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Dugg: Introduction to 'Holding On to Reality' | Albert Borgmann

The introduction to
Holding On to Reality
The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium
by Albert Borgmann

"(...) Without information about reality, without reports and records, the reach of experience quickly trails off into the shadows of ignorance and forgetfulness.

(...) As a report is the paradigm of information about reality, so a recipe is the model of information for reality, instruction for making bread or wine or French onion soup.

(...) technological information lifts both the illumination and the transformation of reality to another level of lucidity and power. But it also introduces a new kind of information. To information about and for reality it adds information as reality. The paradigms of report and recipe are succeeded by the paradigm of the recording.

(...) technological information is the most prominent layer of the contemporary cultural landscape, and increasingly it is more of a flood than a layer, a deluge that threatens to erode, suspend, and dissolve its predecessors. (...)"

(Via David Weinberger, who remarks: "(...) a work about information, the Net, and philosophy, published in 1999. It’s terrific. (...)" )

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The Cluetrain Manifesto on the rebirth of conversations

IMHO, the Cluetrain Manifesto is still the most visionary book, indeed a feast of recognition, of how the Internet is accelerating the shift from broadcast to search, from push to pull, from controlled messaging to open conversation.

From where I stand, the three most relevant themes in the Cluetrain are:

1. The significance of conversations, and how the Internet is bringing them back.
2. Why and how businesses need to change as a result.
3. The power of storytelling.

Below is my collection of references from the book, with an emphasis on the first theme, the rebirth of conversations.

[UPDATE, July 29, 2007: Doc Searls refers to my excerpts from the cluetrain on The Doc Searls Weblog:  Saturday, July 28, 2007. In response, I submit that we should combine the teachings of the Cluetrain and the Long Tail theory to be able to engage in the conversations that matter most to us.]

We need to learn to let go!

The five-member team I work with (we develop and content-manage internal news and participatory media channels) have decided to (re-)read the Cluetrain book over the summer and discuss it when we're all back at the office.

A colleague from another team the other day requested ideas as to whom we could invite to speak at our yearly global corporate communications days. (The name Andrew Keen came up.)

Even though things have moved on since 1999, to me the Cluetrain is still the most visionary book, indeed a feast of recognition, of how the Internet is accelerating the shift from broadcast to search, from push to pull, from controlled messaging to open conversation.

Many corporate communicators, I feel, are still struggling with the concept, clinging on to an illusion of "controlled conversation" or some such compromise. Well, it won't last, will it? And the sooner we all grok this, the better for all involved: WE NEED TO LEARN TO LET GO!

If I had to suggest a speaker to our communications teams, I'd be humbled should any of the four Cluetrain authors be willing. Perhaps the chapters that spoke to me most were those written by Christopher Locke and David Weinberger.

Seven weeks to the Lulu Blooker Prize deadline

Google ads work. I can't seem to ignore them the way I have grown immune to web ads. So I clicked through to Lulu.com. Very interesting proposition: book publishing, binding and selling online.

Also, from Lulu.com's press pages I saw a release about the Lulu Blooker Prize, a competition for blooks, or blogs-based books, chaired by judge Cory Doctorow.

On the FAQ we read:

"A blook is a book with content that was developed in a significant way from material originally presented on a blog, web-comic or other website. This material includes the website's characters, themes, ideas or outline that ends up getting published as a printed book.
(...)
The launch of The Lulu Blooker Prize coincides with the 450th anniversary of Gutenberg's invention of moveable type, and it offers fresh evidence that the oft-touted rumor of the death of books is greatly exaggerated."

Blookers can compete in three categories: fiction, non-fiction and comics, we read in the rules. The deadline for entries is on Monday, January 30, 2006. A shortlist will be announced on March 6. The category winners and the overall winner of the 2006 Lulu Blooker Prize will be announced on April 3, 2006.

'Bush & Us' by Michael Moore?

I'm confused. When visiting a brick-and-mortar bookshop in downtown Helsinki the other day, I could have sworn I saw a book titled 'Bush & Us', by Michael Moore. I justs Amzone'd, Google'd, and browsed http://www.michaelmoore.com, but so far no luck.

Or am I mistaken? Was it 'Moore & Us'? I'll better check that bookstore again.

Christian Lindholm moves to Yahoo!

Christian Lindholm, mobile usability guru, inventor of the Nokia Navi-key, father of the Series 60 user interface, co-author of 'Mobile Usability: How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone' and driving force behind the "memory prosthesis" aka Nokia Lifeblog, is leaving the company after ten years, for a new position as Vice President of Global Mobile Product at Yahoo! inc.

Something had been in the air for a while...

'Task-Centered User Interface Design' by Lewis and Riesman

'Task-Centered User Interface Design - A Practical Introduction' by Clayton Lewis and John Riesman claims to be a hands-on shareware book to designing user interfaces that will enable people to learn computer systems quickly and user them effectively, efficiently, and comfortably.
(0.1 What's This Book All About?)

"The main body of this book is a series fo chapters describing in rough chronological order the steps needed to design a good user interface."
(0.2 How to Use This Book)

"An interface has to be matched to the task it will support, as well as to the users who will work with it. There is an infinite variety of tasks and users, so there's no simple definition of a "good" interface. (...)
"It's impossible to cover every possible combination of task, user, and interface technology, so no set of specific guidelines can be complete. (...)
"This book describes design processes that help to produce good interfaces. (...) focus on process instead of end result (...)
(0.1.4 Why focus on Design?)

The authors chose shareware as a distribution method, rather than print, because:

• they hoped to would reach a wider audience due to its lower cost,
• it might save a  few trees,
• they liked the idea of distributing their ideas directly to the "end-user" without the filter of a publisher.

(0.3.1 Why Shareware?)

Lured by David Allen's 'Getting Things Done'

The number 1 title on the Technorati Popular Books page the other day, 'Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity' by David Allen, caught my interest and after reading a couple of reviews I decided to add it to my Amazon wish list.

I was particularly charmed by Donald Mitchell's review of the book, which contains the following paragraph:

"The essence of the process is that you write down a note about everything when you take on a new responsibility, make a new commitment, or have a useful thought. All of this ends up in some kind of "in" box. You then go through your "in" box and decide what needs to be done next for each item. For simple issues, this includes identifying the action you should take first and when to take it. For tougher issues, you schedule an appropriate time to work the problem in more detail. You organize the results of this thinking, and review your options for what you should be doing weekly. Then you take what you choose to do, and act. Think of this process as the following five steps: (1) collect (2) process (3) organize (4) decide (5) act."

Technorati tracks the books conversation

I discovered the Technorati Popular Books page the other day. This seems like a nice resource. The page keeps a top-30 of books that people are talking about in the blogosphere.

Each entry has links to the blog conversation, as well as to Amazon. I just hope this Technorati ranking is truthful...