can dictate what we do and how we use it.

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary ... I found library eBooks clearly

YOU'VE BEEN HERE, HAVEN'T YOU?  You know, where you sit bolt awake for no particular reason at 2 am, sleep but a fleeting memory.

You don’t feel like playing a computer game, there's nothing on the tube but offers to buy cubic zirconium or to repent your sins, and you've read every single book on the bookshelf at least twice. What to do? What to do?

Well, this week I found an answer: Go to the library.

That's right, your public library. I don't mean get literally get in the car and drive, of course. But if you are one of the growing population with an e-reader device, 2 am turns out to be a great time to logon and download that trashy detective novel to take your mind off the million and one reasons you can't get back to sleep.

Here on the Cape, the CLAMS network (http://www.clamsnet.org/) manages about 3,000 eBooks, available for reading from your Kindle, iPad, Nook, or laptop, depending on the readers you've installed.

CLAMS stands for Cape Libraries Automated Material Sharing. CLAMS provides a real regional service, connecting all the libraries and providing backend delivery and shared materials.

Most of us know CLAMS as the way you can have a book from Wellfleet delivered to your local library branch in Falmouth.  Or track down a DVD in Harwich and pick it up in Eastham.  Like they tell you in kindergarten, sharing is indeed a beautiful thing.

As books move digital, a shared service like CLAMS makes even more sense.

It is easy. You jump to CLAMS from your local library. My beloved physical library happens to be Eastham, and Eastham library's site offers up a "Download" link right at the top of the page. It connects to a CLAMS page promoting both digital and audio books (http://clamsnet.lib.overdrive.com).

The library didn't recreate the wheel to make this possible. CLAMS, like thousands of libraries around the country, uses a service from Overdrive (http://www.overdrive.com).

OverDrive, a Cleveland Ohio-based company, develops and manages digital distribution. It handles content for all major platforms, from Mac and Windows OS computers to mobile devices like from Apple's iPhone/iPad, Android, Kindle, Nook, and a bunch of others.

If you feel insecure, not to worry. The CLAMS folks offer both text and video how-tos that show you the way, even at 2 am when most sensible human librarians are sound asleep.  Both are linked from CLAMS eBooks search page (http://library.clamsnet.org/screens/matebook.html)

At 2 am, in my laptop computer window, I see some highlighted stacks: new releases, just purchased, and most popular. I browse a bit.

I can't help clicking on the title The Dud Avocado. The name just makes me laugh. I see that it was bought by Friends of the Mashpee Library and is available as both Kindle and Adobe epub formats.  Hmmm.

Click. I've added it to my cart.  Once I check out, I'll have it for a week. I can return it earlier, or at the end of the week it will automatically return itself. Hey, cool. I can't forget to bring it back!

Let's see, I want some really light reading. Teen pop writer Meg Cabot writes adult fluff too. There's a handy search button right at the top of the screen. Select: Author.  Now type: c-a-b-o-t. Click the Search button. Ah, with one more click I'm adding Size 12 is Not Fat to my basket.

Oh, and while I'm here, I've been wanting to read that latest book in that series. You know the one. Botswana. Precious is the detective. Alexander someone wrote it.  Ladies Detective Agency something something. Agh.  A straight search isn't going to help me out here and my poor brain seems fogged in at this time of night!

But look, there's a bunch of browsing options along the side. Browse eBook fiction. Click. Mysteries. Click. Ohhh. At the top of the mystery listing here's a Dick Francis/ Felix Francis I haven't read yet. Click!

And now I can search only within this genre.  The phrase "Ladies Detective" brings me a list of the books and I quickly find Book 12, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, and add that to the list as well.

I sadly note that not all the series in the books are available as eBooks, which reminds me of one of the drawbacks. While 3,000 may sound like a lot of books, it barely taps the possibilities. EBooks are still in their infancy and you might not find what you want … yet.

I also wish for more flexible search options. So many times I can remember bits and pieces about a book, but not the structured data like "Author" or "Title."

But for now, I've found a few things that fit the bill and so it's time to check out. I enter my library card number and I'm ready to rock and read.

I use the Kindle reader on my iPad. I've used several reader applications and for a million tiny reasons, I keep coming back to Kindle. I like the physical form of my iPad, but the Kindle reader app has nailed the eBook experience.

Happily, in September, Amazon and OverDrive announced Kindle eBook lending for the 11,000+ U.S. public and school libraries in the OverDrive network. Before this fall, you couldn't check out a Kindle e-book, but Kindle's owner Amazon finally worked out the kinks.

The library shows me the books I'm holding in my virtual arms. I click on each to check it out. But here's another rub. You need an Amazon account. Remember, Amazon=Kindle.

With an account, you just log in and "get library book." Without one, the only option you have is to, well, create one.  Or use a different format of reader. Creating an account is no big deal, but I wouldn't have the energy to do it at 2 am. Luckily, I just log in to my existing account and I'm on my way.

I flip open my iPad again and open up the Kindle reader. Everything synchs. I turn off the light and settle into the pillows, for a nice mindless read.

Did you catch that? I turned OFF the light!

Yeah, that's another nice thing about late night eBook reads - no light. How many times have you woken up bright light glaring in your eyes because you fell asleep while reading? Or woken up in the morning with Bitty Book Lite imprints on your face?

Libraries play an increasingly critical role in our digital information age. Paper books remain wonderful and I can't imagine ever letting go completely. But eBooks add a whole other dimension to the mix.

Whether it's a middle o' the night read, a snowy day, a lack of transportation, or using the passage marking and notes functions of the applications, eBooks belong. Thanks to libraries, they belong to us ALL as well.

Click. Read well! And have a good night's sleep!

Learn Anything, Anywhere, Anytime

I never gave much thought to Georgia State University before.

But now, well, a bit of glow comes from the name because I’ve been listening to a series of brief musical lessons on the history of jazz.

Hmm, I guess I better connect a few dots here. It starts with iTunes U.

In 2007, Apple launched the space as a way for schools to private-label a download space for podcasts. It provided an application for higher education to communicate within itself. However, in the digital world things have away of taking on a life of their own – and iTunes U did exactly that.

In the intervening four years several trends converged:

• The nature of education took a turn as some schools started to think about ways to extend and increase their brand and visibility.
• On the information-yearns-to-be-free front, the concept of public courseware began to catch on fire.
• The iTunes store became mainstream.
• Mobile devices sprouted like so many traveling weeds.

Educator, trumpet player, GordonVernick.

The result? In early September iTunes U reached 600 million downloads of material representing more than a thousand schools around the world — and Jazz Insights from Dr. Gordon Vernick, Associate Professor of Music at Georgia State University landed in my library.

Like Apple says in its current promotion: learn anything, anytime, anywhere.

Many lessons lie within iTunes U (ooh, that’s a pun that I couldn’t resist!) Seriously, take a few minutes to traverse these digital hallowed halls of downloadable learning athttp://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ and you’ll find not only courses, but also a crash course and what does and doesn’t work in this format.

First off, check out the breadth – both in source and topics. This isn’t about big name US Ivies. Community colleges and schools and from multiple countries appear.

Lesson notes: If you thought education meant a handful of institutions, a few minutes with iTunes U quickly reminds you that education comes from a diverse and global universe.

Yup, there’s the expected Stanford and UC Berkely and MIT and Harvard … but there’s also Jefferson Community College (Watertown NY) and Madison Area Technical College (Madison WI) as well as Trinity College in Dublin Ireland, Universite de Lausanne, and Univerisida Rey Juan Carlos.

Some schools use the space as a way to channel internal communications and marketing – one of my favorite titles Brown is Green – turned out to be a pitch for one of Brown University’s programs. I love that schools actively use lots of different channels to reach prospective parents, students, and staff, as well as alumni.

However, to see what makes iTunes U more than just an interesting application for schools, take a browse through all the courses, lectures, and presentations posted here. For you. For free.

A few quick examples …

• Utah Valley University (Orem UT) takes a stab at distance learning with classes like POLY 420 – State Legislative Process
• Oxford University records its Critical Reasoning for Beginners course.
• MIT, through its OpenCourseware project, has a huge suite of courses including Professor’s Marvin Minksy’s The Society of Mind
• Harrisburg Area Community College (PA) podcasts lectures like HIST 101, World History: Becoming Human with Professor Richard Moss.

And of course, there is the aforementioned Jazz Insights from Georgia State University. But don’t stop at these. I liked the currated collections as a gateway to cool stuff: Entrepreneurship. For History Buffs. Economic Insights. Physics for All. The Middle East. 101: Intro College Classes. Noteworthy.

It turns out that not all materials present equally well – and in that lies a lesson about how to prepare for the media.

For example, although the OpenCourseware materials cover amazing ground, their format of a microphone in the lecture hall alone … well, let’s just say that listening to Professor Minsky through iTunes U feels a bit like sitting in the hall outside the classroom straining to hear thorugh the closed door. Great material, but not the ideal way to experience it.

Lectures recorded as podcasts specifically, like Professor Moss’ history lecture, provide a strong audio experience. I felt like I was getting the voiceover to a power point, but at least I moved from the hall back to the same room with the class.

Production expertise clearly makes a difference. For example, both the jazz series and Harvard’s excellent Justice series were co-produced by radio and television partners. The jazz series combines music, voice, and a keen sense of pacing into a clean produced package. The Justice series uses well-recorded video to produce – but not over-produce – Professor Michael Sandel’s lectures at Sanders Theater.

Some schools take the step of combining the audio with online workbooks. Want to learn Russian? Check out UCLA’s Beginning Russian, which combines short lectures and actual spoken language examples with a web-based workbook –http://www.russian.ucla.edu/beginnersrussian/.

The audio tutorials, tied into interactive website and a recommended text really do combine to make you a student in the class. Well, expect for that grade and credit thing!

Of course, as well all know, the teacher matters. Check out the Holloway Poety Series from UC Berkley or Whats New in Poetry – Readings from the Poetry Council at Emory University, where each session is as good or, well, as less good, as the poetry reader.

Education has long reached back into the community. I guess that’s one reason I smiled when I spotted BackYard Farmer. The University of Nebraska/Lincon has been producing Backyard Farmer since 1953. But time hasn’t stopped — and Nebraska, along with its production partner, rebroadcasts the 2011 edition of show in iTunes U, turning its panel of insect, turf, and other experts into a digital export.

I also take it as a sign of hope for the world – and yes, with 60% of its audience international in nature iTunes U does reflect the world — that digital multimedia can actually mean more than YouTube’s latest-cute-dog or current-gruesome-unmentional-actstop 20. The iTunes U collection doubled its download volume in the past 12 months. Maybe this learning thing is catching on!

OK, class, your turn now. Tap your way to check out the physics of football, overview of autism, intermediate French, the fall of the Roman Empire, or climate modeling … and meanwhile I’m going back to GSU to learn about Lester Young.

Send in the Twix Bars: The Give-Get of Technology

I spotted an interesting sounding article in the Boston Globe the other day, headlined "Ingenuity vs. Obesity." As one of the many whose life represents a constant struggle between "this tastes great" and "these jeans don't fit," I couldn't help but jump in and start reading.

About three paragraphs in, I started to wonder.

Don't get me wrong - the article describe some interesting technologies being developed in the Boston area that address the intersection of our bodies and food.

For example, there's the Lexington company named GI Dynamics whose EndoBarrier is basically an internal condom for the digestive tract that lets foods slide along part of the small intestine without being absorbed. It's got applications for diabetes and obesity.

(http://www.gidynamics.com/endobarrier-overview.php)

In Boston, we have Gelesis (http://www.gelesis.com/content/about-gelesis/), a firm that's raised $16M in venture funds to develop a capsule that swells up inside your stomach, making you feel full.

Over in Cambridge, the war on fat is carried on by companies like Zafgen, which develops an injectable drug that slows fat production, and Energesis Pharmaceuticals, which researches ways to burn off fat.

These are but a few examples from the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the battle of the bulge, a battle that matters because the majority of adults in the US fall into the obese or overweight categories. This, in turn, increase diabetes and cardiovascular health risks.

It may have been the notion of pharmaceutical fat burning that triggered it.  I mean, sure I'd like a magic pill to make those extra pounds disappear so I could be as slim and fit and flat-tummied as the American ideal.

But I'm not stupid either.

We all know what burns fat, even if we don't like the answer.  Food in = energy out. Put too much on one side or the other and you end up with fat or starvation.  Want to use stored fat? Draw upon it to create energy.

So it was with that ah-ha moment that I began to wonder if we're working really hard to solve a problem with technology that we also created with technology.

We've done a great job using technology to produce more food, for less cost. There are whole associations devoted to this career discipline, including the Institute of Food Technologists (http://www.ift.org/food-technology.aspx).

Much of this has been wonderful applications of science and technology - creating more bountiful harvests, ensuring food safety, understanding food chemicals and their outcomes...

But some of these technologies create end results that merely led to the need for other technologies -- like stomach-filling capsules -- to counter their results.

UMass Extension notes that the food industry may be spending as much as $10 billion a year advertising food and beverages to people who are forming their eating habits - i.e., youth and children under the age of 18. The Kaiser Family Foundation says approximately a third of the ads are for candy and snacks, a fourth are for cereal, and a tenth are for fast food.

All of these promoted products become possible through applied food science - aka, technology applied to food and drink.

Our inventions in chemistry, materials, and genetics deserve applause ... but with images of sugar plum EndoBarriers dancing in our heads, maybe they deserve a little pause as well.

It's sort of like intro to algebra. One of the first things you learn is the concept of simplification. When you're trying to solve a problem, you start by bringing it down to its most basic level by cancelling out both sides of the equation.

When you look at the fat question, it's pretty clear that a big dollop of technology sits on both sides of it.

Have we been busily investing in technology just so we can invent more technology to solve the problems we created with it in the first place?

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with eating these products of food technology. Bring on the Twix bars! Bring on the Starbursts! I love 'em!

It's just that maybe a few moments of introspection are in order -- and not just with the fat question either.

Instead of charging ahead and assuming that we can invent a solution to every problem, why not take a look to see where we can simplify the equation? To see if our very own technology is already part of the problem?

We hold in our minds and in our hands great power to shape our world. Therein lies the core of technology - using knowledge to create a thing, a process, a solution.

Ingenuity vs. Obesity. You gotta' love that match up. But perhaps we also have to ask if we've merely battling ourselves -- and if we can simplify the equation down to one that's easier to solve.

The Semantic Web: Talking to Machines

Web 2.0. You've mastered it, right?

You tweet. Your videos post to YouTube. Your resume highlights nestle into a LinkedIn bio. Your high school friends tracked you down on Facebook. You've added your favorite cinnamon roll bakery review to Yelp!

This user generated 2.0 social web thing keeps chugging right along. Of course, you try not to think too much about how someone else rakes in advertising dollars off your posts. And you ignore the privacy questions. And your filter skills have gotten pretty darn good or else you'd have drowned in the dreck by now. But it's all to the good because 2.0  = the future. And you're smack dab in the middle of it, riding the crest of the trends. Woot, woot!

Uh, hate to burst that trend bubble, but guess what? There's a new paradigm in town.

Web 2.0, say hello to Web 3.0. Looks like we've got a new model to master.

Web 3.0 has been bouncing around for a while, but the idea of the web as one big database where machines could share information with other machines and create value for people has been a bit too, well sci-fi-out-there.

As the world at large begins to understand the value of shared data and the idea of sharing information feels less scary, Web 3.0's little feet seem to be digging in and gaining some traction and its scampering sounds keep showing up in trade industry articles and development trends.

A few weeks ago, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) launched a new working group (http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/) to update the guidelines of how machines can share information with other machines.

Yes, I hear the screams from those of you who know this stuff - It's not new! And Web 3.0 is a meaningless term!

You, my well-educated friends, are of course correct. What we are talking about has long been referred to as the Semantic Web.

Papers from the early 2000s, like Integrating Applications on the Semantic Web (http://www.w3.org/2002/07/swint), talk about the potential of enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.

The core concept was there in Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal to CERN in 1989 (http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html).

The computer science/philosophical world totally got the phrase Semantic Web. For the rest of us, though, we needed something more prosaic. Easier to pronounce. Like Web 3.0.

People who enjoy the act of thinking for the pleasure of thinking, love the rabbit hole of semantics. Semantics tries to define meaning. Instead of blithely accepting the images and concepts that d-o-g imply, semantics asks why and how that meaning gets applied, and how that interacts and intersects with other symbols.

It's kind of fun sometimes to think this way, except that I have a sneaking suspicion it might end up with one lying on the ground staring up at the night sky quivering because one no longer knows what is and isn't real. Meanwhile, the rest of us just accept that the s-k-y is t-h-e-r-e and settle in for a nice evening of popcorn and a movie.

When you make semantics modify web, as in "Semantic Web," it becomes even more mind blowing. Imagine a world where meaning is embedded in every bit of information. D-o-g becomes more than string of three characters and instead embodies literally and culturally the 'dog-ness' within.

Yeah, I know, this makes your brain hurt and you're probably wondering  right about now if I'm the one staring helplessly at the night sky!

OK, so instead, imagine that all the information connected by the web knows about itself. But more than that, imagine that it knows how to understand all the other information out there, including all the possible points of connection between those bits of meaning.

Whoa!

By the time you're done, you've created a map of all the meaning of all the stuff connected by the web. It sounds complex, but mostly it's just helping machines do what we humans do naturally.

Remember when you were in kindergarten or first grade and you were learning to write sentences? Sometimes you'd get a little pile of words and you'd have to arrange them from a random pile into a sentence that made sense.

To do that, you needed to know something about each word. You also needed to know the relationship the words could have with each other. You needed to know the rules for making a sentence. With those bits of knowledge, you arranged the words to say, "The flower is red" or "The cat drinks milk" or  "The cow jumps over the moon." 

With your context knowledge, you could start using these written sentences proactively. You probably figured out pretty quickly that handing an "I love Mommy" note to mommy, even if she hadn't asked for it, brought a reward, while handing "I love Mommy" to your sister was pointless.

Building the semantic web isn't that different. We create a shared set of rules and provide a means of creating connection and context. Suddenly we have a sort of gigantic relational database with hooks to applications that make sense to different users.

Of course, the challenge lies in that we humans already have rule sets about meaning and symbols - and the web doesn't.

That's where the W3Cs development of the RDF standard comes in.  RDF stands for "Resource Description Framework" and it describes a model for data, meaning, and syntax that can be read by machines. It uses XML as its language, providing a tool for independent and unrelated machines to use and exchange data amongst themselves, with meaning.

So what does this all me for us as we play about in our Web 2.0 world of user-generated content and intersecting user-definable applications? It means a new layer of information will be joining our world and that we need to start thinking differently about how we might interact with machines.

The obvious benefits include easier searching and more powerful data mining, but the interesting stuff happens when we push the boundaries. 

Hmm, let's dream a bit ... Can machines monitor other machines and push data to us when we need it ("Sweet corn is 6/$1 at Stop & Shop this week")?

Can machines perform analysis based on broad concepts and deliver reminders we forget we needed ("Ah-hem, time to review that auto policy, there's new options, should I make the payment for you?")

Can we have conversations with data? ("What kind of pricing are you seeing on this kind of project? Do you think the cost of lumber is going to rise next week and how can I factor that into my bid?")

Can our data collaborate? ("I see you've got 2011 data an I've got 2010 data, let's get together and merge?")

I kinda' like the idea of a floating glowing orb that pops up in front of me at my command, that finds what I ask for, offers what it thinks I might need, and reminds me of what I need to do next. The orb works because it combines my contextual needs with the ability to talk to all the information, everywhere.

Right, that last one is going into the science fiction realm ... a little bit.  

Web 3.0 might not manifest as an floating glowing orb, but it might show up as knowledge agents, business automation tools, or a plethora of other things that can have immediate impact on how move about in the post-digital age.

Semantic sounds esoteric, but Web 3.0 isn't about gazing hopelessly at the night sky and pondering its meaning. Rather, is about taking emerging capabilities into our own hands, grabbing those machine by the throat, and shaping it all into a new knew of collaboration to do things we could only dream about yesterday.