Open Source Democracy

Some clippings and thoughts based on a "Demos" report entitled "Open Source Democracy - How online communication is changing offline politics" by Douglas Rushkoff

"a growing camp of religious historians are concluding that early religions were understood much more metaphorically than we understand religion today"
Interesting point - that stories were more stories than "rules" or strong beliefs. Which goes to show how many problems we face when looking at the far past - being unable to actually go inside peoples heads? Or for that matter, simply when writing about someone other than ourselves? The simple adage of "when you assume you make an ass out of u and me" ... trying to understand how we understand is no simple feat. So how would you describe our current relation to religion - based on the recent coverage of the Pope (both the death of the late JP and the "divine selection" of the new Benedict)? Do we believe that a old polish man, with a variety of medical issues, is a direct line for contributing the will of the one true God? And that this includes having millions die from aids in Africa because condoms are a sin? Right...

Source for more? - Karen Armstrong, A History of God(London:Vintage, 1999).

[Geek Fu Action Grip: Your Podcast Sucks, Let Me Do It - Mur Lafferty ] about marketing, and how a lot of messages say "this it what you're doing wrong - pay me to fix it" Great wry wit.

"Channel surfing and similar behaviour became equated with a very real but variously diagnosed childhood illness called Attention Deficit Disorder."
I'm not to sure if I should get started on this... but the fact that we find it completely acceptable to drug children because they don't want to sit still inside in a stuffy room ... ooh boy. "Prozac Nation" and "Requiem for a Dream" anyone? What does it mean to by normal? How much or little do we except to handle on our own? Not saying that life for a lot of people has greatly improved due to medical advancements - be it lithium or antibiotics - but there should be a little more thought going into the consequences and the values that lie as the foundation of drugging anyone who fails to comply 100%.

One of the most widespread realisations accompanying the current renaissance is that a lot of what has been taken for granted as hardware is , in fact , software capable of being programmed"
We are the choice we make - even when we simply let someone else make them for us, be it intentionally or with out our (or their!) knowing about it. The shows on TV? The tax levels? The representation each county or parish is given? The way we write and pronounce words?
(Sidebar: The Munch debacle here in Norway recently - no, not the paintings being stolen, but how his name should be pronounced; his heir threatened the national broadcaster NRK with withholding displaying rights unless they tightened up the policies - and said Munch rather than Monk (a sharp U rather than more of a o-sound))
Choice is all about applying reason or chance to a set of rules. But who makes the rules - and for how long? Compare flipping a coin to playing football - Calvin&Hobbes style. One straight forward and fixed, the other complex and ever-changing. But both governed by their set of rules. Defined and complied with during the "game". Society works the same way. "Don't cross when the light is red" - but we do anyway - at least when there isn't a car in sight - or when other people are already crossing.

We begin to see how salvation has been traded in for retirement as the new ultimate goal for which Westerners suspend their lives and their ethics
Retirement as the new "heaven on earth"? Salvation in the age of instant gratification? Looking at the ads from a lot of financial companies, I have no doubt about it - "When do you want to quit working? How much can you save a month? Click here to see your allowance" With the default age at 60 - a full 7 years under the current norm for retirement, and with the "pension commission" recommending raising the age to 70 and then some for those who do mostly mental work (yes - that's all of you out there sitting at a desk with a compute). What is the good life? When do we have the time to enjoy it? Is it raising kids - or after we have gotten the house to ourselves again? Is it when we get a breakthrough at work - creating a new product, making jobs for other people - or when we close the door on work, shut of the cell and take a vacation?

[filling my head with the beats of: Tempo of the Down: Session 02 - Various Artists ] nice riffs, 'round 20 minutes in

...and the sun was really hot today, summer is definitely coming on strong

Flash-y?

Adobe and Macromedia: "the primary motivation for the two companies' joining is to continue to expand and grow our business into new markets.'" - this will surely be a merger to watch... Photoshop and PDF meeting Flash - all things web and visual coming together (sometimes later this year, so no products for at least another year or more taking advantage of the possible cross-use)

So how will this influence the users - from photographers, to visual artist to webdevelopers? Will it be even easier to use a wide variety of visuals in Flash? Will it be easier to make pdf from flash - making documentation, or read-out-loud versions?

So many question - and far to long to wait. So, on to other issues.

[filling my head with CI-2005-04-18 - Father Roderick Vonhögen ] - live when the first smoke appeared during the conclave

fractals - over and over?

Benoît Mandelbrot : "emphasised the use of fractals as realistic and useful models of many natural phenomena" [img]
And it was 30 years ago (while at Yale) that he made up the word (fractals).

"Understanding does not mean approval" - Clancy had it in his latest novel, attributing it to Spock from Star Trek. Interesting comment - and somthing that is often ignored in our media-spotlight day... the only option is to condem - if you don't then you support it (be it militant islam, the war in Iraq, ...). Why is it so hard to actually take things at "face value"? Why do we have to demonize anything that we disagree with? And how does that reflect on our attention problems - and our willingness to solve them?

(and Nemi is in Wikipedia!!! Wohooo!)

Working late - drifting off

STARWARS EPISODE III: "Planeten er blitt en glemt planet, den har forsvunnet fra stjernekart og har lite intelligent liv og har nesten alltid regnvær" - a short extract from the presentation of Dagoda, on the local preview site for the final (???) Star Wars movie. Ticket go on sale on the second of May, with the first screening at 00.03 on the 19th. A short month to go - actually looking forward to seeing it.

Oh well, it's getting late and time towrap up the slides and excel stuff for tomorrows presentation.

May the force be with us...

(oh yes - vous papus... the catholics have a new Pope, german this time 'round)

is this me?

"They dislike to see mistakes repeated, and have no patience with inefficiency. They may become quite harsh when their patience is tried in these respects, because they are not naturally tuned in to people's feelings, and more than likely don't believe that they should tailor their judgments in consideration for people's feelings."
- ENTJ

got the link from Wil Wheatons blog (no, he's not that type/personality - he's INFP -almost opposite all the way, but I found my way around the site to my MBTI profile description)

books and 'casts

dragonpage - c2c #158, Richard Morgen - "Market Forces" - check their page and amazon
Dark future, 2020, dystopia, roads empty due to green-taxes - yuppies using it as dueling ground to decide who gets promotion (only ones with too much money to use cars).

Altered Carbon - last novel, optioned for movie, just extended, new screenwriter.

[filling my head with the beats of: Dragon Page C2C Show 157 - Michael & Evo ]

Firefly - and the upcoming Serenity movie... dvd for us?

[filling my head with: CI-2005-04-05 - Father Roderick Vonhögen ]

April 5th - his birthday, 'casting from the "aftemath" of the Popes passing. This one from his visit to St Pete, getting up in the middle of the night, bike through almost empty Rome, stand in line and pay his respect. Rather special experience. Sort of feels like being there, in a removed way. That makes sense...

You are not yourself
Talking about the issues that might appear if we are able to make a "digital" copy of ourselves - ie save our memories and opinions in order to either make a cybernetic copy, or to "re-insert" into a more typical clone... when are we ourselves? What makes one version better or more right than the other? Is the original right and the copy wrong?

[Robert J. Sawyer - Michael & Evo ]

Interesting - the end of march WinginIt they said that they had doubled their listeners - to 5000 - but just a few of the using the rss feed... which brings me back to the key point here: the key point is about listening in on someone talking and/or playing music (as a multitask to reading/writing/surfing/getting to work) - not about one app or one device!

And it looks like CNet has started a 'cast - "buzz out loud". Sound like a good supplement to CIO podcast (.com)
...and the sun is making a nice yellow tint to the clouds as it goes down

[ King Alfred and the battle of Edington - BBC Radio 4 ]

Talking about the time of the danes/vikings ruling most of England, and the "unlikely" King - as he was the fifth son! (BBC info)

...and the sun is shining brightly behind a soft grey cover - while the rain is hurtling down in front - wonderful springtime

Springtime

And with this small note, I would like to welcome you to the re-toned 3-3-3. A little bit over two years down the road, the blog is still flowing gently along - with posts coming on average once a week (at least that is the intention), containing a mix of buzz (new products, articles in Wired, releaese) and "ponderings" on different subjects.

Feel free to stop by every now and then and have another look.

...and the sun is so clear - i had to wear sunscreen...

[filling my head with: CI-2005-04-01-EXTRA03 - Father Roderick Vonhögen ]

'casting "live" from St Peters Square during the evening on last Friday incredibly powerful stuff. His simple voice, and in the background the prayers for the Pope. W o w.

Noir at Fathom

Fathom defines noir as: "coined by French newspapers to describe the dark, bitter moods portrayed by American filmmakers in the early 1940s"

The article (one of many freely available in a good mix of subjects) goes on to talk about the background, the mood of the time and in-depth on five films - from The Maltese Falcon (1941) to The French Connection (1971)


And on that note - we just picked up the second CSI game; Dark Motives. Slightly interactive show - good fun, but not really all that challenging... mostly about finding the right spot to click... that's why we waited until it ended up as Ubisoft Exclusive.

get dressed

can't remember exactly where I picked up the words - probably reading in the Sheldon book, but it is related to saudi dressing; the head-cover worn by some of the males;

"Men also wear a head covering called a ghoutra and bound by a cord called agal" (link)

"with a ghutra (a large square of cotton held in place by a cord coil) worn on the head" - Wikipedia

now why did those two words get written down...?!

Opinions? We really need lots of opinions

Getting a nice mix of opinion, comedy and music now on my Zen Micro - all thanks to 'casting (yes, I still refute the "pod" prefix, since I organize the files in WMP and listen to it either there or on the Zen)

Public internet
Media is one of fields of interest, both professionally and personally, so naturally I dig the 'cast of the On the Media show.
They had a good piece on the coverage of the Schiavo debacle - how the coverage hardly reflected (or commented on) the polls.

Another interesting piece almost directly related to this blog... on blogging and sources vs. trade secrets. Where is the limit? What is good faith hype-building and what constitutes damaging information (ie giving competitors the chance to make knockoffs before the original reaches the market)

Then there was the interview with Ed Schultz - talking about talk radio and a more liberal point of view.
"They gotta talk to Joe Beer Can. They gotta figure out how to talk to middle America. " (Big Ed)
"Lefties can get mean too." (Big Ed)
- since it is online maybe I should listen in one day, just need to get the timezones and such right. Always good to hear different views and agendas! 3:00PM to 6:00PM (Eastern) - would be something like gmt - 5, with CET at gmt + 1 that would be around 9-ish here? Whoo-ha 8 Kb makes for rather interesting sound quality! Stay clear if you don't like "snow".

Faith
Another interesting and definitely opinionated 'cast is the dutch priest onCatholic Insider; "father Roderick Vonhögen, catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Utrech" - who uses minidisc to record but really likes his Mac stuff (the page design is a good tribute/spoof of the iPod ads)

Short digression - way back in '98 I bought what was then a really hot and compact Mini Disc player from Sharp [img, info] on my Hong Kong visit. I used it quite a bit the first months, but basically the hassle of getting the right "mix" (or playlist) at any time more or less meant it ended up being used less and less. But now that I have most of my music already in digital format (for using on the PC rather than swapping cds all the time) - getting some of it onto the Zen is fast and easy. So now there is no real need to buy new stuff for a while since I can actually listen to all the stuff I have... at least until they sort things out and get iTunes working in Norway (at reasonable rates!) ... it is just too good and easy to browse and pick a song here and a song there. Good stuff!

One of his more relevant segments is the bit on the Da Vinci code - even if his view might be considered rather "partial" up front, since he opens up for debate rather than just shooting it down outright.
And right now with all the general media coverage of the late pope, his personal and on location mood-reports [img] is making it big time - vaulting him up to the number one spot in terms of votes (and probably downloads as well).

...and the sun stays longer by the day - especially now in "summer time" (or daylight saving)