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email delivery Read Weblogsky via email:itinerary EFF-Austin Cyberdawg Social, November 2003. Austin: Wireless Future, ongoing project / meetings; conference (March 12-16) SXSW Interactive, Austin (March 12-16) Polycot Polycot helps organizations determine how to build and use effective web technologies to solve problems, build loyalty, share knowledge, and organize projects. For more information, email consult at weblogsky.com, or check out the Polycot Consulting web site. projects CEO, Polycot Consulting. Polycot is a network services company: network consulting, installation and administration, as well as web solutions (architecture and development). Member of the blog team at Another World (worldchanging.com) Co-Founder of the Austin Wireless City Project Manager of the Wireless Future Project for IC² Institute Associated with Rheingold and Associates, Online Social Networking Moderator and co-administrator at the Dean Issues Forum Writer of various interviews, reviews, essays, and articles. President of EFF-Austin Member, Board of Directors, Austin Freenet Local advisor for South by Southwest Interactive Steering Committee Member and Webmaster, Austin Clean Energy Initiative Member of the blog team for Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs weblog. Cohost of The WELL's Inkwell.vue, discussions and interviews. Webmaestro for Viridian Design Co-instigator of Austin Bloggers Member of Mindjack's Board of Advisors. links worth traveling weblogsky archives Email jonl at weblogsky.com 
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Thursday, July 31, 2003
Where's Osama? An article from the New Yorker analyzes the U.S. failure to locate Osama bin Laden, believed to be hiding, well-protected, somewhere around the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Excellent analysis of complex logistical and political issues associated with the search, which was evidently hampered by commitment of resources to the Iraq war. [Link] To the frustration of many of the people involved in the fight against Al Qaeda, the Bush Administration is said to have been distracted by competing priorities—most notably, the war in Iraq. Rohan Gunaratna, a Sri Lankan terrorism expert who has analyzed thousands of Al Qaeda documents recovered by various governments, said, "I feel that if they had not gone to Iraq they would have found Osama by now. The best people were moved away from this operation. The best minds were moved to Iraq. It’s a great shame. It’s the biggest military failure in the war on terrorism so far. The Americans need more resources, and more high-level people exclusively assigned to this task."Discuss Where's Osama? Monday, July 28, 2003 Bob Hope I grew up watching Bob Hope on television and in films. He was a wise-ass in the best sense, where the emphasis is on the wise. He was a pro - he delivered 100% every time you saw him, and he was never condescending. In my own life going forward, I would hope to deliver as he delivered. He's been quiet for a while, and I didn't realize he had an official website, but here's the link. [Link] Saturday, July 26, 2003 Hack the Vote? Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.com has exposed a system integrity flaw at Diebold Election Systems. As late as January 2003, Diebold's customers uploaded their election results to an open FTP site, where anyone could download the files, alter them, then upload them again. [Link] The AccuVote files, freely shared and sometimes snagged from the FTP and e-mailed to election workers and technicians, included hardware and software specifications, election results files, the vote-counting program itself, and "replacement files" for Diebold's GEMS vote-counting system and for the Windows software underlying the system. In fact, anyone with a modem could have hunkered over a computer to download, upload or slightly change and overwrite the files on Diebold's FTP site. The AccuVote files, freely shared and sometimes snagged from the FTP and e-mailed to election workers and technicians, included hardware and software specifications, election results files, the vote-counting program itself, and "replacement files" for Diebold's GEMS vote-counting system and for the Windows software underlying the system. In fact, anyone with a modem could have hunkered over a computer to download, upload or slightly change and overwrite the files on Diebold's FTP site. While not all of us use words like "FTP" and "program patch" around the house, the high tech community instantly understood the implications of this kind of file swapping. "The ability to install patches or new software that wasn't certified has many risks, including the introduction of new bugs and more opportunities for tampering. It is even more risky if different patches can be installed at the last minute in particular jurisdictions," says David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford University.Discuss Hack the Vote? He Kept His Head A carrier driver whose head was severed in an accident managed to drive himself to the hospital and walk himself inside. He's recovering. [Link] Dean and Nodal Politics Dave Weinberger has some followup discussion of Howard Dean's week on Lessig's blog, with comments by Rick Klau and others about Dean supporters' commitment to nodal politics. [Link] Before this, what would you have had to do to get the ear of a potential president of the United States? You could have a column in a national newspaper or you could get a hernia toting sacks of cash to the campaign headquarters.Discuss Dean and Nodal Politics Friday, July 25, 2003 Declaration of Independence Somebody posted this link to a story from the Boston Globe: 'Blogs' shake the political discourse. I started reading it, then realized I don't care! That is, I don't care what traditional media sources have to say about blogging OR politics, and I'm ready to declare my independence from that scene, because it's a world that's crawling at minus speed, and I have to slow down every time I focus my attention there. But it's not really speed I'm talking about, it's expansion... like we can have an expanded view of the world throug the networks that evolve around us, and it may not be packaged perfectly, edited, fact-checked, and dropped into seamless column inches of type... I'm rambling... but the point here is that the Boston Globe says a blog can "can turn anyone with an Internet connection into a mini-media outlet," and the problem with that is that the Globe can only see this form of publishing as it relates to "media," yet this feels so different to me as I'm swimming in it that I don't want to connect the two. Sure, we've been influenced by the publishing models that preceded us, but as I watch developers play with the possibilities I realize we're evolving something that is independent from that world, not just in its methods for representation of information but in its success in building collaborative spaces and social network that no one would ever suspect. It's all about hominids finding new ways to build their tribes, and that really transcends the old sense of media. Wednesday, July 23, 2003 St. Jude  I was devastated to hear of Jude Milhon's death. She nom de plum'd as St. Jude, derived from the patron saint of lost causes. She was a playful techno-anarchist whose sensibility infused Mondo 2000 and made it great. She should have lived forever... death is a rip-off.
Here's the last email she sent me, reposted, with love, for posterity...
Remember the cold-war play called M.A.D. -- Mutually Assured Destruction? -- where our government came on all crazed: "Stand back: I'll blow this planet to asteroids any minute now! Hee hee heeeee..." Well, the Bush plan is similar, but with less play-acting required on his part: "I'll Dessimate Iraq Over Terrorism", usually known by its acronym, I.D.I.O.T. (I dreamed this up this morning.) (You wanna use it, just give me credit, okay?) cheers, guy --
St Jude Sunday, July 20, 2003 Projects We had an EFF-Austin retreat this weekend that was productive, though the heat was a bit of an issue for yours truly. We met at a cabin in a wooded area northeast of Austin, ignoring the bugs and the muggy heat, though I think they took their toll on me as the day wore on. I missed the fun/social part of the retreat, instead driving back to town to work on the Wireless Future project. If you follow that link today you won't see much: I'm working on the web site this weekend. I haven't blogged here about my work with EFF-Austin or Wireless Future. EFF-Austin began as a proposed alpha chapter for the national organization, but we incorporated separately, and we were evolving our own identity and projects by the time EFF announced, in 1992, a decision to forego chapters. At the time they were building a tight organization to lobby inside the beltway, with Jerry Berman at the helm. Stuff happened, Jerry left, EFF went through difficult times and nearly collapsed, but recently emerged with attorney Shari Steele as the most effective and clueful director yet. EFF-Austin lost steam in the late 90s after a brief attempt to reorganize as EF-Texas. I personally stopped doing activism during the last couple of years of the dotcom boom, while I was working for Whole Foods Market helping with intranet and ecommerce initiatives. That work took me to Boulder, Colorado, but Whole Foods dropped its ecommerce project as the dotcom "industry" fell apart, and I moved back to Austin to start my own company, at the same time working to revive EFF-Austin when it was clear that there's a whole new set of EFFish challenges (digital copyright issues, post-911 challenges to information freedom and privacy, etc.). The organization evolved chaordically, and we needed this weekend's retreat to start pulling the pieces together into a more coherent whole. Wireless Future is a project of IC² Institute, a local think tank that is part of the University of Texas. Founded by entrepreneur George Kozmetsky, the Institute supports innovation, creativity,and capitalism with research and action initiatives that extend into the Austin community. IC² has been working on a series of initiatives to support diverse elements of the local economy. As a member of the Austin Clean Energy Initiative's steering committee, I worked with them on a clean energy report, and while doing that work I heard they were planning a similar initiative around wireless technology, so I asked to be a part of that project, and they invited me to manage it. I created an outline for the report, and we hired four researchers to work on it, meanwhile scheduling stakeholder meetings which have been helpful in bringing wireless companies in Austin together to focus economic/cluster development. Interesting work, and we were going to follow up with a major national conference to extend the report's findings. SXSW Interactive suggested that we roll our conference program into their conference as a major track, so that's the current plan. I'll be posting more about EFF-Austin, Wireless Future, as well as some interesting stuff Polycot is doing (like my partner Jeff Kramer's development of Common Content) over the next few weeks, and further developments will be reflected, of course, at the respective web sites. Friday, July 18, 2003 connected selves Dana Boyd has been researching social networks, focusing specifically on Friendster. She's created a blog called connected selves where she's posting thoughts and links related to her research. In an email she's sent around to let people know what she's up to, she says "As you see new material floating about this topic that i should record and incorporate into my thinking, please let me know. Having an archive of this is really important to me as i will begin to truly process it shortly." This is your chance to contribute to some worthwhile research. "Piracy Linked to Terrorism" The head of Interpol claims that CD and software piracy provides funds for terrorist groups. [Link] An Interpol document to be presented in Washington later on Wednesday said that a wide range of terrorist groups have profited from the production or sale of counterfeit goods, including al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Chechen separatists, ethnic Albanian extremists in Kosovo and paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, the statement said.Discuss "Piracy Linked to Terrorism" Revision History In the wake of the Winer watch flap, I notice that Mark Pilgrim has added a revision history to his own blog, Dive Into Mark. Latest post is an Orwell quote... I read the comments with interest... as much interest as I could muster at 5:30am, at least. (This reminds me that years ago a web news site – I'm pretty sure it was Wired News in its first years — added a revision history after some controversy over changes to a story. In print, revising a story meant reprinting it so revisions were always visible as retractions, errata, etc. At the time we were just realizing how news is different on the web - more immediate, more fluid, more malleable. Mark's blog item title suggests that a revision history is a matter of accountability. [Link] Thursday, July 17, 2003 Howard Dean is Blogging Howard Dean is blogging — his own words, not someone writing in his behalf — at Larry Lessig's weblog while Lessig's on vacation. My friend and fellow traveler David Weinberger commented on Dean's blogging in an interview audio blogged by Chris Lydon. The great thing about Dean is that he's doing what politicians never do: speaking his mind, admitting he doesn't know everything, actually listenting to what others have to say. I probably don't agree with all of his positions, but I don't care. Agreement is less relevant than knowing he'll listen and consider. Populist candidates are seldom successful against the money and buzz machines that require a candidate to sell his soul to special interest groups, but Dean has something other populist candidates didn't have: the Internet. He's the first candidate with a clue how to make effective use of this technology, and to understand its social value. It will be interesting to see how well he can do with a combination of clueful Internet organization and competent, effective political organization on the ground. [Link to Lessig's blog] As a doctor, I’m trained to base my decisions on facts. This President never adequately laid out the facts for going to war with Iraq—perhaps, as it turns out, because the facts were not there. I opposed the war not because I’m a pacifist—I’m not—but because the evidence presented did not justify preemptive war. I opposed needle exchanges for drug addicts until I saw the empirical evidence that showed how such exchanges reduce the spread of disease. I changed my position, and I’m proud of that. Facts are a better basis for decisions than ideology.Discuss Howard Dean is Blogging Wednesday, July 16, 2003 Raak and Roll I've been meeting with Dan Cunningham, CEO of Raak Technologies, in the context of the "Wireless Future" project I'm working on (about which more later). Dan's a great guy - we discovered today that we both got into science fiction around the same time and were members of the Science Fiction Book Club, where you'd get a new volume of sci fi every month for a dollar. He had the book club edition of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, autographed by Asimov at a trade show some years ago. Dan's company secures networks and web sites with smart cards and tokens - you have to plug the card in to get access. The wireless LAN solution consists of a smart card or token, a digital certificate, and an 802.whatever client that handles authentication and session key management. [Link] "I'm not Joi Ito, that's just my name" Joi posts a long, thoughtful rant about identity and privacy. [Link] So as we think about FOAF, cameras pointing at my face, location moblogging, it is essential not to forget that WE need to be in control of what information we create and how this information is tagged stored and authenticated. Peer-to-peer / end-to-end thinking is essential for privacy as well. Make client software that collects information from catalogs and locally recommends stuff to you, not central servers of user profiles. Empower the people, not the merchants and the governments.Discuss "I'm not Joi Ito, that's just my name" Thursday, July 10, 2003 You've got Blog! Clay Shirky documents his view of AOL's blog functionality, still in development, asking the question that is always spinning around the core of the blogosphere: Is this publishing, or is it community? The toolset pushes both ways for many of us, but Clay notes that AOL's choices (as in selecting whether comments are on by default) will affect the future of weblogging because of "its nature," i.e. the potential large volume of new adopters and the mainstreaming effect. I personally wouldn't assume that AOL blogging will have the same impact as AOL email or AOL usenet, because of the nature of the blog... but it will be interesting to see the impact on Google searches. Community conversation vs Lightweight publishing platform is not a zero-sum set of choices, but there is a spectrum of offerings, from LiveJournal's hyper-sociability, to blogger, which still doesn't support comments, and the choice of features has a significant effect on patterns of use. Given AOL's size, and given that they are starting with an existing audience, none of whom chose AOL for its blogging tools, they may find that they heve to segment their developement efforts, customizing one set of tools for social groups and another for personal publishing (and possibly merging the latter with other Hometown functions, or their small business offerings.)Discuss You've Got Blog! Wednesday, July 09, 2003 Curiosity Deficit Disorder Mitch Ratcliffe has written this thoughtful followup to Doc's assessment of a New York Times piece called The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive, a critique of the persistently wired among us who, author Matt Richtel suggests, can't pay attention to any one thing because we're spinning through multiple data feeds. I like Doc's response: Sorry, but I'm not going to sit here and have human curiosity — our need to know, our intellectual passions, our extreme generosity with knowledge and knowhow... or hell, just doing our jobs (which have always been frenetic, one way or another) trivialized and dismissed as yet another addiction.Also, from Mitch: I want to know what the scores in Major League Baseball are during the day--I have baseball on with the sound turned down whenever a game is on. Does that mean I am sucking at the teat of mindlessness? Does it mean I have a baseball problem? Fuck no. It means I take control of the media and point it where I want to look.Attention deficit disorder is a label I find suspect. I often wonder if children who are so diagnosed have a problem — or is it just a difference that's evolved with the mediasphere. An adaptation, if you will. It's presented as a problem primarily because it's disruptive in schools, but perhaps we should consider whether school routines are the real problem, needing reconsideration. (If any with K-12 teaching experience are reading this, I invite your comments.) Tuesday, July 08, 2003 Supernova  I couldn't make it to Kevin Werbach's Supernova conference, but I'm tracking via weblogs... so far I've been checking out coverage by Dave Weinberger and Adina Levin, and the images at Jason DeFillippo's blog. Friday, July 04, 2003 Mobloggers in Tokyo  Image from Pete Barr-Watson's blog. Joi's panel (from left to right -
Joi Ito, Yuichi Kawasaki, Scott S. Fisher, Takashi Totsuka) I've been chatting via IRC with some folks who are at the First International Moblogging Conference in Tokyo, which I found out about from Joi and Adam. Also stumbled into The First International Tokyo Love Hotel Moblogging Conference via boing boing. Moblogging is blogging images via a mobile device (cellphone or pda). Thursday, July 03, 2003 "The Dean Difference" David Weinberger blogs Jock Gill on why the Dean campaign is different. An article in today's New York Times talks about the race for the Democratic nomination in terms of money: the leading contender is the guy with the most buck, the guy who can buy the most ads... assuming that broadcast advertising is decisive, and without the dollars to buy more of it, Dean is obviously not in the lead. I think they're in for a rude awakening, and so does Jock. [Link] Dean's campaign shows the smart mobs, hive minds, have more benefits, power, energy, vitality and adapability than the single mind of any political advisor — Karl Rove comes to mind.Doc Searls weighs in. Warriors Get It, Weasels Don't I was never in the military but I can definitely get Britt Blaser's anger. A group of ivy league yuppies who never served presume to send American citizens into harm's way to support abstract notions that we can only guess, where Iraq's concerned, because the case for "weapons of mass destruction" is unproved and seems to have been an excuse, not a reason. [Link] Tuesday, July 01, 2003 Scaling (via Greater Democracy) Dana Blankenhorn discusses the critical importance of 'net-based small-d democratic campaigns such (large-d) Howard Dean's. The assumption to date has been that the race follows the money, because money buys media and media makes elections through propaganda, not debate. (Disclosure: I'm doing what I can for the Dean campaign, they "get" the Internet. You should certainly vote for the candidate of your choice, but you should insist on a candidate that isn't hiding behind a media blitz.) [Link] This Internet campaigning I'm doing right now means everything. It means more than the fate of Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich or any other politician.Discuss Scaling Fitzcarraldo at Loch Ness The great German director Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo; Noferatu - the Vampire; Aguiire, the Wrath of God) is making a documentary — about the Loch Ness monster. [Linnk] In an exclusive interview with Scotland on Sunday, Herzog said: "It’s more than just the Loch Ness Monster. I’m just fascinated about some other Scottish things. It should also include landscapes, like the island of Skye and the Old Man of Storr. It’s not so much the so-called monster that’s important in this, it’s more the question why is it that we need a monster."Discuss Fitzcarraldo at Loch Ness  |
interviews Interview with David Weinberger for SXSW Interactive Conference's Tech Report Discussion with Bruce Sterling at The WELL, January 3 - 17, 2003. Jon L. interview for South by Southwest Interactive conference's Tech Report. Jon L. interviewed by Adam Powell (5/13/2002) jonl interviewed by R. U. Sirius (A version of this interview appeared in The Austin Chronicle) Conversation with Bruce Sterling at the WELL's Inkwell.vue Forum Interview with R.U. Sirius at CTHEORY interview conducted by Yoshihiro Kaneda in conjunction with the publication in Japan, in the book CyberRevolution, the essay "Inforeal." interview with Allucquere Rosanne Stone. No Stone Untenured: May '98 Interview with Sandy Stone Bruce Sterling interview for bOING bOING #9 The Tedium is the Message, Assholes: Interview (for AltX) with R.U. Sirius and St. Jude Don't Believe the Hype (Austin Digerati Roundtable published January 28) Why We Listen to What They Say: Interview with Doug Rushkoff Interviews with Projecting the 21st Century: An Interview with Gary Chapman Information Junkie, an interview with Reva Basch (Researching Online for Dummies) Wired to Virtual Reality: Interview with Howard Rheingold Interview with Carla Sinclair, author of Signal to Noise Making Movies on Cyber Location: an interview with director Doug Block (Austin Chronicle, February 1998) Untangling the Web: interview with Gene Crick of MAIN and Sue Beckwith of Austin Freenet reviews Review of Paulina Borsook's Cyberselfish, in Whole Earth Magazine. review in HotWired of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Cyber Top Ten for 1997 (Austin Chronicle, December 1997) essays
What Happened to the Cyber Revolution? A Few Points about Online Activism in the March '99 issue of the UK journal Cybersociology ZapSpace, published as A Fistful of DOS in the Australian magazine 21C The Cyborganic Path from the April '97 issue of CMC Magazine Essay: Are We a Nation? We Are Devo in The Ethical Spectacle. articles Little Nemo in Slumberland (bOING bOING, February 1998) Technopolitics, a 1997 essay on cyberactivism originally appearing in the Australian magazine 21C. Your 15 Minutes Are Up, Mr. Gates!1998 Top Nine List from the Austin Chronicle! Dungeons and Draggin's: a look at the Ultima Online phenomenon "We Do Cool Things": a profile of Austin's George Sanger, aka The Fatman, and Team Fat The Opera Ain't Over 'til the Cyber Lady Sings: Honoria in Ciberspazio (Austin Chronicle, November 1997) Shout Spamalam! The Austin Spam Suit Who Are You? Who Owns You? A consideration of Amazon's privacy policy. Amicus Brief filed with Supreme Court regarding the "Communications Decency Act" 11.25.96 Freewheelin' in Austin 1.7.97 Cyberdawgs and CyberRights: EFF-Austin 2.25.97 VR in 3Space: Brian Park 1.28.97 Going Native in Cyberspace: Bob Anderson 3.25.97 A Parisian Spring in Austin: Joseph Rowe and Catherine Braslavsky 4.22.97 On a Rock and Roll Firetruck: Shawn Phillips  |
