Is it a matter of organization or content?

There are many things to do on the internet, however, I spend so much of my time sorting through things that I have no interest reading that I get frustrated with information overload.  Luckily the internet has all the content I could ever want in my lifetime, but I don't believe that its organization fosters broad conversations.  I would like if many people could take part in important conversations, rather, than reacting to the content published by large media outlets.  Or more pathetically, we have conversations, like this one, where no one is listening.

Perhaps, I am just lazy, but I hate sifting through the posts of my online friends to find information I want to read. I am also convinced that there is a dumbing-down effect which affects my ability to care about the many bits of information flying by online.  The result leaves me and people like me feeling that they are insulated from the internet's activities.  This has left me feeling like the conversations I contribute to are topical or small.

But no, the internet is full of good information and forums to share ideas.  The issue is that you need to be very specific about what you want to find.  Groups are built around subjects and finding a group to fit into is key.  It is frustrating that so many groups are about things that don't interest me, but that should be a good thing, it means that things are categorized.  If there are a lot of things about which I don't care and a few things that I do then it, the internet, is worth the trouble and time.

Obsessed with Open Source Ecology

I have become fascinated with open source ecology, the ambitious project of  Marcin Jakubowski to create a database of designs for tools for the modern world.  The inspiring DIY project hopes to fix the world.

So I just watched, Yochai Benkler's "on the new open-source economics" (TED).  He describes the open source movement as social production and compares it to the industrial system of production.  Social production is characterized by large problems of information gathering, distribution, use, etc. which can be broken down into many smaller tasks of sorting, compiling, expanding, etc.  Not only does Yochai cite Wikipedia, but he also cites Google and the crowd sourcing way in which it ranks search results.

This is a major insight into the way in which people interact to build useful things.  The talk was given in 2005, and today it seems that Facebook is the next great example.  What is also interesting is that both Google and Facebook have made successful businesses by giving people the platform from which to interact.  It seems that getting people to interact and share information may be a big wave in business.  This raises a question about just how non-profit the open source world is or should be.  Obviously, not all problems need money to be solved, but a lot could use it.  I should say, money could be used wisely on things we need.  Wealth is truly capital or the means of production and not money (which has little intrinsic value).  

Back to Open Source Ecology, I was interested in their dedicated project.   A dedicated project is a proposal that anyone can submit to make something useful for the OSE project at the Factor E Farm.  The application seems competitive.  If I were to take on such a project, I would think about recycling plastic, or better yet, turning it into thread that could be used in a 3D printer (REPRAP) or yarn, like that used in woven, reusable bags.  From an initial search, that seems more complicated than first thought.  Thermo printing uses ABS plastic which is not the same as the plastic commonly found.  Think LEGO blocks and not plastic water bottles.  

Ok need to do at least a few min of "real" work.     

   

Regroup, Refocus, Relaunch.

Restarting Blogging.  I like to keep track of the things I've been working on.  Need to see if these comments are posted to Facebook.

Ayy yi yi, the facebook settings are too long.  But I think because they got rid of notes (to which this blog had been linked) my thoughts won't be broadcast to every person I ever friended.  The amount of organization to get that in line would be staggering.  I wonder what the default privacy settings are for blogger....

Next, I need to figure out how I want to use these suite of tools which I had not been using for quite a while.  This may even mean switching to a different blogging site like wordpress should I start to use CSS and more programing like features.  It also depends on the audience.  That's the problem I have with facebook.  The audience is the masses who insist on entertainment.  That's fine, but between that and the calls for activism, I find remarkably few items that deeply interest me, although plenty make me laugh.

Love writing this at work.  Typing just sounds productive.

Right now, this is just going to be a space for thoughts on videos and such.