Max Senges

Speakers’ Tube - Meine Rede auf dem ersten Speakers' Corner in Berlin

2011-11-10T16:06:00.001+01:00

Ich bin 33 Jahre alt. Als ich aufwuchs, informierte ich mich über die guten alten Medien: Buch, Fernsehen, Radio, Zeitung. Mein 9 Wochen alter Sohn wird mit einem ganz anderen Bezug zu Medien und Partizipation aufwachsen. Erlauben Sie mir mit ein paar Worten zu analysieren, was sich in den letzten 33 Jahren verändert hat.

Ich fühlte mich dabei meistens ganz gut informiert. Doch schon damals fragte ich mich, wo denn eigentlich all jene Menschen Gehör finden, deren Themen nicht für die sogenannten “Massenmedien” tauglich sind. Und was war mit Ländern, die nicht über die breite, freie Medienlandschaft verfügten wie Deutschland sie zum Glück heute besitzt? Wie mochten sich wohl dort die Menschen informieren?

Die einzige Chance, seine Stimme zu Gehör zu bringen, lag für viele Jahrhunderte buchstäblich auf der Straße: in Demonstrationen, Versammlungen oder eben auf der berühmten “Speakers’ Corner” in London, wo immerhin schon seit Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts die Kraft der freien Rede zelebriert wird.

Es ist aber ohne Frage das Internet, dass die Möglichkeiten frei zu reden, Position zu beziehen, sich zu informieren und demokratischen Protest zu organisieren tiefgreifend revolutioniert hat. Grenzen überschreiten, Konventionen missachten, Debatten über alles zu führen - von Filmen bis zur Monarchie. Online war alles möglich. Im Internet entstand ein neuer globaler “Speakers’ Corner”, ein Forum der freien Rede, auf Twitter, Facebook und YouTube und (in Bälde auch unter jedem Pseudonym ihrer Wahl) auf Google+.

Über zwei Milliarden Menschen sind heute im Internet aktiv, und jeder kann seine Meinungen, Träume, Positionen und Forderungen veröffentlichen, die wiederum von allen anderen gefunden und beantwortet werden können. Diese Demokratisierung der Medialen- der Meinungs-Produktionsmittel bedeutet im Allgemeinen eine größere Auswahl und im Endeffekt mehr Macht für den Einzelnen. Erinnern Sie sich an die Bilder aus Ägypten? Leider ist es für viele Regierungen und Institutionen unbequem, die Kontrolle zu verlieren. Dies bedeutet, dass das kommende Jahr möglicherweise von einer zunehmenden Einschränkung der Freiheiten im Internet geprägt sein wird.

Staaten schränken das freiheitlich demokratische Potential des Internets ein. Doch nicht nur Staaten stehen der Rede- und Meinungsfreiheit immer wieder im Wege. Beispiel Mexiko: Im brutalen Drogenkrieg des Landes verzichten die klassischen Medien inzwischen zumeist auf Berichterstattung, die Journalisten fürchten um ihr Leben. Aktuellen Berichten zufolge sind Blogger und Aktivisten aus sozialen Netzwerken als letzte mediale Kraft übrig geblieben, die noch über das Treiben der Drogenbarone informieren. Auch hier beweist die sozio-technologische Infrastruktur des Netzes und die Netizens eine beeindruckende Kraft, die sogar über die der klassischen Medien hinauszureichen scheint.

1989, im Jahr, in dem die Mauer fiel, steckte das Internet noch in den Kinderschuhen. Doch auch damals gab es mutige Menschen, die für die Freiheit aufgestanden sind und gesprochen haben. Engagiert und offen.

Wir wollen hier und heute eine Brücke bauen zwischen der klassischen Kraft der freien Rede, der Speakers Corner, und jener neuen Kraft, dem Internet und seinen technischen Möglichkeiten Dialoge global, in echtzeit und (ver)öffentlicht zu führen.

Denn wer heute spricht, spricht nicht “nur” zu den Menschen, die gerade hier am Brandenburger Tor dabei sind. Ihre Stimme kann weltweit gehört werden. Wir werden Sie unmittelbar im Anschluss über den YouTube Kanal “GoogleFreeExpression” ausstrahlen.
Selbstverständlich holen wir dazu von jedem Redner und jeder Rednerin die Erlaubnis ein!

Hier und heute treffen sich also die analoge Speakers Corner und ihr digitales Pendant in Gestalt von YouTube. Nennen Sie es meinetwegen “Your Corner” oder “Speakers’ Tube” - der Name ist nicht wichtig. Lassen Sie uns diesen Tag zu einer Feier der Meinungsfreiheit machen. Fassen Sie Mut. Kommen Sie auf die Bühne und bringen Sie die Kraft Ihrer eigenen freien Rede zur Entfaltung. Vielen Dank!

„Dienste der Zukunft für die Gesellschaft von heute. Wie Vertrauen schaffen?“ (Mein Paneldiskussionsbeitrag beim Jahreskongress GeoBusiness & D21 im BMWi)

2011-11-09T18:53:00.001+01:00

Letzten Mittwoch am 3. November 2011 war ich im Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie zusammen mit Thilo Weichert (Datenschutzbeauftragter Schleswig-Holsteins) und Olaf Keitzel (CSC) auf einem Panel um zum Thema "Dienste der Zukunft für die Gesellschaft von heute. Wie Vertrauen schaffen?" zu diskutieren. Hier einige Argumente, die ich für die Diskussion vorbereitet hatte:

Kernfrage beim Thema Einführung innovativer Dienste ist das Spannungsfeld zwischen “Innovation without permission” und Schutz der User vor böswilligen Übergriffen.

Konstruktive Kritik aus Deutschlang ist wertvoll und “Privacy made in Germany” könnte sich als ein entscheidender Marktvorteil entwickeln. Allerdings hat man manchmal den Eindruck, dass es eher dystopische Verschwörungstheorien, vielleicht auch ein übertriebenes Geltungsbewußtsein und machmal auch strategische Polemik und Spiel mit den Ängsten von Wählern sind, die den Diskurs beeinflussen.

Wir brauchen mehr angewandte transdisziplinäre Forschung, um die emergenten Phänomene, die durch Internetdienste und -Nutzung entstehen, besser zu verstehen und unser individuelles sowie das Handeln unserer gesellschaftlichen Institutionen darauf einzustellen. Z.B. das acatech Projekt “Eine Kultur der Privatsphäre und des Vertrauens im Internet”, das vom BMWF gefördert wird und Experten von IBM, der Deutschen Post und Google mit Wissenschaftlern aus den verschiedensten Fachrichtungen zusammenbringt, birgt das potential nicht nur zu verstehen, was Unsicherheit hervorruft, sondern auch welche Funktionen und Erklärungen Vertrauen schaffen.

Das sozio-technische online Ökosystem kann als Komplex Adaptives System verstanden werden. Diesem Ansatz folgend, sollten Politik, Judikative und Exekutive in Kooperation mit den Betreibern und den Nutzern daran arbeiten, ein “dynamische Gleichgewicht” zwischen Vertrauen und Kontrolle zu gestalten. Dabei sind die traditionellen relativ starren Regelungen (Gesetze und Regulierung) ein recht unpassendes Mittel. Besser geeignet scheinen sog. Multistakeholder Governance Ansätze, bei denen alle Akteure einen kontinuierlichen Steuerungsprozess verantwortlich begleiten.

Erlaubt mir in diesem Kontext auf ein sehr gehaltvolles Paper meines Kollegen Rick Whitt hinzuweisen. Er analysiert und konstruiert Ansätze und Rahmenbedingungen für die Gestaltung von vernünftigen Internet Policies auf Basis einer komplexitätswissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung. Jedem, der ernsthaft an netzpolitischen Fragen interessiert ist, sei diese 108 Seiten starke Arbeit "Adaptive Policymaking: Evolving and Applying Emergent Solutions for U.S. Communications Policy" ans Herz gelegt.

Organisationen wie z.B. die Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Multimedia-Diensteanbieter e.V. (FSM) oder auf internationalem Level die Global Network Initiative - in der sich Microsoft, Yahoo, Google zusammen mit NGOs wie Human Rights Watch und wissenschaftlichen Institutionen wie Harvard’s Berkman Center gemeinsam für die Einhaltung von Datenschutz und Meinungsfreiheitsrechten im Internet einsetzen - haben die besten Chancen, die Praktiken vernünftig zu überprüfen und ein gemeinsames Vorgehen der Akteure abzustimmen. Es wäre zu wünschen, dass die Politik häufiger auf solche Lösungen setzt.

Ein Denkanstoß, der in unserer letzten Co:Lab Initiative entwickelt wurde finde ich in diesem Kontext auch spannend: Die “Beta-Phase” bei Diensteinführungen sollte standardisiert und offiziell anerkannt werden. Traditionell werden Internetdienste zunächst als “Beta” - als Testversion - gestartet. Diese Herangehensweise scheint sehr geeignet, um einerseits neophilen Nutzern Innovationen früh anzubieten und sie mit Hilfe der User zu verbessern und reif für den "Massenmarkt" zu machen. Andererseits signalisiert das Beta eher konservativen Nutzern, dass der betreffende Dienst nicht final ausgereift ist und ggf. noch technische und usability Mängel (z.B. bei der Datenverarbeitung) hat.

Harnessing the complexity perspective to better understand internetworked companies

2011-07-25T20:29:00.001+02:00

Especially in turbulent and tempestuous times like now everybody has a natural tendency to revert to traditional and conservative practices, because even though they are not as progressiv or "cool", they have proven their worth. Especially many successful internetworked companies have undergone several evolutionary phases, and while some companies managed to maintain a decisively progressive and unconventional culture, with stunning growth complexity has grown to a point that is intimidating not only for new employees but also for veteran knowledge workers who observe that these organisations' startup approach needs to evolve so it can scale to global operations.

In the field of complexity sciences researchers have found patterns and insights that can help individual workers, teams and organisations as a whole to frame and harness heterogeneity and decentralization. Wisdom of the crowds, peer-production, community driven development, crowdsourcing are just some phenomena that can be explained and trained for using the complexity perspective.

Taking this new perspective will not only change the way how you see things but also what you see.

Read my 3 page musing in Google-Docs (And if you feel like commenting or collabowriting please drop me a mail).

Also, if you want a much more elaborate perspective on how the complexity perspective can be applied to internet policy making i highly recommend Rick Whitt's thinking:

the full 10 7 page article Adaptive Policymaking: Evolving and Applying Emergent Solutions for U.S. Communications Policy
Rick also kindly recorded a podcast in which he explains the paper. Together with the following presentation one gets motivated to read the whole piece.

Wind Art – Transforming Wind Mills into Innovative Beauty

2011-07-03T21:50:00.001+02:00

This is a marketing idea for an energy production company,pitched in an open source style under creative commons license. I would behappy to help interested companies with the implementation.

1. The Product

Wind mills have complemented our energy mix for many years.While alternative energy has a very positive intrinsic marketing value, in thebest case they are tolerated, but mostly they are perceived negatively as uglyand devaluing the landscape and natural environment.

2. The Idea

What if windmills became art? The energy company responsiblefor the windmills will have the chance to present itself as innovative, asturning ugly into beautiful, as leading the way into a more humane, a morebeautiful future.

Two promising creative elements to consider are color andlight. Thanks to the organic shape of most windmills simply coloring them inrelation to the landscape context could result in very appealing sights; morespectacular however would be to attach light diodes to them and connect them toa central programming interface which allows to have the lights createfirework-like effects across the whole wind-park.

WindArt can be used for positive public relations from theinitiation of the project to the inauguration of the artistic wind energy parkand if desired, it can be repeated after a certain period.

The PR/Advertisment Campain has the followingcomponents:

· Call a competition for artists to propose thetransformation of a given windpark into an artistic theme.

· Collect artistic proposals on website foreverybody to review

· Have the public and experts evaluate thecontestants in stages (from Xà100 à 10 à1,2,3)

· Document the creative transformation of the windpark

· Celebrate the inauguration of the wind art park

· In case of the wind-fire-work lighting effectsthe ignition can be celebrated every night at a given hour.

Yenta - The art of finding a match

2011-06-11T17:35:00.000+02:00

I recently decided that it would be a good idea to get to know a bit more about Google's chief economist Hal Varian, so I searched and watched a lecture in which he explained the basic economics behind Google's search and advertising business model.

Given that I work and research in this area for several years I didn't expect to learn too much in this video, rather I figured it might be a good source to recommend to people who just got started. Well, I was wrong: I really learned a lot about the emergence of the system (e.g. the competition with Overture), I learned that academics have already developed an algorithm that is a bit better than the one used by Google (at least back in 2008) and I learned about the magic of two-sided markets and the characteristics, benefits and challenges of a yenta.

A yenta - explained Prof. Varian - is a jiddish term used to describe a matchmaker. (A person that facilitates (or arranges) the marriage between a boy and a girl.) Yenta in a two sided market describes the role of a platform provider which facilitates that someone who wants to sell something and someone who is looking to buy something find each other as easily (in terms of time and money) as possible. Trust that the yenta is not biased towards one particular seller is naturally key for the buyers but also for the sellers, who would run away if they found out that the yenta is not treating all offers equal.

I had always held the believe that Google depends on the trust of its users to deliver the best search results but Hal Varian's analogy of the yenta opened my eyes that the business model *necessarily demands* that Google acts in the best interest of all parties involved. As soon as the neutrality of the platform is compromised, trust would plummet and the very efficient dynamic equilibrium of the two sided market would crash as soon as one side would loose its trust in the yenta.

In this context the principle "Don't be evil" makes enormous business sense.

First TESLA on the road (Dreams of an internet enabled global car race)

2011-06-11T11:38:00.002+02:00

Some years ago, when the aspiring e-Lotus-Sportscar Tesla first came out, I thought of the following marketing idea (which I still quite like and would love to see someone pursue):

1. The product

The tesla is a revolutionary 21^st centuryelectronic car, with a body from the Italian luxury race car specialist Lotusand a uniquely powerful engine that accelerates faster than a Prosche anddrives up to X km/h.

2. The idea

Invite TESLA owners to track the roads as well as the timeit took them to cover a given course and submit it to an online global database– generating a map that shows how TESLA’s are conquering the world.

This approach will:

· Generate publicity because of it’s innovativenature and excellent conditions for social media participation. Drivers andcitizen journalists can record and upload complementary footage to their “FirstTESLA on the road”.

· It instigates a positive ‘can do’ attitude andbricolage towards generating maximum reach and other performance measures ofthe TESLA.

· It generates publicity for each region, city andvillage as they produce their local “first TESLA on the road”.

· The best pictures / videos – e.g. TESLA inPatagonia, TESLA over Monte Carlo, TESLA at the Taj Mahal – can be used forprofessional print and video commercials.

CoLab Bericht "Offene Staatskunst" veröffentlicht und Open Data beim Elektrischen Reporter

2010-10-31T15:46:00.001+01:00

vor ca. zwei Wochen haben wir die zweite Initiative des Internet & Gesellschaft Collaboratory abgeschlossen und die Ergebnisse der Zusammenarbeit im Bericht "Offene Staatskunst: Bessere Politik durch Open Government?" veröffentlicht. Über 30 Experten aus Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft und Zivilgesellschaft haben knapp drei Monate diskutiert und einen ganztägigen Workshop organisiert, auf dem wir unser Verständnis einem Realitätscheck durch ca. 20 Kollegen aus Politik und Ministerien unterzogen. Das Ergebnis kann sich, wie ich finde, wirklich sehen lassen.

Der Bericht entwickelt zunächst eine strategische Perspektive: Wie kann man (speziell als Politiker und Ministerium) die Instrumente des Open Government nutzen um die Legitimität, die Handlungsspielräume und Ergebnisse seiner politischen Arbeit zu verbessern? Das Kapitel fragt provokant "Wie würde Machiavelli sich des Web 2.0 bedienen um seine real-politische Situation zu verbessern?".

Im zweiten Teil behandeln wir das Thema ePartizipation. Das Kapitel erklärt die verschiedenen Einsatzmöglichkeiten, stellt erfolgreiche Beispiele vor und gibt dem Praktiker eine Reihe von Empfehlungen, die bei der Planung und Durchführung einer ePartizipationsInitiative von Nutzen sein kann.

Im letzten Kapitel geht es dann um einen sehr konkreten Aspekt von Offener Staatskunst, es geht um Open Data. Dieses Thema eignet sich besonders gut als Beispiel, da es den Kultur- und Paradigmenwechsel perfekt verkörpert. Bei Open Data geht es (verkürzt) darum, alle Daten des öffentlichen Sektors (die nicht personenbezogen sind) öffentlich im Netz zugänglich zu machen. Ich finde die Experten haben ein außerordentlich guten Text erarbeitet, der diesen Diskurs aufarbeitet und sowohl die Pro als auch die Kontra Argumente verständlich macht.

Am 25.10 beschäftigt sich auch der Elektrische Reporter mit dem Thema Open Data. Das in dem Beitrag sowohl Daniel Dietrich (Editor der CoLab Arbeitsgruppe zu Open Data) als auch Christian Kreutz von www.frankfurt-gestalten.de, der auch an unserem Abschlussworkshop mit diskutierte, mitwirken, freut mit natürlich besonders.

PS: Selbstverständlich liegen auch die Rohdaten unserer dimap-Umfrage zu Open Gov und Open Data auf der Collaboratory Site zum Download bereit.

What I believe

2010-10-03T21:16:00.001+02:00

During my trip to climb peak Korzhenevskaya I had the great pleasure to disconnect from the information overload and hectic that is my urban life. One of the most gratifying experiences was to read Hans Küng's essay "What I believe" in the base-camp sauna.

I knew about Hans Küng before, but this essay is so well written and conveys his mindset in terms of his most fundamental believe so convincing that I now proclaim myself a disciple and promoter of his approach.

A very short background about Hans Küng: He is a German theology professor, who used to train young men who wanted to become priests. However since he had published a book which doubts papal infallibility in 1971 the church's beholder of all dogmata (Mr. Ratzinger) and Küng have a long dispute. Küng began to focus on Ecumenical Theology and developed the axiom:"No Peace Among Nations until Peace Among the Religions" (1991). Over the last decades a global movement has gathered around this axiom and I can simply say: I very much agree and the efforts of the movement are highly sensible.

In fact, given the abhorrent and very counterproductive analysis put forward under the "clash of civilizations" label, Küng's efforts to find and define a "world ethics", as well as a format for peaceful theo-politics (see e.g. the world parliament of religions) hold, in my humble opinion, the key to overcome the challenge of peaceful religious/cultural co-existence.

So what is the essence of Küng's believe? For him the most decisive force that determines each individual human's struggle is whether or not the man or woman has a fundamental "trust in life" - a positive attitude and believe that things will develop in the right direction. He very savvily substantiates and explains his analysis by building e.g. on the work of eminent psychologist Erik Erikson.

I wont attempt to recount the marvelous content of said essay, but rather (1) point you to his book (first 6 pages of the introduction and first Chapter are accessible via Amazon's "Look Inside" and are the same as in the German essay) or if you read German I recommend you "Denkanstöße 2011: Ein Lesebuch aus Philosophie, Kultur und Wissenschaft" which contains the essay I read.

Some weeks ago I contacted the Berlin chapter of the Küng's World Ethics NGO but so far nobody replied to my email. If you happen to know about a good way to further the cause please contact me.

Breaking Borders Award & Reflections about Freedom of Expression online

2010-01-03T16:08:00.005+01:00

This Tuesday Google and Global Voices announced the details and call for nominations for the Breaking Borders Awards, which will honor activists, policy makers and technologists who make a contribution to develop the net as the global forum where netizens around the globe can express themselves and collectively deliberate and discuss ideas. In this post I'd like to share my own take on why freedom of expression is important and highlight some aspects regarding the potential of the net to improve governance and transform social conduct.

On the outset I'd like to set the scope regarding the importance of Freedom of Expression: Nobel economist Amartya Sen famously found that freedom of expression and access to information are fundamental conditions for development. In his analysis, no country in which information is freely disseminated and debated has ever suffered a famine. More broadly, political freedom correlates directly with economic success.

Let me now share my understanding of how internetworked technology advances freedom of expression and societal information sharing/management: One can distinguish between “factual news”, opinion and subjective contextualization.

What happens when reportage comes not from a select few professional sources, but from a multitude of decentralized observers feeding their social networks (and, incidentally, the public)? We see a dramatic increase in transparency—and, through the proliferation of sources, in credibility.

This “reported reality” (from neitzens posting their perspective on Twitter, YouTube, etc.) informed coverage of the recent demonstrations in Tehran and Urumqi. Such reportage will be still more important when, as well as covering breaking news, it brings transparency to institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program.

The other aspect of ”news processing”—analysis and interpretation—traditionally represented the view of an institution or, at its best, sought to deliver a balanced perspective. In times of blogs, social networks and other means of sharing your views online the information you publish defines your identity and how others perceive you; and it transforms and multiplies the original information.

The virality of information (the way it spreads and changes) has long been exploited by marketers and politicians. With the Internet democratizing information—putting a global publishing outlet and, more recently, a mobile live-streaming camera within every netizen's reach—you can not only globally publish your opinion but debate it. The process can have a substantial, and healthy, effect on citizen participation and decision making, and therefore on governance and societal dynamics.

The real pragmatic challenge however is not in the principle of free speech but in the hairy details of balancing it with other rights like privacy, and defining and deciding on defamation, hate speech complaints, etc.. All nations agree, for example, that child pornography should be banned. But individual governments have decided on highly divergent areas where national history necessitates thematic restrictions on freedom of expression.

If content is legal in one country and illegal in another, how do we foster the net’s potential as a global public space?

In my opinion there can, and should, be no final answer: human judgment and mores inevitably change over time. That is why I think two approaches should be pursued: To encourage the creation of national (and possibly international) expert bodies that transparently identify content which is illegal. And to create multistakeholder alliances like the Global Network Initiative, which has embarked on a step-by-step process to ensure good privacy and free speech practices within its constituents' online services.

Professor Lawrence Lessig warns us that the web—combining software (technological) code and legal (social) code—forms a perfect architecture of control. While we are very successful in building globally spanning internetworked technology on the basis of open standards and simple, liberal rules like “running code and rough consensus,”; we have been less successful at rooting our social code in similarly simple and liberal rules: those that nurture human rights.

With the Breaking Borders award Google, Global Voices and Thomson Reuters are looking for your nominations to promote good practices in freedom of expression online.

#NewLife in Berlin working in Google’s Policy Team

2009-10-08T11:33:00.002+02:00

About two weeks ago I started my new job and I thought it would be good to share my first impressions, my vision and motivation.

To start with the basics, I now work in Google’s policy team in Berlin, which is basically my manager Annette and myself (plus Ines in Hamburg).

My scope of work is to promote and co-create reasonable policies in Google products, as well as to work in multi-stakeholder groups to deliberate and help develop sound new media policies for Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Thereby my special focus is to liaison and collaborate with colleagues from academics and civil society. In that regard I am really happy that I can build on and extend my engagement for a humanistic conception of the Internet, advocate for Rights and Principles based internet governance regimes, which enable us to enjoy our Human Rights on the internet.

More concretely I am looking forward to (a) work with all stakeholders on internet and society related questions here in Berlin, (b) contribute to the deliberations about and development of policies that are user-centered, maximize individual freedom and balance the sometimes paradoxical overlaps between fundamental rights e.g. freedom of expression and privacy, or access to knowledge and intellectual property, (c) promote transparency and access to information about public institutions (but also of Google as an organization of public interest)

Oh and my managers endorsed that I continue my work with the multi-stakeholder coalition on Internet Rights and Principles as my 20% project! I am really excited about our current endeavors to draft (in collaboration with APC) a Charter of Human Rights and Principles on the Internet (based on APC’s Internet Rights Charter).
However I want to use this opportunity to state that I believe it is time for the IRP coalition to elect a new chair during this years IGF (as stated in our charter). I will be happy to actively participate and continue in the steering committee (if I will be elected).

But back to my new job at Google. In my view Google has brought us some really remarkable services that have not only shaped the way we use the internet, but how we live and work. I have joined them, because I think it is one of the most interesting workplaces, with a true 21st century organizational culture and colleagues who share my passion for the internet. In my experience Googlers have a genuine interest in working with all interested stakeholders to deliberate and collaboratively find ways to (legally and socially) frame the use of its disruptive innovations, which necessitate innovative policies.

Your Data lives forever on the internet

2009-09-26T13:36:00.002+02:00

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has been thinking and talking about the inability of the Net to forget for quite a while now (ArsTechnica, 2007, (german) re:publica'08: Keynote: Nützliches Vergessen).
Now his new book came out "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age" (Princeton Press)

The balance between privacy and a social online life is not easy to define and implement in practice. Social networking and social media (a.k.a. sharing culture) has become second nature to many of us, while other avoid or even outright reject to "make their private life public".

Allow me to share two aspects, which seem essential to describe and understand (my) social media life:

Networked publics are to be differentiated from the classical terms 'audience' and 'public'. The information I share on internet is interesting and relevant only to a limited group of people, most of which I know personally. One shares information in different groups (publics). And rather than "presenting" to an audience, it is more like a conversation at a (public) party.

The other concept is self-fashioning (wikipedia). A term that was introduced "to describe the process of constructing one's identity and public persona according to a set of socially acceptable standards." Originally applied to how people at the court of Renaissance kings used to design and live their roles like in a theatre play. It remindes me of "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" (Erving Goffman).
Putting information online is a concious act upon which most of us reflect regularly. The image, the mirror of our lifes we share online is a "positive" is a persona perspective.

impressive statistics about social media use and impact

2009-08-17T00:57:00.002+02:00

A friend pointed me to a really nice youtube arguing for the importance of social media using a lot of interesting statisitics (from the US).

you can read all the stats (and links to their respective sources) on his blog.

openDNS - seems to be a decent way of content filtering

2009-07-12T02:51:00.003+02:00

last night i met someone from www.openDns.com (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS). As the name says, they offer a free/open Doman Name resolver and what i thought was quite interesting: they allow for community based (crowdsourced) filtering by categories.

I just signed up for their service to test it. Here is how it works and some reflections:

You select the network you want to have filtered by either choosing one of the categories or doing a custom category filter:

High - Protects against all adult-related sites, illegal activity, social networking sites, video sharing sites, and general time-wasters.
Moderate - Protects against all adult-related sites and illegal activity.
Low -Protects against pornography and phishing.
Minimal- Protects against phishing attacks.
None - Nothing blocked.
Custom - Choose the categories you want to block.

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in their category list they have some pretty strange themes to filter like "Educational Institutions", "search engines" as well as really broad ones like "news & media"

once you selected the "evil" content you dont want your children, roomates or workers to see all you have to do is active the filter and no-one in your IP/network will be able to access these pages. In fact you can define custom messages/pages to be displayed for the different blocked categories.

I am not 100% sure how the system works though. I played around with it and e.g. didn't see a reason why weeklygripe.co.uk or even more strange http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ was tagged (to be decided for blocking) as hate & discrimination. In fact i didn't think any of the sites in that category were reasonably tagged.

In their defense it has to be said that from the 5,399,836 sites submitted only 1,034,372 are aproved for blocking right now.

here are some relevant answers from their FAQs

What Do I Do If A Domain Is Tagged Incorrectly?

If an undecided domain is tagged incorrectly, vote No.

If a decided domain is tagged incorrectly, go to the domain detail page and click the "Flag for review" link.

Community moderators will review all reports.

Who are the moderators?

Moderators are a mix of OpenDNS employees and trusted community members. Moderators are identified throughout the community by a badge .

**And they invite applications to become a moderator from the community.

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so here are my 2 cents worth of thoughts about this approach

A) I think the way the decisions about blocking are made should be described clearer (who has the final say?) and a wikipedia like discussion page would also be helpful

B) having that said, i think it is a rather transparent, community driven and therefore commendable approach

C) it would add substantial value if there was a "suggested warning" category -- so say nazi propaganda gets flagged and a warning page is displayed when a user tries to enter, but if s/he descides s/he wants to see the page there is a link to enter

-------------------

Interestingly Prof. David Casacuberta and myself had envisioned a relatively similar service in our 2007 article "Do we need new rights in Cyberspace? Privacy and the Need for an Internet Bill of Rights ", presented at the GigaNet Symposium 2007 and published in Enrahonar 40/41

Allow me to quote:

"Lets imagine the institution managing the cyber address assignment includes meta-information regarding the content of the information and service provided. This would enable, for example, the classification of content to be only appropriate for mature users as well as the insertion of a informative page advising the user of the quality of the content. This upstream page would also allow for public discourse and collective assessment of content provided at the site. This way there is no enforcement of particular axiological dispositions in the form of restraining the freedom of expression but vulgar and extremist content would be classified and debated."

-------------------------------

Lastly i looked and it seems quite easy/possible to "hack" (=circumvent) the openDNS system. You can go to the sites IP directly, or you can use a proxy server.

Also it seems that openDNS finds pretty interesting (value added) services to complement their core functionality. For example you/the admin can define shortcuts to point to urls; so you can define that the word "mail" points to your webmail etc.

I would be interested what you think about their system. For me it is clear that openDNS is operating in a space that is very relevant to internet governance so i would like to invite them to join our efforts and discussions; and if possible come to the IGF so we can work with them "in real life".

Fotos:: Climbing the Chief:: Squamish - BC Canada

2009-07-06T02:06:00.003+02:00

just came back from a really nice climbing trip in canada. Here are some impressions:

Schooling is the best way to fight terror & under development

2009-07-02T05:42:00.003+02:00

What i stated in the title is no news, but it is always encouraging to see someone really making a difference and putting theory to practice: Enter Greg Mortenson

Greg is a mountaineer who "climbed Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain in the Karakoram range.
While recovering from the climb in a village called Korphe, Mortenson met a group of children sitting in the dirt writing with sticks in the sand, and made a promise to help them build a school.

From that rash promise, grew a remarkable humanitarian campaign, in which Mortenson has dedicated his life to promote education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As of 2009, Mortenson has established over 90 schools in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 34,000 children, including 24,000 girls, where few education opportunities existed before."

Chapeau - it is a reminder that we can all really make a difference if we choose to do so!

Greg has written a book about his venture - read about it @ www.threecupsoftea.com

Values in (technology) Design

2009-07-02T05:28:00.002+02:00

I had a very productive meeting with Eddan Katz from the Electronic Fountier Foundation last Thursday. At the end of our conversation we found out that we both have a passion philosophy (of technology) and he recommended me the work on values in (technology) design done at the Center for Science, Technology & Society at Santa Clara University and e.g. by Helen Nissenbaum (Professor @ New York University) as well as Batya Friedman (Professor @ University of Washington).

On my travels up to Vancouver/Squamish i had some time to review their work and i really really like it. It is a super interesting approach to getting Human Rights included into technology planing and policy development.

Please if you know of similar approaches or other peoples work in this area please comment or contact me directly. I am especially interested in cultural differences in technology use & design.
Thanks in advance!

Emotions ~> Values ~> Rights - An Inspiring TED talk

2009-06-20T23:06:00.002+02:00

Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the emotional world of the Web:

also the two projects sites are interesting

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

Universe, which explores the notions of modern mythology and contemporary constellations.
http://universe.daylife.com/ -- background: http://universe.daylife.com/statement.html

this made me think of Neil Postman's "grand narratives" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Education)

In the second part of the book, Postman proposes 5 narratives as possible alternatives to the current ones:

"Spaceship Earth" (the notion of humans as stewards of the planet)
"The Fallen Angel" (a view of history and the advancement of knowledge as a series of errors and corrections)
"The American Experiment" (the story of America as a great experiment and as a center of continuous argument)
"The Laws of Diversity" (the view that difference contributes to increased vitality and excellence, and, ultimately, to a sense of unity)
"The Word Weavers/The World Makers" (the understanding that the world is created through language — through definitions, questions, and metaphors)

---------------------

basically i would suggest to frame our "human rights online" story as a complementary (sub)narrative of this kind. something like "one free and fair global (online) community" what do you think?

Google's Data Libertation Front

2009-06-10T22:42:00.004+02:00

I just learned that there is a Google code team working to enable users to extract their data (email, contacts, blog-posts, etc.) and move it between different services. That would put the users in the driving seat regarding data ownership and increase competition on data security and privacy.

Here are the Goals of the Data Liberation Front as stated:

Liberate data across web services.
Make that data portable across cooperating web services.
Allow users to own their own data which is submitted to the Cloud.
Do anything else to allow users to have fine-grained, easy access, and control of their data.

This is pretty much along the lines of what Eric Schmitt was saying back in 2006:

We build a very good targeting engine and a lot of business success has come from that. We run the company around the users–so as long as we are respecting the rights of end users and make sure we don’t do anything against their interest, we are fine,” Schmidt said. He noted that history has shown that the downfall of companies can be doing things for their own self interest. “We would never trap user data,” (ZDnet interview, bold added)

Really looking forward to learn more about this initiative!

You can follow them on twitter: http://twitter.com/dataliberation

Slack-Lining [watch out HIGHLY ADDICTIVE]

2009-06-10T06:45:00.005+02:00

it seemed 1000% impossible, but then i tried and it was instant fun; and then it became my new obsession: Slack-lining is a thoroughly fascinating, meditative sport of balancing on a super-easy-to-setup sort-of tight rope ;-)

I guess it's most easily explained by a little video we shot next to my current home in palo alto. I am still very very beginner but who cares it was fun from the very first second i tried ;-)

So believe it or not I have already summoned basically everybody who met me over the last couple of weeks onto the slack-line and so far (a) they all had fun and (b) everybody was able to balance for at least a couple of seconds after about a 30 min session. IT'S REALLY RELATIVELY EASY. I am not saying it's easy, but the learning curve is just amazing. The first time feels impossible, but then with every second you spend on the line your body learns.
And that is a very interesting feature, it's not cognitive or intellectual learning it is only your body that learns to balance.
It is one of the most pure feelings of Flow (see wikipedia entry for psychological state of flow) i have ever experienced in my life. It is really just amazing and certainly more exciting than participating in a beard competition ;-)

It is pretty amazing what people do on these slack-lines. Watch e.g. this guy doing a back-loop landed on the freakin line:

But the real professionals are without a doubt the circus artists:

Here is another pretty crazy video Aye just send me: Dean Potter BaseLining (basejumping of a high-line that your balance on)

Best Firefox Plugins

2009-06-08T02:37:00.006+02:00

i have quite a number of firefox plug-ins installed, but really the ones that adds most value are

Googlepedia This very simple plugin adds a wikipedia search to all your google searches and displays the wikipedia page to the right of your google results.

Search Cloudlet - which adds a tag-cloud displaying the most used words on top of your google searches. The clue is that you can either increase the importance of the terms in cloud or exclude them from the search.

And last but definitely not least i installed AdBlock Plus, which actually really eliminates a big percentage of the banners and ad-words on websites all over the net (e.g. spiegel.de and google)
http://adblockplus.org/en/

What are your most useful plugins?

Best of Amsterdam [Travel Recommendations]

2009-06-04T22:35:00.003+02:00

Last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting with Howard in Amsterdam and I would like to recommend you the places I really liked:

www.canvasopde7e.nl/ - has a really nice roof terrace overlooking Amsterdam, really good food and it turns into a club at night

P96.nl is one of the very few houseboat cafes

Trouw Club - really good music - mixed and bouncing crowd - i liked shakin' that boody again ;-)

Jordino.nl - has the best choclate/pralines i have had in my life - period

Saunadeco.nl - is a supernice art deco spa - i did not have the time to go but Howard went and really likes it

and last but not least we took a pretty nice boat ride on our private little party barge. Marcel runs the business and he can be reached under bootvaren@gmail.com or 0642302209 (he also has a really nice little houseboat for rent)

OK hope this works for you next time you are in amsterdam!

Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives

2009-05-13T12:50:00.003+02:00

This is probably the most entertaining, enlightening and pragmatically useful analysis/explanation for how/why there are such fundamentally different moral mindsets.

I am off to read his 2007 Science article http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/

Steinbeis-Transfer-Institut Information Ethics ( STI-IE )

2009-04-10T13:40:00.003+02:00

Over Christmas I met one of my academic-philosophic role models, Rafael Capurro. It was a gray german winter day, and as always when i meet an established elder I admire, I was full of excitement and a bit nervous. I am always especially nervous, when i meet intellectual specialists (Prof. Capurro has created the philosophy of angeletics and is one of the top authorities in information ethics). I know my scholarship is genuine and holistic, but because it is highly transdisciplinary it must be eclectic, hence it many times lacks in-depth genealogy of the respective field in question, which makes me a bit un-easy because many academics tend to judge their conversation partners based on what they know about their field.

Anyways, the meeting was a true intellectual and friendly encounter. We talked and philosophized for six hours straight, and I believe both of us had the understanding that we'd meet many times, collaborate and deliberate about the themes that matter to us (ethics and values in cyberspace, info-ethics, philosophy of technology, etc.).

On my next visit, some weeks later, we helt a short interview for the Internet Rights and Principles coalition (listen to mp3) and we agreed to setup a explorative survey about 'values on the internet' (please contribute!) meant to produce qualitative data, which we plan to use as basis for more research.

During that visit I also learned that Prof. Capurro and Dr. Michael Nagenborn had just setup the Steinbeis-Transfer-Institut Information Ethics (STI-IE), and I felt really honored when they asked me to join their international advisory board.

About two weeks ago we had the first board-meeting (adjunct to a symposium on Prof. Capurro's angeletics) and as expected i was impressed by the high academic competence, as well as cultural and geographical diversity of my peers in this community.

"The STI-IE envisions an international as well as intercultural cooperation focusing on the ethical impacts of information technology on human practices and thinking, particularly on social, economic, political, scientific and cultural interaction.
The STI-IE is devoted to academic research as well as to practical projects."

So if you plan to work on a project within that scope or if you are looking for a partner to address relevant aspects in a project you work on, please feel free to contact either me or Prof. Capurro.

What educators (and other media/) can learn (or Scott McCloud rocks)

2009-04-10T13:21:00.003+02:00

when you understand experience as the basis for learning, and when you realized that new social multimedia networks are replacing old text-book / frontal teaching knowledge container transfer methods; then Scott McCloud's TED talk about how human storytelling evolved to the high art of comic books, should be inspiring regarding how we can/should/must design knowledge ecologies that take advantage of the this amazing n-dimensional interactive canvas that is cyberspace.

Towards a Humanistic Conception of Cyberspace. A Twofold Challenge for Netizens Mobilizing for a Democratic Internet Governance

2009-03-27T14:21:00.004+01:00

I am happy to point you to the article i co-authored with Elena Pavan and Konstantinos Komaitis for the GIGANET Symposium 2008. It has just been published @ Fascicle I. Economics and Applied Informatics (The Annals of Dunărea de Jos University)

UDATE: Here is the full paper we presented @ the giganet symposium as Script or as pdf download

please reference as: Pavan, E., Senges, M., & Komaitis, K. (2009). Towards a Humanistic Conception of Cyberspace. A Twofold Challenge for Netizens Mobilizing for a Democratic Internet Governance. The Annals of “Dunarea de Jos” University of Galati. Economics and Applied Informatics, 1.

and here is the abstract and bibliography from the journal:

Towards a Humanistic Conception of Cyberspace. A Twofold Challenge for Netizens Mobilizing for a Democratic Internet Governance

http://www.ann.ugal.ro/eco/Doc2009/ElenaPavan_MaxSenges_KonstantinosKomaitis.pdf

Modular Human Readable Privacy Policies Initiative

2009-03-01T23:20:00.009+01:00

a multistakeholder group of privacy, internet & new media experts (including me:) are working on developing an approach to have modular human-readable privacy policies. The idea pretty much is to do what creative commons has done to copy-right -- make it possible to really easily see what is happening with your data when you sign up for a service and thereby making it a relevant business point for marketing / quality-branding / differentiator.

Please review our wiki-site, spread the word and join the team @ the privacy OS wiki!

I tried to visualize the situation:

SOOOoooooo.........ooooOOOOOoo
the long term vision is to start and work with privacy - and then move to other rights like Freedom of Expression

Ideas For MicroEntrepreneurs

2009-02-18T13:20:00.005+01:00

Don't you also keep wondering how many peddlers are selling this super-cheap toys, candy and roses? So quite some time ago i had the idea to start a collection of business ideas (products and services) for mirco-entrepreneurs. I started to take pictures of things & services that can (more or less) be easily build (bricolaged) by oneself.

Unfortunately i never really catalouged these pictures (so most are on some backup somewhere ;-( BUT i just recently took a couple which i now uploaded to start this collection.

For now you will find some examples of (1) inspiring and not-standard masks, (2) artsy objects like colored stones, a mobile; (3) furniture and some other things i thought might transpose well into other micro-entrepreneurial contexts.

You are more than welcome to send me your ideas and pictures. I plan to develop a more comprehensive web-knowledge-base on the subject of micro-entrepreneurship over the next years.

Some years ago i visited the DrapArt festival in Barcelona and they had a whole product range of things that could be build with some simple tools and materials that were thrown away. Check out their website @ www.drapart.org/en/

Edit: i dont know what's up with this picasa embed, but i edited twice and it doesnt show up nicely in my browser - so if it doesnt work for you please go to http://picasaweb.google.com/maxsenges/MicroEntrepreneurship?feat=directlink

US Idealism Pragmatism vs. French post-modern meme archiology

2009-02-12T09:11:00.003+01:00

Still one of the best YouTube videos i have ever found, this Noam Chomsky | Michel Foucault debate from 1971 is an intellectual delicatess (and the awesome hippie atmosphere adds even visual appeal).

Sidenote: Isn't it cool how these two über-intellectuals claim to talk to each other, while speaking on completely different subjects ;-) Chomsky first elaborates on conditions/components for an ideal social order - then Foucault counters by saying he doesnt even understand the current system and speaks about power - to what Chomsky replies he needs the ideal to inform his actions. Or might there be a connection after all??

Entrepreneurial Learning Article co-authored with JSB and Howard Rheingold

2009-02-10T10:52:00.002+01:00

Last year, while working and living in the Bay Area, i had the pleasure to get to know John Seely Brown and Howard Rheingold and the three of us stuck our heads together and co-authored an article entitled "Entrepreneurial learning in the networked age: How new learning environments foster entrepreneurship and innovation" which has been published in the Paradigms Journal of the Catalan Ministry of Innovation, Universities and Enterprise

this is soo microsoft.... and the real world has a sense for humor

2009-02-04T14:44:00.003+01:00

The german mag "der spiegel" just made me aware of a super funny story: Microsoft has released a pretty interesting new software called SongSmith. It records your singing and adds more or less "harmonic" rythems and instrumental sounds around it. The result is a more or less song-like piece of music. Quite frankly i like the idea and the resulting product does produce bearable songs that seem to be fun and creative to produce (see below). But before i show you what the web community used it for - awesomly funny re-makes of blockbuster classic songs in exemplary creative commons re-mix style - you have to check out this incredibly stupid, dull, old-school advertisment Microsoft dared to publish:

and here a pretty cool Queen re-make:

virtual xmas present & max' life's venture

2009-01-11T12:11:00.002+01:00

It has become a tradition for me to share a mash-up of my "Best Brainfood of the Year" as my virtual present with my friends and peers. This year i selected books, videos, sites, and services waiting to be cognitively unwrapped right below the few paragraphs about what happened in my life in 2008:

My year was dominated by my experiences in the bay area (San Francisco):

Stanford's d.School
dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

During my post-doc in Stanford i learned in & about the d.school, which is the best educational institution i have ever seen. Why is it so great? Because it is an environment where creative thinkers coach transdisciplinary teams of learners to design adequate innovative solutions (to any kind of problem) - they teach design thinking - hence d.school is a mindset and a set of solution development practices - @ d.school knowledge is created and enacted rather than consumed and memorized.

Startup Experience @ Supecool School
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssupercool
During my time in California i also met Steli Efti, the founder of SupercoolSchool. Steli became my best friend in the area and SupercoolSchool.com became "my first start-up". The idea is really really supercool: it's a webplatform that offers a marketplace for learning (it allows you to say i want to learn X and team up with others with the same interest). I am "only" an adviser to the company, but it really feels like my baby and it provided the opportunity to live the life of a silicon valley entrepreneur (meetings with venture capitalist, pitching, bootstrapping, networking, organization building...). If you are interested to learn more, I co-authored an article with John Seely Brown, and Howard Rheingold "Entrepreneurial learning in the networked age: How new learning environments foster entrepreneurship and innovation" where we discuss Supercool School. I also wrote several substantial pieces on our educational philosophy. It will be amazing to see our baby grow up! Please come and join our educational revolution!

Research @ Google
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After a great summer Europe VW-bus road-trip to a friends wedding in Greece I returned to California to do a research project investigating learning & leadership development practices @ Google. During the two months there i interviewed more than 20 Googlers and Nooglers (new googlers) and deliberated with veteran managers on Google as a Complex Adaptive System - I'd say my initiation into Google culture and practices has been versatile & profound and i am now ready to roll up my sleeves and apply the insights gained. In short, my experience there was supercool and I am looking forward to work with my Google peers in 2009.

Yosemite
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Oh and i climbed of course. Man, do they have great rock in Yosemite (some pics)! I spend almost every second weekend there and after adapting to the craziness of traditional climbing i slowly but surely did longer and longer climbs (up to about 1000m = 16 rope lengths = 16 hours) including my first big wall - where we slept on a little ledge at about 300m.

Internet Governance & Human Rights on the Internet & India
<:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:>
In 2008 i accepted to coordinate the Dynamic Coalition on an Internet Bill of Rights. It is a true challenge: super complex discourse space, globally dispersed volunteer participants, etc. etc. nevertheless for me it's the perfect cause. To contribute actively to the humanization of Internet Governance and thereby help shape how we participate in Cyberspace & network societies is for me the most rational citizen/netizen engagement. And it is highly rewarding; I learn and become competent in pragmatic leadership, political alliance building, (online) collaboration and community building, plus it is great for networking and social capital building. Lastly it is a fascinating field for academic reflection (I co-authored two papers and participated for the first time in GigaNet's conference planning committee).

The yearly gathering - the UN lead Internet Governance Forum (IGF) - happened to be in India. The timing was tight, but i squeezed in one week of travels before the conference. The quest was clear: full immersion in indian culture, "instant expert" in indian philosophy and of course inner peace and happiness in an ashram crash-course ... impossible to convey what happened in this mail, but we can surely have a good conversation next time we meet. In short i fell in love with the country, i feel humble (with regards to the insights of modern western philosophy) and a deep respect for the human centeredness and idealistic foundation of indian philosophy/spirituality.

Social Media & Virtual Communities @ UOC
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUOC

In december Howard Rheingold and myself started to work with a team from UOC.edu to develop a Social Media & Virtual Communities Strategy and conduct 4 pilot projects to foment virtual community building and collaboration. So far the kick-off workshops went really good and i am looking forward to co-lead this knowledge entrepreneurship initiative meant to appropriate internet based innovations into a university (= my phd theme).

And here are my brainfood recommendation:

BOOKS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis - a man who lives his life to the fullest, a man who acts, a man with a examplary life philosophy; a great book about the flow, the energy, the unplanability of life; a book of down to earth pragmatic philosophy of the heart not the lofty intellectual philosophy of the post-modern refelctive citizen. [This book is considered THE modern greek classic]

Goodbye Tristesse by Camille de Toledo - the first intellectual social-critique of substance i read who is my age (30). The book is fun to read, because he uses our language, because he sees the world through the eyes of someone who came of age between the 9th of November 1989 (when the Berlin wall came down) and 11th of September 2001. Sarcastic post-modern french intellectual.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera superb Kundera style tales of life; Kundera has a unique skill to mash psycho-analysis with rich and engaging stories that hit the essence of what's "really going on" when people accept, revoke or shape their destiny.

When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin D. Yalom entertaining (fictional) contest and dialogue between Nietzsche's radical life-philosophy and (Breuer/Freud's) psycho-analysis; wrapped in a well designed storyboard situated in Freud's Vienna.

FABULOUS FLICKS (Movies)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The City Of Lost Children (1995) if you liked Amelie and Delicatessen this one is right down your ally. Rather sur-realistic somehow darkish fairytale.

Into the Wild - i guess it comes as no suprise that this movie about a guy who leaves civilization to live in the wilderness of alska speaks to me, and i believe most of you will like it (at least as a thought experiment)

Tropa de Elite (2007) same atmosphere and intensity as City of God. Hard core, hyper-real impressions from Brazil's social dillema.

Serenity (2005) - really nice Star War's style science fiction

Maria Full Of Grace (2004) - this one is heart breaking. Story of a young columbian girl who becomes a coke smuggler. I don't know why exactly, but this movie was really really intense. I guess it was because the main actress does an outstanding job and the director manged to produce a super credible setting.

No Country For Old Men - Coen brothers at their best; modern city-cowboy adrenalin with strangeness mix

Charlie Wilson's War (2007) - tells the story of a politician who runs the US foreign affairs committee on afganistan in the 70/80ies and describes how he created a war there. I am not sure how much of the movie is based on historic facts, but the movie claims to be based on a true story.

I.Heart.Huckabbes (2004) - surrealistic funny - something for the whole (post-modern) family

SERVICES & Tools
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
- drop.io is a place where you can drop up to 100MB files (or you can fax, email, call to the "drop-box"), no registration, but password protected if you want, and the best is it's sooooo simple everyone can use it instantaneously

- Ubiquity - the modular mash-up web we will take for granted in a couple of years - http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

***The apple side of life (Best Free Mac Tools):***

- Copy & Paste Pro - is a tiny tool that remembers the last 30 things (text snippets, pix, files) you copied and gives you a shortcut (double paste) so you can select which one you want to paste - i experiment with many services over the year, Copy & Paste Pro is by far the most useful new tool i have adopted this year. I use it about 100 times everyday.

- Quicksilver - makes starting all programs much faster - ctrl + space and the first letters of the program name replaces looking and clicking around before you found the right launch icon.

WEB SELECTION
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Best documantary about kids' internet use: FRONTLINE: growing up online: watch the full program | PBS

Supercool videos explaining social media, wikis etc. so your grandma will understand: The Common Craft Show | Common Craft - Explanations In Plain English

A real utopia! 1800 people who live together in india Where is Auroville and how to get there?

Does the internet change the way we perceive the world? Is Google Making Us Stupid? (New York Times article)

TED videos are cult: Clay Shirky on institutions vs. collaboration | Video on TED.com

My good friend and mentor: Howard Rheingold on collaboration | Video on TED.com

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I hope you find something meaningful amongst the recommendations above!

and i am of course looking forward to hear from you and hopefully spend some time with you in 2009

happy holidays
Max

Notorious Prankster

2008-12-30T12:33:00.004+01:00

This very very naughty fellow frenchmen pulls a thousand unique "he can no do THAT" pranks (he is a living legend amongst french - the stunts are not staged): http://www.nimportequi.com/

KANGOUROU (REMI GAILLARD)
by nqtv

Humanizing Internet Governance

2008-12-23T20:35:00.003+01:00

The two papers i co-authored for this years Symposium of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) are available for download from the conference site:

The Humanization of Internet Governance: A Roadmap Towards a Comprehensive Global (Human) Rights Architecture for the Internet, together with Wolfgang Benedek and Matthias Ketteman paper presented at 3rd GigaNet Symposium.

Toward a Humanistic Conception of Cyberspace. A Twofold Challenge for Netizens Mobilizing for a Democratic Internet Governance, together with Elena Pavan and Konstantin Komaitis presented at 3rd GigaNet Symposium

The Path Towards Centralization of Internet Governance Under the UN

2008-12-08T14:51:00.004+01:00

An interesting article appeared on Publius Project "Essays and conversations about constitutional moments on the Net collected by the Berkman Center". The article discusses ten steps that are (in the opinion of the author) bound to hinder the creation of a good Internet Governance (IG) regime.

Very provocative and a good "checkpoint" to have in mind when shaping IG

Reflections On "Fear of Knowledge" by Boghossian

2008-11-12T04:44:00.002+01:00

Boghossian has surely written a well informed and thoroughly argued book entitled "Fear of Knowledge". And I have to admit in most cases he was able to make me doubt what I would call my “common sense” approach to knowledge . What Prof. Boghossian proclaims in very elaborate terms is that there is a historic evolution and that there exists a factual world outside of our cognition , and I won’t argue that it doesn’t seem to me like that.

However I found several sections where I think he is a bit out of balance, but I will focus on two fundamental problems with his well crafted rationalization. He himself states one contradiction on page 78, where he writes: “We ourselves seem to acknowledge that WE CANNOT HOPE TO DEMONSTRATE THE CORRECTNESS OF AN EPISTEMIC SYSTEM BY USING THAT VERY SYSTEM”. (emphasis added)

A) He is dealing with facts/truth/knowledge on a meta-level, because he already uses the we clause, hence indicating that his demonstration makes only sense when communicated with others

B) He is right – how can you possibly claim you are right based on your own observation.

I think that my relativism has is based on reason. It allows me to engage in constructive – as in productive/diplomatic/sythesis-seeking communication .

Hence a relativist position allows to accept the fact that you might be wrong (and as a package/worldview) allow to disregard aspects of believe e.g. religious, that you don’t share without disrespecting other positions – one theme at a time.

I’d describe my Weltanschauung in this case as pragmatic relativistic (rather than radical relativism).

At one point Boghossian uses the example of the perception that the world is flat, while in reality it is a sphere. Isn’t that a wonderful example of the usefulness of pragmatic relativist thinking: in everyday life the world is flat, for aeronautical engineers the earth is a sphere, but to a theoretical physisist the earth is a space with tons of molecules in a quantum state. It makes sense to accept ‘facts’ relative to what you want to do.

Especially in the case of scientific knowledge I am with Habermas’ existence–reality split. In this view existence describes the world of objective factual truth (as in the objects that you see in front of you) and existence is gradually (say hyperbolically) verified with the amount of observations that coincide. However just because you and nobody else has ever seen a pink elephant doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist – as discussed at length by philosophers of science under the theme of induction. It results that once again my pragmatism solves the problem – as long as the existing insight provides correct explanations to the phenomena I will use it as reference.
Or in other words so is my reality. Because reality is in Habermasian terms nothing but what one individually believes to be true. Hence each individual lives or constructs his/her own reality.

Which brings us to the second component, constructivism. It is relevant only for the description of the human construction of knowledge in the brain, rather than the collective construction and codification of scientific insights in the noosphere. Both are constructed, but on very different scales/dimensions.

I believe in radical constructivism (ala Watzlawick). The brain constructs reality out of the experience it is exposed to.

I have to end here (I just cant find more time right now), but if you want to engage in a discussion, feel free to comment – and I will follow up.

Also please check out the cyberphilosophy collaboratory some friends and myself just started.

you say Ohhh we say BAMA - what a great celebration

2008-11-06T08:33:00.005+01:00

this was the most emotional and uplifting democratic experience ever - and i wasn't even able to vote ;-) No but really, i have never experienced anything similar - masses of people celebrating, taking over the streets - a stereo and a DJ emerged from nowhere and smiling faces all over...WOW i am really proud of this new generation of americans, i am so happy this country which has so many great people and that has so much power is reigned again by someone who is really smart and whats even more important who spreads hope and the spirit of optimism around the world - let's go and make this planet a better place - Yes we can.

Best Docu on Kids and the Internet

2008-10-31T06:51:00.002+01:00

my sister always asks me what she should allow her kids to do online. It's a difficult question to answer, because she doesn't really understand what's going on so everytime i end up explaining here what this or that service is in the first place.

But as a good uncle i do reflect quite a bit about what my nephews and nice should be doing online and from a professional perspective i am really intrigued to understand how they can exploit the net for learning and "contextual intelligence booster'(checking wikipedia etc.).

Anyways PBS has produced a really good documentary about the reasons why kids love their online lifes and what's good and what's bad about it. I really have to say that this is probably the best docu on the subject i have ever seen!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/view/main.html

Goooo Barack!! Groovy Obama Vibes

2008-10-29T17:35:00.002+01:00

The US elections end race is really giving me goose bumps and shivers. Depending whether i hear and think about the positive vibes and epochal advancement should Obama win, or whether i think about what a sad and scary scenario will unfold in case the world has to deal with a new rendition of a conservative commander in chief fear-monger.

Well, next week we'll know - that much is for sure. For now check out these pretty groovy Obama support songs:

Yes We Can - Will.i.am (Black Eyed Peas)

Coco Tea - Barak Obahama

PRINCE THOMPSON - Obama Reggea

GOOOOOO Barack!!!!!

I love these Statistics

2008-10-17T07:24:00.004+02:00

I usually argue for qualitative analysis, because i believe that statistical data might be good in describing trends, but it does not determine the individual case (which is what is IMHO most relevant most of the time).

In this TED video Hans Rosling presents some amazing data very nicely animated and passionately commented:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

Book chapter published: Virtual worlds as environment for learning communities

2008-09-24T14:55:00.004+02:00

I am happy to announce that the chapter i wrote together with Marc (Ludo) Alier (Sciences of Education Institute, UPC, Spain) in "Knowledge Networks: The Social Software Perspective" (editors: M. D. Lytras, R. Tennyson & P. O. d. Pablos) is available @ e.g. Amazon

Here is the abstract:

This chapter discusses the potential of three dimensional virtual worlds as venue for constructivist learning communities. To reach a balanced answer to the question whether virtual worlds are likely to evolve into satisfying educational instruments (1) Authors retrace the historic trajectory of virtual world development and computer based learning, second they describe how (2) learning communities function in general and how virtual worlds in particular can be exploited for collective educational experiences. With this basis, authors then present (3) a structured analysis of the strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) found to bound the potential of SecondLife for institutionalized learning based on their expertise from working and teaching in virtual worlds. In conclusion authors argue that a critical but optimistic approach towards virtual learning environments (and SecondLife in particular) is adequatee. In their assessment virtual worlds bear great opportunities for educational purposes; however most of today’s educational institutions will be challenged to encompass the informal and holistic learning scenario.

Just drop me a line and I am happy to send you a working draft of the chapter.

Concetrated multitasking and lost linear comprehension - what's cognitively happening when we are online

2008-09-20T15:43:00.003+02:00

Some reflections on Nick Carr's pretty good article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?":
In general i have to commend him for writing a thought provoking article and I agree with his core argument: "The more [we] use the Web, the more [we] have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing."

But Scott Karp gives a good counter argument - in his reflections about the Atlantic's piece: "Maybe the reason why Nick and so many other literati are losing their patience with long form information is that it is so fundamentally inefficient and inferior to connected bits of information."

What i would like to add is that the even more fundamental shift is not the way we perceive information (surf the net) but how we are engaging and participating in the discourse (by blogging, etc.), hence not only taking in, but creatively processing the info. The web has the potential to transform couch-potatoes in creative activists!

But coming back to reading and concentration: I think Nick has a point in saying we don't read linear and the text must also keep us interested - in fact i have read at least 6 comments embedded in the article by an web-annotation service called diigo, and one of the comments send me off to read half of Scott's response to Nick quoting him. My point support's Scott's: We are searching, identifying and continuously critically assessing all the information opportunities we have in front of us - as I see it: the amount of relevant info processing is really high while on the other hand it is true that this type of learning/experiencing information has become my dominant style and it costs me to following one long linear experience.

After a quick google search resulting in a wikipedia lookup to confirm that my conceptualization is reasonable, I would like to also critique Nick's use of the term concentration: He writes: "Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text." Again I agree in principal, but it is attention span that is shorter, because there is a related/networked task or piece of information that draws the attention. Nevertheless i claim that when i - like now - working with 16 tabs and 8 programs open (involved in about 4/5 different work tracks) i am in a very concentrated (alert) state of mind. What's happening is I am jumping between tasks to maximize my productivity. While working on a task I am either instigated to switch to another by a thought triggering idea i perceived, or there is a certain boredom or lack of creative thought which drives me to look through the options running on the machine. No matter what is exactly going on with Being online (i am reflecting on these themes in the Cyberphilosophy classes @ SupercoolSchool) i would describe my state of mind as concentrated multitasking.

On a side note - I really grumbled when i read the following taylor'ist quote in Nick's article: “In the past the man has been first,” Taylor declared; “in the future the system must be first.”
Wow - know your enemy: This is exactly the contrary to what John Seely Brown, Howard Rheingold and myself are writing about in an article about the use of technology for humanistic education.

Rapping Physicists

2008-09-13T17:59:00.005+02:00

Some folks at the CERN research center produced a rap video about what they are researching with the Large Hadron Collider. It uses original footage from the center, so you can see the actual machinery and visualization tools etc.

the future of browsing / web-collabloration

2008-08-08T00:48:00.004+02:00

peter - a.k.a. the waving cat - pointed me to a really interesting video in which mozilla's concept browser labs showcase their vision of web-browsing/collaboration. Really cool interfaces. And I really liked the idea of having "objects"/mini-programs/macros that i can use e.g. to do certain things like visualization of tables, searching & clustering information, etc. etc. etc.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Tuolumne Meadows (Yosemite)

2008-07-22T02:50:00.006+02:00

I usually spear you the misery of my weekend adventures, but in this case I can not hold back - it was probably the most intense climbing i did in a long time (12 pitches fairview dome, 5 pitches cathedral, and 5 pitches eichorn pinnacle - all in two days).

(some pix are taken from the web)

next - car design revolution

2008-07-16T17:55:00.003+02:00

this morning i had one of these moments when you find something on the net which makes you think - Jeeez that might well be the beginning of a very new way of doing X - in this case "build cars". Ideo's Diego Rodriguez commented in his metacool blog about BMW's GINA prototype:

Hail the Peer-Production Revolution

2008-07-04T20:12:00.003+02:00

Yochai Benkler is possibly the man with the most convincing argument for a knowledge work revolution based on the radical change regarding the control of the means of production.

If you have not heard of his thesis developed in wealth of networks you have to watch this TED video. If you know about his work watch this video to re-engage, he is really convincing:

(should the video not work for you go here)

delicious visualizations

2008-07-04T07:07:00.003+02:00

inspired by the hypergraph tool i blogged about in my last post i thought that delicious would be a great playground for this kind of visual navigation. and sure enough, there is a ton of really nice and (possibly :) usefull interfaces designed already. The only one's I handpicked:

Revealicious allows for pretty neat bubble network diagram style browsing of your bookmarks

Delicious Mind i haven't tried it out yet, but it looks like an awesome app which allows you to make a mindmap out of your delicious tags

please send me if you find widget style visualization in the hypergraph direction Please comment or contact me!

Hypergraph for navigation

2008-06-27T18:27:00.002+02:00

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

2008-06-27T02:07:00.003+02:00

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...

2008-06-17T19:19:00.003+02:00

...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!

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.
A Discordian Shall Always use the Official Discordian Document Numbering System.
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).
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.
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

2008-06-17T04:33:00.003+02:00

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

2008-06-10T20:04:00.002+02:00

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/

Virtual World "Activism" inspires pro-Kremlin Political Action

2008-05-30T07:17:00.002+02:00

something strange, innovative and remarkably funny happened the other day at a news conference by the former chess world champion Kasparov. While he was talking to the press about the Russian opposition movement, he was disturbed by a remote controlled mini-helicopter modified to look like a penis. Now this is strange "panorama" news which i wouldn't mention on my blog. What makes this intervention truly unique is that the young pro-kremlin activists took that idea from an earlier incident in SecondLife where a group of anti-capitalist hackers disturbed a press conference by in-world real-estate tycoon Anshe Chung.

To my knowledge this is the first time that political activism from a virtual world was copied in a real world scenario.

Great Modern Art

2008-05-24T20:24:00.004+02:00

Mr. Stylewalker has spotted some really innovative, beautiful, awesome, argentinian modern art:

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

THANKS!

eLearning Social Media Competence

2008-05-20T17:58:00.003+02:00

Some weeks ago i learned about Howard Rheingold's project to develop an online environment and curriculum to have students learn and practice Being (social) online and developing a Voice in the global cyber-discourse. Howard has summoned a team consisting of Samuel Rose, Brian Christiansen and myself to develop the online classroom and the course design for the Collaboratory.
Brian has created a great little video introducing the project's aim and components:

http://blip.tv/file/920630/

Holy Moly: iFlew

2008-05-15T19:03:00.003+02:00

continuing the practice to post "private storries" if i feel that they might be interesting and relevant, i would like to share my excitement about www.iflysfbay.com.

I went indoor skydiving yesterday with my nephew and my niece; And IT ROCKED. I really really liked it, so go check it out if you have one of the 14 Ifly centers near you.

That's me:

And tha's a video (not me:)

Supercool School Introducation & How to (May 2008)

2008-05-13T03:24:00.003+02:00

i finally managed to produce a screencast introducing the facebook application and live online classroom of www.supercoolschool.com

Social Media in Cyberspace & the public sphere

2008-04-08T05:27:00.008+02:00

I recently had the chance to meet Howard Rheingold - godfather of the study and practice of virtual community building. We had a really interesting conversation and i am really excited to work, co-think and design a social media classroom.

Most of our philosophizing dealt however with the fundamental effects human expansion into cyberspace can potentially have. The next day I attended a class on Social Media Howard is teaching in Berkley and fittingly the theme of cyberspace and the public sphere was discussed.

Rather than paraphrasing his argument i found the following quote (1):

"Although civic engagement encompasses many dimensions, this chapter focuses on participation in the public sphere through direct experience with online publishing, discourse, debate, cocreation of culture, and collective action. By showing students how to use Web-based tools and channels to inform publics, advocate positions, contest claims, and organize action around issues that they truly care about, participatory media education can draw them into positive early experiences with citizenship that could influence their civic behavior throughout their lives. Formal theories of the public sphere could be introduced most productively after, and in the context of, direct experience of exercising a public voice. Talking about public opinion making is a richer experience if you’ve tried to do it."

In 2006 Habermas himself acknowledges that there is a second structural disruption of the public sphere by the internet:

“Use of the Internet has both broadened and fragmented the contexts of communication. This is why the Internet can have a subversive effect on intellectual life in authoritarian regimes. But at the same time, the less formal, horizontal cross-linking of communication channels weakens the achievements of traditional media. This focuses the attention of an anonymous and dispersed public on select topics and information, allowing citizens to concentrate on the same critically filtered issues and journalistic pieces at any given time. The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the Internet is the decentralised access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus.” (translation and bold from signandsight)

I am not sure i agree with Habermas on this point. It seems to me that he has not fully grasped the cyber-logic of the blogosphere and the web-based media. The aggregated power of links pointing to authors with a special-knowledge reputation or exceptionally "on the spot" statements allows in my eyes for an increase in egalitarianism as well as space to enjoy positive freedom and the prudent evolution of a professional reputation or kleos.

IMHO it is exactly the media competence Howard alludes to a) develop a Voice online, as well as to b) navigate the public cyber-sphere and be able to perceive and understand the online Voices in their context.

(1)Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement

Howard Rheingold Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth, Pages 97-118 - online @ www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/dmal.9780262524827.097

PS: I also really like the Yochai Benkler "The Wealth of Networks" quote in Howards text:

" We are witnessing a fundamental change in how individuals can interact with their democracy and experience their role as citizens. Ideal citizens need not be seen purely as trying to inform themselves about what others have found, so that they can vote intelligently. They need not be limited to reading the opinions of opinion makers and judging them in private conversations. They are no longer constrained to occupy the role of mere readers, viewers, and listeners. They can be, instead, participants in a conversation."

My web-tv channel & our video community?

2008-03-29T22:45:00.006+01:00

some weeks ago i posted a request for recommendations for a web-tv player where one can have a list of videos recommended by my friends.

Miro seems to be the tool. I have played around with it in the last weeks and i like it.

Hence i started my video channel at video bomb which allows for direct integration into miro.

Check out and subscribe to my recommended videos feed - AND tell me about your channel so i can subscribe!

WANTED: A confederated peer online-tv

2008-03-17T20:37:00.002+01:00

I dont have a TV for many years, and I have to say that online video has been more than a sufficient substitute for news and the occational dose of special interest videos and "funny stuff". However what i don't like is that there is no "online tv-player" (the software equivalent of that traditional single-purpose technology called TV) where i can watch all the streaming formats or at least where i can share and receive recommendations for videos in all formats. It is annoying to have a youtube favourits, some real media streams that i like, joost chanels, etc, etc.

Is there a application or site that allows me to network with my folks exclusively on video recommendations so when i sit down for a meal (which is when i get my daily dose of news and video) i can switch on my online-tv and see what you folks have been recommending?

More than One - I am the two sides of my brain

2008-03-15T02:33:00.003+01:00

This video starts of as a "normal" presentation of a neurologist but transforms into a furiously inspiring spiritual happening.... left-right, left-right, left-

Knowledge Entrepreneurship as Mindset for Leaders in Education

2008-03-10T17:11:00.004+01:00

I will hold a talk at Stanford's School of Education this Wednesday. Here are the slides (which are a variation of my phd defense presentation):

| View | Upload your own

Wikipedia Game

2008-03-03T22:36:00.002+01:00

(english below)

Eine praktische idee(1) fuer ein intelligentes (famielen)internet-lern-spiel:

jeder spieler sitzt an einem computer mit internet

ein "schiedsrichter" waehlt zwei worte z.b. erdnussbutter und alexander der grosse

das erste wort wird in wikipedia nachgeschlagen (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdnussbutter)

ziel des spieles ist es von erdnussbutter zu alexander der grosse (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_der_Grosse) zu kommen ohne die tastatur zu benutzen

man kann drei varianten spielen: a)wer als erster fertig ist (denke hier haben kids einen vorteil, da sie schneller klicken/sich besser zurechtfinden) oder b) wer mit weniger klicks hinkommt (ich erwarte die erwachsenen gewinnen da ein weiteres wissen bessere links ermoeglicht). Die dritte variante is nich ganz so funkey: wer schneller von der homepage zu einem wort findet.

logischerweise is die alfabetische listen verboten

als benchmark ich war beim 5ten klick und nach 4 min. beim alexander

Im englischen teil is noch ne variante

(1) ich hab mir das game nich ausgedacht sondern es von jemandem erzaehlt bekommen, weiss aber leider nich mehr von wem - naja jetzt hab ich kurz gegooglet und verschiedene englische sources gefunden

-----------------------
English

a first version (what i described in german above)
"Shaggy Hair was working on his chemistry homework and so [the wikipedia article on] "Chemical Sources" is traditionally the place where they begin. Then someone calls out a word or term or person, like "Bob Dylan," and they race to see who can get there first. The rule is you can't type anything; you can only click on links. And you can't go backwards." (blog link)

a second version:
"We invented a game where you try to find a certain item (for example, pancakes) the fastest, measured in either time or clicks. Here are the rules:

You cannot edit any pages
You must start from the home page (http://wikipedia.org/)
You cannot type anything. Everything must be done via mouse clicks.
You cannot use the categories, A-Z listings, etc

Here's a sample game, searching for "witchcraft."

Wikipedia > English Wikipedia > United States > Massachusetts > Salem > Salem Witch Trials > Witchcraft" (forum link)

Chilenian Communists & Cybernetitians invented another Internet in 1970

2008-02-25T03:48:00.004+01:00

"Project Cybersyn was a Chilean attempt at real-time computer-controlled planned economy in the years 1970–1973 (during the government of president Salvador Allende). It was essentially a network of telex machines that linked factories with a single computer center in Santiago, which controlled them using principles of cybernetics. The principal architect of the system was British operations research scientist Stafford Beer." (wikipedia)

Check out the whole Wikipedia entry, and some chilenian activists prepared a pretty good website and an installation at the ZKM a great museum in Karlsruhe.

Open Source Mobile Phone Initiatives

2008-02-22T22:07:00.002+01:00

I wrote a post about a couple of interesting initiatives working on open source mobile phone products & services. Read it @ the entrepreneurship.de blog (yes i will start to syndicate these posts soon ;-)

Larry Lessig for Congress

2008-02-21T21:55:00.003+01:00

I just learned that Lawrence Lessig is considering to run for a seat in US congress and i call upon everybody to support his candidacy and help build the grassroots movement he proposes is necessary to CHANGE the way Washington works.

On the website http://lessig08.org/ there is a really good presentation about his stance & plans.

Entrepreneurship @ Stanford

2008-02-19T07:34:00.002+01:00

I just published a post @ entrepreneurship.de listing all the interesting entrepreneurship activities i found here at stanford.

You find it @ labor.entrepreneurship.de/blog/entrepreneurship-stanford/

Igloo's are more difficult

2008-02-18T05:26:00.003+01:00

so as promised, i went up to Tahoe this weekend to build and sleep in an igloo. Having done my homework and after the success with the snow cave i felt rather confident my buddy Sean and I would be able to build a luxurious igloo in his front yard.
Well - igloo's and esp. the statics of the dome proved to be much more difficult to build. After 4,5 hours of sweat and cold we had to acknowledge our defeat - - - for this time!

@ Ipernity I put up some pix; and to prove that we didn't turn too melancholic there is also some from the mountain we climbed the next day. Apparently the locals have made it a tradition to hang up their underwear to the summit flag pole - so did I ;-)

Future of the internet & social phsychology podcasts

2008-02-18T04:28:00.005+01:00

Just came across two very good podcasts:

Ramesh Johari, assistant professor at Stanfords Engineering Department gives a highly recommened course entitled "The Future of the Internet". Considering the content of the course I dont like the title to much - he explains very well how the internet is working today and wants the students to think about questions regarding the future development of the internet. Naming issues apart, he gives a very interesting and insightful account about the internet's fundamental architecture and the inter-play of technology, policy and business in shaping this increasingly critical infrastructure. Especially lecture 3 on the economics of the internet (on the level of carriers and e.g. the niche that akamai was able to create) i felt was really good.

You can download all 6 lectures @ iTunes U and here are the lecture notes

------------------

At Berkeley's webcast series i discovered the Social Psychology class, which proves to be an excellent introduction to the field, allowing the learner to develop a good overview of the core concepts and the main academic protagonists in the very dynamic science.

Again all lectures are available from Berkeley or @ iTunes. The lecture notes and syllabus etc. are available here (this course will run until mid-june)

the future of charging your mobile divices

2008-02-11T02:07:00.001+01:00

patrick just pointed me to www.wildcharge.com. they have a really powerful value proposition: charge your mobile devices - mp3-player, phone, laptop, etc. - without fuddling and plugging no wires. They are still in the "start-up" phase and dont have their product ready to be 100% satisfying but it is potentially a technology that we will all want to use - just like wireless internet.

In the year 2014 the New York times has gone offline

2008-02-08T22:00:00.001+01:00

i have a really bussy day, but i have to share this. It's really really powerful fiction-future-forcast. (Allow the backdrop to develop in the first few minutes)

"Set in 2014 it charts the history of the Internet, the evolving mediascape and the way news and newspapers were affected by the growth in online news.

It coined the word "Googlezon" from a future merger of Google and Amazon to form the Google grid, and speaks of news wars with the Times becoming a print only paper for the elite culminating in EPIC Evolving Personalised Information Construct

As a flash animation, this film is extraordinary, not just for it's use of technology but for it's fantastic perception looking forward."

Epic 2015 (new updated version)
Click here to launch the new movie
Click here to launch the movie full screen

Finally, my first snow cave

2008-02-05T07:41:00.000+01:00

Introduction
My friends and I first talked about sleeping in a snow cave about five years ago when we where ski-touring in Norway, and the idea of building and sleeping in such a traditional shelter has been with me ever since. On several occasions we discussed whether or not to do it and NOW with these 2meters of perfect snow in the Sierra Nevada I was finally mentally prepared to do it :-)

I first consulted some websites. Especially this, and this (good pix) and this one (scroll to bottom) were quite helpful.

Then i went to a close by outdoor shop and bought a cheap 32$ bivvy sack and a 6$ three square meter silver-foil to reflect my body heat (not sure i really needed the latter).

As my partner from last weekend had to work i decided to go by myself. Naturally I was a bit ambiguous about the whole project. Hell would i do when the cave collapsed? As always traffic was worse than expected and I got to the trailhead around 12.00. Luckily the 3 miles to the Peter Grubb hut (at Mount Castle near Lake Tahoe) next to which i planned to dig my cave were not too difficult and i got there by around 3.30 pm.

The Building Process
The websites had recommended to look for a small not to steep hill and build the cave on the lee side where the wind had transported the drifting snow. I had also read to take advantage of a tree if possible. So i chose my spot at the tree you see at the right.

I dug a pretty deep whole in order to have the necessary depth to setup the cold-trap (the entry tunnel needs to be lower than your "bed"). On the picture you see the entry as well as the tunnel photographed from the sleeping position.

Things got a bit complicated once the horizontal entry tunnel was complete and i had to dig up vertically. I couldn't think of another way than to lay on my back, shove myself into the tunnel and work overhead -- with the result that a got my face etc. all wet from the falling snow. Once the tunnel was big enough for me to crawl into it things got gradually more comfortable. However the fact that i was by myself made the procedure more difficult as i had to gouge the "body" of the cave while constantly squeezing out to remove the snow from the entry hole.

The Night
The idea to build the cave next to the hut proved pretty clever, because all my cloth were completely wet after muddling through the wet snow for so long. I could have them dry in the hut, prepare a soup and some noodles and read a bit. At around 23.00 i prepared my gear: loaded the sleeping bag in the bivvy and filled the sleeping pad halfway with air. Then i went in my cave, spread the silver foil, draged the crash pad inside and filled it up. Last was the sleeping bag. Shit and the cave was full full full. But it was much too late for second thoughts. I got got rid of the outer shells of my ski boots (which was quite acrobatic given the tightness of the place) and climbed into my "bed" - not without reassuring myself that the shovel, which would allow me to dig myself out in case of an emergency, was right behind my head.

I fell to sleep without a problem, but kept waking up every two hours or so, because i couldn't really turn around, plus there were these ice water drops that interrupted my dreams. But overall it was pretty comfy and warm. In fact when i woke up at around 6.45 it was light already - a really awesome ice-blue light - and i decided to take another nap which lasted until almost nine o'clock when i rose out of my cave, completely relaxed and rested.

Reflections
The whole building procedure took me about 2 and 1/2 hours and i have to say there is plenty of room for improvement :-) Even though it did remember to smoothen the caves ceiling (this is supposed to make melted snow run down the side walls), i apparently wasn't thorough enough because i had small but constant amount of drops drip on me all night. Also my cave was really small. It would have been much more comfortable if i could have sat up. A bigger would have prevented me slowly sliding towards the tunnel also. Well next time. I am optimistic that from now on snow caves (and igloos) will - slowly but surely - become my specialty :-)

Serious Times

2008-01-26T02:49:00.000+01:00

i just met my new back country skiing partner out here at Lake Tahoe (California). What a perfect day! We did Mount Tallac (see pic) which was a relaxed 4 hours up and probably the best adrenalin-rushed powder run i had in years :-) They have a solid layer of no less than 2m of perfect snow - hmmmmmmm

Anyways, I don't wanna bother you with my miserable life. Rather i have to share THIS ABLSOLUTELY BADASS VIDEO of a guy skiing-or-better-flying down the EIGER!!

And while i am at it. LEt me recommend two other outstanding YouTubes:

The power of ten is an amazing visualization of perspective-us-and-the-universe:

And last but not least: An awesome animation about what cyberspace does to human verbal practices:

Virtual Xmas Mail

2008-01-24T07:09:00.001+01:00

Hello friends & colleagues

It is slowly becoming a tradition that i send out an xmas/new year mail sharing some of what i consider exquisite brainfood i consumed during the last year. It is also become a tradition that this xmas mail comes substantially delayed, but i trust you are always prepared to receive gifts. I hope you find some bits of your taste. This year the menu contains:

1) Philosophy
2) Futurology
3) Techie (some applications i enjoy using)
4) Fabulous Flicks (movie recommendations)

Before the you unwrap the treats, allow me to give you a short update of the state of my life's venture:
In 2007 I finally managed to travel through Latin America. I backpacked Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina. It was a bit of a rushed and schizophrenic trip, as i had only about 10 days per country and shifted between chilled backpacker and proper professional, because i realized about 20 job interviews along the way. Overall the trip was very successful; I know that, regarding professional opportunities, I like Ecuador best; I found plenty of good friends & professional contacts, and I verified that there are some wonderful mountains to be conquered e.g. the Alpa Mayo (5985m), which was the most amazing climb i have ever done in my life - just check out this picture of the 900m icewall before the peak :-) http://foros.construaprende.com/files/alpamayo_.jpg

Even more relevant to my paths progress, I got my PhD, published a small book on virtual worlds, and taught my first class in Philosophy of Technology. Everyone who is not put off by the bulky title: "Knowledge Entrepreneurship in Universities: Practice and Strategy in the Case of Internet based Innovation Appropriation" can quench his/her curiosity by watching the 42min. video of my defense @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB3nXTNRgPM&feature=user, or listen to the mp3/podcast download my intellectual offspring @ http://entrepreneur.jot.com (the new branded website is still under development @ www.knowledgeentrepreneur.com).
The book i wrote in collaboration with Thomas Stylewalker and Pit Bihr is dealing with virtual worlds and SecondLife in particular. It is available for purchase in spanish @ http://tinyurl.com/2d8h2k but you can access the english version as Open Educational Resource for free @ http://www.thewavingcat.com/virtual-worlds-book/ (there is also a free audio-book version of some parts).
Also in early 2007 I supported my friend David Casacuberta, who is professor at the Universitat Autonoma, in the design and conduct of an introductory course on Applied Philosophy / Philosophy of Technology with particular focus on ethical and meta-physical questions arising in Cyberspace. I found out I really like teaching. I made the typical mistake of believing the students found the matter as mindblowingly interesting as myself and are hence highly motivated to prepare the texts, contribute to forum discussions, collabowrite in a wiki. Well, I hope it only took me one class to remember what my strategy was for most of my early student life... Nevertheless it was good fun and in the long run I'd like to teach.

Last but not least i'd like to share the little i know about my future: I have accepted an invitation to go to Stanford University as a visiting scholar until end of July 2008. I have never been to California, but takin into account that i will have access to the lectures, library and scholars of one of the best univerrsities, that silicon valley with all its entrepreneurial energy is just around the corner, and that this area has some of the best climbs and backcountry skiing, i am optimistic i will not wither.

So without further delay, here is the best-of-max's-brainfood 2007:

PHILOPSOPHY
------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
JUSTICE vs. POWER: This is the most interesting youtube i have ever seen. When a friend of mine told me about a 12 min clip from the sixties where Noam Chomsky and Michelle Focault disputed the nature of justice versus power, i knew this would be fun, and indeed the SuperNerd and the SuperHomo say very interesting things in a funky way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbUYsQR3Mes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXBfOxfmSDw&feature=related

BEING ONLINE: One constant theme in my meta-physical reflections treats the condition of Being online and the general question of what the Virtual is. A particularly well done 4.30 min multi-media clip has been produced at the university of kansas in a department that deals with digital etnography. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

POLITICS & THINK TANKS & FUTUROLOGY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When i traveled through Colombia i met with the director of the Latin American Office of www.crisisgroup.org. It turns out Crisis Group is a very well regarded group of political analysts (they have many ex-foreign ministers on their board), who write in depth and high quality countries reports. If you are traveling to a potentialy unstable country/region or if you just want to read a professional political analysis I highly recommend their reviews. E.g. for Venezuela the report gives you the history of how Chavez came to power and how the situation in the country develop since then.

I believe i recommended these before, but as I come across them as a source of super interesting material again and again...
The RAND corporation is a think tank that published quite famous future forecasts in the 60 where men live on the moon and under bubbles on in ground of the sea. Since then they have learned to be more cautious, but they still publish very insightful reports on a wide range of subjects, from child policy to military technology: www.rand.org/pubs/online/

One of the finds of 2008 is Ray Kurzweil. I posted a short piece on my blog when i read about his extremely optimistic view of the future ( http://maximiliansenges.blogspot.com/2007/06/bright-side-of-future.html) but the chap is really a jack of all trades, has about 12 PhDs and it is really fun and inspiring to browse his website www.kurzweilai.net /brain/

Another outstanding futurologist is Matthias Horx (http://www.horx.com/English/Home.aspx) he has a lot of very interesting analysis and prognosis to share, and - at least for me highly controversial - he is the contrary of an alarmist, basically saying we made a big fuzz about Waldsterben and that climate change will be, or at least can be tackled. On the one hand i agree that it is bad to loose hope&optimism and it's no use crying wolf all the time, but on the other i do see serious reasons to act more responsibly.

TECHIE
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http://www.yousendit.com/ - Send 100MB "attachments"
Wanna send your holliday fotos to you friends but your email account only allows 10MB attachments? This site allows you to send (upload) files up to 100MB and then sends a mail containing a download link to your friends.

http://www.blogarithms.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/23/skype-for-interviews/
This little tutorial shows you how to feel what this web 2.0 thing is all about - you can learn how to produce professional radio interviews within half an hour. Let's see whether I get my first podcasts/interviews done in 2008 :-)

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest?flash=1
This is actually a tool recommended in the tutorial above, there are several tools that allow you to test your internet connection and find out what your download and upload seep really is.

FABULOUS FLICKS (Movies)
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Persepolis - an outstanding comic about a girl growing up the 80ies in a liberal family in iran (i really think this is a very suitable way to communicate modern values especially to muslim women, but no worries this comes implicit, in the forefront it is a very funny, intelligent and subliminally rebel movie) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808417/

Matchpoint - The best Woody Allan i have ever seen - not too funny but rather breathtaking - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416320/

Munich (München) - starts with shokin pictures from the real 1972 Palestinian Olymic Terror Act and then develops into a realistic and very exiting spy story - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408306/

Stranger than fiction - this is truly really and honestly very funny - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420223/

Against the Wall (Gegen die Wand) - a very good german road-movie style rough romance between german turks http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347048/

Last King of Scotland - young adventurous medic goes to uganda and become the personal physician of the charismatic maniac who is the president of the country - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455590/

The Serpent's Egg by Ingmar Bergman - I always sort of avoided Ingmar Bergman movies, because i figured they must be hyper-intellectual and mindful but boring - Well I was very wrong i saw a couple now and found them all entertaining and exciting. The serpents egg is the most thriller-like and definitely good psychological entertainment - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076686/

24 (second series) - it was the first series i watched in ages, and i got hooked with the first episode. it is a truly innovative format (you see 24 hours in 24 episodes, so the plot unfolds in real time) and they always manage the timing so that you end up longing for the next shot (i know its an old method, but i have never seen it so well done) - www.imdb.com/title/tt0285331

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thats it for this year. I hope you found something you like, and that makes you get in touch with me so we dont loose sight! (Which is rather easy given that i am every-&no-where)

All the best & good vibes to you and your loved ones
Max

--------------------------------------------------------
"I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart. I love not the
plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.

And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience- a wandering will
be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself."

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Also spoke Zarathustra)

------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Max Senges
UOC Researcher & Freelance Consultant

maxsenges@gmail.com
www.maxsenges.com
http://entrepreneur.jot.com
https://www.openbc.com/hp/Max_Senges/
------------------------------------------------------------

Share - It's fair

2008-01-23T08:51:00.000+01:00

The European Greens have once more won my support. Digital media and the internet make it possible not only to recommend, but to share content (links, but also movies and music). The global players of the industry haven't been able to come up with business models that exploit this ability to make perfect copies but are attempting to transpose the scarcity of the physical business ecosystem to cyberspace. They are criminalizing file sharing and compare it with stealing - but to make a copy is not stealing. I agree the discourse is controversial and both sides have to be heard, but the ideal way forward is to find new business models and this is what the European Greens are suggesting with their new campain: Share - It's fair.

A bold political move. Check it out @ www.iwouldntsteal.net/support.htm

Online Video Verleih in Deutschland

2007-12-04T12:05:00.000+01:00

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

2007-12-02T19:07:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-30T14:44:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-13T14:43:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-20T13:04:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-16T20:49:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-16T13:30:00.000+02:00

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!

2007-06-11T14:56:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-10T18:05:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-10T12:06:00.000+02:00

[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?

2007-06-09T15:35:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-06T09:34:00.000+02:00

[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

2007-05-09T12:39:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-07T19:52:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-04T13:50:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-03T12:15:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-03T09:25:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-02T09:52:00.000+02:00

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.

2007-03-27T11:03:00.000+02:00

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?

2007-03-26T14:50:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-23T12:26:00.000+01:00

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

2007-03-20T13:03:00.000+01:00

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)

2007-03-18T20:05:00.000+01:00

"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

2007-03-17T13:05:00.000+01:00

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

2007-03-17T12:28:00.000+01:00

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