Online Video Verleih in Deutschland

heute mal eine frage über's Blog: Der Spiegel hat heute 'nen Artikel zu Shops bei denen man online DVD's leihen (sich schicken lassen) kann. Ich kenn das aus den Staaten bei NetFlix geht's bei 5$ und immer einer DVD zu Hause los. Dazu hat man refferal systeme, freundes empfehlungen, und 90'000 filme, plus 5000 direkt download. Meine frage: welches angebot in deutschland ist vergleichbar?

- Per-Post-Videothek: Amango
- Per-Post-Videothek: Amazon Onlinevideothek
- Per-Post-Videothek: Amovie
- Per-Post-Videothek: DiViDi
- Per-Post-Videothek: dvdothek
- Per-Post-Videothek: Filmtaxi
- Per-Post-Videothek: glorimedia
- Per-Post-Videothek: Glowria
- Per-Post-Videothek: inVDeo
- Per-Post-Videothek: Lovefilm
- Per-Post-Videothek: Netleih (ab 4.12.07 Video Buster)
- Per-Post-Videothek: ovideo
- Per-Post-Videothek: rent4home
- Download-Videotheken: Arcor Video on demand
- Download-Videotheken: maxdome
- Download-Videotheken: myVoD
- Download-Videotheken: one4movie
- Download-Videotheken: RTL now
- Download-Videotheken: Videoload

metaphysical murder & Stanislaw Lem's reflection on love

The last words of Stanislaw Lem's psycho-analysis-thriller Solaris:

"We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox…

... I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past."

I have the german hörbuch and the enlish text as doc&html, just contact me.

Entrepreneurship als Lebensphilosophie

Letzten Donnerstag hat mich Prof. Faltin wieder in sein Labor für Entrepreneurship eingeladen. Dort hatte ich die Chance die Aspekte meiner Dissertation, die Entrepreneurship als Weltanschauung, und den Entrepreneur als jemanden der ein "stimmiges, und spannendes Lebenskunstwerk" (Horx) herausarbeitet, zu beschreiben.

Viel Spass und gute Unterhaltung beim Video und hoffentlich die Anregung zum Tieferbohren in der Dissertation

Me entrevistaron en Educ.ar

Cuando estaba viajando en Argentina realize una reunion con Alejandro Piscitelli, y resulta que me pregunto si no pueden hacer una entrevista sobre mi tesis y mi apreciación de Second Life para el portal Educ.ar del ministerio de educacion, y voila aqui esta

Ahora han publicado la secunda parte de la entrevista en cual hablo de mi tesis.

Kurzweil's Vision for the Furture of Education

Some days ago i wrote a post about the eminent scientist, entrepreneur, and futurologist Ray Kurzweil and his vision of Singularity. Now the book has arrived and i am fascinated, still quite curious and a bit amused about his radical optimism. Enjoy these words about what the next generation of virtual worlds after Second Life will have to offer:

"Because of current bandwidth limitations and the lack of effective three-dimensional displays, the virtual environment provided today through routine Web access does not yet fully compete with 'being there', but that will change. In the early part of the second decade of this century visual-auditory virtual-reality environments will be full immersion, very high resolution, and very convincing. Most colleges will follow MIT's lead, and students will increasingly attend classes virtually. Virtual environments will provide high-quality virtual laboritories where experiments can be conducted in chemistry, nuclear physics, or any other scientific field. Students will be able to interact with a virtual Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison, or even to become a virtual Thomas Jefferson. Classes will be available for all grade levels in many languages. The devises needed to enter these high-quality, high-resolution virtual classrooms will be ubiquitous and affordable even in third world countries. Students at any age, from toddlers to adults, will be able to access the best education in the world at any time and from any place" (Kurzweil, R., 2005, The singularity is near, p. 337)

Labor fuer Entrepreneurship Video Interview

Im Mai war ich fuer ein paar Tage in Berlin, eine tatsache die Prof. Faltin nutzte um mich ueber die entwicklung meiner doktorarbeit zu befragen:

Das alte video lass ich mal im selben post:

00:03: Begrüßung und Vorstellung von Max Senges

• Wissensentrepreneurship
• Konzept der virtuellen Universität Barcelona

• 04:13: Vorstellung des Buches: The Global Virtual University
• 06:20: Wie man Internet für den Bereich e-learning richtig nutzen kann
• 09:50: Diskussion über die Vorteile beim Lernen an einer virtuellen Universität unter Ausnutzung des Internets in Bezug auf

• Zusammenarbeit
• Betreuung
• Anzahl der Professoren
• Technik
• preiswerte Massenbildung (Beispiel von amerik. Universitäten MIT, Harvard)

• 17:37: Entwicklung der virtuellen Universität Barcelona
• 18:58: Second Life
• 24:25: Virtuelle Universität als "Second Life" für ein neues Lernkonzept unter den Aspekten

• Entrepreneurial Learner
• self-directed learning
• traditionelles Schulsystem

• 33:25: Virtuelles Lernen zur Überwindung traditioneller Lernstrukturen
• 35:50: Open-Source Software für virtuelle Welten/Programmierung virtueller Welten
• 39:33: Ende

RC helicopters

just a short one, but the gadgetmania has gotten me again. I remember about a year ago i was amazed by some 30 $ remote controled aircrafts - which then turned out to be so cheaply build that my nephew and i didn't even get it to start ;-(

So this time i plan to go the DIY way and order the serious version Walkera Dragonfly. If anybody feels like recommending other helis or do-it-yourself gadgets of that type please drop me a line. There is still time as i will not order, build and equip this flying incarnation of my childhood dreams with a mini camera etc. because as you know i will be traveling for the next few months.

Team up for a better world!

On saturday i was invited to a really interesting dinner organized by Toni Mascaro (from www.emascaro.com) and meant to get some interesting people to together and see what explosive mix comes out.

Two social entrepreneurship project particularly struck me as interesting:

Teaming.info is an idea that is communicated over a website on which one can also download documents meant to help YOU implement it in your environment. The idea is very simple but its aggregated power might move mountains. The idea is to get people within an organisation to each donate one Euro and then collectively decide on what project the donation is spent. (One little extra value is created by having your organisation/company donate the money which gives you a good negotiation position to ask them to add at least what they save in tax reduction for the donaten) - but what am i trying to explain what it is - the idea is very well communicated at www.teaming.info


The other one is called Citta and i had the luck of sitting next to Eduardo Borés, who is Cittas Spanish director, and who could had to endure my curiousity all night long. Citta is a very small NGO that has built and is maintaining a hospital in one of the poorest regions in India (as well as some other public service institutions in India and Mexico). Citta is particularly interesting because it has virtually no administrative overhead and because it is run by people who have a very down to earth attitude to making change happen rather than talk about it. Respect!

They have done it again

google just doesn't stop. Every couple of months they come up with a new service that simply expands the opportunities of what can be done online. In this case i am a bit slow to find out Google Street View has already been launched in May, but that doesn't make it less impresive when you use it for the first time.

In short, they have taken fish-eye video footage of a couple of US cities and you can now switch beterrn satelite picture, normal streetmap view and a video-based virtual walk in the streets.

Check out this video explaining what is happening and then try yourself

PS: I actually learned about street view reading about a weird cyber-subculture of people who find 'funny' details that were recorded when google took the footage like "a guy taking a pee" or "sunbathing girls in park"(www.streetviewfun.com)

Kleos - human qualities, transparency and trust

[The following is an idea that i am going pregant with for some years now - today i signed up for IBM's innovation & collabroation platform ThinkPlace and to test it out i posted an outline of the following idea:]

Summary
The idea is to introduce a reputation system inside an organisation.
You all know ebay's reputation system. Well i think it would be very interestig to develop a similar system where you rate your colleagues' way of collaboration.

I guess it would be usefull to provide several categories, like diplomacy, or swiftness.

What are the objectives?
I believe this continuous way of assessing community participants is less prone to 'election cycles'. (People are always nice before the elections/assessment.)

The objective is to develop a culture of trust and transparency. I believe it is a barrier for mobbing and unfriendlyness when there is a constant reputation system.

How is it implemented?
The idea con easily be implemented in an intranet/website scenario. All you need are some web-forms and a database. A wiki with one page to portray yourself and one page with a "reputation page writen for you".

(The difficult aspect is to make it credible by having it emerge/evolve naturally and with credible champion. If the boss just has his secretary write his profile it wont fly.)

What are the benefits?
Trust and a more human work place. The kleos system allows to consider and value empathy and humaneness rather than monetary quantifiable measures when looking at a colleague/employee.

-----------------------------------------------------
Here is a longer introduction to the idea:

Barcelona: 3.10.2006

Kleos: Your virtual reputation

In the following paragraphs I present an idea that has occurred to me more than a year ago but that, given the intimidating complexity of the practical implementation, has so far left me paralyzed as to present and develop it in written form.

Rather paradoxically, it is an idea that can be proposed in a rather simple statement: Over many centuries (valuable) physical objects have been exchanged for other physical objects or (physical) services. Money as a proxy has emerged as a powerful facilitator of trade. Today almost everything can be (monetarily) priced. However there are many aspects of our life-world (respect, credibility, etc.) that defy quantification. The proposition (of this first sketch) is to interpret and use the virtual space created by the internet as a qualitative representation of the individual’s honorability and qualities. For the holistic and open phenomenon of online identity created and maintained for this purpose I suggest the greek term kleos.

Kleos was a key personal attribute in Greek society (and thus a quite prominent theme in Homer’s Odyssey). It describes the fame or reputation a warrior has build up in battle[1]. It is what the people say and believe about somebody in contrast to Time (read temea) which is the personal code of honor one is practicing for oneself. As such someone’s kleos indicates what society thinks, values or condemns about a person; which might be expanded to be a proxy for that person’s personal traits like credibility, persistence, drive, etc., all important indicators when engaging in collaborative or other inter-personal relations.

The ‘external’ and inter-subjective representation of the kleos becomes especially relevant in the context of non-presential (informational) relationships as they are more and more common in the ephemeral project based work teams of the network society.

Allow me to elaborate on the practicalities of the kleos concept. Probably the closest implementation of what I mean by kleos are the ‘user ratings/profiles’ offered e.g. by ebay. The ability to estimate the trustworthiness of a contract partner by evaluating his/her transaction history and the experiences of others allows for a sufficient understanding of that persons code of conduct to assess the risk involved in dealing with the other. However the kleos concept is not limited to these foremost and directly economic aspects. For example the assessment of someone’s foreign language capacities, his/her social attitudes, or analytic or decision making skills can be a powerful indicator increasing with the amount and quality of recommendations.

Furthermore kleos fosters the development and transparency of communities (or social networks) as proposed in my thoughts about a re-framing of nepotism (see Revisting Nepotism). Because people indicate and describe their relation to each other in a transparent, descriptive and performative fashion, social (emotional/intimate) bonds are valued but reasonably constrained.

Last but not least let me raise some of the challenges regarding kleos. The most obvious point is fraud. However considering that even though it might be rather easy to obtain a rather voluminous account of positive recommendations, it is the critical voices that will be recognized and perceived most problematic. Surely one can always revolve and start with a clean slate, but it will cost him/her considerable effort to re-build a solid (manifold supported) kleos. Thus even though one might be able to build up a (fraudulent) positive kleos rather quickly, it will be de-valued as quickly. (There are many other possible free-riding scenarios, however I believe efficient prevention methods can be devised. E.g. the case of swindler gangs who conspire to testify false kleos can be prevented by setting the system up to give more weight assessments from established long-term users)

I can very well understand that the proposed system and the degree to which the individual’s life becomes public information might intimidate some of you[2]. But after all it is your behavior and being that shapes your (online) identity[3]. You are who you are and it seems to me more attractive to be able to see what my friends and colleagues think about me.

In conclusion, kleos will represent your reputation and the relationships you have allowing the world to see who you are. In my understanding this is the virtual equivalent to the physical presence and features you have. One might use makeup or wear a fancy suit but if you want it or not your facial expressions, posture etc. will always show your ‘personality’. As for ‘fashion styles’ there are personality styles (just look at myspace and you know what I mean). I believe that kleos on a personal level fosters consistency and a positive value set and on a interpersonal level it fosters transparency which fosters honest discourse and justice

I am looking forward to comments and hopefully constructive critique.

Side-note on the difference between personal websites an kleos

On the internet more and more people are constructing identities, and one could hence argue that they are sharing their personal qualities etc. In psychology this kind of personality presentation is called impression management and even though it has value because it shows you what a person wants you to see and think about him/her, but this “self-branding” and self-expression does not have the credibility than external descriptions which is supposed to be written from a neutral point of view[4].

Literature

I began to explore whether similar approaches have been developed and proposed. Please send me any references you might know. I found the following interesting papers:

Six degrees of reputation: The use and abuse of online review and recommendation systems by Shay David and Trevor Pinch
First Monday, volume 11, number 3 (March 2006),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_3/david/index.html

Manifesto for the Reputation Society by Hassan Masum and Yi–Cheng Zhang
First Monday, volume 9, number 7 (July 2004),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_7/masum/index.html

The following is a selection of texts that are related (most of them are from the articles above):

Albert–László Barabási, 2002. Linked: The new science of networks. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus.

Gary E. Bolton, Elena Katok, and Axel Ockenfels, 2003. "How effective are electronic reputation mechanisms? An experimental investigation," University of Cologne Working Paper Series in Economics, number 3 (September), at http://ideas.repec.org/p/kls/series/0003.html, accessed 2 July 2004.

Eric Bonabeau, Marco Dorigo, and Guy Theraulaz, 1999. Swarm intelligence: From natural to artificial systems. New York: Oxford University Press.

David Brin, 1999. The transparent society: Will technology force us to choose between privacy and freedom? Reading, Mass.: Perseus.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1991. Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperPerennial.

Chrysanthos Dellarocas and Paul Resnick, 2003. "Online reputation mechanisms: A roadmap for future research," Report from the MIT/NSF Interdisciplinary Symposium on Reputation Mechanisms, 26–27 April 2003; at http://ccs.mit.edu/dell/symposium.html, accessed on 1 March 2004.

Thomas Homer–Dixon, 2002. The ingenuity gap: Facing the economic, environmental, and other challenges of an increasingly complex and unpredictable world. New York: Vintage.

Robert Kaye, 2004. "Next–generation file sharing with social networks," accessed at http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2004/03/05/file_share.html, on 1 May 2004.

Gregory MacLeod, 1997. From Mondragon to America: Experiments in community economic development. Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada: University College of Cape Breton Press.

Paolo Massa and Bobby Bhattacharjee, 2004. "Using trust in recommender systems: An experimental analysis," iTrust2004 International Conference, at http://moloko.itc.it/paoloblog/papers/itrust2004/trust2004.html, accessed 2 July 2004.

Howard Rheingold, 2003. Smart mobs: The next social revolution. New York: Basic Books; book discussion site at http://www.smartmobs.com, accessed 1 March 2004.

W.E. Bijker, T.P. Hughes, and T. Pinch (editors), 1987. The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

---

[1] Unfortunately true Kleos can only be earned after death, but we will neglect this point as it does not dovetail with the proposition made here.

[2] I can only argue that it’s benefits are great and you will adapt to it the same way you adapted to mobile phones.

[3] In Germany we have a long discussion about the ‘glass citizen’ (the increasing amount of information stored and registered about individuals) in my point of view it is much less a question that data about you is stored but who and what kind of data is stored for what purpose.

[4] Obviously also people contributing to your kleos have a subjective experience about you but at least the impressions are external and with raising quantity their inter-subjectivity raises.

Why don't they hold the G8 summits on islands?

I was following the G8 summit and the protests against it over the last days and I have to say that it really made me shiver to when these idiots went on their violent rampage. There are a thousand good reasons to protest against the summit, there are also hunderets of good reasons to hold such a summit, but no matter how badly you want things to change with violence - especially against cops who are only executing their duty - you are in fact the most counter-productive force possible.

[side note: there is actually speculation whether the rioters in Genua were masked provocateurs with the mission to discredit the globalisation critiques]

There is one aspect of the G8 that i do not understand: Why are the summits on such accessible locations? Wouldn't it be much cheaper, less prone to recieve bad media coverage and above all more secure to have these summits on a small island, like Helgoland, or aboard a ship, like the Roosevelt and Churchill at their famous secret WWII Atlantic Charter negotiations?

The bright side of the future

[Note: This post was also published in Spanish @ Creamos el Futuro]

Listening to futurologist, inventor and researcher Ray Kurzweil is highly stimulating in the sense that one recharges the battery labeled "the future might turn out really fantastic after all".

Kurzweil holds around 12 doctor titles and seems to have been participating in or leading virtually all important applied AI and human computer interface projects in the last 30 years. I learned about his work following up on the references of futurologist Tom Lombardo, who in his paper "The Pursuit of Wisdom and the Future of Education" puts forward the very support worthy argument for 'deep learning' and aiming to have students understand the 'big picture' rather than narrow vocational techniques.

But let's return to Kurzweil: In 2005 he has published the book The Singularity Is Near, in which he examines "the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations.
That merging is the essence of the Singularity, an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity. " [1]

I just ordered it so i can't review it yet, but what i learned about his take on reality and future creation in the video "The Singularity: A Hard or Soft Takeoff?" taken at the Stanford Singularity Conference, had this very positive forward looking effect I mentioned above.

What's more is that Kurzweil seems to have a distinct entrepreneurial mindset with a stress on knowledge entrepreneurship: One of his latest inventions - a portable camera with integrated text-to-voice making texts and webpages accessible to the blind - illustrate his entrepreneurial motivation: He has is focusing his work around the realization of knowledge/research opportunities, whereby he aims at developing technology meant to give impaired folks more equal opportunities, and he is professionally commercializing the output through a dedicated private enterprise Kurzweil Educational Systems

That's the spirit and the future we want to create!

Del.icio.us Brainfood - Educational tagging service

John Palfrey (director of Harvard's Berkmann Center for Internet & Society) just spoke at a session of UOC 's UNESCO e-learning chair about the practices and conditions of digital natives and what this means for education. At one point the discussion turned towards entrepreneurship as a suitable paradigm to describe the creative destruction of educational practices, and this is when the following education 2.0 idea struck me:

As i am elaborating in my thesis, education institutions are not exploiting the potentials to aggregate relevance the same way financial institutions are doing[1]. So here is one idea that identifies an opportunity to aggregate relevance of professors:

Build a tagging service like del.icio.us (or collabroate with them) that allows for filtering and synergizing relevance in respect to the source of the tag's author. By building exclusive academic tagging networks the quality of the information refferred to is to a certain degree 'guaranteed' and if the network

This idea would be one way "to share the knowledge of the university" as Julia Minguillon pointed out is the key mandate (formulated in the web 2.0 fashion) of educational institutions.

This idea might also entangle very well with the 'social search engine' e.g. wikia "the search engine that changes everything" concept, pursued by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. An entrepreneurial university could reap first mover advantages and publicity by partnering up and pioneering 'professors recommended' search results.

UPDATE: I just found an interesting service that aims pretty much at what i am thinking about: http://edtags.org/ (is a Harvard related initiative)

------------------------
[1] This is a theme i have found in Sasskia Sassen's work - she compares the exploitation of digitization by financial organisation with civil society organisations.

Die SPD faellt durch sinnvolle nutzung des netzes auf

Ein freund hat mir gerade die plattform www.programmwerkstatt.spd.de vorgestellt. Sieht echt ganz brauchbar aus was da passiert. Die SPD will sich im herbst wohl ein neues grundsatz programm geben und dazu wurden viele thesen erarbeitet. Diese thesen kann man nun auf der plattform web 2.0 maessisch kommentieren und bewerten. Wenn die ergebnisse dann auch in die debatte mit eingehen dann waer dass doch mal was, wa?

Exchange of arguments & reaching decisions online

I guess most of us agree that the online tool (mailing list) and practices we have to have a share information and opinion are rather good but they are producing information overload. However compared to traditional discourse's location and time constrains there is an improvement in inclusiveness.

Partially as a result of the information overload however, our tool is rather poor for the important practice to collectively take a decision and to have a controvesial exchange of arguments.

Allow me to point your attention to http://grass-arena.net = Group Report Authoring Support System

"The purpose of the GRASS project is to develop an arena for credible societal discourse. Its aim is to produce concise group reports that give their readers an uptodate and credible overview of the positions of various stakeholders on a particular issue. As such, these reports can play an important role in consensus assessment and catalyzing societal conflict resolution."

The system
- gives an index (overview) page including the current state of the decision in question via pro/contra/neutral positions
- structures the exchange of arguments which significantly improves clarity and density
- transparently shows the activities of users

I dont think this system is the short-term solution but it is an indication as to what we will hopefully have sometime down the road.


PS: GRASS seems to be discontinued - If anybody knows a similar system i would be very interested to learn about it!

SecondLife architecture interface prove of concept

Thomas a.k.a. www.stylewalker.net
just found a really cool demonstration of how to 'work around' the in-convinient and un-productive internal SL building tools.

"To make this, I used PDFs from our architects as a base to trace all the walls on 11 layers in an Adobe Illustrator file, then exported each floor as an XML-based Scalable Vector Graphics file, each of which I ran through a PHP script to extract the object info and convert it to something I could paste in a notecard. Then I made 11 objects (the little cubes in front of me in the video) that scoot themselves off to a predetermined location, spew out prims based on the notecards, and send them to their appropriate positions. The next step, is to rez this on the ground, terraform, and then texture-bake every single prim..."
Click on the image to see the really impresive video!

Knowledge map of online communities

Makezine is just a great nerd-hub. This morning i found the visualization of cyberspaces' community landscape. A great example of knowledge visualisation if you ask me.

Ps: i haven't seen any copy-right or -left statements, but - it coming from makezine - i expect that it is ok. to show the pic - i have not even touched it - it comes from the original server.

Die kanzlerin besser als erwartet

Angela Merkel war nicht meine kandidatin der letzten wahl. Ja ich muss gestehen dass ich ihrgegenueber zunaechst recht negativ eingestellt war. Aber man muss sagen, sie ist bis jetzt noch fuer nichts was ich als eine skandaloese fehlentwicklung nennen wuerde verantwortlich. Im gegenteil ich stimme dem autor des spiegel artikels "Staunen dreimal" ,den ich hiermit empfehlen moechte, in grossen zuegen zu. Speziell aussenpolitisch bewegt sie sich geschickt und was er ueber die intelligente gestalltung der transatlantischen politik schreibt macht hoffnung.

The physical, the meta-physical, and the virtual. Tertium datur est.

Since Descartes the dualism between mind and body had been framed in laws of physics on the one hand, and the reason of the mind on the other. This distinction stays in large terms true, but there is a shift to make an even finer distinction between what is going on in the conscious (meta-physical) part of the equation. One prominent modern representative of this new understanding is Habermas. He develops his concept of the life-world in contrast to traditional rationality with its logical mechanics of reason (Luh). Habermas’ life-world can be related to philosophic notions of liberalism and individualism; schools that focus on the non-rational causality of interest or pleasure. The distinction is based on the observation that one can not argue for the pleasure or interest of others. One can only know by oneself whether one enjoys or is interested in something. This is different from objective reason and leads us to the notions of inter-subjective reason. The life-world concept thereby splits the Cartesian mind into a subjective-reason and inter-subjective-reason. Both valid and relevant.

Similarly the virtual space created by the internet creates a middle form between constructed reality and existence, which has been dubed “society frozen” (Sassen), alluring to the fluidity of the continuous emergence of the human/social condition and the fact that in a virtual scenario all states are recorded as fixed (frozen). In many ways this is simply a development from earlier forms of meta-physical virtuality – as in books or newspapers – but the technical virtual representation of realities (ideas) has a certain co-relation with Habermas’ life-world as there is no rational why someone chooses to represent himself in a certain way in a virtual environment but through the virtualisation the choice becomes existence (facts) thereby the Cartesian dualism is transformed into a trinity: The physical, the meta-physical, and the virtual. Tertium datur est.

Microsoft and revolutionary user interfaces?

I just read an interview with a spanish researcher who works for M$ and mentioned MS Seadragon as a revolution in user interfaces. So I went and checked it out: The idea is to have frictionless zooming in and out of interfaces so that you can have a really big desktop and zoom in and out of the various tasks you have running, or a big document and jump pages without need for reload. The promises is really big:
1. Speed of navigation is independent of the size or number of objects.
2. Performance depends only on the ratio of bandwidth to pixels on the screen.
3. Transitions are smooth as butter.
4. Scaling is near perfect and rapid for screens of any resolution.

and the performance of the beta viewer still very buggy. At least on my mashine it dod not produce good results neither with Firefox nor with Explorer.

Nevertheless i will keep an eye on it as the idea is really powerfull.

Optimism for Open Metaverse

There is much discussion about the fact that most virtual worlds - including the flag-ship second life - run on proprietary non-standardized code. The netizen community is of course horrified by the fact that single companies have despotic power over their metaverses, but are we really doomed to remain in proprietary virtual worlds?

I don’t think so. There are open source efforts to create virtual worlds - e.g. croquet and the very Linden Labs (after already having open-sourced the client) are now openly supporting a roadmap for open source development of their server code base. I quote:

8<----snippet from a dialoge on SL Edu list>

Actually, if you want to work with Linden Lab, the best place to go is here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Open_Source_Portal

OpenMetaverse uses Linden Lab technology, but is not affiliated with
Linden Lab. .. but LL control the roadmap and want to determine the protocols,

We control the roadmap in a way not unlike Linus Torvalds controls the Linux kernel, Mozilla Foundation controls Firefox, and MySQL AB controls MySQL. We're still relatively new at this, so it's going to take time for us to get good at it, but we'll get there.
8<--------snippet from a dialoge on SL Edu list>
https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/educators/2007-March/007555.html

Unfortunately i don’t have the reference at hand, but i remember reading about an interview with Linden Chief Mr. Rosedale (the man who we will probably have to remember as causing the huge media hype and capitalist hoax about SL which gave SL the critical user mass to flourish), where he stated that Lindens mid/long-term plan is to turn their business into top-notch consultancy regarding the creation and maintenance of virtual worlds run by other enterprises. I believe all they do is build up their brand value (reputation) and intend to position themselves as the Linus Torvals of the VR code (see post referenced above).

In conclusion, (and I sincerely hope i am not being proven wrong but) i perceive Linden as a smart crew, open sourcing their creation, while still intending to steer it to a certain degree; thereby they might be able to develop a solid business model for large-scale open source projects (with leadership).(1)

(1) Linux to a certain degree represents the only proven business model () and the fact that it still hasn’t made it to more than 5% market share even though they have really substantial cost advantage, tells me that there is still something not-convincing about that model.

Other open source community based projects like moodle are of course really ethical efforts and their output is amazing, but one has to see that they only work because they are in-directly (and in fact un-consciously) subsidized by the state through professors (and students their students) who invest their work time in them. Nevertheless this model is IMHO completely feasible for many applications. (But for better or worse outside the capitalist market and therefore constrained by other variables.)

Second Life: critique and tolerance

Below you find some short arguments which I just wrote in a critical email to a friend who sent me his euphoric sales pitch for Second Life (SL). Subsequently i delve into a short cultural reflection about how important tolerance is for bootstrapping thus taking up the cudgels for Second Life and paying respect to their accomplishments.

1) Don't lure them into developing an island by using inflated numbers: I would be very cautious to present the user growth rate with 30% for the 2007 forecast. I don’t think it will continue at that speed. It was a nice media-virus for some month now, but as 'real SL development' with 'real benefits' is much slower I believe it will stabilize and turn to an organic growth.

SL and virtual worlds in general have some very potent value propositions but right now the biggest benefit to create a subsidiary is: marketing/branding: to communicate a) that the organization is a pioneer and b) whatever the SL offer potentially is. I say potentially because it is almost impossible to really fulfill the expectations.

Allow me to elaborate: Take the case of a car-maker who sets up an SL race-course to allow users to "try" a new model. Everybody who actually tries the car in SL will be disappointed because we are used to high-end racing games (need-for-speed, etc.) and in comparison the SL experience is really devastatingly bad. However i believe it is only a matter of time until the 3D web will be able to have people test-drive really good simulations of cars (potentially through the virtual representation of their own neighborhoods). Before that happens at least two conditions have to change: server-infrastructure (connection and resulting graphic) problems have to be taken care of and the know-how of racing-game specialists has to be incorporated. Once we are there i believe it is quite realistic that virtual-world-car-selling becomes a decisive aspect of marketing and selling cars. Will the company that has developed a long term experience in using virtual worlds have an advantage against its competitor who neglected the new medium? Without a doubt.

2) do not forget that in this moment only 40 people can be at an island simultaneously so SL internal out-reach is quite limited. (Of course the solution is to really market the SL footage in traditional media). Another important point seems to me that an entity that runs an island should plan for in-world-representative(s) (and the additional monthly cost). Given that SL is accessed by people from around the world a representative would ideally need to be there 24/7 and speak at least the organizations 'normal' languages. There is technology that communicates to Real Life (through messaging) when someone comes to your island. However this does not solve the 24/7 issue.

Having communicated what IMHO is the current infancy conditions for setting up an SL island (or other venture), while i believe I also outlined the immediate and potential benefits, I feel obliged to pay my respect to the Linden Labs team and everybody who is participating in the realization of the potential by creating this fascinating new world.

Virtual reality is a theme in science fiction for many many years and first attempts to realize this vision have been conducted with various success since the creation of the internet. Hence SL is nothing new as such. BUT SL is the best 3-dimensional cyberspace i have come across so far, AND maybe more important. they have managed to create such a media fuzz around their project that it seems there is a critical mass of users and enough interest from investors and organizations that invest in SL presences that there is enough capital to really boost development and hopefully solve many of the technological problems now present.

So in conclusion it is always difficult to do the splits (find the equilibrium) between being critical (as in enlightened or not-naïve) while tolerating some flaws, and SL surely needs a good dose of both. Whether Second Life as a virtual world developed and run by Linden Labs has a promising future i am critical; That the 3D web is there to stay and that it is very valuable to invest time and money in understanding and exploiting it I am even more convinced.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Praus, Peter Bihr and myself (a.k.a. MaPeTo) are lately exploring and discussing about SL and virtual worlds. Peter has published his evaluation of the current opportunities and limitations of SL and Thomas will shurely do so very soon.

Machinima (in Second Life)

"Machinima a portmanteau of machine cinema or machine animation" is the art of making movies recording activities within a game or other virtual environment.

There is a portal with hundreds of recordings www.machinima.com. One example of what this results in is "Out of my skin" the first entry of a second life series/diary:

Simpsons on the tube

Last night I was introducing the kid of a friend of mine to the wonders of the net. His first google question was "cool online games" ;-)

After some funkey jump & run we looked at how homer and his folks broadcast themselves and we found some really innovative footage:

Live action Simpsons

and then later on that night i ran into this one which i also enjoyed

smokin homer simpson

digital ethnography & cutting edge sixties

Text is linear by Prof Wesch
is really a great visualization of the change from physical-analog-linear to virtual-digitally-hyperlinked
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=78



Prof Wesch is working on digital ethnography and in my opinion this is an excellent marketing piece, communicating the relevance and triggering the interest of potential students. Here are some more videos of that course - http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?cat=4

Powers of Ten
A film dealing with the relative size of things in the universe - and the effect of adding another zero. I dont remember where i read it but i think this movie was shot by IBM in the sixties and that makes it a truly cutting edge piece
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6945724039283018435

Collabowriting an Institupedia to enable cothink

Recently i came across Nobel laureate Herb Simon and his ideas about how science should be creative. He basically believes that it is much more productive to create reality rather than to research the 'pure' existence. More straight forward he thinks that when we try to create something - let's say a rocket that flies to the moon - we will learn a lot during the process of the construction; we might not have understood 100% what and why things are happening but at least we have "mastered" a challenge and can reap the benefits. In comparison when we start out to understand and describe gravity, we might investigate for a long time, generate a lot of "knowledge" but can not exploit it. [please excuse the outrages simplification of Simon's thinking]

Having that said, I believe that, as words replace matter in the meta-physical world, the creation of new words is the essence of Simonian social science. So without further delay allow me to propose three new words: Collabowriting, Institupedia and cothink.

Collabowriting is the most straight forward of the three and its significance should be easy to decifer as it is a simple combination of the word collaborate and write to describe the practice of writing a document together. Collabowriting has been possible long before the advent of wikis and other IT collaboration tools, but the practice of jointly letting a document emerge was much less dovetailed and with less interaction. So true collabowriting is a rather recent phenomenon and most of us are still rather stone-age when it comes to doing it efficiently.

Institupedia is inspired by the popular encyclopedia wikipedia, which uses the collabowriting tool wiki to create an open encyclopedia on the internet. Following Wittgestein's claim that all thinking and human being originates in words, I suggested during my time at UNDP as well as in my university UOC to create an institutional enceclopedia in order to allow for collective and discursive definition of the institutions vocabulary. After i received an invitation to attend a webinar on "Ways to create an internal “Wikipedia” inside your company" (organized by socialtext), I decided that my proposal might have been viable after all.

There is several reasons why an institupedia (UNDPedia, UOCipedia, etc.) helps to create an enabling environment, and i plan to elaborate on that in due time. For now allow me to cherry pick just one: Cothink is a literal translation from the German term "mitdenken" that my dictionary translates as: 1. show some initiative, think (things through); 2. [please cothink!] help me (oder us) think; 3. follow someone's train of thought.
In general i would claim that cothink happens when an individual identifies to some degree with the scenario and thus applies his being to the situation. Two conditions have to be met to enable cothink: (a) the individual has to be motivated to help (team spirit etc. come to mind) and (b) the person needs to know / have information about the scenario. Developing an institupedia where the emerging plans, projects etc. are defined will enable at least the latter condition and probably contribute to the former as a positive spiral can be triggered.

Giddens - A call to arms (for sociologists)

Anthony Giddens published a short opinion piece reflecting upon the question "why isn't sociology again right at the forefront of intellectual life and public debate?" (guardian - http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/anthony_giddens/2006/11/post_682.html).

There are some interesting arguments. I especially agreed:

"A little bit more utopian thinking might help too - well, why not? Politics in some ways has become deadly dull. We need more positive ideals in the world, but not empty ones - rather, they should be ideals that link to realistic possibilities of change."

And some lines above he says:

"There are no longer utopian projects that would supply a source of direction for social reform and a source of motivating ideas. I'm not saying that sociology was ever itself a form of utopianism. But sociological thinking, born of the political and economic revolutions of the 19th century, certainly was regularly stimulated by an engagement with those who wanted to change the world for the better."

As you know i am all up for creating utopian ideals to strive for.

One i just recently came across:

technocratic movement - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocratic_movement

From my reading it seems to be true that technocracy (as they describe it) is wrongly negatively connoated; I dont really see why technocracy should be incompatible with humanism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism)

The chilenian 'socialist internet' project (1970-73) appears to me to have been an socio-technocratic experiment
--> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

brainfood selection 01

allow me to recommend two wired articles that caught my eye and made me believe technological progress once more:

Apparently (americans please excuse my european ignorance) internet based mobile phone services are already widely available in the States and they make communication decisively cheaper once again. In the wired article they are testing services for around 20$ a month offering unlimited calling some of them even to selected european countries. Unbelieveable but it really seems well talk for a low flat fee with all the world soon.

Also a guy was awarded a patent for a huge 35 m diameter baloon covered by millions of LEDs making the airship the biggest spherical screen ever - check out the pix @
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/02/video_airship_p.html

Fussball

Eine freundin von mir baut zusammen mit ihrem Bruder das Fussball-Portal http://www.nordostfussball.de/ auf. Dort findet ihr top aktuelle Nachrichten und Reportagen zu allem was Fussballfans im Norden Deutschlands interessiert.

DRM or no DRM - that's the question

this morning a friend send me this:

> Mark my words. this is the day, when DRM died:
>
> http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
> Open letter from Steve Jobs about how much DRM sucks, and that media
> should be unprotected.
>
> well written too

which made me - after reading and agreeing that it seemed quite a move - forward the message to some friends and bang i got some brisk critical feedback which i post as comments to this entry.

I recommend you to read Steve Jobs before you read the comments.

My 2 cents:
1) Apple is a really really street smart company and yes they are 'manipulating' consumers just as (or maybe a bit better than) the other big MNCs.

2) As long as they are playing in my direction i wont write a rant about it

3) I own an iPod and i have very mixed feelings - sort of a hate-love relationship. I only once ran into DRM issues (buying for the first and last time from audible) which i duly solved myself ;-)

so my conclusion is:

I don’t agree with dAn à all consumers hate DRM and the industry will not succeed in pushing it out so it is dominant.

I do agree with Micha – it is just a marketing communication fad (cluetrain manifesto style) and apple likes their profit more than their customers. However apple is among the few companies that are already playing with and seriously valuing their customers.

Best language school in Barcelona

In my constant search for spending my time with worthwhile activities, i consult my good friend Jan de Lassen (cool site with his pictures) who is a painter and who just recently opened the doors of what will be the best language school in Barcelona Spain - diloga. Jan's technique is really usefull and efficicent in braking the ice and actually make you speak. The school is located in one of Barcelonas best neighborhoods - Gracia - where you find small spanish plazas and an excellent street- & night-life .

For me it is a great opportunity to gather some hands on experience in entrepreneurship and get to work with really nice people!

Second Life in 3D

just stumbled across the following news:

The University of Michigan 3D Lab has brought Second Life one step closer to real life by developing stereoscopic support for the Second Life viewer. This recent addition allows visitors wearing special glasses to see the objects of Second Life pop out of the screen similar to watching a 3D movie.

Using the recently released source code by Linden Labs, Gabriel Cirio and Eric Maslowski have developed a stereoscopic version of the Second Life viewer that works with a large-screen stereo projection system. This low-cost system uses passive stereo based on polarizing filters and was built from off-the-shelf components.

The University of Michigan 3D Lab is continuing development of their Second Life viewer, as well as other projects related to Second Life and Virtual Reality. For more information contact “um3d-secondlife[at]umich.edu” or visit http://um3d.dc.umich.edu/.

spotted the news on http://www.nmc.org/sl/2007/01/30/3d-viewer/

Democracy, Nietzsche and Higher Education

I have expressed my disillusion and mounting disrespect for what has become of democracy in our days. On various occasions I have argued that a meritocracy (wikipedia entry), or what Plato described as the wise philosophy king, would be a more rational and sustainable system. That is because a meritocratic leadership or wise king would not be as prone to populist opportunism and short term thinking (as is the case in our current state of affairs).

I lately come to revise this believe as I am (literally) listening to Nietzsche (sitting in the train with a recording of Zarathustra [german mp3 auf anfrage] on my iPod). Nietzsche, who detests the weak, declares that the übermensch, who is ‘beyond good and evil’ [english public domain audio-book], should engage in a constant good war, turns out to be the true ideological architect behind the Nazis. Nietzsche has reminded me about the superior power of the primeval human condition – self interest.

The rule of the majority - democracy - is the only cure (proven to work) against the egomaniac drives of all individuals. I still see all the flaws of the democratic rule we have, and I still believe that the weighting of influence according merit makes a lot of sense (and is actually already present to a certain imperfect degree), but the issue really is to have interested, educated and participating citizens in a democracy. And this is where I want to put the emphasis of this text and elaborate the argument for more ‘cultural citizenship’ (Delanty, 2001) education.

The phenomenon I want to critique is, that the trend to streamline education to the point where it is (only) effective vocational training, preparing people to perform a market demanded job, has gone so far as to cut and rationalize away most ‘cultural citizenship’ education. Because the programs are shorter, while having to transmit the same amount of disciplinary knowledge, there is arguably very little time for the students to engage in citizens education (developing informed opinion about political/axiological issues) and participation (organize and participate in constructive critical discourse).

If we follow the late capitalist tendency to have universities (and after that schools) serve the demands of the (free) market (ever faster training of oven-ready workers), while neglecting the demands of democracy, we will end up in a system where the most charismatic (read entertaining) and populist (read doing most for the majority instead of the smart) politician will win elections.

I believe that education must be a free public good implemented by autonomous institutions, which (next to delivering vocational training) engage citizens in learning about today’s pressing problems and foster their active participation in tackling them. Hence the implicit opinion that a) the WTO should not succeed in making education a globally tradable service just like any other but that b) it is the any nation states best investment to ensure good education and research. May they cut on military and police surveillance budgets for a change!

Highly recommended:

Delanty, G. (2001). Challenging knowledge : the university in the knowledge society. Buckingham [England] ; Phildelphia, PA: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press.

starting a business in your Second Life

I just found a nice & short article by Laura Tiffany on entrepreneur.com, which introduces the virtual environment Second Life and reflects a bit about the abundant entrepreneurial opportunities present in this new business environment where people spend about 1’000’000 $ per day!

I especially agree on the importance of the following and question Laura poses: “But the bottom line for entrepreneurs is, will Second Life really pan out? Or is it just hype, since the majority of people have never ventured virtually or even heard of it?” Laura at least answers positively: “Your mom may never understand exactly what a 3D world is, or the point of an avatar. But enough other people do that a whole new class of entrepreneurs has been born to serve their needs.”

Linden – Second Life’s producers – also maintain a page listing business opportunities: http://secondlife.com/whatis/businesses.php

Xmax mail 2006

I have the tradition of sending out a xmas mail to everybody i like to stay in touch with. It contains info about projects and brainfood i believe are really good. Here are the recommendations:

Open Educational Resources (OER)

I guess most of us agree that knowledge is the key to development. Open Educational Resources (OER) is a movement (supported e.g. by the UNESCO) that attempts to cooperate in a global alliance to provide teaching materials of all levels on an open source (no copyright) basis. Not only can everybody freely access e.g. video lectures but the idea is also to collaboratively continually improve e-learning materials. Amazingly even eminent universities especially the MIT (Open Courseware Project) but also e.g. Harvard have already bought in and have opened big chuncks of their content. If this really takes off it will be a good weapon against the global knowledge divide. My supervisor is the head of the UNESCO chair for e-learning at my university and we are actively trying to spread awareness and support these efforts, I’d be happy to get you involved.

It’s hype – but I like my Second life

When Second Life (SL) started it was a virtual world (a green floor, gravity and lighting) where you could walk around with a little avatar but there was nothing to see or do. But that changed. The clue is that the responsible Californian company allows you to create (/program) more or less everything you can think of. And people have created a fantastic world with flying islands, hip hop clubs, the US Congress (including virtual clones of some ‘I-was-there-first’ politicians who really show up to take their vote catching to the next level). I tell you I hardly ever touch any computer games but that is not a game, that is a virtual REALITY. Being the radical constructivist that I am, the real creative possibilities seem truly amazing. If you are not curious, no pasa nada! It is quite slow, the graphics are still very basic, and many (including me) are very cautious regarding the importance of commercialisation (the Reuters and the German Telecom just produced the first commercial Tabloid) and consumption present in this Second Life. But hey – does anybody still remember Mosaic or Netscape these were the first platforms that allowed for a completely new experience of the web and that is what I believe SL is. Hyped or not I had some fun hours in there and I will happily meet up with you and go on some excursions. User accounts are free and I recommend this Wired Travel Guide: Second Life

MakeZine & SocialEdge, AfriGadget and Kiva

Here come a number of InfoSpaces: MakeZine makes me dream of a better world in which people use their creativity and the other three show me that this world does actually already exist:

MakeZine’s slogan is IF YOU CAN’T OPEN IT YOU DON’T OWN IT. It is a great tinker & hacker magazine, complete with construction plans and sometimes with ‘do it your self’ packages and even beginner sets. I got a couple of the easy treats for xmas and it was great fun soldering and put to unintended use ;-) As nicely put on the SocialEdge blog: MakeZine is a blog full of things that I will probably never make, but that being said, it's nice to know that if I ever did need a personal submarine, I could make one out of a pig trough (no, I'm not joking).

@iPod owners: You have to check the iPod hacks page – there are do it yourself solarpanel chargers, software replacements that make you independent from Apple’s awful digital rights management… and the list goes on and on.

SocialEdge & AfriGadget are two blogs that implement the creative MakeZine spirit to sustainability and development. Both sites collect instances of social entrepreneurship & innovative technology application at its best. Here is one I liked best: One project that particularly caught my eye on the site was the "Playground Pump" ... a water pump that's generated from a children's playground merry-go-round

Last but not least there is Kiva (Loans that change lives) – an NGO started by some techies, who droped out of yahoo and the like, in order to setup an online service that allows you to choose one individual person in Africa, Asia or Latin-America who’s entrepreneurial project you want to support by lending him or her some dollars. (I’d call that personalised micro-finance.) I have become a lender to Marie Bikope in Togo who wants to open a cosmetics shop and to grandpa Nadjaf MardanovI in Azerbaijan, who wants to expand his little ale house, and I can only tell you it feels pretty good to know what is happening with the money and has it – not to speak of how happy I will be when I (most likely) get all of it back in 12 months ;-) (Here I wrote a more rational analysis of Kiva)

Lastly I’d like to recommend you some movies that I saw and really liked:

The Fountain

Big Fish

Volver

Vendetta

Sin City

Frida

Campain for a Parlament at the United Nations

to facilitate the final preparations of the launch of the campaign for the establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly in April 2007 we have posted some *initial* information on the net. In particular, the text of the UNPA appeal is now publicly available in over 20 languages and may be signed online.

Please visit
http://www.uno-komitee.de/unpa/

Feedback and comments to improve the initial campaign pages are very welcome.