You Think, I Think, We Think (Better) Together

Been reading reviews about Charles Leadbetter’s book We Think all over the place. Got to get my hands on a copy sooon (come on Rosie, hand it over).

If anyone is trying to get their heads around Web 2.0, social media, new paradigm thinking and all that claptrap - get a look at this. Lovely simple animation. I’m going to use it at the beginning of all my courses. Free event coming up soon to give people a taste of it all. Watch this space.

Guardian review here (including Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky) which also looks reeal good.

Shame The Big Issue review isn’t available online. A different and very valid take on things.

No wonder most journalist’s I meet are annoyed with blogging and What’s Going On with we-think.

No wonder I am compelled to work in and support this space.

So glad Rosie Sherry is in it with me (thanks for the video).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiP79vYsfbo&hl=en]

Steering by the Stars

Reproducing an email just sent to a group of global unplug pundits, like David Levy, Mark Bittman, Peter Pruyn, Leif Hansen and Ariel Meadow.

Posting it here to open up the discussion.

Join in and help take it forward?

At a bare minimum, everyone in the world needs to read Peter’s article continuous-partial-attention-02-08.pdf.

“It is time we steered by the stars, not by the lights of each passing ship.”

Omar Bradley (1948) in Peter Pruyn (2007)

Seriously.

………………….

Dear unpluggers

Thanks for being in touch and many thanks to Mark Bittman for bringing us together, for me anyway.

Peter Pruyn’s paper is also excellent! See attached. A must read for unpluggers. Really puts the meta-ness of it all together.

David Levy has been in touch - his paper “No Time to Think” can be found, among others, on his site here.

52 Nights Unplugged is growing thanks to Ariel and the community.

We are making the domain www.everywhereisnowhere.com available to whoever wants to move the unplug meme out into the world. Synchronously the woman who coined the phrase “Constant Partial Attention”, Linda Stone, also said “We [are] everwhere except where we actually [are] physically” - which is a direct link to the Seneca quote that the domain references. An ancient dilemma.

Also keen for one of us to present at LIFT09 and others to attend as a “movement”. Free bloggers passes available and accommodation can be provided. I guess David or Peter would need to be on the stage to come, but perhaps that will happen. The community votes on who they want to speak, and I will be approaching the organisers directly about the unplug movement. I was asked to attend as a blogger this year. Influential space.. starting to be compared to TED talks.

A book you could all read, if you haven’t already, is “In Praise of Slow”.

Considering the climate emergency and reading in Peter’s paper “It is time that we steered by the stars, not the lights of each passing ship” - I am reminded to bring ecophilosopher Joanna Macy into the discussion. Her writing made it possible for me to attend the LIFT conference without being drained by the Technology as God types.

Tessy’s site http://thrivingtoo.typepad.com/ is another place for the meme to grow, and she is friends with Sir Ken Robinson. See his TED Talk on creativity, which has enormous traction, here.

And now, I am unplugging and hitting the bath - in the garden, with my daughter. Brrr. Spring not quite sprung. But lovely.

Please reply to all if you want to move this agenda forward. In that moment, a group exists. Together we are stronger.

Bestest

Libby

……….

Other posts on unplugging here.

Can you unplug for 52 nights?

I’m going to move the main discussion about unplugging over to the wonderful (ironic) new community at 52 Nights Unplugged care of Ariel and Ning. She is one happening unplugger.

Come and join in.

You know you need to when…

• Your eyes/arms/body is aching from too much tapping / idiot boxing / talking
• You check your email as soon as you wake up and just before you go to bed
• There’s never enough time
• Your mental environment is smogged out with gumpf
• Computers/TV/Radio/Mobiles/Ipods/Games keep taking you away from the here and now

Many thanks to Leif Hansen from Spark NW for the 7 Step Programme to Unplugging. I’ll be referring all my clients/students/friends to it and the Unplug Challenge. Seems only right and proper when we are banging on about the wonders of the Internet on the one hand. Seems people might need a health warning to go with every new social network or application. Seems like we all need to take a break occasionally, or a lot.

No matter how good it all is, it ain’t sustainable.

Actually, we’ve just put together a 7 step e-workbook that takes people through the same process. The steps and exercises covered in the e-workbook are basically to:
(perhaps first identify what you like about your tech life)
1. Identifying your challenges with tech
2. Identify the needs trying to get met
3. Develop your vision/goals
4. Finding your focus
5. Finding solutions
6. Turning ideas into actions
7. Sticking with your plan (can be hardest)

See the full richness of Leif’s comment on the previous post here. Sounds like it could be hard work, but if you want some more reasons and to make it fun… go join 52 Nights. These guys just HAVE to present at LIFT09.

My what a helpful community we are. Sucking you in to more and more information on the one hand - then telling you to switch off with the other.

Reminds me of when we tried to buy airtime for “subvertisements” advertising TV Turn Off Week on major TV networks, only this time we (kind of) control the channel.

I’m off to bed. Now… do I take the laptop with me and catch up on the BBC programmes in iplayer, or not…. might be jut in time to read Bea (7) the last story before lights out.

We teach what we most need to learn…

The unplug meme grows

Great to read Mark Bittman’s article in the New York Times this morning online. Some people might be surprised to see a blogging evangelist type advocating that we unplug, but here at Authentic Blogging, we have always advocated balance and reason.

“I need a virtual break. No, really.”

“I TOOK a real day off this weekend: computers shut down, cellphone left in my work bag, land-line ringer off. I was fully disconnected for 24 hours.”

Read the whole article here… great reading and very helpful.

We are not alone in experiencing what Mark and others are calling Internet Addiction Disorder and David Levy’s work seems to connect with Joanna Macy (see previous post) and the Adbusters folk.

In a keynote address in 2005, Levy asked:

• How can we recognize and establish balance?
• We have an abundance of information sources, devices and technologies. When does this abundance lead to overload?
• We have an abundance of attentional choices. When does this lead to fragmentation?
• We lead full lives with full schedules. When does this become “busyness”?
• We largely subscribe to rapid action and response. When is this speed counterproductive?

Excellent questions indeed.

We recently started spreading the meme of tagging all posts on this issue as “unplug”, using the term in blog posts, articles and we are going to start aggregating them at

www.everywhereisnowhere.com .org (based on the Seneca quote). Not in use yet.

Then we will run a competition for the best words to describe “offline” in a way that does not make it sound secondary to “online” -= maybe “real life” or visceral. Tricky stuff.

Kind of like an antidote. I once ran TV Turn Off Week in Australia with Adbusters.

Came after attending LIFT08 and seeing how much we all need to get a grip - and being married to an ubergeek who struggles to ever go “offline”.

More here.

And within the Wordpress community.

Technorati tag is a bit of a jumble, but lots happening there within parenting and other worlds.

Want to help create a (very necessary) movement? Just add a comment on one of the posts if you like and watch this space.

Better still? Set yourself the Unplug Challenge and get off it all for a weekend this spring. It’s a beautiful world right here, right now.

Let us know what happens…

Friends - a simple equation

++ social networks ++ emails + 1 big conference = give me a dose of Seneca

So you think Technology is God?

Moving now to the elephant on the table we’re not hearing much about. Flesh. Not the stuff you cut to insert augmentations and enhancements (bbrrrrrr Dalek Sek aka the, ironically, very lovely Kevin Warwick). The flesh we press together. The stuff we make real love with, real friendships with in the here and now - in “meat space” as William Gibson calls it. The stuff that holds our organs in, our hearts, our minds, our real senses.

Next year I humbly request a section, a thread, an ongoing reminder about the need to be grounded. To be HERE. To be on the earth, truly connected, not above and beyond it. That kind of patriarchal arrogance has gotten us into this mess in the first place. Read Joanna Macy World as Lover, World as Self to get a grip on reality and priorities.

Yes, I applaud the appropriate use of technology for the well being of all beings and the planet we all call home. No, I do not think the hype about Technology as Religion is being well balanced here at LIFT08 (with some noble and Nobel exceptions).

What about practical tips for unplugging. Having run TV Turn Off Week in Australia, I want to hear about Unplug from Computers Week. Dave Stone, a young upandcoming uber geek we know in digital Brighton has just come back online after a much needed break. I want to co-present with him next year in an interactive session that puts the focus back on the flesh. That reminds us how to protect and even enhance our Mental / Emotional / Physical / Spiritual Environment.

A quick search for “internet free week” or a chat with almost anyone at the conference would confirm this is necessary.

Why am I so angry? Well it’s not just the hangover from fondue and wine. It’s much worse than that. It’s the anger, nay the RAGE I share with Jasmina Tesanovic and people all around the world, mothers, fathers, adoloescents, citizens about the outcomes of rampant partiarchy. It’s why we need people like Joanna Macy here as the antitode to all this:

Technology as God (insert other concept eg. Human Supremacy over Gaian Paradigm) + Testosterone = Money + war + a dying planet.

If these issues are not going to be explored at LIFT, then were and when? We just don’t have the time to wait.

Thank Dog and God, all the Buddhas and Allah and Gaia and the stars and the moon I met Ben Segal here. If you haven’t yet, do yourself a favour. But stand in line. True humanists that can integrate head and heart are, sadly, few and far between. Let’s hear from more of them.

A voice of reason please…. Vote One for Ben Segal or Joanna Macy to keynote LIFT next year.

The topic? Let’s hear what you think…

Social media is dying. Long live social media!

So social media has truly hit the mainstream. It even has it’s own comic strip. Are we all onboard and up-to-steam? Thing is, this new way is meant to be real. It’s meant to come from a genuine desire to connect with others (customers, stakeholders… fill in the blank).

I’m starting to cringe about the whole thing. The hype. The hyperbole. Sure, Google’s algorythms (currently) love blogs. Sure we can optimise search and get “seen”. But who’s actually going to be listening?

Some emerging thoughts here about how the cream is going to rise to the top.

Many early adopters are already screaming for the off switch.

We are reaching a new point in the adoption of social media. Something’s gotta give (she says joining Dopplr). There is another tipping point approaching.

Time for some great editing and aggregation. Time for some trusted sources to filter it all for us, and I don’t mean the USA Today Bloggers & Podcasters Guide (even if we do keep ranking 1). Or even cool geek individuals like Scobelizer. I’m looking for something all about my interests, the blogs I want to follow, but more visual. Definitely NOT Google’s Blog Reader.

What do we think Gra… time for a chinwag. Oh look, there’s my husband blogging in the room above me. Time to STOP all this and go find him.