Here is a conference tip for those of you who may be in Uppsala on the 21 September. It’s a free one-day conference on creativity and copyright called Using Fairly. Among the speakers (and organizers) is Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, the author of the excellent book No Trespassing.
This is definitely an event worth attending…
Boing Boing reports about a cool Open Library project:
The Internet Archive has launched a demo of the Open Library, a project that seeks to gather all the information about all the world’s books and make it publicly available as a giant books wiki.
While many books are making their way online for free access, most still are restricted or cost money to touch. The Open Library combines links to open resources with information on in-copyright works and enables you and me to review, annotate, correct and convene.
I think this project (which right now seems to point to almost half a million books) is very cool — it’s going to be a major addition to the world’s open cultural infrastructure. I have a hunch that it’s going to be the primary way many if not most people access books, and I see it becoming an always-open window on the desk of every librarian.
Aaron Swartz led this project, which was conceived by Brewster Kahle — please send them support, critiques and book databases!
Lets hope the project grows!
The general image of the librarian is definitely uncool but this image has been changing for a long time. When the New York Times published its article A Hipper Crowd of Shushers last week (8 July) this was a sign of the times.
Librarians? Arenâ??t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons â?? the ultimate humorless shushers?
Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging…
How did such a nerdy profession become cool â?? aside from the fact that a certain amount of nerdiness is now cool? Many young librarians and library professors said that the work is no longer just about books but also about organizing and connecting people with information, including music and movies.
The upcoming documentary The Hollywood Librarian (release 29 September) will also become part of the way in which the perception of librarians is changing.
Instead of being only the strict formal organizer the librarian is actually on the forefront of several important debates in the information society. The questions of access to knowledge, privacy, free speech, open access and parts of the DRM debate are being lively discussed among librarians.
Getting a new computer is a fun and, at the same time, annoying experience. On Monday I got a shiny new Macbook Pro and spent the day organising and customising it to make myself feel at home. Now when I think that I have almost installed all the software I need and customised most of it I am beginning to grow accustomed to my new machine. But one major step remains…
On my old computer I engraved an image of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza based on drawing entitled â??Reflectionsâ?? by Gene Colan. After some minor changes the engraving looked like this:
 
Rather nice! But here is the dilemma. The new laptop is this blank empty space. I need to put something there. So the question is what image shall I engrave on my new shiny laptop? The imagery and metaphor of Quixote is excellent but maybe it’s time for a change?
Every now and then you come across a book which is just inspired. This idea fits the bill exactly. What a brilliant idea.
Photographer Peter Menzel and author-journalist Faith D’Alusio have put together the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. The book is a comparative photo-chronicle of their visits to 30 families in 24 countries.
The family snapshot shows the family with a typical week’s worth of food purchases, weekly food-intake lists with costs noted, typical family recipes and essays, such as “Diabesity,” on the growing threat of obesity and diabetes.
It is difficult not to get political when you see the amounts spent on family food for a week from $500 (for a family of 4) to $1.23 (for a family of six) weekly.
Time Magazine has done a photo essay based on the book so for a sneak preview go there.
(via Boing Boing)
The New Yorker has published a long piece on Banksy, sub-titled “The invisible man of graffiti art”. Banksy is the famous, but anonymous, UK graffiti artist whose work is a mix of cheeky social commentary and plain fun. Not much is known for sure, but the article writes:
This much is certain: around 1993, his graffiti began appearing on trains and walls around Bristol; by 2001, his blocky spray-painted signature had cropped up all over the United Kingdom…
Since street art is ephemeral, he occasionally issues books filled with photographs of his work, accompanied by his own text. He self-published his first three volumes, â??Existencilism,â?? â??Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall,â?? and â??Cut It Out.â?? His latest, â??Wall and Piece,â?? was published by Random House and has sold more than two hundred and fifty thousand copies…
Ralph Taylor, a specialist in the Sothebyâ??s contemporary-art department, said of Banksy, â??He is the quickest-growing artist anyone has ever seen of all time.â?? Banksy responded to the Sothebyâ??s sale by posting a painting on his Web site. It featured an auctioneer presiding over a crowd of rapt bidders, with the caption â??I canâ??t believe you morons actually buy this shit.â??
Besides his own website and his books there are plenty of images on Flickr (over 18000 images) that have been attributed to Banksy. They may be originals or simply followers of the Banksy style.
Teaching and presenting is an handicraft. It is, unfortunately, an underestimated craft. Most presenters are too boring and too disinterested in their own material. This becomes even more obvious when you see a great presenter in action.
Take a look at Hans Rosling debunking our impressions about the third-world myths on poverty, families, health and growth. Not only is he enthusiastic but he also uses some of the most exciting statistics rendering software I have ever seen in a presentation.
Youâ??ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called â??developing worldâ?? using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid — toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Roslingâ??s hands, global trends â?? life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates â?? become clear, intuitive and even playful.
Download this talk in full SD resolution.
Hans Rosling is very cool this is from his bio:
Rosling began his wide-ranging career as a physician, spending many years in rural Africa tracking a rare paralytic disease (which he named konzo) and discovering its cause: hunger and badly processed cassava. He co-founded Médecins sans Frontièrs (Doctors without Borders) Sweden, wrote a textbook on global health, and as a professor at the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm initiated key international research collaborations. Heâ??s also personally argued with many heads of state, including Fidel Castro.
As if all this werenâ??t enough, the irrepressible Rosling is also an accomplished sword-swallower â?? a skill he demonstrated at TED2007.
Historian Barbara Tuchman has written several fascinating books (many of which have been top sellers). One of her most interesting books is March of Folly (1984). In which she studies human stupidity in history.
Tuchman sets specific standards to what is to be defined as stupidity (or folly as she prefers to call it). To be understood as folly, acts have to be clearly contrary to the self-interest of the organization or group pursuing them; conducted over a period of time, not just in a single burst of irrational behavior; conducted by a number of individuals, not just one deranged maniac; and, importantly, there have to be people alive at the time who pointed out correctly why the act in question was folly (no 20/20 hindsight allowed).
Itâ??s easy to understand why this book is fascinating. We are often fed with success stories but I believe that we have more to learn from failures. Success can always be attributed to a number of vague and contradictory reasons but never really pinned down â?? success can be a result of dumb luck. Failure on the other hand can be studied.
But Tuchman has a specific type of folly in mind. My thought for today is more concerned with the stupid move the idiot idea. Not quite a total nutcase but more the act of sheer dumbness that is done unintentionally. OK so we have the Darwin Awards for those who manage to remove themselves from the gene pool and phenomenon like Jackass for pubescent humor â?? but who studies the fuck up?
What I am thinking about is the social Darwin awards. People who manage to remove themselves from a social group (friends, job, hobby) through an act of sheer dumbness.
If man is a social animal then how is it that we can be socially so inept? Sorry about this strange rant. If you are still reading this you must be wondering about my weekendâ?¦ It was very nice thanks!
Richard Stallman is going to give a lecture in Göteborg which is really cool. We booked a hall with a capacity for 400 but the amount of registrations has now increased to 600! We had no idea what to expect but with over 600 registrations we are naturally very happy. This can now be classed as a major event.
Naturally this means that we will be moving the venue to a new site. The lecture will now be held at the Draken cinema on Järntorget. The cinema is an old style movie house and seats 700 people. You can see a plan of the theater on their website (in Swedish).
For more information about the talk see the website www.rms2007.se…
If you happen to be in London on 25th May then you may want to attend the RSA special event Social Impact of the Web: Society, Government and the Internet. With speakers Cass Sunstein, Tom Steinberg, Andrew Chadwick, William Davies, Matthew Taylor, Bronwyn Kunhardt, Georgina Henry it promises to be a very interesting day (in addition to this the event is free). Unfortunately I will not be in London so I cannot attend (how annoying) I would very much have liked to have been there.
Here is the text from the advert:
How can new internet technology empower us to interact with each other in novel ways?
This conference will address this question by focusing on the political culture and norms that the internet has been instrumental in fostering, both in relation to centralised politics and more diffuse social and civic networks.
It will also look at the psychology of the internet â?? as we create virtual fully living worlds, lines may be crossed between what is real and unreal in our lives.
Virtual environments let people create their own digital identity with their own unique psychology. When online do we treat people differently, does the technology that we are using change how we would behave in the real world? If people create their own representation what does it say about them and what are the wider implications, social and political.
To book a place at this conference visit http://socialimpact.eventbrite.com/
Location: RSA, 8 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6EZ
Date: 25 May 2007
Time: 10.30am – 4.00pm