Xark!

Mobile post sent by Xarker using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Mobile post sent by Xarker using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Mobile post sent by Xarker using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Mobile post sent by Xarker using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Mobile post sent by Xarker using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Why we're always tired

Duty Calls, from the ever-popular xkcd.

The White Stuff

As broadcast this morning on my way to work at 8am:

"The good news is that the air is barely moving, so we have no appreciable wind chill.  The bad news is that it's currently negative seven degrees [Fahrenheit] without the wind chill."

Yeah, it's cold.  We've barely gotten a break since the last Packer game when Fox demonstrated that even Alaska was appreciably warmer than Green Bay right now or, as our Chamber of Commerce president put it, gave the impression that we're within a dog-sled trip of the north pole.

The cold, on its own, really isn't the problem.  People here apparently do know how to deal with cold.  But without even the occasional warm day, the snow doesn't melt.  The problems isn't heavy snowfalls, which we really haven't gotten a lot of, but rather snow accumulation.  Of course the cities all plow the roads, but now they're having to plow the snow piles so we can see around corners.  Heavy machinery and dump trucks started sneaking out about a week ago to start scooping the snow up and dumping it elsewhere.  (I want to know where those dump sites are, and I want a sled.)  They're having to dig out the fire hydrants.  When I went voting Tuesday at the local high school, traversing it's driveways felt like doing the trench run in Star Wars.  When an SUV ahead would turn a corner, it would immediately disappear from sight behind the snow piles.

Another g-damn magnum opus

I just published an enormous overview of my ideas about the future of media ("Foundations of 21st century journalism") over at my revived media blog. I'm rather appalled by how long it is (3,275 words), but it's a big topic. And I'm not writing for everyone.

The subheads:

Monoculture to ecosystem
Structured and semi-structured data
Scalability
Open Source
Informatics
The Blur: News, information and advertising
Newsbots and Intelligent Agents
Multiple revenue streams and business models
The Intelligence Briefing model
Mainstream retrenchment
Nichestreaming
E Pluribus Unum
Watchmen watchers
Credibility grading
Death of monopoly pricing and profits
Game theory
Social technology -- virtual and otherwise
The Web is Local
True Convergence
Curating information
New elites
The Creative Middle Class
Surplus people
Yes, newspapers are going away

This was written for the students and faculty at the Journalism Department at the University of Mississippi, but you're all welcome to have your say.

Make the change real: Draft Lessig in '08

Geeks, bloggers, artists and new-media pioneers have been in love with Lawrence Lessig since... well, forever. When you think about the things we love about the Web, Lessig is in each of them: In every Creative Commons license (Xark, btw, is licensed through a CC  "Attribution-Noncommercial- Share Alike 3.0 United States License"); in the work of the Center for Internet and Society, in the civil-liberties-protecting brilliance of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Lessig is more than a law professor, more than an intellectual. Even the term "visionary" fails to capture the practical leadership role he has filled in the amorphous space we think of as "web culture." Yet to see him solely as a get-things-done leader is to miss out on the power of his remarkable ideas. If we were a village, he would be one of our respected elders.

Since the death of California Congressman Tom Lantos earlier this month, a grassroots movement has been forming around the idea of drafting Lessig to run for the suddenly vacant 12th district seat. It's one of those strange moments that feels fated: Lessig offered his final "Free Culture Lecture" at Stanford just weeks ago, announcing that he was turning his attention from Internet law to a campaign to change the relationship between money, influence and politics. Lantos' suddenly demise created this vacuum.

Within the last two days, Lessig has put up a Lessig '08 site and announced that he's considering running for the Lantos seat. The Draft Lessig Facebook Group has -- at this hour -- grown to 3,395 members (up about 1,400 since earlier today), and in 48 hours of online-only fundraising has generated more than $20,000.

If you're serious about wanting to change not only the faces in Washington, but the way that Washington operates, please consider throwing your support behind Lessig and his Change Congress campaign (the bipartisan Change Congress campaign will continue regardless of Lessig's decision about his candidacy). Donate. Join. Volunteer. Digg.

No, I'm not a utopian. I was raised on a commune, so it's "been there, done that" when it comes to believing that a few simple changes will magically solve all the world's problems. But I'm not a cynic, either, and I'm not blind: Something amazing is happening RIGHT FUCKING NOW.  It's political and it's cultural and it is coming out of US, unmediated by the unusual suspects.

We are the people we've been looking for.

Three speeches