openness

The WikiLeaks story is really becoming a saga. It’s like a new chapter is added every week, with new characters and new ethical questions raised. The latest one helped me work out at least one big answer to move forward with. The answer hinges on trust. It used to be that knowledge was power: it [...]

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Learning to Be Open By Default

by Brian on 06-24-2010

in civics,london

This is my first post following ChangeCamp London (there will likely be one or two more) in which I’m suggesting points for probable improvement: mostly things I actively promoted through the planning process, and which I hope to see emphasized more in the future. This post argues for the need to be open throughout the process. [...]

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The whole process relies on failure. People have to be willing to accept failure and admit to mistakes, or the process won’t work properly. If we artificially hide information to deny failures — whether it’s done in the name of positive thinking or is simply a manifestation of anti-social self-interest — then the process becomes [...]

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Steven Johnson has an excellent column in the New York Times, on the iPhone and the mixed merits of open and closed platforms. He begins with a reference to Jonathan Zittrain’s work on “generativity,” (familiar to readers of this blog) i.e. “the ability of a self-contained system to provide an independent ability to create, generate [...]

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Today I was trying to answer this question in a group discussion at AgendaCamp. Most of the time we talked about reasons to not stay in London. Personally, I moved back to London in 2000 after finishing school to regroup before figuring out what to do with my life… And I stayed in London because [...]

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There’s no way to avoid the reality that strikes will make people upset, but maybe we can do more to avoid them altogether. That suggestion was made by Larry Cornies in great column in Saturday’s London Free Press, arguing we’re overdue to consider the damage caused by strikes and lockouts, time to think more imaginatively about [...]

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Late last night I had a serious lapse of faith in social media — as we all must from time to time. We should have serious doubts questions about this stuff… Which is why I chuckle whenever I read editorials merely pointing out “there are hazards” and digitization “isn’t all good” — as if any [...]

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After the Google Wave announcement in May I went in to work all excited to share the awesomeness with my colleagues — one of whom caught me off-guard by asking, “Ok, so what good is that?“ My first thought was, “Hmmm, obviously I didn’t stress how awesome it’s going to be.” Then I realized maybe we’re [...]

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The Best Disinfectant

by OpenConceptual on 07-14-2009

in commentary

This morning I realized I was a little unfair to Glen Pearson in my last post at BrianFrank.ca. I excerpted a bit of his blog as a jumping-off point, but the rest of my post didn’t really have much to do with what he wrote. I kind of left it hanging there as if he didn’t [...]

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Just sort of a brainstorm here, following up on some of my relatively more youthful attempts to outline what this is all about: Draft Enterprise Model The Practice of Theory The other day I jotted down a few points — trying to distill the underlying mission of this amorphous enterprise. It has a few different [...]

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Pragmatism: From Philosophy to Politics

by OpenConceptual on 07-04-2009

in reading

Read Carlin Romano’s piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Obama, Philosopher in Chief” (via aldaily). The article includes a number of useful references for further study (if you haven’t read them already). Adding to Obama’s speech in Cairo (as well as at Buchenwald and Omaha Beach), here are some key books mentioned: Kwame Anthony Appiah, [...]

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