Sunday, October 27, 2002

Is your life ruled by time?   Today, my view of time is different. Time is much different when you are managing a company. It's less important how you spend an hour here or there. What is more important is making sure that the days, weeks, and months spent working are going in the right direction. That is the wasted time I worry about.  I guess I am still ruled by time but without the direct tyranny of the watch but more of the calendar. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 9:22:23 PM    comment []  trackback []

Netfuture turns out to be a great discovery in its own right, a non-profit "dedicated to pursuing a science of nature rather than of mechanisms assumed to lie behind nature. This is a qualitative science, contextual and holistic in spirit, and ethically informed in immediate practice rather than in afterthought. The Nature Institute also promotes humane uses of technology rather than mechanical uses of humans." Which seems to address square on the challenge that has always lurked in the industrial ecology metaphor: are we going to remake industry in the model of nature (the hope), or remake nature in the model of industry (the risk)? 10:20:01 AM    comment []  trackback []

Doc Searles reports: Complexity, Trust and Terror is a thought provoking piece by Langdon Winner in Netfuture. A sample: "Just as sixth-century Romans abandoned their city when the aqueducts were cut, Americans seem to be abandoning essential parts of the democratic civic culture that developed during the past two centuries. This appalling turn of events is certainly evident in the material features of public buildings and grounds. A visit to Washington, D.C., shows the place transformed by ever-present ugly cement barriers, recurring security searches and ubiquitous surveillance cameras. The city has been redefined as capital of Homeland, a strange new country where once-cherished freedoms of thought, expression and movement are regarded as luxuries too dangerous to afford." 10:14:17 AM    comment []  trackback []

Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto Rather surprising posting from the Mother Jones discussion boards... WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Left -- the moral blindness that refuses to recognize that free markets, individual liberty, and experimental science have made the West a fundamentally better place than any culture in which jihad, 'honor killings', and female genital mutilation are daily practices approved by a stultifying religion. WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Right -- whether it manifests as head-in-the-sand isolationism or as a Christian religious chauvinism and bigotry that all but mirrors the Islamo-fascist fanaticism of our self-declared enemies. WE ARE MEMBERS OF A CIVILIZATION, and we hold that civilization to be worth defending. We have not sought war, but we will fight it to the end. We will fight for our civilization in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds. 8:16:32 AM    comment []  trackback []