The Longest Now

Sunday was for physical chains being rearranged and reassembled.  Rather gorey.  Suddenly, I feel twenty pounds heavier… but light on my feet.

Weights, balances, monitors; maint. records gleaned from usage, readouts of maint. tools; Inventory tracking, storage (hooks for transport), unification with continuous for-sale listings, shared libraries, more.

I need a private place to collate and track metrics, that will get used more often than my once-a-day lab notebook (which I don’t dare take out of the lab).  Time to do it in a googlish fashion.  And don’t forget the chains of peaceful ritual. (where have you gone??)

Tired of expressing yourself outright? Try virtual familiars  (program your own AIBO, develop agents and chatbots with Turing-test promise)  or trained animal familiars (parrots, dogs, chimpanzees, dolphins, students).  Somewhere these channels merge with the other end of the spectrum — quotations, writing, design/art, videos, speeches, followers.

Or just look at what the media lab is getting up to these days.

Off to commune with moonlit visionaries… thoughts on the death of legendary truths when their visionary concentrates on them too hard (Matrix –> Reloaded; Dune –> Messiah) to come later.

For those seeking beauty, here is a strategic bone, care of Dan Benjamin.

It’s becoming ever easier to refine one’s thoughts publicly, letting other benefit from and comment on initial great ideas, before taking the plunge of submitting a book manuscript to editors (cf. my developing essay on cloning communication channels).

See, for instance, Seth G‘s 99 Cows (lovely companion to his new book, released on its publication date), Halley S’s Alpha Male lessons, Wil W’s new life as an author.

Then there are the instructive notes from people who learned to write, then came to master the art of sending messages to everyone — via printer and by-hand mass mailing, then via mail, over the web; is it the same? Do people who have made one leap eventually go further and use the effort they put into their biyearly family mailing to generate a beautiful corner of the web for others? some people, of course, come to put everything that might interest others on their personal site…

What lessons are to be learned here?  Certainly none of the people above regretted being open with their thoughts and writing before committing them to a publication deal, nor had to retract old writing.  How and when does publishing profusely online hurt (potential) authors?

How can one measure the efficacy of a posting framework?

Ease of expressing [targeted] thoughts to one’s [t.] audience (different frameworks targeting different clusters of thought-form and audience).  Suitability of learning curve to the stamina of the [t.] userbase.  More crudely yet measurably, user retention.

What metrics was Radio designed to fill? Is there really and outlining editor hidden away in here somewhere?

Ease of use by non-geeks; speed of use via macros; cloneability of design effort.  Yes!  Not in Manila hoewever.  More details on this next week (apparently it has been covered at a previous evening’s discussion).

What is easier, and what harder, for pro writers newly introduced to these tools?

Getting used to the limitations and continuity of the format…

All this and more… updates from tonight’s discussion. [add your own question, if I didn’t get to it, below.]

Some immature thoughts about the novelty of the present, particularly regarding ‘social’ technology; California state’s infamous 3FLD092 and a small book it had just printed for meg; and another quick toolchain update.

Presence, Sociability, Movable Print …

Enjoy the most uplifting animation ever…  pure golden bliss.  Be sure to leave your sound on.  (thanks, Fink!)

Relax. …

There’s broadcast publishing that replaces standard books — posting hypertext instead of printing hard copies.  Or you can layout a full book and broadcast the resulting .pdf, encouraging people to print their own. 

Broadcast Publishing …

Over at NPR, if you’re browsing with Win/IE, they have a phenomenal This American Life clip about the real life of Wonder Woman (Damn the narrator for his urbane amusement!). If you have some other setup, it’s 20:00 into the full recording.  Alas, audioslicing isn’t standardized yet…

This SuperAmerican Life …

I just created a new topic about the arenas we use for discussion, analysis, expression.  Where we learn and communicate has an interesting effect on what we exchange and what manner of things we can learn and communicate about.  Check it out.

In the Arena …

Back by popular demand… my favorite photograph. 

A few sensitive souls (and Dave Winer) don’t like my caption, imagining it deserves better.  Help me out!  Send me your favorite caption, or comment on the picture; whosoever sends the most thrills of glee through my stoic roommate gets captioning rights and lauded to the skies, the Four Winds beseeched to carry said praise to the corners of the earth.

Caption Contest   …

…on my way home, I thought of how often conversations run the same way — people pairing off with others who feel strongly [whether in agreement or not] about their favorite topics, leaving the rest to their own tracks. 

How can any coordinated progress be made this way?  Yet we work this way all the time.  Now to find the exceptions where everyone pushes forward together, and the extremes where progress in each direction is constantly being torn down by progress in others…

And, noting how much the evening was directed by flamboyance, though people laughed at and not with its purveyor, I remembered not to underestimate the power of the peacock.

“peacock power 2”

There are all kinds of lessons to be learned by observing the oldest set of daily movable type users — the newspaper publishers, modern-day journalists, reacting to the closeness of this modern world with gray-haired media. I was given a copy of the Philadelphia Independent today, and it drips with the look, scent, feel of homegrown newspaper. What a fabulous beast! No technological barrier has keeps there from being such a paper in every major city. Some snippets from that later. For the moment, I just want to note that the ‘echo‘ that many people note in TV media, and online — the ease of reflecting what has already been written –goes back to that ancient but fleet-footed medium, word of mouth. Here’s a dramatic instance of it at the Gray Lady. Now just imagine how many people like Jayson Blair, but just a few degrees saner, make up our media, our government, our non-profit orgs…

Old-school Movable Type …

Sign up as a member of the Logweb, and you can submit your own posts, comment without retyping your personal info, request email notifications when there is activity on your favorite threads, and track what you’ve written (so the story goes). This is where the interaction between my editing and yours gets a bit hairy, and I could use some HELP testing it out. Just click on the title of this news item to sign up… (*why* didn’t I just take the *blue* pill?)

Then send me a note asking for editing privileges; I’m happy to have anyone at all edit content here.  Let’s see what we can create!

JOIN UP: Become a Publisher of One …

As to whether and how the blog infatuation is different from technology crushes of earlier decades, see the fight breaking out at the main blhe blog, between optimists like Dave Winer (who has $1000 riding on the success of blog-journalism) and John Palfrey who think we have a good chance of seeing the NH primary influenced by local blogs, and cynics like Seth Finkelstein and MSNBC’s Jon Bonne who have seen these promises of pending revolution so many times before it pains them.

Then go look in the mirror and tell me how the productivity tools you use every day fundamentally change your output.  I don’t mean that cynically — when PZ and Gil Pratt tell me that emacs has doubled their output over the course of their lives, I believe them, and expect it’s an understatement — just look in the mirror first and make sure you believe what you are about to say.

Blog-fad bust-up at BLHE Central …

There are gems and shortcuts hidden within this logweb; now if only I could figure out how to make them appear on the main page.  I hope this isn’t a feature that’s incompatible with the CSS skins…

For instance, here is an image post (if someone can tell me who took it, I’ll tag it) which never made it to the frontpage lineup: Noogie Promotion

Gems, Shortcuts, et al …

The most recent updates are up on the main page (the end of the toolchain for cloning one source of information across many channels)

A few new thoughts, and links to Blosxom and Archive.  Check it out (just follow the topic link, or this smaller one).

Toolchain updates …