Archive for the ‘RandomWrites’ Category
‘listen to what joe is listening to/last listened to’
ah – this does exist, I didn’t know if it did; on last.fm you can listen to any other user’s library radio. Too bad most of my friends don’t use last.fm.
Actually, it doesn’t work that well – it seems to try to load the entire library before it starts playing any one song.
I admit it – I enjoy children’s books. My excuse is reading them to my kids. When they all grow up I’ll have to rent kids so I can read to them. I compare picture books for kids to power point presentations designed for executives. Both assume a short attention span and try to get the point across powerfully and with images as an aid. The picture books tend to be more honestly informative, but otherwise not so different.
Where else would I have time to delve into the life of Leonardo da Vinci, dolphin behaviour, or the invention of steamboats and submarines? And who else would point out the dangers of the Terrible Trivium if not for Norton Juster, author of the Phantom Tollbooth in which the protagonist faces this most terrible of fiends, “demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit.” As the Terrible Trivium says, “If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you’ll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won’t have the time. For there’s always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing…” Indeed.
Ah – I’ve been looking for this: ways people are sharing documents to make structures outside corporations. Creative Commons is building up some case studies of how CC licenses spread good ideas through the world.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies
Global Voices Online is a good one, I think: http://globalvoicesonline.org
Most content sites and could use more serious, thoughtful writers. Brave activists in democracy movements around the world could use more financial support.
What if, content sites hire democracy activists who need to make a living, to research best practices in established democracies, in community building and local governance? They really need to think about these things and might have deep and genuine interest, and could write from a fresh perspective…
Now, if I just had a bunch of spare cash to pay out…
google does presentation and display pretty well – but if the website adds structure and tools and clues
franchise restaurant = convention over configuration
but, the key is documented convention
otherwise you just have a bunch of mysterious dependencies
The larval stage is when living in the host’s brain; metamorphosis is the act of writing; and the mature stage capable of reproduction is in written form.
Sometimes larval stage ideas reproduce in casual conversation, but mass reproduction is almost always after metamorphosis. Even ideas transmitted in speeches or on TV have generally gone thru the transformative writing process before being re-emitted as speech.
I am excited – just interviewed by email an Egyptian guy who is trying to support innovation and cultural transformation in Egypt (though Ramy might not say ‘transformation’) – here’s the post: http://btucson.com/Tucson/Politics%20&%20Government/Global%20Issues//189881
Will post the books idea there tonight and see if anyone is interested.
On a more serious note, what should us comfortable Western folks do to support democracy protesters risking their lives to eliminate dangerous dictators? I don’t really know. Its their revolution, not ours, but it seems like we should somehow offer non-directing friendship or support.
We can ‘friend’ their sites on Facebook and make links to their pages, and attend virtual protests. We can sign the page on Access now asking Facebook to hide protesters’ identities to protect their lives. Find a way to get funds to Abdul (no last name) to get medical aid to injured protesters. More ideas here.
But long term, democracy means building up a whole new culture. For a while I’ve thought that sending books is a very simple and powerful thing. Books are deeper than fragments of text on the web, and many accounts of individuals breaking away from controlling mentalities start with books (Infidel, for one). I would like to see a site that facilitates individuals sending books to other individuals, without going thru a central organization.
what is the world coming to? Broken links on an Apache.org site – to the latest source tarball for the apache httpd server, no less
http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi#apache22
ah well – its Thanksgiving ( but that should only affect the US… )