Category: Uncategorized
-
iDC post #2: DIY: nightmare for humanities, social sciences, media
As previously mentioned, I post regularly to the terrific Institute for Distributed Creativity listserv, and have started cross-posting my contributions there to this blog. Here is yesterday’s post, in response to George Siemen’s post titled: DIY: nightmare for humanities, social sciences, media. The entire thread can be found here: https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2011-September/thread.html Hi George, well, first of…
-
What You Know vs. Who You Know
Last night I was speaking with Moses, a visitor from Kenya, about the difficulty young people have finding jobs in his homeland, even when they have a degree. Because, he said, “It is not what you know that matters but who you know.” Now this is a phrase I have also heard used to describe…
-
The Gift Edition Goes Out
“It is better to give than to receive” goes the old adage, and today I feel it is very much true. Although I hope that tomorrow – or whenever these books I am sending out today arrive on your doorstep – that you will be equally pleased to receive! For today I am sending out…
-
Printers Printing Humans
Today’s BBC.com has an article about a lab in Germany that has for the first time successfully created artificial blood vessels on a 3D printer. They will apparently be very helpful in organ transplants. One of the scientists involved is quoted saying: “We are establishing a basis for applying rapid prototyping to elastic and organic…
-
The Publication Studio – an Interactivist Publisher!
In my last post I talked about the iDC listserv. Today I was contacted by a lurker on that listserv. His name is Matthew Stadler and with his partner Patricia No he runs an extremely interesting organization called The Publication Studio, which describes itself as ‘makers and destroyers of books‘. How cool is that? Better…
-
Excerpts From A Discussion About DIY Education
For some years now I have been an active contributor to a terrific listserv called the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC), run by Trebor Scholz of The New School in NY. From now on I’m going to cross-publish my iDC posts here. My first such reposting is below. Subject: Re: [iDC] Can DIY education be…
-
More News From the Frontlines – Digital Dakar
Late last night I met Amadou from Senegal and we started talking. As I always do whenever I meet anyone from somewhere else, I asked him about how people use digital technology in Senegal. Like Array of Words, who recently returned from the Philipines with tales of the Manilla Street Kid Digital Gift Economy, Amadou…
-
Digital Bridges to a Sustainable Future – Part 2
I promised some magic beans in yesterday’s post, Part 1. But after careful consideration I figured my magic beans shouldn’t be just written words. That’s fighting fire with fire, which just creates more fire. So I decided to fight fire with water, more fluid, less predictable, less ‘architectural’ but more nourishing by far. There may…
-
Digital Bridges to a Sustainable Future – Part 1
In my book, and on this blog, and practically anywhere else where I can find an audience lately, I have been saying that the only way to overcome the eco-cidal tendencies of OS2 (literate) culture is for us to build bridges between sustainable OS1 (oral) culture and hyper-efficient OS3 (digital) culture. The two obvious questions…
-
Literate Debt in the Digital Age
Literate culture has mortgaged its future. Who will pay? In OS1 (oral) cultures, debt did not exist. Obligations existed. You can, for example owe someone your gratitude, or your allegiance, or your help or your vengeance in OS1 culture. But obligations in OS1 culture are defined by relationships between people. Whereas in OS2 (literate) cultures,…
SOBOLTALK 