Floydian Slip & DSM IV.

Oh my god. You know I pulled Christopher Locke off my blogroll months ago. I admit I was taken back by his whimsical and fearless writing, no nonsense sensibility of marketing concepts and ideals and his wacky sense of timing. But he dropped off the scene for awhile, never returned any of my more than 10 emails and his lack of consistency in taking his 'meds' took its toll on his blogger as rockstar syndrome. A fraction of the blogger he used to be. I mean the guy has issues. But who doesn't it. He's brilliant when he's on. And when not. Well, you can take a guess.

So when I stumbled onto his comparison of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb with the bible of psychology, pscyopharmacology and psychiatry DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV), I was taken back. Rage Boy was back. Well. Almost. Perhaps I was just a bit jaded by subject matter.

Anyone who knows me knows that in the past I've been a bit evangelical about the music of Roger Waters and his alma mater Pink Floyd. But you gotta love Locke's Floydian analysis. So I won't rage on about this any further. instead, I point you to the Rage Boy post. And urge you to post your comments here. No matter what, it's amusing, fun and well, it's Locke.

[for the sake of clarity - The Digital Tavern]

He reminds me of Syd Barrett -

and Roger Water's words to him - Shine on You Crazy Diamond !

"Remember when you were young,
You shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes,
Like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire
Of childhood and stardom,
Blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target
For faraway laughter,
Come on you stranger,
You legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon,
You cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night,
And exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome
With random precision,
Rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver,
You seer of visions,
Come on you painter,
You piper, you prisoner, and shine"

Shine on You Crazy Diamond !

1:46:54 PM    comment []  trackback []

Today is 'click 'n link' day after yesterday's soul searching!  

Some interesting reads and links on blogging, wikis, social software and their applications .... i'm saving them for the weekend ! 

And i still have to read all the great stuff blogged from the two recent conferences i'd have loved to attend - Networking a Sustainable Future - PlanetWorks and  the Weblogging conference in Boston.

Here goes :

How Instant Messaging Augments Conversations. Intriguing, fragmentary post by Stewart Butterfield ragging down how instant messaging augments conversation. He agrees with Jack Schofield's contention about the importance of IM "...my bet would be that the most important social software isn't going to develop out of blogging anyway: it will come from instant messaging." and goes on to say

"In addition to the conventional concrete examples, "conversation" makes for an excellent conceptual abstraction of certain types of human interaction. It is also a way of thinking about interaction which lends itself to nice sets of related use cases: flexible conversation objects can support synchronous or asynchronous modes, push (invite) vs pull (browse) and flow seamlessly between one-to-one and multiuser participation."

The post isn't finished, but now that Stewart has comments enabled, you could help him finish it. [Corante: Social Software]

Don't define knowledge, improve knowledge work instead.

KMPro with Mark Clare. Mark Clare argues that KM needs to step back and define knowledge before plunging forward with the "next wave" of knowledge management approaches or applications. [Knowledge Jolt with Jack]

I disagree.

I think that most efforts to define knowledge get hopelessly bogged down. The reason this happens is that the discussion is locked in an assumption that there needs to be a centrally managed agreement (at a minimum) about the definition.

I take a different approach. Focus instead on knowledge workers and knowledge work. Work on eliminating friction and hassles in their ability to do whatever it is they think matters. Attack the problems that are preventing knowledge workers from being as effective as they would like to be.

There's an old story that I've heard described as a Russion proverb. It says that if each one of us takes care of sweeping the sidewalk in front of our own home, we won't need streetsweepers. It's worth thinking about how that might apply to the world of knowledge work, both on the level of being an individual knowledge worker yourself and on the level of helping make the other knowledge workers that surround you more effective.

[McGee's Musings]

Wikiblog, We Bliki, W[ei][kb][li]og, .... The WikiLog discussion over on the Meatball Wiki has heated up, including a long section on how wikis differ from weblogs.  There's a lot here, too much and too various to summarize, but worth a read. [Corante: Social Software]

Clay Shirky, in a piece by Jane Black on open source media, says that to say blogs will harm traditional media "is like saying that instant messenger will kill e-mail." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]

Xeni Jardin in Wired on camera phones: "Like blogs, phonecams are a fresh combination of familiar elements that equal way more than the sum of their parts." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]

On Permalinks and Paradigms... [plasticbag.org]

Random connections. Taste Tribes: Smartmobbing your aesthetics. Mindjack's running a great article by Joshua Ellis about the way that technology is giving us the capacity to connect with like-minded people around the world. Link Discuss (Thanks, Joshua!) [Boing Boing Blog].  I totally agree with this.  This is why I'm very careful as to what T-shirt I wear and try to see through my feelings for people. I said something in my speech this weekend: "even Republicans and fascists are people....."We may not like somebody for who they are, but we can still converse with them and work with them to make the world a better place.[Marc's Voice]

Wifi for dummies. How to set up a wifi network (for the technologically challenged) [iWire]

12:22:35 PM    comment []  trackback []