Monday, December 27, 2004

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Regarding Extensions Extensions of Management Better late than never, I often say. Donald Officer has an "InSite Review" of my book, McLuhan for Managers that he calls, Extensions of Management . In writing McLuhan for Managers , coauthors Federman and de Kerckhove have mined McLuhan's body of work for the powerful, interesting and creative concepts we'd consider sustaining principles and the core of his method. They've been remarkably successful in defining and refining those aspects of McLuhan's genius that managers, facilitators or planners can most readily benefit from. Nicely put, if I do say so myself. One of the great implications of "the medium is the message," and the use of the McLuhan thinking tools, is that once we can perceive all of the effects of a given new medium - whatever it is we are about to inflict on our business or society as a whole - we have the opportunity to choose which of them to bring about, or cause. With McLuhan's notion of effects preceding causes in this way, we actually get to create the type of world we want, as opposed to leaving it to the whim and will of the medium itself. Once we, collectively as business managers, politicians, policy makers and educators, realize this power, both opportunity and responsibility are laid before us, waiting our initiative to pick them up and make our world as we want it. In business, we often speak of empowerment, but it, too, has become co-opted as the latest in business buzz-speak. Taking our opportunities and responsibilities based on clear perception is the real empowerment. It remains to be seen how many business leaders actually have the courage to see with clarity, and how many take refuge behind the fog of conventional rote-repetition of slogans. This, of course, is revolutionary stuff - that is, it challenges the conventional authority of business schools, business practice and apparently successful business people. It challenges the way we have managed for 100 years, and the very underpinnings of today's modern corporations. That is both its strength and its subversive danger. As I responded to one person during the McLuhan Festival, such perceptions comprise McLuhan thinking as a political project, of course, extending this thinking beyond business life and into all aspects of public policy. - Mark [What is The Message?] 9:58:39 PM

]]] Merry Crystal. Snow flakes and Snow Crystals Bentley Snow Crystal Collection Photographing Snowflakes Ice Crystal Engineering - Weather Modification Specialists Merry Christmas. [bTang reBlog] 9:53:42 PM

Saturn / Poligraf Muse. Quelques dgauteur RSS pour Windows que j'ut... Muse. Quelques découvertes musicales : Matt Herskowitz, un superbe pianiste qui habite présentement à Montréal et que j'ai eu la chance d'entendre sur Espace Musique au lever samedi matin. Voici un extrait de sa savoureuse interprétation de l'Adeste Fideles :  Adeste Fideles Bigtime, un trio de guitares de Buenos Aires découvert via la DGM Links page. J'aime bien leur interprétation de Fuga & Misterio d'Astor Piazzolla :  Fuga & Misterio Un tapon d'extraits du catalogue d'Unicorn Records, une maison de disques indépendante basée à Lorraine. En passant, si vous utilisez Firefox, je recommande l'extension downTHEMall!, qui extrait les liens de la page courante et les présente dans une liste grâce à laquelle on peut choisir les éléments qu'on souhaite télécharger. Un filtre permet entre autres de sélectionner automatiquement les liens qui contiennent une chaîne de caractères particulière, comme ".mp3". Ça simplifie énormément l'acquisition d'extraits ! Avant de poursuivre avec les découvertes musicales, une petite introduction au podcasting : The term podcasting plays upon the terms broadcasting and webcasting and is derived from the name of the iPod portable music player, the playback device of choice of many early podcast listeners. Podcasting is not directly associated with Apple's iPod device or iTunes jukebox software. Podcasting is similar to time-shifted video software and devices like TiVo, which let you watch what you want when you want by recording and storing video, except that podcasting is used for audio and is currently free of charge. Note, however, that this technology can be used to pull any kind of file, including software updates, pictures, and videos. J'ai mis un peu de temps avant de me laisser convaincre, mais plus j'explore et plus j'y prend goût. En gros, c'est une combinaison de technologies qui permet le téléchargement automatisé de fichiers en tous genres, à partir de sources pré-déterminées. Plus précisément, un logiciel comme iPodder ou Doppler auquel on fournit une liste de "stations" télécharge les fichiers et les ajoute à une liste d'écoute dans votre lecteur multimédia favori. Les stations sont des fils XML qui contiennent les fichiers sous forme de "pièce jointe". Les fichiers ainsi acquis sont nommés "podcasts". Pour ma part, j'utilise Doppler et le Windows Media Player. Et pour poursuivre les découvertes musicales, voici quelques podcasts qui m'ont intéressé : Coverville, en particulier le Coverville 24: The Coverville Lounge avec Pat Boone qui interprète d'Enter Sandman. IndieFeed, qui présente les pièces individuellement. Un lien vers le feed de Pitchfork est disponible ici. Et l'incontournable Daily Source Code d'Adam Curry, un bloggeur hollandais ex-VJ à MTV dont l'enthousiasme pour le podcasting est contagieux. À entendre sur son podcast d'aujourd'hui, un excellent monologue de George Carlin "America has no now." Le podcasting illustre très bien le courant de démocratisation de l'information qui déferle actuellement. Dixit Curry : "We've got the tools that before only the professionals had." Et bien sûr, les "weedcasts" suivront bientôt... ;o) Parlant Weed, ces derniers jours j'ai fignolé différents éléments du site de distribution et j'ai aussi ajouté une fonctionnalité qui permet d'inclure les informations des fichiers aux recherches d'artistes. Amateurs d'illusions d'optique ? Visitez Illusions Etc... ! Voici "Floating Beans" : Plusieurs autres illusions du genre valent le détour, dont "trippy mirror". Intéressant timing de la webcam : comme je me relevais pour me redresser sur ma chaise, le haut de mon pantalon a entraîné le dossier de la chaise, qui s'est pliée, et bref, je me suis assis sur le plancher. La caméra diffuse un cliché aux 30 secondes, mais évidemment, elle choisit son moment... ;o) Difficile de choisir un livre pour faire suite au "Threefold Lotus Sutra" que j'ai terminé la semaine dernière. J'ai opté pour "The Mysticism of Sound and Music" de Hazrat Inayat Khan, dont voici un succulent extrait : Many in the world take music as a source of amusement, a pastime; to many music is an art, and a musician an entertainer. Yet no one has lived in this world, has thought and felt, who has not considered music as the most sacred of all arts. For the fact is that, what the art of painting cannot clearly suggest, poetry explains in words, but that, which even a poet finds difficult to express in poetry, is expressed in music. By this I do not only say that music is superior to painting and poetry: in fact music excels religion, for music raises the soul of man even higher than the so-called external form of religion. But it must not be understood that music can take the place of religion, for every soul is not necessarily tuned to that pitch where it can really benefit from music, nor is every music necessarily so high that it will exalt a person who hears it more than religion will do. Vague antifumée : Même les bars se préparent à la fatalité L'actuelle vague antifumée est tellement forte que même les bars, au Québec, reçoivent de leur association le mot d'ordre de préparer tranquillement leurs clients à une éventuelle interdiction de fumer qui pourrait les frapper quelque part au cours de 2006. :o) Big Beautiful Saturn : Avec en prime quelques liens sur Saturne : ESA - Cassini-Huygens et Saturne et ses anneaux. Andromeda's Core : et sur Geek News Central : Mozilla Throws Lightning in Outlook's Direction : The Mozilla foundation has unveiled a new project called "Lightning" that will be tightly integrated into Mozilla's new Thunderbird e-mail client and sharpen the client's elbows against rival Microsoft's Outlook software. With Lightning, Thunderbird will have user features that may compete with Microsoft in the enterprise and thwart the software giant's size advantage by being free of cost. et FeedDemon, un agrégauteur RSS pour Windows que j'utilise depuis quelques jours pour lire mes blogues favoris : FeedDemon enables you to quickly read and gather information from hundreds of web sites - without having to visit them. Don't waste any more time checking your favorite web sites for updates. Instead, use FeedDemon and make them come to you. - poligraf [The Daily Poligraf] 9:47:04 PM

China and IPv6 China's new IPv6 Net. China says it s achieved a world-first with its next generation Internet network CERNET2, the largest Internet Protocol Version 6 network anywhere. Compared with the current IP Version 4, the new version is capable of allocating endless IP addresses, and features a transportation speed of 10G per second, 1,000 times faster than the current speed, says state news agency Xinhuanet. By creating a digital network in their own homes, in the near future Chinese people could use it to enjoy video and audio communications, information resources, and the benefits of far-away education and health care services, it says. CERNET2 links up 25 universities in 20 cities, says China Daily (Continued at p2pnet.net) [unmediated] 9:41:29 PM

Korea / Hangul hangul writing models. Brenda Lee posted a photo: www.sigmainstitute.com/koreanonline/hangul_history.shtml By (Brenda Lee). [words - Everyone's Tagged Photos] 7:24:57 AM

^ Where I've been. I've just returned from a Western ski trip. A belated Merry Christmas to everyone. [Asymmetrical Information] 7:13:57 AM