A while back, i blogged part of a story sent from my friend Devon who is working in the Congo. She sent me another bloggable post today so i thought i would share. If you have the means, it would be great to help her program out. $50 pays for 2 students in the school there. They are applying for grants, but those take a long time and thus any support that you can offer would be fantastic!

—

working with these women continues to be an entire life of itself: births and deaths, sickness and true healing, new arrivals and going home, and being together at every different hour of the day: all those early morning chores, heat-of-the-day lessons, rainy afternoons stuck in the church singing songs, social hour evenings, and worship at sunset. I’ve started a new project to take down the each of their stories: just interviews and photos. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with them yet, but, for so many reasons, it just seems important that they be recorded. Maybe that will finally be a use for my blog.

But just one now the girl I interviewed today is seventeen, quiet now, but with teh most beautiful voice. When her village was attacked, she was abducted by the Mai Mai, raped and beaten. Apparently angry at her for crying, they tore out her eyes and left her on the road. People from her village found her and tried to bring her with them as they fled into the forest but she was unable to keep up, so they abandoned her again. Eventually she was found and taken to one of the docs counselors out at a rural clinic. From there, she was brought into the hospital but there is nothing that can be done for her eyesight and she is also almost deaf, from injuries to the head that got infected. She has no idea whether any of her family survived and has been terrified to leave docs, not knowing where she can go. but lyn, through the network of services and people she works with here, has found a hotel owner who will pay her to do basic kitchen chores and a room in a widows cooperative where she can live; there are kids there that can bring her too and from work. Its so much more than any other hospital would do for a patient and yet I still dread the day when she’ll leave this community of women who are all healing each other to live on her own. I’m selfish, but i hate to have them leave; though the actual goodbyes are always uplifting, with the whole tribe out singing and celebrating, a mix of being happy for the woman who is leaving and, i think, the hope that it brings them for themselves.

the gsf project is coming along beautifully. my connections with people and places from my last visit haave helped me immeasurably and every step just seems to be falling into place. feels charmed, or meant to be. more on that soon.

politically, we had a little scare when the RCD (rwandan party that used to occupy this area) pulled out of the transitional government. almost comical to have jo aka. my dad, head of docs, senator, just a general congolese “big vegetable,” called away from dinner because one of the two govenors of a town was using his personal army to defend an arms cash from the other govenor. everyone is in duplicate here, as the organizing theme of this transitional period is to let the past lie, invited everyone to take part in writing the constitiution, and not oust anyone, even as a new system is set up in its place. a UN presence combined with a figurehead leader so far are managing to keep everyone in line, with the hopes of having the second congolese democratic election (the first being in 1960, with independence.) a new friend here is looking for the funds to start a civil education program to prepare the community for elections but where do you start when so many people can’t read, most of the country is inaccessible by road (there are fewer roads now than there were in 1960), and there are over 200 political parties, all oriented locally or tribally. but this guy is amazing and if he does manage to put together a project, i’ve offered him the gsf school in the evenings to hold his classes. its amazing the gravity of an open physical space for events, trainings, programs, possibilities.

Huy Zing’s description of his orkut death is a riot.

During this period, I slowly saw the count of my list of 750+ communities (600 created by me) get halved, then drop by 20 at a time, then slowly 1 by 1 until my list of communities reached 0. Watching the list of my communities slowly drop meant only one thing: impending death at the hand of none other than a human!

Some anonymous poster decided to point me to this Wired article on blog attribution and virality.

I found myself sighing. There are some key assumptions built into the critique that bloggers borrow (a.k.a. steal) ideas from “lesser known bloggers.” First, there is the assumption that the goal of blogging is to become popular by spreading good memes. Certainly, there are many people for whom this is their goal. But damnit not all bloggers have the same goals.

On more than one occasion, i have blogged something and attributed it and been asked to remove attribution either to the individual or to their blog. Not everyone wants their name attached with the things that they uncover. There are politics involved. After a couple of awkward situations, i have reverted to not attributing unless known to be appropriate.

For example, when someone emails me a link to blog that they think is interesting, i never attribute it. But when they email me a link to their blog about something that they thought that i would find interesting, i do attribute it. I figure that if it is public enough for them to put it out there and tell me about it via their link, then they want to be attributed. Perhaps i’m making a mistake in this distinction. [If you’re one of the people who send me things and want attribution, just say so.]

Over and over again, i am told by look-at-me bloggers/technologists that blogging is public and everyone should be AOK with being seen. Guess what? Sitting in Golden Gate Park talking to my friends is a public activity, but i don’t really want/expect everyone in the world to be there too. The concept of public is far more complicated than we often realize.

When i link to someone’s blog, there are various ways that this can be read. It is not always about respect; sometimes, it is about exposing someone. That is not something that everyone wants. I’m finding myself increasingly frustrated that those covering blogging seem to think that there is a consistent goal, need and mode throughout bloggers.

I think that it is fascinating that HP is studying blogging along the lines of infection, but this is also quite problematic. Those studying infections are always obsessed with the source. Even if we are going to realize that meme sources are considered ‘good’ (while infection sources are considered ‘bad’), what on earth makes anyone think that all ‘good’ sources want to be found any more than ‘bad’ sources?

[Btw: can you tell that i’m getting interested in blogging? I’m finding myself vocalizing my frustration towards all things blog related these days.]

I logged into Orkut today and was pleasantly surprised to find that the first two connectors were neither Joi nor Marc. Instead, they are two men from outside the States (Brazil, Czech Republic) with a relatively small cohort of friends (73, 19). This is intriguing.

Now, i know that there are games being played, so i checked out their friends. Almost all are from their countries of origin and most have relatively few friends. Now, this would make sense in a normal model, but i’m curious who these central bridges are – how are they playing such a significant role on the network?

I also received an email from Marc Canter encouraging people to make more friends so that he can be more of a connector. This was a kind reminder of how fake the data really is.

Since it’s fake anyways, i encourage all of you geeks with times on your hands to play. The trick to being the biggest connector is not a game of collecting people. It’s a graph theory game. You need to bridge the most disparate groups as well as connect to the hubs strategically. Remember: it’s an algorithm of average path length. Thus, you don’t want exceptionally long path lengths factored into the average. But, if you bridge the hubs and the disparate groups, you’ve reduced the average for everyone.

Anyhow, i’ve got to get back to work and should not focus on this instead of writing, but it’s a really fun math problem that i’d love for someone to solve. What is the algorith to minimize your average path length? Given the data, what strategic connections need to be made for a newcomer?

When i first started using RSS, i was ecstatic. Rather than relying on going to each person’s page, i could just throw them all in one place and go through them. I’m a bit more disillusioned now.

I got all excited and started adding every blog that had an interesting thread. Almost humorously, i started breaking after about 150 regularly updated blogs. Worse: i miss half of the interesting posts that i want to read because i’m too overwhelmed.

This made me sit back and think about what kind of an RSS feed i want.

First, i want to be able to choose to watch an entry, a topic or a person. I don’t want to be forced into a person only; this unit of view is way too big.

Following a person should be like now – i see everything in their feed.

Following a topic means that i can specify things like “all entries by this person related to ‘echo chamber’.” As such, i can follow whatever this person has to say on something. This is particularly relevant for following bloggers who have a topic of interest to me, but whose entries are by in large, not of interest. Of course, i know that this means that all of you YASNS followers will never read my V-Day writings. But alas, i know you don’t care about my politics anyhow.

Following an entry is a bit more fun. Say that i find an entry that i think is of interest – either in my feed or out there on the web. I should be able to add/mark the entry so that the entry tells me when there are new comments and all new trackbacks get inserted into my feed as single entries too.

Personally, i’d like to tap into the graph of blogs. Technorati knows the linking structure. Forget blogrolls. We can see who links to who embedded in their blog. We can determine blog topology. Why can’t i have topic-based RSS requests. “Tell me anyone within 3 degrees of my network who is talking about ‘rape’ or ‘domestic violence’.” In theory, Google should help me on this but that’s overload! Plus, i can’t pull out just the blogs (a feature that i’m STARTLED they haven’t implemented after having purchased Blogger).

Finally, every day trusted friends of mine send me URLs. When i surface for air, i have to fish through thousands of emails to find those interesting tidbits. I love getting recommendations from friends. Why can’t they just drag a URL into my RSS feed? Why can’t i have a feed of “every URL that Ronen thinks i should read”? Frankly, this would be so much more efficient to reading things. Plus, my friends know what is of interest to me. Another thing is that it should be possible for me to have a public dump. Anything that people in the public think that i should read.

I don’t want automated recommendation systems. I want tools so that my friends can do what they already do – pass on information that they think is relevant. But i want to make it easy for them. And perhaps have a mechanism to say “THANK YOU!”

As more and more people blog, RSS is going to break on the social/attention level. In many ways, it already has for me. I’ve started interviewing bloggers and i’m fascinated by how hard it is for them to consider adding something to their RSS. Overload. Overload. If anyone wants to know why the early players get all of the attention, it’s because RSS feeds focus on people, not ideas, and the early players are too overloaded with following the other early players to consider new people.

Anyhow, just an idea… Although i’d love anyone’s thoughts on this approach. [Perhaps there are tools out there… So far, i’ve only used Bloglines, Shrook and NetNewsWire]

I love Cameron. Today, he announced his new art project: Radio Vox Populi. Blog entries are turned into speech, which is broadcast in a fun way. It’s pretty surreal to tune in and let it play in the background.

As many know, i have an amazing talent at breaking all technology. This week, i broke AIM.

I got this bright idea to start adding new pictures on top of people’s pictures that bothered me via iChat. This required me adding them to my Addressbook. Something went wrong. When i fired up AIM on my Sidekick, they multipled. Some people in the Addressbook were in every ‘group’ including ‘Blocked Buddies.’ When i first sent a message to someone that was in both a group and the Blocked Buddies list, things went haywire. AIM on my Sidekick crashed.

I went to my computer. By this point, iChat was royally pissed. They weren’t in doubles there, but they started deleting themselves. I’d go to write a message to someone and i would get an error message (not a pretty one…) and the window would close and the buddy would disappear from my list of buddies. Hrmfpt.

So, i went to Fire. They were really really gone. ::grumble:: I tried to add the person back. That was a bad idea. Apparently, there’s a cap on number of friends in AIM. I believe that it is 150. Since a lot of my buddies were inserted many many times, everything got mixed up. I think my buddylist overwrote itself. Basically, my AIM is FUBAR.

And i’m once again reminded as to why technology hates me and why i hate anyone who abuses the number 150.

I decided that it’s time to start over. With a new screenname. Unfortunately, i no longer have everyone’s screen names. And i feel guilty once again spamming everyone (having lost my phone only a few months ago) so i figure i’ll post it here and hope that those who were in my AIM list will see it and remind me.

I’ve always been a bit obsessed with tangible networks. When i was mapping out hypertext stories that i used to write, i used to use index cards, punch holes in them and tie strings between the different cards. Thus, when i wanted to read parts of the story, i’d pick up the mess of cards and just arbitrarily choose strings to follow. It was fantabulous.

Thus, when Stewart pointed me to Mark Soo’s exhibit, i was thrilled. Balloons to represent people!?!?! Ribbons to tie them together! What fun!!!

And just think of the trouble that can be caused by running through the gallery with a pin and a set of scissors. The easiest way to wreak havoc on someone’s network… Moohahaha. I wonder if it’s voodoo doll like…