Over the last few months, one of the most consistent search strings for my blog, showing up in the top 20 almost every month, is “how to build a raft.” (They end up with this post, from April.) I think the desire to build something that can float and take you places runs very deep in many people. And the bigger the better.

Why not a Wikipedia of rafts, a mob riverboat? Designate somewhere on the Mississippi, maybe Minneapolis. Fix a date and a place, and take all comers. They can bring any salvaged material that is enough to float themselves and another person (and that they don’t mind never seeing again), and necessary provisions. Then make your way down the old Miss, picking up people along the way. End it with a huge party when we hit the Gulf of Mexico.

Has this already been done? It would only require a skeleton crew, some scrap lumber, and a cheap motor to get rolling, I’d think, and could accommodate as many people as were willing to give it a whirl. Maybe next June? The USS Snowcrash?

When I was growing up, not infrequently I had nightmares about nuclear attack. I have always looked for ways to hedge against the worst case. A large-scale nuclear war, though not likely, was clearly a very real possibility, and about as worst-case as you could get (at least until I read this in the 7th grade). I was convinced that neither the USSR or US would jump into MAD, but that it wouldn’t be hard for a rogue state in the Middle East (at the time, all terrorists were going to be Middle Eastern), probably Libya (or someone else), to buy or develop their own bomb.

To be honest, I am shocked every year that goes by without a nuclear device being used. I’m sure the wait won’t be much longer.

There was a lot of material available on how to survive a nuclear war and what to do after an attack. Most of this material dated to the 50s and 60s, but I figured that this was better than the utter defeatism indicated by the lack of preparation that was prevalent in the 70s and 80s.

September has been declared “preparation” month by Homeland Security. And what better way to make sure that the family unit is safe than by hitting the surest consumer of propaganda: the kids. So, be sure to have your children fill out and send the form to the DHS indicating that your family is in compliance, and that you have plenty of plastic sheeting and duct tape on hand. Don’t worry if you forget: you’re school will probably help out. Actually, this is a great excuse for buying some of the new clear duct tape—as if you really needed an excuse.

But a lot of the things I had on my list didn’t make theirs. Where are the iodine pills? The atropine, valium, 2-PAM, pyridostigmine bromide, and antibiotics? Field surgery kit? Knife? Items for trade (ammunition, gasoline, gold, Clash vinyls)? Survival manual? Dog? Certification of party membership?

If they were serious about this, they would put an emergency kit in every home. Figure, in bulk, there is no way such a kit would cost more than $40. Figure there are 100 million households in the US, and we have a total bill of $400 million. A conservative estimate of the direct costs of the war in Iraq puts it at about $3.9 billion/month. So, for about 3 days worth of the war, we could put an emergency preparedness kit in every home—and that money would be helping the US economy. But then, we wouldn’t want to spread terror among the populace. Best to keep it low key, and make sure no child is left behind in our fight against Eurasia terror.

In a last minute dash to switch over the blogs for school to WordPress, I discover that PHP isn’t talking to myMySQL. It’s missing a single file (mysql.so) that should allow this wondrous bridge to happen. All the other bits are fine—perl talks to MySQL talks to Apache, etc. And, though I didn’t do the install, presumably (this is Redhat 8 ) it should have worked “out-of-the-box,” but something’s gone slightly awry.

Only, the needed file isn’t anywhere on the system, and the only way to get at it seems to be to rebuild PHP. Only, the person who installed it left out all the development libraries (including some useful stuff, like a compiler). No problem, want those anyway. Now the dependencies start stacking up. Effectively, I can’t build PHP without reinstalling Apache & MySQL. Many, many hours later, and I have screwed up the server beyond any hope of ever being un-screwed.

And that’s when it hits me. No, not that servers should simply work without having to think about it much. (They should, BTW.) But that if I am willing to pay someone to change my oil, I am willing to buy time on a server somewhere. Already, the time sunk into getting this to work has been, frankly, a terrible waste. It would have taken far less time to do a fresh install. But in the end, I guess what I have learned far better than the current state of linux, is that I have no need or desire to administer this particular machine. Sure, I’ll still poke around with some of the hobby-boxen at home, but when it needs to be something that is consistently maintained, and when I want to consistently be able to do something a bit more fun on a Saturday, I need to bite the bullet and leave it to the pros, even if—like paying someone to change the oil—it grates just the tiniest bit.

A UBC group is planning on test-flying the first human powered helicopter, thanks in no small part, I am sure, to the gift of carbon fibre from Boeing. (via /.)

I decided to go the route of creative ambiguity in my BlogClass syllabus:

The rise of mass communication in the last century led to the emergence of the professional communicator, and more broadly, the acceleration of professions that are engaged chiefly in symbolic manipulation. The technologies that led to this revolution, including the penny press and electronic broadcasting, are quickly giving way to both technologies and social structures that favor customization and networked connections. As a result, the communication professional is increasingly a networked professional.

A set of tools that make use of the internet to facilitate or augment social networks is becoming increasingly important. Weblogs, despite popular depictions, represent the first crude tool of this new revolution. Just as people once dismissed ham radio operators and homebrew computer builders as eccentrics, blogs are often seen as a fad rather than a trend. In this course we will investigate the possibility that they are much more than this: that blogs and related social technologies are a window into the next revolution and the tools for the vanguard of the emerging network society.

And yes, if you read over the syllabus you will see that at its root, the students are getting credit for blogging. I will be requesting that they read and blog on a constrained set of topics, but we won’t (for the most part) be meeting in person. The blogs are not an appendage of the class: they are the class. Fingers crossed, this will be an interesting teaching experience.

If you want to join in, and read the things we are reading, and comment on them, I welcome you with open arms. Heck, if you want grad or undergrad credit for such blogging, that too can be arranged. But be prepared to pay through the nose—especially if you are outside of NY. If you are already a student at a SUNY school… well, I’m not sure how that all works.

Happy also for any comments on the syllabus. Clearly still needs some editing, at the very least.

I was saddened to hear today that Henri Cartier-Bresson has passed away. Even if you are not a fan of photographers, you know who he is, even if you don’t know you know. Take a look at the portraits in this gallery and you will find some of your own memories probably arrived through his lens. I was pleased to learn that his favorite photograph is also mine, a photograph that is ultimately in the moment, and aching in its sense of anticipation.

I’ve foregone the traditional blogroll, so I’m instead moving it into the entries, with a new blogroll category that will introduce other people’s blogs (OPB). This time around, I’ll introduce you to some of the blogs from people who have interesting to say about technology in human environments, including cities. These might fit as a group only in my own mind, but it is my blog, so you’ll have to deal with that.

Aaron Delwiche: Aaron, at Trinity in San Antonio, is one of the brightest guys I know, and consistently ends up doing very cool research that makes me say “I wish I had thought of that.” To get the flavor of his blog, you might check out an entry on his summer research interviewing gamers in Chiang Mai or a post on writing biographical notes on Veblen, Goodman, McLuhan, and Leary.

Purse Lip Square Jaw – Anne Galloway, a grad student at Carleton, keeps a research blog relating to her interests in the intersection of the city, the body, and technology. In part because she works in disciplines that are interesting to me but not my own, I often find her linking to ideas, projects, and events of which I would otherwise remain unaware. Consider, for example, her posts on Ubicomp and Situationism or Mobilities and Computing: A Few Research Questions.

Smart Mobs – This blog, a spin-off from Howard Rheingold’s book by the same title, is widely read, and with good reason. They (it is a group blog) consistently chronicle news and information related to the dynamics of creativity within groups, especially when this has a RL dimension. Recently, for example, they had blurbs and links on the the use of NYC streetlights to provide a better cellular and WiFi network and demands for more use of open materials for students. I had run into these items via other sources, but if I had to limit myself to reading five blogs, this would be one of them.

There’s an interview with Hakim Bey over at The Brooklyn Rail, in which he indulges in a Luddite rail against the internet.

Bleyer: But isn’t there something to be said for the subversive use of technologies?

Wilson: We believed that in the ‘80s. The idea was that alternative media would allow us the space in which to organize other things. Even in the ‘80s I said I’m waiting for my turkey and my turnips. I want some material benefits from the Internet. I want to see somebody set up a barter network where I could trade poetry for turnips. Or not even poetry—lawn cutting, whatever. I want to see the Internet used to spread the Ithaca dollar system around America so that every community could start using alternative labor dollars. It is not happening. And so I wonder, why isn’t it happening? And finally the Luddite philosophy becomes clear. We create the machines and therefore we think we control them, but then the machines create us, so we can create new machines, which then can create us. It’s a feedback situation between humanity and technology. There is some truth to the idea of technological determination, especially when you’re unconscious, drifting around like a sleepwalker. Especially when you’ve given up believing in anti-capitalism because they’ve convinced you that the free market is a natural law, and we just have to accept that and hope for a free market with a friendly smiling face. Smiley-faced fascism. I see so many people working for that as if it were a real cause. “If we have to have capitalism, let’s make it green capitalism.” There’s no such thing. It’s a hallucination of the worst sort, because it isn’t even a pleasurable one. It’s a nightmare.

As for the Ithica HOURs project, if Bey spent some time online he’d realize how much of that is integrated with the internet. At the MEA Conference, Douglas Rushkoff expressed his enthusiasm for such attempts to “play” the economic system. To me, though, scrip systems are too easily reduced to dollars. Bey is right in that interoperability are at the root of both the internet and global capitalism.

I wonder what Bey would think of the headline on the Ithaca Hours site (if he ever used a computer) that reads “HOURs Go Global!” Or the fact that the introduction notes that Ithaca has issued “over $105,000 of our own currency.” That’s right, in US dollars. While it’s an interesting idea, barter systems do ultimately reduce to capitalism.

Quixotic isn’t even the word: you need to be stupid to assume that a violent overthrow of capitalism is going to happen at all. I am convinced that Marx didn’t think this is how things would go. What may happen—with enough material and symbolic work—is a gradual erosion of capitalism over time. And I think we see that happening in technological circles. I am optimistic that open source—and it’s outgrowth in open culture—represents the seed of an idea that is going to spread. The trick is to open up pockets of autonomy in time and space—yes, Temporary Autonomous Zones—and allow these to grow to the degree that someday, and I think that days is not so very far off, capitalism—or at least the very negative outcomes of capitalism—are minimized and marginalized.

In other words, just because new technologies share some of the aspects of global capitalization (namely, a drive toward interoperability and the tendency to alter consciousness) does not make it identical. In fact, it may provide the means for creating a viable alternative. Bey needs to buck up a bit.

This has stayed with me over the last week or two. I went to visit Jamie who is living with a friend in Harlem for the summer. This part of Harlem, north of the park around 125th, started to be gentrified in earnest over the last five years. It’s easy to see this in terms of events: Bill Clinton moved his offices nearby, recently one of the Bush daughters requested to teach at a local public school, the Times runs articles on hot new bars nearby. It’s also evident in the fabric of the neighborhoods, in the mix of the new construction and the buildings clearly about to be picked up as bargains and “turned.” When you get off the 125th subway stop, it is still a largely African-American crowd, but interspersed with a lot of apparently young professional white folks.

When I left our newly constructed apartment building one morning, an African-American man walking by said we needed a doorman for that building. Why didn’t we have a doorman? He could call cabs, the whole bit. We should get together and set him up as a private contractor. He was kidding, kind of.

Later in the week, we went for a slice before heading back to our place. Walking along Frederick Douglass Boulevard well past sunset, an African-American in his early 20s crossed in front of us and said “Don’t you know this is Harlem? I think this is Harlem. What are you white folk doing up here? This used to be Harlem,” or words to that effect. As he passed he said he was “only playin’,” and his tone made it clear that he was. But it wasn’t hard to imagine he was joking only serious.

This part of Harlem is changing amazingly rapidly as costs for housing in the city go through the roof. The average apartment in Manhattan went for over $900K last year. And so those who work in the city are on the hunt for the “next new place.” While everyone guesses at where the next mini-boom will be (Flower District? Red Hook?) there is no question that Harlem is already there. And those renting apartments aren’t shy about it. The thing is, the new developments and inhabitants tend to strip the place of its local culture. I don’t think it is all bad: many of the new developments, including where Jamie is living, are really very nice. But there is a strange clash of the new and the old, and of the new and the old residents, that is hard to work out. This doesn’t divide cleanly along race lines, but race clearly plays a very visible role. How could it not: just the word Harlem immediately brings forth images of a long and illustrious history—an African-American history. It’s not unusual to see a white face in Harlem these days, but when I did, I wondered if they lived there, and if so how long. Perhaps this was racist of me—in fact, I’m sure it was—but I also wonder what thoughts went through the mind of those who had lived in the area for decades, who were attached to the place and its memories. One the one hand, I’m sure some like the idea of a rejuvenated area, of new opportunities and changes. And at the same time, it seems as though these new changes don’t quite fit with the spirit of the place. But what do I know—I was just visiting.

When I saw that David Weinberger had put up a video blog entry critiquing an article on Cnet by Charles Cooper, I was worried we would hear the wounded (and boring) “blogging will eat journalism” refrain. Cooper claimed the the credentialed bloggers’ “coverage” of the convention was lackluster, and I agree. In particular, the few entries by Weinberger I read really didn’t do anything for me. So, what I was expecting was something along the lines of “we did the convention the way it should have been done.”

Imagine my surprise when I find that Weinberger has articulated my position better than I might have hoped to. Just before the convention, I was asked for comment on this momentous occasion: credentialing of bloggers as real journalists for a national event. I was reluctant to fall into punditry, because it seemed like a set-up. Here were people who were obviously not journalists going to play them at a convention. Cooper’s assessment was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Weinberger makes what should be an obvious point: bloggers are not journalists. I would like to think that the convention blogging brings an end to this debate, though I know it won’t. I think some of the more interesting blogging came from the people who were there as participants rather than as bloggers-with-credentials. Participatory journalism is an old term, but one that makes a lot of sense when we think about how weblogging relates to traditional reportage.

Weinberger correctly elucidates some of the reasons blogging isn’t journalism: no editor assigning stories or selecting them, no pretense to balance, and no appeal to a mass public. Blogging is, like journalism, “public writing,” but that doesn’t mean that the two are identical. I would add some others ways in which they differ. The idea of a “journalist” and journalism as a profession came about in part through educational credentialing (most journalists now have a college degree, and most in journalism), and professional organizations with a set of codes and ethics. And, of course, journalists make their living reporting the news. Bloggers, by and large, are not journalists.

The funny thing about this is that I completely understand why the journalism/blogging dichotomy is important to journalists—many of them feel as if their jobs are being devalued by technological advances, and rightly so. The 24-hour news cycle and tabloidization of news coverage are serious threats, and I can see why the incursion of blogging might seem to some like a plague of a million Drudges.

What I cannot understand is why so many bloggers are interested in being equated with journalism. I guess part of it is that “legitimate” journalists have a particular social primacy not shared by bloggers. Bloggers are seen as nerds, hobbyists, or fad-followers at worst, impresarios or dilettantes at best. Yet, most bloggers are also newsies, and actually care what journalists say about them.

This is where Weinberger’s response rings hollow. He says to Cooper: if you don’t like my blog, don’t read it. But in responding, he admits that it is not as easy to walk away from a commentator who commands an audience through the traditional media. It seems to me that bloggers, as much as they would like to cast themselves as the new rebels, are at the same time hoping for the parental pat on the head from enthroned journalists, rather than being satisfied with the respect and readership of their own small audiences.