03 January 2003

Reflections on the year that's gone: Promises, Regrets, Expectations and Vanity for the New Year In the last year, there were a few occassions on which I made promises that I honestly could make it come true. I overestimated my abilities, and most importantly the amount of time I had at my disposal. I gave my word to my dear friend Julien Tayon that I would join his Libroscope [french version] team and the "Free Methods, Free People" project that he leads under the Libroscope virtual roof [english version]. I repeatedly told him that once several obligations of mine had been sorted out, I would wholeheartedly devote my free time to his admittedly challegning project. I didn't. I've surely let him down and I only hope that hasn't left him with bitter feelings. Judgning by how things look to evolve in the next few months, it's only sad that I'm not going to have the time required to make a worthwhile contribution not even this new year. What conforts me thought, is that this inability to fulfil my ethical debt towards Julien is not the result of hypocricy and it's neither that I don't give a damn about it (it's exactly the opposite), it's simply not feasible. But I am commited to prove myself worthy of your faith in me. Happy New Year Julien! Unfortuantely, there were other promises I made that I didn't come through too. There are people expecting some work to be done and I haven't yet delivered, not to the extent that would be ideal anyway. Not of the ordinary month in - month out bricks-and-mortar get your job done or you're fucked kind of work but nonetheless, a promise is a promise and a commitmenmt is a commitment and all I've done is skimming the top, scratching the surface and leaving the work unfinished. But I'm working on it and I'll make it happen no matter what and how long it's gonna take. Just be patient fellas and I won't let you down. I'm not superhuman and my shortcomings outnumber my virtues but I'm working on it and you all help me wanna become better. On the good side, I made quite a few new friends, and I will embrace and shelter our relationship so that it grows even stronger as the time goes by. This is what matters most: relationships among people. And this is also the downside of the year that passed: I've simply lost touch with far too many friends whose company I miss so much. I miss you all people. I'm so damn ashamed of myself that I only remeber you when it's your nameday, birthday, mother's day, Christmas day and basically some fuck-up day you are obliged to make a phone call or send an email. But it's upon me to change this. Let me take a deep breath, get myself together and we will all hang together, once again, and get hammered. Maybe even have a spliff for old times'sake. Yes, I still favour a smoke, James!     Will (Do) I lead a boring life or not this year? What I want to do with my life? Become an academic? A consultant,or to use a catchword I like, an E-lancer? Or a manager in a bricks-and-mortar? Maybe, an enterpreneur looks like an engaging career path, perhaps I should create a high-tech start-up but Silicon Valley bite the bullet, ya know? Or everything together? That sounds more promising and less boring. Take it as it comes, just remember to have fun and make your work be worth it. Time is the most important asset we have on this life and we shouldn't waste it. Neither should we waste other people's time with our own actions. That's a good promise to make and try to stand up to. But the big enigma still remains. How can I be happy? How can I satisfy my inner dreams when they keep on changing? Let's see, I want to read more books than last year, make a documentary (about what? you may ask - well about everything: technology, business, society, change, spirituality and consciousness, human evolution, dreams and ambitions, the future, the present and the past, love, affection, hatred, self-satisfaction and renewal....), write a couple of books or papers, meet interesting new people, make friends, meet up with old friends, explore life, body, mind and places, enhance existing skills and pick up new ones, fall in love and learn how to care so deeply about someone else that you become one, get high more often, motivate other people to better themselves including myself, learn what it actually means to be young, philosophise aout life's mandane affairs, and so many countless other things....but there's still hope, I have a whole new year ahead of me and I will make it worth it by trying to be happy, to have fun, by doing all I can to better myself, to make my friends and my family proud of being what they are to me. Happy New Year:-)       5:29:08 PMSay it loud  []

The Power of Blogging along with networked minds: the time of distributed intelligence has come It's almost 3 o'clock in the morning and a surprise is expecting for me in the world of outer cyberspace. It's one of these nights that sleeping is no fun and there are far more interesting things going on out there anyway. I was popping from site to site, from blog to blog and from list to list to catch up with the news and strike up a conversation with a few friends I haven't seen for some time now. While I am roaming around in a state of near collapse after several glasses of whiskey (I had gone out for a few drinks with some friends earlier this evening), I decide to pay a visit to blogtalk conference's website, just to see if there are any developments regarding the stunningly interesting networked minds' meeting in May in Vienna. And there-here (Do i have any sense of place or should I say space?) I am browsing the page and...hold on a minute...scroll down...go right...I read my name!!! It's even hyperlinked and the link takes you straight to my blog. It basically says that I am about to submit a paper for the conference. The fascinating thing is that I haven't yet got in touch with the conference's coordinators and no way I expected to come across my name and a link to my radio weblog there. It's a fact indeed that a week ago I posted at my weblog that i 'm definitely impressed by the conference's sentiments and will try to put a paper together but no chance I expected to see that a vague idea somewhere at the back of my head was taking shape at the conference's site, especially without even dropping a line at the blogtalk people. Bloody Hell! This is the power that weblogs unleash! This is the true rise of distributed intelligence bound to destabilise current organisational structures, demolishing asymmetries of information and bridging the gap between consumers and firms. This is real education: education not of the MIT OpenCourseWare kind that seeks to help faculty and program leaders to better synthesize and structure their courses (ironic to be called open, isn't it?) but education based on things we learn from other people, our peers and fellow learners no matter where they are located at. I ramble, I rant and I stumble on the pervasiveness of tech that I sometimes find hard to explain or understand but nonetheless weblogs always manage to surprise me. They are simply always a step ahead of the game: they are the only real, true application that's so simple to use and implement while being so helpful for an astonishingly wide spectrum of uses and destined to turn power relations upside down!           2:54:04 AMSay it loud  []