second life avatar

Just had to show my Second Life avatar. I hang out at the ISTE Island and Cookie Island, where the writers are.

Technomama – Ana Sisnett — my tech heroine for Ada Lovelace Day

Ana Sisnett (1952-2009) was Executive Director from 1998-2006 of Austin Free-Net, a community technology center. But her pioneering on the internet began earlier when she co-founded Technomama with Gisele-Audrey Mills. Technomama worked with the Institute for Global Communications (IGC) and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) back when the text-only internet presented more opportunities for social justice activism than for consumerism. Funded in part by the Foundation for a Compassionate Society, Technomama trained women left out of the digital revolution and viewed equal access and ability as an international human rights issue.

An early adopter who delighted as much as the next geek over a new application or gadget, Ana nevertheless always thought through the complex questions of access, training, and ability. If the technology excluded, well, then…where’s the fix? She admired the work of Knowbility, whose annual AIR-Interactive (Accessible Internet Rally) features a web-design contest focusing on assistive technology and accessible design.

Over the last three years, Ana struggled with ovarian cancer, and she passed away on January 13. She leaves behind many, many people who were touched by her vision of a usable and just technology that bridges differences and helps us realize our better selves.

to twitter, or not

i didn’t think i’d like twitter… really not. but i do. i’m still curious about it. i like posting. i like that i only have 140 characters. the limit makes this a genre. the twitter-post. nothing else like it. so cool how some folks make it poetic, others mundane — still others, a mish-mash. kinda like a photo with words — these quick shutter flashes that capture one moment, or a small slice of time or thought. fleeting. but pinned down. just for a sec. i’m still trying to figure out a classroom application.what if? what if i don’t figure out the application and just say, “let’s twitter.” and see how students come up with a classroom application. how cool would that be… 

the universe in a single atom

I’m reading this book by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and I’m hooked. Science and Buddhism…how do these two fields learn from each other? I think that’s the Dalai Lama’s central question. Or one of them, at any rate. One point he makes that I love: believing that the practice of science occurs outside of some kind of moral framework and that one only asks ethical questions of the resulting products or practices…this is ludicrous. Ethical and moral questioning needs to occur at every step of the scientific process. The Dalai Lama also says that if scientific findings contradict a Buddhist belief, then that belief needs to be revised. I love reading about his first encounters with technology, how he takes apart the artifacts left by the 13th Dalai Lama: a watch, automobiles.

Turing award goes to woman for first time

Frances E. Allen, who began work at IBM in 1957, has received the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2006 Turing award and is the first woman to receive this honor in the forty years that it has been offered. Her work has focused on compilers and machine architecture. For some historical perspective on pioneering women, check out Ada and Grace: Practical Visionaries.

david kestenbaum’s “how iMet my neighbor on iTunes”

Yesterday on NPR, David Kestenbaum had this fine piece of writing about discovering someone else’s iTunes music folder on his desktop. The piece runs like a mystery story as Kestenbaum figures out that the “Anna,” whose folder “Anna’s Music” now resides on his desktop, must be using Kestenbaum’s wireless service; Kestenbaum’s wife has recently taken down the firewall. On realizing that this Anna must reside in the neighborhood, Kestenbaum decides to email her using an address he finds on one of her downloaded songs. He makes a leap — the kind of leap we all want to make when we’re looking for connection and community — he mentions that he and his wife would like to invite Anna over to dinner.

What a blessedly human thing to do — connect. Through music, food, talk. We need government-financed chunks of the day, every day, to do just that. Imagine. If we all had the time, all took the time, to make a meal together every day (or once a week), to sit and talk, to commune. Ah, yes. That’s what communes do.

At any rate, I hate that I knew the email was a bad idea. If I had gotten an email saying, “Hey, we like the same music. Come on over and have dinner with me and the wife!” — I probably would have thought it was spam and dumped it. Or I would have freaked out. Being female in 21st-century U.S.A just means being hyper alert for the next piece of violence, and Kestenbaum tried to circumvent this state of fear by saying he was NOT a stalker. Ah, well.

Kestenbaum’s wife finds out there’s an “Anna” in their building and David reaches out again, after he hasn’t received a response to his email. Sharing music tastes with Anna compels him to hope that there’s a friendship waiting to be built, and David goes to Anna’s door, knocks — and they talk. We hear their voices on the radio, so David had to set up the interview, talk. But his piece ends by saying that they retreated back to their caves, as he called their homes.

An opportunity missed — it’s a sweet, bittersweet piece — and Kestenbaum’s delivery on the radio is a little quirky, as if he’s just talking to us and not reading from a piece of writing he’s polished. The piece reveals as much about how we live as it does about cyberculture — our yearning to connect, our ignorance of those who live just meters away.

Google acquires Earth, sets sites [sic] on Mars

Mike Myers says that the next Austin Powers movie will make a significant set design change: Starbucks, which has served as the central office for Dr. Evil’s dastardly doings, will be replaced with the Google logo and a set replicating Google’s corporate headquarters. Myers, known for his astute economic pronouncements, ascertains that Google’s dash towards mega-company through a year-long acquisition frenzy proves its kinship with Dr. Evil and his lifelong desire to vanquish the world.

Pyra, Blogger, YouTube, Writely….what’s next?

Checklist for determining whether a corporation veers towards megalomaniacal fiendishness:

1. designs products only for Windows operating systems – check (If you have a Mac, don’t bother investigating Google’s photo system, Picasa.)

2. loses sense of humor – check (Used to be, you could google “weapons of mass destruction” and retrieve a well-written piece of irony.)

3. labor conditions deteriote – check (Well, do they have company-sponsored daycare anywhere?)