August 2004

The item below by email from Joel and Michelle Levy

The term “protest” has come to be associated with being “against” something.

help the greatest of all causes — goodwill among men and peace on earth.”

What is it that you are willing to take a stand and speak out for in your

life and world today

It seem clear that there are (at least) two major worldviews, and systems of belief in increasing dissonance and thus conflict, both here in North America, and in the world.

Seems fitting today to revisit these lyrics. They’re in the public domain since a longtime, and provide us with a frame for the struggle that struggle that keeps become more visible and vocal.

Beyond the obviously confrontational interpretation that can be put upon the poet’s words, there are interesting refernces to many of the systemic issues we see all around us today.

I’m regularly struck, awed … by the scale and complexity of the systems that govern us, such as language, money, beliefs expooused by one religion or another. Cohen is. for me, and endlessly interesting lens.

First We Take Manhattan

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

This delicious, comprehensive, careful, provocative and (to some) radical blog essay by the Happy Tutor will become a permanent link on the sidebar of my blog.

It should be read regularly, IMO … about once every couple of weeks … to keep in mind the enormity of the challenges that lie in front of us all.

An excerpt:

Winning the Game of Tit for Tat - In Wealth Bondage

Now, kids, let’s see how in modern life we can foul up this natural system, this “hidden hand” of civil society, from which good comes from evil, and we how can prosper ruthlessly as bullies at the expense of others - and get them to kiss our ass in the process. These are the strategies of Machiavelli’s Prince and many a business book. How to win; how to gain power; and how to use power to crush potential critics.

Go back to the link at the beginning of this post, click through to the essay, and read it … if you don’t get all of it, or get bored, force your self to keep going. Then read it again. It’s all there, it’s important, and it will remain important … and the advice is clear, well-researched, sound and actionable if you exercise mindfulness and discipline.

IMO, a must-read for all humans who care about themselves, their family and friends and the fact that we are all more similar than dissimilar, all over this planet, and share the same hopes, dreams, aspirations and emotions after all the propaganda and ideologies are stripped away to our basic human-ness.

Go read it, here.

An excerpt (emphasis mine):

“Now US occupation of Iraq is making it even more hated in the Muslim world. It is a policy hatched in part by AIPAC, WINEP, and their associated “thinkers.” The cynical might suggest that they actively want the US involved in a violent struggle with Muslims, to make sure that the US remains anti-Palestinian and so will permit Israeli expansion.

As the Labor Party in Israel has been eclipsed by the Likud coalition, which includes many proto-fascist groups, this subservience has yoked Washington to foreign politicians who privately favor ethnic cleansing and/or agressive warfare for the purpose of annexing the territory of neighbors.

I found Toogle thanks to David Weimberger.

Here’s the result of a search for Wirearchy - vaguely reminiscent of the logo on my web site, IMO

Here’s the email message I just sent Flickr this morning.

Extremely cool … how I go out for the evening with a friend or two, have a couple of beers, come home, go to sleep, wake up, check my blog, and my Flickr Zeitgeist badge has just disappeared.

Please tell me it was , like, a power surge or a blown fuse or a temporary denial-of-service or something cool like that.

I went out tonight with a buddy. I don’t do that often these days because I don’t have lots of cash.

We went to a cafe in the neighbourhood that I’ve been meaning to go to for a while, because about a year ago they started having poetry sessions and live music, with a regular offering of live flamenco music on Friday nights. It’s a really cool, hopping but laid back bohemian cafe. The flamenco was great, the beer and wine were flowing, the cool cats were hanging, and there was a good proportion of hot, funky-sexy looking women in attendance.

At one point three-quarters of the way into the evening, I went to the men’s room to relieve myself, and when finished went to the bar and asked for a pen and paper, so that I could remember this graffiti I read on the wall of the stall I used:

Canada is an oasis of sanity in a world going mad with overcrowding and fanatical cults who have lost their common sense.

signed - An American who is very happy to be here

Then, with a line arrow drawn to the general vicinity of words “Canada” and “oasis”, was the following reply or addendum:

Full of sheep being led to slaughter by Paul Martin

signed - A Canadian who knows what’s going on here in North America

A friend of mine in New York City sent me this tonight.

We have safely escaped the city this evening. By the time we left, around 8 pm, Manhattan was a virtual ghost town. Most of the residents and even the tourists had fled by this afternoon. The restaurants and outdoor cafes of our usually busy neighborhood were half-empty. We only saw police and some arrested demonstrators. We both had problems riding home from work via subway - the police had the trains bypass several stations - and had to walk home part of the way. There were police cars and ambulances with sirens racing past, and helicopters hovering above. They will probably be there all night.

It’s going to be a hellish week, but I still welcome the demonstrators. Reuters reports that most bystanders applauded these cyclists. Their headquarters is in our neighborhood, and we are familiar with them. Some run a local bike shop. This is what I love about NYC.

My reply:

I’m certainly certainly glad that there’s the dissent … and at the same time it seems all so hopelessly stupid and unevolved to me.

It’s a fucking cartoon, and I don’t understand why “we the people” tolerate this any longer.

There’s too much to keep up with … and this is how it will forever be, in these new conditions.

I keep running across many new examples of how people are defining the sociology of the Web, often via, through and in blogs.

I was scrolling through the comments section of Atrios (I read lots of comments, in a a range of places on the Web) and I noticed that some people there are starting to adopt an interesting way of adding a bit of expression to their comments.

On Atrios most commenters are quite critical of the Republican camp (they would call them rethugs, or repugs .. you get the drift), and I noticed a commenter recounting an incident that she or he felt should be reported on by the media … CNN, in this case. The comment (I can’t remember the message, so I am making up a fictive, bland, pretend comment) took the following form:

Paula Zahn reporting -

< dream >‘This event is an example of how the Republicans are not playing straight with the American people, and are twisting the facts to create the perception that John Kerry is a liar and of bad character< /dream >

So, using nonexistent html tags to emphasize that this is NOT what Paula Zahn would ever dare to say.

Nifty - yet another example of how we are adapting to life on the Web.

I can’t imagine that traditional, secretive, obfuscating hierarchies trying to control information and knowledge to maintain a hold on power can survive the weight of millions of links and connections.

You’re supposed to cut and past the following blog post into your blog.

Actually, if I had a working version of Qumana available, it would be higlight, drag n’ drop and publish … I would have to open up my blog, click on Post New Entry, and then paste the content into the blog Editor after typing the title.

Here goes:

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!

* (15) My operating system is: Windows 2000

I wonder if Mark Fletcher will learn of this ?

Bloglines has a new (to me) feature, called “Clip/Blog This”.

It feels like this, and a few other niggling bits I’ve experience lately, change Blogline’s usability … not for the better.

In a departure from my usual blogging, in this post I’m going to (try to) be a bit more technology-oriented. It will be a stretch, of course, because I am pretty darned challenged in that area. Which in itself is a bit odd, since I am working with two colleagues in developing an advanced microcontent gathering, assembly and publishing application that we believe will add ease-of-use and (perhaps) a new dimension to blogging and blogging-like processes. I’m the resident wacko/visionary/sociologist.

Back to Bloglines “Clip/Blog This” feature … at the bottom of each blog post in Bloglines is the link that pulls up a dialogue box that allows you to publish the item to a destination as a link. Nice idea, but a bit awkward.

It would be much easier … slick, actually …. if there were just an icon (or keep the words “Clip/Blog This” … no matter) and when you clicked, the item would go automatically into the WorkPad of our new app, and then … one click on the item, and it’s in a full-function WYSIWYG Editor, with a wide range of publishing destinations, such as all your blogs, Adobe pdf, email and (eventually) integrated enterprise systems.

Our application is called Qumana, and it is proceeding to a small, semi-private soft-launch of the beta tool in the next couple of days.

A true “dynamic information hub”, on the horizon. Similar to the old-world roundabouts for trains in the trainyard, but for microcontent.

Flickr

Stewart Butterfield

Caterina.net

Caterina Fake

StreamlineWebCo, or Bryght

Roland Tanglao, Boris Mann

Sxip

Dick Hardt

Qumana

Fred Fabro, Victor Aberdeen, Jon Husband

Wirearchy

Jon Husband

StikiWiki

Ben Nolan

View from The Isle

Tris Hussey

More to come.

Five minutes after I posted the item below, I was thinking about how immediately easy it was to get cynical.

I guess in the business world, most conversations are actually coinversations … “how can I get this guy to buy my new gizmo?”, “how can I con-vince these people to agree to my con-sulting services?”, “how can I position this-or-that so that we’re the supplier of choice?”, emotional intelligence, be a good listener, which will result in a better relationship and so you’ll be more successful, yadda, yadda, yadda …

But then along comes Harry in the comments section, with a clarion call for reciprocal human interest, authenticity, trust … all those things that the ongoing hunt for money make so intangible and so very valuable.

Coinversations, indeed.

Jon, in the last year or so I’ve started directing all my internet purchases to businesses where I can interact with the owners and employees. I would like to direct all my business to people who engage me in a civil and interesting fashion. The sum total of my purchases, though not grand by any means, is business worth having. I’m sure there are many people like me. That’s where the money is. I even buy from places that charge a bit more because I know the merchants and I appreciate their willingness to be held accountable in front of everyone with a modem and a browser.

More blogging means more customers. We all engage in commerce, and in our rapidly fragmenting society, the human touch is important. A quality product from nice people always does pretty well.

More often than I’d like, I type coinversations instead of conversations … the “o” key and the “i” key are next to each other and my awkward, middle-aged guy-who-never-learned-to-type style helps me hit the two keys together (I’m pretty fast, though).

I was thinking about this last night, and then this morning I found this on Hugh Macleod’s Gaping Void, in a post wherein he gets some encouragement and takes some heat.

i.e. Start conversations with like-minded folk, turn them into markets. Heh.

and of course we’re all wondering how to make some money blogging. A couple of days ago a colleague of mine asked me “how many people do you think would start blogging if some bloggers started finding ways to make $4,000 or $5,000 a month from it?”. I said “lots”.

Coinversations, anyone ?

Of course, we know what the issues are … where would the money come from, what kinds of value would blogs provide, and so on …

I’ve just been invited to be a presenter at the Banff Centre New Media Institute’s Fall Summit, titled “Participate/Collaborate”.

From the program description:

Banff New Media Institute has held a series of summits on collaboration. This year, we focus on participatory design and social networks. “Collaboration” is used to describe a large set of current experiences and forms of organization, from multi-player games, to community blogs, to high performance computing grids. Is collaboration a new term for simply working together, or can it mean something more — the potential for new ideas, forms of social organization and even new discoveries?

This summit will launch an international collaboration studies network.

What fun ! I get to hang out for a week at the Banff Centre - a beautiful learning centre peopled with interesting and lively humans from (usually) all over the planet - and yak, listen and learn about one of the most interesting, to me, social and cultural developments of this era.

I feel like a lucky guy today.

Thanks to Rob Paterson for finding and reproducing Terry Heaton’s fine piece on decentralization.”

Rob has been writing well-articulated material about this issue and its components for some time now, as of course has Terry.

And, for anyone who has ever ventured over to my web site at www.wirearchy.com, they’ll know that I am firmly in that camp … and that I believe that the dynamics and effectiveness of traditional hierarchy are being impacted in fundamental ways by our interconnected environment, minds and capabilities.

We are beginning to loosen and cast off the shackles of outmoded structures, and more often than not are struggling mightily with the opportunities and responsibilities this new set of conditions offers us.

Decentralization - Terry Heaton

08/09/2004 Entry: “Decentralized power is THE issue of the new millennium”

The user experience is EVERYTHING online. Tinker with it, and watch those “hits” shrink overnight. In fact, the user/consumer/customer is really what’s EVERYTHING today. We would all do well not to underestimate their power.

Thanks to Brian Moffat for digging up this cute little gem by Molly Ivins.

After having travelled quite a bit in the last three years, I’d say Molly is understating the case, but it’s really so hard to get any kind of sense of the dislike to which she refers from North American media.

OH, DEAR !

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet

Posted on August 10, 2004, Printed on August 20, 2004

http://www.alternet.org/story/19509/

KANANASKIS, Alberta – Make that a big Canadian, “Oh dear.” These nice Canadians, whom George W. Bush once managed to triumphantly identify as “our most important neighbors to the north” are famous for their reticence. Canada, Land of the Understatement. I once proposed their national motto should be: “Now, Let’s Not Get Excited.” Not that I would ever generalize. I attribute their commendable phlegm to being too cold to waste much energy, and also to regular ingestion of oatmeal.

So, here I am trying to explain to these politely astonished people how Americans could vote for George W. Bush. Some days are much tougher sledding than others.

On CNN.com today there’s a headline that clicks through to an article - both the headline and the related article are about the recent arrest of 8 terrorism suspects in the UK.

I can’t find even a hint related to the death penalty in the article. Why would CNN.com’s international News create a headline like this:

Should Convicted Qaeda Members Get a Death Sentence?

That headline clicks through to an article with the following five initial paragraphs:

LONDON, England (CNN) — British police have charged eight men arrested two weeks ago with terrorism-related offenses, including conspiracy to commit murder.

The eight men were among 12 arrested on August 3 during raids in northwest London, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Lancashire. They were held under the Terrorism Act 2000.

WTF ?

… Rev. Jerry Falwell will be leading the conventioneers in prayer.

Just so as to provide a bit of context, and let us begin thinking about what the Reverend’s prayer might contain, here are some past quotes by this great American religious leader - thanks to General Jesus Christ Patriot

- The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.

- I sincerely believe that the collective efforts of many secularists during the past generation, resulting in the expulsion from our schools and from the public square, has left us vulnerable.

Great stuff. I think he, not Dubya, should be President.

Via Doc Searls’ blog:

Continued training 

Jonathan Schwartz recommends Tom Malone’s The Future of Work:

Having read a few chapters, I’d heartily recommend it - especially to those who manage large organizations (and fans of The Cluetrain Manifesto).

If you’re a CXO, there are no better blogger models than Jonathan and Mark Cuban. Even (or especially) if you disagree with them, because they give you a lot to work with, in their own unfiltered voices.

In the long run, expect their blogs to become model forms of executive behavior, as well as documentation.

From Juan Cole’s Informed Comment blog comes this:

A sound bite from President Bush on Monday strikes me as emblematic of the country’s current crisis. He said,

“It is a ridiculous notion to assert that, because the United States is on the offensive, more people want to hurt us,” he said. “We’re on the offensive because people do want to hurt us.”

I always surprise myself that I continue to be further surprised by the sheer thickness of what passes for the leadership of the most mighty and powerful nation on this planet, which has obvious consequences for the rest of the planet.

And, for the record, I don’t know why the other 5.8 billion-plus people keep on taking this crap.

The United States has often been on the offensive, in many parts of the world, for the past fifty years. This and not just a rabid psychotic desire to see communism or Islam or some other political, religious or econmomic philosophy, is one of the core root causes of terrorism. Why is that so difficult for so many people here in North America to understand ?

The interventions and meddlings of the United States have yes, sometimes been to uphold principles of freedom and democracy. But more often than not these adventures have been as much or more motivated by the desire for strategic control of regimes friendly to the corporate interest of American multinationals, or (of course) oil.

Why would anyone in some of the other parts of the world object to that ? Gee, I dunno.

Simple is as simple thinks … and simpletons everytwhere can rejoice that their club leader is at the helm these days.

(This is a draft - will return to later today)

… that made me think of Wirearchy this morning.

1. Joe Trippi’s new book is out. It’s titled “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Democracy, The Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything”

2. Dan Gillmor’s new book is also out, titled “We the Media”.

3. I have not yet read either book. However, I have been following the writings and perspectives of each of these men, and I am aware of the premises and themes of each book.

Both books are in essence about the early experiences and impacts of interconnectedness and processes such as blogging - grass roots, bottom-up activities - that are bringing large and fundamental changes to established systems and mechanisms of governance of human affairs.

The conditions that have created these impacts are not going away. As is my wont, I keep thinking about the ongoing and cumulative effects will play out, and I am reminded of two quotes I have used in the introduction of the concept of wirearchy:

The speed at which we innovate far outstrips the speed with which we integrate

We tend to overestimate the impacts of change in the short term due to details and practicalities, and underestimate the impacts of change in the long term due to interconnected and compounding effects.

I don’t think that the impacts of ubiquitous interconnectedness and social processes such as blogging and hyperlinking of information can be controlled in the conventional sense of control of the outcomes, unless there is a significant form of Brazil-the-movie regulation of not only the medium but of the societies we live in. And this will require some form of public consent, I imagine.

Let’s look back ten years, and forward ten years.

Ten years ago the browser was just beginning to nose into our collective awareness, and little of the type of information publishing was happening that we are now experiencing as increasingly common.

Ten years from now, the substrate (broadband) will be much more common and cheaply available. The devices will be smaller, more portable, easier to use and less expensive. People everywhere will be much more adapted to connecting, conversing and acting through interconnected networks.

How can hierarchies that are relatively static, narrow at the top and dependent on just a few people for interpretation and direction maintain effectiveness in the face of an ongoing Amazon-like river of contiunuously flowing information ?

It seems to me that no matter what steps are taken to ensure some form of order and predictive control, there will need to be clear recognition that power and authority are not vested only in the few who currently have power and control.

Yes, our current systems have all been designed and built to enable order and stability. It has often been noted that humans are pack animals, and pack animals establish hierarchies. I believe that this is true, and yet we are the animals that are blessed and cursed with both consciousness and language (other animals may be - this is another subject - but as yet we don’t understand them and in general we humans dominatethe other animal forms, and so our will has prevailed).

Democracy, for example, is usually couched in terms such as power for and by the people. And this power depends for and by the people depends upon information flows and (till now) some degree of transparency.

As the title of Joe Trippi’s book suggests, there is too much evidence that current conditions are one-way … top down … and “overthrow” is not too extreme a term to use. Those who have and seek to maintain power today are not used to, and do not like, the new conditions.

The transparency offered by interconnectedness and the archival capabilities of data bases herald different forms of governance, two-way and/or many-way flows of power and authority that are launched from purposeful grouips of people armed with information, brains and intentions.

In such conditions, when we are potentially connected to any one, it will become supremely important to be connected to ones’ self and to be able to address , if not answer, how ought I (and by association we) to live ?

We are moving , i think towards a dynamic flow of power and authority based on knowledge, credibility, trust and a focus on outcomes, enabled by interconnected people and technology.

And as some wag has put it, sociology always trumps technology. And the new conditions we have only recently entered will create some very new sociology, a field which has been relatively obscure for the past 30 or 40 years at least.

Dancin’ … in the street

Excellent idea from John Perry Barlow …

… dancin’ in the streets of New York will so confuse the republicans … people havin’ a good time, celebrating spirit.

Dance mobs, with boomboxes and good shake-ass music ……

They can’t coop that up inside a barbed-wire Free Speech Zone, can they ?