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December 27, 2007
This quotation from Admiral Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations, comes via a terrific post by Dan Bricklin about how trust is built through little steps and tiny interactions. [Tags: social_networks dan_bricklin ]
Two posts at GlobalVoices — 1 2 — talk about the reaction from bloggers in the area. [ Tags: benazir_bhutto pakistan ]
December 20, 2007
Dopplr went live while I was traveling last week, and I’m just now getting around to noting the fact.
Dopplr does something simple: It tells you which of your friends are going to be in the places you’re going to. And it does it quite simply, even though specifying places is actually quite a daunting task: Did you mean Paris in France, Texas or the other dozens of places on earth that share that name? The Dopplr UI makes entering this info just about as painless as possible.
Or course, my good feelings about Dopplr, where I was a beta user, are abetted by the fact that the people doing Dopplr are among the people I like and respect the most on the Web.
BTW, here’s a moderately funny video parody of Dopplr from Mahalo.
December 19, 2007
Writes Beth in an excellent article in Democracy Journal:
Now, however, new technology may be changing the relationship between democracy and expertise, affording an opportunity to improve competence by making good information available for better governance.
She argues against relying on professionals to make good political decisions for us, and goes into some depth on the Patent Office’s Peer-to-Patent project, which she designed. (Thanks to Howard Rheingold for the link.)
December 11, 2007
I’ve loved watching Al Gore become himself. For years, he was seen as wooden, lifeless, blood-less. Some of that perception was due to Republicans and lazy comedians, but there was also some truth in it. Despite his public demeanor, the people I met during those years who knew Al Gore uniformly said that in private he was funny, relaxed, personable and passionate. Ever since he “lost” the 2000 election, we’ve all seen the private Al emerge in public. And it’s been wonderful to watch.
I realized this morning that I felt the same way about Princess Diana once she left Prince Charles. Freed from her marriage and her royal position, she began to become herself. I mourned her more than I thought I would because her story was so promising and so suddenly incomplete. Likewise, John Lennon, whom I loved as a Beatle, I loved more when he left the Beatles. I still mourn his being murdered while still in his New York chrysalis.
At the same time, I’m suspicious of the metaphysics implicit in the notion of “becoming who you are.” It smacks of essentialism, as if we have a nature or destiny that is fixed. Yet, it is a nearly inescapable perception. There are changes that we can only describe by talk of someone becoming who she is. And even if the metaphysics is off, the process is joyous to behold.
December 9, 2007
I’m currently sitting in the Zurich airport, where everything is sparkly and incredibly expensive, on a six-hour layover on my way to Stockholm where I’m giving a talk to a conference on local governance. The conference organizers then are taking the attendees to Oslo for the Peace Prize ceremony; I assume well be in a back room watching on TV, but nonetheless, this is not something I would say no to. In fact, I bought my first suit in 15 years in part for the occasion. This is as close to Al Gore — or Uma Thurman, for that matter — as I’m ever likely to get.
Then it’s on to Paris for LeWeb 3 where I’m giving a brief talk on Web leadership, completely rewritten (but not yet rewritten enough) from the version I gave at the Web of Ideas discussion last week. Thank you, discussants!
Then I’m talking at a conference in Rome, although the details are still sketchy. There are some other plans as well, but they are sketchy to the point of erasure. But one thing is for sure: I’ll be home in a week, ready for my comfy slippers and weak American coffee.
[tags: peace prize]
December 3, 2007
I’m listening to a terrific This Week In Tech podcast about the One Laptop Per Child project butting up against Intel and Microsoft. It features Steve Stecklow of the WSJ and Cory Doctorow, who, btw, acknowledges — great news! — his coming fatherhood.
(Thanks to marc1919 for the link, via twitter)
November 28, 2007
The Wall Street Journal did a poll of 200 Facebook users (which doesn’t sound like a very significant number). Theresults:
If Facebook could tell your friends what you do on other sites — buying movie tickets, clothes, etc. — when would you want to share that information? Of the 200 respondents, 1.5% chose always, 30.5% chose often, sometimes or rarely and 68% chose never.
October 2, 2007
I’ve heard from some of you that my comments are broken. Again. Sigh. I’ve mucked around a bit with the MovableType settings trying to fix it. If you can’t leave a comment, please drop me an email at self
evident.com? Thanks. And sorry.
September 17, 2007
Anastasia Goodstein of ypulse.com talks about the questions she gets asked by parents about teenagers and their social networks. Will they lose their social skills? Can the kids take down photos, etc. The kids are used to putting it all on line. [I got a phone call I had to take and missed the rest.]
Stefana Broadbent has done studies and has found that social networking sites are not used by teenagers to communicate, but rather to identify people they’ve met or record where they’ve gone. Day-to-day communication is done through instant messaging and the phone. [and I missed the beginning of this one :( ]
Sean Kelly of Zoodaloo talks about the fact that his company doesn’t use email. They use Basecamp. Zoodaloo is a social networking site for kids. The avatars are done as cel shading (cartoon style). The boys want to explore and the girls want to customize and decorate.
Mike D’Abramoof Youthography. Last year they did about 120 studies in North America. The 10-29 year old group divides into four equal five-year cohorts, with no one cultural force driving all four. Kids are getting enrolled in school younger than ever and having sex earlier, but having kids, getting married and graduating from college later than ever. It’s now more important to people to have a lifelong partner than to get married. People find religion far less important than having faith or being spiritual. Conclusion: It’s not just the culture that’s changing, but the people. Trends: People integrate culture better than ever before. Identity is harder to catregorize. We are becoming more hedonistic. There’s rehumanization.
Fiona Romeo begins by talking about Club Penguin’s banning of numbers because members were speaking entirely in coded numbers. “Dictionary dancing” was born substituting other signs for the numbers. [Wonderful.]
Paarents are anxious about children’s use of digital tech because they overestimate the risks. There are few public spaces in the real world, so they spend more time on line. “Mobile phones are the new bicycles”: It gives them more freedom and greater range. Kids are fine about surveillance by video cameras and being fingerprinted by schools, but think that montoring mobile phones crosses the line.
[Sorry of the inadequacy of these notes]
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