Saturday, December 20, 2003

Barlow - No Degrees of Separation BarlowSpam: No Degrees of Separation. An ecosystem is an information sorting engine. Whether photons entering a rain forest or heat gradients entering the deep ocean, biological systems pass these differences back and forth among themselves, creating increasingly complex matrices of structure. Hence, Life. And yet, the most complex information sorting system yet devised by humans, the Internet, remains relatively simple and flat, rather as life was before the Cambrian explosion. Every IP address is like a single celled animal, with larger critters yet to emerge. I've been expecting to see more new forms of order in Cyberspace than I have so far and am always watchful for the substrates of connection that might support it as it emerges. Lately, I've been watching sites that seek to narrow and map the famous 6 degrees of separation, like Friendster, Tribes.Net, and LinkedIn.Com. I'm not entirely sure these things are going anywhere truly interesting, but they are certainly diverting to observe from a sociological standpoint. The former two are like gigantic singles bars for Burning Man refugees, while the latter seems to function largely as a means to reduce professional surface tension between aspiring business types. It occurs to me, however, that since I am eager to increase the personal connectivity among you BarlowFriendz and give you better opportunities to know one another without passing through me, these sites might be useful to us. (There is already a so-far fairly quiescent BarlowFriendz "tribe" on Tribes.Net.) At least, it feels worthy of an experiment.... [BarlowFriendz] 10:41:20 PM

John Perry Barlow's Weblog Barlow in Blogospace.... Here I am, in the lobby of the highly attitudinal W Hotel in San Francisco, creating my very first blog entry. Joichi Ito, a blog sensei if ever there was one, is introducing me to the Blogosphere. I'm wary. Am I too old a dog to blog? Am I actually too sick of things virtual to plunge myself deeper into electronic immateriality? We'll see. But, I am motivated. For years, I've been sending out BarlowSpams and then privately enjoying the responses, both from friendz and friendz of friendz. Now I will have a place to pass to these on to our little community and, with luck, grow this into something besides my own little personality cult.... [BarlowFriendz] 7:40:55 PM

photo: a vague and distant chimney Chimney. I never noticed what a vaguely sinister shot this distant chimney can provide just after the sun goes down. [Antipixel - Excerpts] 4:15:17 PM

John Adams. "There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." [Quotes of the Day] 8:20:29 AM