Facilitating Change

Yeah, I know. Supposed to be writing about communications, technology, social change. How you can save the world. Not today. News of the day is this wine made from syrah grapes. Crozes-Hermitage, 2000. From Les Vins de Vienne, Cuilleron-Gaillard-Villard.

Identica’s commitment to open standards is hot. And all good technology shares this characteristic: People can figure out how to make it work for them. It’s hackable. Just look at Twyka in Kenya and Naijapulse in Nigeria. And as for me? Tonight I discovered a group that shares recipes in 140 characters or less. Bliss.

Visualization is powerful because it gives you a different perspective. Which helps you think differently. I like to tell my friends that I’ve figured out what enlightenment is: It’s the ability to see all different perspectives simultaneously.

she closes the lid
and unplugs the device
no bigger than her thumb
from the computer…
And, her lifes work is more than a four meg flash drive. My lifes work, she says, is the impact that this has. This is not about what I produce. It is all about what others receive.

Introducing Freebase: “the easiest way to add free, community-curated, Creative Commons licensed content to your web applications.” Watch the video. Imagine the possibilities.

I love love love to cook. Odd that I never put recipes here. Tonight this turned out so good that it inspired me to share with you — it’s the best and easiest thing I’ve made in a long while. And all you have to do is chop and boil water.

On passing through the immigration control at the airport in Tehran, she was asked by the officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said “no”, the officers pulled up a laptop and searched for her name on Facebook. They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends.

My first Artefatica project is coming along. Sooooo slowly. A draft of the website for our first book — Terrain Vague, Citizen Engagement & the Open City: The Roerich Garden Project — is up! Check it out, send some feedback, add your story or your vision.

In April I went to see Astra Taylor’s Examined Life, a film that “pulls philosophy out of academic journals and classrooms, and puts it back on the streets.” Right. No no really it was good. They just set themselves up for me to be bitchy by describing it that way.

I got this expression from the first One Giant Leap film. From the section on time and the 10,000-year clock. I use it in my knowledge sharing work — when trying to explain why it’s important to document, tag, give context. The idea is to make it easier to build on each other’s work.

The adoption of he technologies of the City Control is not inevitable, nor something that we must kindly accept nor sleepwalk into. Each of us can help contribute to building technologies of trust and empower ourselves in the age of mass surveillance and ambient technologies.