Labour Wave

How to build an open source community

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:17:00 +0000

Nice piece of work on how to build an open source community. Introduction and overview here. Meanwhile, you can find the book itself here and if you feel like contributing to its development, there is - in good old open source tradition - a wiki for just this purpose here.

The mysterious attraction of Chat Roulette

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:02:00 +0000

An interesting video here on the subject of Chat Roulette. How to be nexted in one (slightly) painful lesson.

This is definitely towards the darker side of social media.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

opensource.com versus "open source web"

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:16:00 +0000

I received this email from Red Hat this afternoon. Interesting stuff:

Dear Red Hat Magazine readers,
We posted a little while back to let you know we were thinking about making some changes. And now we have some news.
We had to get all the i's dotted and t's crossed, but now that the ink is dry and we're warming up the servers, we wanted to invite you over to check out our new space. We haven't got all the furniture in yet, and it won't be exactly the same as Red Hat Magazine--but we hope you see the same potential in it that we do.
We're excited to introduce http://opensource.com

More and more, people are talking about open source principles at work in business, government, law, and education. We intend for opensource.com to be a place to share stories and ideas for places where open source is having an impact on the world. We want to shine a light on where the open source way is multiplying ideas and effort even beyond technology.

And we want you to be a part of the conversation.
Register, contribute, and comment. Starting with your ideas on what you think opensource.com should be:
You can either post a comment on the site here: http://opensource.com/should-be
Or send us an email directly via the feedback form: http://opensource.com/contact
This change also means the Red Hat Magazine email list will become the opensource.com email list. While opensource.com will not include technical content, our hope is that we will continue to provide many of the same kinds of interesting content that you were accustomed to receiving from Red Hat Magazine in the past.
We plan to send monthly updates with top-rated articles from highlights@opensource.com. If you're not interested in receiving these emails, you can always unsubscribe here.
You can also follow opensource.com on identi.ca or Twitter at @opensourceway
And subscribe to receive content feeds via RSS.
Want to get an idea of the kind of content you can expect to find on opensource.com? Here are few articles to get you started:
Is IP another bubble about to burst? A view from another civilization.
Open textbook bill.
Open Thread Thursday | Business: Can the truth really set you free?
Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you at opensource.com.

Coincidentally, Alex Smith publishes an article on the British government's approach to data sharing over at LabourList today. It's unclear if the terminology used - "open source web" - refers to access or software. Some clarification would be useful. If it does refer to the software and Gordon Brown does truly get the web, it would be nice to see a similar approach being implemented in our schools and further education colleges.

By the by, the Microsoft ad for Office I mentioned in a previous post has disappeared from my local further education college's intranet this evening. Question is whether it will remain disappeared - but it does seem wrong that a publicly-funded institution should be selling the idea of Microsoft software to a captive audience. Don't you think? (Even more so if there's even the whiff of a commission changing hands.)

Google Apps and the Open University

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:25:00 +0000

One of the reasons I set this site up with Google Apps was because of the opportunities the system seems to offer for online collaboration, which, in the context of working people and our socialisation, I'm most interested in exploring. Google Wave itself is still in its infancy - if ever there was a time that it became a mature product, it would most certainly blow most of the competition out of the water. That time is, however, some while away. In the meantime, we have Apps.

Another project I've recently been involved in is www.thesmallprint-book.com. There, I felt Apps was most suited to a potential second part - if, at any time, it was decided to create a second collection of short stories and poems, Apps would be a most suitable playground for organising complex teams, communications and documents in one place. This may or may not happen in the future - the potential, nevertheless, is already built-in to the site should the need and desire arise.

Interestingly, a most significant player in education here in Britain has just announced that they also see value in Google's offering. This from the Open University yesterday, and which came to me via John Naughton's Memex. Fascinating days for Google in its battle to convince the big customers that it has viable technologies to replace traditional - and rather more proprietorial - offerings. (Would that my local further education college take notice. When you log on to their intranet, you get a rolling series of adverts in the top right-hand corner of the screen, one of which encourages you most forcefully to buy Microsoft's Office suite. I do wonder, in a world where OpenOffice.org is freely available for download and Google Apps Standard Edition costs around $12 a year with domain included, how any training organisation can justify acting on behalf of Microsoft's marketing and sales department? Shouldn't there be a law against it somewhere?)

www.unionreps.org.uk

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:37:00 +0000

I was at a reps meeting of my local committee yesterday and was told about www.unionreps.org.uk. I've registered this morning. It seems to run a little slowly and it tells you that you haven't registered for the email newsletter when your profile tells you that you have - but apart from these niggles, it seems a jolly useful idea. Plenty of opportunities for training, exchanging information about issues in the workplace and networking with like-minded reps.

I'll report back when I've had an opportunity to use it a little more.

Driving open source in San Francisco (and maybe elsewhere too)

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:54:00 +0000

In the face of historic budget deficits, what can one do? How about saving millions by not buying proprietary software licences, installation and training? The alternative? Forget the licences - just buy the installation and training. More here on both how to effectively drive open source software policies in municipalities, as well as why, via Mr Penguin's Twitter feed.

So how about doing the same here in Britain? Schools, councils and other public bodies are overrun with proprietary software licences that not only allow the providers to essentially own your intellectual property (without their software your data is worthless and migration costs are often horrendous) but also dictate when and how often you need to upgrade. Neither of which happens with open source software which uses open document standards.

Interestingly, there is an official British government website on the subject but it tells this rather curious, and what's more, unhappily non-committal story:

Welcome to Open Source Academy. Our aim was to encourage the use of Open Source Software by local authorities through knowledge sharing and practical advice.

The OSA project ran from May 2005 and completed March 2006. Since then we have maintained the site because of the high level of interest.

We are unable to continue providing the resources needed to update and have therefore frozen all activity on this site.

For more information on the latest Open Source/Standards isues please link to the Open Forum Europe website.

If, however, you're interested in pursuing this subject - and you really ought to consider doing so - you might want to try looking through this case study on Bristol City Council's experience with the software suite StarOffice, based on the freely available and downloadable OpenOffice.org.

Left-leaning blogging initiatives

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:53:00 +0000

Some quick links here. At TCF, where I've commented somewhat, there is this useful post I've already linked to at other sites. Well worth reading for both the post and its associated debate. I'd also like to draw your attention to my own rather tentative toe-dipping exercise in local blogging at Chester Tweet and this post in particular, which explains my reticences on the subject.

Meanwhile, the story of how local involvement can make real and immediate improvements to everyday lives can be tracked here.

Is government monitoring of social media wrong?

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:51:00 +0000

This story from the New York Times makes me wonder. I've always argued that blogging is more analogous to that semi-public conversation in the pub than traditional publication, and we wouldn't expect governments to snoop on such exchanges.

Yes. In a virtual world, what we say is registered and may remain online for years. But the intention, the context, the way we exchange ideas, the way we share them, sometimes unattributed (through no fault of anyone's), the way we build upon them for a greater good ... all of this smacks to me more of that pre-Gutenberg world of oral communication than the post-printing press age of unidirectional publishing. Social media is anything but unidirectional. That's the real difference between the world of traditional copyright and this brave new world we are all so bemused by - and, perhaps, in some cases, even frightened of.

So does the government have the right to monitor these virtual dialogues? In a strictly legal sense, of course it does. They are in the public domain. But in a moral sense, surely we are not looking to reproduce the nasty small-minded intrusivenesses of Cold War Eastern European states that would lead us all to begin to look over our shoulders in fear of committing imagined and forever expanding transgressions.

No. This is not the right way. If we believe in anything in the West, it is the freedom to speak. Government monitoring of social media will impose a painful and bloody break on everything we hold dear - and, indeed, in the spirit of openness that peer-to-peer consumption and production could bring us all both economically and culturally, everything we could achieve in the future.

Please let us think again. And let us think again in good faith.

Xbox iPlayer launch delayed indefinitely

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:04:00 +0000

John Naughton reports on the above and hits the nail on the head:

Could this have anything to do with the fact that Rupert Murdoch and Microsoft are in, er, talks, about Redmond paying the Digger to let Bing have exclusive ‘indexing rights’ to News Corp content?

Fact: the Digger (and his various offspring) detests the BBC and would like to shut it down.

More here.

In the meantime, you can always enjoy iPlayer on the Wii. I've started using it frequently myself and can happily report it works brilliantly on LCD TVs. The Wii acquires a utility I never anticipated it could ever have.

Feedback on Google Wave

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:38:00 +0000

Yesterday, Google published the results of a survey I missed on what people like and don't like about Wave. I would tend to agree with the respondents - a great place to meet but integration with standard email would be good.

You can find more at Google's blog here.

Crowdsourcing, taxation and the new digital economy

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:40:00 +0000

Governments need taxes - need things they can tax - to operate effectively, to have the resources to provide all the services we agree we all need. But the problem with the new digital economy is that large portions of what is created these days is done voluntarily, out of hours and by people who care more for a cause than the buck they could turn. Wikipedia exists because of this crowdsourcing effect, and usefully defines the term thus.

Now what happens if a government realises that all this voluntary work, all this unauditable activity, imperils its very own future, its very own ability to raise income? In much the same way as the big content holders - essentially the film, music and publishing industries - feel threatened by the way the opportunities to make money are moving from paid creators to ISPs and search engines, so governments should be worrying quite strategically that what used to be carried out in large office blocks and under the guiding hands of giant corporate bodies is now being developed in people's sitting-rooms and via two-a-penny broadband connections. Whilst content and intellectual property were created by taxable organisations, so government and content owners had shared and vested interests in maintaining a certain shape to the economy. But now truly useful software and services are gradually slipping into the hands of the voluntary sector (one simple example being how Microsoft's Encarta finally lost out to the community's Wikipedia), we begin to realise that perhaps our ways should part.

As end-user/producers, our interests on the one hand and those of government and big business on the other are beginning to go through a process of considerable revision.

So it is that I repeat the question. What happens if a government realises that the end-user/producer trends of 21st century crowdsourcing mean a creeping reduction of taxable organisations? I suggest the consequence is what we have today in Britain's Digital Economy bill. Designed to reinforce existing structures and ownerships over future trends, this is where the interests of the Internet's future creators clash destructively with what has suddenly become a confluence of current needs - needs that the old content producers and government both share: how to raise their income in order to support their enormous structures when people are choosing more and more to do important things without pecuniary payment.

Yes, I know. This is beginning to make me sound like a small government agitator. But what really I think I am trying to argue is that both big government and big business need to rethink their approach. The future is in the grassroots. And if they want to make money out of the grassroots, then what neither should do is believe that legislating the future back into the restricting bottles of our 20th century genies is the solution. Both big business and big government need to move along the supply line and find different ways of generating income. And perhaps requiring less of that income to function effectively. To, in fact, use the very same trends of crowdsourcing to reduce their own costs and structures and integrate more usefully in the new Internet.

For the solution, most definitely, does not lie in kneejerk reactions such as Peter Mandelson's Digital Economy bill.

We need to enable the future, not underline the past.

How social networks may drive us towards Microsoft-type monopolies once again

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:51:00 +0000

And here I was thinking that socialising networks would release us from the monopolistic attentions of capitalism - only for the natural algorithms that underlie their behaviours to bring me sharply to my senses. John Naughton writes this today in the Observer:

[O'Reilly's] argument is that since Web 2.0 services get better the more people use them, so they have a natural tendency towards monopolistic specialisation. So he thinks we're headed for "a world with one dominant search engine, one dominant online encyclopedia, one dominant online retailer, one dominant auction site, one dominant online classified site, and we've been readying ourselves for one dominant social network".

It's difficult to argue with this analysis. And each of the network's local monopolies is doing everything it can to keep us inside its walled garden. Google executives, for example, constantly blather on about how they value the "open" internet, freedom of choice etc, while at the same time frantically constructing an online environment which provides a cornucopia of services sufficiently rich to ensure that subscribers need never leave the Google embrace. The same is true of Amazon, Facebook and eBay.

The truth of the matter is that if you don't own the means of production, you don't own anything. We're back to the same sad truth time and again. I truly believe in an open Internet. But I'm beginning to truly believe in neither governments nor corporations. As Naughton caustically adds:

[...] common sense, not to mention bitter experience, tells us that the company that voluntarily turns its back on the prospect of monopolistic power has yet to be incorporated.

More here from Naughton.

BBC iPlayer on the Wii

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:12:00 +0000

You can now get BBC iPlayer on the Wii. I tested it out this evening whilst watching the latest episode of Dr Who. High quality images, far better than on a PC in fact, coupled with a perfectly skip-free delivery made for an enjoyable experience. The British TV licence fee just added an extra string to its evermore digitally rich and melodious bow. The people responsible should feel proud of the software they've produced, as well as the development process they've followed, whilst private industry competitors such as Sky and Virgin Media should be looking over their shoulders.

If you're interested, more background to this product and service can be found here and here. It's a clear example if there ever was one of how public software applications can be used to support and re-energise private industry at crucial moments in our economic history. One caveat - you do need your Wii to be set to the United Kingdom for the program to run as expected. And you do, of course, need to have paid your BBC licence fee.

Community computing and that $80 computer

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:14:00 +0000

Here's something really special. For the price of a Windows operating system licence, you get an operating system and a computer to boot (or reboot as the fancy might take you). More here. Via lirazsiri's Twitter feed.

The thinking behind Twitter's new retweeting functionality (the organic version, I mean)

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:53:00 +0000

Evan Williams explains it with clarity. You may agree or you may not. I'm not sure I do - it seems to structure too aggressively what you can and can't do. Manual retweeting may remain as a least worst option. Or, alternatively, we'll carry on using our Twitter clients - just as we have been doing so up to now.

It's a classic example of eco-system and third party support, though - the give-and-take between originator and business opportunists. A leaf out of Microsoft's book, if there ever was one. So how do these Twitter client developers hope - long-term - to make any money? A sheer and utter mystery to me.

Spain says no to file-sharing "three strikes" policy

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:51:00 +0000

This is good news. Let's hope it spreads. Via Pontus Westerberg's Twitter feed.

When five sevenths of your electorate is already on Facebook - what then?

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:41:00 +0000

The fascination with all things virtual grows exponentially. I remember teletext as a monumental revolution but for my children there has never been a world without. I remember reading recently that adults go online but for our offspring there's no difference between online or off. It's one and the same.

That is not the future. That is their present.

Now we discover, via Tom Watson's Twitter feed, that by next year's attorney general elections, five sevenths of California's Democrat voters will be on Facebook.

More on this astonishing statistic here.

And yet even so, those who do not understand that software code is our new method of writing constitutional frameworks will continue to kick against overwhelming social change and believe we can impose old 19th century ways of thinking on 21st century trends.

It may be possible to monetise parts of Web 2.0 but this does not mean it will be possible to monetise them in quite the same way as we have been led to accept to date; these relationships we have between gigantic corporations and end-users is now fluid and curiously disconcerting for us all. There will be more power to those of us who both consume and produce. Freemium economics will try and encourage us to pay for services we can get for free elsewhere - new start-ups will perpetually offer us new free services that in turn they will attempt to monetise in some way or another. Thus it is that the Internet teaches us both promiscuity and fidelity at the same time - on the one hand, fidelity to the concept of never paying for more than the Internet access, and wherever possible getting even this included in a wider phone package; whilst on the other hand, a vast and startling promiscuity in terms of brand loyalty. Never have we simultaneously cared so much about our brands for so short a time. In the past, perhaps, we were parallel lovers, never very deeply involved but more than happy to share our attentions around. Now, we are serial lovers and our virtual relationships are short and sharp.

A tumbling rise and fall is the dynamic that now rules. Empires will exist but will define themselves in the content of ever-declining timeframes.

And politics must take note.

Those of us who might bemoan a decline in the reading of books should take note of the following reality: websites are surely the 21st century equivalent of our beautiful wall-to-wall library of tomes - and it is also surely true that people read far more now than they ever did in my youth.

And if this is true of reading, how much more so of democracy? Voting buttons, comment boxes, virtual interactions of all sort - no, people are not sick of democracy but, rather, thirsty for it; and they go wherever they might find a true representation and exemplification of it. What they clearly now ignore is that empty and sad version which the politicking of political parties currently demonstrates.

That is not a vote against democratic engagement but a massive step forward in total favour of it.

Blogging and commenting and Facebooking and Twittering are evidence that democracy is alive as it never was. What those who believe in party politics must understand is not how to "click" baldly and superficially (in a bland marketing sense) with the virtual generations that all these tendencies form a part of but, rather, how to re-engineer their methods of communication and their hierarchies of power so that true democracy becomes their reason and not just an excuse.

"Don't abuse democracy for your own ends" is really what I'm saying. Allow it to flourish amongst the people as indeed the people are fighting already to make it flourish - and the world will automatically become the place it ought to become.

We hope.

As always, a question of overarching trust.

How socialists might engage with the idea of reform rather than revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:15:00 +0000

A thoughtful - and engaging - piece from Dave today on the subject of reform. Well worth reading - and well worth internalising its lessons. His conclusion - as much a product as a cause of virtualised Web 2.0 tendencies (certainly we could apply them to that part of the Internet which still fiercely resists all attempts at monetisation) - runs as follows:

We’re not approaching organisation right, at the current time. That much is absolutely evident with the rise of parties like the BNP. It is pretty clear that Labour has failed not only to represent the people who elected it across the country but its core constituencies, its members, the people who cause the party to exist in the first place. That needs to change, or else there needs to be a long term replacement for the Labour Party, to represent the interests of millions of working people without the need to resort to the culture wars, racism and anti-immigrationism as catch-all excuses for the failure to solve social problems.

No single issue campaign and no piece of primary legislation will achieve that, which is why when it comes to reform I’m not looking towards our political class, nor the well-meaning (if seemingly narrow) group of people who populate Amnesty International, Liberty, Oxfam, Power 2010 and the rest. I’m looking towards the people whose picket lines I went to visit this morning, or the people whose doors I’m knocking on when out campaigning, or the people I see regularly when I attend local party political branch and student meetings. They are my constituency.

But I’m not asking them to tell me what the problem is, so I can pass it on to the people who will reform it. I’m demanding that they pick a side, get active and reform it themselves.

As I have been half-alluding to for months at 21st Century Fix, Web 2.0's essence is involving people in the very act of creation - whether this be artistic, political or social. That our communication will be mediated is absolutely inevitable in a massively capitalistic world. But it would also be mediated in a massively socialistic world. The question is really whether we trust human beings to hold onto the good and proper things in life despite the machinations of the worst excesses of a money- and property-driven economy. I think capitalism does hold within its underbelly the ability to sow if not the seeds of its own destruction, then definitely the seeds of its own reform. And factors of virtualisation, of consumer-producer knowledge, factors which have never really existed before, will lead to a curious process whereby ever greater concentrations of wealth in the provision of online tools will lead to an ever greater disintegration of the ability to pull the wool over what - until now - have been hapless end-user eyes.

A lost decade, they're now calling it. Lessons, here, for everyone to learn.

Not least that the tendency to use online tools to uncover and tell the truth about human intercourse and exchange is one that will outlast any corporate attempt to entirely monetise and dumb down their (our) socialising technologies and how we use them.

What e-waste does to other communities

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:13:00 +0000

It provides certain communities with jobs and a living - but at what cost? Images which - at the very least - will disconcert here, as the interdependence of world trade shuffles the underbelly of the bright side of modern gadgetry to countries like China. There must be a better way. Surely we should really learn to pick up our own rubbish. Via John Naughton's Memex and acidcow.com.

Trends that are reshaping communities

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:38:00 +0000

More evidence of significant changes taking place in our communities - in this case, at the hands of open source:

The French Government's public finance department will switch 130,000 desktop PC's to Mozilla's email and calendar applications. Mozilla's Thunderbird email service, Lightning Calendar and an open-source groupware will replace IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office. The move signals how more government agencies from around the world are dropping enterprise accounts with major vendors to cut down on costs and get better license agreements.They are turning to open-source providers and companies like Google that can offer email and services such as Google Docs.

The package which powers Labour Wave - Google Apps - will also be used by the Los Angeles City Council in a recent and fiercely contested decision this week:

The vote today ended a nearly year-long process during which Google competed furiously with other software vendors, including rival Microsoft Corp., to secure the city's valuable stamp of approval. Parties on all sides believe that if smaller cities see Los Angeles successfully transition to Google's cloud system, they may be more likely to follow suit.

It is that type of cascade effect that Microsoft lobbied hard to prevent, sending executives and paid advocates to Los Angeles to make the case against Google.

Finally, Google redraws a different market in the video below. My question now is: what's the difference between an empire (ie monopoly) constructed on the foundations of negative freedoms and one constructed on the foundations of positive freedoms? No difference really - except that the world's leading economic power approves of one and not the other ...

These stories thanks to Thierry Lhôte's Twitter feed and John Naughton's Memex.

Mediated communication? Oh, just get used to the idea!

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:25:00 +0000

Since it is inevitable that, in a global culture, our conversation will be mediated in some way or other, our focus should not be on whether this should happen but how. In any case, mediation always existed - you spoke to someone and prejudice - or simple observation - immediately intervened: was this person richer or poorer, more highly educated or less highly educated, better dressed or worse, taller or shorter? Mediation, insofar as it provides a context which affects how we communicate with others, has always existed and will never disappear.

We do really have to get used to it.

In a global village, however, it is easier to assign blame - or, at the very least, apportion responsibility - for what often seem to be covert acts of mediation. A very simple example: the very fact that MSN and other chat clients have popularised an ever-broadening range of ready-made emoticons mean that our younger generations haven't had to learn the short-hand - the code - that originally defined them. From the codified to the picturesque and literal in one corporate bound.

What was an open secret, deliciously shared, became, quite shortly, a prosaic question of click and return.

Our ability to remember and impose and implement an action via a suitably exercised brain is, in a way, becoming impaired. Other things come into play: so perhaps this impairment is actually a positive. Ridden of the need to remember these sometimes irritating codes (command line operating systems are neat but define a power relationship between those who have the time to remember and occasional users - or relative IT illiterates - who never will), we can dedicate more of our brainspace to thinking and communicating creatively about the future. For that, I am sure, is what we were built to do.

Part of the inspiration behind this website is Google Wave. I've already described this product here and in other places. It clearly has a great deal of potential to facilitate conversation, but - by the same measure - will also inevitably mediate that conversation. Should we be worried? Maybe we should - I still do not know enough about Google's motivation, objectives, business model or future intentions to know whether I should be. For the moment, it seems to me that Web 2.0 and whatever comes afterwards will drive freemium economics forwards and ensure that the current relationship between large facilitating corporations such as Google and the rest of us will continue to be a norm rather than an exception.

As with all large corporations, as long as we are prepared to go along with a number of underlying assumptions (generally relating to the structures of capital and workforce), we can reasonably happily benefit from their offspring. The problem is when we want to blog, tweet, wave or email using our own means of production - particularly if we have an ideological need. What has become astonishingly cheap suddenly reverts to prohibitively expensive; what is 21st century utility becomes 20th century luxury.

Do you remember how we were prepared to be wage slaves in the 1960s because corporate concentrations of wealth paid for transatlantic telephone calls, office infrastructures and well-detailed finely-tuned career paths?

Telephone calls which I can now make from the comfort of my own home either via Internet and video-conferencing technologies like Skype or via ordinary telephone providers with monthly bolt-ons.

Whilst these days working for a corporation means designing your own career path, completing your own sick notes online and paying for your own Christmas parties. Why work for a corporation any more? Well, indeed - it's a good question. Where's the added value these days when a company job no longer means a job for life - or a pension worth its salt?

Those days, weeks, months and years spent counting the seconds to retirement ... Oh, no, not any more.

On the other hand being a consumer of the products and services these massive organisations serve up and produce is a different matter. Producing your own stuff on the back of their efforts is a far more attractive affair. Suddenly, what these corporations produce has become sexy, often free and completely liberating.

A simple example closer to home. We have just contracted Skype's worldwide unlimited landline calling service as we prepare for my son's expedition to the Far East. For around £8 a month, we can make unlimited calls across the world, to both landlines and mobile numbers. Now there is a truth here we must recognise: only with the modern 21st century corporate landscape at our side would our small family - from the point of view of our more than modest means - even be able to contemplate funding his plane flight, insurance and communication needs. My socialist colleagues at other socialist blogsites might find my lack of vigorous resistance to such structures criticable; indeed, they would say that in a properly socialist world my small family would have the leverage it needed to send its offspring to wherever they pleased - but in the meantime, Gmail is better than any other email service I might choose to fund for myself, whilst Google Apps supplies a whole host of services for up to 50 members at little more than $12 a year, domain registration and blog included, YouTube is playing a long-term game as the number of daily hits tops the billion, airlines transport us for a fraction of the cost of even twenty years ago, trains whisk us to Paris in a matter of hours, companies like Sony, Apple and JVC make gadgets that allow us to play games, communicate and film videos, and the greatest and most creative minds in the world spend long hours into the night, huddled together in constant concentration, as they make films, TV, music and books - just for all those small families like mine.

Also, of course, for the money.

But it's up to them to sort out how to monetise it.

That ever-present dilemma in a world where - suddenly - so much is free, or practically so.

And half the planet now walks around with a palm-held computer in its multitudinous pockets which we call a mobile phone, with thousands of times more computing power than was the norm those twenty years ago for a startling fraction of the price.

Yes, socialism - on its own, fully formed and implemented - could do all these things; could have done all these things. But my gut instinct tells me that like any belief system, it is discrete and does not cover all eventualities; nor, indeed, do all of its proponents care to understand that essence of a human being is their attachment to an idea of diversity.

Those human beings who reject diversity are also rejecting their essential humanity.

Socialism is a belief system because it still requires a leap of faith. Capitalism is a tool because it is currently used to do things - bad things to a lot of people as well as some good things out of (pure and naked) self-interest.

I believe in the need for every empowered individual to own their means of production. But it's not socialism that has taught me this importance - it's capitalism.

In reality, I suppose socialism has taught me that as well, as I watched how mind-numbing its implementation in the ex-Yugoslavia managed to be. To own the means of production in a world where work rules is a fundamental and key factor in determining how liberated one might be. It all depends, of course, on whether you believe in a world of work; whether, in fact, you believe that a world of wage slaves is an ennobling thing to contemplate.

Personally, I don't.

The world that this video describes, in its collaborative approach to human intercourse, seems much more attractive.

Further details on how this better world of thought might be implemented can be found at this marvellous blogpost.

What am I really trying to get at in my own meandering way? That, in 21st century virtualities, where reputations rise and fall through the connected decisions of millions upon millions of souls, we can become empowered individuals through the freemium economics of the grand ogres of capitalism; it doesn't only have to be via Marx and Engels.

We can break free through using the very tools that capitalism creates to ensnare us, because - even as what we do is mediated fiercely - what we are will, long-term, remain a constant.

Each generation is born anew.

Each generation is destined to start again.

Afresh is the tonic for every human soul.

And that is - finally - what'll really protect us from ensnarement.

You can get me whilst I'm alive but, as yet, you can't change me before I'm out of the womb. Let's keep it that way. Not this way, but that.

Prefab politics, Poblish.org and PolicyWiki retreads galore ...

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:48:00 +0000

If I had anyone to wave with, I'd wave this idea. Prefab politics. This was an email I sent to a certain Beth Noveck in 2006. It was a bright idea which like all bright ideas before it had already been thought up by someone else. That someone else was Noveck and her colleagues. Their website was called PolicyWiki.com - or something like that - because, as is my wont, when I have a bright idea, my first instinct is to register a website; I went to do so and to my chagrin found it was taken! The site is, however, no longer operational, as far as I can see, but the germ of an idea remains.

I don't generally publish private emails, but I think the content of this one is worth republishing here. It's my half of the conversation, not hers, so I don't think I'm breaking any rules:

Hi Beth:

I had a bright idea yesterday, as I was getting totally frustrated with how the British political party I'm a member of simply doesn't allow for participation in policy-making (an opinion poll published at the weekend indicated 74% of its members believe they cannot influence policy in the party). So I thought it'd be a great idea to set up a PolicyWiki site. But of course someone (yourselves!) has already thought of it.

The idea came to me borne of frustration, but also because the British government has recently considered importing Megan's Law (the right parents have in the US to know where paedophiles are living) to Britain. It seemed to me that if a grand and searchable repository of all the policies that had ever been made could be set up (policies rather than laws - laws are too administration-specific, they're the technological implementation of the science and what interests me here more is the science rather than the technology), then we could all benefit from Wiki-style approaches to policy-making, which would help us focus on creating best policy collaboratively for the benefit of all, rather than using certain policies as litmus tests of political trueness.

Anyhow, I see you have a project up and running and I'd be interested in joining any mailing list you might have.

Many thanks in advance.

Regards,

Miljenko Williams

As you may gather, it didn't work out at the time - but that's no reason to say it couldn't be made to work now. With the technologies that Andrew Regan is developing over at Poblish.org, prefab politics using a PolicyWiki approach could be made to work on behalf of us all.

If it was good enough to solve a housing crisis, why not use the same prefabrication approach to solve a political crisis?

If we can simplify IT to the point that everyone who is half knowledgeable in these matters can create a decently devolved PowerPoint or word-processed document, why not use similar templating and wizarding technologies to help develop and - what's more important - efficiently reproduce political ideas from across the globe?

My frustration is unbound. The idea is so good, I would consider it self-evident. A biosphere for politics. With certain caveats of course. I'm not looking to preserve all the political DNA we have at our disposal. The events and discourses here in Britain during the past ten days should provide sufficient evidence of why that would be unwise.

But a massive PolicyWiki, using plugged-in social media tools to ensure voter-relevance, and aimed at enabling Gov 2.0 to be a little more than simply a question of designing platforms to ensure delivery, would, I think, be something truly special. Andrew: are you listening? Beth: are you still interested?

Microsoft so happy with Windows 7 they launch their own version of Linux

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:58:00 +0000

As Ubuntu readies its latest version, Microsoft - apparently pleased with the sales of Windows 7 - decides it has to have all the bases covered and launches its very own version of Linux. That, anyhow, is what Dell was advertising recently on its website.

Surely, some mistake, as the Register points out.

It's not a bad idea though.

OpenOffice.org 4 Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:52:00 +0000

Here's a beautiful, supportive and community-orientated idea if there ever was one. OpenOffice.org 4 Kids. The website introduces the project in the following way:

OpenOffice.org Education Project's goals are to establish a bridge between OpenOffice.org and the world of education as well as recruit and train new developers.

It is supportingby the France association EducOOo.

As part of its activities in close relationship with teachers, we identified a need: a suite dedicated to education and particularly in the first degree.

Thus was born the project OOo4kids (pronounced "OpenOffice for kids").
OOo4Kids is a lighter version of OpenOffice. Org:
Dedicated to 7-12 years
With specific adaptations to the world of education
Who works everywhere (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows)
International / Multilingual

More here as well as links to download sites for all three operating systems mentioned above.

Why Whitehouse.gov has gone open source

noreply@blogger.com (Mil) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:16:00 +0000

More reason for the British government to take note and understand open source more constructively. This article, via 0pensource's Twitter feed, describing as it does how those running the American government's own website have decided to use open source tools instead of proprietary systems, tells an intriguing tale:

The great Drupal switch came about after the Obama new media team, with a few months of executive branch service (and tweaking of WhiteHouse.gov) under their belts, decided they needed a more malleable development environment for the White House web presence. They wanted to be able to more quickly, easily, and gracefully build out their vision of interactive government. General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), the Virginia-based government contractor who had executed the Bush-era White House CMS contract, was tasked by the Obama Administration with finding a more flexible alternative. The ideal new platform would be one where dynamic features like question-and-answer forums, live video streaming, and collaborative tools could work more fluidly together with the site's infrastructure. The solution, says the White House, turned out to be Drupal. That's something of a victory for the Drupal (not to mention open-source) community.

More from this report here. More from Drupal itself here.