The other day whilst reading a feed somewhere in my hundreds, I came across a link to a video .. this video in fact :

I instantly felt a recognition and affinity and especially wth the subtleties in the kaos (yes, oh yes, there’s subtleties), so much so it sent me hunting for more. I found it’s a creation by John Callahan who has a wikipedia entry here.

If anybody really knows me they’ll see why I like this so much. Some, like the person who complained about the ‘insensitivity’ of the cartoon shown above, won’t see anything, as they really don’t wish to see the reality of humanity in all its raw openness anyway.

You see I realise the affinity I felt was with John’s humanness, not specifically his disability.

I’m not gonna say much more except this guy has insights only other quads could recognise and does a bloody fine job pointing out some of the idiocy anyone with a disability lives around and through. A true artist.

Here’s links to some of his other stuff worth a watch:

Interview snippett

Part 1 of a tv documentary shown on Dutch TV:

and his other ‘Quads’ animated cartoon series

and his songs on youtube

For many years I’ve had an image in my head of an absurd cartoon that I’ve just been waiting for opportunity to be drawn. It’s the kind of image I think someone like John would appreciate and could really do justice – If there ever was such a thing in this world.

FWIW

Dave

Audio of JP Rangaswami speaking at Supernova 09 on 4 characteristics publish/subscribe environment.

1. realtime
2. personal [capillary tubes not firehoses]
3. interactive
4. augmented

JP Supernova 09 [mp3]

via – Supernova Day 2 Afternoon – Real Time Flow Panel part 1 [video]

It makes me think a lot about what I said regarding Social Isolation over on my Lifekludger blog recently.

[audio:http://media.dnwallace.com/mp3/Snippet-Keynote_MeWeandtheNetwork.mp3]
Shout-out by Nancy White

Nancy White
Keynote: Me, We and the Network
Learning Technologies 2009 Conference

The power of you – or of me, is mighty. But when and how do we tap into the power of “we” – bounded groups, or networks which flow beyond our personal lines of sight. What practices enable us to utilise the power across these three forms?

Learning Technologies 2009 Conference Podcasts from both days available now at http://bit.ly/2zq7yv

Something about this is neat. The act of helping is so ingrained and helping robots reveals something inherent about our humanness. Were these ppl helping to be a part of something? Or because they knew there must be human behind it?

Unorganised crowd sourcing.

Fascinating.

Dave

[via David Weinberger]

Now, don’t panic, I’m not ill and don’t intend on dying anytime soon. But it will happen. And it so happens that with recent changes in living arrangements I’ve been in the updating Will mode for a while. (Read there – I’ve been slack in finalising it.)

Anyhow, I was thinking about how we talk about how the things we do digitally are so more ‘sticky’ or permanent and how one should be careful of what we put online as it will be ‘searchable forever’. But will they? Forever is a long time and while I understand the sentiment in such arguments, the fact is that if I let my domains expire that a lot of what I do would be inaccesible. And someday even the information from them that is stored in google’s cache will be expired. Then, it will be gone. Much is said about how to not do things personally online that might jeopordise opportunities in the future, but I don’t see much about what to do if you actually do want to ensure the ongoing nature of the opportunities you have taken.

Now it might not be so bad for things to disappear, really, when it comes to anything personally I do. However I thought of Lifekludger as an entity and how I believe in what its potential is and how such potential might not be realised in my time. Lifekludger will depend on the increasing nature of online connetedness between people and so while progress and time might be on it’s side, time and progress isn’t for individual human beings.

So I thought about how much of what I do online is important to me and how much I value what it is I’m building oline – whether personally or otherwise. And I figured that if I was serious about it then I should do something to help it survive after me. Hence I thought of the Will.

Here’s my plan. I’m going to put in my Will that a certain sum of money be taken from my estate and put in an interest bearing account with responsibility of maintaining given domains and hosting company fees falling to a pre-determined and informed trusted person. I figure all these online cost are likely to get cheaper in future anyway so the outlay won’t be huge and interest might even account for most of it. At current prices I’d only be looking at about a $3-5k amount. And if Lifekludger finds legs before then well and good, my personal domain will survive even longer … FWIW

So there you have it. Have you thought about the longevity of your digital identity?

Dave – Lifekludger

PS: As would happen, after writing I see there’s a startup called Legacy Locker that deals with the distibution of passwords to online accounts. This doesn’t however allow for ongoing expenses involved but I might consider using a service like that in conjunction. That said, who will guarantee survival of a Third party online service?

Lost Generation

Hat tip to Laurel

Dave

October 10 is World Mental Health Day.

Expect to see lots of Blue.

A lot of my Twitter friends are already turning blue and are doing various things, calling it Blueday2008 and
using the hashtag.

I’m never one for jumping on bandwagons for the sake of it. Like these wristbands you see everywhere for instance. But I wear a BeyondBlue wristband, constantly. If you’ve got one, or see one, you might like to take a photo of it and put it on flickr and add it to the group I started there.

I also made a T-shirt for your Second Life Avatar, if you feel so inclined. You can pick one up from here as part of the Blueday2008 event in Second Life.

While there you might like to have a look at/in my sculpture / artwork in there called Ocean of Tears , which, though I started long ago, have been spurred on to complete at, and release on a time like this.

I wrote before in this blog post here why I’d be interested, and in fact why I am doing this stuff.

All this Incandescent Blue, and the iTunes Genius gave me a music list to write this post to.

As long as we are talking about it – What do you do to stay sane?

Peace.

Dave

http://www.beyondblue.org/

Technorati Tags: blueday2008, secondlife

hyperconnected thru @mpesce

Originally uploaded by dnwallace

Mark Pesce did the keynote at Web Directions South, I wasn’t there, but my eyes were…

Watch This : http://www.viddler.com/explore/mpesce/videos/18/

Read That : http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=76

Be The other.

Enough Said.

Dave

“social tools are specifically different from other tools we use to interact in that they shape culture”

Stowe Boyd

… the underlying premises of our educational system, which is to produce good little individual economic cogs. Meanwhile, the kids are turning themselves into self-organized networks where collective productivity is the central aim. …

… Meanwhile, the kids are reshaping their cognition to include non-linear, shared, and interruptive modes of thinking, …

… We move into a realm where our identity is linked to our network of contacts and our shared activities: we are increasingly defined though our relationships with others, instead of our membership in organizations, like schools, clubs, or citizenship.

This is a revolution, …

Read the lot here – The New Literacy and The Enemies Of The Future

Technorati Tags: network productivty

Which lead to the thinking about how I do what I do at Lifekludger, documented in the “Contexts and Clues” section of the About page as — “To get from one context to another takes a Kludge!“….

So just the other week I get a ping from @fang about the book kluge —–

Then I see a tweet from @kanter asking “what is the sweet spot between personal productivity and connectedness?”

My response (below) gets quoted by her in a blog post “What’s the sweet spot between personal productivity and social productivity?” here ……

Which leads me to read Stowe Boyd’s post about “Information Overload, Schmoverload“, and his thoughts on network productivity here ……

Then I talk about it with Mike on our podcast here …..

And so there I am, reading Stowe again, critiquing more mainstream media articles on the so-called ‘curse of multitasking’ and the over emphasis placed on ‘personal’ productivity – “…the war on Flow” here ….

And what do I read? “In the wonderful book, Kluge, Gary Marcus makes a solid case that the human mind is really bad at memory, and that we have developed all sorts of compensating techniques to counter that weakness. Our memories can be demonstrably changed by simple shifts in context ….”

From Context to Context via a connected kludge.

We need connection to others and to other’s thinking if nothing more than a technique to counter our weaknesses – we need a networked life.

And this holds true in any area of application – personal or professional.

That, my networked friends, is life network productivity.

Dave

Technorati Tags: beth kanter, connection, context, fang, information, overload, network productivty, stowe boyd

Getting into the van, this line came to me:

Into the cockpit of our future
Fly the memories of our past

That’s not quoting anyone, it’s my original thought. There’s a poem in there somewhere. Maybe the rest will appear sometime. Or maybe it’s just stimulus.

Sitting in the back of the van, half sleeping, gives lots of
opportunity for catching up on podcasts and things I haven’t listened
to for a while….or thought about.

Here’s a line from Bruce Cockburn that resonates:

You’ve no idea how I long
For even one loving caress
For you to step into my heart
Without deception or duress

That comes from “Life Short Call Now” the song, off the album by the same name. I also got stuck on the song “Slow Down Fast”. (I’ve quoted these before, last year, but without context).

I wonder about the dichotomy that seems to exists between the two songs. “Life’s short”, seemingly urging us to speed up action and “Slow Down” drawing us to the opposite conclusion. Of course the answer lay in the detail, and in context the songs are both valid and both saying the same thing – think about what you’re doing, right here, right now.

In my common parlance they’re both saying – find and focus on the signal.

Tension, balance, change.

Which got me to thinking why it is I’ve never driven change in my own life. So much of my life seems to be having change forced upon me. I admire people who can say I want a change, I want to be doing this, this and this, and do it.

Sure, those who know me know that there’s reasons I might feel this way. We all have limitations and things we can and can’t do, I’m talking about changing those things we cam. But I especially think this stuff is harder when it comes to fundamental personality issues. Like always wanting to be a poet, or architect but for various reasons becoming a doctor. But you can’t deny who you are.

So I thought perhaps I need to draw a line in my own sandbox and take a step over it. Even if it’s just a little step; a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I decided to make a decision (there’s an odd line for you). I’m going to do that writing course I’ve been thinking about for the past couple years. I’m telling you here so you’ll hold me to it. If I’m bad at creating the change I want in my life, rather than that I think others do, then maybe I should get help. Tag, you’re it, dear reader!

I might fail, but then again, as they say in the excellent Australian movie “The Dish” – “Failure is never quite as bad as regret“.

Dave

Photo from flickr by zacklur

Stowe Boyd puts it well. At last, I actually read something that points to where the real power of an open distributed web will be – with the individual as the centre of gravity and full-focus attention enabled – just like Linda Stone predicts.

The question remaining to be worked out is how business models will evolve to support such individual-centric knowledge flows and not keep relying on the silo model.

Watching Bob Dylan this morning on YouTube I thought of Facebook.

The times still are a changin.

Dave

[tags]linda stone, facebook, focus, signal, bob dylan, change, stowe boyd[/tags]

Looking around, turns out it’s the blog of a team of people from Naked Ltd who is a start-up company working on a new open messaging service that will enable people to share thoughts, feelings, and experiences, through lightweight mixed-media posts.

Reading through the posts on the blog I’m struck by the vibe that seems to be driving the development – personal openness, human connection (and anyone whose watched ‘The Castle’ knows ‘the vibe’ is everything ).

Their plain spoken manifesto is:

Being Naked means that:

I say what I mean
You mean what you say
I’m more in touch
I’m in touch more

If they can deliver on something that enables us as people to filter out the noise so we can find the signal that matters to us, more power to them. I can’t wait to see it.

Dave

“There’s really only one rule for community as far as I’m concerned, and it’s this – in order to call some gathering of people a ‘community’, it is a requirement that if you’re a member of the community, and one day you stop showing up, people will come looking for you to see where you went.”

Whatever form it takes, that’s the kind of community I want. How about YOU?

Dave

Photo by Jeff Kubina via Flickr & CC

Dave

Ahh…filter=signal

Munge Twitter Pipe

Gday UnclePaul.

Stickyness of connection only works if you don’t kill the signal (feed).

Dave

From Park Paradigm, via JP

Just wish I had a clearer view…persevere, it’s worth it.

Edglings – some previous thoughts about life on the edge

Dave

Recently he developed another of his own guides to direct his twitter use and is only going to follow twitter conversations of people who follow his own. A fair idea I reckon. He calls it his ‘Pink Floyd Policy‘.

I love Pink Floyd. As it turns out, Kent has hit on a theme song I’ve aquired since my accident, albeit in a different context. But I digress.

Twitter. I’m not signing up for twitter – yet. You may’ve seen I wrote that I’m watching my friends twitter away, including Kent, and that it’s a shame that I cannot see what one of my real, not-twitter friends is saying simply because according to twitter I’m not her friend!

So, in a sense, I’ve created my own twitter policy and it revolves around not fragmenting my life any further than it already is. You could call in my ‘Brain Damage‘ policy. I’d rather think of it as ‘Breathe‘.

You see, I realised something today. It became clear when typing in google chat to one of my very good real-life friends who, although living nearby, we can’t seem to syncronise calendars to meet up. She made the comment something about having no life yet still can’t get to see me. I returned that my time is so fragmented currently that my life’s not a life. I recorded in my google notebook :

fragmentation=existence

signal=life

So, for now, I’m resolved not to sign up for twitter, even though I see it has potential – even as a ‘signal filter’ too. But let it be known, I’m the one making the policy and hereby reserve the right to re-make it later. But this is not easy for me, being the alpha-geek I am. This is no easy line in the sand I’m drawing.

So Kent, here’s my Nod. I can hear you. If you can’t hear what I’m saying, it’s because my lips are not moving. I am still home. We all don’t have to live in the same home (silo) to communicate effectively.

Peace

Dave

The older I get, the more I see life as the exception rather than the rule. Those gone outnumber those here, all of whom will live one speck of time in an unimaginable abundance of it — on a sphere so small and remote from others like it that nothing in our bodily experience gives us a scale to measure the exceptional grace of mere existence.

Thanks Doc

Connections happen when stories overlap.

Need to build a way to overlap the geek_dots in the geek_stories.

Dave (Uncle)

PS: I wanted to leave this as a comment on this post on on10.net but do I really gotta sign up for yet another account on another silo?

Because I’m not watching them as a twitter user they don’t know.

Be afraid.

Dave

PS: Does this mean I have no recognition or anything useful to say?

PPS: Because I’m not a twitter user and one of my friends has a closed list, does this mean twitter is a silo or maybe a ‘clique’?

[via postsecret]

Bruce Sterling @ IDEA 2006

* architectures of participation
* mass dis-intermediated production
* participative information architecture
* If you cut up the present, the future bleeds through. (William Burroughs)
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000698.php

Bruce Sterling @ SXSW 2007

socially motivated commons based peer production
* granular
* modular
* integratable

* self-selectable
* in/out mechanism – membrane of differentiation
* communication
* trust construction
http://audio.sxsw.com/podcast/interactive/panel/2007/SXSW.INT.20070313.BruceSterling.mp3

Right on!

(No Signal)

Photo by Whistling in the Dark

I just got back from seeing the film Stranger Than Fiction. I state upfront I’m not a Will Ferrell fan and have come to expect shallow, overstated slapstick which quite frankly leaves me feeling empty.

But this movie is different. It is a brilliantly written story that pulls you into its spell as it weaves its way on Ferrell’s character and the others that are destined to intersect his existence.

And it’s just these intersections where the film shines..no glows..shines is too shallow…with life being found in the overlaping lives of the people he comes across.

It’s in this overlap and in these interstices of the ‘mesh‘ of our existence with others where life really takes place. It’s where the signal will be found.

(Signal)

Photo by Ben McLeod

It leaves me asking the question…

If the signal is in the overlap and these overlaps are often the result of serendipitous collisions of the network effect, how can we deliberately make more collisions?

But before you answer that…take a break and go out and see the movie. You just may bump into someone!

But it takes time to share. And right now I don’t have time to share. So I’m making time to share a little bit, show the overlap and the connections from that.

Mike, my mate, brother in munge and podcast co-host is in Sydney at the Unlimited Potential conference where Hugo is who is also a mate and was the first guest on said podcast. Hugo leant me a Tablet to review after hooking up with him on a podcast on TPN, a hookup which Mike is going to play the audio of upconf2007. I see Mike is thinking of a UMPC which reminds me. Hugo, isn’t it time a UMPC got a Lifekludger going-over? Meanwhile Beth Worrall, a friend of Mikes, appeared on her first podcast and gives the shoutout to Mike and I.

Remember…connections happen when stories overlap!
Stories need to be shared for the overlap to occur.
Share or die!

Dave

For those not in the know, I had what the Doctor termed an ‘emotional breakdown’ and what I termed ‘falling apart’ about 6 weeks ago. I ended up in hospital for chest pain and stayed there a few days while I was physically checked out. That was all cleared and my body was sent home. This was just a manifestastion of stress really and my body’s way of telling me I had to slow down fast!

The Doc ordered no work for a couple weeks which turned into four. It didn’t bother me, I had lost all interest anyway…in just about everything…and just about overnight.

I cleared decks by re-routing emails and getting other associates to keep eye on the servers at work. And set about doing nothing. This isn’t usually something I’m used to..or like. But this time…well I just couldn’t care any longer.

I ended up spending my days with my head switched off in Second Life (SL). And it was my answer in this period, my therapy. I needed something that didn’t take any analytical brain power and yet could occupy me enough just to relax. I found a whole new side of me, a side that had been buried under that rock I talked of for 25 years. I knew from outset that the word ‘expression’ was a key, but didn’t know what that meant. SL gave me a new way of expression and of freedom from the constraints that come with my disability and those constraints I’d built myself as a way of either escape or coping.

Slowly over time as my body healed and my brain slowed down, I was able to have time for feeling to return, for issues to bubble up and stare at in the face and realisation to surface.

It’s all a bit freaky, hippy and messy – but needed…and good. Not that it feels it at the time…or even now.

So, how am I now? Well, John Mellencamp puts it best:

Between a laugh and a tear
Smile in the mirror as you walk by
Between a laugh and a tear
And thats as good as it can get for us
And there aint no reason to stop tryin

Typing isn’t the easiest thing for me and one reason I have the podcast is as a way of expression that doesn’t take so much time and physical effort. So I’m going to talk a bit more from time to time on there about it.

So now, things are going to have to change – if nothing changes nothing changes and we end up getting the same results we always do. Cutting back on work as much as my finances will allow will be part of it. Changing the way I do things and finding new things to do that are diferent things will also be a part. Maybe even finding some work that doesn’t require so much of me, or at least so much of the same thing, so I can pay the mortgage yet live, might be a part of it.

All part of what Jackson Browne sings as being “caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender“.

Dave

This time it’s over an email he sent to Nathan Torkington of O’reilly, documented in a post titled “Business as Morality”.

Doc Searls: Business as Morality

In it, Doc outlines three moralities, however it’s the last one that caught my attention.

Morality of generosity. We give. We are open. We love without expectation of reward, or even accounting. (In fact, when you bring in accounting, you compromise it.) Think about how we give to our spouses, our children, without strings. It pays off, too.

(emphasis mine)
This morality of generosity is characterised by giving. We see it in technology in the ‘sharing’ of open APIs in the web environment today. But Doc is right when he points to the family relationship as a model of this morality. There is no other place that requires such intense, ongoing, openness. Here we see the meaning having its impetus from something much deeper than technology. As Linda Stone’s address at last years Supernova conference hinted, the shape of technology is more fashioned by and for culture than it is an incidental happening of experimentation.

Linda Stone: Supernova 2005: Attention

In short, we create and form what we crave. The tools we use are what’s at hand and what we can make with what’s at hand. But the driver is people, not the technology in and of itself.

So, what do we crave now? Linda outlines some of it in her address:

So now we’re overwhelmed, under fulfilled, seeking meaningful connections.

Now we long for a quality of life that comes in meaningful connections to friends, colleagues, family that we experience with full-focus attention on relationships, etc.

The next aphrodisiac is committed full-attention focus. In this new area, experiencing this engaged attention is to feel alive.

I happen to believe that full-attention focus has always been an aphrodisiac. Just look at kids and what they do for attention. It might just be that at this point in time we’re beginning to realise it. And the technologies of the Net are forming to make it possible.

Too much openness at once?

I wonder are virtual worlds becoming more popular because the internet world is becoming more like the real world – or at least how we sense the real world should be – and for many people it leaves them feeling too vulnerable and seeking for a place to be anonymous again. Forming virtual, virtual realities, where relationships can be ‘managed’ and ‘safer’.

Doc maps his three moralities to a market model with relationships as the foundation.

But relationship is what actually makes markets. I’m talking about real markets here: places where we do business and make culture.

You have to be generous in relationships.
I learned this from a Nigerian theologian named Sayo Ajiboye, by the way. Way back here.

Way back there, Doc quotes Sayo speaking about markets, life and meaning.

“Aiye Loja…” meaning “All of life is a market…”

Speaking about life as a market makes relationship the currency and a person’s life the bank. Bank isn’t such a good metaphor in this instance though as Banks aren’t exactly known for their giving, let alone giving generously. Maybe source is a better term, or essence.

Relationship is the essence of existence.

I’ve held that to be true for many years. Relationship is what our lives are about. If relationships work, life works. That’s why markets are miracles. They’re made up of the very substance that makes life work.

Ever since becoming aware of this phenomenon known as blogging and its related out workings in people’s lives, I’ve had a quote at the forefront of my thinking. Amazingly, it stems from a song written back at the time Doc was crossing paths with Sayo Ajiboye, 2001, but wasn’t credited as quoted until a couple years later.

“What I see happening in the face of all this darkness is something new in human spirituality, openness, some sense of our common destiny. We’ve got to keep nudging ourselves in the direction of good and respect for each other.” (Bruce Cockburn – Open)

As I touched on in my previous posts titled You can’t stop the signal and Audio of Linda Stone’s Supernova Address

Question left to discover is what will be the “adaptive behaviour” that will emerge to fulfil our desire of “being connected”? Will it be, as I touched on in my previous post, this concept of “openness”?

Is openness more than the outworking of a technological concept we are seeing in the form of web apps that “share”?

Is openness a cultures’ adaptive behaviour to enable what in essence we crave? relationship?

[tags]Nathan+Torkington, doc+searls, markets, signal, linda+stone, openness, Generous+Web[/tags]