I’ve had difficulty explaining my networking concepts without resorting to some exasperated cliche like, “that’s just how I think about it.” Well, turns out that scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health are coming to the conclusion that that’s actually how the brain thinks. Of course that’s how I think about it. It’s literally …
Read more »Insights
The Internet as Third Place
Ray Oldenburg is an urban sociologist who writes about the importance of informal public gathering places. In his book The Great Good Place, Oldenburg demonstrates why these gathering places are essential to community and public life. He argues that bars, coffee shops, general stores, and other “third places” (in contrast to the first and second …
Read more »Societal Culture and the Internet’s Clusters
China’s “Netizens” number 130 million – and are growing 30% every year. Second only to the U.S., China is installing Broadband everywhere and internet cafes are the size of K-Marts and as abundant as Starbucks. In 2005, Dr. Guo Liang of the Chinese Acadamy of Social Sciences published a study showing that only two thirds …
Read more »Some Great Pictures from NH
This is a great photo set from Steve Garfield. He was in the blogger meeting with Senator Edwards and walked away impressed. You can read his and other New Englanders posts at a few blogs such as this. Edwards, in an unorthodox move, is not asking you to join a campaign. He is asking you …
Read more »Netmask width conversion
When setting up various services you will often be required to provide a subnet mask for the ip address you are configuring the service for. Sometimes you need to input the mask in the form xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, sometimes in terms of a mask width, or bits, in the format xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/ww, where ‘ww’ is the mask width …
Read more »Sweet Commands
I have this knote on my desktop that I use to keep track of commands I use often, but not frequently enough to remember by heart. Its gets fairly long, and is invaluable for me in my daily internet building tasks. I occasionally clean it out, removing things I never use, have found better solutions …
Read more »What works on MySpace
Over here at Future Majority, I answered a question about how one can make MySpace work. I brought up an example of “virtual-to-field back to virtual mobilization.” The hugely unfunny and equally popular comic Dane Cook is the example. The basic point is that the best political tools on the internet have been invented by …
Read more »Migration and Evolution, Intelligently Designed: YouTube
Culture grows and spreads through environments organically. It evolves. When culture spreads via built environments, its evolution can be intelligently designed. Consider this example: What I know of as Lindy Hop, that athletic, exuberant, acrobatic dance, was essentially invented at the Savoy Ballroom in 1935 by Frankie Manning. Like so many things at the time, …
Read more »Identity in Network Culture: MySpace
What is the culture of MySpace? Youth culture in my town’s high school was dominated by the jocks and their rivals, the burnouts. The closer the burnouts were to jocks, preps, or worse their parents, the more miserable they felt about themselves. The further away from the mainstream, the greater their self-respect and higher their …
Read more »The People Who Run The World
Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article in The New Yorker in 1999 called “Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg.” In it, he tangentially explains how it’s been mathematically proven that Kevin Bacon is NOT the most connected actor, that distinction goes to Burgess Meredith (Rocky’s trainer). Why? For value, the 70 year length of Meredith’s career was …
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