Blackbeltjones/Work “The cosmos is a deeply dangerous thing to think about - into it, vacant minds expand” - Dr. Jonathan Miller

Back later.

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The 2003 O’Reilly ETCON programme is live, and we’re a’coming.

The ETCON Brit-Pack (partial-list):

• Gonzo Collaborative Mapping on the Semantic Web : Jo Walsh
  
• UpMyStreet.com Conversations: Mapping Cyber to Space : Stefan Magdalinski
  
• Mailing List Bots : Ben Hammersley
  
• Social Software & Social Capital: Designing a Platform for Civic Activism for the BBC. : Matt Jones, James Cronin
  

Also, from the New World, Butterfield, Hourihan, Kahle, Rein, Shirky, Rheingold, Gillmor, Weinberger, Johnson, and Alan “The Daddy” Kay!

Hopefully see you there!

Filed under: Conferences and events
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Dan is right, J. Bradford DeLong is funny:

“My feet hurt. These marble floors are hard. I want to go sit down.”

“But here comes David Laibson, the master of hyperbolic discounting. If we stay here, we can talk to him.”

“But then our feet will hurt worse later on in the afternoon.”

“Ah, but right now we don’t care: you see, we are hyperbolic discounters, and so underweight future pain relative to present pleasure. It’s true that later on we’ll regret the fact that we spent so much time standing around and did not sit down. However, right now the benefits of discussing hyperbolic discounting with David Laibson are irresistible!”

“But if we stay here, we’ll be doing the wrong thing…”

More niche humour from James, yesterday:

“Two atoms were walking down the street. One turns to the other and says, “Oh, no! I lost an electron!”

The other responds, “Are you sure?!?”

“Yes, I’m positive!”

» J. Bradford DeLong: The Non-Work Side of the American Economic Association’s Annual Meeting

» Pretty Punny Physics Jokes

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This is a great chewy chunk of stuff from another aspect-of-the-Matt-cloud: “Adaptive design for weblog software”.

“The spectrum of software development has two ends. On one end is the push model (yes, I’m going to lapse into the push/pull dichotomy again), which is the model where you set your sights on a goal, and build a tower to get there (like Windows). On the other end is the pull model, which is more like an ecology. Tiny steps, filling niches, each new piece of development just taking advantage of what’s already there, and creating new capabilities—like, life creates conditions conducive to life, in everything that it does . But it’s undirected, not goal oriented, and slow. It can’t be forced. “

Welcome to the New Cambrian.

» Interconnected: Adaptive design for weblog software

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Danger (who designed/produced the Hiptop) have launched Hiplog, their moblog environment. It’s a near-clone of amateur effort HiptopNation, which preceded it’s commercial equivalent (as is now common in the New Cambrian Era of the web) by a number of months.

Joi Ito thinks that they share some DNA [update comments on Joi’s site indicate that they do not], but where corporate nuture is taking over from open-source nature is clear already from this, one of the inaugural posts to Hiplog:

“Unless my posts can be under a Creative Commons license, this is the only post I’ll be sending here… This is what I think of your terms of agreement [pictured]. I prefer to retain copyright on everything I produce, and give it away as I see fit”

I know that the owner-demographic of the Danger at the moment is in all likelihood techno-savvy, early-adopters who are ultra-aware and ultra-paranoid about their personal information and content, but wouldn’t it be great if this kind of “personal copyright awareness” went mainstream… Sounds like a job for a public-service media organisation…

Filed under: Ubiquitous computing
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Noticed this at k10k.net:

“Nowadays I seem to get more pleasure from reading on the web than looking at the web – I don’t know whether that’s symptomatic for the design scene as a whole (which seems to be in a rather disjointed state), but it does give me an opportunity to shine the light on some of my current favo[u]rite “wordy” spots.”

Least said, soonest mended. I think it was Spiekermann who said: “You cannot not communicate”. Strikes me – whether it’s written or graphically communicated: you cannot not read the Web. The “design scene” knows that surely? You’re losing out if you’re just looking or making things to be looked at, not ‘read’, not engaged with.

Having said that, maybe looking vs reading is just a symptom we’re heading nicely into the snowcrashed century.

Filed under: Visual and graphic design
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This week’s NTK says it best:

“Into the final days of the government’s Great ID Card Consultation – and the Home Office couldn’t be more excited. Lord Falconer continues to tell everyone who’ll listen that over 1500 people have responded, and the majority of them were extremely positive on the idea.

Now, given that they’re proposing a massive IT project to introduce a universal identifier for all citizens, with a centralised database of personal details, kept accurate by making a new crime of withholding your current address from the government – well, we can’t help but think that more people would a bit squeamish on the principle.”

The lovely folk from stand.org.uk have created a tool to make your voice heard in the consultation on Identity Cards, making it easy to go and do your bit.

» Stand.org.uk: A Cynic’s Guide To Entitlement (cough ID cough) Cards

Filed under: Society and culture
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David Lu’s fantastic notes from an Ivrea workshop on drawing ideas by Bill Verplank.

Wander around the rest of David’s site… Wonderful stuff.

Filed under: Strategy and process
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John Webword Rhodes on how commercial WIFI provision through payphones could complement or compete with Clay’s vision of DIYfi or DIYfratstructure.

” So I think we are seeing the end of Warchalking, but we are seeing the beginnings of a very strong wireless network. The internet will be everywhere, all the time, available to all devices. And you won’t need to look for quaint Warchalking markings. Instead, you’ll walk into Starbucks or Wallmart or Barnes and Noble, or you’ll be walking through your neighborhood, or perhaps some place near a payphone. You’ll have the web around you, all of the time. At home, at the office. Everywhere. It’ll be like air or water. Wi-Fi will just be there. At some point, you won’t have to worry about where you are. Wi-Fi or some other related wireless network will provide you with an internet blanket, and you’ll always feel warm and cozy. No Warchalking required.

Please don’t mourn the loss of Warchalking. It made plenty of people drool and it helped people start really thinking about Wi-Fi in all places. It helped people think about how to expand and extend the internet. To make it more like a utility, always on and available. With all this said, I’m actually excited about the death of Warchalking.”
[My emboldening]

If indeed warchalking’s dead… then that’s the best epitaph I could hope for.

» Webword: How Warchalking Died
[Via Anil Dash]

Filed under: Ubiquitous computing
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Set phasers to dreadful Shakespearian pun! Down and out in the Magic Kingdom has hit both the bookshelves and The Commons in the USA [it’s not out in the UK till February, apparently], and it’s a corker.

With Cory’s approach to publishing, he might show other authors of content how it’s possible to stack up both the dollars and the Whuffie.

Filed under: Book reviews
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or Keep It Simple, Software Socialists! Tom outlines how he and the team who developed UpMyStreet Conversations approached the project:

“The process of developing the UI and functionality of the sites (which, along with Dan Burzynski and Dorian McFarland, has been one of my major responsibilities) has presented some particularly interesting challenges. Throughout the process my main aspiration was to make it almost so obvious to use that people completely ceased to notice how novel it was. This involved paring down the message board functionality to its simplest core and concentrating on fully understanding the very distinct issues that a geographically-organised board might engender.”

» Plasticbag.org: On the Guardian and UpMyStreet Conversations…

Filed under: Social Software
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http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns.html

[via IASlash]

Filed under: Social Software
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My first snowball fight at work in about 6 years… BBC Bombadiers Vs. TheUpMyStreet.com Irregulars.

UPDATE: more pictures of Londoners confused by snow from the BBC News.

Filed under: Misc.
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Browsing blogs, I’ve often had what I call the “glittering cave moment”; when I leave the dowdy, familiar surrounds of my blog-neighbourhood and get taken by the hand (or link) by someone I trust into a new and sparkling world of scary new knowledge, opinions, thoughts and views. That bridging moment has a tangible excitement to it.

My biggest “glittering cave moment” was last year’s ETCON, when I realised the fun that was happening in the techcave, as opposed to where I was. Another huge one was when I discovered the parallel universe of LiveJournal.

Worth remembering bridges happen at divides: they are erected over chasms, canyons, torrents.

This post at greaterdemocracy.org by Adina Levin explores what happens if the systems you navigate tend to keep you in your cave.

Noted socialnetwork analyst Valdis Krebs has been discovering the lack of bubble-bridges at Amazon:

“There’s a set of books that seem to represent “left-wing” readers, with titles by Chomsky and Michael Moore and Tom Friedman. And there’s a parallel set of books that seem to represent “right-wing” interests, with books by writers including Ann Coulter and Patrick Buchanan.

The clusters of recommendations seemed to be mutually exclusive. Only one book appeared on recommendation lists in both clusters: What Went Wrong, a book by Bernard Lewis about Middle East history.”

I believe that’s what’s being illustrated in the lovely, lucid accompanying diagram [above, reminds me superficially of this by Stewart]. Mr. Krebs goes on to say:

“The challenge is to create bridges so that diverse information and ideas can be exchanged (not just via hollering and arguing).”

As I mentioned before, one of the things we’re finding from our ethnographic study of people working to change their civic environment, is how successful people or organisations often shift from being adversaries to allies, and how important and how delicate those bridging moments are in achieving this in real-life.

We have a “charrette” tomorrow to try and figure out some alternatives to encourage and manage this online.

Tricky.

Dumb un-thought-through ideas I have lodged in my head: I’m thinking some kind of compass of links or opinions that give you a panorama view of those associated with issues you’re concerning yourself with. In my mind it looks like the variations tool in Photoshop meets politicalcompass.org. You know, where you have your original picture in the middle and then are shown variants which are more yellow, more cyan, more magenta, etc.

Or maybe some kind of implementation of the ‘publish my friends on my page’ feature that LiveJournal has, except you publish contrarian or adversarial views – not a lot different from having comments turned-on on your blog perhaps!

Some kind of functionality to facilitate “hand-shaking” and create common-ground to establish cooperation within are going to be important. Turn-taking is going to be important. Also, some kind of auto-glossary commonground, where you can discover whether you are talking about the same thing just from different view points and share/merge the langauge you’ve been using [XFML/Taxomita involved somehow?]. Tools to widen “the circle of empathy” as Steven Pinker puts it: Telempathics

Very glad we have some models from real-life research to start from. Going to dig out everything Meatball and Valdis Krebs have to offer.

Any other pointers?

» Greaterdemocracy.org: Is the “Daily Me” at the doorstep?

——Side-question to self: must read in-depth and figure how does this relate to ShellyBurningbird’s great recent run of posts on the matter of connections between one’s commonplace books and “the commons”

Filed under: Social Software
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From what might be my new favourite place, Lightcycle.org:

“Love in a petri dish”.

Awww.

Filed under: Blog watch
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Phil tried to explain it. Simon still doesn’t get it and asks the lazyweb to explain itself. Stef slaps the lot of us for trying to baffle his mum.

“I’m an unashamed populist. If my mum can’t use it, if a complete web novice doesn’t get it straight away, I’ve failed.

And the Trotts, and all these people writing more endlessly self-referentially feedback mechanisms for staring up the arse of your referrers, are failing too.

Why do we keep making the web harder instead of easier?”

» Whitelabel.org: Survival of the easiest: Trackback

Filed under: Uncategorized
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A couple of quotes from a longer piece at the Long Now Foundation website:

“He pretended not to like working on any problem that was outside his claimed area of expertise. Often, at Thinking Machines when he was asked for advice he would gruffly refuse with “That’s not my department.” I could never figure out just what his department was, but it did not matter anyway, since he spent most of his time working on those “not-my-department” problems. Sometimes he really would give up, but more often than not he would come back a few days after his refusal and remark, “I’ve been thinking about what you asked the other day and it seems to me…” This worked best if you were careful not to expect it.”

and

“The last project that I worked on with Richard was in simulated evolution. I had written a program that simulated the evolution of populations of sexually reproducing creatures over hundreds of thousands of generations. The results were surprising in that the fitness of the population made progress in sudden leaps rather than by the expected steady improvement. The fossil record shows some evidence that real biological evolution might also exhibit such “punctuated equilibrium,” so Richard and I decided to look more closely at why it happened. He was feeling ill by that time, so I went out and spent the week with him in Pasadena, and we worked out a model of evolution of finite populations based on the Fokker Planck equations. When I got back to Boston I went to the library and discovered a book by Kimura on the subject, and much to my disappointment, all of our “discoveries” were covered in the first few pages. When I called back and told Richard what I had found, he was elated. “Hey, we got it right!” he said. “Not bad for amateurs.”

In retrospect I realize that in almost everything that we worked on together, we were both amateurs. In digital physics, neural networks, even parallel computing, we never really knew what we were doing. But the things that we studied were so new that no one else knew exactly what they were doing either. It was amateurs who made the progress. “

» Longnow.org: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine

Filed under: Misc.
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For something I’m doing at work, I mailed a few folk about the benefits of installing wireless networks in the workplace. Phil Windley was the first to reply, and he’s blogged it here. Superuseful.

» Windley.com: Wireless Workplace Wisdom

Filed under: Ubiquitous computing
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Phil has come up with some pretty clear explanations of terms commonly used in the blogging world.

» Gyford.com: An introduction to weblog terms for weblog readers

Filed under: Blog watch
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Trying to redesign my site. Trying to do the right things, but in the 2-3 years since I did this design, the web got really complicated. I still get HTML. I understand my content caught up in presentation, just like I like my jokes told by a funny person rather than written down in logic statements expressed in esperanto.

I could build the design I want to do in a couple of hours in HTML. If I did I get the feeling that I would be banished from the village in rags and never spoken of again. I also get the feeling that once I left the village I’d find a whole wide world full of uncomplicated places; free of the perpetual, byzantine betterment of the blogosphere.

I’ll try and give all this new fangled stuff another go though.

Sigh.

What does a DIV do again? Ugh.

Filed under: Misc.
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