View a sampling of V.I. work online.

At the beginning of a meeting there might be a long horizontal paper unrolled across the wall. Eileen would, from start of meeting, begin sketchhng out words, clouds, little people, relationships, all the way thru the end of the meeting. These murals served as conceptual records of the meetings — embedding not only ideas, but interrelationships. Particularly relevant to NextNow was her Engelbart mural, viewable on VisualInsight.net

The post Bill Daul’s NextNow (#3) appeared first on Sky's Blog.

I’ve already remarked on some predictions I made in 1973, including working from home, email, co-working spaces and online community access to information and learning. There were a lot of people working on these concepts in the 1970s. Many people had these and similar ideas, and much of the work presaged today’s online educational and social media. My personal focus was on communication in education, and my work involved using a supercomputer (and later a minicomputer) as a hub for education and distance-independent group communication.

Notable among those I interacted with

Community computing—People’s Computing Company (Bob Albrecht) in Menlo Park. Resource One (Lee Felsenstein) on Howard in San Francisco. Whole Earth Store (Rich Green) in Evanston (and Berkeley).

Computer conferencing—Murray Turoff (New Jersey Institute of Technology and formerly the Office of Emergency Preparedness). NSF project managers.

Networks—Doug Engelbart and team (Stanford Research Institute, SRI). I was at Doug’s lab he day they connected to the “Arpanet.”

(There’s a whole additional thread of people who worked in computer-based-education, which I’ll write up later.)

Resource One

The post Community Computing in the 1970s appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Online_Computer_Conference_in_1973 (PDF) contains the transcript of this 1973 online conference. (The PDF has been saved in the ERIC system for 43 years. Thank goodness for government-sponsored ed research archives.)  If you notice the timestamps on the messages, some interchanges were in real time and many were asynchronous. The time-independence of the conference did actually confuse some of the participants because it was such a new concept. (And I had not implemented many of the commonsense conference components you’d find in a modern system.)

At the time I had a Texas Instruments thermal “TTY” style terminal I used at home on a separate phone line installed for the dial-up modem. The terminal belonged to my project and was well beyond anything an individual would have at home. IT was portable in the sense that it had a cover and handle like a big suitcase — and weighed maybe 25 lbs. I also had another dozen CRT style terminals in my lab at the university. And one terminal in my office. A true luxury in those days.

The online conference transcript displays messages in chronological order. Several participating locations had multiple human participants. Particularly Resource One (a community computing center in San Francisco) and the University of Michigan. Participants had to dial in to the main computer and could type while online, so this was an expensive process. To cut the connect time, a couple of locations batched their comments locally, then uploaded them by connecting their computer to ours. You might call this a precursor of email. My recollection is that Arpanet was young in those days, being one of the first networks to include email as a basic capability. PLATO-IV had its equivalent of email in its notes program, which allowed people to create threaded discussions.

Participants in the local conference were:

Long distance online participants included:

Organizations represented:

The post Early Computer Conferencing – 1973 at Northwestern University appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Tom’s journey from writer at Financial Times to blogger, to publisher is an interesting one. There are some parallels I’d like to call out.

[Tom’s photo here is by JD Lasica taken during Traveling Geeks 2009] [short interview]

Tom started writing for The Financial Times, then quit to become a blogger and thus one of the disruptors of journalism as it had existed until then. I was reflecting the other day and thinking that in 1970 we could and should have predicted that computers would eventually disrupt our lives. And also caught myself thinking well “how would we know the degree to which they’d be disruptive?” In those days I was thinking I’d get a job in research at IBM, or Kodak, or SRI, or be a university professor (which I was) and just keep doing that, and computers would play an increasingly important role in my life and the world. But, you know, I was pushing the disruptive edge too, without really thinking about it that much. Disruption wasn’t a word we used very often. More on disruption next time.

The post Self-promotion and disruption appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Because of my job, and my grad school research, I had privileged access to this computer, and pretty much “run of the farm” after midnight many nights and on weekends, along with the crew who programmed “Chess 1.0” and other delicious software at Northwestern University. Our sponsor, Ben Mittman, was Director of the computer center. Once we had  dial-up (“modem” look it up!) computer terminal access, my nights were spent more via remote access, but this computer still has a special meaning for me.

The post My First Computer appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Compared to today, 1963 really was the early days. It was pre-Internet. It was pre-Ted Nelson. It was pre-Doug Engelbart. And so forth. And getting a PhD in computer science back then was really an adventure in the unknown. Most of what we regard as Computer Science was unmapped in those days.

So some unaskedfor advice to my readers. When you find yourself saying ”I think I should do X but I really like Y” please pay attention to what your intuition is telling you. Don’t waste your time doing what someone else thinks you should be doing. Above all, be realistic, but give great weight to what your intuition is telling you, because it’s very likely right about it.

That old Steve Jobs advice again (see also)

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

///

P.S.: In 2015 I decided to augment my computer science career by studying (music) composition for a year at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. [Read more]

The post Finding your way appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Steve Jobs knew about these cycles, and said during his famous Stanford University commencement address of 2005 [7:22 into the video, which you can find on NPR]

“The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.”

These cycles have nothing to do with whether you get rich or become a bum. They have to do with how you decide to use your precious years. He put the exclamation point on it [12:40 into the same video] by adding

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

The post The Beauty of Starting Over Again appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Don’t participate in something (anything) unless you can make a real contribution.

All through my school years I was focused on soaking up knowledge and, of course, on using that knowledge to get things done. But I also spent a lot of time going to events where I was listening rather than really interacting and learning. Soon after that, as a young faculty member at Northwestern University, I started a research project and began helping other professors and graduate students learn how to use computers in teaching. Converting “learning” into “action” is what got me that faculty position, and what has worked for me ever since.

In the last five years I finally got my act together and turned this into a principle or commandment, if you wish, and now have an iron-clad rule that I will not go to a conference, or a meeting, or commit a big piece of my time to something unless I see an opportunity to really make a contribution to whatever is going on. It doesn’t mean that if it’s a conference, for example, I have to be on the stage or on a panel — I can still go primarily to listen and learn, but unless there is a real opportunity for me to interact with folks, ask questions or point out important stuff, I just won’t do it.[1. What does the photo have to do with this? Well, every summer I take a small group of 6+ people into the Yosemite wilderness to have fun and learn more about their own abilities. I contribute by organizing these trips. And several of my friends who have gone along on these trips are now doing the same thing themselves, for their friends.]

As a result of implementing this commandment, I have cut back on my commitments to organizations where I’m not of direct use, and I’ve cut my time spent meeting with people who waste my/our time, and I’ve created more time in my schedule to learn and be productive. And yet I still can put some of my time “at risk” by investigating things that may or may not pay off — I just learn to shut down my time investment earlier if they’re not producing!

The post Sky’s First Commandment- Contribute appeared first on Sky's Blog.

[vimeo 6827318]

* Understand risk. Buy low, sell high. Manage your risk.

* Spend your time (as in investor) on the companies that are doing well, don’t just “nickel and dime” the ones that are failing.

* The cost of failure is decreasing. If you start from open source, and have a designer, an engineer, a products guy, users, and you get growing 30% a month or so, you don’t even need to write a business plan. [just after 9:00 minutes into the video – THIS IS THE KEY point I want to make]. If you can get your project to the point where it is running, growing, perhaps bringing in some money, you bring in the VC investors at that point – no earlier!

* Open standards give you a big advantage. Big companies spend $ millions to even think about a new project, but you can get your project off the ground for far less by starting with open source, good ideas and good thinking.

* Development methodology needs to be flexible, iterative, and respond to what you can learn from your customers. ”If you’ve launched your product and you’re not embarrassed by it, you‘ve launched too late.”

* Distribution. Every failed startup has had a business model, team, and so forth, but no users. Almost every team that has users eventually comes up with a business model [if they’re smart and paying attention]. You must be viral – you must infect your customers.

The post Joi Ito on Innovation and Startups appeared first on Sky's Blog.

I have thought recently about writing an online book (downloadable) or even a printable book about the “plumbing” that allows bloggers to integrate lots of sources into their blogs—because most bloggers are not really technologists and it’s hard to make some of these software tools work correctly. My thought was to connect the dots and come up with a Give your blog a shot of steroids “book” that would be really useful to non-tech-savvy bloggers. When am I going to do that?

Howard’s major message right now is about 21st Century Literacies which you can view online—he and I were in London during July 2009, where he delivered that particular talk.

The post Making your own information radars appeared first on Sky's Blog.

See his photos directly on Flickr for even more.

Here is the second of his photo sets that I promised I’d feature:

The post KY6R Art Gallery (2) appeared first on Sky's Blog.

I particularly like Rich’s approach of using found objects, which trigger nostalgia, and positioning and lighting them creatively. Some might describe his work as spooky or weird as well as completely intriguing.

I’m going to feature two sets of KY6R photos, one set today and one set tomorrow – here is the first:

The post KY6R Art Gallery (1) appeared first on Sky's Blog.

In 1971 he witnessed two tankers colliding, creating an oil spill in San Francisco Bay, and decided to give up riding in motorized vehicles. He began walking everywhere he went. “I thought that if I started walking, everyone would follow.” So on his 27th birthday, he decided he would stop speaking for just one day “to give it a rest.” “I have to tell you it was a very moving experience…for the very first time I began listening.” He realized that (as a regular speaking human) he listened to only the first few words or sentences when someone was talking, and then “my mind would race ahead” thinking about what “I was going to say in response.” He decided to do this for another day, and another day, and this stretched to a year, and then lasted 17 years. [Continue reading and you can also view the TED talk given by John Francis in 2008…]

During that time, John walked and played the banjo, and wrote in his journal. “I walked up to Ashton, Oregon, where they were offering an environmental studies degree” and enrolled. After two years he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. Then walked east through Washington, Idaho, and Montana… and he enrolled in the University of Montana (after 2 years of walking)… he registered for one credit, got a key to an office, went to classes, couldn’t afford tuition, but the professors “saved the grades” for later on when he could afford to register and pay.

In the process, he taught courses as well, and “If you weren’t learning, then you weren’t teaching.”

At the University of Wisconsin he wrote about oil spills. Two years later the Exxon Valdez “happened.” And he was the only expert writing about oil spills. John earned a PhD.

“On Earth Day 1990, I began to speak” (again).

“Not speaking […] taught me about listening.”

The post John Francis- Walking the Earth, Silently appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Hmm… Tibet, mountains, snow… very cool, and this looked like fun. These are fat (also phat^[1]) skis in two senses — first, they are wide and work well in deep snow and conditions where there’s piles of snow all over the runs — and second, phat in the sense that they’d let you ski with great exhiliration and joy all over the slopes in varying conditions.

Pat Keane^[2], CEO of PMGear (he is also known as Splat), who manufactures the ski, said (in a comment he made on backcountry.com): “I feel sustainability is a symptom of bigger issues and that the non-biodegradability of skis is as a big a problem, if not bigger.” … “Certainly, all the micrososmic contributions add up but, personally, for me, an old hippie, I’d rather make a ski that might actually raise consciousness so the token efforts to appear to be mitigating the world’s problems and appeasing those who would settle for such small contributions become more widely held views. The Lhasa Pow is such a ski. We wanted to raise awareness of Chinese oppression in Tibet and at the same time protest Chinese-made skis, the carbon footprints of which are far greater than US made skis.” … “Skis are exceptionally non-biodegradable. They are wood (and metal) surrounded by fiberglass, resin and plastic sidewalls, bases and topsheets. But in the whole circle of how skis and boards impact our world, there is much to be done, starting with perceptions and impressions.” … “I think it is important that consumers look at the big picture of perceptions and awareness. Such large scale big-picture trends could prove every bit as valuable, if not more, than making entire skis and boards out of recycled household garbage.”

What’s it say on his helmet in that photo? Die Living! W00h00, that’s the extreme skier’s mantra, isn’t it? Pat and I met the day of the public memorial for extreme skier Shane McConkey (at Squaw).

[2] PMGear video on YouTube – the ski I saw on the slope was the Lhasa Pow – BRO 186

Disclosure: I have not skied these skis, and have no connection to PMGear in any way – this was just an interesting encounter.

The post The Buddha gets ready for ski season appeared first on Sky's Blog.

This music video is a trippy artistic rephrasing of how two thinkers talked about the meaning and inspiration of all of this.

Please also continue reading for footnotes and a second video where Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan discuss the universe…

Also for more fun, listen to this discussion: Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Arthur C. Clarke (momentarily) — play it below God, the Universe and Everything Else

Phil Plaitt’s original Bad Astronomy blog.

Hubble Telescope web site at NASA.gov.

The post We await a galaxy-rise – a morning filled with 400 billion suns appeared first on Sky's Blog.