Tag: me

Netizens 2.0

Charlie Nesson’s ideas always seem crazy until about a year later. So Charlie walks into the office yesterday and says he has an idea that is crazy even for him..(but once we hear it, we like the idea)
Charlie’s idea is to run a candidate for President of the United States who is supported by the worldwide community of web-enabled activists. Essentially this person would be a second superpower candidate for the key power role in the first superpower.
Charlie is suggesting John Perry Barlow as the candidate, because John is excellent at debating and discussing controversial issues, and the role of the candidate will be to change minds–not simply to win votes.

a new try at establishing a net culture, seemingly:

The power sphere of the second superpower is in a different dimension from nations, and as such, the second superpower can and does work to influence the behavior and balance the power of nations. As individuals we are all members of one nation or another, and we may choose to be members of the second superpower. We can be both. Second superpower people identify themselves as citizens of the world, and care about social development, collaboration, innovation, open societies, and commons. They believe that at heart all people are precious and are one. Second superpower people need not be conventionally liberal or conservative, because there is political and social innovation yet to be done, and current political categories are certainly outmoded.

i am ready to shed my nationality (which i don’t care about), and adopt better principles.

phd or not?

i got a second call for papers in less than a week today. open source is all the rage in academic circles it seems. which brings me back to the question whether i should pursue a phd. i certainly holds some appeal, but there are downsides too.
upsides

  • worldwide recognition
  • chart new territory
  • help to shape a new paradigm
  • job safety (for a while)

downsides

  • submission to the academic process
  • commitment to an endless quest
  • low pay

i guess i know only one thing for sure: i wouldn’t want to become a full-time assistant. i would prefer to do my phd externally. also, university of zurich holds less appeal than other places like harvard, MIT or berkeley.
i should do some more thinking on the subject, for sure. like collecting a list of interesting places to do a doctorate.

Offline schmoozing

I have done it. I’m now officially without a computer at home. Why? Because I feel it’s time to spend more of my spare time offline. The first few days have been hard, I admit. I certainly am addicted to the internet, and computers, and when I came home in the evenings I was like: ok, now what? I hadn’t yet found a good use of my newfound spare time. With no tv or computer to slack in front of, I was forced to entertain myself in new ways. I decided to use the opportunity to apply some of the schmoozing lessons I learned online the last 2 years to my offline environment. There a lots of old and new friends to meet. In related news I will probably have a mobile again, because I was being told repeatedly that trying to get hold of me had become exceedingly difficult. Without a computer at home I tend to agree 🙂 ps. If you send me email late at night or over the weekend, don’t expect an immediate response. I will deal with your email first thing in the (workday) morning, a fresh cup of coffee in my paws 🙂

trapped

its too early to tell for sure, but i think i’m headed towards a situation i found myself in repeatedly over the years. ingredients: adulation, spring time, imagination. it sucks big time.

Dissecting oss development

i have long planned to eventually update my thesis with new developments. apparently, some people are actually reading what i jotted down 🙂 i got an invitation from ieee to submit an article for their software journal today:

Increasingly, we develop software by integrating components, libraries, and subsystems. The open source software movement has generated an extensive repository of potentially reusable software elements of varying quality and integrability. The free availability of source code might address 2 reservations often raised when deciding on the use of COTS components: unknown implementation quality and long-term vendor support. However, the use of OSS in commercial software development has not yet been formalized as an established practice. Developers need to know what types of OSS they can reuse, when such reuse is a promising strategy, how they can locate and evaluate OSS, and how OSS will fit into their development and maintenance processes. In addition, drawing on OSS in ways that go beyond unmodified as-is use (by modifying the source) raises further issues of long-term maintainability and its own set of interesting economic, business, and legal aspects.
We seek submissions that address one or, preferably, more of the following topics: taxonomies and repositories of available OSS; searching and evaluation strategies; success stories and failures; development strategies, models, and methodologies based on reusing OSS; economic, business, and legal aspects; the maintenance and integration of evolution paths; cooperation with the OSS community; and challenges and benefits.

the submission deadline is in august, and publication is in january 2004. geez, talk about lead times. on the other hand, it gives me time to come up with something original.