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participatory culture

i suddenly feel better about my time spent contributing to wikipedia, after watching this excellent talk by clay shirky at the recent web 2.0 conference. in it he theorizes that participation is the post-television peace dividend. highly recommend:

social network wars

wow, current tv nails it. they parody the different social networking sites and especially ape the personas of the particular sites:

hilarious. i think their friendster was more of a xanga really. thanks to laughingsquid for pointing this out.

beach creatures

i saw a clip of Theo Jansen’s beach creatures before but in his ted talk he demonstrates both how they’re getting more sophisticated and also how he views them as a form of life.

is life merely the organized movement of a structure? or is that just how it all started and then it evolved somehow into something more than that? what a central question. in his recent evolution the beach creatures can now detect when they enter the water and count steps from the water’s edge. we must have begun as well in such humble first steps. perhaps these beautiful creatures are alive?

perhaps life is already present in any form of structural discipline and integrity. i think alan watts thought so.

meditation in prison

just saw this trailer for another documentary about meditation programs in prison, but this one occurring in the bible belt. The film is titled The Dhamma Brothers:

four more clips from the film are on the film’s web site.

the famous steve keynote

i’ve read the transcript but i’m appreciating more a video of steve’s keynote at stanford; about 15 minutes long; like a manifesto. he sums up with a mantra “stay hungry, stay foolish.”

are things really getting worse?

some things definitely are worse now than they were years ago, but as a whole are things worse overall? this is a question my friends often casually discuss and occasionally debate.

i think some things appear worse than they are, because of increased news reporting. the world is smaller. it seems more chaotic. but that may partially be a horizon effect. we can see more at once now. that may mask a qualitative sense of how things really are trending.

as an example of how things might be getting better, read about the undelivered arms shipment to zimbabwe , for example. you could argue that neighboring countries just allied to prevent zimbabwe from re-arming themselves, but the issue has an international eye because of political unrest there and a global desire for stability. regional leaders are speaking out about the unrest in zimbabwe and the inability for the government there to release election results. not only that, but the dock worker unions in south africa refused to unload the 77 tons of munitions.

i have no specific evidence nor informed opinion, but doesn’t it seem that say just a hundred years ago that kind of scrutiny, conversation, and effort to reduce violence just would not have happened? in particular, the part small groups were playing outside of government decision making - like the labor unions - seems notable to me. i get the impression that the greater awareness both of what’s going on and the interdependence and effect of unrest is making a real difference for the better. anyone else have some evidence to that effect? or counter claims?

UPDATE: the ship was sent home to China.

death penalty continues

i’m disappointed that the supreme court recently ruled to allow death penalty cases to continue, but i guess the justices collectively do not agree with me that it is hypocritical for the state to kill citizens in the name of justice. one aspect of the finding though that was quite interesting is to read of justice stevens reversal over the last thirty years on his position and what he wrote about it. though he voted to allow the death penalty to continue because of legal precedent in his statements he came out vehemently opposed to the death penalty. that was a reversal of his early judgements in the 1970’s.

”State-sanctioned killing,“ justice stevens said, was ”becoming more and more anachronistic“. He added that the death penalty was, ”the product of habit and inattention rather than an acceptable deliberative process“.

fair use doctrine in american law

slowly, over some time, i’ve been learning about fair use and the history of copyright law. this is especially interesting in recent time because of digital media, remixing, and projects like the wikipedia with their non-reserved copyrights.

so it’s quite interesting to hear about the current harry potter case in new york. the wall street journal has been following the case, which rapped up arguments yesterday, and blogging about it. we should hear soon whether in that case re-organizing and re-packaging rowling’s work in an encyclopedic fashion will be allowed under fair use.

personally, i think they should be allowed to publish. the suit now is merely about it’s publication in book form, when they were making money off it previously in web site ad form it was not contested. but also because it’s re-organization alone is useful. the structure of a work imparts quite a different usage and value alone. and the only argument that rowlings would be negatively impacted financially is if she published a competing encyclopedia, which she has not. it’s more likely that supplemental material like this would only support and increase sales of her books.

i’m sure there are many misunderstandings about copyright and i have only the most amateur understanding. if you’d like to learn more i recommend perusing the stanford university fair use web site as well as the wikipedia article on the topic.

i’ve included the stanford site summary of fair use (which is reprint of nolo press material) below the fold, as an example of fair use.

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the growth of user research

a grad student on an ethnography email list i’m following just asked this question:

The practice of using ethnographic methods in business has been around for decades. However, the use of this type of researcher has increased greatly over the past 20 years. Many of the members of this list have been part of that history. In your opinion, based on what you have seen or experienced directly, what have been the events/people which/who have propelled the field forward or have had far-reaching impacts? Alternatively, what do you see as being important in the history of this work?

I’m sure there are people and specific events that have had far-reaching impacts, but really what I’ve noticed is a slow march toward inclusion and incorporation into the development process.

I’m not sure what it’s like at most large companies, but based on my few years working with smaller companies, i have some opinion as to how the value of research generally has increased. most of this relates to user research for design and user testing, as opposed to a roll more strictly defined as ethnography, because of the size of my clients. but perhaps my view is also generally useful. this is what i’ve seen (continued below the fold).

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