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…

Friends – a simple equation

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

“Stay hungry, stay foolish” – dip into the Well

Just when you think someone is “The Enemy”, maybe even “The Other“.. up springs a lovely, unifying surprise. Yep, it’s (still) all connected.

I’ve just joined The Well. Found myself wanting to get stuck into Bruce Sterling types again (rant rant nihilistic, post-modern, partiarchal “Technology is God” tossers).. still downloading from the LIFT experience. But then I realised I did not know enough about him or more to the point, what “he” represents to do this with a clear(er) conscience, more considered opinion.

Of course his very special wife, feminist activist/writer/film maker Jasmina Tesanovic was a red herring stuck in my rising bile – and should have alerted me to there being some potenial yin & yang in the equation.

Then I went to Brucey’s Wikipedia entry, his website, (intrigued by the shortness and meaning of the domain name) and then linked it back to… The Well. Well well well. What a place

I have come home after another long journey, and I smell nice things cooking.

I’m diving in. The Well describes itself as:

“a gathering that’s like none other — remarkably uninhibited, intelligent and iconoclastic.

“The regulars in this place include noted authors, programmers, journalists, activists and other creative people who swap info, test their convictions and banter with one another in wide-ranging conversations.”

Yeah yeah, you’re all fab. Alles Gutte. But it was when I saw the roots of it coming from The Whole Earth Catalog that my heart and mind were won over. Many things clicked into place. Bruce couldn’t be all bad, maybe just a bit misguided or misunderstood! There was more to reveal. It looked like a place for my integrated/complementaty thinking/being to emerge into more light. The Yin & Yang thing again. Science and Gaia, unified?

Steve Jobs was also an early adopter:

“When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation…. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.” During the commencement speech Jobs also quoted the farewell message placed on the back cover of the 1974 edition of the catalog: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” (from Wikipedia entry)

Now I can see the origins of my internet addiction, indeed why I married my husband Graeme Sutherland, as he woo-ed me with utopian visions of appropiate, world changing technology.

I grew up with The Whole Earth Catalog (then Whole Earth Review > now Magazine). I was young, but it was ever so formative, as were the joints and conversations around the table of that expansive, bohemian childhood. It was THERE, everyhere. As ubiquitous and omnipotent as the bible, more so (hey Steve, you stole my line). I am having an epiphany right now just thinking about it. Must find out if Tim Berners-Lee read it before he invented the WWW.

Well… it looks like there is more to know about Bruce and his very much extended community. If any of you have Well stories or WEC>R>M to tell, do tell. I shall restrain myself from posting a Bruce-esque diatribe until I get a better context.

In the meantime, here’s the umpteenth profile I have submitted this year. I have most definitely joined Well. Interesting to see all these different selves we portray isn’t it. Thank goodness I have Buddhism and meditation to help me discover who I really am / am not. Ha! Another cosmic joke.

I particularly enjoyed writing this one, I think because I had a better idea of who the community was and how I am right now, having just come through a very heavy bit of navel gazing. All very self-indulgent and self-referential, but I wrote it for myself first I guess.

“Hello hello. I’m a West Australian-born woman who has finally made it back to Europe. We chose (digital / gay / pagan / close to London / Gatwick etc) Brighton, just like Second Life has – but for very, very different reasons. We chose Europe, or it chose us. I have a 7 year old girl and am well into looking at the world as her generation’s advocate. My card says “I help people express, connect, learn” because we teach what we most want to learn. I love learning > evolving. I am an educator / activist / social entrepreneur / Buddish-pagan / future-aware / whimsical / eccentric / meditating / social constructivist / idealistic realist / Leunig, Harold Maude, Nick Cave, Schubert lover with a real hope that humanity can get it’s shit together FAST and move on from the “Technology / Man is God” paradigm towards more integrated, creative, intelligent, kind, humble, interconnected ways of being and relating… before Gaia swallows us whole.”

There is just one tiny issue of the massive ego’s in question here, and the place of humility in the search for real wisdom. But we’re working on that, aren’t we Brucey.

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?

Metacognition on learning at LIFT – Part One

Okay, so blogging these presentations is deepening my learning. I can listen and type at the same time, move between the presentation in this space and their website, downloading and checking email as I go.

But heck, I’m a woman! Multi-tasking comes naturally to people that breastfeed.

;-)

Also realising that I now have a common experience with others in the room. I have arrived. I belong. We are all here together now.

Loving Venture Night at LIFT08

Viewdle – video search with face recognition and more. Very cool. Check it out. Revolutionary.

Wuala – “the skype of online storage”. Simple, neat. Watch these guys.

Mixin – a really exciting new way to organise your (online) social life. Gra is going to love it. Destined to be very popular with the Twitter/Dopplr/Upcoming… possibly even the Facebook set. Can’t wait to try it out with the Brighton/London folk. Well mashed and stirred. “Social applications have a long way to go, currently in their infancy and strangely disappointing.” Mixin is meant to take things on to the next level. Let’s see how it goes. “Helping you digest the noise”. Scoble is rawther juiced up about the whole thing. Rightly so.

Pixelux – interactive physical simulation technology…. brand/media experience channels, multi-sensory. Takes the stuff we have seen in conceptual art spaces forward into super slick stuff that the retail marketing folk will clamour for. It will be in our face, seducing us to buy buy buy before you can shake a mouse at it. But beautiful, beautiful stuff. Will be good to see what the cultural and heritage sector can do with it. LCD, Plasma screen, projection on to floors.

Cocomment – “Helping you track your conversations on the web.” You know how we struggle to manage our conversations in the blogsophere? Well here’s a great free tool that really helps. Let’s all get on and give a go… Enhances conversations, helps you track what you said and who said what to whom. The speed has improved a lot recently. More work to be done on the useability we hear from early adopters (eg. Scoble). Another social networkto maintain though? I’ll let you know…

clipperz – “think of it as a web rollodex”… “free and anonymous online password manager”

and more to come.

Downloading Wuala closed alpha trial right now, just registered for cocomment. Love it. Love seeing the response from the expert, whizzbang panel, asking all the tricky questions that Gra would be thinking and asking if he was here. Sniff.

So far every venture that’s been chosen is fantastic. Really enjoying being in at the ground level with “The New”.

Somewhat ashamed to have posted the question about “where else if not Venture night…” on the LIFT community blog.

Battery just about dead, brain full, drinks are calling… out the door right now…

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