These are the stories that have been posted to the Personal category.
IT Conversations and the Conversations Network keep my brain happy…
Moira Gunn talks with Sandra Blakeslee about her book the Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better. It’s a wonderful conversations about neuroscience and cognitive maps. Blakeslee (a science writer) does a wonderful job conveying the excitement and joy of discovery. Recommended.
Moira Gunn also has a nice conversation with John Thackera, a designer and writer. His most recent book, In the Bubble, discusses how we can try to break out of our self-imposed design limitations and see a bigger picture. I’m reading the book now and its a fun read with a very European slant on tools and technology. Its inspiring to hear of the many things that people are doing right (there and here in my somewhat benighted USofA). Aside from an occasionally too informal riff, Thackera’s prose flows nicely with a excellent mix of insight, quotations, examples and analysis. Both the interview and the book are recommended.
I also recently heard a far less interesting interview with Morgan Gillis, the executive director of the LiMo Foundation. I guess the excitement of Mobile Linux and a new cell phone platform just goes through my head…
Finally, I heard a wonderful interview between Tom Parish (the host) and
Jake McKee. McKee used to work at Lego and has gone on to focus on social media and customer interaction: the creation of community in support of selling product. He has some great points to make about how to do this honestly and with integrity — indeed, you can’t succeed in this sort of endeavor unless you loads of both! He comes to the table with great background and experience and really makes his points well. Recommended.
In the video podcasts category, I’ve been enjoying Mahalo Daily and GeekBrief TV. After all, who wouldn’t enjoy “Shiny Happy Tech News”?
The “blasts from the past” winner is from Mesh Forum 2005 where Jamais Cascio spoke about the Participatory Panopticon (great title, just try saying it 10-times fast (it it it it it it it it it it. ha.). To summarize: personal digital recorders (cell phones, etc) are becoming ubiquitous to the point where everything we do will be recorded by the crowd and by ourselves. This will mean that surveillance will be overwhelmed by sousveillance (seeing from below) with both good and bad effect. PIMs will be replaced by PMAs (Personal Memory Assistants). Memory will change.
Cascio covers many of the obvious and some of the more subtle effects this may all have. What concerns me is that memory has evolved to be flakey and malleable for a reason — perhaps those reasons no longer hold… — and it’s not at all clear how we’re going to adapt as individuals or a species to permanent records (cf. the wonderful Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) by Carole Tavris and Eliot Aronson.)
Johanna Rothman gives Andy Hunt a nice interview over at Pragmatic Programmers. Rothman wrote Manage It a “reality-based guide for modern projects. You’ll learn how to recognize your project’s potholes and ruts, and determine the best way to fix problems—without causing more problems.” I tend to be a bit skeptical of books about Management (or anything else!) but she sounds like someone who has both been there and learned something from what she experienced. Once I finish a few of the other books I’ve got on my desk, I think I’ll buy it.
Finally, some interesting bits and pieces
Jamais Cascio and Howard Greenstein - Breaking Old Networks
Mostly about the good and not so good about Mashups. Nothing too profound here, move along.
Manuel Lima (from VisualComplexity.com) - Mapping Complex Networks
Manuel gives a talk that would be profoundly better if the podcast included the visuals (I’m sure that they are out [there somewhere][there]!). He discusses lots of visualization techniques and interaction ideas and says “I don’t know if you’ve seen this” too many times (seriously, it gets irritating and then it gets funny). Worth skimming (if you could).
Finally, there’s an Salon.com interview with Alice Waters (of Chez Panisse fame). Waters is advocating for a return to the simple, the local, and the slow when it comes to food. To value richness and diversity over speed and commodity. I think she’s right but I’m not sure I’m willing to make the changes in my own life and habits so ultimately I’m not sure how hopeful I am by her inspired example.
Keep on listening.
From John McKee at TechRepublic
For a well-rounded, and fully satisfying life; I suggest you learn this simply truth. Recognize that you are a complex, well trained, feeling, and yet thoughtful individual. Learn to use your life skills in both your personal and your professional life and become more genuine.
Yes!
Jon Udell blogs about “New contexts for old ideas”
Advocates for powerful ideas and methods that are long extant but have yet to fully bear fruit may tend to become nostalgic, appear misguided, act bitter, lose focus. These are counterproductive behaviors. So how do you avoid them? How do you stay the course, keep your eye on the ball, move forward, remain excited, and find ways to explore the same old things in new and different ways?
and claims that Bill Buxton makes some interesting points in a recent BusinessWeek column (I can’t vouch for that since I haven’t read the column).
Finding ways to take the great and move it forward without getting glum, nit-picky and whiny is certainly a skill of which it seems Lispers could often do with more.
Daniel Weinreb has a long and very interesting history of ObjectStore over on his weblog (it’s been there for a month but I’m slow sometimes… :)). As someone who is working hard on another take on what a database can be and do, I found the discussion of markets and technology really interesting. (and as a long time Macintosh fan-boy, the discussion of niche markets is also fun!).
From Toni Bowers at Tech Republic
What the sorryless don’t realize, however, is that admitting you’re wrong is not the same as admitting you’re incompetent. If anything, it means you’re capable of recognizing a mistake and learning from it.
In the tooting-my-own-horn department, here’s a link for my Federated Queries on the Semantic Web with AllegroGraph webinar. I won’t win an Oscar but it is cool stuff.
(update: apparently there are issues with computers running the better class of operating systems (sorry, my bias is showing). I’ll try to get this fixed as soon as I can figure out what is what.)
Dacher Keltner has an interesting essay on “Power”
This leaves us with a power paradox. Power is given to those individuals, groups, or nations who advance the interests of the greater good in socially-intelligent fashion. Yet unfortunately, having power renders many individuals as impulsive and poorly attuned to others as your garden variety frontal lobe patient, making them prone to act abusively and lose the esteem of their peers. What people want from leaders—social intelligence—is what is damaged by the experience of power.
When we recognize this paradox and all the destructive behaviors that flow from it, we can appreciate the importance of promoting a more socially-intelligent model of power. Social behaviors are dictated by social expectations. As we debunk longstanding myths and misconceptions about power, we can better identify the qualities powerful people should have, and better understand how they should wield their power. As a result, we’ll have much less tolerance for people who lead by deception, coercion, or undue force. No longer will we expect these kinds of antisocial behaviors from our leaders and silently accept them when they come to pass.
Hey, we can all dream, right?
Everyone I know is always adding more connections. I am such a stick. In the mud. Joking.
