Self-discosure

[Bernard D. Tremblay (ben)]

I joined this Ning quite pre-occupied by the comment I had added to one of Phil Jones' posts, "Live Together, Die Alone". Rather than quibble with the title (I think one of the many gifts of true community is that one can pass away in good company.) I responded to something else he had there written, i.e. "I went looking for peer-to-peer computing projects that looked likely to do some good." (NB: as I write this I see that my comment hasn't appeared yet.)

My visceral response to that surprised me, in a positive way. The passage of time hasn't been kind to me; though I'm deeply pleased by how my 5 kids are doing well, my life's project has progressed only on the drawing board. Since the whole point of it is to have IT serve the public interest, I'm feeling very much a failure. So my visceral response alerted me to the fact that the old fire hasn't been completely quenched.

Wiki ... as tectonic as spreadsheet, or relational database ... an alternative paradigm not just to presentation but to participation and interaction.

But I'm not satisfied.

Even with Wiki, the discourse aspect of cybersphere (forums, mail-lists, blogs) is still noisy and incoherent. And my "discourse-based approach" still progresses not at all (except on the drawing board).

So fine, I'm no salesman. But it isn't just that I've failed to enrapture the great mass of netizens; it's that my "Participatory Deliberation" has, in all its years, given rise to not a single note or message or inquiry, not even one sign of interest.

Having gone beyond graphics-based concept mapping (which was a big part of my project) I talk to folk from Jive and SocialText and others about "discourse-based document portal" and get not the slightest glimmer or interest. I float "Thinking together about what is crucial; speaking deeply about simple things" and am greeted by ... nothing. Nothing at all.

Moving laterally: the huge interest in Buddhism (a multi-million dollar business) has everything to do with ego-gratification. So I'm not astonished that online discussion is all "phatic" ... social posturing that serves to distract from the wicked problems of our day.

So ... I'm going to carry on ... today's ToDo is testing degradation of WordPress performance when the number of categories is unusually large (30 at least, perhaps 50 or more) ... but I can't say that my heart's in it. Thanks to Phil's post, though, at least I know it's still pumping warm blood.

p.s. the passage of time is much on my mind: it was 33 years ago, at the time of the UN's 7th Special Session (on "The New International Economic Order", now known commonly as "globalization") that I created a database index for a local "development education / social justice" resource library. (Non-digital ... stiff cards with holes punched along the edges, sorted using knitting needles. Not kidding!) It was at that time I saw how discussion and debate was more about social games and less about solving problems. It was 13 years ago almost to the day that I created the ultimate version of my "Green Futures Foundation" resource site. ("Ultimate" because two months later the university think-tank for which I'd been working was de-funded and that page was deleted, along with its ancillary pages. "Compiled List" is the sole survivor.) I'm for sure older. I'm for sure not enjoying the same rude health. So I'm certain that time has passed. But I don't see our citizens' best energies being harnassed.

[Bernard D. Tremblay (ben)]

Now, see, that's the interesting bit: I'm sitting on a complete design but have to chip in a little bit here and a little bit there, as though I'm not allowed to innovate ... like my decades of doing support have disqualified me in some way. Dangdest thing I've ever seen.

But yaa, something like. But tools like wikidbase *stretching for an analogy* ... better tools make for a better fountain, but a fountain is more than just good plumbing.

I'm talking about an alternative approach to ?what? discourse ... not JavaScript, not PHP, not some new MVC or framework ... that's hardware.

I was "blogging" before there was blog software, know what I mean? But nobody can say that about wiki. It's quantum. The same way a spreadsheet is quantum. You can write a software using any old language. (OMG, how many of us spent hours keyboarding code out of magazines to create spreadsheets for our C=64s?!) Likewise for Wiki ... they aren't language dependent. And they aren't framework dependent. They're different ways of approaching presentation/interaction.

What really busts my balls is that, come the day someone else creates the presentation layer I came up with in Dec 2002, my decades of work become worth precisely $0.00.
At which point I can take this albatross off from around my neck, put on a bit of hippie clothes, and become a yogin/busker again, pretending that I haven't the vaguest clue about CMC and cognitive ergonomics. *grin*

[phil jones]

hmmm ... would something like Wikidbase (mixture of open, wiki-like but structured database) be in the direction you're looking for?

http://projects.nickblundell.org.uk/wikidbase