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

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

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]

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

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]

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!