goodbye Ev, go cause trouble

Ev’s leaving. ::sigh:: I will very much miss him, but i’m soooo glad he’s going. No, no, nothing like that. When i first met Ev, i instantly adored him. He has that passionate scattered attention that i very much recognize. He’s hyper-curious and in love with his work, with his life. His baby grew up and things became stable, procedural, functional. He needs to be out exploring. He needs to chase down a new adventure. And i’m sooo in awe that he realized this and decided to go, even though it meant walking away from his baby.

I wish you the very best, Ev!

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why i love my sidekick

I ran into a skater kid on the BART yesterday who was sporting the newest Sidekick. I peered over with envy. He told me it was fucking rad and that a friend of his worked at T-mobile and snagged him one before it came out.

I keep seeing kids wearing their sidekicks around their neck on chains. At the X-Games this summer, there were tons of sidekicks. The Hiptop is definitely appealing to the hip-hop youth crowd. And for good reason.

First, look at the device. It looks like a gaming device. It says: you will use me for play and textual communication. Forget the phone – who talks on the phone anyhow? Certainly not you… you don’t want to shove a piece of toast up against your ear now do you? And besides, if you want to talk, you’ll use an earpiece.

Next, look at the interface. There are no horrible menus, no poorly named programs. It’s simple: scroll on the right and find everything you need. AIM is obvious. Email is obvious. SMS is obvious. Everything you need with simple scrolls. The feedback mechanism is purrfect – little icons in the upper corner no matter what screen you’re on. And if you’re away from the device, it’ll buzz for certain messages and turn pretty colors for others. Feedback. Constant feedback.

Three things would make it beyond perfect for me: a longer battery, a retractable ear piece (i always forget mine) and the ability to add programs to the ones available. I hear synching is improved with the latest version, but i haven’t tried it out. That was previously on my list.

But the fact is that using the Sidekick makes me feel like a subculture kid. And even as the mainstream kids are picking up on them, only a few adults are. Adults don’t get the importance of text, particularly AIM text. And the Sidekick understands that American kids are mostly on AIM and it’s a central feature, not a pain in the ass add-on. This is what texting looks like in the States. Turning AIM texting into a gameboy and voila!

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digital xenophobia

In checking my email this morning, i was really disturbed by a message on a mailing list that i lurk. The question was simple:

Is anyone worried about the del.icio.us community being diluted with non-geeky type people?

My first reaction was one of insult. There’s nothing like digital xenophobia to get my goat early in the morning.

First, this is the problem of all online communities. What draws people to them is homophily – birds of a feather stick together. Folks are ecstatic when they walk into a community where everyone’s like them.

In theory, people want to espouse the liberal value of tolerance and love of diversity. In reality, most people are anything but that. Ask the anti-Brazilians on Orkut. We have the language to criticize the neo-Nazis on Friendster, but how different are the anti-nongeeks? We really only know how to talk about racism, sexism and homophobia. You can’t really say “we don’t want any girls here” and get away with it now (although you may think it). [Of course, one contemporary approach is to allow a handful of token women in, but maintain the male dominance…]

Unlike the more politicized phobias, xenophobia and classism often go unchecked. It is even more culturally acceptable to want to maintain a community of others like the original community and to reminisce about when the community was closer, had more in common and when there were less problems.

Of course there are more problems in a heterogeneous community. People don’t speak the same (actual/conceptual) language. Diversity brings divergent opinions, values, ideas. Diversity requires us to broader our perspective, appreciate things where we are not superior and realize that not everyone comes about an issue from our perspective.

With community tools popping up daily, everyone’s talking about how this tool can be used by everyone in the world – won’t it be great? Yet, as soon as multiple communities use the tool in different ways, everyone flips. No one actually knows how to manage diverse communities with different values. Why? It’s a really hard SOCIAL problem that doesn’t have a simple technological solution.

[I’ve got lots more to say on this topic, but until next time…]

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on dating

[warning: personal blog entry]

I’m often whimpering to my poor roommate about my lack of dating. His response is typically a reminder that i don’t have time. I’m usually stubborn to this response, arguing that i’ve dated plenty when i’m in more stressful times than this and ones where i’ve slept a lot less and done a lot more. He’s always quite weary of this response.

To spite him, i got this bright idea to start responding to online personals. But then his statement finally hit home. I don’t actually have time to date people that i don’t know. In truth, i’ve never actually “dated” anyone. I’ve had friends or colleagues that became partners through some odd set of circumstances or a foolish idea. I don’t actually know how to meet people and i certainly don’t have time to go through the rigamarole of dating – meeting people you don’t know, seeing if things might work, trying out chemistry, etc. I don’t actually have time to get to know new friend groups or scenes. And i’m not even sure i have interest.

What i want is that magical miracle where someone just instantly fits into my life and i fit into their life and everything just works out. My roommate is definitely right in that i have impossible standards. Yet, i didn’t really realize how unrealistic they were. ::sigh:: So impossible. Gah.

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Flickr slideshow

Have i told you how much i love Flickr? Well, it’s true. And over and over again, they impress me with new features that are brilliant for both the voyeur and the everyday user.

Today, i finally sat down and looked at slideshows. Slideshows let you take a tag and just slideshow through all images with that tag on it. Stewart loves the sleeping slideshow. I’m partial to the Burning Man slideshow… of course. [If you’re a Burner, add your images to Flickr!]

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“Sentenced to Be Raped”

In June 2002, the police say, members of a high-status tribe sexually abused one of Ms. Mukhtaran’s brothers and then covered up their crime by falsely accusing him of having an affair with a high-status woman. The village’s tribal council determined that the suitable punishment for the supposed affair was for high-status men to rape one of the boy’s sisters, so the council sentenced Ms. Mukhtaran to be gang-raped.

….

But instead of killing herself, Ms. Mukhtaran testified against her attackers and propounded the shocking idea that the shame lies in raping, rather than in being raped. The rapists are now on death row, and President Pervez Musharraf presented Ms. Mukhtaran with the equivalent of $8,300 and ordered round-the-clock police protection for her.

from Sentenced to Be Raped

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Engaging the TV-minded

My grandfather and i often speak about Christian morality in the context of politics. This has become increasingly noticeable this year and i was stunned when he told me that Bush was not a Christian (in his actions, not necessarily his purported religious association). That gave me hope.

I decided to assemble a little pre-election package for my grandparents. I wanted to send them: Moral Politics, Don’t think of an Elephant, Unprecedented, Outfoxed and Fahrenheit 9/11. Much to my dismay, Outfoxed was only available on DVD and F9/11 wasn’t to be released for a few weeks so it cost a fortune. But still, i sent them the other three.

This made me wonder. I get an AOL CD every few weeks. I realize that not everyone (like my grandparents) have DVDs. But DVDs are much cheaper to produce than VHS tapes. I’m getting all of this paper political propaganda, but most Americans don’t get their propaganda on paper – they get it on TV. This is why organizations spend millions of dollars to place their ads on FoxNews. Of course, FoxNews is biased.

What would it mean for MoveOn (or other organizations) to start manufacturing DVDs and shipping them off to potential voters? Imagine a hand-written note from a volunteer saying that this might be of interest to you (oh random stranger from a swing state). Imagine shipping out Outfoxed or Unprecedented or F9/11 rather than asking people to pay for it. The people who buy it are already converted. Imagine putting a little note saying “if you don’t have a DVD player, return this card and we’ll send you a VHS copy; give the DVD to a friend.” I wonder what percentage of people would watch a movie that appeared on their doorstep. I’d bet a decent number. Certainly more than read paper propaganda. The TV is what makes most people in this country think. Why not work with the TV, even if you can’t work with the TV stations?

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