Hypergraph for navigation

about 8 years ago i experimented with the Brain as website navigation tool, and i was really won over by the smooth visualization that gives you a good impression of Where you are on a page.

Yesterday Sam finally showed me the open source equivalent - hypergraph was of course developed for more sophisticated purposes and it isn't as eye-candy as the brain, nevertheless i would reckon we see this type of navigation more and more on the web.

In fact Patrick immediately wondered why the heck we can't browse our delicious bookmark tags through a hypergraphed interface? I agree, that would be great! please make me aware of any similar tool esp. to be used with delicious!

Supercool Philosophy - Learning to be Free

I have recently written some substantial blogposts on the supercoolschool blog:

Supercool Philosophy - Learning to be Free

Is the most profound one as i am sharing the first 1.0 of the educational philosophy of supercool school. It links to the full text (22 pages) and a shortened manifesto (3 pages)

Supercool School will set minds on fire

Is a review of John Seely Brown's Minds on Fire. It elaborates on the multitude of synergies of his text and the supercool philosophy.

Supercool learning = to inquire and to create

Is a review of a 1971 text by Noam Chomsky. The text entitled "Toward a humanistic conception of education" also has several great passages that align perfectly with the educational approach of supercool school.

You know you are talking to the right people when...

...the "warning screen" for a conference registration contains Hail Discordia! propaganda ;-) (For those of you who don't know Discordia - check out the wonderfully anarchic/psychedelic world setup in Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminati).

I just registered for the iCommons Summit and when i made a mistake in the form it prompted me with the following message:

Pentabarf Meditation has been interrupted by worries.
The Erisian dwarfs have been notified. In the meantime you are encouraged to read The Five Commandments below or go back in history instead.

KNOW YE THIS O MAN OF FAITH!

1. There is no Goddess but Goddess and She is Your Goddess. There is no Erisian Movement but The Erisian Movement and it is The Erisian Movement. And every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm.
2. A Discordian Shall Always use the Official Discordian Document Numbering System.
3. A Discordian is Required during his early Illumination to Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog on a Friday; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (no Hot Dog Buns).
4. A Discordian shall Partake of No Hot Dog Buns, for Such was the Solace of Our Goddess when She was Confronted with The Original Snub.
5. A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads.

IT IS SO WRITTEN! SO BE IT. HAIL DISCORDIA!
PROSECUTORS WILL BE TRANSGRESSICUTED

This is the way i want cyberspace to communicate with me! Of course it turns out Pentabarf is a conference management system programmed for the 21C3...

South Park: The Day The Internet Stood Still

I am usually not a big SouthPark fan, even though i think there are some very funny aspects, the aesthetic is not really appealing to me. BUT this episode is just VERY VERY FUNNY

"One day the citizens of South Park wake up and find the internet is gone. When Randy hears there may still be some internet out in California, he packs up his family and heads west."

The whole episode is great, and you can watch all 22min here.

Here comes everybody

The latest episode of "Der elektrische Reporter" features an interview with Clay Shirky, author of "here comes everybody". I'll have to dig deeper, but what he had to say left a very very interesting impression:

"Like Lawrence Lessig on the effect of new technology on regimes of cultural creation, Shirky's assessment of the impact of new technology on the nature and use of groups is marvelously broad minded, lucid, and penetrating; it integrates the views of a number of other thinkers across a broad range of disciplines with his own pioneering work to provide a holistic framework for understanding the opportunities and the threats to the existing order that these new, spontaneous networks of social interaction represent. (from amazon)"

http://shirky.com/
http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/