Busy Jon L. was remiss in failing to blog the 50th anniversary of Sputnik yesterday. The Sputnik launch in 1957 kicked off the space race and left sci-fi spaceniks like me dewy-eyed with visions of space stations, moon landings, interplanetary travel, etc. - all in the name of science. We were too innocent to realize it was all about military strategy. Still is: the Russians want to establish a presence on the moon; watch for renewed vigor within the U.S. space program. Meanwhile I have nostalgia for an era in which we knew so little about space, had never seen the earth from afar, had no experience of the challenges of space travel. That all changed, of course, after Sputnik. [Link]

Thor Muller at Satisfaction has been researching the various reasons Facebook accounts are disabled, and has posted a list. Unfortunately Facebook is in a bit of a fix given its rapid growth – how to manage use and prevent abuse in a crowded, vibrant, rapidly evolving environment. They're disabling accounts without clearly explaining why, mostly to avoid the very real potential problem of spammers in the system. He notes that "you may be disabled for no clear reason at all," and posts this example from an Australian member:

"I was blocked for a little while because I was 'misusing certain features of the site' Naturally I closely examined their conditions of use etc for some insight as to what I must have done wrong. I couldn't for the life of me find anything...

"Upon request for clarification I was told that they were not at liberty to divulge which features or of course any thresholds of use. Then they warned me not to do it again or I would be banned permanently without recourse to reinstatement."

As someone in the comment thread points out, the Australian had mentioned that he was "poking a lot of people" – he evidently breached the poke limit. But the problem Thor's focusing on is Facebooks' termination of accounts without a clear explanation. He says that Facebook is listening, and he has confidence that they'll fix the problem. To me this represents the very real growing pains of a social system.

An excessively busy couple of weeks here. Last week I coordinated a couple of sessions at Innotech Austin, where we talked about Sustainability and Social Media in one session, and Ambient Intelligence and Digital Convergence in another. (Some photos here. For Maker Faire this weekend, I've been working with Derek Woodgate, David Demaris, Joey Lopez, Maggie Duval et al to create a "futurama" installation on the DIY home of the future. We hope to give a good sense of three aspects of the home of the future: 1) it's reconfigurable by the "user," 2) it's responsive (via sensors picking up health and energy information, etc., and 3) it's an environment for immersive media and ambient intelligence. These are potential, anyway - I can imagine barriers. I talked to someone yesterday who's working on a project to create smart energy meters for homes that will send readings over the network (an idea that's been around for many years, but it's finally going somewhere). He said that the energy companies don't want residents to be able to see their energy usage. Not sure why; if I was a conspiracy theorist, I would imagine they want to jack with the numbers before they send a bill. But surely not...

Photo: The Sustainability and Social Media panel at Innotech... l to r: me, Bill Anderson, David Armistead, Josh Parker

Photo above is a shot of the DIY Home of the Future installation at Maker Faire, concocted by Derek Woodgate, David Demaris, and I, with a lot of help from other folks. It wasn't practical to build our complete vision of the DIY Home, but we did manage to show some sense of the immersive media environment and suggest embedded "ambient intelligence" by including the very interesting biofeedback system "Healing Rhythms" from Wild Divine. This was a pretty good first instance of the kind of "Futurama" exhibition we want to do more of ... a kind of floating museum of the future. We ran into all sorts of interesting problems of production, but Dave Demaris is a real genius at solving those problems. Biggest hit: Brian Park's Flogiston Chair with a nice bendy screen for fully immersive game play. Kids were all over it. (BTW, we were using the same chair that was used in the film "Lawnmower Man.") We're at Maker Faire again today, if you're in or around Austin...

I've been leading a discussion with Denise Caruso about her new book, Intervention. We're talking in the Inkwell conference on the WELL. Denise has written off and (currently) on for the New York Times. We've known each other for years - she used to cover Silicon Valley tech stories, but in 2000 she founded the Hybrid Vigor Institute, which is "not-for-profit research organization and consultancy that is dedicated to interdisciplinary and collaborative problem solving." Intervention is about risk assessment, focusing especially on transgenics and DNA hacking. We've been talking quite about about who should be assessing risk, and who should have authority for decisions about science and technology. If you want to ask a question or make a comment, and you're not a member of the WELL, you can send to inkwell at well.com. [Link to Denise's blog item about the discussion]

Here's a quick video clip of our DIY Home installation at Maker Faire:

You can also check out my set of Maker Faire photos at Flickr.

Tiny comet 17P Holmes, generally invisible to the naked eye, seems to be exploding. [Link]

... the outburst has left experts scratching their heads. How could a tiny comet, whose nucleus is no more than two miles across, grow so bright so fast? Perhaps a crack opened in the comet’s surface, exposing fresh ice to the sun and causing an explosive eruption of dust and gas. No one knows for sure.

Here's a link to a 1272x948 animated gif of smoke from the California fires, as seen from space.

Metropolis Magazine, after repeating a quote from Ray Anderson that says

No one should be claiming sustainable products. There is no such thing yet in terms of zero footprint. What you can do is demonstrate reduced footprint.

offers a set of articles that represent 7 Steps in the Lifecycle of a Green Product.. The mag also has an overview of "What It Means to be Green," which is really a couple of lists of eco-design and eco-labeling terms.

I'm digging The New Yorker's new web design – they finally figured out how to bring it online. Also digging the Halloween cover for this week's issue (abovee).