May 2006 Archives

It was 3° C (37° F) at the airport half an hour ago. It's only 5° (41° F) in Brisbane's city right now. Can I stay in bed till it's warm please?

Thanks to all those who participated in today's online conference with the Australian Flexible Learning Framework through the Knowledge Tree and special thanks to Frankie Forsythe and Jo Murray in organising the event. Negotiation of the continuing issues, strategies and processes with growing the blogging environment is so crucial to the future of blogging. The change management processes I referred to in the conference session are going to require ongoing analysis and a open culture to ensure that Age of Authenticity emerges.

Feel free to add further questions commentds and contributions to the session, and if you were unable to attend, you can access a copy of the session through this site.

Any of you bloggers or interested readers out there who might have an hour of spare time between 2-3pm today are welcome to join me for an online lecture, based on the lead article I wrote for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework's The Knowledge Tree, and which was published last week. I'm happy to have a large crew of participants in today's session, so feel free to roll up and have you say, ask questions and discuss with me the future of social networks.

Access the article and the link to the online conference here.

It's my mother, Alison's, birthday today and she is enjoying 22 again (well why not?). I've had my mother with me for the past 10 days and it's been a joy. Of course I haven't been the best daughter I could be by any stretch of the imagination, and my rather weakened state due to an illness that has attacked my joints and left me fairly hopeless for the past few weeks has meant that I wasn't able to do all I wanted with Mum while she was here. But we did get to spend some good times together. And more to the point, I am lucky enough to have a Mum who is very different from me and a worthy combatant as well as being a great friend. So life was never dull while she was here! She's gone home to Melbourne now, and I miss her now she's gone, but I know she's being well looked after in the company of some fabulous friends tonight in Melbourne (huge thank you to Veronica and Avril for being with her tonight!).

Mum, it was great to have you here for Mother's Day and your birthday. Thanks for all your help and your generosity while you were here in balmy Brisbane. Love you heaps, Mum. Hope you had a happy birthday.
:-)

Not dead, but close enough to it for things to be unpleasant. I have a series of things to blog, but for the time being I just want to give a little gift to the Mac users out there. Turn your Mac laptop into a jedi weapon and annoy the hell out of anyone by prodding them with your closed laptop, having it light up and making lightsaber sounds. It's just too silly for words, but it's also hysterically funny to watch.

(Of course, anyone who prods me with a Mac laptop will find it confiscated and Linux installed onto it. But that's just because I like linking good quality hardware with good quality software. It's the anal retentive cleaner in me I suppose.)

My lead article for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework's journal, The Knowledge Tree, is now accessible online at the current edition home page. If you have comments or feedback, feel free to use the blogging facility at the page to engage in a continuing conversation.

EDIT: You can also listen to the podcast of the paper, if you're not up to reading a 5000 word paper!

Belated Happy Mothers Day wishes to all Mums out there. You're all wonderful. I was fortunate enough to spend mine with my Mum, so I was fortunate.

This has got to be the most emotional moment on television I've seen in a very long time.

EDIT: Here's a video of the interview following the moment, including video of them coming out of the lift shaft.

Thank goodness. They're out and they're alive and well. All tributes to the rescue team for their wonderful efforts. And all thoughts with Brant Webb and Todd Russell and their families during their recovery.

A lot of happy faces down there in Beaconsfield since 4:47am today.

I had trouble sleeping tonight because after returning to work yesterday, I lasted just two hours in the office before being overcome by the illness that has subdued me for a week now. Once I arrived home yesterday, I passed out for nearly three hours and spent the rest of the day trying to stop shaking. As is my wont, I'd pushed myself too hard to get back to work. Serious influenza - which, unfortunately, I admit I have actually contracted - isn't just an upper respiratory tract infection. And it takes time and patience to get over, neither of which I was prepared to permit it. My body got the better of me though, summarily removing me from the driver's seat and forcing me to take things a bit more slowly. I'm going to work from home today, in the hope that "light duties" (ie: sitting in my office at home and working from there) will be less inclined to rob me of my dignity and composure.

However, my own troubles seem so incredibly miniscule besides those of the miners in Beaconsfield, Tasmania, or little Sophie Delezio.

At 12:30am this morning, it was reported that the miners had at long last seen the probe which began the final stage of drilling to rescue these two men, trapped for 14 days almost a kilometre underground in a tiny metal cage. There's still 30cm of hard rock and another 60cm of rubble to get through before the men can be freed, but the end appears at last in sight. It's now more than a week since then men were found using thermal imaging equipment and sheer luck after an earthquake caused a rockfall in the Tasmanian gold mine, and the men have been forced to work for their own release, grouting around their cavern to help prevent further cave-ins as the rescue team have tried and tried to reach those trapped. When you think about the hot, cramped and unsanitary conditions these men have endured for a fortnight - 6 days of which were spent in total darkness and without food or water - you can only begin to imagine the kind of trauma that will stay with Brant Webb and Todd Russell for the rest of their days.

Similarly, if Sophie Delezio survives this last accident I wonder what it will do to her sense of mortality in the longer term. After being hit by a car as she was crossing the road in front of her school last Friday, 5 year old Sophie remains in a medically induced coma as doctors attempt to determine whether she has suffered brain damage among her injuries. Sophie, who suffered burns to 80% of her body, lost both feet, most of one hand and an ear when a car ploughed in to her child care centre 3 years ago, was being pushed in her pram across a school crossing when an 80 year old driver allegedly failed to stop at the crossing, collecting Sophie and only narrowly missing her carer. The driver of this last incident has been charged with dangerous driving and there are calls for elderly drivers to be more regularly tested, but it's Sophie who is again struggling for her life, as her already limited existence has been curtailed again by human error in the driver's seat.

Someone close to me has just commented on both these incidents with the following wise words:

"The pain of others, the rule of com-passion, is easily available through media these days - but even though we have systemic understanding of it, our systemic response to reform and change is sorely lacking. I'm enough of a futurist to want to run an 'automation index' over (every dangerous task, driving included)...No quanta of consciousness is worth losing to a badly-arranged, under-innovated system."

I couldn't agree more. We are often concerned about loss of jobs and personal autonomy with technology-oriented solutions to various tasks, but we're all increasingly aware of invasions of civil liberties occurring in the name of national security, when such technologies could be so much better used to save lives. As a society we need to find better ways of employing community members than locking them in cages 100 metres below ground. And we need to be less politically correct about identifying loss in driver skill among elderly or even over-stressed and weary drivers. It's time we started considering ways in which the technologies of today can be put to better use.

If a robotic device to cut into rockface and determine the best approach to gather mineral resources could have saved the heartache and expense of the miners' rescue, and a proximity alarm and engine shut down system could have saved Sophie, it'd be worth it.

A light evening's reading for you.

I'm still recovering from what has ended up being an exceedingly nasty bout of influenza (headache still comes and goes, but body ache is gone; I'm still coughing and I still tire very easily). However, in between periods of sleep, housework, drafting articles, assessing study guides, and gathering news of the still-trapped Beaconsfield miners, Sophie Delezio and the death of journalist, Richard Carleton (more on these in another post), I've been trying to articulate the differences between these three distinct but important theories.

Why am I writing this post? Because I've been considering how these theories can be invoked to support my arguments for the political nature of open source collaborative initiatives. Whilst all three theories are apparent in literature available in this field, I'm not entirely sure that they have been properly applied. I don't exactly refute previous uses, I just want to be sure that they are being used appropriately. And perhaps more to the point, if I'm going to use these theories I want to ensure my sense of their use is appropriate. Thus I begin with a few definitions and consider these theories in context.

Chaos theory is probably the biggest misnomer in history, because chaos theory isn't about utter disorder at all. Instead, it defines the behaviour of systems that are non-linear and dynamic, but which also have entities/actions occurring therein which can intersect with each other over time and space. Differences in entity/action movement within such a system will be dependent on their sensitivity to initial conditions (occasionally called the "Butterfly effect").

Game theory is a strategy based mathematical theory, where two players in a system make decisions about a strategic situation, based on their interaction with each other. The objective of both players is to maximise their returns, thus cost and benefits to a strategic situation can only be properly calculated based on the decisions made by players.

Complexity theory can refer to systems theory (study of large systems including schools of thought, biological systems and engineering) as well as considerations of genetic and artificial life processes. Essentially, complexity theory considers what is generally predictable behaviour in a system, what is aberrant behaviour and how engagements between entities/actions in a system can result in either predictable outputs or aberrant results.

So when it comes to open source projects, how might these theories be used?

Chaos theory could be used to demonstrate differing behaviours of players in the system as they move about and engage with an open source project. Whilst players can and will engage differently, depending on their initial exposure to the people and objectives of an open source project, they will inevitably react in an at least partially predictable pattern, intersecting with other players and content (code, applications, functions) in a manner that will launch them into another wave of activity.

Game theory can be used to describe the gains accrued by active open source community members in sharing knowledge and applications strategically. Because open source projects implicitly involve interaction, game theory is a logical mechanism to describe the act of interaction. Further, the process of negotiating shared knowledge for maximum personal benefit (not necessarily financial benefit) actually increases the attractiveness of the exchange scenario for players, thus invoking the pattern of system trajectory repetition described in chaos theory.

Still with me?

Okay Complexity theory could be used to describe what is generally consistent system behaviour and provide a conceptual framework for what could amount to system mutation - for instance, where an open source project or initiative adapts to commercial, environmental, or personal/human interaction imperatives. Effectively, complex systems theory could identify where chaos theory "ends" and a new set of system parameters "begins" (and chaos theory starts all over again).

So does this make sense? Or is the 'flu still badly affecting my judgement? All comments greatly appreciated.

I've been banned from work. My lovely Operations Manager, Ali, said she'd kick my a*** if I came in to work. She has threatened to send the police to my door, to barricade me in.

Of course, she's being one of the most caring managers I've ever worked with, because she has heard what I sound like today, and whatever I'm down with makes me sound like death. I'm still sleeping a lot (though in short fits) and I'm still wracked with aches and pains. Still. My appetite is coming back slowly and I'm hopeful my energy levels will return soon. In the meantime, Ali has suggested I get some reading done, so I'm going to follow her advice and read some articles from the think tank, Demos.

*huge, non-infectious hug to Ali* Thanks sweetheart.

Ok. So it was more than just a cold. I'm writing this from bed where I've been a trembling wreck for the past 36 hours. But I'm hopeful that I'll be feeling a lot better by the end of the day. At least, it'd be nice to be able to stand up and walk around without the sensation of the world going black around my field of vision.

But malady aside, there are a few items I wanted to record today:
- Apple have come out with another set of great advertisements for Macs
- The blog search engine, Sphere, has launched. This service is designed to provide more connection-rich results for ideas explored in blogs
- Dan Gillmor has composed a useful piece for a Columbia University talk in New York City on principles of journalism in the future which is reproduced on his blog
- Quick reminder if you're a night owl that tonight at just over a couple of minutes past 1am this evening, the time and date will actually be 01:02:03, 04/05/06. Numerical linearity trivia. Worth a late night cup of tea, anyway.

Finally, I wanted to send the very best of everything to Hue & Cry for their gig tonight! :)

So I've managed to come down with a cold, I think. It was probably inevitable. All the executives in the office have been soldiering on, coming in to work every day and spreading their germs around to everyone else. After years of carrying on that practice myself, I've decided to refrain from that action nowadays. Given I can work perfectly well from home, I'd prefer to stay warm and comfortable, drink plenty of fluids and get better faster than struggling to get to work and feeling rotten. I imagine I'll be home from work tomorrow. I'm sure they'll cope without me.

In other news, in the midst of sending a whole series of links via email to my muse, I realised I should have been blogging the ideas for later reference and for the interest of all my readers! So here are the readings I've consumed today in my Race Around the Web....

* Creating Passionate Users has a lovely and accurate expose on the myth of keeping up with research readings: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/the_myth_of_kee.html

* Dion Hinchcliffe has a useful run-down on the differences and similarities between Web 2.0 and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA):
http://web2.wsj2.com/web_20_and_soa_contrived_or_converging.htm

* On Web 2.0, the Web 2.0 Ireland conference held over the last few days seems to have produced some interesting ideas, including Jeff Clavier’s presentation on key factors for success:
http://blog.softtechvc.com/Web2Ireland-FactorsForSuccess.pdf

* Ross Mayfield has done it again, with a fabulous post on Power Law Participation:
http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/04/power_law_of_pa.html

* I’m fascinated by the concept of Jonathan Schwartz keeping up his blogging now he’s CEO of Sun, but his ideas for transparency of business practice are something I’ve alluded to in my research and he seems to be enacting them already, so I wonder how this humanizing strategy is going to suit him:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan?entry=sunlight_is_the_best_disinfectant

There are also a few other pieces I haven't got around to yet, but will form the majority of my reading/exploration after dinner tonight:
- Guardian article on the True Price of Doing Business in China
- New York Times is plotting homicide locations on Google Maps
- Seth Godin has a piece on blogging frequency I need to read: The noisy tragedy of the blog commons
- Just when you thought Google was running out of business ideas, they've found a new way to make megabucks advertising on otherwise vacant websites.

Enjoy the fruits of my research! :)