mtl3p

I’ve looked through a few of these o’reilly posts on women in tech. I appreciated this (short) one.

So What? by Shelley Powers

so the public speaking I’ve done recently has been - or at least has felt - very different from my earlier work. The presentations include the Gilberto Gill panel, the interview with Jon Udell, speaking to my friend Gerardo’s corporate social responsability class at HEC and last night’s University of the Streets discussion.

I’ve given a variety of talks over the last 4 years. Besides the usual ISF dog and pony show I’ve had various versions of an information infrastructure talk, a municipal involvement in ICT talk, a community / geek innovation talk and probably a couple of others.

None of my recent speaking has felt easy or comfortable and the reception has been very different from my earlier presentations. I’ve felt frustrated feeling like I wasn’t communicating properly what has been in my mind, that I was very distant from my audience (which in two of the presentations has been a very non-tech audience). I normally get good receptions from my talks, people from the audience are excited to come talk to me, encouraged, energized. In the last while I’ve just felt awkward at the end. Unsure of what just happened.

I am hesitant to interpret my frustration or awkward feelings as signs that the presentations aren’t good or that I’m not on the right track. I don’t think that the best talk is a rally or a clear exhortation, and I don’t think that the best sign of a good presentation is that you immediately fall for the person presenting.

I’m reading José Saramago right now. It’s hard to read. And wonderful. I wish that I knew that my presentations were worthwhile, even if they are getting harder (let’s forget that I’m using a nobel prize winner as a point of comparison).

[more here about the language and settings of these places adding difficulty to what I’m trying to get to - as well, of course, this place].

I guess the clearest example I can point to that I’m happy with of my change in thought has been taking a request from U of teh Streets to speak about the the great and powerful/vulnerable/unstoppable/* online commons and how we need to feed + protect it and turn it back towards:

“With the world wide web, we now have access to the world’s biggest library: more facts, opinions, history, critique anyone could ever want, but no one could ever thoroughly explore. Almost any question can get a variety of answers. Yet what are the questions that cannot be answered solely by facts, that cannot be explored through technology? And what use is knowledge if it doesn’t helping us come up with better solutions? How do we learn to ask the questions that will create the answers that will help us create the world we want? And what does all of this have to do with protecting, enhancing and preserving the commons?”

anyways - I’m going to keep going and see what I/we get to. I don’t think anyone really needs me to help out as a cheerleader for the online commons. It’s got enough brilliant people (and bucks) pushing away.

Howard Rheingold en Eric Kluitenberg
Mindful Disconnection : Counterpowering the Panopticon from the Inside PDF

In this article, media experts Howard Rheingold and Eric Kluitenberg ask us to consider if unquestioned connectivity – the drive to connect everything to everything, and everyone to everyone by means of electronic media – is necessarily a good thing. To stimulate ideas, the authors propose a possible alternative: a practice of ‘mindful disconnection’, or rather the ‘art of selective disconnectivity’.

Although I have devoted decades to observing and using participatory media – from tools for thought to virtual communities to smart mobs – I want to propose that disconnecting might well be an important right, philosophy, decision, technology, and political act in the future. - Howard Rheingold

not much content to the article. But super interesting that Rheingold is working on this.

“Thanks David! Am I to take it that you are scheduling Lunch 2.0 at Microsoft as the next Lunch 2.0? Awesome. I just love your initiative. Go them tiger! :)”

link

I love it. Having unconferences and creating “online” projects where the goal is to create the next unconference. brilliant. hopefully we’re reaching our logical absurd limit where the simple goal is to produce the next “new”. Remember, as long as it’s innovation….
:-\

at some point, I hope the emphasis switches from awareness-raising and “networking” to “doing”. I’ve been trying to throw that switch in regards to my own practice. Time will tell. (update- that’s kinda overly critical to my own work. I think I have always been oriented towards doing - what I’m frustrated about is my own prior naivete about participating in celebrating the new and using (and continuing to use?) the empty hype).

to compare the practice of creating change through repackaging lunch versus on the ground doing - The pink vigilantes: The Indian women fighting for women’s rights. via Mir.

“On my own I have no rights but together, as the Gulabi Gang, we have power.”

It would be an unfair comparaison if *2.0 as a whole didn’t get more press than local organizing for justice for women as a whole.

And Darin Barney’s lecture on friday was freakin great.

(or just pass by if you live in the ‘hood)

The latest from my fav University of the Streets. I’m definitely going to enjoy this.

Oh, and I did improv dance finally yesterday (I was scared off last week). Creepy *and* fun.

Lundi le 17 mars, 19h à 21h
Centre Saint-Ambroise, 5080 St-Ambroise (coin St-Rémi)

The Commons: So Many Answers, So Few Questions. What do we do with all this knowledge?*

*Veuillez noter que cette conversation publique aura lieu en anglais, mais les interventions en français son toujours les bienvenues.

With the world wide web, we now have access to the world’s biggest library: more facts, opinions, history, critique anyone could ever want, but no one could ever thoroughly explore. Almost any question can get a variety of answers. Yet what are the questions that cannot be answered solely by facts, that cannot be explored through technology? And what use is knowledge if it doesn’t helping us come up with better solutions? How do we learn to ask the questions that will create the answers that will help us create the world we want? And what does all of this have to do with protecting, enhancing and preserving the commons?

Invité: Michael Lenczner
Modératrice: Kim Klein

GoDaddy shutting down a police watchdog site called RateMyCop.

UPDATE - it’s already back up.

I never would have thought of a website like this. Even after I’ve heard of all the RateMyProfessor/doctor/etc.

The interview is okay, but I heart the intro / framing he did of it on his blog.

He quotes a nice meaty section of Darin Barney, points to his Hart House lecture, and puts it together with a quote from our meeting to nail what I’ve been concerned about and presumably what he finds relevant/interesting.

I’m kind of impressed / curious / taken with the idea that this critique is possible in this particular forum. I’m pretty sure that Udell made it clear that the change of employer (microsoft) wasn’t going to dictate his writing, but I’m still somewhat surprised to see this conversation emerge in this place. But I guess it is not that different from me looking critically at the only thing I’m good at and that brings in money. ;-)

“I am beginning to think that Internet social networking is another CB radio, destined to crash and burn.”

Social Networking is Just Another CB Radio

vs

Web of Change and MaRS are pleased to announce the Social Tech Training

Each participant will emerge with new technical, creative, and leadership skills, a powerful network, and a customized, comprehensive “Web 2.0 Plan” for their host organization.

blech.

I know and respect some of the people behind this, but the lingo is killing me.

so much class.

Help Keep the Gramophone Saying

I’ve met Prof Barney recently - first in Ottawa at the Parliamentary conference and then at the Gilberto Gill - Media@McGill thing. He was really exciting to talk with. I think I’m going to attend this lecture even though it’s a redo of his Hart House lecture last year and I’ve already had the chance to read and discuss it.

——————————–
One Nation Under Google: Citizenship in the Technological Republic

A public talk by Professor Darin Barney
Canada Research Chair in Technology & Citizenship, McGill University.

Friday, March 14, 2008
Arts W-215, 853 Sherbrooke Street West, McGill University
18h30, free

Does more technology equal more freedom? While the nuts and bolts of technological progress - computers, cellphones, internet access wired and wireless - become accessible to more and more people, the promise of increased civic engagement enabled by these gadgets seems to have eluded our wired society. There’s a lot more to technology, and to democracy, than wires and buttons, and it has a much deeper affect on our lives than simply being tools we can use well or badly.

In Dr. Barney’s words, “technology is, at once, irretrievably political and consistently depoliticizing. It is at the centre of this contradiction that the prospects for citizenship in the midst of technology lie.” Presenting a range of examples from YouTube to the hidden networks of food production and government bureaucracy, Barney contests the common notion that technology necessarily leads to enhanced freedom and improved civic engagement. One Nation Under Google examines the challenge of citizenship in a technological society, and asks whether the demands of technology are taking over the practice of democracy.

Presented in collaboration with CKUT 90.3FM

About Professor Darin Barney
Darin Barney is a professor of Communication Studies at McGill University where he holds a Canada Research Chair in Technology and Citizenship. Working at the crossroads of social sciences and the humanities, Barney’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the relationship between technology and citizenship.He is the author of The Network Society (Polity Press 2004), Communication Technology: The Canadian Democratic Audit (UBC Press 2005), and Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology (UBC/University of Chicago Press/University of New South Wales Press 2000).