Doug Rushkoff will be speaking at the Paramount Theatre Wednesday night. Doug's an old friend of mine; I interviewed him a few years ago for the Austin Chronicle, and thought, in all modesty, that it was one of his better interviews. Here's one of my favorite bits from that talk:
JonL: Well, you throw a party, and you invite everybody to come, and you really have a good heart, you really want it to work. But the thing is, how do you accommodate the diversity, and how do you accommodate the fact that some people have bad intentions?
DR: There's so many models, even biological models. You figure we're all one body, right? And every person's a little cell. So okay, I want to have a gathering of cells, the good ones. Not the pimple cells and cancer cells, I just want nice ones coming in. And you know that after a certain point, you can invite maybe one or two negative people, and then hope the energy of the good group heals those people, or brings them around somehow.
But you invite five or six or seven, and you crash the whole thing, and it makes you feel really shitty. I always used to tell myself that I never want to live a life where, if I was tripping, I'd look at stuff and bum out. And one thing that does bum me feels like a lingering elitism ...
JonL: Within yourself?
DR: Yeah! I want to hang out with certain people, I don't want to hang out with others. But on another level, well ... shit, I'm a human being, I'm only on this earth for so much time. It's easier to look at images of starving people than images of fucked-up people. With starving people, at least you can say how do we get them food? What can we do? But what can you do about fucked-up people? And unfortunately, maybe half the people in our culture are fucked-up people. I mean, I'm fucked-up in my own little ways. But there's legions of unconscious people, people who are what I would call coerced by corporate America, coerced by television, coerced by the very systems of logic they've succumbed to.
Link to a press release about the Wednesday gig. Link to the event page, where you can buy a ticket.
Bootstrap WebAlong with David Swedlow, I lead the Web Subgroup for Bootstrap Austin, and I think it's worthwhile here to talk about some of that group's connections and areas of focus. One interesting aspect: because it's part of Bootstrap, it inherently involves entrepreneurial activity, and because it's web-focused, it involves technology more than some of the other Bootstrap groups. Also, by virtue of my own connections, it has the potential to partner with a couple other organizations, specifically EFF-Austin (which is about tech policy) and the Digital Convergence Initiative, which is about regional economic development. Bootstrap Web members were instrumental in helping revive the Open Source Posse that originally began as part of EFF-Austin, and we've talked seriously about making Bootstrap Web members beta users of a web testbed that DCI hopes to create.
Bootstrap Web meets the last Monday of the month at 6:30pm at Café Caffeine (909 W. Mary in Austin). Our next meeting, on April 30, will be a discussion of commons-based peer production and open innovation, and how these concepts are relevant to the current and future state of web development and business. Founders off Bootstrap web companies are welcome - we have an interesting and lively combination of business and technical participants.
Taking climate change seriouslyThe 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is out, and even the Bush Administration acknowledges global warming (though it's less sure they're ready to do anything about it). The report is hardly depicting the worst case, as Alex notes:
...while we're heartened by the media's generally good reporting on the severity and unanimity of the IPCC's conclusions, we're a bit disappointed that more reporters haven't picked up on the fact that the IPCC's conclusions are baselines, conservative findings they were sure they could scientifically defend (and in some cases, even less bold than that) and (as Gil wrote yesterday), many serious scientists believe that the most accurate climate models suggest we can expect to see much more dramatic effects, much more quickly, particularly as regards how quickly the seas will rise. Worse, there has been little acknowledgment that some of the major wildcards, like the possible release of massive amounts of methane from melting permafrost, or a huge change in the climate functions of the ocean due to acidification leads to (as Andy Revkin puts it) "a more than a 1-in-10 chance of much greater warming, a risk that many experts say is far too high to ignore."Alex likes to think of climate change as a challenge ("we have an opportunity for adventure and possibility now") and I try to go there, too, and feel some relief that the reality is finally sinking in. A next step here in Texas might be to Stop the Coal Rush, i.e. let our legislators (many of whom were brewed in the same pot as Bush) know that we're serious about climate change. ("The purpose of this event is to ask Texas State Legislators to intervene on the unfair permitting process and stop the permits for 18 dirty coal-fired power plants proposed in Texas. We want clean and safe energy solutions for Texas!")
Greezy Wheels
I posted a set of Greezy Wheels photos on Flickr, shot at their terrific Christmas Eve show at the Armadillo Bazaar. Also sitting in: Maryann Price, Barbara Kooyman, Zhenya Kolykhanov, and Tony Airoldi.
Austin is one of the best geek citiesWired 15.01 (January 2007) lists Austin as one of the top ten geek cities in Texas. Reasons include the city's EFF connection, Dell, Whole Foods, South by Southwest, and our happening dorkbots.
Sweetriot in AustinSarah Endline was in town last night, offering samples of Sweetriot's chocolate at 219 West. Marsha and I dropped by for chocolate and conversation - ran into Mason Arnold from Greenling and Vinay Bhagat from Convio as well as organizers Bjorn Billhardt of Enspire Learning and Bijoy Goswami of Bootstrap Austin. I'm not sure what we talked about, I'm deaf as a post. We did gobble some chocolate, though.
I'm giving a talk at the Central Texas World Future Society meeting next Tuesday, inspired by Extreme Democracy, the book Mitch Ratcliffe and I edited in 2004. Given the audience, I'll talk about the future of web-based political technology. My views are definitely not utopian, but I'll try to avoid going dystopian.
LeavesJust thought I'd share the view from our living area... the leaves are finally changing!
Extreme Democracy talkInterested in technology for politics and democracy? I'll be speaking on the subject at the December 5 meeting of the World Future Society in Austin. [Link]
In the 1990s online activists experimented with the Internet and the World Wide Web as a platform for a new kind of politics, leveraging interactive "many-to-many" tools to support both advocacy and deliberation. Early online activism focused on issues that were relevant to the Internet's strong "geek" element,"cyber liberties" issues of free speech and privacy. However in 2000, as Internet penetration was mainstreaming and reaching critical mass, the web became relevant to political campaigns. In the presidential campaign for election 2004, the Internet became an essential part of the political process. Howard Dean's short-lived front-runner status, a product of his campaign's effective use of Internet tools, proved that the Internet could have an effect. Though Dean was unsuccessful in his bid for the Democratic nomination, he continued to use web-based tools effectively to take control of the Democratic Party. Jon will answer the question, how is the Internet's role in politics evolving, and what are the implications for 2008?(It'll be interesting to see whether I can really answer that question.) LOTV Podcast
More coverage of the LOTV Code-A-Thon: Joel Greenberg recorded a podcast on the scene, which he pitched to the local NPR affiliate, KUT. They didn't run it on the radio, but they did add it to their web site. [Link]