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July 10, 2007
This is a rich exchange between Chris Lydon and Steve Antinoff.
This is a powerful piece by Britt on the ordinary and the extraordinary,
Here, again, is the video of Clay Shirky’s extraordinary talk on the Web of love.
The blogosphere is a blessing…
Supernova has posted a video of Clay Shirky’s fantastic opening presentation in which he utters the unspeakable word: Love.
July 9, 2007
Supernova has posted the video of the session I did with Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur. [Later: The mp3 version of it is now up.] It begins with my 15-minute version of my Everything is Misc talk, followed by Andrew’s more informal opener, and then us discussion whether the Internet is killing culture. [Tags: andrew_keen supernova2007 supernova07 everything_is_miscellaneous]
Arjan Vreeken has a history of the term and concept “information.” It’s especially strong in following its twists and turns from the Latin, through Shannon, and into the contemporary uses. Arjan is particularly interested in its relation to ontology, but “ontology” in its philosophical sense of the question of being. (Thanks to Abdur-Rahman Advany for the link.) [Tags: information philosophy arjan_vreeken ]
July 8, 2007
Verizon (according to the AP) has been removing the copper lines from the houses to which it is attaching fiber lines. This means you will have difficulty going back from FIOS, the Verizon fiber product. Also, Verizon is not required to provide other phone companies with access to its fiber lines, the way they are for copper lines. Verizon thus at once accomplishes a laminated lock in and lock out. (Thanks to Charlie for the link.) [Tags: verizon fios fiber delamination net_neutrality ]
As I write this, it is my mother in law’s 80th birthday. I love her, I like her, and I enjoy being with her.
As far as arbitrary markers go, an 80th is a big deal. We’ve marked it by gathering the entire family, as well as the four couples known collectively as The Wine Group who have known her since high school. They are only slightly reduced by age: One couple is now a single, they are all shorter than they used to be, one of the men runs down conversational paths a little too long. Still and all, when I was a lad, eighty year olds were by and large dead, and for the survivors we had words like “dotage” and, if they were lucky, “spry.” I don’t know if being 56 enables me to see past the wrinkles and pates or whether we’re just aging remarkably better than our grandparents did — if we are lucky enough to get to old age, a contingency that, as ever, comes without merit or mercy.
So, this morning I went for a run. Of course, if you saw me, you wouldn’t say, “Oh, there’s a man running!” You would have said, “Oh my god, should we get that staggering man some help?” Nevertheless, to me it feels like running. It was the first time I’ve run wearing my new iPod, which came basically free with my new MacBook. Yes, I am now Apple Man, right down to my iSkivvies. So, here’s a Note to Self: Do not exercise while listening to John Lennon songs because it’s hard to keep up one’s breath while weeping.
By December 8, 1980, nothing had gone wrong in my life. My parents were middle middle class, although growing up I thought we were wealthy. None of my desires were frustrated (well, except for prom night, but that’s a different story). An aunt and an uncle had died young, but I’d managed to make that feel like someone else’s loss. I had convinced my draft board to make me a conscientious objector — a first for them, I was told — and even then, my lottery number didn’t come up so I didn’t even have to spend two years doing alternative service. I’d gone through philosophy graduate school having been warned for six years that there were very few teaching jobs available, yet in 1980 I was an assistant professor in a philosophy department. I’d married well and truly.
We were sitting in our little apartment in Portland, Oregon, when the radio announced that John Lennon had been killed.
The Beatles’ story was my story, our story. It wasn’t just music, although I’m ever more impressed by their talent and daring. It’s hard to explain my — our — sense of identification with the Beatles. I didn’t think I could have been a Beatle if only I had been in the right spot. I didn’t identify with their rise from humble origins. I didn’t envy their lifestyle of concerts and groupies. They were more important to my self-understanding than that. They exposed my — our — possibilities. Everything was up for reinvention, or so we thought, never dreaming that when our generation took over it’d be in the form of Bill Clinton and George Bush. The Beatles in their music, but also in their way with celebrity, said we could take the old, bust it up, make fun of it and delight in it, and build something new. Love and youth could refashion the world.
Until they shoot you.
Had any of the other Beatles been killed, it would have been sad and horrible, but it wouldn’t have marked the end of my own youth. John was special.
John was doing to himself what the Beatles did to music and culture. He became a father and househusband, and started writing songs as naked as his photo on the “Two Virgins” album. I didn’t like many of the songs. Some were embarrassing. And that often was the point. In fact, many of his most personal were sung at the highest reaches of his voice, as if to say, “I love you so much that I’m willing to sing badly for you.” (Not that Lennon ever sang badly. I will have none of that!)
So, I was running this morning, listening to “Instant Karma,” the 2-disk collection of Lennon songs sung by others, with profits going to Darfur via Amnesty International. There are performancs, particularly on the second disk, I like a lot. Green Day’s “Working Class Hero,” Jack Johnson’s “Imagine,” Ben Harper’s “Beautiful Boy,” Jaguares’ (or Jakob Dylan’s?) “Gimme Some Truth,” The Postal Service’s “Grow Old with Me.” I’m sorry to say that I didn’t like the under-represented women’s tracks as much: Avril Lavigne’s “Imagine” and Christina Aguilera’s “Mother” both sing songs that came more directly from Lennon’s voice.
The compilation makes it clear that Lennon was inconsistent. In “Imagine,” he singles out religion a couple of times as a force that stands in our way. Later, he thanks God for Yoko. So he likes God but not organized religion. But then he bashes God. Oh my! What a great blogger he would have been, so eager to be imperfect in public.
I admired the perfection of Beverly Sills’ singing, but I could never get past wondering how she did that with her voice, which is also my reaction to ventriloquists. I know her singing touched many, but it wasn’t for me. The imperfection of Lennon’s voice, his insistence on being human right in the midst of our insistence that he be John Lennon, is what got to me. Gets to me.
Mark David Chapman thought he was protecting John Lennon by killing the evil Lennon-impersonating robot outside the Dakota that December evening. Bang. Lennon isn’t given the chance to be patient with his children, to tell them how beautiful they are, to grow old in their eyes.
So, here I am at 56. Our children are 25, 22, and 16. I’ve made it past the point where they’d be too young to remember me clearly if I died tomorrow. I find comfort in that, although I’m enough of a rationalist to find it also silly.
But, like many heading into old age, I don’t feel old. I still dress as if I’m going to summer camp. Yet I remind myself — biting down on a painful tooth — that I’ll be sixty soon. Fifty you can pretend is the new forty, but sixty is just freaking old. I’ve always avoided mirrors, but now I find myself examining my baldness to try to fix in my mind how old I look to others. Likewise, when talking with young people (a symptom of my denial about my age: It feels weird to call them “young people”), I force myself to dredge up an external image of this old man talking with the kids.
This isn’t a pity thing. I think I know more than thirty years ago, and, thanks to the Net, I’m part of many networks, each of which is smarter than I am. I have more love in my life than when I could take three of flights of stairs, skipping every other step, while whistling. (“Octopus’ Garden” for many years was my stairs-climbing song, even though I never liked it very much.)
But something has gone wrong. I know what the path to old age is supposed to be: You’re young, you marry, you work, you retire, you become small, cute, and certain, and you die. But, here I am hanging out with 80 year olds who don’t feel all that old to me. And here I am, hanging out on the Internet where no one knows you’re an old dog, and where the pace on the treadmill has been turned up from cane-assisted to massively multiplayer intellectual marathon. The simple journey we’re supposed to take, one of ascent and descent, has been disrupted. Only the end remains fixed.
The truth is that I don’t feel myself on a path. The truth is that I don’t know how old I am.
[Tags: john_lennon instant_karma beatles aging death ]
July 7, 2007
In response to my posting about the desirability of structurally separating businesses that connect us to the Internet from businesses that provide content and services over the Internet, Esme Vos, of MuniWireless.com, in an email reports some good news from Europe:
Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Telecommunications, has already said that the Commission will seek structural separation in the next EU round of telecom regulations. In addition, the Commission sued the German government for allowing Deutsche Telekom to exclude competitors from its new fiber optic networks. The German government believes DT deserves a regulatory “holiday” to allow it to recoup its investments in fiber.
[Tags: structural+separation delamination esme+vos ]
Things have been going well with my MacBook (thanks for all the IM help, Britt) until yesterday. The pattern that’s emerging brings back the feelings of dread so familiar from my many years of Windows use.
First my terminal window stopped working. When it starts up, it shows me the following message:
Last login: Fri Jul 6 19:46:14 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
macdavid:~ david$
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/A/Resources/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub; exit
[JavaAppLauncher Error] CFBundleCopyResourceURL() failed loading MRJApp.properties file
[JavaAppLauncher Error] CFBundleCopyResourceURL() failed while getting Resource/Java directory
[LaunchRunner Error] No main class specified
[JavaAppLauncher Error] CallStaticVoidMethod() threw an exception
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.NullPointerException
at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.run(LaunchRunner.java:85)
at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.callMain(LaunchRunner.java:50)
at apple.launcher.JavaApplicationLauncher.main(JavaApplicationLauncher.java:61)
logout
[Process completed]
Then the built-in Web server stopped working. When I try to restart it using System Preferences > Sharing, it hangs.
This morning, Smultron has started crashing whenever I try to save a file. I lost a bunch of work, which is just damn depressing,
At least with Windows, I have enough experience to know how to try to fix it. With OS X, I’ve installed third party replacements for the terminal and Web server, but I fear I’m facing cascading system failures. Or is that just a Windows-based reaction?
In any case, I’m not enjoying this feeling of helplessness:( [Tags: macintosh macbook whines ]
July 6, 2007
I’ve posted a long-ish call for structurally separating the businesses that provide us with connectivity and those that provide us with services and content that uses that connectivity. It’s called “Delaminate Now!.”
It’s based on David Isenberg’s Making Network Neutrality Sustainable, which argues that the only way to get an enforceable Network Neutrality policy is to restructure the industry itself. I also highly recommend Susan Crawford’s Moving Slowly in the Fast Lane. [Tags: telecom david+isenberg susan+crawford net+neutrality ]
July 5, 2007
There’s a fascinating discussion at Wikipedia about whether lists of loosely associated items should be kept or deleted. in this particular case, a list of song titles that contain first names was deleted.
I don’t feel I have standing to have an opinion — this is a discussion among people who spend a good chunk of their lives building and maintaining Wikipedia — but (nevertheless) I do tend to favor including articles rather than deleting them. Wiki is not paper. As you’ll see in the discussion, there are lots of criteria at play, but some of the arguments for deleting such lists seem to me to be based on a desire to keep Wikipedia dignified. That argument I don’t buy. Other criteria adduced for deleting “silly” lists are far stronger. And in the discussion you get to see Wikipedia continuing to figure itself out through a process of suggesting criteria, interpreting settled criteria, appeals to precedent, and personal persuasion. [Tags: wikipedia encyclopedias everything+is+miscellaneous lists ]
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