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May 30, 2004
Once again, Alive
Posted by Xiao at 11:29 PM | TrackBack
含义
必然的过程和结局之后，你开始明白其中的含义。
《棒球》
是很简单的
游戏
你只是
投球
击球
捕住球
有时你赢了
有时你输了
有时
下雨了
８８.⒐
Posted by Xiao at 12:14 AM | TrackBack
May 28, 2004
Link back
Just put this link on transnets.
Fifteen years ago, you had never dreamed that one day you would "link back" through cyberspace to Notre Dame this way. Although, it all started from that serach, then lead to Border's book shelf two years ago. You also remembered that warm breeze on New Mexico plateau, in a sunny afternoon of May.
(Through memory, "links" are crossing spatial, temporal, and social spaces.)
Posted by Xiao at 10:37 AM | TrackBack
May 26, 2004
Coming media revolution
Media capture devices become programmable and networked
meta creation and use become integrated throughout media production and reuse
media consumer become media user on daily bases.
Media stream
Active capture
Adaptive media
Mobile media metadata
(distributed network on the planet, study usage patterns. )
Posted by Xiao at 07:53 PM | TrackBack
Social Use of Photos
Nancy is giving a talk on this topic, from Action Theory to a real case study.
How do we do user-centered design for emerging technology? In our project on networked, programmable, mobile imaging devices, we are empirically investigating the social uses of personal photography. Our goal is to better understand and design for the uses of emerging networked imaging technologies by adapting social science research frameworks that have been used to explain the successes of technology retroactively.
what people take picture of?
family, travel, art etc...
What people do with photos?
1, Throwing them around, 2, album, 3, storage. (Why people feel guilty? There is an established social norm of expectation of how these photos should be organized.)
and 4, story telling: (it is a event. Who participate in that situation is important here. )
5, put on website (publishing) , including collective photoblogs & themes.
social use of photos
1, memory: off-loading memories, etc...
2, relationships: representing, creating new relationships etc.
3, self-expression, self presentation
Media: suddenly people has large audience
physical, digital, oral
telling story face to face.
mortality is a factor here. Person who is going to die, who has a strongest sense of mortality, most willing to have these stories telling became enduring activities.
Surprising Observations:
1, attachment to prints
2, reluctance to annotate photos
etc...
Open Issues:
exploding volume
increased # of sources - by orders of magnitude
blurring between public and private
bringing together different media
production does not mean consumption. (people like to write blogs does not mean they want to read them.)
etc...
Posted by Xiao at 04:33 PM | TrackBack
The New World of Planetary-Scale
"Start by asking yourself this question: assume you had a worldwide network of computers running a single application, in constant communication. What old problems could this new resource solve? What new applications can one imagine? What improvements to these existing infrastructures are required?"
Then go to here.
Just as the turn of the 20th century ushered in a new era in physics with the discovery of quantum mechanics, the turn of the millenium ushered in a new era of information technology with the emergence of wide-area collaborative computing platforms: the Grid and PlanetLab, to name two. Pure peer-to-peer systems such as Alan Kay's Croquet wide-area operating system (formerly known as Tea) are also emerging. New applications which uniquely exploit these platforms have begun to appear:
* Education
* Wide-area collaboration
* Collaborative media, particularly in the humanities
* wide-area sensing applications in the sciences ....
Posted by Xiao at 04:10 PM | TrackBack
“格”、“博”与“联”
因为想到“格”的关键之意，信手“博”来的文章，却“联”到十年未见的旧知。
Posted by Xiao at 02:54 PM | TrackBack
《我在天国的麦地割麦》
梁小斌
不用携带瓦罐和丰收的喜悦
我在天国的麦地割麦
我用一柄系着红色绸带的镰刀割麦
我闭眼。防止麦芒刺我
拾穗人在尾随
我若想念她
我就乱扔麦穗
几声呵斥
从人间传来
像水瓢掉进水桶一样沉闷
我吃的是麦子
麦秸被我塞进炉膛
灰烬也不放过
麦子的灵魂可以写诗
我在天国的麦地
背诵麦子的用途
放下陈旧镰刀看我的
是几位穿着粗布衣裳的如同大象一样茁壮的割麦女神
这里是可以自由地糟蹋粮食的神圣领地
用我的全部身心
去踩碎一颗麦粒
Posted by Xiao at 02:33 PM | TrackBack
Text Mining
Lunch with Arthur on Duran. He introduced you to his prosessor Marti Hearst. She wrote about text mining and taught about Information visualization & presentation in SIMS.
Posted by Xiao at 02:31 PM | TrackBack
Cassini-Huigens
你曾经是土星。
《让我们一起仰望星空》
让我们一起仰望星空
让大地和沉睡的世界
在我们身下延展
深蓝色的天鹅绒上
缀满莲花般的星座
无形的花瓣
晶莹的露水在闪光
每一滴露珠都是一个遥远的世界
在向我们无声地张望
那里，也会有一首歌
吟咏青春的岁月
也会有梦幻般的目光
仰望壮丽的星空
也会有
心和心真诚的故事
流传在彩色的梦里
勇敢的足音叩响道路
坚定的手握紧舵轮……
(人生是短暂的
但可以并不渺小
宇宙是宏伟的
而且还饱含深情）
我们永远
永远在大地上行走
会有沉重的时候
会有孤独的时候
让我们一起仰望星空
1984.6
Posted by Xiao at 11:00 AM | TrackBack
Digital Network in Asia
Posted by Xiao at 10:08 AM | TrackBack
盲者
难得阴天，早上的Roma几乎称得上“拥挤”。
戴绿色礼帽的老人，用放大镜在看报纸；
跑步进来的高个子中年女子，体恤衫上写满了“我尝过”的长长清单，上面还有几个红字：“自愿的”；
蓬须长发的盲者，桌上一杯见底的热巧克力，和两叠白纸，左边的一叠已经针眼密布。
你的Chai喝完了。他的双手还在钢尺和针笔上欷欷梭梭地划动，时而又陷入沉思。
莫扎特欢乐的四重奏，他椅子下面的背包显得陈旧。
Posted by Xiao at 08:47 AM | TrackBack
May 24, 2004
Information revolution
“The history of life, as I (Stephen Gould) read it, is a series of stable states, punctuated at rare intervals by major events that occur with great rapidity and help to establish the next stable era."
Are we living in one of these rare intervals now?
"An interval characterized by the transformation of our 'material culture' by the work of a new technological paradigm organized around information technologies. "
"Biology, electronics, and informatics seem to be converging and interacting in their applications, in their materials, and more fundamentally, in their conceptual approach."
"The core of the transformation we are experiencing in the current revolution refers to technologies of information processing and communication."
"What characterizes the current technological revolution is not the centrality of knowledge and information, but the application of such knowledge and information to knowledge generation and information processing/communication devices, in a cumulative feedback loop between innovation and the uses of innovation. "
"There is a close relationship between the social processes of creating and manipulating symbols (the culture of society) and the capacity to produce and distribute goods and services (the productive forces). For the first time in history, the human mind is a direct productive force, not just a decisive element of the production system."
"Computers, communications systems, and genetic decoding and programming are all amplifiers and extensions of the human mind.
What we think, and how we think, become expressed in goods, services, material, and intellectual output, be it food, shelter, transportation and communications systems,computers, missiles, health, education, or images.
The growing integration between minds and machines, including the DNA machine, is ......fundamentally altering the way we are born, we live, we learn, we work, we produce, we consume, we dream, we fight, or we die."
Castells, "The Rise of the network society" , p28 -31
Posted by Xiao at 09:54 PM | TrackBack
礼尚往来
回报Ross的邀请，链接他对上周会议的描述。里面对Peter Kollock的工作有特别的介绍，不过没有提这位素食先生的满面紫气，是刚刚禅坐两月的结果。
Posted by Xiao at 09:27 PM | TrackBack
Social Software reader
This from Many-to-Many workspace, a good resource list for a introduction of social software.
Posted by Xiao at 02:52 PM | TrackBack
May 23, 2004
茅峰茶
你们不需要语言。
Posted by Xiao at 10:29 PM | TrackBack
声音
清晰的声音
唯一的声音
仍然是，你的北京
Posted by Xiao at 10:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
新的散步
为明天的散步准备。
“知识的分工”是怎样产生的？"Knowing more and more about less and less" 确实存在，不过相反的（互补的）努力呢？
Posted by Xiao at 09:02 PM | TrackBack
May 21, 2004
十点二十分
邻桌的两位在练习会话，依稀听见一声“云南”。
从Roma Cafe硕大的玻璃门望出去，学院路又堵车了。
Posted by Xiao at 10:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
社会软件
－社会硬件是什么？
－桌子。
Posted by Xiao at 05:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Result of weblogging workshop
You did not make it. But at least should read some papers from May 18 workshop.
Posted by Xiao at 05:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Searching Wisdom
"Ten things Goolgle has found to be true."
Sunny California, and the youth.
Posted by Xiao at 05:21 PM | TrackBack
Technology and us
"First we invent technologies-and then our technologies reinvent us, as individuals, as communities, and ultimately as entire societies."
‐‐‐ Paul Saffo, IFTF.
Posted by Xiao at 01:29 PM | TrackBack
May 20, 2004
The Tragedy of the commons
Here is Hardin's classic paper in 1968.
Posted by Xiao at 11:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Class in UCLA
Peter Kollock has been teaching this class for years. It all goes back to Axelrod's work.
Posted by Xiao at 10:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cybernomads
You are not sure this word can be used beyond of northern California. But it did catch the growing need for a new human identity. "Cybernomads are what we are becoming as we integrate our movements in a globally connected world with our thinking, our social interaction, and our fundamental sense of who we are. "
Wireless, geopositioning, location-linked data, these are infrastructure of location-based services.
What about "repurposing of public space"?
Posted by Xiao at 08:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Collective Action
This is what you are here in the Hayes Mansion for. Although missed the game part, but it is a good feeling to see cooperation is now finally emerging as the new frontier of strategy. It has been long ignored in the Western science of revolution as well as market activities.
![image00[1]](http://rockngo.org/images/image00[1].jpg)
Economics of cooperation
* peer-to-peer markets
*Agent based production networks
(A battle for the commons: science, network access and
art)
Then there are shared interest groups and online political organizing.
And this leads to social software: Reed's law, "friend-of-a-friend" network building, mapping enterprise networks, technorati ......
You are talking about global production networks, new kinds of citizenship, and group forming networks.
Posted by Xiao at 08:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 18, 2004
口头传播和政治行动族
Posted by Xiao at 10:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Danah's papers
Here is Danah Boyd's publication page. Some very well researched and written papers on the subject of Social Networking Software and online activities.
Posted by Xiao at 02:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
JEDI谈部落格
"blog“在台湾被翻做”部落格“，”格“亦静亦动，(竹子可“格”，网络亦可格。）部落则强调了”社交“的含义。Jedi的这一篇介绍部落格，比较完整。
“博客”强调了主体，但是用做动词，“博”就不如“格”了。
Posted by Xiao at 10:53 AM | TrackBack
May 17, 2004
社会软件简史
Ross指点的Wiki去处，是从Engelbart开始的。BBS是84年，博客是1999，近来的发展在这里。
Posted by Xiao at 03:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
社群的尺度
Ross提过网路生态系统，中间有提到世界大小的问题。Shirky的受众尺度范围分析和群体症结两帖也可读。
Posted by Xiao at 02:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 16, 2004
Ability to surveil
Just as the ability to read and write and freely communicate gives power to citizens that protects them from the powers of the state, the ability to surveil, to invade the citizen's privacy, gives the state the power to confuse, coerce and control citizens. Uneducated populations cannot rule themselves, but tyrannies can control even educated populations, given sophisticated means of surveillance.
---- Michel Foucault, "Discipline and Punish", 1979, p290)
Posted by Xiao at 09:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Freedom of opinion
In 1859, John Stuart Mill explained why freedom of opinion was good for society.
"First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be in error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of the truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the reminder of the truth has any chances of being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it be held in the manner of prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds."
Posted by Xiao at 09:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Mesh Forum
Do you want to be back in Chicago in Octorber? Here is a good reason to do so.
Posted by Xiao at 10:44 AM | TrackBack
May 12, 2004
The paradox
While information systems and networking augment human powers of organizations and integration, they simultaneously subvert the traditional Western concept of a separate, independent subject.
Thus, the search for new connectedness around shared, reconstructed identity.
The search for new identity and new spirituality is on also in the East, in spite of a stronger sense of collective identity and the traditional, cultural subordination of individual to the family.
(Manuel Castells "The Rise of the Network Society"- p24)
Posted by Xiao at 05:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Key question
In a world characterized by simultaneous globalization and fragmentation, how to combine new technologies and collective memory, universal science and communitarian cultures, passion and reason?
(asked by Calderon and Laserna)
Posted by Xiao at 05:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
No more "class struggle?"
In a post-industrial society, in which cultural services have replaced material goods at the core of production, it is the defense of the subject, in its personality and in its culture, against the logic of apparatuses and markets, that replaces the idea of class struggle.
Alain Touraine (1994)
Posted by Xiao at 05:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Gucci的午餐
Emeryville, 菠菜沙拉，Peter西藏的经历以及新的知识网路。
随意浏览，看到Karen Stephenson的Netform, 以及这本网路组织的书。
Posted by Xiao at 04:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Identity and social meaning
In a world of global flows of wealth, power, and images, the search for identity, collective or individual, ascribed or constructed, becomes the fundamental source of social meaning.
This is not a new trend, since identity, and particularly religious and ethnic identity, have been at the roots of meaning since the dawn of human society. Yet identity is becoming the main and sometimes the only, source of meaning in a historical period characterized by widespread destructuring of organizations, delegitimation of institutions, fading away of major social movements, and ephemeral cultural expressions.
People increasingly organize their meaning not around what they do but on the basis of what they are, or believe what they are.
Meanwhile, on the other hand, global networks of instrumental exchanges selectively switch on and off individuals, groups, regions, and even countries, according to their relevance in fulfilling the goals processed in the network, in a relentless flow of strategic decisions.
It follows a fundamental split between abstract, universal instrumentalism, and historically rooted, particularistic identities.
Our societies are increasingly structured around a bipolar opposition between the Net and the Self.
(Manuel Castells "The Rise of the Network Society"- p3)
Posted by Xiao at 03:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
子曰
"Do you think me a learned, well-read man?"
"Certainly," replied Zi-gong, "Aren't you?"
"Not at all," said Confucius, "I have simply grasped one thread which links up the rest. "
Recounted in Sima Qian (145-ca. 89BC)
Posted by Xiao at 02:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Information Technologies
Technology, In straight line with Harvey Brooks and daniel Bell, "the use of scientific knowledge to specify ways of doing things in a reproducible manner."
Among information technologies, Manuel Castells include the converging set of technologies in microelectronics, computing (machines and software), telecommunications,/broadcasting, and optoelectronics. (The Rise of the Network Society - p30)
Posted by Xiao at 02:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 11, 2004
到达
十点二十分，学院路的Royal Cafe, 一杯清茶。
忽然觉察到了涌动。潮渐渐涨起，开始听懂了鲸鱼的歌声。
从Google"C.P.Snow"算起，是９43天。
雪地上无声的奔马，直布罗佗海峡，“早安，柏林”，七座清真寺的城市，蓝色航行，奥林匹亚的地火，南中国海，言论自由咖啡厅，晚霞烧红的高原，阿斯本，第一次见到克雷是在东村......
是的，一切都很好。
Posted by Xiao at 06:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Oxygen
Information is like the air we breathe. It is the element we live in. It surrounds us on all sides, and we couldn't survive without it.
Does this mean that information ought to be free, or at least a public good?
Steven Landsburg is against such logic. He tells us of the many problems we face simply because the air is free. That is why we suffer from air pollution. But Steve Shaviro went even further to propose that this plan would also solve the problem of overpopulation. Is he being sarcastic?
Posted by Xiao at 03:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 09, 2004
台湾网络文化研究
南华大学的瞿本瑞先生在《如何研究网络文化》一文介绍了台湾学界的一些成果：《网络社会学通讯》《信息社会研究》和《信息社会丛书》。
Posted by Xiao at 02:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 08, 2004
鲸鱼的歌唱
Pescadero，你们听到了鲸鱼的歌唱。
Posted by Xiao at 08:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 07, 2004
社会软件定义
Matt Webb试图定义社会软件，中间又引用了Stewart Butterfield,甚有意思。
Posted by Xiao at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
竹叶青
After three cups, the way Francis sees the question is
(1) metaphor, (2) science of networks, (3) social networks, and (4) communication infrastructure of networks.
"If modernity defined by time, globalization defined by space, then networks create new situation of time and space. "
~f
Posted by Xiao at 12:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
两年前
刁曼岛，默默潜近巨大的珊瑚礁。
Posted by Xiao at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 06, 2004
Coalitions and networks
Dr. Yang Guobin mentioned this point in his writing about virtual public sphere in Chinese cyberspace: "Weaker parties tend to enter coalitions to resist or negotiate with dominant political and economic actors. "
Posted by Xiao at 03:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 05, 2004
日月为易
观变于阴阳，发挥于刚柔，和顺于道德，而理于义；
穷理尽性，以至于命。（说卦传）
Posted by Xiao at 06:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
演进的次序
部落最先出现，然后是等级制度，竞争性的市场成型是再后的事，直到信息和传播技术发达的今天，合作性的网路组织才真正开始成为重要角色；国家，市场，公民社会的关系也因此要重新平衡。
Posted by Xiao at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 04, 2004
GBN's conversation with Clay Shirky
This is an old article. (2002.12) It quoted him saying:
"The Internet was the first new tool to help convene group conversations since the invention of the table."
This ability to hold groups together and make them work effectively across distance holds one of the keys to the power of the Internet in the coming years.
Alongside this profusion of practical social software innovations, there have been comparable advances in our theoretical understanding of social networks. We're beginning to get a clearer sense of how networks work-particularly in contrast to hierarchies, which, despite much talk to the contrary, are still the overwhelmingly dominant organizational form within business. We have a better grasp of how sub-networks form within groups, and why some groups succeed, while others, organized in a slightly different way, fail. Shirky studies both sides, the tools and the theory, which often are complimentary. Social relations are now being made more explicit by using new tracking and mapping software that captures and represents the interactions of a group in real time. And understanding what a group really needs to succeed is informing new software development.
Posted by Xiao at 03:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
组织形式
部落，制度性机构，市场，网路，这是兰德David Ronfeldt对社会组织形式的分类（PDF)。
Posted by Xiao at 11:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 03, 2004
水，信息
小波浪苦恼地问大波浪： ”为什么你这样大？而我却这样小？“
(苦恼由没有清楚存在的本质而生。）
”那本质是什么呢？“小波浪问。
”你们都是水啊。“
（蔡志忠的《禅说》，是那次归程唯一的行装。）
水‐信息
十五年后，重新回到了小波浪的问题吗？
Posted by Xiao at 07:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wheeler's Questions
You have met him in the winter of 1984. Twenty years later, sitting by the Spieker Pool, you are again pondering on those RBQs. (really big questions.)
- How come existence?
- Why the quantum?
- A participatory universe?
- What makes meaning?
- It from Bit?
about the last RBQ, Wheeler said:
" Every it - every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself - derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely - even if in some contexts indirectly - from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits."
You can certainly keep on asking more RBQs. Hans Christian von Baeyer asked two:
- What is information?
- It from Qubit? (quantum information)
Posted by Xiao at 07:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thinking Web
Thinking its enormity, complexity and global reach. Bernardo Huberman from HP Lab said that statistical physics model has helped to discover some regularities of the Web. It can shed light on:
- how information is stored and linked within the Web
- how individuals use it
- how people interact on a massive scale when foraging for information in this new medium.
The structure and content of the Web is the result of actions by millions of people who seldom, if ever, think of the global implications of adding an extra page or a link to their sites.
Those strong regularities are interesting, because it can be explained by theories that take into account the detailed behavioral mechanisms of Web users and designers of sites. As the theories then proceed to connect the individual level to the aggregate behavior of the Web, they shed light on number of social mechanisms that are operational beyond of the Web. examples of such insights are provided by laws that explain how people surf, how they interact with one another through congestion patterns, and how they determine the popularity of given sites. From this perspective, the Web becomes a gigantic informational ecosystem that can be used to quantitatively measure and test theories of human behavior and social interaction.
Posted by Xiao at 07:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack