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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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Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Space, Foam, and Social Software Renee Hopkins posts thoughts on a presentation she saw at the Innovation Convergence conference, a discussion about the kinds of spaces that enhance innovation and where innovation lives in the workplace. The answer is that innovation is in the links between people, i.e. in social networks, and Renee relates physical to virtual and sees the potential for the thinking expressed by presenters Jason Heredia and Tom Mulhern to be considered by social software developers. "Cyberspace" is, after all, a virtual space or space "in effect" that is sustained by social consensus, so it makes sense to extend thinking about productive spaces and how they're defined into that realm. [Link] One other interesting thing I found out during Tom and Jason’s presentation: The material that’s best for group projects is actually that stuff I’ve always thought was called foam core but is really (so Tom says) fome cor. It’s better than easel pads or tacking things up on walls, because it allows you both to work in large format and to save your work while still in the large format.Discuss Space, Foam, and Social Software Saturday, September 27, 2003 Time Waits for No One Overview of Peter Lynds' groundbreaking work in physics. Lynds' work may have an impact similar to Einstein's. He's developed a theory that seems to resolve paradoxes of time and movement by showing that those paradoxes are based on an assumption of that time is a progression of instants, whereas he contends that there is no such thing as an instant of time as a physical quantity. [Link] Addressing the age old question of the reality of time, Lynds says the absence of an instant in time underlying a dynamical physical process also illustrates that there is no such thing as a physical progression or flow of time, as without a continuous progression through definite instants over an extended interval, there can be no progression. "This may seem somewhat counter-intuitive, but it's exactly what's required by nature to enable time (relative interval as indicated by a clock), motion and the continuity of a physical process to be possible." Intuition also seems to suggest that if there were not a physical progression of time, the entire universe would be frozen motionless at an instant, as though stuck on pause on a motion screen. But Lynds points out, "If the universe were frozen static at such an instant, this would be a precise static instant of time - time would be a physical quantity." Consequently Lynds says that it's due to natures very exclusion of a time as a fundamental physical quantity, that time as it is measured in physics, or relative interval, and as such, motion and physical continuity are possible in the first instance.Discuss Time Waits for No One Thursday, September 25, 2003 Austin Bloggers: Best of Austin austinbloggers.org won 'best of Austin' in the Austin Chronicle! It's a little inaccurate: the meatings preceded the blog... but who's to quibble? [Link]: We think some individual Austin weblogs deserve this title, but it's hard to choose between them, since that would require comparing apples to oranges. Fortunately, you can have the whole fruit basket with www.austinbloggers.org, a site that 'aggregates articles about Austin, blogged by our members.' The site is based on a simple idea brought to life by local bloggers Chip Rosenthal, Adina Levin, and Adam Rice. It's one-stop shopping for dozens of stories and perspectives on our city, and if you have a weblog (or Web site by any other name), you can join in on the chorus quickly and easily. The site has also spawned a community that meets in meatspace once a month.Discuss Austin Bloggers: Best of Austin Wednesday, September 24, 2003 U.S. Court Protects Audio Spam I knew it was too good to be true: telemarketers can keep calling, because a judge has ruled that legislation asking the FTC to create a "do not call" list didn't give the FTC clear direction to create a "do not call" list. Wait, I have to go... the phone's ringing... [Link] Iogeo My good friend David Nuñez has announced his Iogeo project. I often describe David as the token Mad Genius within EFF-Austin, but he's actually one of the sanest people I know, but bursting with creativity, mostly focused on technology and cyborganics (or human/machine coevolution). Most people claim they don't "get" science. Artists, in particular, tend to believe they just don't understand the techie stuff, yet they use math and science every day in their creations, whether they know it or not. They dismiss engineering because our society hides the emotion underneath a veil of science. It's stunning to me that we never think of engineers as artists, despite their beautiful creativity, and even go out of our way to segment them as people who think with only one side of their brain... the emotionless side.Discuss Iogeo Monday, September 22, 2003 Austin City Limits Sunday We were late to Lucinda Williams' set, our own fault for hanging 'round the house and catching late-breaking phone calls... and we couldn't have predicted the chain of snags between our house and the shuttle pickup, the stalled traffic here and there, the cop who wouldn't let us into the lane for access to the parking garage, our wrong turn in the parking garage, steering away from the open spots. By the time we arrived Lucinda was into a rousing version of Joy, and she charged right along until she got into "Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings" and lost track of the lyrics. The song fell apart and she let fly a round of f-words that were somehow endearing. After that she got right with god (the name of the song, anyhoo) and ended her set as we wandered to the next stage for Polyphonic Spree's demented set. Despite my avant pop predilections, I found my Spree threshold early and left with Marsha to get set for Yo La Tengo's set. I had a strange reaction to YLT – I really liked their deep fuzz psychedelia (at times reminiscent of Velvet Underground or Jesus and Mary Chain) but it made me want to sleeeeeeeep. They were followed by Ween, whose latest album Quebec is in heavy rotation in various corners of my brain. I was disappointed that they didn't play more of the latest, but they did a great "Zoloft," and that was enough. R.E.M. closed with a great set, but fearing a long night in a meandering line for the bus, we left a few minutes early, missing the last number. I was mush by then, though, so it was okay. The REM set got of to a weird start: Austin Mayor Will Wynn and Senator Lloyd Doggett introduced Lance Armstrong, who introduced the band. Poliltics. Sunday, September 21, 2003 Austin City Limits Saturday Saturday grandson Colton's birthday party was happening, so we left the fest after an amazing and sometimes hilarious set by my favorite Austin band, The Gourds... we missed the first fifteen or twenty minutes, checking out the South Austin Jug Band, an accelerated punk bluegrass band who played an amazing acoustic version of Hendrix' "Little Wing" as we were wandering away. They were great, but the Gourds really knocked us out... esp their last bit, a demented take on the Chambers Brothers' classic "Time Has Come Today" that morphed into the Rolling Stones' "Miss You." Set over, we ran to the shuttle, buzzed into town and found our car, made the Blazer Laser Tag scene, ate pizza and cake, drove back to the parking garage, and Marsha buzzed back to the event while I wandered over for a glass of wine with Mark Dery, in town for a keynote at one of the many games conferences we've been having in Austin, a city that has only just realized it's a hotbed for digital media. Mark isn't that much of a gamester, but his ongoing critique of digital culture is the right fit for a conference called Games Without Borders; wish I could've been there. Back at the festival it was raining, the crowd was dense and happy (and I was feeling the same way, probably more dense than happy, though, after a long day). Marsha was digging the North Mississippi All Stars; unfortunately I was late and missed most of their set, but I figured it was pretty great from the altitude of the crowd. We spent the rest of the evening with the String Cheese Incident, a Colorado jam band we managed to miss when we were living in Boulder. They played a great set and were going to play a second, but we were too wiped out to stay. Saturday, September 20, 2003 Austin City Limits We're spending much of the weekend at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, kind of a vacation in that I'm actually spending time away from the 'net. (There's a cybercafe; onsite but I'm avoiding it!) Last night we saw great sets by Steve Winwood and the Rev. Al Green. The Winwood set was a big deal to me – for years in the late sixties and early seventies his band Traffic provided a soundtrack for my life. He played recharged versions of two great Traffic songs, "Dear Mr. Fantasy" and "Pearly Queen." We arrived late and caught the last half hour or so of a nuclear set by Los Lonely Boys, our first exposure to a band we've been hoping to see if we get a life again. Rev. Green is a great manipulative showman with a crack funk band that "jammed down to the ground," as the Rev. would say. We wandered out early, we thought, but by the time we reached the line for the shuttle it was about a mile long... by the time we reached the end we were halfway to a stop for a bus that would take us all the way home, so we just kept walkin'... Wednesday, September 17, 2003 Word Pirates Avast, ye swabs! David Weinberger and Dan Gillmor have created a rather inspired web site to undermine the corruption of lanuage by the masters of marketing or political misdirection. Thanks, Dave! [Link] Marketers, politicians and other short-sighted, self-interested, sticky-fingered people have been stealing our words. Not only do they take them for commercial purposes, but they misuse them entirely. They're Word Pirates and we're going to take back what's rightfully ours.Discuss Word Pirates Sunday, September 14, 2003 Todorov: New World Disorder Bulgarian historian Tvetan Todorov presents what strikes me as a clear view of the state of the world today, based on this piece about his new book The New World Disorder: Reflections of a European. [Link] (In the NY Times, requires free subscription.) ... the United States lacks the will to intervene everywhere that freedom is threatened. "It intervenes only in certain cases that coincide with its clearly defined interests," he said. "This means that in the eyes of the world it intervenes to defend its interests, not to defend justice. But an empire cannot maintain itself only through force of arms. It also needs to impose itself through legitimacy."Discuss Todorov: New World Disorder Saturday, September 13, 2003 Johnny Cash  I bet there´s rich folks eating in a fancy dining car they´re probably drinkin´ coffee and smoking big cigars. Well I know I had it coming, I know I can´t be free but those people keep a movin´ and that´s what tortures me... Anniversary My partners in Polycot Consulting LLC and I celebrated our second anniversary as a company yesterday, and realized that our LLC was filed by the attorneys the day after 9/11. We hadn't paid that much attention to the file date from then 'til now. That felt a little strange, and it brought back memories... I was still living in Boulder at the time, with an office in the basement of our house at the base of the Flatirons. I wandered downstairs that morning and found a New York Times alert in my inbox, a bulletin about an airplane striking the World Trade Center. In my head I saw something like a Cessna hitting the building and blowing apart. Then another bulletin came about a second strike, and it dawned on my what was happening. I rushed upstairs in time to see the World Trade Center burning, and the eventual collapse. It was a clear sunny day in Boulder, as in New York. We didn't do much that day. The next couple of months -- putting the company together and preparing to move -- were a rush, we were going through motions. We tend to forget how little we knew then, how the world seemed so incomprehensible. Does it seem less so now? Business is better, we have so much more clarity about our sense of direction; life is better. Still, I've learned to question assumptions and avoid complacency. The world is what we make it, and we have to work to make it better. Friday, September 12, 2003 The Island Chronicles: Kookoo for Coconuts I hope you're all reading The Island Chronicles. Carla wrote this one, and this bit is absolutely inspired: Mark walks out to the front yard to greet us, looks up at our palm tree, and by sheer luck, witnesses a coconut falling from its top. It thumps to the ground with a force that could crack a skull. His eyes water with amazement, the way Moses may have wept when he witnessed the parting of the Red Sea.[Link] Sunday, September 07, 2003 Bob Frankston: AOL & Roadrunner Have Left the Internet! Bob Frankston's written this great rant about clueless attempts by megaISPs like RoadRunner and AOL to deal with the spam problem by blocking certain types of mail relays. Unfortunately those who are in the business of selling services rather than connectivity seem to be confused and can't resist meddling and force themselves into the middle. Even if their intentions are noble they doing a lot of damage. They are making the Internet harder to use by frustrating attempts to make it simple and dynamic and by forcing me through these narrow and problematic chokepoints.Discuss Bob Frankston: AOL & Roadrunner Have Left the Internet! Saturday, September 06, 2003 Lisa Rein: Ted Koppel On The Dangers Of The Patriot Act Lisa Rein blogged the September 4 Nightline, where Ted Koppel tore into the "Patriot Act." Ed Murrow's ghost was hovering around there somewhere. Includes links to video of the whole show. [Link] The men who drafted our constitution, who framed our civil rights and protected our various freedoms under the law would, I suspect, retch at some of the bone headed, self-serving, misinterpretations of their intentions that they so often use these days to undermine the very freedoms they pretend to safeguard. The miracle of American Law is not that it protects popular speech, or the privacy of the powerful, or the homes of the priviledged, but rather, that the least among us, those with the fewest defenses thoses suspected of the worst crimes -- the most despised in our midst, are presumed innocent until proven guilty.Discuss Lisa Rein: Ted Koppel On The Dangers Of The Patriot Act Friday, September 05, 2003 Virtual Earthquake In a way I experienced last night's minor Bay Area earthquake from my office in Austin, Texas. I was in an IRC chat room with when someone from the Bay Area remarked about the tremor, and I popped over to the USGS shake map and saw that it was a relatively light quake (3.9 magnitude) - but they could feel it from above Santa Rosa to below San Jose. I was immediate-messaging with my friend Peter Kaminski, who lives in the area, and asked if he felt it. He said no, but his kids upstairs felt it. We had a phone call and he put his son on the phone - they saw the curtains shaking. I logged onto the WELL around the same time and brought up the quake conference, where several reports were coming in - evidently it was loud and a bit scary near the epicenter in the Oakland area, and people downwind of a Chevron refinery were advised to go indoors and put tape around doors and windows. Wow. Tuesday, September 02, 2003 Burning Man's Plan for World Domination As Burning Man just gets bigger and bigger, the Burnsters look past Black Rock Desert, Nevada to the rest of the world, with regional spinoffs that extend the Burning Man ethos. [Link] “We’re the other choice in a consumer world,” Harvey said, as extravagantly or barely costumed Burning Man participants donned goggles and pulled up bandanas and face masks against the talcom-fine dust that at times cut visibility to a matter of a few yards. The wind shook the two-story wooden deck on which Harvey sat, and threatened to sail his trademark felt Stetson off into the surrounding desert.Discuss Burning Man's Plan for World Domination Open Source Production How do you extend the Open Source model beyond software? This page considers several non-software Open Source projects, and proposes an OS model for physical products via "fabbers," or digital fabricators, minifactories that generate solid objects from physical data. There's a bit of utopian sociopolitical "GPL society" speculation at the end that I don't buy, but the impact of broader applications of OS is worth considering. [Link] Monday, September 01, 2003 Surf Culture  The San Jose Museum of Art has an exhibit on the art history of surf culture. How influential is surf culture? Hey, I live in Texas and seldom visit the beach, but surf aesthetics (and music) influenced my life... and even when I was a kid growing up in a small West Texas town I knew guys with surfboards and bleachy hair who lived for their beach. (They also surfed Sand Dunes near Monahans, Texas.) Thanks to Steve Cisler for the head's up (or surf's up?) via Nettime. [Link] Works in the exhibition reference several centuries of art. Sandow Birk’s recreations of nineteenth-century paintings such as Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutze (American 1816-1868) are immediately recognizable as such, though the figures are now surfers oiled in vibrant hues and blunt forms. Kevin Ancell’s hula girls recall the kitschy tiki dolls of the 50s, but they now wield M-16 assault rifles and grenades, symbols of American imperialism. Other artists illustrate the more physical impact of surf-related inventions by using materials like fiberglass — a synthetic that revolutionized the construction of utility boards. Other works suggest a more subtle correlation, such as the meditative tone of Robert Irwin’s discs that mirror the transcendence surfers often feel while immersed in the ocean.Discuss Surf Culture Microsoft is Bursting Robert Cringely on a recent hearing that suggests theft of IP from Burst.com and deception in the lawsuit Burst has filed. [Link] "Why would a company like Microsoft do this?" asked Richard Lang, who is Burst's CEO and half the company workforce. "We were a little company. Microsoft could have had our technology for almost nothing, but instead they stole it. We called them on it, and they could have settled at any time, but they didn't. They stuck their heels in and won't give an inch even now. The only way I can make sense of this behavior is that they need to win no matter what the cost."Discuss Microsoft is Bursting Living Machines, Inc. Great concept: "revolutionary natural wastewater treatment and reclamation systems that accelerate nature's own water purification process." [Link] Giant lizard terrorises Beirut The news just gets weirder. BBC reports a giant lizard, probably a Komodo Dragon, wandering around Beirut, devouring pets. [Link] Charles Bronson Charles Bronson was one of my favorite actors in the '50s and '60s. I first saw him in a television series called Man with a Camera - I was into photography, so the idea of a heroic crime-fighting photographer seemed pretty cool. I also remember an early-sixties issue of Curtis Lee Hanson's Cinema where Charles Bronson and James Coburn both had interviews. This was after they had appeared together in a couple of John Sturges classics, The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. I quite following Bronson after the cheesy Death Wish films. He's dead at 81. I'm thinking it's too bad he didn't have a great final bow (like Coburn in Affliction. [Link]  |
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  |
