the web is information, and the web is access. the web is also loads of fun. all of these can drive human evolution.
other than its obvious charms, such as having access to dancing hampsters, dubai luxuries, and the latest (third party) announcements of what can only be described as our continual loss of liberties, the web, as access to information and fun, can and will be integral to our success as a people, in our local community and as a global civilization.
as they say about the roads in mexico, utilícelo o piérdalo.
for my one day before/about OneWebDay 2008, i would like to share some of the inspirational things i see happening on the web. to me, these are tender sprouts of innovation, and the sort of things we need to protect with an open web.
localharvest.org :: people can find local food, once again. ideally, a site such as this could allow people to request items, and farmers would have access to varieties and amounts requested, and offer to fill the order in the coming season. (an interactive CSA).
public input in government :: the UK is “hoping to find new uses for public information in the areas of criminal justice, health and education.”
the public works :: cityzens of merced post street issues on a platial map.
obama on technology and innovation :: the site, scribd, is a beautiful thing in itself, and obama’s use of technology continues to astound me, as well as his insight into future uses of technology to improve government.
corpwatch :: and who watches the corpwatch? someone else. then someone else. then someone else. maybe one day we won’t need to watch, as the corporative/governation/populice distinction will be moot. meaning integration through access.
tolweb.org :: tree of life web project. as we glimpse the interconnectivity of our natural systems, we can respectfully emulate its grace and efficacy in our own design. our designs can become/include their own growth patterns. evolvative, generative scalability.
of course, that last tree of life has only boring names.
which brings me to the meat. 3D imaging….
digitised.info :: an evolutionary bioinformatician’s 3D hyperbolic viewer of the tree of life. whoo hoo!
what is the difference? brain warp. but don’t worry, brain warp is a good thing. who knows, it may mean we are evolving. (note to evolutionary bioinformatician: update tree of life)
here is some more brain warp:
MGTD :: this is one for fiddlers, and i don’t mean charlie daniels. it is an alpha version of the new MonkeyGTD tiddlyspot system, based on tiddlywiki. tiddlywiki is a brain warp on its own, especially in the arena of social implications, but spend a few days here in simon’s realm, and you’ll spend the next two weeks curled up with a nested file system and a blankie.
3DOSX :: my current favorite 3D ZUI interface. it’s in a swimming pool! of course, files are still files. but soon they will be something else. bags of holding, maybe?
3d visualization interests me for this reason: our current concepts and constructs as the human animal intelligent are, arguably, based on our ability for symbolic representation. in the past, we had paper. two-dimensions. from that medium we were able to visualize three. if we become familiar with a three-dimensional interface, will we be able to become familiar with the fourth?
in the spirit of 4D visualization, here is a video of a tesseract i compiled from a series of shorter clips that were posted online by a professor named Terry Boyce, who used to be in hong kong, in 2003.
ok. so.
to wrap this up, as today is almost tomorrow, at least here, now, and is definitely tomorrow in other places, a mention of my personal paladin, the tag cloud. one definition of a tag cloud is: a visual depiction of user-generated tags. people generating tags means other people can find what they are talking about and talk about the same thing. key to communication. communication drives development. (needed: web-wide tag readers)
here are some tag clouds:
chir.ag :: tag clouds of state of the union addresses
searchcloud.net :: search the web using tag clouds. (i searched ‘tag cloud’)
wordie.net :: tag cloud generator. fontographers become imagicians.
tagcloud.com :: an original tag cloud, if not the original tag cloud, sadly overwhelmed with traffic, and temporarily down. it seems 6 million page views per month will bring down a single server. who knew?
and, finally, i’ll send you off with a big hurray for the UK, who recently released satellite tracking information as these pretty pretty lights.
OneWebDay 2008
