feeding change

I run an OLD system and I ask a lot of it. So, I am in constant fear of my old P166 (you read right 1 – 6 – 6) just refusing to go one day.

That fear was reinforced the other day when Robert Paterson posted this:

“My hard drive crashed this weekend. Back on air later next week.”

Simple, short and scary as hell when you think about how much important stuff we keep on our hard drives. Personal computers have moved beyond being simple machines that we use to get work done. They have grown to be an extension of ourselves.

As bloggers or even just as web surfers, we are our computers. Via my PC I am Liam the writer who can send documents around the world. My PC allows me to be so many different identities, each defined by their username and password, that I need to keep them written down on my bulletin board behind my desk (don’t bother looking – they’re cunningly concealed.)



Blogs and websites allow us to be someone in cyberspace that we’re not in the meatspace. PCs (or Macs) are the vehicles that drives us to the ball. Usernames and passwords provide the face and clothes, but it’s our computers that get us through the door.



Our lives are driven by digital data – bank cards, security codes, cell phones, PDAs, etc. When they break down, so do we. Being human is being machine is being connected.

Thankfully Robert is back in the saddle again and his great posts will continue, but it wasn’t easy. As Robert puts it:

“The last two days have been hell – I now understand how addicted I am and suffered terrible withdrawal.”

His experience was enough to send me out to the store to pick up some disks and start copying.

So remember, love your computer, treat it right and back up that data!

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I?m new to this whole blogging thing and very quickly starting to like it a lot. But until this week I wasn?t really sure why it attracted me so much. A series of sites put together my new found interest in blogging like the pieces of tricky Tomb Raider puzzle.

It started out with Joi Ito’s defence of bloggers at Davos this week. Many journalists’ claimed that bloggers are just wanna-be journalists, trying to break into print. Joi set them straight: Print is an old medium and, while some bloggers do aspire to have tompaine fame and land a cover piece for newsweek, others are happy broadcasting to the growing audience that are bloggers. As Joi puts it:

“I (emotionally) asserted that the mass media and blogs were not the same. Many bloggers (such as myself) are blogging, not for the money, but for a passion which embodies what I believe is part of the heart and soul of journalism.”

Tying into Joi?s comments was Richard MacManus? expansion of Tim Berners Lee?s idea of a fractal society. On MacManus’ great blog, readwriteweb.com, he applied this theory to blogging and came up with the idea of a fractal blogosphere. The fractal blogosphere, proposes another way to look at how the blogging world is defined, pulling away the power law, where 20% of the bloggers get 80% of the audience (via A-listers, and celebrity bloggers).

A fractal blogosphere is based on a blogger?s comfortable level of involvement and not a desire to become the most popular. Instead of everyone striving to be have the most widely read blog, bloggers move through levels of involvement, increasing their commitment to the blog and their audience. It?s reassuring to new bloggers like me who are overwhelmed by the millions of blogs out there already (?What?s the friggin? use? Who?s reading this and hasn?t this already been posted on boingboing??)

So, with fractal blogospheres and journalistic scorn running through my brain, I stumbled upon the answer to the nagging blogging question: ?Why am I doing this??

Within the bios of the bloggers parliament members was a site called, AntiApathay.org. I checked it out.

In their own words:

?ANTI-APATHY is a vibrant cultural campaign designed to connect the politically drained and disengaged citizens of the world with key issues of our times and to help create a more just, democratic and sustainable world through awareness and action.?

Their tagline at the top of the site is: ?because waking up is hard to do.?

That struck a cord with me, because a few years ago I had that sudden feeling of waking up and seeing the world around me with fresh eyes. Raised in the suburbs, I was fed a diet of centrist ideals that I never questioned. When I found out I could (at the embarrassing age of 26!) nothing looked the same again.

As a recovering apathetic, I firmly believe that we are a society in need of a great big alarm clock buzzing in the ear (and not switched to the radio because we?d all just hit the snooze button.) Jumping around AA site, I found their 12 step recovering plan:

1. Admit that there is a problem and that a life addicted to apathy is a life half lived.

2. Come to believe that the power to change things and restore society lies within each and every one of us

3. Ponder the question, ?What can I do?? And while you’re at it, list some answers)

4. Make a list of all of the practices in your every day life that stress the planet and society

5. Act on your discoveries

6. Restore conscious contact with nature. Hug a tree. If it is too wide, mobilise your community to link arms and then, together, hug the aforementioned tree

7. Reject the doctrine of individualism and see the world as an interdependent whole

8. Learn a new joke

9. Befriend a politician (lets face it most of them could do with at least one)

10. Tell your new joke to a stranger on the street and your new politician friend

11. Having experienced a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, Carry this message of hope to other apathetics.

12. Ignore this guide and find your own path to enlightenment.

To me, these steps reinforced Joi?s comments that many bloggers don?t seek to become print journalists. It also answered the question of why I blog.

I blog as a first step to get involved, to contribute something and to stay awake. My involvement and subsequent audience isn?t huge (or even big) but I?m finally broadcasting. And it feels good.

It?s not much, but it?s a start. And like many people recovering from an illness, it?s best to take these things one step at a time.

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Babies With Beards is back on online and I’m happy about that. Their story must be told.

Thanks to clickable culture for unearthing this tragic tale.

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This isn’t new and but it’s still steamin’: 17 year old Mike Rowe is being sued by Microsoft for copyright infringement for using the domain name http://www.mikerowesoft.com. Mike knew what he was doing, but he still gets full points from me.

“All along I have just wanted to prove a point that the small guy can win against the giant corporations. Hopefully people will stick up to what they think is right even if someone bigger than you is behind it.”

When Microsoft offered Mike $10US for the domain name, he asked for a $1000US (to compensate for his substantial investment in building the business site). Microsoft countered with a 25 page letter accusing him of copyright infringement. But Mike isn’t backing down.

The bad press is already flying, so I think this one will be settled without much more fuss. But it’s certainly made Mike a popular guy – he’s had to switch hosting services to handle the traffic on his site, he’s been on CNN and CBC radio.

Another blip in the battle of brands.

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