Category: Paleoblogs

  • Will There Be US Bases in Iraq?

    Absolutely not. “The U.S. ambassador…told Congress last week that the deal would not establish permanent bases in Iraq nor specify the number of forces to be stationed” there. —Washington Post, 4-15-08 This unspecified number of troops will not be housed in bases, but since they will be stationed there for an also unspecified period, the…

  • Talk back to presenters with Ted Nadeau's patented* Reaction Deck 1.0

    At South by Southwest, Ted Nadeau and I led a “core conversation” on the topic of reputation, identity, and presence. Ted is great at questioning basic assumptions and had this idea of handing out placards an audience of participants could use to signal their reactions to what was being said to them. We imagine double-sided…

  • Capitalism and the Homeowner: Contempt Hidden in Plain Sight

    Marxists have long suggested that home ownership is encouraged under capitalism because when masses of people own small-scale properties, they identify with and defend large-scale capitalist ownership of true wealth in the means of production. Homeowners in America, then, are comparable to the land-owning peasantry in the Old Countries, unwitting bastions of reactionary economics. From…

  • If I have to appear in Valleywag this is the way to go

    Started off Saturday morning with Kick ’08. Namedropping: Talked to George Kelly, Erin Malone, Anil Dash, Jessamyn West (yay!), Simon Willison, Owen Thomas, Hugh Forrest, Micah Alpern (briefly, passing on the escalator), Janna Hicks DeVylder so far….

  • The Obama Charisma Recoi. “Have a little faith; there’s magic in the night.”

    I wrote this in response to an article on another list, but the general attitude I responded to is common enough. It is a recoil at the sight of Barak Obama’s rallies and speeches mostly, but also his political positions. The typical terms include: platitudes, revivalist, naive, empty, credulous, cult, spell, euphoria, fervor, creepy, messianic.…

  • I'm speaking on presence and reputation with Ted Nadeau at SxSW

    If you’re interested in social web design, how to model identity, presence, and reputation, and how to create and align incentives with the behaviors you wish to encourage in your online community, then join Ted Nadeau and me for a Core Conversation on the topic of “Online Identity: And I *do* give a damn about…