advocacy

a founder’s manifesto

a founder’s manifesto:

I know I am a hypocrite. Every day I fail to live my life according to my beliefs in small and large ways.  Sometimes I get angry when people fail, instead of creating a wonderful, supportive environment where failure is a part of the learning process.

[Amen. On point. All true, I do the same things, yet it doesn’t stop me. It seems irrational to keep failing and keep trying. Still, it might be the sanest thing I do.]
Source: the evolving ultrasaurus

3 Thoughts on Generosity

3 Thoughts on Generosity:

Generosity alone is not enough

Generosity is nothing more and nothing less than the foundation upon which we build. We won’t solve the big problems of the world just by opening our hearts.  That is a dangerous dream, because the stakes are much too high.  Yet without generosity too many doors are closed, too much judgment creeps in.  Without generosity empathy is not given a space in which to grow and we experience the terrible misfortune of undervaluing the gifts we have been given.  In so doing we run the risk of forgetting that each of us has something important to offer in creating solutions big and small.

To me, generosity is an active orientation towards the world and all its messiness.  It is a refusal to walk by, to shut down, to pretend that if we just keep our heads down everything will turn out OK.  It won’t, at least not without all of us.

[On point.]
Source: Sasha Dichter’s Blog

Freedom of Speech and Art: 3 Things to Know

Freedom of Speech and Art: 3 Things to Know:

There are other ways to watch what you are doing. If you want to read up on all varities of art law, you couldn’t do much better than Starving Artists Law. Or, if you are interested in learning more about the right to assemble and protest, this link is a great resource. If your voice is strongest online, it couldn’t hurt to check the Legal Guide for Bloggers.

And above all, don’t stop doing what you do best.

[It’s a far more complicated world than I’d wish for and work toward.]

Steve Jobs in 1980 (and how schools still get this wrong)

Why do school kids have one computing experience at home and in their personal lives, and a completely out of touch, ancient experience at school? I’ll get back to that.

Steve Jobs in 1980:

Same vision. Same goals. What he was talking about then applies almost completely to what Apple is doing today. (Via Michael B. Johnson.)

[Gruber pointed to this video from 1980 and if you’re a student of Steve Jobs you’ll have heard these themes before. The condor & the bicycle for example was very common in his talks from those years. Two things struck me as I watched this.

Something struck me at about 10:18 in the video. Steve is talking about how different the experience is when there is one computer to an individual not, what was until then, common—many people sharing one computer. Despite our collective understanding of this, made clear by the shear number of computers available to schools so many of us, most schools have one computer shared by many students for short periods of time as a curricular addition. Gym, art, music, computers. Asides in the daily lives of students everywhere. This is clearly ridiculous in age of iTouches, smartphones, iPads, texting, tweeting etc. How could we possibly not have computers in the hands of students all day every day.

Some schools courtesy of some smart administrators are getting this right. Integrating computing into the curriculum at its base, not as a course of study. That’s key. The teachers must use them for their coursework. Homework, communication, the entire experience of school must be integrated. Don’t teach “computers” in the classroom, use computers in the classroom.

The second thing, an aside really, is that recordings will *not* be scarce in the future. Almost everything that someone does publicly will most likely have a recording made and available for the future. This can be good, and bad. The bad that I’m thinking about is that it might be harder for people to evolve if their past is so well documented. The good is obvious, that we’ll be able to study people in far greater depth, in the direct way that seeing an image of them provides.]
Source: Daring Fireball

Episcopal cleric: Let’s Take Christ Out of Christmas

RAYMOND J. LAWRENCE is an Episcopal cleric for 46 years, recently retired Director of Pastoral Care, New York Presbyterian Hospital, and author of numerous opinion pieces in newspapers in the U.S. and wrote the following.

Let’s Take Christ Out of Christmas:

Christmas was adopted by Christianity late, by some three hundred years. It was incorporated into Christianity in the 4th century, the same way Friday fish-eating was incorporated and during the same time. (Imperial Romans ate fish on Fridays to honor Venus, the goddess of love, fish being the food of love and sex.) The venerial fish-eating was simply co-opted by Christianity and given a revised rationale, namely that Jesus died on Friday, so one should abstain from eating meat on Friday.

In imperial Rome, the December 25 feast in honor of the Invincible Sun, Sol Invictus, was accompanied by the exchange of gifts, cutting of greens, lighting of candles, and public festivals commemorating new life. The sun, after all, had turned in the sky and was rising earlier and setting later, after the winter solstice.

[snip ed.]

To liberate Christmas from the clutches of Christianity would demonstrate a generosity of spirit on the part of Christians that would set a good example in these times of increasing strife between the various religions of the world.

[It certainly would improve my solstice celebration.]

Writers discover focus. Film at 11.

iPad 2 as a serious writing machine (how-to):

This is liberating for a writer, and I find I can write more, and better, on the tablet system than on a “real” computer. There are no menu options competing for my attention, no updates needing to be run, just an app on the screen. Those of us who write for a living know how precious it is when you get “in the zone” while writing. The zone is that mental place where the words just flow as fast as you can type them. I find I get in the zone far more often on the iPad than on other computers. I attribute that to my focus being forced to the task at hand, and that is priceless.

[So everyone that writes this mentions the above “focus” thing and the battery life (it’s very long compared to even a current laptop). But here’s the thing. Running any app full screen will provide the focus of which they are all so enamored. Some writing apps (for the Mac) were built with exactly this in mind, and completely hide the screen. It’s now fairly common on the Mac as many apps support Lion’s “full screen mode” which takes the menus off the top, the dock off the bottom or side, and eliminates tool bars etc. So again, other than cool factor, and battery life (what did all we do until now? The horror!) these articles are simply “look at me, I’m cutting edge.” articles. I agree that adding a keyboard transforms the feel of an iPad (or iPhone) entirely. And the battery life is gloriously freeing if you’re used to the dance of power cords, and timing, and outlets. But the focus thing strikes me as people who had no clue about what as available to them for years. The change, if you can consider it one, is that the iPad doesn’t provide a choice about “one thing at time”. It is that design decision that they’re actually praising. They’re embracing the constraint and saying “behold the beauty”, even if there are plenty of times it feels in the way. For example, working on a web design where switching back and forth between editor and browser is a back and forth whip saw like action that repeats many times.) But I’m so glad that all these writers who apparently are so undisciplined that they cannot ignore the flashing of their tweets, or the siren call of menu choices have found nirvana. Now if they would just write about something worthwhile, instead of informing us of their modern version of a #2 pencil.]

PS Don’t misunderstand. I love the combination of keyboard and iPad or iPhone, it’s a really great way to go for writers and some types of tasks. But it doesn’t replace a big screen for everything. It’s just a tool, albeit a great one for some tasks.

In Africa, the Art of Listening

In Africa, the Art of Listening:

It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats — and they in turn can listen to ours.

Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.

So if I am right that we are storytelling creatures, and as long as we permit ourselves to be quiet for a while now and then, the eternal narrative will continue.

[We also listen first and speak second in our development.]

Our Voices Revolutionize the World

Our Voices Revolutionize the World:

3 lessons we learned early:

We didn’t have the credentials. None of us were humanitarians, we just cared about our home and wanted to do something.

We had no funding. It wasn’t until 4 months later that we formed Ushahidi as an organization, and 4 months after that when we received funding. That didn’t stop us from doing something.

We had no time. If we had thought long and hard before we built our system, it probably would have been too complicated and wouldn’t have worked. We also might have thought of a more sayable name…

All of the lessons that we’ve learned through our journey are baked into our organizations culture. We question assumptions and we treasure disruption. We’re willing to take risks that leave us open to failure, in our effort to change the way information flows in the world.

[On the money.]