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Monday, May 7, 2007
Viva la something 
| | Eric Norlin: identity's history shows us that things will most likely be messy |
Genesis
You are here:
Royal view
| | The vast Diamond Princess is moored outside the harbor here in Santa Barbara, dwarfing the town. Click the Bridge Cam link to see the view back toward town. |
Wheres on Earth
| | I consider it almost criminal that airlines tell you to close your window shades so bored passengers with crap headphones can watch a censored movie on a tiny screen — when the scenes outside the window are ones many of our ancestors would have given limbs for a chance to see. Of course the view isn't always fine. Much of the time the sky is undercast with clouds or the view is of blank ocean or featureless plains. But sometimes the view is like drinking with one's eyes from an informational firehose. Geography, culture, geology, history and commerce slide underneath the plane, often so fast that there's no chance to savor them. |
| | Ah, but now we have digital photography and the likes of Google Earth, Flickr and Tabblo. What a miraculous difference these things make. |
| | So the kid and I shot a crapload of photos out the right and left sides of our LAX-bound United 777 last Wednesday. We've been studying these, with the help of many other contributors of notes and perspective at Flickr, and learning a crapload of facts about the places we shot: England, Scotland and Greenland ... so far. Several of the photos are now what you see when you look those places up on Wikipedia: Boreray, Soleway Bay and Berneray are three of them. One may end up on a geology final tomorrow. Here's one I've been wanting to get for years: of Dunoon, where my sister was stationed at Holy Loch, when it was a U.S. Naval base. |
| | Best are the notes and comments others have put up on these, and the connections being made with varioius individuals and communities that care about the subjects I shot. |
| | Hate to say it beats the hell out of the usual tech grind, but hey: it does. |
Serving history
No, me either
Unconferences make BusinessWeek
| | Unconferences turn the plodding, predictable business gathering inside out. They're a hybrid of a teach-in and a jam session, with a little show-and-tell mixed in, and they are attracting hundreds in cities like Austin, Tex., Bangalore, San Francisco, Sydney, and Tokyo. Unlike traditional, $1,000-a-head and up conferences, they're totally unstructured‹the agenda isn't determined until the opening day of the event. Everyone who shows up is a potential speaker, and those who don't speak contribute by posting photos, blog entries, podcasts, and video clips of the proceedings. Neckties and heels are noticeably absent. And attendance is almost always inexpensive or free. |
| | Also, stuff actually moves forward and gets done. More: |
| | Dave Winer, a blogger and software developer who organized an early unconference at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in 2003, believes one factor spurring the growth of unconferences is their ability to tap the smarts of the people who usually sit mute in the audience. Once someone has attended an unconference, Winer has written, "you're spoiled. I've heard it said many times by people with unconference experience that they can never sit in a dark room with their hands folded, waiting for the Q&A period, listening to a PowerPoint presenter drone on and on." |
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