Last week, Twitter did something big: they introduced a new patent assignment agreement that binds them to use their patent arsenal only for defensive purposes. In an environment where things are getting ugly in software patent land, this is a bold move.

The agreement (here on GitHub), which they’ll use for upcoming work and also apply retroactively, enforces the intent by both requiring complete inventor approval for any non-defensive use, and further, by granting inventors the right to sub-license the work in the case that Twitter breaks its part of the agreement.

This is fascinating for lots of reasons, but I’ll focus on three:

First, because it’s a hack on the system — rather than attempting to make head-on patent law reform (a noble but unquestionably difficult cause), it creatively hacks a solution to the problem — quickly and without needing to ask anyone’s permission. It’s beautiful that way, really. Don’t like patent law? Then let’s, collectively, change the way we use it — if it works, then we’ll have achieved the same goal with far less headache.

The second reason is that it’s a visible, powerful act of Internet Citizenship. By adopting this Twitter is taking a step towards making the Internet a better place to work, invent, and start a business. Of course, this value is not uncontroversial: this article on PE Hub gets at some of the tensions from the perspective of VCs and entrepreneurs:

“Regardless of your political beliefs, fundamentally, VCs have a fiduciary duty to our investors, and this structure does not enhance shareholder value,” says Ganesan. In the end, he adds, “My LPs don’t fund me to create change; they fund me to create returns.”
Still others argue that there are powerful cultural reasons why this patent reform initiative can’t simply be dismissed. “This newer generation of VCs has a much more progressive agenda,” notes economist-investor Paul Kedrosky. “Whereas other VCs take a more orthodox asset management view, which is: ‘These are the dials I have to turn to maximize value,’ [people like Wilson] think you can build a healthier ecosystem for the future.’”

Fred Wilson’s point, from the article, and expounded on in his post on the USV blog, is that restricting the use of software and business method patents levels the playing field, and encourages companies of all sizes to compete based on features and experience, not using weaponized patents. Even if a single company could stand to profit from this type of activity, his point is that getting away from it is good for the ecosystem as a whole.

Finally, perhaps the most interesting point is that this is likely to have Netizen Effects.

By that, I mean that Twitter’s actions should ripple through the Internet ecosystem, as other tech cos, startups and VCs adopt this and similar policies (either for the good or the ecosystem, or simply to compete for engineer love w/ Twitter). This is where things get really interesting. It’s possible that we could see a major shift in the way internet companies approach this area of intellectual property strategy, as a result of a visible, repeatable, netizen hack.

That’s exciting and I hope we can figure out how to support more of this kind of thing.

Yesterday at the Center for Civic Media, our lunch guest was S. Craig Watkins, a professor at UT Austin working on a variety of projects under the heading of “Connected Learning”. In his blog post about the idea, Dr. Watkins defines this as:

the increasingly complex ways in which young people’s learning ecologies are evolving. It is the notion that, in addition to happening anytime and anywhere, learning happens across the many different networks that teens’ navigate. School is an obvious node in a young learner’s network. But school represents only one node among many others, which includes after school sites, extracurricular activities, online communities, libraries, family, and peer communities just to name a few.

In his visit, he pointed out a few really important points, namely:

• the “learning & civic opportunity gap” we see in poor/marginalized communities is largely a result of what happens OUTSIDE of school, so there is perhaps the greatest opportunity to make a difference there;
• these “informal learning environments” don’t have the rigidities of the formal education system, allowing for greater creativity and innovation;
• In “extreme” locations, such as the poorest parts of the world with the least formal infrastructure, traditional school simply isn’t possibly, so we must take a more real-world, connected approach.

This resonates with so much of what I’ve been thinking about, regarding networks, and how they’re creating new, connected opportunities across all sectors. The idea that school is “only one node among many others” is the key idea. This is such a huge opportunity — to think about learning as something that can and should happen everywhere, and that can be facilitated and guided by many actors in the network. And of course, this also represents a disruptive force in the world of traditional education, which no doubt cause friction within the establishment (more on that in a minute).

The idea of “connected learning” dovetails with another idea I’ve been following recently, which is “natural learning”.

The term natural learning comes from the Unschooling movement (a variant on home-schooling) which I got to thinking about this week via this article on opensource.com. Unschooling is founded on the idea that humans are natural learners, and that the way that we learn in early childhood and adult life — by exploring, wondering, asking questions, and doing — is in line w/ our nature. The unschooling philosophy puts learners in the drivers seat, letting them follow their own curiosity, and using that as the driving force for learning. Adults (parents and others) act as facilitators, guides, and learning partners. Rather than pursuing a pre-defined body of knowledge, unschooling is more about learning how to learn, and turning people into life-long learners. From my personal experience with the unschooled (in the name of Nick Bergson-Shilcock, a life-long unschooler, fantastic human and blogger at unschooled.org), it works.

By contrast, unschooling argues that the “structured learning period” that we enter in grade school actually stifles real learning more than it supports it. Quoting from the father of Unschooling, John Holt, via the wikipedia article:

…the anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to remember, and drives them away from the material being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don’t know.”

I am sure this resonates with nearly everyone who has attended school.

It seems that we’re entering a period where the values of natural learning and the technologically-enabled methods of connected learning will join together to produce awesome and exciting opportunities. And seriously important outcomes, such as better access to learning opportunities and communities and deeper civic engagement.

And of course, as with most disruptive innovations, we can expect to see three things happen, likely in sequence:

1. Innovations in connected learning will be written off as “toys” — irrelevant to the “real” learning in schools.
2. Institutions that are threatened by connected learning will resist and fight back (countries, school districts, teachers unions, etc.)
3. Connected learning will prove to be more powerful and significant than anything we’ve seen before, and the role of formal learning institutions will change dramatically.

This is perhaps one of the most exciting and important areas where networks can make a difference. I’ll be following closely.

I’m not a hard core follower of GTD, but I do believe that working from the top of your inbox all day long is a recipe for disaster. However, accessing email is important and necessary. Problem is, with most email clients (I use gmail), you have to pass through the inbox (risking distraction) to do anything else you might need to do with your mail, such as composing or searching.

Recently, I’ve developed a workaround for this, which allows me to a) send and b) search without ever seeing my inbox. It’s working pretty well for me so I thought I’d share:

• Sending: Using the Quick Compose w/ Gmail and Quicksilver technique, I can now fire up a new Gmail compose window from anywhere (even outside of the browser) by invoking command+shift+m. Now, when I think “Oh, I need to email Karl about our project”, I don’t go to the inbox, I go to the compose window directly from wherever I am. Priceless.
• Searching: Using the Gmail Search chrome plugin, I can go directly to a Gmail search from a new browser tab, by starting out with g+s+<space> and then my search query. I get straight to what I was looking for; no trip to the inbox along the way.

The end result: I’m spending way less time in my Inbox, and doing a better job organizing my time around my real priorities. I think that’s a good thing. The down side is that I’ve actually missed a few emails recently, as spending less regular time in the inbox means a bigger pile when you do get there. But I see that as a manageable problem, and less important than getting past the prioritization-by-inbox routine.

The Internet works differently than most other things we’re used to. 20th century humans are accustomed to hierarchy, control and scarcity. The Internet, by contrast, is distributed open, and abundant. That difference is fundamental — it not only empowers what’s possible on the Internet (which we increasingly understand), but it also informs how we need to go about solving the Internet’s problems (this is harder).

So, I’ve been thinking about this notion of “the Internet way” (hat tip to Holmes for putting this phrase in my head), in two separate but related contexts:

1) The Internet way of doing things — meaning networked, collaborative, direct and efficient. All of my favorite examples (AirBnB, Skillshare, Kickstarter, Wikipedia, etc.) exhibit these characteristics. This is exciting and magical, and full of hope and opportunity.

2) The internet way of solving problems — and in particular, I mean solving problems that the Internet itself creates. This is where things get tricky, and where we bump up against our natural tendencies to think in terms of hierarchy and control.

Today, I’m going to focus on the latter, because it’s harder and arguably more interesting.

Solutions that are “net native” or that take “the internet way” tend to be non-intuitive. Rather than exerting top-down control, they leverage bottom-up peer production and empower users to protect themselves and each other. Rather than being closed and proprietary, they are open and transparent.

Albert Wenger writes consistently great stuff on this topic, so I’ll just use some of his examples to get a bit more concrete:

Problem: Sex ads and human trafficking

Newspapers and websites run classified ads that are blatantly used for sex services. This fuels the human trafficking trade.

Old way:Remove adult services ads from newspapers and websites like Craigslist

The problem with this type of approach to Internet issues is that it doesn’t fix them. Top-down control almost always results in a never ending game of “whack-a-mole”, which drives undesired activity deeper underground into less regulated (by other usersa nd well as by authorities) territories. Shut down craigslist ads, the ads to go foreign sites, etc. Prostitution and human trafficking are still going strong.

Internet way: (quoting from Albert):

To attack the problem of pimps forcing women into prostitution we need to come up with the most effective ways for the women themselves to be able to reach authorities and for third parties to be able to detect suspicious activity. One idea for the former is providing anonymous access to help via text messages and widely publicizing this ….
The obvious idea for the latter is to work with sites like Backpage and not against them. For instance, it is quite possible that a much better screening system can be created that identifies ads that may involve trafficking based on how the text is written and how the ads are posted. We won’t know that until we try it out (and big data has gotten very good at picking up even very subtle patterns).

Problem: Copyright infringement (aka piracy)

The Internet reduces the cost of distributing audio and video files to practically zero.

Old way: Lock all content down with DRM. Make sharing copyrighted works a felony; prosecute individuals who share file and websites who make it possible. Apply surveillance technology throughout the network to inspect and block packets transmitting unauthorized works.

The problem with this approach is the same: it doesn’t work. And furthermore, it’s massively expensive and deeply restricts personal freedoms.

Internet way: simplify the buying process. With increased network access, there is more demand for content than ever. Make it easy a) for individuals to pay for things and b) for innovators to build products and services on top that grow the audience and the industry. Rather than lock content down w/ DRM, open it up and create an open standard for rights management.

Problem: Mobile app security

A number of mobile apps have been getting into trouble recently, taking liberties with their users data.

Old way: Use regulation or the app store review process make sure that bad apps don’t get through to consumers.

Internet way: (quoting from Albert again):

It would be a shame if this resulted in more centralized control over apps and longer review processes. What we need instead is some kind of peer produced approach to app security. What I have in mind is something along the lines of what Chris Dixon did with SiteAdvisor for web sites. Some people will (voluntarily?) run software on their mobile handsets that monitors app activity, including which servers these apps communicate with. The results from these “monitors” are aggregated to provide security rankings for applications.

As we continue to explore the new, connected world, I think it will be useful to keep coming back to this framing — are the solutions we’re proposing equivalent to fighting a tidal wave (unnatural, ineffective)? Or are they native to the environment, taking advantage of our new strengths and capabilities?

Or, as Andy put it: remind ourselves that the Internet is not the problem. The Internet is the solution.

What are other examples of solving problems the Internet Way? It’s our job as the Internet community to help identify them, promote them and explain them. I’ll be keeping track of what I find here.

When the Internet erupted on January 18th to voice its discontent with SOPA and PIPA, it was a moment of loud power. Fight for the Future has a nice infographic describing everything that happened that day: 115,00 websites blacked out, 10mm signatures gathered, 8mm calls to congress; all in one day. The Internet exercised its voice, and boy was it loud.

The SOPA strike was like a digital nuclear bomb — it needed to drop, to make it clear that the Internet can stand up for itself. It’s critical to have that in our arsenal when we need it. But it shouldn’t have to come to that.

Luckily, the Internet also has tremendous quiet power . I think about the Internet’s quiet power in terms of production — the ability to make things of lasting value, together. For instance, the ability of the Stack Exchange sites to surface the best answers to hard questions, or the OpenStreetMap community’s response to the haiti earthquake, or the way that the Peer-to-Patent program lets collaborators on the Internet help build a base of evidence for use in the patent process. Each of these takes the input and attention of a large community of people, and turns it into a lasting asset.

So, how can we harness our quiet power for ongoing, constructive engagement in civic issues (Internet-related and otherwise)? By flexing our muscles and demonstrating the nuclear threat, I think there’s an opening to work with.