Don't Gel Too Soon

E3, FABLE II AND BEING THE PROUD MOM

I've written often about the ways life changes as your kids grow up and become adults.  We are blessed that both of ours have brought us so much joy.  This public accomplishment is really just icing on the cake; moment by moment is where the real wonder comes.  Even so, how could I not post it here?

The man on the right is my older son Josh.  Speaking at E3! (The annual video game trade show in LA) On G4 TV.  About Fable II, a game he has been working on for a very long time.  How cool is that?

BLOGHER WANTS TO KNOW STUFF. LET'S TELL THEM

I love BlogHer.  It's become a very important part of my life; its three remarkable founders women whose foresight and commitment guarantees every blogger a voice in its governance, tone and purpose.  Right now, they're taking a reader survey.  It will help them grow if you take the survey.   So when they ask for survey responses, I say - let's give them some!  It won't take long - give it a try.  Thanks.

YET ANOTHER REASON TO KEEP MY HUSBAND AROUND

This is what he came home with today.  For me. 

BLOGGING BOOMERS BLOG CARNIVAL - THIS WEEK'S LINK

Join the boomer crew at I Remember JFK and see what's on our minds this week.  Mine is, as usual, the soppiest.....

LUST FOR THE MACBOOK AIR - BUT IS IT GOOD FOR YOU?

I usually do enormous research before buying a new laptop.  Last time I moved from Windows to a 12 inch Powerbook mostly for the 3 lb. weight at the lowest price.  I dropped the darn thing and the disk drive broke so I have to do something -- but what? 

Apple has quit making Powerbooks under 5 lb and now I know why.  They want the market for the super-duper groovy looking, skinny MACBOOK AIR.   I'm totally psyched by it, although the price is really stiff - $1800 and there's no disk drive so you need to spend another hundred on the external one.  I don't know...  Here's what Walt Mossberg says:

I guess I could just get a Vaio - and I don't know if I have the bucks to do either.

When my husband brought me a surprise - an iPhone I took it back because I couldn't insure it OR search contacts (you still can't) and the ATT rates were so absurdly high, so I know that even with Apple, looks aren't everything.  But the idea of a light machine with power (even without a disk drive) is so seductive.  And it's so damn gorgeous.  What  are you thinking about this BEAUTIFUL new toy?

FABULOUS SCRABULOUS, LAWRENCE LESSIG AND A FACEBOOK CRISIS

Way back a million years ago in the 1990s, the Internet mantra was "information wants to be free."  In other words, if you could figure out how to get something up on the Web, it was meant to be there.  So there was Napster - all the music you could grab.   Books, games,  news, music, images -- whatever you wanted you could find. -- for free.  Just like, right now, you can find the wonderful Scrabulous on Facebook.

Then attorney and -- really -- guru of the Information Age Lawrence   Lessig launched an entirely new way to define copyrights and began to institutionalize a new perspective on information.  Basically, since musicians, film makers, visual artists and authors were all sampling previous works within their new creations, Lessig demanded a new approach to the protection of intellectual property. 

So our beloved Interweb offers us a chance to find out anything about anything and gather any information from any source, but it also offers us real ethical problems:

For most of my life, I've made my living producing television news pieces and being pretty well paid for it.  Now, I'm often compensated for my work on the web - except for this blog.  I wrote and published a book, published book reviews for years and have written and published other features.  I get paid for my work; that's how I live.  If all information were to break free -- who would pay the creators?  Or, for that matter, the distributors.  Even if books are published online they need to get there; advance URLS have to be sent to reviewers, someone has to edit and proof-read.  That work, unlike information, does not want to be free.  Lessig would say it's too late to worry about that - online access has released the information so stop complaining and find another way to monetize your work.

Fair enough.  I have heard Lessig speak about this and it's thrilling.  The 60's girl in me loves the anarchic idea -- after all, information does want to be free.  But the analysis and creation of that information - not so much. Right now Hasbro and Mattel are trying to get a restraining order against Facebook, requiring the removal of the Facebook version of Scrabble, Scrabulous, for copyright violations.  Created by a couple of brothers in India and posted for free, it's one of Facebook's stars.  I'll be devastated if the game is actually removed because it's such a kick.  At the same time, I understand the concept of getting paid for distributing content, not just for creating it.  The Scrabulous brothers chose to built and post Scrabulous for free.  That's their decision.  But even company employees (including the people who make Scrabble boards and design their labels and ship the game to gift shops and Toys R Us, also have to eat.  It's as if all sides are right.  Lessig's exploration of all this is invaluable, but there's no answer yet - except of course in the law, which currently favors the terrestrial owners of such properties.  Josh Quittner, in his Fortune blog, has another perspective.  We're on a journey here just as we've been with the rest of the wonders and miracles that are the Web.

What do you think?  It's worth a comment here, no?   

THE STORY OF STUFF: DOES IT WORK?

This film was screened in Berkeley in early December so I'm a little late (a lot late?) writing about it but it's worth a conversation any time.  The Story of Stuff *is an extremely effective exposition on the consequences of overconsumption - and the origins of the habits that led us to our current environmental crisis.   It's riveting.  And most of it makes horrifying sense; it's the accumulation of so many common sense facts that has the power.

Somehow though, I wish for a bit more.  Much of the rhetoric, while the facts may be real, is intense.  I keep thinking that if the data were relayed in a way that gave us a second to breathe and absorb the most impressive**, and if the relationship between government and business were described a bit less simplistically (as almost a conspiracy,) the effect would be greater.  The problem is that all those businesses are where people work.  The first thing many will hear when we talk about villainous companies is the threat to their livelihood.  That doesn't make the facts less true; it just means that we have to talk about the issue in ways that address these fears.  Otherwise, the film provides a great vehicle for the converted but not much firepower to reach those who may buy into the issue generally but not into the condemnation of what keeps their family alive.

I'm only dwelling on this because the film is such a great tool - and its flaws will reduce its impact.  Those passionate about the environment, especially now, when people seem so much more ready to listen, want to get everything into the conversation.  But I'm afraid, in this very good job, they've included elements that will prevent those least engaged from joining the battle. Take a look - what do you think?  Here's the introductory chapter.  You can see the rest here or on You Tube in chapter elements.

*Funded by the Tides Foundation

**     For example, these:
*In the past three decades, one-third of the planet's natural resource base have been consumed.            *In the United States, we have less than 4% of our original forests left.
*The U.S.has 5% of the world’s population but consumes 30% of the world’s resources4 and creates 30% of the world’s waste.
*The average US person now consumes twice as much as they did 50 years ago. 
*In the  US, we spend 3-4 times as many hours shopping as our counterparts in Europe do.
*Each person in the US makes 4.5 pounds of garbage a day - twice what we each made 30 years ago.

HUNDRED DOLLAR LAPTOP: ONE PER CHILD - AN UPDATE

The One Laptop Per Child project is an exciting one; I've written about it before; that November 3rd post garnered a remarkable level of traffic.  On Christmas eve, another story appeared.  Here's how it starts: 

Laptop Project Enlivens Peruvian Hamlet Dec 24, By Frank Bajak  [this is also an AP photo]

ARAHUAY, Peru (AP) - Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago.

These offspring of peasant families whose monthly earnings rarely exceed the cost of one of the $188 laptops - people who can ill afford pencil and paper much less books - can't get enough of their "XO" laptops.

At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them - if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines.

"It's really the kind of conditions that we designed for," Walter Bender, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff, said of this agrarian backwater up a precarious dirt road.

You can read the rest here.  It's popping up all over the place.  The state of Maine has had wonderful results in its efforts to distribute laptops to junior high kids, too.  You don't have to go into the developing world to see the value of universal access, even in places where it may seem far-fetched unless you know the machine and its capacity.  Here's more.

More resources:

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)        http://laptop.org/

OLPC Wiki                                  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home

Nicholas Negroponte at TED          http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/41

60 Minutes piece                          http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/69/one_laptop_per_child

 

THE $100 LAPTOP - FOR EVERY CHILD (FROM 11/12 DONATE ONE - GET ANOTHER FOR YOUR FAVORITE KID) *

This is what One Laptop Per Child looks like: a remarkable idea taking root in remarkable places.  Founded by legendary Internet pioneer Nicolas Negroponte, its mission is to get every kid in the developing world a simple laptop for a more active way of learning described as "Giving children good things to do so that they can learn by doing much better than they could before." The concept was developed by Seymour Papert, creator of Lego Logo - a simple computer learning system both my kids used in elementary school,  Alan Kay and other legends of technology and education.

Think about this:  if you grow up wandering around the world online, won't your perspective on that world be broad and curious?  If you create a game to teach fractions, won't you learn them more completely?  They call it "learning learning."

In 2002 every Middle Schooler in Maine got a laptop.  The Maine Learning Technology Initiative has reported great results from the initial laptop distribution by 2005.  If there is significant performance improvement in a reasonably well-resourced environment, think what it can do for one with little access to books, maps or math tools in the earthbound world!

For a brief period starting November 12^th, you can “give one” and “get one.” Buy two laptops for $399. One will go to a child in the developing world; you or your favorite child will get the other one. But act fast – this is only a two week outreach.

If you're interested or want to help, you can visit the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) site here.

*NOTE: In order to observe the Sabbath, this post was written in late October and set to post on Saturday morning.

 

WELCOME TO NABLOPOMO! HOW I SOLVED THE SABBATH PROBLEM

This is a very exciting undertaking - a blog post a day for thirty days!  A little scary, but exciting.  For me though, it offered an extra challenge, one that forced me to drop out last year.  I can't work on the Sabbath.  Every Saturday I observe Orthodox rules about the kindling of light, whether it be a spark plug in a car, a doorbell or a reading lamp.  God told us to rest, and every Sabbath we pray the He be "please with our rest."  It's a pretty big thing.  And it's lovely; beginning with the lighting of Sabbath candles on Friday night and then a festive dinner.  I've come to love the peace of it even though before we began our observant life I thought it was nuts.  It was a great lesson in not prejudging.  Ever.

So of course, there was no way that I could post on Saturdays.  I can't use the computer.  Fortunately, technology solved the problem.  I figured out that if it's ok to use timers for the dining room lights (it is) then I could set a timer for my post.  I'm writing each Saturday post in advance and setting it to be posted on Saturday morning.  And I'll be in Israel for almost half the month so this will also be a great diar.  I'm looking forward to this.