YouTube: “Reel Wisdom: Lessons from 40 Films in 7 Minutes”:
via Laughing Squid, via Dave Rogers
Author Archives: Karl
Nancy Scola gives the good news and bad news about participatory democracy
A good thought provoker I’d thought I’d pass along: Personal Democracy Forum: “Talk Notes: The Invention That Is American Democracy”:
I’d argue that much of what has passed for participatory democracy in these early stages of its reinvention has been obsessed with re-engineering a system — while largely ignoring the role of real-live flesh and blood people in that system. Tools like Twitter, and Facebook, and mobile, and the good old World Wide Web are potentially incredibly powerful. But they are the how of participatory democracy; they’re not the what. The hopeful side is that the what consists of exactly what I’ve talked about social media being very good at – sharing ideas and shaping our engagements with other people. Once we figure out how to apply the same new power we have over our personal lives to our political lives, that’s when I suspect we might see democracy’s real re-invention.
I think there is a challenge there to take up and that she succinctly outlines it for everyone.
“whatever we count is always an underestimate”
YouTube: “Volunteers count homeless in SEPTA concourse “:
Story at newsworks.org.
Must reading about Kensington at Philly.com
The Inquirer recently wrapped up a series about the struggles faced in Kensington and Philadelphia’s First Congressional District – the 2nd hungriest in the nation: “Hunger in the First”:
- Alfred Lubrano: “Inquirer spotlight on hunger spurs acts of generosity”
- Alfred Lubrano: “A struggle to make an honest living”
- Alfred Lubrano: “Nutritional challenges in a supermarket desert”
- Alfred Lubrano: “The Drugs Dilemma”
- Alfred Lubrano: “Scarred by violence, moved to take action”
- Alfred Lubrano: “Planting seeds of hope”
- Alfred Lubrano: “Hunger in Philadelphia: The Safety Net Is Torn”
- Alfred Lubrano: “Food that’s as poor as the family”
- Alfred Lubrano: “A Portrait of Hunger”
Following this series, no doubt brought on by the horror of the Kensington strangler, was a greater spotlight cast by the papers on the neighborhood that included a great set of independent articles:
- David Gambacorta: “No simple solution for prostitution, cops say”
- Jan Ransom & Natalie Pompilio: “In Kensington, residents united in fear”
- Daniella Wexler and Mohana Ravindranath: “Kensington neighborhood fends for itself after the snow”
- Hayden Mitman: “Beyond ‘Strangler’ panic, Kensington looks to long-term ills”
- David Gambacorta: “Kensington vigil draws a crowd in support of victims’ families”
All are worth reading.
An article that introduces us to a new news effort coming *from* Kensington deserves a special shout out because it is efforts like this that point us towards the future or news and maybe the neighborhood itself: “Philadelphia duo bring Internet attention to Kensington’s woes”. That duo is Richie Antipuna and Heather Barton and their video series can be found on Blip.tv.
I just had to round up these articles and post them to one page since the subject matter was so related. Now if there was a place to discuss these stories collectively. Reddit’s Philadelphia sub-reddit perhaps? That feels wrong. The stories need an official home someplace where people from the neighborhood and outside the neighborhood can discuss them collectively. Why do I care about that? Because when people connect over subject matter that is when ideas can take shape and action can take place.
Balancing automated and non-automated testing
Actually the following talk is on automated, manual, early cycle, and late cycle testing, and test planning, crowd sourcing, and dog-food programs, and more.
YouTube: GoogleTechTalks: “Turning Quality on its Head” Presented by James Whittaker, Engineering Director, Google Inc.
Google docs: slides
Maptivism getting easier, happening more
Combine mapping, with participation, and a subject matter that needs attention, and you can create some powerful, useful tools. Google Maps APIs and various mashup techniques made it easy for technologists to build services that pulled together these concepts, but now hosted services like Ushahidi’s CrowdMap and SeeClickFix are opening up the possibilities to more.
NYTimes: “Phone Apps Aim to Fight Harassment”
Observer: “Want to Help Dig Out Some Police Cars? Site Crowdsources Snow Cleanup in NYC”
Snowmageddon Clean-Up: New York
StreetCorner.com.au: “Police and public turn to social media & maps in the Queensland flood crisis”
EveryMap and ABC Qld Flood Crisis Map
Mercury News: “O’Brien: What Haiti tells us about the promise and limitations of digital media”
GigaOm: “How Social Networks and Mobile Tech Helped in Haiti”
CNN: “Ushahidi: How to ‘crowdmap’ a disaster”
O’Reilly Radar: Alex Howard: “The role of the Internet as a platform for collective action grows”
Related:
Queen and Heroism
slacktivist: “The terror of knowing what this world is about”:
Nothing new here — nothing novel or innovative or unusual. But worth repeating, I think. In any case, it was something I needed to repeat after firing up the computer this morning to find that the artists and the saints had conspired against me, teaming up to remind me what this world is about.
Love dares you. Mm ba ba de.
Related:
Greater Good: Philip Zimbardo: “What Makes a Hero?”
Both good reads.
So what language/skill will you be learning this year?
Rafe is going to be investing in learning JavaScript and Node.js. After some server-side JavaScript work last year with Alfresco WebScripts, I’m inclined to to continue to dig in further myself.
First up is finishing “Eloquent JavaScript”.
Related, recent reads:
Steve Yegge: “The Universal Design Pattern “
Sam Ruby: “Planetary Exploration”
JavaScript, JavaScript: “Exploring JavaScript for-in loops”
w2lessons.com: “Why You Need to Learn JavaScript”
Ever see the “Mother of all Demos”?
In 1968 Douglas C. Engelbart, along with a team of 17 researchers at Stanford, in a 90 minute taped demonstration, showed us what was then the future – which is now the present (and soon to be the past?) – hypertext, gui based interaction, online collaboration including email, and more.
Stanford has a terrific page on the demo, including video clips of it broken down by time and topic, and a single clip of the whole thing. If you’ve never seen this before, take the time, scroll to the bottom of this, and watch beginning to end. It’s not called “The Mother of all Demos” for nothing.
I’ve watched this a few times over the years and I keep coming back to it and being blown away. How far have we gone? How far have we not? There has been much added to the mix these past ten years, but it was a long way from there to here.
Related:
Metallica’s Sanitarium guitar parts broken down
Invisible Oranges analyzes the isolated guitar parts to Sanitarium – and you can listen to them to – in its post, “”Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”: Just the guitar”.