There is no substitute for fire
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{ Tag archives }
collective
Alive to the extent [2]
Paraphrased for a new century and an old industry:
“To seek the timeless way we first must know the quality without a number. There is a central quality which is the rooted criterion of life and the spirit of man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be numbered.”
2007-12-06
Facebook applications I want [2]
Here are three quick rambly sketches of Facebook applications I want — and yes, I’m working on Facebook stuff, but these are applications I want to use, not make.
(1) A flyer tool for group / event promotion. Ideal workflow: point it to a group, get a full-page lo-fi flyer suitable for printing and posting at the cafe or bulletin board. This flyer wouldn’t need to contain much more than a giant Facebook F, the group’s name and picture, some community_indicators — such as number of members, unattributed snippets from wall postings or discussion boards, etc. — and a cheesy “you’re invited!” message. Lots of interesting groups for cafes, venues, and locations, and a flyer is a cheap way to link Facebook to meatspace.
(2) A pageoftext.com style micro wiki application. Individuals and groups already have a strong set of communication tools: posting walls, discussion boards, messaging, and so forth. But for certain kinds of conversations, a wiki scratchpad would be awesome. The generic use case is a way to dodge the Facebook group officer control tower stuff: only officers can make certain kinds of changes to the group, but it’s a hassle — and a risk(?) — to make everybody an officer.
(3) Hunt the Wumpus. With a tileset like this, and anybody who shows up on your profile gets to take a turn (so that the Wumpus never goes unfed).
2007-07-17
Best
The best networks are the ones that generate a new way of thinking about some part of the world. This way, the network and software and people stick with you, even when you’re not near them. There’s a sense of availability: that the new way of seeing, or measuring, has some nontrivial half-life — that it persists — once you close the laptop and stand up and start walking.
There are plenty of networks that change the way you work. When you find one, you grow into it over time, and it grows to fit you, like a glove.
But there are fewer networks that change the way you are. A network like this is life-changing in some small way. Maybe it gives you a way to relate to people you wouldn’t otherwise notice. Maybe it gives you a new measurement, so you can go out into the world and try to change it. Maybe it teaches you to slow down, or to speed up, or to remember, or to forget. When you find one of these things, celebrate it. You’re lucky.
2007-06-21
Ann Arbor microcoworking calendaring [2]
Text of an announcement I tried and failed to send to the a2b3-coworking mailing list:
Introducing ‘a2b3-microworking’ a public calendar over on Google Calendar.
HTML: http://tinyurl.com/37neb2
ICAL: http://tinyurl.com/3a4m8d
RSS: http://tinyurl.com/377xnkSyndicated at http://a2pla.net/a2b3/ and etc.
What is microcoworking? http://wordie.org/words/microcoworking
Why not Yahoo calendar? because it’s more stingy with feeds and I bet more of us use Google Calendar anyways. The only grossness is that one of the people who are using it already will have to ’share’ calendar posting access with you.
I’ll conclude with the description I wrote for the google calendar:
“Microcoworking calendar for folks in and around Ann Arbor. If you have work to do, but not a place to work, you are invited to join us whenever and wherever there is something on the calendar. You may also add time to the calendar, just make sure to be there. Send a note to brian@joechip.net to get magic calendar posting privileges (sorry for the hassle).”
If any of you putative microcoworkers have ideas for how I can make this work better for you, let me know.
2007-05-04
Towers open fire
From Those crazy “cut-ups” Burroughs, Gysin, and Balch restored to their rightful place in avant-garde film history in Bright Lights:
Towers Open Fire is a collage of the main themes and situations or “routines” that appear in Burroughs cut-up novels of the period. The soundtrack accompaniment is a mixture of recordings made by Burroughs on a cheap Grundig tape recorder and resembles many of the cut-up tape experiments achieved in collaboration with Ian Somerville. The rest was done in a studio, with some Arab music used. The film depicts society as crumbling in the form of a stock exchange crash, shots of which were purchased from Pathé news. Members of “a board” are dematerialized, and Burroughs plays an omnipresent role in the film (not least as the victim of an “orgasm attack” in which he leaps through a window and shoots family photos with a ping-pong gun).
2007-03-07
Q1/Q2 2007 upcoming events
A few upcoming events of interest (rust belt edition). For each: micro summary, cost, format, dates, location, and notes.
NEXUS for Change
→ process arts • $299 • ??? / meta / open space
→ March 22–23, 2007; Bowling Green, OH
NEXUS for Change (@upcoming.org) is a gathering to “advance participative change methods.” Some of the usual suspects will be there, seems like an opportunity to learn what (wiki-weblog-web) tools we need to enable the work folks want to do.
(He)Arts Coming Together
→ Omidyar.net member gathering • $40+ • openspace
→ April 13–15, 2007; Canton, OH
Invitation; I’m not sure what’s going on with o-net at this point, but there are some people I’d like to catch up with and interesting organizations converging here. The ptf (peace tile factor) looks pretty huge.
RoCoCo 2007
→ Supermassive sprawling barcamp-esque • free • openspace
→ May 18-20, 2007; Montréal, QC
Wiki; your invitation. fr:”Rencontres sur la Collaboration, la Créativité et l’Autogestion.” en:”Meetings on Collaboration, Creativity and SelfManagment.” Really looking forwards to this one.
Conference on Communities and Technologies
→ Send your papers • $100–$400 • academic conference
→ June 28–30 2007; Michigan State University
C&T (@upcoming.org) looks great, but I don’t think I’ll have the energy for an academic conference (ever again). Maybe a day trip, or just hear about it at a subsequent a2b3.
