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…

Newbies Guide to Blogging

Nice simple, practical guide to getting you blogging right from Dustin Wax at the very useful lifehack.org. Mainly for individuals but the principles are the same for enterprises and others.

Follow the links to explore your own context and see the list at the end to extend your learning.

Highly recommended!

Check it out. 

Blogs – here to stay

Blogs – love them or hate them, they’re here to stay.

Let the cream rise to the top.

A review of the blogosphere and it’s implications for enterprise – from the current Business Week, Feb 20, 2008.

A bit of a hyped-up piece, but relevant all the same. I offer it with a word or two of caution:

1.    Enterprises should not be jumping into the blogosphere until they have a pretty clear idea of why, where, what, who, when.

2.    If you haven’t got anything interesting /useful to say, don’t blog, or at least, don’t expect anyone to read it.

Of course individuals can just go for it and play and why not! You are the first audience for your blog afterall (see free e-book on Authentic Blogging), and internal blogging for organisations can have a huge impact. What’s going to be of interest varies a lot depending on where you are sitting. But that’s another story…

“Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later.

“by Stephen Baker and Heather Green

“Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business—including yours.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)”

Cont…

Feedback from Fresh Writing classes

Thanks again to folk from our Fresh Writing classes for bloggers and non-bloggers alike. But watch out, we might have you all blogging soon. In the meantime, it’s an honour to be helping you get your words and ideas flowing. Really impressed with what you are all coming up with and the impact this is having in your lives.

Games, exercises, tips to make writing easier and more fun, strategic thinking on audience and the writers/bloggers life. Even nice biscuits and a game you’ll all love called Two Bob (or a Pebble) Up Your ‘Ort Sport. (No photos taken fortunately… you had to be there).

More about the writing classes here…

“Fun, interesting and worthwhile – personally and professionally. I’m glad I took time out of a lousy schedule to do this class. Now I can rite reel good.”

“It’s been easier to write. I’m jotting down ideas again and having more of them. It’s the creative convalescence, soon I’ll be back at full strength.”

“Did first workshop on the Tuesday. Signed up as a co-worker at The Werks to give me a place to go write. Wrote a 10 minute play that Thursday & Friday & submitted it to a competition on the Monday. First thing I’ld written in years. All good.”

“I’ve been flying since the first session. A real release.”

Flexible, affordable, easy transport, what’s stopping you? We all need to express ourselves better in life… and be seen and heard.

Register on Upcoming and see who else is watching/coming, get in touch with Libby if you want to know anything, or just turn up on the day.

Look forward to sharing the magic of your words with you. The techniques we use are so immediate and such fun that you will surprise even yourself with what you are capable of, and how this can translate into your daily life and work expression.

No need to be afraid. Everyone is equal in these sessions and you do not have to read what you have written unless you want to. The inner critic or ferocious editor (find out more in the e-book here) takes a break during most sessions, infact, it is only welcome when being constructive. If none of this makes sense or you are in any doubt, call for a gentle chat with me. It is a very natural thing to have some fear about writing. It is wonderful to overcome it.

Bestest – Libby

More posts on writing to help get your words flowing…

Survey results & comments from Autumn courses

Find out how we rated and what clients think of our courses with an update on the Testimonial page.

“Helped me to just jump on the blogging train and get moving… The course got me into action and increased my learning and Libby was a lot of fun to be with. Met some nice people too.”

“You helped motivate me to enter the new world.”

“I benefited from the course by learning what’s possible through blogging and considering the different things I’d want to share in this medium. I also learn’t how easy it is to start and develop a blog and how much interesting material is available in the blogosphere.”

“I’ve wanted to set up an online site for a long time. This was a relatively cheap way to do it and that was my initial goal. However, the extra benefits I’ve gained have been great, and a little unexpected.”

Thanks to all for your feedback and suggestions of the top priority screencasts you want to use to embed your learning and clarify what you missed. As you can see, we are already moving ahead with making the improvements you suggested. Get in touch if you are really stuck with anything in the meantime. Soon, we will start linking to your new blogs!

More… 

CERN – the cosmic joke

Great quote from a Skype chat with my dear husband, early internet guy Graeme Sutherland.

Off to CERN tomorrow…

“It all sort of seems like a bit of a cosmic joke. You need to build massive machines, use amazing amounts of energy, to find out how really little, simple things work. And maybe, just maybe, the whole thing ends up proving what the observers want to see.”

Reminds me of the Alan Watts quote and Taosit poem at the centre of my paper on curiosity and learning – Towards integrated learner curiosity.

“In sum, then, te is the unthinkable ingenuity and creative power of man’s spontaneous and natural functioning – a power which is blocked when one tries to master it in terms of formal methods and techniques. It is like the centipede’s skill in using a hundred legs at once.

The centipede was happy, quite
Until a toad in fun
Said, ‘Pray, which leg goes after which?’
This worked his mind to such a pitch,
He lay distracted in a ditch
Considering how to run. (Anon.)”

(Watts, 1957)

lift08
CERN

Bamboo for Pandas

Many of you will have heard me talk about the need for pandas to have bamboo. Not just enough to survive, but corridors to link them together so they can mate.

People are like that. Bamboo feels like ideas. When I meet people like Ben Segal, it’s like finding air, water, food. The essential stuff for me to not just survive, but thrive.

“I am convinced that today the main challenges for the Internet (and hence ISOC) are more social and economic than technical, and that progress depends on effective programs of education and dialogue.”

From Ben’s election statement as a trustee for the Internet Society in Geneva.

As someone working the in the field of education with an emphasis on dialogue through blogging, I couldn’t agree more.

Perhaps this is why, sitting here blogging at LIFT08, I am delighted to see several speakers that help us explore these ideas.

But there is still an underlying frustration I am feeling at LIFT which, apologies to anyone that has been caught in the clutches of one of my angry rants today, centres on this.

We keep exploring the “How”, the technical side I guess and how the social can be appropriated in support of the technical or the economic. But what we are still lacking in this space is the “Why?”

Why are we wanting to innovate, to create, to advance technology in society, to overcome challenges and take up opportunities.

I can only hope that the wonderful inclusion of the sustainablilty section will be emphasised in the takeaways summary.

So much potential in the room… where will people direct it….

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…

Bruce Sterling Opens LIFT

Nikolas + Carla = black swan factor

The High Impact of the Unexpected

I love Bruce Sterling. His book Disruption has stayed with me for over a decade. His predictions about the way technology will create even more manipulative political campaigns have come to pass. Think: the President-elect with an ear bud connected to feedback system in realtime that tells him what to say to keep the audience happy… Think: the shadowy power behind the throne with their hand fair-up-the-clackers of the puppet king.

The way he described how trust and reputation would be created and served online have come to pass. Think Couchsurfing or epinions and how we now expect our online karma to run over old-world dogma. Hyperlinks keep subverting hierarchy and our actions speak louder than our job title. New kinds of community can emerge.

Brucey baby’s laconic, voice of reason tells it like it is. 2008 is going to be a crap year, he says. Nothing to really inspire or motivate us there. Sorry. So he takes us on a random riff about this and that, building rapport and entertaining.

It’s great to see the work of futurism and journalism brought into an idiosyncratic person style that engages you and makes no false claims to empirical science.

What is truth and reality anyway? Outside of the physiological fact of the way hearts and lungs function, most claims to truth are subjective anyway, so why try and pretend otherwise. So why not take part in truth yourself….
I will always trust the word of someone who puts themselves fully into the frame. I want to know the context, the editor.

Bruce knows what’s going on in the world and has a great skill for feeding it back to us in a way we want to hear.

He said Gates would rather try and cure malaria than stay at Microsoft pretend Microsoft is interesting. There were a range of insightful remarks in his opening.

Then the Sarkozy / Bruni obsession began. Entertaining, well thought out, well communicated. The central point being, they are a “Black Swan” (”a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations”) when looked at as a futurist. That their rise and rise to power in 2008 marks a point in time we should be looking at. His scenarios involving the axes of ambition and publicity led to a central predication about the Empress Bruni becoming a central figure in the world, bringing together the power of celebrity and politics like perhaps never before.

I agree with him. I’m just not sure why it is was a keynote for LIFT. There are a great many other topics that might have been more relevant. Mind you, knowing Bruce, the Black Swans might just turn out to be flying into our digital Twin Towers.

And I can’t finish without mentioning my hometown Perth is the only place you can find a real black swan, bizarrely. But I found a pair in Norfolk the other day. What is it with these birds? They’re starting to follow me all around the world. Is it a sign to phone my Mum?

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