I have not been atDLD before. Quite the aggregation of folks. Very interesting crowd, and excellent sessions. Unfortunately, I’m so jetlagged that I’m drifting in and out of alertness.

[Tags: dld ]

Be the first to comment »

Video games have gotten one rev away from awesome. While the graphics on PC games are not yet truly photo-realistic, they are good enough that, in the hands of superb graphic artists, they are not only immersive, they are stylistically interesting. Bioshock is a terrific example of this. Far Cry 2 is realistic enough that you want to pull over and watch the scenery now and then. The new Call of Duty is visually good enough that killing Nazi and Japanese soldiers was too gruesome. The human figure, facial expressions, and even dirt and dust are getting very close to being good enough for drama.

So, here’s the movie I’d like to see using these tools. It’s a drama, possibly a mystery. Multiple narrative threads and interdependencies. All set within a single city, or in sites that I can teleport between (unless travel becomes more rewarding than it is in most games). I want the characters to enact the plot. And I want to be free to wander around the city, eavesdropping. I want to be a ghost, a disembodied eye and set of ears, a camera, moving around the room where characters are now interacting, choosing where to look and who to listen to. The first time through, I’m not going to be in the right spots at the right time. Eventually, though — and perhaps with some guidance from the plot or extrinsically (“Go here now!” arrows) if necessary — I will see and hear everything, and I will understand what happened.

I don’t want to interact. I don’t want to choose my own ending or help characters find the key or move the crate. I want to watch a movie, but be completely free to move through its settings as I want. And, perhaps the software will let me record the movie as I’ve seen it, and share my path with others.

I wouldn’t know how to write a movie like this. Maybe it can’t be done in a way that makes for a satisfactory experience. But I’m curious. I’d like to see one. [Tags: movies video_games theater art narrative ]

12 Comments »

James Surowiecki has a piece in the New Yorker that finally got me to understand why Obama is including a tax rebate in his stimulus package. It’s not the mere pandering to the Republicans that I thought it was. It actually sounds pretty smart.

And while you’re there, you might as well read Atul Gawande’s argument for building our health care system on what we have, rather than sweeping it all away and beginning fresh.

Then finish it all off with the dessert wine of Mariana Cook’s 1996 interview with Barack and Michelle Obama, in which the future president expresses love’s swing of mystery and familiarity. Just in case you weren’t gushy enough about the two of them.

[Tags: economics obama michelle_obama health_care health_insurance health_reform new_yorker infohist james_surowiecki atul_gawande mariana_cook ]

4 Comments »

Nicholas Lemann has a terrific piece in the Jan. 26 New Yorker that says that personal characteristics are not enough to make someone a great president. To achieve that status, Obama “has to create institutions that will outlast him.” His examples are the United Nations, NATO, and social “legislation and regulation that affect very large numers of people and are built to last politically and economically…”

One could certainly point to health care as possibly being of that status, especially if Daschle steps up the game so that it’s more than reform ‘n’ extend. It’s also possible that building a new world role for America could put Obama in the Hall of Great Presidents even if no official institutions come out of it. Likewise if his action on global warming and all around greenness changes not just our policies but our assumptions. But let me suggest another place Obama could do something monumental. Yes, the Internet. And, yes, I do understand that this is not as important as world hunger and poverty. Nevertheless…

There are two basic ways a government can use the Internet. First, it can automate and improve existing processes, greasing the gears of government. From this, one gets efficiencies, cost savings, shorter lines, and occasionally frustrated citizens who can’t find anyone to explain to them why nothing happens when they click on that link…

Second, the government can use the Internet as a way of increasing the intimacy of government. This itself can be divided into three parts: Intimacy among members of the government, among the citizenry, and among the government and the citizens. (Note: All of these divisions are messy and overlapping. What else would you expect?)

Intimacy implies three things: We know one another better, we trust one another more, and we care about one another more deeply. (And even though talking about intimacy among government workers is somewhat creepy, I’m going to stick with the word.)

The first category — intra-government intimacy — is the least interesting and least urgent. It would entail taking advantage of the various social networking technologies, and perhaps thinking anew about the trade-offs between security and knowledge, as is happening in the intelligence community … [added a few minutes after posting] as with social software experiments already underway throughout the government. Maybe Hillary Clinton can experiment with letting some branches of State twitter. [Note, minutes later: Micah Sifry points out that people at State are already twittering, and there is a social network in place.]

More interesting are the ways in which democracy can become more intimate among citizens and between citizens and government. Intimacy there both provides new tools for action and reinvigorates democracy itself.

I am not suggesting that we set up a Bureau of Intimacy that comes forward with a 94-part plan. Rather, if we recognize that we have this opportunity, our government and we ourselves can start doing some stuff. Like what?

The lowest hanging fruit at the moment is WhiteHouse.gov. It’s a big step forward from the previous occupant’s version (and, by the way, where is the link to the archive of that version?), but it’s trying to convince us that Obama is swell. Ack. The White House is ours, not any president’s, and WhiteHouse.gov ought to be ours as well. That doesn’t mean we get to write it ourselves. Rather, it ought to be thought through from the point of view of what we, the citizens, want and need.

One easy change: Get the blog right. Right now it’s press release stuff. No comments. No links. In other words, it’s only a blog because it says it is. How about hiring a couple of bloggers who will take the point of view of citizens writing from a unique vantage point: The freaking White House. What’s it like? And how about some vigorously argued pieces from officials? And, why not stir in guest bloggers for a week at a time, people who actually know how to blog? (The rules might be something like: It has to be family-friendly, and it’s about the White House, not about the individual blogger.) As the blog gets more confident, it could start engaging more with what the blogosphere is saying. They could even turn on comments at some point.

Another relatively easy change: Start allowing officials to engage in the blogosphere.

Slowly, the administration might want to introduce social networking services designed for citizenry. This doesn’t have to be on the scale of Facebook. And it probably wouldn’t be introduced by the government because we’re more likely than the government to come up with the right system. (Disclosure: I’m on the board of advisers of the Open Resource Group which is offering open source conversation software for each Congressional district. Who knows?)

But we don’t have to wait for a good citizen networking site to open. We can make our democracy more intimate through many small steps. Intimacy can become pervasive. For example, transparency is usually touted as a requirement for accountability. But it also can be seen in the light of intimacy: Transparency leads to intimacy if we have the tools by which we can make sense together of what we now can see.

Intimacy sounds like it’s about feel-good democracy. It’s not. Real intimacy is built on truth, and truth worth a damn requires trust. This is not the trust of a buyer and seller but of people who care about one another. Truth, trust and caring are in a reciprocal relationship. They are, one might say, intimately related. And, if they do result in our feeling good about our democracy, literally only the most cynical will object. [Tags: http://www.openresourcegroup.com/ ]

5 Comments »

Even if Justice Roberts hadn’t flubbed the oath, I’d still count this as Day 2. The Inaugural day doesn’t count, does it?

So, how’s it going so far? I’d say pretty damn well.

When Hillary Clinton arrives at the State Department she tells the workers that she loves nothing better than a good debate. They cheer, and you realize that on top of everything else, George Bush totally sucked as a manager.

In case there was any doubt about this, I have friends in the Justice Department who have been demoralized for years. Now they’re eager to get to work.

Hillary cheered at State. Holbrooke heading out to Afghanistan and Pakistan. An unabashed preference for science. Closing Gitmo. Planning with the military the withdrawal from Iraq. Making open access to information the default, not the outcome of a lawsuit. Limiting the implicit corruption of the revolving door. The Internet to be kept open.

Obama is making it look easy. As easy as saying, “Yes, waterboarding is torture.”

My daydream: George W. Bush is in in his new home, sitting in his penny loafers, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper’s articles about Obama’s first day. “So that’s how you do it,” he thinks. “So that’s what a president does.”

What’s the opposite of disappointment?

[Tags: obama ]

5 Comments »

Gene Koo has a great post about why Obama’s speeches don’t produce sound bytes. Gene calls them “non-reductive.” The speeches are too complex for soundbytes. Obama’s soundbyte failure is, as Gene says, a strength, although he points out that politically Obama has also benefited from the ability of others — Will.i.am, for example — to produce soundbytes on his behalf.

I loved yesterday’s speech. I’ve loved it each time I’ve heard it. I liked it even more when I heard it on the radio, free of distractions. And Gene gets at why. The speech actually says something. It takes us through a set of gates to get to where we need to be. Gate 1: Yes, times are hard. We have to look at that squarely. But there is hope, based on some real things. Gate 2: We are pushing past the old contradictions that formed our idea of what is possible. Not big government or small government. Not security or liberty. Not Republican or Democract, black or white, Christian or Muslim or Jew or Hindu or non-believer (yay for the shout out!). Gate 3: Together, we are strong and resourceful and imaginative. Gate 4: We share, and should return to, our abiding values. Call them hope and virtue.

There was more in there. But, there was nothing I would take out. And there was also, therefore, little I would excerpt in pursuit of a soundbyte.

[Tags: obama inauguration #inaug09 gene_koo speeches ]

14 Comments »

A site called Christian Colleges has posted a list of top 100 open courseware courses in theology and philosophy. Open courseware, of course, are real world courses recorded for distribution over the Net. MIT has blazed this path, and this particular Top 100 list is dominated by courses from that school, with Notre Dame showing heavily as well. The Online Education Database has its own, more generic, Top 100 list.

Open courseware is a fantastic idea. It will only spread further and further, because it wrings significant extra value — value perfectly aligned with most educational institutions’ mission — at relatively little extra cost. And while simply recording a class without paying attention to the needs of those watching afterwards is suboptimal, we’re getting better at it. In any case, I don’t mean to carp. Less-than-perfect open courseware is a zillion times better than no open courseware. And we’re just beginning this. Open courseware will change, and it will also change how courses are taught in the real world. Here comes atomization, the Long Tail, network effects, backchannels, and, OMG, spam and undoubtedly porn and …

The most obvious missing piece has to do with metadata. Right now, there is a relative scarcity of open courseware, so sites like iBerry aggregate the known offerings. But, as recording and posting courses becomes the norm, we will have the problems of abundance. And then we’ll want the usual — and perhaps some unusual — ways of filtering to find exactly the courses we want to invest in. For undertaking to listen to a course is not a trivial task. Listening to the first three minutes may lead you to dismiss a course that would have changed your life if you’d made it to the third lecture. We need tags, ratings, reputation systems, trust mechanisms, social networks, and ways to talk with our fellow auditors. And the sites that do this for us well will take on some of the role, value, authority, and standing of universities themselves.

(And now y’all get to tell me about all the sites I’ve missed that do exactly that already.) [Tags: open_courseware ocw education ]

3 Comments »

This is the poem Derek Walcott wrote for Obama. Read it out loud twice. I dare you. I couldn’t get through it the second time. Too weepy. This is a beautiful, beautiful piece.
Cenforce: Your Guide to Safe and Effective Use

Did you know that proper usage of cenforce can significantly impact its effectiveness? Here’s what you need to know:

1. Take one tablet orally, about 30-60 minutes before sexual activity.

2. Don’t exceed one dose in 24 hours.

3. Avoid high-fat meals beforehand, as they may delay absorption.

4. Stay hydrated, but limit alcohol consumption.

5. Inform your doctor about any medications you’re taking to prevent interactions.

Remember, cenforce is a prescription medication. Always consult your healthcare provider for personalized advice and never self-medicate.

Have questions about Cenforce? Drop them below, and let’s discuss safe usage practices!

Forty Acres

Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving —
a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls,
an emblem of impossible prophecy, a crowd
dividing like the furrow which a mule has ploughed,
parting for their president: a field of snow-flecked
cotton
forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens
that the young ploughman ignores for his unforgotten
cotton-haired ancestors, while lined on one branch, is
a tense
court of bespectacled owls and, on the field’s
receding rim —
a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him.
The small plough continues on this lined page
beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado’s
black vengeance,
and the young ploughman feels the change in his veins,
heart, muscles, tendons,
till the land lies open like a flag as dawn’s sure
light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower.

[Tags: obama derek_walcott poem inauguration #inaug09 ]

1 Comment »

#1

3 joys: 1. We elected a black man. 2. We love that we did. 3. That man is Barack Obama.

#2

Exec summary of speech: The oldest values beat the old politics. We move ahead together.

[Tags: obama inauguration politics #inaug09 ]

Be the first to comment »

Within minutes, the new WhiteHouse.gov went up. (Here’s the before and after.) The first blog post (yes, blog post) promises communication, transparency and participation. At the moment, though, there’s no way to participate, including no comments on the blog. I do admit that it’s not obvious how best to enable conversation on this site. (There’s a page that promises more participation.)

All the original content is copyright free, of course. Third-party content is posted under a CreativeCommons license.

[Tags: white_house obama president_obama e-gov e-government e-democracy ]

4 Comments »