Everything Is Miscellaneous
September 30, 2008
Letting the FOX count the hens
Sounds at the end like the room may be laughing at the reporter…
Let’s just see what happens
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I twitter as dweinberger
A "page-turner ... makes the consequences of the changes clearer than any work before", Frankfurter Allegemeine Complete list of reviews, good bad and indifferent (with some commentary from me)
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Universal academic directoryAcademia.edu lets you add yourself to its gigantic Tree of University Departments. It’s a slick, slidey, Ajaxy UI, and there seem to be only benefits to adding your name to it, even though it will forever be incomplete. The question is whether it’s easier and more beneficial to count on participants to centralize their contact info at Academia.edu or to hope that universities somehow might agree on a metadata standard — a microformat — for how they list faculty members on their own sites. Since the latter isn’t happening, the former becomes appealing. (Thanks to John Palfrey for the link.)
Tagged with: academics • education • everythingIsMiscellaneous • folksonomy • metadata • taxonomy • universities
September 29, 2008
Sarah Palin plays the age cardI’m a little confused by Sarah Palin’s joshing that she’s been listening to Biden’s speeches in the Senate since she was in second grade, especially with John “26 Years in the Senate” McCain standing right next to her. What’s next, comb-over jokes?
Fiscal physicsFrom Greg Mankiw’s blog:
Greg is an economics professor at Harvard.
September 28, 2008
University home page word cloudMatt Pasiewicz at Educause has created a word cloud out of 1,000 university home pages. Nothing too surprising, but interesting nonetheless.
Daily (intermittent) Open Ended Puzzle: Top Ten Reasons Palin Cancels DebateHere’s a contest idea from my brother Andy. Submit your entries as comments. Prize: Nothing at all. Top Ten Reasons Sarah Palin Cancels the VP Debate Suspicious Russian tourists spotted across the Bering strait in Dezhnevo Wrasslin’ a bear Learns Tina Fey will be watching When taken on tour of White House by McCain handlers, is “inadvertently” locked in Cheney’s man-sized safe Schedule for memorizing state capitals thrown off by need for new schedule to memorize states Speechless after finally looking up what “MILF” stands for On deadline to finish her book, “Namin’ Your Baby the Alaskan Way” Not yet confident how to work in those hilarious hair-plug zingers No matter how hard she scrubs, she can’t get Kissinger’s moral stank off of her Stuck in traffic on the Bridge to Nowhere
Ethanz on Africa in Amsterdam at PicnicEthan Zuckerman is doing his usual raise-the-bar conference blogging, this time from Picnic in Amsterdam. See his roundup of the “Surprising Africa” day at Picnic. And that’s preceded by a post about an African architect, Francis Kéké, Ethan has long admired. Ethan is always an eye-opener.
Tagged with: africa • bridgeblog • conference coverage • culture • picnic08
Science photosSeptember 27, 2008
Washington Post debate mashupThe Washington Post has a nice set of interactive features for “decoding” the debates. You know what would be even better? The open access Larry Lessig and a left-right coalition is calling for.
Tagged with: debates • e-democracy • everythingIsMiscellaneous • media • politics
Where “leading” means “fighting”I hope every independent voter watches the ad the McCain campaign released even before the last radio waves of the debate escaped earth orbit:
So, McCain believes in crossing partisan lines, but when his opponent agrees with him, he takes it as a sign of weakness. Wow. Obama could not be more clear or explicit about what he thinks leadership is and the way forward for this country: Find common ground, discuss the differences. McCain couldn’t even look at Obama, much less acknowledge the values they share as Americans. My hat is off to Jim Lehrer. Well done!
Country first? Hahaha.So, as far as I can tell, the story so far is: McCain sees an opportunity to look presidential and experienced. He announces he’s suspending his campaign so he can rush to DC, although he in fact takes 22 hours to get there and manages to squeeze in some interviews, a speech at Pres. Clinton’s event, and a nice dinner. Plus, his surrogates stay out on the trail bashing Obama, and McCain continues his ad campaign. Other than that, the campaign is completely suspended. Then, to show that he is not a marginalized Senator on the fringes of economic discussion, he encourages conservative Republicans to back out of the deal the two parties had brokered in a genuine spirit of bi-partisanship so that McCain can spearhead some alternate proposal. Why? Well, since McCain’s original comments — in which he tacitly accepted Obama’s statement of principles — seemed to go along with the deal the two sides had worked out, I can only conclude that McCain would have disrupted any agreement so that he can be perceived as coming up with the new one. The Democrats are pretty much boxed in. If they make any concessions at all to McCain’s new proposal, McCain will trumpet that he’s the one who saved the economy by wringing changes from the Dems (while ignoring that the original deal before McCain stepped in to “save” us had been bi-partisan). So, clever move by McCain. Too bad it’s a clever move motivated by McCain’s ambitions rather than by what’s best for the country. For example, today’s economic slide is directly due to McCain’s self-centered disruption of the process. Nice, John. See you at the debate. Or not.
Chat during the debate?On Friday at 9pm EDT (-5 GMT), if you want to talk, cheer, and snark together about the debate, feel free to join irc.freenode.net/#debatejoho. We had lively and enjoyable chat sessions during the Democratic convention, so maybe we will again. Note that this is an old fashioned IRC chat, requiring some type of chat client. (I use chatzilla, a Firefox add-in.)
September 25, 2008
Enough about American politics. Now let’s talk about what the rest of the world thinks about American politics.Voices without Votes continues to give interesting international perspective on our American vote-fest. Sometimes the similarity of perspective is as interesting as the differences.
2% chance of a debate and falling?Whatever happens with the budget agreement, I can’t imagine that McCain’s going to agree to debate on Friday after taking himself out of three days of debate prep. Well, we’ll see. And if McCain is a no-show, don’t we hope and assume that Obama will take questions from the audience (at home and in the venue) for the full span of the debate? That Friday: I was wrong. I didn’t think McCain would so blatantly change his conditions. Foolish me.
Is McCain looking for his 9-11 moment? Some cheap, armchair psychologizing…McCain’s suspending of his campaign is so very odd that I find myself looking for psychological, and not just political, explanations. So, try on this armchair psychoanalysis, keeping in mind that I’m just making this stuff up: First, assume that McCain is desperate. When Fox puts you at 39%, desperation becomes reality-based thinking. Second — and this is the unpleasant part — imagine that McCain has had the thought that many of us had had: A terrorist attack in October would shake up the entire electoral chessboard, and might well favor the Republicans. (Yeah, yeah, I don’t think it should it, either.) Now, no one wants a terrorist attack (except, um, the terrorists), including John McCain, of course. But we’re talking psychology here. So, could it be that McCain is reacting to the financial meltdown as if it were a large-scale terrorist attack because deep within him, he’s waiting for the crisis that saves him, the crisis that lets the aging warrior put on his flight suit one more time? After all, the subtext of his “putting country first” trope isn’t patriotism but heroism. Heroes need crises. McCain’s brand of heroism consists of sacrifice: He gave up 5 years of his life in North Vietnam, and now he’s willing to give up campaigning. McCain’s political problem is that in this case, his self-sacrifice seems unnecessary and can be taken as panic or cowardice. It seems like sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake. He thus runs the risk of voters turning away from the hero-without-a-cause to the leader who has one.
September 24, 2008
Open up the debateHere’s an idea I’m taking from a mailing list. I’ll check with the guy who posted it [Later: It was John Laprise] to see if I can credit him, but I’m sure he’s ok with the idea itself being circulated: Obama ought to counter-propose that instead of postponing the debate, it ought to be changed to a debate on the economy, and opened up to public questions, as a way for the candidates to address the concerns of citizens. Nice idea.
Obama greets independent voterDebate chat together on FridayOn Friday at 9pm EDT (-5 GMT), if you want to talk, cheer, and snark together about the debate, feel free to join irc.freenode.net/#debatejoho. We had lively and enjoyable chat sessions during the Democratic convention, so maybe we will again. Note that this is an old fashioned IRC chat, requiring some type of chat client. (I use chatzilla, a Firefox add-in.)
Two press conferencesLynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times has blogged transcripts of press conferences given by the two candidates yesterday:
Information breeds controlA stray and obvious thought? If you look at the issue of privacy at social networking sites in terms of information, as outside observers such as parents and governments frequently do, you come up with proposals to enable users to control their information. But sites like Facebook aren’t about information. They’re about self, others, and the connections among them. Likewise Flickr isn’t about info; it’s about sharing photos. If the issue gets phrased in terms of info, then the field tilts towards assuming privacy as the good and publicness as the threat, with control over info as the bulwark. But, within the participant’s frame, publicness is taken as the good and privacy as fear-based or selfish. This is a case where an information-based view misses the phenomenon and can lead to bad policy decisions. Also, our kids will think we’re dorks.
Tagged with: digital culture • digital rights • facebook • infohist • infohistory • privacy • sns • social networks
Amazing sidewalk artJulian Beever makes incredible sidewalk art trompe-l’œil that photographs in 2-D amazingly well.
And that’s not even the most impressive!
Who was saved in Sodom and Gomorrah?My wife just blew my mind. I thought I knew the basics of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. I’ve always cottoned to it because you have to like a religion in which people get to argue with their god. But I thought it was obvious that Abraham was arguing to save the innocent. Nope. My wife, who is a scholar about these things (although she denies it), says that on the contrary, the traditional Jewish commentators take it for granted that G-d will save the innocent. And, indeed, He brings Lot out, even though Lot is only semi-innocent. In fact, Abraham is arguing that the presence of the innocent ought to save the guilty. Why would having ten righteous people in a city be reason enough to save the guilty, given that either way, the innocent were going to be saved? That’s where the Jewish discussion of this passage begins. And maybe it’s where everyone’s discussion begins. But not me. I had it quite backwards.
September 23, 2008
[berkman] Born DigitalJohn Palfrey and Urs Gasser are giving a talk to launch their new book, Born Digital, to be followed by a party . [I'm live blogging, getting things wrong, omitting important points, losing track, not spell checking...] Urs begins by talking about the questions they’ve been asked as they’ve given interviews about the book. “Why did you write this book?” 1. “We’re researchers.” They’re interested in how the Internet is making structural changes that affect our lives. Those changes are most visible in the digital natives (people born after 1980 or so and have the skills to use digital tech). 2. “We’re teachers.” 3. “We’re parents.” They also get asked, “Why did you write a book?” It aims to bridge a gap between those who are more or less familiar with digital tech. They get asked how long it took to write the book, and what use they made of digital technologies. It took about 3.5 years to do the research for the book. The actual writing took about a year. Of course they did much of the research online. They used a wiki to assemble research. They used BaseCamp to share drafts. They opened drafts up to comments. “Writing a book in this digital age doesn’t have a clear starting point and may not have a clear end. It is the beginning of a conversation.” JP talks about the argument of the book. It’s a “myth busting” book, he says. And it aims to show some of the great things digital natives are doing. The meta-myth is that digital natives is not a generation; it’s a population. For one thing, only a billion people are on the Net. For DNs, what they write and post makes their multiple identities. They don’t distinguish between their digital and offline identities. They multi-task. They presume that the media they interact with is in a malleable, digital form. They download music using the filesharing services; if they download from iTunes, it’s because someone gave them a gift card. They create media and share it. (We should be teaching young people to work in teams, he says.) E.g., the Digital Natives logo came from a 15 yr old boy in England, via a contest. He points to couchsurfing as an example. The issues people have about DNs: (1) Security. That’s the first thing parents worry about. But it is a myth that children are more in danger than they were ten years ago. There are fewer abductions than ten years ago, for example. (2) Privacy: People do share a lot of info about themselves. And that is a concern. We are building up lots of information. No one has yet lived through a lifespan online, so we don’t know exactly what it will be like to have everything from your prenatal sonogram to your obituary available online. JP shows a video from a 17 yr old based on the privacy chapter in the book. (3) Intellectual property: DNs tend not to have a good idea of what they are allowed do with what they’ve downloaded. He shows part 2 of “The Ballad of Zack McCune“. (4) Information overload. JP ends with a “positive outlook.” We should acknowledge the real problems, but also recognize the creativity, the engagement in democracy, the available knowledge and info… JP ends by saying that the book is of course obsolete the moment it was published. So, join the continuing conversation. E.g.join the Digital Natives Facebook group or go to DigitalNative.org Q: Is the book on Kindle? Online for free? Q: It’s a great book, but you got one thing wrong: Your call for a rollback of CDA Section 230. [That protects hosts from liability] Q: As teachers, have you observed the effects of the digital experience on the way people think, write, or formulate arguments.
Crowd sourcing radio segmentsThe Brian Lehrer Show, on the nation’s largest public radio station, WNYC, is asking listeners to use a set of wiki pages to help produce six segments about the candidates’ positions on some of the less-hyped issues in the presidential election. The first issue to air will be the Internet and Broadcast Regulation. It will be on this Friday, 10-12 (EDT).
Public comment on bail-out billsMettadatta fer dumbiesFrom TechPresident:
September 22, 2008
One Web Day at Berkman continues: An amazingly cool interfaceThe Berkman Center has today launched an incredible user interface into the Berkman@10 conference. Put together by Bestiario, a group that has done some amazing work — you’ve got to see their home page! — this swirling pixellated cloud of info lets you dive into multiple relationships to browse by topic, person, tag, etc. The nodes that go swirling by display info as appropriate: a scrolling Twitter tweet, live video, etc. Your mind…is it blown yet? Zack McCune, one of the Berkman’s Super Summer Interns, worked with Bestiario to put this together. Zack describes the process here. It took a lot of work by Zack and by Bestiario. Thank you!
It’s all part of the Berkman Center’s One Web Day celebration.
Tagged with: bestario • digital culture • everythingIsMiscellaneous • onewebday • owd2008 • social networks • tagging • ui
The Internet LexiconIn honor of One Web Day, we’ve launched The Internet Lexicon, a blatant ripoff of the immensely clever Philosophical Lexicon. It’s a wiki-based list of Webby people whose names are treated as if they were definable words. For example:
The lexicon is an unofficial project by some Berkman Fellows. It’s a wiki, so jump on in!
One Web DayYay for One Web Day! This is from 2007:
No change to Obama tech policyThe Obama campaign changed its tech policy statement, raising concerns that it was backtracking on its commitments. Now the campaign has explained that the changes were an attempt to de-geek the language and the original policy statement is still up on their site. The campaign says:
To my reading, the explanation is consistent with the edits.
September 21, 2008
The Bank SurgeI don’t understand economics or the current crisis. I thus don’t trust my own judgments about who to believe. But Paul Krugman’s concerns and analysis strike a chord. So do Eric Hovde’s in the Washington Post. Since I lack the education and background to understand the crisis and its context, I find myself thrown into rudderless thinking, where I find myself swayed by people who I already tend to agree with (= Krugman), who are able to pain a coherent picture, and whose broad premises seem in line with mine. In short, I feel pretty helpless not just about the crisis about even how to understand the crisis.
Mike Wesch on YouTubeI just watched Mike Wesch’s talk at Library of Congress about YouTube. Mike, as you undoubtedly know, has made some astoundingly lucid and compelling videos that explain the Web that takes away the last excuses for not “getting” it. Brilliant stuff. This talk is not one of those videos. It’s a 55 minute lecture, with lots and lots of examples, explaining the importance of YouTube. And, like his own videos, it’s compelling, brilliant, and moving.
September 20, 2008
Why McCain should lose, in a single sentenceYou don’t get this very often: A single sentence that disqualifies a candidate not because of a scandal or a slip, but because it is an clear and forthright expression of the candidate’s beliefs. This is from a statement McCain wrote for Contingencies, published by the American Academy of Actuaries (via Paul Krugman):
Democracy’s susceptibility to softwareI want to propose an hypothesis. Suppose our new president gets serious about using the Internet as a tool of governance. So, he takes his email list and uses it to kickstart a new e-gov social network. In fact, his opponent provides his email list, too. So, let’s say we have 5M on this network. Let’s say it prominently features blogs and forums. Let’s say after two years there are 30M registered users, and some good percentage of those are at least occasionally active. Of course, I’m making all of this up. Now, the problem the Internet has faced almost from the beginning is how to scale conversations. We’ve solved it time after time, whether it’s threading and forking Usenet discussions or Amazon’s reviews of reviews. So, let’s imagine that this new social network solves the problem through a combination of forking (or recursive conversations … see orgware [Disclosure: I'm an adviser]) and reputation, more or less along the DailyKos lines. So, 30M people are engaged in vital conversations. Some people gain prominence in discussions on particular issues. The administration notices this. The relevant government policy makers want to engage in these conversations, because otherwise the 30M citizens feel like they’re being ignored. The emergent discussion leaders become the online points of contact between the administration and the conversations, because that’s how those conversations scale. For example, PolarKing111 gains an enormous reputation because he writes about polar warming so knowledgeably and passionately, because he engages with all sides in the discussion with respect, and because he’s so good at representing all the various opinions. Administration officials engage with him on the site, often in a spirited back-and-forth. He ably represents the concerns emerging from the many discussions on the site. It’s a public dialogue with just enough structure, one unlike any our democracy has seen. Inevitably, one day in early 2011, the media will discover that PolarKing111 is a 15 year old girl, but that’s not my point. My point is that the emergent online discussion leaders play a role unprecedented in our democracy. They are not elected yet they represent us. They are not members of the government yet they directly affect government. They have some power but the power comes from an emergent process. We don’t even have a word for this role. Of course, I’m making all of this up. It’s just an hypothesis. Yet, it’s easy to imagine something like this happening, while it simultaneously being impossible to predict exactly what will happen. Nevertheless, there’s a strong possibility that some form of e-gov social network will emerge, either from the government or from the people. This social network could create new roles or processes of democracy that could well turn out to be quite important. But, just as Facebook can alter the nature of privacy by deciding whether or not to set a checkbox on or off by default, the roles and processes of this new layer of democracy will depend to a large degree on small decisions about how the software happens to work. Democracy is susceptible to software. Personally, I think that’s likely to be a good thing. But, who knows? No one, that’s who.
Tagged with: democracy • digital culture • e-democracy • e-gov • e-government • politics
September 19, 2008
[irmc] Government 2.0 and beyondI’m at the 20th anniversary celebation of the Information Resources Management College of the National Defense University in DC. David Wennergren (Deputy asst secty of defense for info mgt, and DoD deputy chief info officer) is leading a panel on Gov’t 2.0, with Anthony Williams (nGenera, and coauthor of Wikinomics), Bruce Klein (Cisco, US public sector) and Mike Bradshaw (Google, federal sector). [I'm live blogging, making mistakes, being incomplete, mishearing ...] The moderator and the panelists each take a turn at the podium. David says that Web 2.0 (etc.) is a powerful opportunity “for us to change differently.” Agencies don’t have to be isolated. Mashups, mass collaboration, etc., enable rapid innovation. “We’ve grown up in a world of systems,” big systems. In the new world, we need to be able to “focus and converge.” [David is citing someone else, but I didn't catch the name.] He refers to the book “Polarity Management.” We have to get both security and sharing right. E.g., focus on secure networks and you create a “self-inflicted denial of service attack” on yourself. [Nice] If you don’t get sharing right, we lose our edge as a nation of innovators. Anthony Williams (Wikinomics) says he’s been working with governments on e-gov ideas. If we can do Wikipedia, Galaxyzoo, Curriki, there’s no telling what we can do as citizens. The five big ideas: 1. Rethink public service. We still treat citizens as passive recipients. 2. Make sure the information flows horizontally and through all the governmental layers. 3. Open up the boundaries of government, inviting input from citizens, non-profits, private e, etc. 4. New models of democracy, especially interactive models of political communication. 5. Rethink our core institutions, redraw the division of labor. Can we source government services globally? Bruce (Cisco) talks about how Cisco is using tech to transfer its business. Web 2.0 is about collaboration. Collaboration accelerates productivity, mission success (or growth), and innovation. But it’s more about the culture and the processes than the technology. He shows a crowded slide of how Cisco is using Web 2.0. Their Directory 3.0 includes profiles and areas of expertise. Ciscopedia is an internal wiki. And they have a portal for employees that includes info and apps. Wiki use went up 5x over a year, blogs up 3x, and video up 12x. Cisco is changing from command and control to collaboration and teamwork. Mike (Google) begins with a title slide that has Google in one corner but that shares the space equally with Skype, Wikipedia, the iPhone, Facebook, AOL, YouTube, the iPod, Second Life, and Bebo. 98% of Google’s revenues come from its free products. Only 2% comes from Mike’s federal group. The cost of switching is zero, he says, so companies have to constantly work on providing good features that are usable without training. “We take that philosophy now to the workplace.” 89% people say they use at least one “unsanctioned” technology at work (Yankee Group). 49% say the tech they have at home is more advanced than what they have at work. He gives some examples of government embracing Web 2.0 tech. E.g., Homeland Security in Alabama used Google Earth as a platform for satellite imagery. Then firefighters started populating it with info about buildings and equipment. Then students started adding info. Etc. He ends by talking about the importance of cloud computing. He compares it to the early corporate resistance to PCs because they were insecure, etc. In addition to providing applications and infrastructure, cloud computing can be a platform (as with Google aps and Salesforce.com). In its own data centers, Google assumes things will fail. They buy commodity hardware and hold the drives in with velcro. Every minute, 13 hrs of video are uploaded to YouTube. The search engine gets a billion queries a day. Google has had to build a huge infrastructure, which they now make available to the public for free. Q: How do we reconcile the rapidity of innovation and the slowness of the gov’t acquisition process? Q: What kind of test did Cisco do to weed about the execs who are not ready to move from the command and control structure? Q: The DoD blocks many social networking sites. The younger employees want to collaborate all the time. How do we bring them in, let them live in their culture, and modify the environment to meet their needs? Q: In the new model of gov’t how do you make sure the voice of all the people, even those without cmputers, is heard? Q: The Toffflers [who are in the audience] point to the variance of rates of change. What’s Google doing to help accelerate change in education and law, to keep it up with the speed at which business changes? Q: We don’t have standards. Should there be government regulation of the Net to produce standards? And how would this work internationally? Last thoughts? What do you see coming down the road?
Tagged with: business • cluetrain • conference coverage • digital culture • federal • government • irmc • web 2.0
September 18, 2008
Miscellaneous scurationJohn Pollock, in an email, thought that readers of Everything Is Miscellaneous might be interested in The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. John writes:
John also found this:
Sounds fascinating…
McCain causes flap in SpainTalking Points Memo has a bunch of posts (latest) about the odd interview McCain gave to Radio Caracol Miami.
About 3/4 of the way through, the interviewer asks him if he’d invite Zapatero to the White House. She says his full name — José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — which might have thrown him, since he gives his generic answer about meeting with those who support democracy, and then starts talking about Mexico. It seems pretty clear to me that he didn’t catch the name and didn’t want to alienate the Florida audience by seeming to be thrown by the interviewer’s properly accented pronunciation. He then, unfortunately, gives a response about being willing to meet with friends of democracy, as if that were in doubt about Spain. The interviewer then explicitly says she’s talking about the president of Spain, and McCain repeats his answer. Since that’s a pretty dumb response when talking about an ally, I’m assuming that McCain felt he had dug himself into a hole and didn’t want to crawl out by admitting his error. The price, however, is a needless flap with an ally.
September 17, 2008
National Maritime Museums flickrs photos |
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