Gnodal Journal

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admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:59:35 +0000

I’ve been putting this off for a long time, waiting for the shake-out in blogging clients. /me peeks at “WindowsRead the Rest...

“Must-see” video

admin — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:14:56 +0000

#SocialMedia “Social Media Revolution 2″ (Refresh) YouTube video Verified as Empire Avenue ITGEEK (EAVB_YBJKHHWRJX) Related posts:Web2 is You and MeRead the Rest...

2010 flashing-back a decade and more

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 01:08:24 +0000

I say it’s because of personality politics … the A-list only allows advances that add value to their own stock. In case case the fact is that most of what’s being discussed as “new” I recall from the early 80s, even the late 70s. (I carried around my copy of “Netweavers” for years!) And the software that’s coming out? I saw designs that were almost identicial (if not superior) in the last 90s … a decade and more ago.
My point is simply this: my communalism dates back to “the bus” in ’68 … where dozens showed up to help hang new drapes but when it came time to change the engine it was just the.same.old 6 or 7 of us. And I’ve watched the dynamic mature: the clique that was oh.so.willing to “partake” but not actually “take part” have been treated well by the passing years and a good number of them are now well-positioned if not wealthy. And their thing is this: stand back and watch til there’s something they like and then take / steal / copy it … your basic Bill Gates manoever. Actual collaboration? Horse.shit … “collaboration” is the pretext they use to stick their nose in it.

So anyhow, it’s still good stuff … however couched in self-serving cant.

Interview with Tim O’Reilly by Delib from Delib on Vimeo.

Here’s some material from the blog at delib.co.uk (File under “They sure do have the theory!”)

Here’s an item that shows the end effect: March, 2010, a lovely blog post celebrating a brilliant new method (“Notes v. Maps: Trading Quantity for Quality“) when actually the method was “cutting edge” late-90s. How am I so sure? Because that’s when I abandoned for the fact of being retro- and inherently dead-ended. But it suits the twits in suits so … so that’s that. Period. “Innovation”?! C’mon, get real …

Why "participatory deliberation"? from where?

BenTremblay — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:03:25 +0000

*Re-draft of a letter; X-posted from Public deliberation on climate change in Alberta*

I came across something of interest while going through old material in one of my blogs. In the process of setting up a new blog with old material (WordPress can import from other blog platforms … sometimes very, very well. But when not “very well” it’s catastrophic!) I had to go through checking for data errors. In the process of that, I came across something I noted 5yrs ago about healthcare policy / personality types. In a nutshell: that’s what I’ve been beavering away at since 1975.

Facilitating workshops here in Edmonton about GATT (The social justice community was active in this long before there was an “anti-globalization movement”.) I noticed something about the way people formed opinions. It seemed to me that the strength of their conviction and the confidence of their positions bore very little relationship with the accuracy of their knowledge or the depth of their understanding. This concerned me. A lot. As an 8 year (1962) old I read about the Hungarian Revolution. The next year Kennedy was assassinated. When Prague Spring rolled around I was on the hippie bus and we hosted some kids who showed up here that summer. Then … and this is key … while I was in uniform (Canadian equivalent to Signals Intelligence, after have trained airborne infantry) we over-threw the Allende government in Chile. So how citizens relate to policy concerned me a lot. As it does today.

I know I’m not one of the brilliant ones. But I also know (industry tested) that when one persists with good craft one experiences something like success. My point … or, rather, the point of my “participatory deliberation” project … is that only discourse can root convictions in one’s personal belief system. Otherwise? Otherwise it’s usually some sort of sophistry … or, at best, rhetoric. What I find is that many times positions taken are as though proxies for other issues. Some sort of displacement? I don’t know for certain. If I’m granted a second life with intellect I may devote myself to cog-psych and study that, as I wish I could have in this one!

My suggestion is that a system that fosters (read: imposes) logical rigour can support true discourse while promoting the individuals’ subjective narrative. The up-side of having an actual design rather than abstract theory is that, like most good craft, it has multiple applications. Like, for example, acting as the core of a pedagogical method. (Imagine something like Harvard University’s Harvard’s Professor Sandel in his “Justice” series on a global scale. Really!) Or, somewhat more mundane, as the spine of a deliberative system for budgeting and other policy decisions at a municipal level. OpenYEG, yes? Parks policy in Edmonton … or, moving up a notch, energy policy for the province, or the country.

I like to think of it in terms of Hermann Hesse’s glasperlenspiel, or pondering the impact of the ancient Library of Alexandria, keeping in mind UBC’s John Willinsky and his work on Open Access. Likewise Jurgen Habermas, with his “discourse ethics”. But what I’m really talking about is a spreadsheet of sorts … a spreadsheet for ideas. “Merely” … and it only took me from 1975 to 2003 to figure out how to do it!

If I had some sort of backing, any sort of support or collaboration or sign of interest, I’d be more explicit about my design. But I don’t, so I’m not. And so I don’t often run my mouth like this. But discovering that old blog post seemed an opportune moment for heh something like an exposee.

If some of this seems at all sensible to you, please do let me know!

As I wrote in “GroundPlane 101“:

To energize collective intelligence …
… to magnetize the wisdom of crowds.
==== ====
Thinking together about what is crucial …
… speaking deeply about simple things.

@bentrem

"Fake" participation

BenTremblay — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:49:00 +0000

following up on my post, “The Obama WhiteHouse – Civility, OpenDemocracy and Web2.0″:

from IAP Journal Symposium on Obama Administration and Public Participation
- “Deterring Fake Public Participation“; Snider, J. H. (2010)
- “Practicing a Participatory Presidency?: An Analysis of the Obama Administration’s Open Government Dialogue“; Konieczka, S. P. (2010)

slightly related:

on the validity of “persuasion”:

Me and "them"

BenTremblay — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:50:00 +0000

Here’s the mockup I created of the graphical interface to IssuePress:

(Click for explanation)

And here’s the fancy graphical front end for “Grab More Science“:

When you click on one of the boxes, you get this:

*blink*

Sooooo, who’s getting paid to develop this stuff? Not me …

Drinking the Koolaid: "Light and Love Delusion" as the new jingoism

BenTremblay — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:06:00 +0000

*X-posted from my blog on http://GlobalSenseMaking.net*

Micah Sifry quoted this in his post about the IntenseDebate deployment on Change.Gov:

“I just wanted to say thank you for giving us a place to make our thoughts and comment heard. It’s about time the government provide a centralized place for citizens to express their opinions where they feel they will be heard.” [Emphasis added by him there.]

My response to him on Twitter was this:
“With 3.7K / 53 pages of comments (and the thread closed), you say ID on Change.Gov is a place people can go to be heard?! #koolaid”
In effect, this says that standing in a crowd with 3,699 other people and holding up a placard is a brave step forward for engaged democracy.
That’s non-sense … and worse: it leads to complacent self-delusion, entirely antithetical to the drive for innovation.

Sidebar: I noticed that Sifry has blocked me on Twitter …
… to that, I tweeted this: ” Well, after years of cold-shoulder I finally got a reaction: blocked by none other than @Mlsif, the high-priest of democracy. #borg #matrix ”

The ironies are ripe … and entirely keeping with what might seem a cynical appraisal on my part: those who are charged with the responsibility of applauding the Emperor’s new clothes are doing just that.
Such behavior has consequences.
Most immediately … well, most immediately is that folk like Micah Sifry are not charged to new levels of aggression rather than deniable disdain and silent contempt. (I notice my login failed at http://www.techpresident.com … that’s Sifry’s bully pulpit. He wouldn’t do that, would he? That would be positively Soviet.)
Almost as immediately: folk are lulled (or cowed) into mute appreciation. Unless they join the cheering.

Here’s what I added to a discussion about ID on Change.Gov:

“I like the IntenseDebate crew and project … but the system is basically a Web2.0 version of 1997 functionality for threading comments. (HyperNews comes to mind … Daniel LaLiberte’s project)

Folk who don’t think we need better don’t realize the real challenge civil society is facing.
I think we need more … and I think the Transition Team and the Obama Administration deserve better. We all do.

Adding a few lines on what becomes page 27 of 53 isn’t “participatory deliberation” … it isn’t anywhere close to “Democracy 2.0″.

It took me 28 years to derive a design … Jurgen Habermas’ “discourse ethics” combined with John Willinsky’s “OpenAccess” … but I can’t get a hearing.

Until and unless we recognize the problems there will be no substantive change … Spin2.0 is still just spin.
And nobody wants to settle for that.

p.s. a note on communications (I was SigInt BTW):
I’ve sent Feedback a number of notes saying that the footer here breaks in FireFox.
Each time I did, my note was blocked because the form doesn’t accept the postal code we use in Canada. The form says it does, but it doesn’t. It only works with US ZIP. I use the one for the WhiteHouse (and make a point of saying so).
The footer here still breaks in FireFox …
… and the form still doesn’t accept Canadian Postal Code.

God’s in the details, ehh whot?”

I’m sure that such thinking will mark me as an enemy to those who flock to High Priests such as Micah Sifry.
Which goes to show how techne is controlled by social dynamics. Lawrence Lessig was right: moneyed opinions are privileged in decision making, and that needs to be changed. But I say again: that’s only part of the picture.
When the oligarchs’ partiality is exercised through gross wealth it can be seen and tracked, if not always easily.
When the oligarchs’ partiality is manifest through the activity of middle-men, in effect a fifth column, then the common understanding is degraded and the dominant paradigm wins by default. (Read: opportunistic careerists will rationalize the most abominable outrages.)

Unlike the flat/linear format of ID which swamps the vast majority of voices (deniably, which makes the effect only more dangerous for being insidious) what’s needed is a method that promotes no individual utterance … one that proceeds by quality of its content … one that manifests something of Hesse’s glasperlenspiel.
That, IMNSHO, is the need.

But where’s the market pull?
Flash … buzz … fun … appearance.

Have some koolaid … I’m sure Sifry’s got a pitcher full of it on his office desk.

p.s. about an hour ago I had an honest.to.god Eureka moment … that makes ?what? maybe 3 in 54 years. I was yet again going over my theory concerning taxonomy / ontology, tags and categories, topics and subjects, and on and on … going back over what I’ve implemented, all the way back to ’75 and the resources library database (cards with holes punched along their edges, to be sorted with knitting needles. I adore that!) … and for no real good reason OLAP came to mind … OLAP cube … maybe I visualized a Rubik’s cube, I’m not sure … but it fell into place. IssuePress.com has legs!

Whitaker's Autopoiesis and Enactment

BenTremblay — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:49:00 +0000

see also his page on Francisco Varela: http://www.enolagaia.com/Varela.html

clipped from www.enolagaia.com

The Biology of Cognition
Autopoietic Theory
Enactive Cognitive Science
The Theories of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela

THE OBSERVER WEB:
Autopoiesis and Enaction

Brought to You By:
Dr. Randall Whitaker

Cat Out O'the Bag?

BenTremblay — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:51:00 +0000

*I’ve been in “stealth mode” for years … cat definitely in the bag.*

A while back I did a little online work for a guy on the other side of the Atlantic … just helping him re-design the frontpage of his commercial site. Not rocket science, but not thumb-twiddling either.
Thing is, he had no means of paying me. I don’t have credit card, so paypal is out.

So I decided to start the implementation phase of my project and arranged for him to get me an account at DreamHost. And that’s where things stand.
But now the time has come for me to renew that account and secure my domain name.

Well, I just let the cat’s head out:

“The Antenna is You” – GroundPlane.wordpress.com

Quick bookmarks (re-jig)

BenTremblay — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:47:00 +0000

Re-posting August 04, 2005 which I deleted due to constant Russian spamming.

*I’m on my second laptop and so don’t want to add these sites to bookmarks*

http://www.understandingxml.com/

http://www.xulplanet.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3 XULPlanet and its http://www.xulplanet.com/forum/ Forum
http://www.xulplanet.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4 General, http://www.xulplanet.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=1 XUL, http://www.xulplanet.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3 XBL, and http://www.xulplanet.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3″ XPCOM .

http://www.xulplanet.com/ndeakin/ aka ”Neil’s Place” (XUL blog)