Dissing Information
Berlin is beautiful in the snow, though we get to experience it mainly through the window. Day 1 of the “Collaborative Futures” book sprint (more about what it is in my previous post) was fascinating and intense. I feel very privileged to have met this group of talented people, all coming with strong experience and … Continue reading Collaborative Futures, Day #1
During the upcoming week I will be working in Berlin with 6 super smart people (Adam Hyde, Mike Linksvayer, Michael Mandiberg, Alan Toner, Aleksandar Erkalovic, Marta Peirano) on writing a whole book from scratch titled “Collaborative Futures”. The format for this collaborative writing was developed by Adam Hyde and the Floss Manuals community which is … Continue reading Towards the (week of) Collaborative Futures
Apparently, there’s a certain parasite in cats stool that makes us love them. What does it tell us about cats as pets? about LOLCATS memes? about free will? Radiolab, a popular-science radio show and podcast from NPR had a show about parasites. The whole episode was great, but the one segment that really blew me … Continue reading Why we take shit from cats? (and love them for it)
In the second day of Wordcamp NYC last month I was asked to repeat my Open Source Design presentation in a 5 minutes version for the whole of the conference audience. I just realized somebody uploaded a video of it to YouTube, but since it’s a bit shaky and the image quality could be better … Continue reading short+audio – my Open Source Design slides
Kevin Connor & Matthew Skomarovsky from LittleSis.org (an involuntary facebook of powerful Americans, collaboratively edited by people like you) & David Nolen and myself of ShiftSpace have teamed up and together with Eyebeam have submitted an application for the Knight News Challenge. It is a cross between what LittleSis and ShiftSpace do best, applied to … Continue reading NewsShift: watchdog journalism with a long tail [Grant application]
Questionable priorities of archeological facts on Google Maps, divisive cross-lingual links on Wikipedia… Are the ideological distortions of history on so-called balanced online services here to stay? As I was working with Laila El-Haddad on the 2009 version of You Are Not Here, we were looking for interesting locations to feature on our mediated/dislocated tour. … Continue reading A Subtle Zionist Occupation of Gaza through Google Maps
Last week Google have announced a somewhat surprising initiative, to digitize the artefacts and documents of the Iraqi National Museum. The first ring of this is great! A private American company helping with the reconstruction of the ravaged Iraqi cultural heritage and making it available to the public online. And all for free.
I do acknowledge that there’s a high level of paranoia whenever Google announces anything. And while I definitely share some of the suspicions, I do not wish to align this post with the side of the conspiracy theorists. Yet I believe it is not hard to suspect that there is more than pure altruism in play here. Google has been expressing frequent PR attempts lately to fight against the inevitable (just a matter of time) anti-trust lawsuit by aligning itself on the side of the public interest.
Still licking the wounds of its somewhat failed book deal (digitizing the world’s books for free), Google is still trying to make an attempt to dive into publishing (rather than indexing) public content on the web. It seems like Google is impatient with the world’s pace of uploading its knowledge online, every failed Google search is a net loss for Google and almost every new service it has announced lately is geared towards increasing this process.
Towards the discussion I will be leading on this subject at Wordcamp, this Saturday 11:30am I wanted to share with you this diagram I’m proposing for discussing the open source process and how might design be a part of it. What is the motivation model that have been perfected in open source coding? (especially in … Continue reading Beyond Sharing: “Open Source Design” / Wordcamp NYC
This video is taken from a public debate between Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Dr. Israel Eldad and Dr. Menachem Brinker in 1980.
In the 50:40 minute an Israeli farmer asking what should he tell the Ismaili (apparently referring to the Biblical term used in the debate by members from the right portraying the Palestinians as the arch-enemies of the Jews in Biblical Israel/Palestine friend), who works in his farm and asks him:
“This land that you’re working, I sat in just 30 years ago… In a friendly manner he says that… How can you explain the fact you are working it now? And sometimes, with my labor… You hire me and my friends, to work for you on the land that belongs to me.”
The Israeli farmer continues…
“What will I explain to that Arab, which I want to live with in peace, that I want to reach the day in which he will think of me as a friend and will not think bad thoughts about me.”
Here are some notes from the “Design By Committee” talk I am working on. I am publishing the notes and the slides here for your reference. Please let me know what you think (comment).
[slideshare id=2106687&doc=design-by-committee-pk-091001155302-phpapp02] Continue reading “Can “Design By Committee” Work?”