Finally a game made for me – Quinn Norton spoke about the Kingdom of Loathing today and already I am into it. I have some way to go (about 5 levels) before I am into the interesting economics that Quinn was speaking about. Already it has made me laugh and I haven’t been made to feel like a complete idiot because I can’t get my thumbs to syncopate with my index finger while at the same time using my big toe to hit the fire button.
Archive for September, 2004
I experience childlike glee whenever someone mentions 3D printing and copying. This is entirely fueled by the desire to fabricate at will and the very optimistic hope that it is the precusor to the words “beam me up”. So you can imagine my excitement when there are several foo sessions on the subject. Tim Anderson started this morning talking about his company Z Corp that builds 3D printers. Very cool.
However, arguably the most interesting idea was planted by Tim O’Reilly when he asked whether there was an open source community around the digital fabrication. I immediately imagined a world where the ability to fabricate a cup was dependent on your purchase of the fabrication template. In other words, things we take for granted as being in the public domain – ie. the basic notion of a cup becomes something that is licenced because the design is captured in a template.
Last night I was out at 9:20 Special – great night – brand new floors were really nice even in sticky soled trainers and catching up with Dexter, Lak and Howard is always worth the effort.
Another really cool thing was that some local dancers had made a swing version of DDR called 9:20Special. It had all the classic numbers in it as well as customised graphics and of course customised choreography. The great news is that it is possible to look cool dancing on the mats to swing, the bad news is that you have to be Kevin St Laurent – he looked great!
ars electronica:2004:part 3:creative commons austria launch
Published Tuesday, 7 September, 2004 conference 2 CommentsToday Austria CC launches – www.creativecommons.at – I have spent a few days hanging out with the organisers of the Austrian effort. They have done a great job and it has been really interesting to see how the existance of CC is identified as being a key part of the network infrastructure required to develop open and/or free culture domains in Austria. Often, when I speak with CC folks they are very focused on individual artists, however it seems the institutional link has been made here very early. They already have one university that has incorporated CC as part of the student contract. This means that all student work is licenced under CC.
Interesting stats coming out the creative commons. It turns out that 95% of all licences types selected included attribution. In future, CC intend to make attribution a default feature of the licences.
Other new things coming out of CC include continuing development of the nutch based search engine and the development of a CC content wiki.
BBC just got a great plug for the creative archive project. This project is of enormous interest and gaining in profile across Europe.
ars electronica:2004:part 2: digital communities panel
Published Monday, 6 September, 2004 conference 1 CommentWarning – raw conference notes.
This year the Ars Electronica added a prix for digital communities. Howard Rheingold was the jury chair and is having a little chat about the history of digital communities.
wikipedia won a golden nika. Jimmy Wales is giving a rundown of wikipedia – this is the same presentation that he gave in London.
dorothy okello uganda – combination of offline and online technologies are important in order to ensure reach and inclusion. uganda’s official language is english. online sources are really important sources – they are used and incorporated in newsletters and
the world starts with me – golden nica
hiv aids, illegal abortion, life skills, alex okwaupt, teaching young people life skills, sexual and reproductive health information, virtual peer educators, used across schools.
Missed the middle part of this panel – smart extension is a cultural survival tool. It is a tool to try and keep culture alive – tonga.
Joi was on the panel – 14 honorary mentions
some of the key notes was that many political activism sites were overly complex.
Joi does it again with this quote:
it used to be that you watched tv and your vote counts – now you engage in media and your VOICE counts.
Sitting next to Jan – www.web-laun.ch/pieceoBlog – he bluejacked me within seconds of sitting down – cheeky :)
panel conversation: There is a feeling that the validity of information from a source is really important. This seems to me to be missing the point of having lots of points of views available. Surely the myth of objectivity is finally coming undone. While journalists do not use first person grammar one only has to look at FOX news to see that it does not make them anymore objective. The point seems to me to be that consuming news/information is now something that you do by following facets of objectivity. You can now get a lots of different truths and come to your own conclusions about facts. – this is stream of consciousness – will work on later.
I am speaking at ars electronica on a panel called netvision.
Which means I get to hang out in Linz and attend a couple of days of the festival.
So far I have spent most of my time with the Austrian Creative Commons folk who are launching on Tuesday. As well as the usual stickers and flyers they have CC open source water!
One of the organisers told me that the bottles were originally part of a temporary art installation. The artist then wanted the bottles to be re-used. In stepped CC Austria with an offer to do something new with them. CC Austria then found a group of farmers that manage 4 fountains in an Austrian village. Apparently they come together every year to discuss who shall have access to the water for commercial use – farming – and to discuss maintaining the fountains for non-commercial use – people passing by who are thirsty. CC Austria approached the farmers and got permission to bottle some of the water for non-commercial purposes.
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