June 2009

Make Institutions and Leaders More Fallible

by OpenConceptual on 06-29-2009

in Uncategorized

Read this on O’Reilly Radar: Andy Oram getting to the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC: I hooked my friends through the idea of an irreversible political shift. Not a regulatory regime that could be dismantled like the agencies responsible for civil rights, or a mandate that could be defunded like federal housing initiatives–no, in this [...]

Directory

by Brian on 06-29-2009

in general,media

Just finished getting the latest iteration of Open Conceptual presentable. My first post introducing the new phase is here. So I figured, since I’m shifting things around a little, it’s time for a roundup of where I am on the web: BrianFrank.ca [subscribe]  2 – 4 posts per week on average, usually around 800 words, fairly [...]

I was going to do this Thursday night but I got sidetracked.  Dan Brown at the The London Free Press took up my challenge (which was “both 100% ironic and 100% sincere at the same time”) to “take a few hours or a few months to figure out what really matters” and compose it into [...]

Death of an Immortal

by Brian on 06-25-2009

in art,belief,culture,global,media

The news sure spread fast. It interrupted broadcasts and seemed to consume Twitter — as much as it can be consumed by any single event. Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices reported, according to his metric, that 15% of all posts on the service mentioned Michael Jackson. By comparison, he never saw Iran or Swine Flu [...]

It’s now one month-minus-a-day since I launched the LDNbeta dingy into its big, open, blue ocean.  After pushing it a little this-way-and-that to see how the creative winds and currents move — I have a pretty good idea of what it is and what can be done with it. Ironically, those currents don’t seem to flow London’s [...]

Our Creative Roots

by OpenConceptual on 06-23-2009

in examples

A recent paper published in Science argues that our big brains aren’t what ultimately caused early human cultural development. In fact, it took maybe 100,000 years (give or take tens of thousands) for the human brain to find its mojo. What was the secret? Sure enough, when the critical population density was reached or there [...]

The Raw Feed of History

by Brian on 06-22-2009

in civics,media

As a journalist, I cannot say that what I have read and seen today is the whole story: everything is too piecemeal, too unconfirmable, too one-sided. But experiencing the raw feed of history has been chilling. As we try to carve out the truth from the speculation and relentlessly repeated reports of outrage, the overall [...]

Nurturing News Sources

by Brian on 06-20-2009

in civics,london,media

Contrary to what a lot of professional journalists seem to resent citizen journalism for aspiring to — essentially just cheap and undisciplined journalism — my vision of open and participatory journalism is that non-journalists will play complementary and contributing roles. More people will have some of the basic skills and reflexes needed to contribute whenever they [...]

Information Food Groups

by Brian on 06-19-2009

in humour,media

I left a comment on this post at the LFPress Editor’s Blog about the traffic disparity between Tori Stafford-related livestreams (up to over 5,000 viewers) and yesterday’s Beyond the Crisis panel (55 viewers — it would have been 56 if I didn’t have to work).  By chance, a food metaphor popped into my head: some [...]

Just finished Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. Loved it. Exactly my kind of book: smart, funny, yet sincere — almost as good as actually being in the company of someone I really get along with. It was the first conversation I’d had in ages, the first time I’ve been able to talk [...]

I’m absolutely enthralled by this, both emotionally and intellectually. My passion is driving me to reason that we’re in the midst of one of history’s great moments. Historians a century from now will yearn to imagine what it was like to actually experience these changes (I mean the large-scale shifts). Let’s not squander this. We’ll [...]

Komoka

by Brian on 06-13-2009

in general

… is where I’ll be Saturday night for my brother’s (and his fiancé’s) – – Dana & Dan’s Stag & Doe If you find yourself in Komoka (after the Poplar Hill Picnic?), I can tell you there’s no place you’d rather be than the Community Centre (map) for Late Lunch and a cold beverage served by [...]