Self-Facilitating Media Node

Nathan Barley
Or how I got the blog drop on Scott Beale. Marc turned me onto Nathan Barley yesterday, a brilliant British commentary/parody of the commodity cool culture of the dot-com era, UK style. Genius writing, I can see why it only lasted a season in a country that drops everything for Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire. It would have lasted even less here. Barley is a self-described self-facilitating media node who wears dual bluetooth headsets while directing his growing self-referential media empire under the sparkle of the discoball and celebrity spotlight.

This BBC article from 2001, reporting on the British dot-com backlash (yes, it’s total twilight zone!), describes the early Barley:

“Nathan Barley rides a tiny metal scooter along the pavement in the direction of an overpriced ‘gastro-pub’ in order to attend a meeting with a group of worthless toffee-nosed sh**s intent on setting up an internet radio station with an elaborate Shockwave interface, eternally doomed to be of interest to absolutely no-one other than themselves.”

It might hit home a little, which is partially why it’s funny as fuck and worth a snort in the BitTorrent-o-sphere. You can find the first season, 6 episodes, which only aired in the UK last year. While waiting for the download to finish, follow Barley’s Wikipedia roots. The subversion runs deep.

Camping with Mooses



MooseCamp
Originally uploaded by Laughing Squid.

Vancouver is a rad, beautiful town. The mountains beckon, but only from a distance this time. Moose Camp is day 1 of the great white north blogger geek-o-thon. Did some GETV interviews with the talented Sarah Pullman guest corresponding. This shot is Sarah interviewing Chris Pirillo and Ponzi of Gnomedex fame. Scott Beale always quick on the 5D.

A few self-promotional bits today: Le Monde 2 has an interview with Ryan and I about Webzine and the future of the Internet or whatever, like we know anything. No online version. If you’re in France, please pick up a copy for us. Also, Webzine 2005 named dropped in Annalee’s Techsploitation this week. Lastly, Xeni’s BoingBoing piece on Marc’s Dorkbot food hacking presentation features my grinning mug. It was that tasty!

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I digg it, man

digg.com

People power is finally organizing on the Internet in interesting ways. Digg.com, a site I discovered barely a month ago, has quickly become a favorite place to kill time. Digg is essentially a place to find interesting links to news stories, blog entries or anything of interest on the world wide Internet. It’s mostly tech oriented right now, but that’s about to blow wide open real soon. What makes digg different than most other link aggregators is that editorial control is done by you, me and anyone else who cares to jump in. Anyone can submit a link they think is cool or interesting, but it’s gonna take a small community of people to agree with you for a much larger community of eyeballs to see it.

The way it works is pretty simple. You peruse digg.com for something interesting in the “digg for stories” queue, the place where all new submissions get tossed. When you find something you like, you click the “digg” button next to a link’s title and it is “dugg”. This increments a number next to the submission and adds the link to a personal bookmarks collection. Kind of like del.icio.us, which anyone else can see. When an article or link gets enough diggs, the article is “promoted” to the home page. This boosts the visibility of the article enormously and many more people get a chance to find it and hopefully also digg it.

What’s really amazing about digg and why I think it’s future is really bright is that it empowers the reader of content to decide what is interesting. Contrast this with the current model of the media in which you have a cadre of editors who decide what stories they think are going to gain the biggest audience or sell the most papers. We’ve all seen plenty of bad TV and read really crappy articles. What digg does is it flips the control of interestingness from the editorial ivory tower to the unwashed masses who ultimately consume the stuff. digg isn’t a media desitnation itself, merely a smart pointer to intersting stories and links that others create. Digg CEO Jay Adelson describes the symbiotic relationship he sees with the mainstream media in a recent interview with Mad Penguin.

I believe that the role of the New York Times, just to use them as an example, will be to go out and find the news and to interpret the news. We are going to bringing people to the New York Times IF they make the right choices. I believe that it is a very symbiotic relationship. Perhaps what we will provide organizations like newspapers is some insight into what the mass audience really wants to read about today, at least the on-line Internet audience.

Digg isn’t perfect. Yet. Some popular articles get repeated, some lame stuff bubbles up and it remains to be seen how the digg’s current audience will receive or adapt to non-tech categories. These are all relatively small issues that will evolve solutions. The decentralized editorial approach is amazingly powerful and the mainstream press are waking up to it as they see spikes of traffic from digg.

GETV - Kevin Rose

I recently had a chance to meet Kevin Rose, founder of digg, at a geek party. Very cool dude. He agreed to do a GETV interview, posted yesterday. If you like it, be sure to digg the interview and embrace your new found editorial power. It can be addicting.

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Flocking for the Winter

FlockAs the rainy winter sets in here in San Francisco, two birds of a feather spread their wings. Last week, the much anticipated social browser Flock made it’s debut. This is my first post using Flock to see how she flys. So far, she’s airborne.

The other Flock coming to San Francisco is the beautiful metal sculpture piece pictured here from Burning Man 2001, by longtime artist Michael Christian. Flock (the sculpture) will be coming to the plaza in front of City Hall in mid-November, assuming the Black Rock Arts Foundation can raise enough dinero. You should donate, hint hint. Flock is one of my favorite pieces from all of Burning Man. The legs that rise up from the ground are organic and vine like slowly transforming to an animal shape as it reaches the headless mammalian torso. Possibly a glimpse into our own genetic future?

Hey Scott, so I think Flock officially bridges the gap between the SF Burning Man art scene and the new generation of open source geekdom. Your perception was spot on.

UPDATE: The San Francisco Examiner did a story on Flock coming to SF. I’m happy they chose to use my photo, despite not giving me a credit.

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Monday brain food

Monday night was rad. Media Alliance did an informative thing at 111 Minna on wifi in San Francisco. Larry Lessig did an incitement and wry presentation and slideshow on the history of communication monopoly, specifically touching on how AT&T stifled any sort of creativity when they felt the least bit threatened. One example of this is being the Hush-a-Phone case. With the FCC in their pocket for many decades, AT&T got their way until they were finally broken up in the 80’s. After Larry, a panel discussion followed by three people representing communities that have stakes in wifi access. A reoccurring point of the evening was that whatever gets deployed in San Francisco, should be ‘network neutral’ and ‘platform neutral’ meaning that the city and the provider don’t get to decide who does and does not have access to the network. Neutrality being the key concept here.

After the intellectual fun, a bunch of us headed across the street to a Thai restaurant to munch and shoot the shit. It was cool meeting Jimmy Wales, the genius behind Wikipedia, one of the best things about an open Internet. Rene shot some video of Irene interviewing Jimmy and Irene interviewing Craig Newmark (yes, THAT Craig).

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Lessig at SF Wifi Media Alliance Event

If you live in SF and care about democratizing Internet access, you should attend this free event. Media Alliance is making it happen and Lawrence Lessig is gonna throw down a few words. And check out Awesometown, funny as fuck.

Lawrence Lessig on Wireless in SF: Digital City or Divided City?

When: Monday, October 10 2005 @ 07:00 PM PDT – 10:00PM
Where: 111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna Street
between 2nd and New Montgomery
San Francisco
Description: Join Media Alliance for this dynamic panel discussion on creating universal, affordable Internet access through municipal broadband utilities. Featuring a presentation by Professor Lawrence Lessig and a panel of local community Internet experts, the evening will include Q&A with the audience.

After years of advocacy by MA and other groups, Mayor Newsom announced earlier this year his goal of free wireless Internet access for all San Franciscans. Cities across the country are implementing municipal projects, though with varying degrees of commitment to bridging the digital divide.

This evening will explore the significant opportunities for city-run projects to expand Internet access and usage by under-served communities, and improve cost, service and consumer choice for everyone.

The talk will be followed at 9pm by music from DJ’s Kid Kameleon and Ripley.

Cost: $5, Free for Media Alliance and EFF members

7-9 pm Discussion: Lessig, Panel, Q&A
9-10pm DJ’s Kid Kameleon and Ripley

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No One’s Listening except you



No One’s Listening podcast show
Originally uploaded by ekai.

The podcast show that Ryan and I are on is up now, in three parts. Renegade and Josh also call in live. Schlomo‘s in their somehere too. This was the Webzine 2005 special of No One’s Listening and it was mad fun, even if YOU are the only one listening.

Almost forgot. I was interviewed a couple weeks ago for this Publish.com piece and this one on Journalism.co.uk. Yep, someone in the UK has some sort of interest in this whole Webzine thing. Now if only both of these sites would allow for comments, things may get a bit more interesting. Oh, and also a Turkish glossy print magazine called Bant, interviewed Ryan and I awhile ago on the history and future of Webzine. We’re big in Instanbul too. Coincendentally, it arrived in my mailbox the morning of this year’s event.