The Emergence of Obama

Sitting outside the poll yesterday, I listened to Steven Johnson discuss emergence on both a Radiolab podcast and TED Talk. I didn't quite make the direct connection at the time, but later in the day I began to recognize Obama's political success in our country as an example of emergence. In the same way that Alan Watts speaks of a tree appling and a planet peopling, the United States just obama'ed. We are witnessing the emergence of a new politics and a new sensibility in this country. Recent research at the NDN indicates that a new generation of voters is fundamentally transforming politics in this country and consequently, the types of people who rise to positions of power. Obama is right when he acknowledges the essential role his supporters have played in his meteoric rise. He knows, in much the same way Howard Dean got an inkling of in 2004 (and Joe Trippi wrote about), that his electoral success is a self fulfilling prophecy of the American political system.

Social Media Classroom

Howard Rheingold just announced the launch of the Social Media Classroom.

In an educational setting, the social media classroom is designed to augment or—when physical co-presence is not possible—to replace face-to-face interaction. The power derived from using social media in group learning processes comes not from a more efficient computerized extension of older communication forms—the classroom discussion, texts to be read, essays and theses to be written. The power of social media in education and elsewhere derives from their affordances for forms of communication and social behavior that were previously prohibitively difficult or expensive for more than a tiny elite to benefit. Forums afford many-to-many, multimedia, asynchronous discussions among small or large groups, regardless of distance, over extended periods; blogging affords the expression of individual voice, the emergence of a market for intelligent information-filtering and knowledge-dissemination, and public interactions in the form of comments; wikis enable collaborative document and knowledge creation as well as web-building as a learning method; social bookmarking makes possible simple, bottom-up, collective knowledge-gathering; microblogging and chat add synchronous online text channels that can be tuned and cultivated for specific purposes.

Pretty cool.

Palin a closet social liberal?

I was surprised to hear today that Sarah Palin told Fox News that she reads The Economist. I suppose Sarah knew she was taking flak for not being able to name a single news outlet when she was recently asked where she got her news. Surely The Economist is a reputable, serious source of information. Honestly, I couldn't agree more.

But hearing this from Palin reminded me of a letter from the editor of The Economist sent to Savage Love a couple years back. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Savage Love is a sex advice column that's syndicated across the country. Dan Savage is a strong advocate for sensible government policy on social issues and equal rights.

In one letter to the column, a reader commented that they assumed they are one of the few people who read both Savage Love and The Economist. The following week, the Economist's editor submitted the following letter:

Dear Dan Savage: I was flattered to hear that you and your readers had picked up our reference to santorum in The Economist, but I just wanted to disagree with—or hope to disagree with—your reader who ventured that they were unusual in reading both Savage Love and The Economist. I hope very much they are not. Although nonreaders often think of us as a conservative magazine, we've actually always been socially highly liberal, whether on immigration, gay rights, or many other things, including favouring the legalization of drugs. The Economist was among the first mainstream publications, on either side of the Atlantic, to advocate legal recognition of gay partnerships when I ran a cover on the subject in 1996 and then another in 2004.

Our readership is younger than that of other current-affairs or business publications, and I like to think that, like us writers, they are thoughtful, intelligent folk. But you were right: It is not only gay activists who use the term santorum in that way. Maybe being edited in London explains why we got that wrong.
Bill Emmott, Editor
The Economist, London

Maybe Governor Palin is more thoughtful and open-minded than I give her credit for.

Alan Watts and the Creators of South Park

Appling

Let me get this straight...

I recently discovered Hulu, a joint venture by NBC Universal and News Corp to provide video content online. Hulu is an effort by two of the big media outlets to compete with Apple and itunes. So far I have been impressed by what they have available.

High-def versions of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report? Where have you been all my life?

But then I noticed something kind of interesting. On Wednesday's Colbert Report, Stephen has Naz on as his guest. Naz has been in a bit of a dispute with Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. So here I am watching Naz in beautiful hi-def video, streaming on my computer FOR FREE as he takes Bill O'Reilly, Rupert Murdoch, Fox News, and News Corp. to task. It seems unlikely that the content providers are aware of, no less condone, the content they are providing me, but that didn't diminish my enjoyment of the show any.

Al Gore's challenge to have 100% carbon-free electricity in the United States within a decade

Googlehead

Radiohead created a video for House of Cards using "two scanning technologies to capture 3D images. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produced structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne LIDAR system that uses multiple lasers was used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In the video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes."



Google partnered with the band to provide more info about the technology.

Check it out.

G8 science ministers to expand low carbon R&D

According to Cordis News, the G8 plus several G20 countries have agreed to increase government support for low carbon research and development:

Science ministers from the G8 countries have agreed to increase funding for research and development to create a low–carbon economy.

The ministers, along with representatives from Brazil, China, India, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, the Philippines and South Africa, met at the first G8 Science and Technology Ministers' meeting in Okinawa, Japan, this week (15 June).

Participants agreed to cooperate on research into energy technologies, including carbon capture and storage and the development of biofuels from non-food plant material.

They also expressed a commitment to the commercialisation of such technology through government funding and measures to encourage investment by the private sector.

Recognising the role of science and technology capacity building in developing countries, the group suggested that developing-country scientists should be able to work more closely with institutions in G8 countries — provided mechanisms were in place to encourage them to return home and thus avoid brain drain.

'Brain circulation', where G8 countries receive and send researchers to developing countries was also discussed.

There are plans for a workshop to discuss science and technology cooperation between G8 and developing countries in October.

scidev.net has a ton of content on this and other related issues.

Newly Mint

So I don't really intend for this blog to end up just being a list of various websites and services I've tried and like, but recently I've come across a few new things I feel like passing along.

The latest is a personal finance site called Mint. Mint is fantastic because it monitors my finances for me and gives me various analytical tools and displays to show me what I'm doing with my money. Switching from Quicken to Mint is akin to switching from traditional folder based email to searchable Gmail. Mint automatically figures out what categories my expenses fall under and uses graphs to illustrate spending patterns.

The exciting thing about Mint is that it's growing and changing quickly. New features and options are always being added. The other nice thing is that the user interface is incredibly intuitive. It gets you up and running quickly and easily.

Check it out.

TED Talks

"TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader."

Their website has lots of great videos of recent, and not so recent, speakers.

Al Gore's new slideshow on climate change was especially compelling.

Brijit

I've tried on several occasions to use an RSS aggregator to put all of the stuff I want to read in one place. I also seem to end up with thousands of unread articles. I hate feeling stressed for not reading all of this stuff. At the same time, I'm still looking for something to help me get all of the things I want to keep an eye on in one place.

I just started trying out Brijit. Brijit combines the RSS feed concept with human editors who summarize articles down to 100 blurbs. You can easily find the full article if the summary interests you. Brijit also compares your preferences with other uses and recommends other articles, etc. Sounds good in theory--we'll see how it goes. (You can see my recently read articles, etc, on the sidebar to the right)

Social Finance

I'm intrigued by sites that combine social networking trends with opportunities for commerce. Zopa allows potential loan recipients to bypass the traditional loan providers and borrow directly from other lenders. Pretty cool.

Think about it

I just heard about a new website designed to be a sort of YouTube for ideas. Pretty interesting stuff...

"bigthink.com is a new and growing website, currently in its private beta version, with a simple mission:

This is a digital age, one in which a wealth of accessible information empowers you, the citizen-consumer. But where is the information coming from? How accurate and unprocessed is it, really? Ask yourself this: how empowered do you feel debating a television screen or a newspaper?

Our task is to move the discussion away from talking heads and talking points, and give it back to you. That is Big Think's mission. In practice, this means that our information is truly interactive. When you log onto our site, you can access hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with todays leading thinkers, movers and shakers. You can search them by question or by topic, and, best of all, respond in kind. Upload a video in which you take on Senator Ted Kennedy's views on immigration; post a slideshow of your trip to China that supports David Dollar's assertion that pollution in China is a major threat; or answer with plain old fashioned text. You can respond to the interviewee, respond to a responder or heck, throw your own question or idea into the ring."