Neil Gorman’s: Text Edit

Today I was cleaning out my in box before I leave to a two vacation and I saw this email from a firend of mine. It really made me realize just how lucky I am, and I’m decided along to anyone who might read this blog.

Please help if you can.

-N
___________
To: Neil Gorman
Subject: A simple request for a friend that would mean a lot.

Hey, all, I know this is unorthodox, but I was hoping people could help. A good friend of mine, Andrea Scamihorn, passed away yesterday in Santiago, Chile. She was 25 years old.

http://www.myspace.com/andreasaysrevolt

I couldn’t possibly overstate how much she meant to myself and other people who knew her. In the activist circles we had both been involved in for almost a decade, she was a bit of a living legend, as she started doing anti-racist grassroots organizing in rural Indiana at a time when most people considered it to be an extremely dangerous place to stand up to white supremacist movements. But she not only endured, but lead and was part of dozens of successful campaigns over the years.

She had moved to Santiago about a year and a half or so ago and considered it her adopted home. She was a few days away from returning when a carbon monoxide leak from a faulty heater took her life.

The U.S. embassy has told her mother that it will be $4000 to move her body back to the US, money her family doesn’t have, let alone for a funeral when her body is returned. We’re trying to see if we can raise this money for her, so every little bit counts. If you can donate just $5, $10, $25, or whatever you can, please do. I can’t imagine being in the position her mother is in, and I’ve put in $200 myself to help her out.

The email address you can send money to is:

debbeehaskell@hotmail.com

A Facebook Event to help raise money has been set up here:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=106687950602

Thank you so much,

Every now and then I experience a moment that makes me really feel like being alive is so beautiful. The year 2008 had several moments like that, but there is one that stands out in my memory more so than others.

Election night November 2008.

The night that Obama was elected I planned to go downtown to Grant Park to listen to him give his speech. I had told several people about this plan, and lots of them thought that I was nuts, because they believed that Chicago was going to go totally crazy. As in cars being overturned, and stores being looted. Needless to say these people who expected the worst from their fellow human beings were wrong. As evidenced by the coverage of that night by both the mass media, and new media.

I remember near the end of his speech Obama started to talk about a woman who was 106 years old. He spoke about all of the change, and the progress that this woman had seen in her life time, and he would punctuate each statement with the words “yes we can.” By about the third time Obama had said “yes we can” it seemed like the entire crowd was chanting it with him.

I remember looking around me, and in every direction for further than I could see there were so many people. They were different races, genders, ages, faiths, and sexual orientations. So man people gathered together listening to someone say that great things can be, have been, and will be done with in our life times.

As I stood there listening to all those people affirm the belief that when we work together the impossible becomes possible I got a little misty eyed, and a sense of profound wonder made my skin tingle. It was something that was very amazing, and I’m so happy that I was there to be a part of it.

Now however, as I listen to grim news of the economic shit storm that has gathered in the sky that we are all living under, that day seems somehow very distant.

I’m sitting in a dinner listening to my iPod as I write this, and a song called “Perpetual” by the band VNV Nation. Some of the lyrics to this song are…

No need of sun to light the way

Across the ages, we have reigned as we endured

Through the storm fronts we will ever surely pass To stand as never ending light.

Going into 2009 this is the kind of thing that I want to have on my mind. Times are hard, there is no sense in denying that. Nonetheless as Fredrick Douglass said “with out struggle there is no progress.

There will be struggle. Can we endure? Will we progress?

Yes we can.

Yes we will.

Bring it 2009.

-N

… something happens that really brings a huge smile to my face. Take today for example, I woke up and checked my email, and I read Cory Doctorow’s goodbye 2008 bring on 2009 email.

Cory says:

Who the hell knows what’ll happen in 2009? It’s definitely the most uncertain new year I can remember. One thing I’m sure of, though, is that whatever happens, we’ll all figure it out together, that the Internet will make it possible for us to bug-in and help each other here at home, rather than heading for a defensive position in the hills. Crappy economies are often the home of wonderful Bohemias. Two recessions ago, I dropped out of school to become a computer programmer. In the last one, I quit the company I’d co-founded and went to work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Now that I’m a parent — and now that I’m a little older — I feel the risk a lot more keenly than I did then. But I just keep on remembering that we live in the best time in the history of the world to have a worst time: the time when collective action is cheaper and easier than ever, the time when more information and better access to tools, ideas and communities are at our fingertips than they’ve ever been.

This was a great thing to wake up to.

Thanks Cory.

The second episode of Text Edit is now live. Text Edit #002u

In this show I talk a bunch about how the iPhone / iPod touch app Stanza is amazing, and wonderful.

You should download Stanza after you listen to the show.

-N

 

 Text-Edit-002 [7:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’m a big fan of the New York Times, mainly because they have a great team of people writing about books, films, and culture in general.

Today when I was looking through that the Times had to offer I found this really interesting article about the classic film “It’s A Wonderful Life” which says…

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

Wow!

I never really thought of the film in that context, but now that he says it… well that is all that I see.

The article is really a fun read, so heck it out if you have a few spare moments.

-N

I’ve been out of the loop with podcasting for a bit now.  For way to long really, it is past time for me to try to podcast again.  For the past several days I’ve been thinking about what king of content I would like to podcast about, and I made a list of several subjects.

After that I took each subject and made a list of things having to do with that subject that I could talk about on a podcast.

The thing that clearly emerged as the winner was doing a podcast about books, publishing, reading and all of the ways that people interact with the written word in the digital eage that we are all living in.

One of the reasons for this is that I have always been a book person, but another reason… Maybe even  the main reasons that I feel so compelled to talk about this set of subjects, is because I read this amazing blog called The Book Oven Blog.

(Disclaimer: I have also recently started to write things that appear on the Book Oven Blog from time to time.  Like this, and this.)

Today when I had some free time I sat down with some recording gear and made a podcast, that I’m tentatively calling “Text Edit”. The plan right now is to do a season of the show, which I’m guessing will be about 12 shows total.  After that if I’m still feeling good about it I’ll continue, if not I’ll stop.

I’m not sure if I will use this site as a home for “Text Edit” or if it will get its own little place on the web.  (What do you think I should do?) But either way: here is the first episode.  Hope you enjoy it.

**Show Notes**

1. A link to the Hybrid Readers post by Hugh McGuire.

2. The really cool ideas about the format of a book not changing the book comes from the comments section from the Hybrid Readers post which were written by Chris Hughes.  I would have linked to him, but I don’t know where to link.

3. You can download the amazing iPhone / iPod touch app Stanza. eReader is another good app.

 

 Text Edit 001 [10:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Everyone has a blog, but very few people have what I think are very good blogs. There is a small list of blogs that I do check almost every single day, and I thought that it might be nice to list them here.

I’ve also stated three reasons that I each of these blogs is on my daily read list. 

1. Hugh McGuire’s Blog:

• Hugh can write well.  For real, he he writes well constructed complete sentences.  The level of writing that Hugh is capable of allows him to take ideas that are often complex and make them understandable, with out dumbing them down. 
• The things that Hugh writes about are things that I’m interested in.  The tag line of Hugh’s blog is “at the intersection of technology, philosophy, and politics (and some other things)” and it is a very true statement.  In a internet that is filled with low-brow hacks attempting standing on their soap boxes shouting nonsense Hugh is saying interesting things that make a lot of sense. 
• Hugh does not talk about things that I dislike such as “personal branding” or “marketing”.  I know that lots of people are interested in those subjects but I’m not one of them.  Almost all the bogs that talk about those things come off as non-authentic horse piss to me.  In short Hugh, and his blog, are genuine, very authentic. 

2. Julien Smith’s Blog:

• Julien has been a good friend to me, and helped me out over and over when it comes to creating my own content. 
• I really think that Julien has a great sense of humor, and his writing (and the way that he writes) really make me laugh.  Like the other blogs on this list Julien’s blog really seems like an extension of his personality.  Julien is a really funny and good natured guy who has a point of view that I think is often refreshing. 
• Good cultural commentary and criticism is difficult to come by, because now-a-days everyone is a critic but most suck could not make a living as commentators or critics.  Julien is one of the people who consistently makes interesting and compelling observations on culture. 

3. Doc Sarls Blog:

• Though Doc is what I would consider to be a academic blogger his blog remains very personal, it expresses Doc’s very enjoyable personality as well as his impressive intelect.
• The posts that Doc write generate great comments and discussions.  On top of that Doc does not just sit back and watch his readers sound off, he jumps in as well.  There are many times where the comments section of his posts are just as (or more) imformative as the post. 
• I’ve said this about other blogs already, but there is a great veriety of content on Doc’s blog.  The things that I have seen over there recently are about politics, infrastructure, technology, business, and law.  The fact that I’m not always reading about the same thing makes Doc’s blog more interesting to me as a reader. 
• Doc gets one more bullet point.  As I said when I was talking about Hugh’s blog I dislike reading about “marketing” and “branding”.  Doc talks about both of these things, but I don’t mind when he does it because he is not all preachy, he does not come across as the old man who has come down from the mountain top to impart wisdom to the lowly peons, the way that so many other “markiting” and “self branding” centered blogs do. 

Do you use Twitter? 

Ok.  That was a rhetorical question.  Of course you use Twitter.  I mean who the hell does not use Twitter, right?

Here is the thing: You have not REALLY used Twitter until you used TweetDeck.  I say that because after using TweetDeck for many months now I see it as the Mercedes of Twitter applications, because it lets you do things that no other app does. 

Like what?

Glad you asked! 

1. It lets you set up groups of people to follow.  I currently have three different groups that I can see at the same time.  The first one is my “everyone group” that follows everyone that I follow.  The second is my “local people” group that I use to follow what is going on with the people who live near (or near-ish) me.  The third group is my “A List” group and it is the people who I would consider close friends.  This group is great because I follow a TON of people on Twitter, and prior to TweetDeck I would lose the Tweets by my close friends because new Tweets would push them down very far very fast.  TweetDeck solved that problem. 
2. It lets me see what are the “trending topics” at a glance because it makes a tag cloud that pulls its content from TwitScoop.  This is really cool, and in many ways has taken the place of my morning news check.  I just open my laptop let TweetDeck refresh and if there are any really big words in the tag cloud I check them out. 
3. It is better than Twrilin every way possible.  For real.  I’m not attempting to rip on Twirl here, it is a good app.  However, TweetDeck took the good that was Twirl and made it better. 

So that you can get an idea of what I’m talking about:  Here is a screen shot of what TweetDeck can look like.  It shows several groups open in columns.  Each column is a group of people taken from the people who the user follows.

Please note: The second column is a replies column that shows the user the people who have tweeted with @your-useer-name. You don’t see it here but TweetDeck also has a default column that shows DMs. You can move those cloumns to the left or to the right to fit your needs.

Please note that if you don’t like that view you can shrink TweetDeck into a single column view.

Last thing: TweetDeck is an Adobe Air app, so you will need to have Air installed to get it to work.

Now go download TweetDeck!

Peace.

-N

Today I have a question for you, whoever you are. 

Does irrevocable damage exist?  I ask this because I recently happend on a copy of the book The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas which is one of the best stories about revenge, and social currency. 

I have never really thought about the book as a story about social currency, however today I was thinking about social currency when I happend to find the book… and now I can’t seem to stop thinking about the ways that the book provides some amazing examples of how social currency works, or at least how it can work, to a person’s advantage and to his or her disadvantage. 

I say that this is a story of social currency because Edmond Dantès, the main character in the book, is this guy who has been so wronged by another person that he makes it his lifes mission to get revenge.  In addition to that the way that Edmond goes about getting revenge is by re-creating himself… making a new identity… and building up this huge amount of social currency that he can later use as a weapon to extract his revenge. 

The lesson that I think a person can take away from this book are:

1. How to use social currency as a weapon if you need to / want to.
2. It serves as a warning of what can possibly go wrong when you create a enemy who understands how to use social currency as a weapon.

In the end this is a fascinating story that anyone who is interested in the the social nature of the web should read.  (You can watch a film if your one of those people who does not read things that are not in blogs.) 

-N

Many people who read this blog my not know it, but I have another blog called All-A-Twitter that I use to talk about microblogging in general.

One of the ways that I get content for that blog is doing google news searches for Twitter, then if there is something interesting I summarize it and post it.

Today I found some really interesting stuff that I think directly relates to the social trust economy that human beings use that I write about here.

The first thing I read came from The Independent: Indy Blogs site, and it was written by Andrew Keen .  This post / article talked about something called “The Law of the Vital Few” which is also known as The Pareto principle or (most commonly) the 80-20 rule. This law states that states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

The Keen linked to the second post / article that I found really interesting over on Silicon Alley Insider by Peter Kafka.

Both articles talk about how if a person went to Twitter for information on the world today they would have believed that Iran had shot down an American plane, and that there was about to be a mega shit storm as a result.  The Kafka article which talks about the ways that epic level Twitter users can cause something called cascade effects by Tweeting things that are false, or not exactly totally true.  Kafka states…

While Twitter theoretically treats all voices equally, some carry much more weight than others. Jason Calacanis, for instance, has nearly 43,000 people follwing him. So when he taps out “Breaking: US miltary plane forced to land in Iran after breaking air space. Just heard on France24 hour news. October surprise? Hostages?!” that has huge ripple effect in the Twittersphere.

After Calacanis Tweeted that this event happened it spread like wild fire, and became one of the most talked about things on Twitter.  I can’t prove this but, I’m willing to bet money that many people (about 75-80% of people) believed the event had happened because they trust Calacanis as a source.  After all, he has told them many things that are true in the past, he has built up a large amount of trust with people on the net.

Keen has some great insight on this as well…

There is only one problem with Twitter. When it comes to reliable information, the followed aren’t always very reliable. Today, for example, Twitter is abuzz with rumors about a US invasion of Iran. With most of our reliable newspapers on the brink of shutting down, where better to check for the latest global news than the massively popular Twitter. The problem, however, is that Twitter doesn’t have a bureau in Tehran. Thus, Pareto’s Law of the Vital Few kicks in and Jason Calacanis becomes the trusted source for news about the invasion. Now, I have the greatest respect and affection for Jason, but the one thing I don’t trust the Santa Monica based entrepreneur about is Iran.

Keen brings up a really good point, that no matter how much we trust the Jason Calacanis, and not matter how often he has been correct: It is possible for him -or anyone else who we trust- to be wrong.

I personally believe that people need to practice more empirical skepticism on the net, and in their lives in general.  We need to get better at error detection and correction with in our social networks.

I’m not saying that we should not invest our trust (social currency) in other people.  I am saying after we invest our trust we need to remember that even the most solid trust agent can be (and at some point will be) wrong.  Also, when they are wrong that does not mean that we stop trusting them.  Rather, it means that we (the investors of trust) and they (the trust agents we invest in) both need to learn from the screw up and move on as better smarter people.

-N