Tag Archive for ‘people’ at Alan Vonlanthen’s blog

Tag Archive for 'people'

Stand with Tibet - Support the Dalai Lama

Published by alan on March 27, 2008 in considerations. 0 Comments

Hi,

I just signed an urgent petition calling on the Chinese government to respect human rights in Tibet and dialogue with the Dalai Lama. This is really important, and I thought you might want to take action:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/98.php/?CLICK_TF_TRACK

After nearly 50 years of Chinese rule, the Tibetans are sending out a global cry for change. Violence is spreading across Tibet and neighbouring regions, and the Chinese regime is right now making a crucial choice between tougher crackdown or dialogue.

President Hu Jintao needs to hear that “Made in China” exports and the upcoming Olympics in Beijing will have the support of the world’s people only if he chooses dialogue. But it will take an avalanche of global people power to get his attention. Click below to sign the petition–in just 7 days, the campaign is over half way to the goal of 2 million signatures!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/98.php/?CLICK_TF_TRACK

Thank you so much for your help - forward this message to friends!

Lift08 - Kevin Warwick

Published by alan on February 8, 2008 in considerations. 0 Comments

Notes on the run of the talk by the cybernetician Kevin Warwick.

Just 2 words to say that this is the probably the craziest thing I have ever seen!

During the talk, I had the feeling I was witnessing the birth of Daleks…

Weird…

Lift08 - Express notes on Paul Dourish

Published by alan on February 7, 2008 in considerations. 0 Comments

Paul Dourish (UC Irvine)
On interaction between ethnography and design.
(really experiencing trouble with wi-fi, firefox and wordpress )
In short: ethnography IS relevant for design.
Aboriginal navigation vs cartographic navigation relevant for our understanding of mobility.
The wi-fi here is definitely dead

Lift08 - Genevieve Bell on “Digital Deception”

Published by alan on February 7, 2008 in considerations. 0 Comments

Notes on the run…

Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist with a Ph.D. from Stanford. Why an anthropologist at Intel’s? Well… There are at least 30 of them there! Intel seems to want to understand what kind of a specie humans actually are.

“Technology changes faster than people do”

A few interesting figures:

45% of cellphone users in the UK lie about where they are
100% of online dating servicesin the US lie about themselves
Men tell 20% more lies than women
We tell somewhere btw 6-200 lies per day! (concealing misbehaviour, increasing popularity, keeping one’s social world ticking over)

We are entering “arms race of digital deception”

Volker Sommer: self-deception is a part of survival

“secret” or sacred knowledge have deep history in many cultural, religious and political systems. Layers of knowledge - not everything should be known to everyone. Parallels with digital world are quite obvious: cultural ideals on the one hand (lying is bad) and cultural practices on the other.

Cites a research by Danah Boyd : a surprising % of myspaces users are over 100 (restricted access to 14 years and above)

About secrets and sacred, mentions postsecret.blogspot.com

=> Tensions between cultural practices and ideals persist around lies and secrets
=> Do the twin ideas of secrets & lies offer new ways to think about pricavy and security?

Brilliant talk, sorry I’m so lousy out taking notes…

Lift08 - Ewan McIntosh

Published by alan on February 7, 2008 in considerations. 0 Comments

Actually, it’s the same talk as he gave in Reboot in May. Still just as brilliant!

About the online social skills of kids, their parents aren’t even aware of.

The last renaissance was lead by a bunch of Scotts. The second renaissance is lead by people in this room

Don’t think. Try!

Lift08 - Stephanie Booth on OpenStage about Freelancing

Published by alan on February 7, 2008 in considerations. 0 Comments

Notes on the run…

Steph shares her experience on going freelance and invites all the freelancers to Going Solo, her conference for freelances in March, in which she managed to invite Stowe Boyd as a speaker.

Good luck!

Lift08 - Jonathan Cabiria about Virtual Worlds

Published by alan on February 7, 2008 in considerations. 0 Comments

Jonathan Cabiria, whom I had the chance to meet at Lift last year, is a brilliant American psychologist and researcher. I quite enjoyed his talk since he brought social communities back to their evolutionary basics: “We come together to be safe”.

Jonathan and his team have been researching marginalised people and how virtual social networks could bring them back to socialisation in the real world (which was unexpected at the beginning of the study). Virtual worlds can actually help people to feel more real, more authentic and more commited to society.

What it means is, basically, is that “real” and virtual worlds should probably not be viewed as separate worlds. In both cases, we are just social animals.

Brilliant!

Lift08 - Opening Talk by Bruce Sterling

Published by alan on February 7, 2008 in considerations. 0 Comments

Notes on the run…

Sci-fi author Bruce Sterling was in charge of the opening talk at Lift08. He wanted his keynote to be “punchy” and “focused”.

He did mentioned Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, the US economic depression and Al-Quaeda, the global warming (quote: “Global Warming is a Way of Life”) since he probably felt compelled to, given the talk was supposed to be a review of 2007 and a prospective review for 2008, but of course that’s not what he focused on.

Instead he developed what he considers to be the essential: Carla Sarkozy, the “Madame du Barry of the French political renaissance”. His prospective scenarios were quite funny, including “the First Beaver of France”.

His point was about publicity, power, politics and money and their relationships and about the impredictibility of things. Could have been brilliant, but honestly I was a little disapointed, the argument deserved a better backup.

Favourite quotes:

Carla Sarkorzy is a Black Swan

2008 will be a Crappy Year

Global Warming is a Way of Life

I’m an epistemocrat

Published by alan on January 26, 2008 in books and considerations. 0 Comments

I’m currently reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan. I know I will have to read it at least 3 times before I get the whole idea and even then, I’m not quite sure I will get it straight.

It’s the kind of book that totally changes the way you view and understand the world when you’ve read it. I’ll comment once I’m actually done with it.

Just wanted to quote a few lines, before I forget, which will probably change the way I view and understand my own little self:

(…) Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say “I don’t know.” He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion.
This does not necessarily mean that he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will call an epistemocracy. The major modern epistemocrat is Montaigne. (…)

Now, that really speaks to me! And it sounds smarter than “shy”, “introverted” or “unsociable”…

The fairy who bends over the Swiss web workers’ cradle

Published by alan on December 17, 2007 in web. 0 Comments

Ever heard of Sandrine Szabo and her web portal www.profession-web.ch?

Well if you haven’t, you’re either not a web professional in the French-speaking Switzerland or you’re working too hard to see what’s going on.

I don’t even know exactly why nor how she got on the scene, but she’s there and that’s just providential.

I’m not sure she’d appreciate the metaphor, but she seems to me like a loving-mama aiming at pampering each one of us with infinite affection. Let me explain…

Most of us are quite autistic when it comes to communicating and networking. I am the perfect example. I can do brilliant stuff but I can’t talk about it… I always have this geeky attitude whenever I’m asked about my work or achievements… For instance, though I claim to be a good popularizer on complicated projects, I have never been able to get my own mum to fully understand what my jobs consists of exactly. Ok, my mum probably isn’t the best example, but I’m sure you get the idea

We are lousy communicators and it is definitely our fault if ordinary people think that ergonomists walk on the moon or that Ajax it just a detergent (or a Greek Hero for the most learned). Instead of hating us for this, Sandrine has decided to help us and to make something out of it, something rather brilliant: www.profession-web.ch, which is a 2.0 portal for, about, and by local web workers. If I recall Sandrine’s announcement after it was launched a few weeks ago, “If your an actual web developer fed up of receiving advertisements for positions of SAP consultants, well, this site is intended for you“.

She has also carried out the “Swiss Web 2.0” initiative, which feeds on her incredible energy and stamina and allows us to get to know each other (despite our natural tendencies) and keep informed of what’s going on on the local web scene.

I am not going to start a philosophical point here, but in short, I am convinced that beyond its obvious advantages, the mere notion of networking is what make us specifically human. And connectors such as Sandrine make the whole thing possible.

On behalf of the swiss web professionals: THANK YOU SANDRINE for what you do for us and please keep going, you’re making this microcosm a better place!

Alan Vonlanthen’s blog