Book Reviews | Gordon Campbell | News Flashes | Scoop Features | Scoop Video | Strange & Bizarre | Search

 


500 Words

500 Words

#kiwifoo #webstock #multicoreworld
Industrialised ignorance, creative constraints, the 100 days project
Information overload

And so it begins
This is not the 100 days project
But it is an exercise in creative constraints

I need this
I need the creativity, I need the discipline
I embrace change/improvement

#KiwiFOO

Mega
Is much bigger than people think
Pause for thought

Wikilegislation
Is probably part of the answer
And its easy (so easy)

Clay Johnson vs Aurelia Rose
A battle of wits, a game of power
We revel in our humanity

#webstock

@cjoh : News these days
Is industrialised ignorance
Go on a diet

To answer a question
The solution is to find a better question
Creative constraints FTW

@bruces : The Stacks
Are enormous, powerful and unstoppable
They are also unstable

#multicoreworld

Multicore
Changes everything
Now

Computers
Of the near future are different (much smarter)
Than they are now

Mobile tech has passed
The inflection point, and this is how a new
Boom begins

**** 193 words *****

Covering Notes: All of which is to say that when you write in something like verse - 500 words starts to get pretty dense. And when you write it fast probably a bit loose. I do not intend to edit this as that would just take more time.

The words above relate to events of the past 13 days - three conferences:
#KiwiFoo which is held annually in Warkworth and hosted by Nat Torkington (@gnat), Jenine Abarbanel (@justjenine) and Russell Brown (@publicaddress) is pure magic. It would be fair to say that a few years ago At KiwiFoo I discovered my people, many amazing New Zealanders who make me want to stay here and work here and converse here.

The magic of KiwiFoo is in its nurturing supportive environment which (sadly) is not the standard mode of communication in post-colonial NZ with its roots in suffering both here in NZ and back from where we came from in Ireland and Scotland. Here in NZ we all too often bring each other down.

As night follows day #webstock follows KiwiFoo (the following Thursday and Friday).

And this year's Webstock was for me the best yet. To me anyway. I mentioned to someone at the after party that it had been rather "mindblowing", "the best one yet", and "it felt like the internet was growing up a bit" and she replied "yeahmmmmm but that's what we say every year".

Ubiquitous awesomeness is such a drag sometimes!

Webstock is always for me a bit like an operating system update….
…. But that story will need to wait till tomorrow as I am approaching my word limit for today.

Fortunately here at the beginning of my "writing 500 words a day before I read my email" project I have lots to say. I can see now that it's going to have to be top of the head stuff. But there is plenty of that needing a home and it will be fun.

And so it begins.

- Alastair Thompson 9.33am 22/2/13

© Scoop Media

 
 
 
 
 
Top Scoops Headlines

 

Catherine Austin Fitts: The Real Deal: Make Way For Killers & The Tax Haven Round Up

There are no scandals in Washington. There is simply a turnover. We are preparing for an escalation of the global financial war. The old team are simply being told to step aside. Make way for the killers. When G-7 concluded their emergency meeting in London last weekend, they announced that they were going to target tax havens. What does this mean? After months of G-7 central banks buying mortgage bonds and equities, the hunt for capital is on. More>>

Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham: The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets The Heart Of Science

Journal editors have a lot of power in science – power that provides opportunities for abuse. The life science industry knows this, and has increasingly moved to influence and control science publishing. The strategy, often with the willing cooperation of publishers, is effective and sometimes blatant. In 2009, the scientific publishing giant Elsevier was found to have invented an entire medical journal... More>>

Richard S. Ehrlich: Racism At The Heart Of Fight Among Buddhists And Muslims

Buddhists and Muslims are clashing with increasing ferocity in Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka where minority Islamic ethnic groups blame racism by majority Buddhists more than religious intolerance. "It is like the K.K.K. (Klu Klux Klan) in America during the period of the civil rights movement," said Myo Win, a Muslim activist based in Yangon, Myanmar... More>>

Binoy Kampmark: The Mining Myth: Sustainability And Development

It has been a fiction that has held sway for a time. Mining booms create trickledown wealth. It is tagged as “sustainable” when it is premised on temporariness. Natural resources work for countries that possess them in abundance. Only on the periphery do we see the sense of foreboding that comes with these assets, be it the murder of such leaders as Patrice Lumumba in the Congo... More>>


Ramzy Baroud: Israel, Hawking And The Pressing Question Of Boycott

It is an event “of cosmic proportions”, said one Palestinian academic, a befitting description regarding Stephen Hawking’s decision to boycott an Israeli academic conference slated for next June. It was also a decisive moral call which was communicated on May 8 by Cambridge University, where Hawking is a professor. More>>

Binoy Kampmark: Angelina Jolie: Breasts, Celebrity And Choice

Popular culture, and celebrity, have come to this. A well-endowed personality, a figure of celluloid appeal, has to justify to the other-worldliness of an action personal and specific to the person in question. That a woman has to have a mastectomy brings with it pains within and without – not merely the challenges to her body but her family and friendship circle. In the case of celebrity... More>>

David Swanson: How Your Town Can Stop Drones

Local resolutions have helped advance many issues, including war opposition, when they've been passed in large numbers. When we passed a resolution in Charlottesville, Va., last year opposing any attack on Iran, I heard from numerous cities that wanted to do the same. As far as I know... More>>

John Spritzler: Uri Avnery's Specious Attack On The One State Solution

Uri Avnery may be the most sophisticated defender of Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. He defends this ethnic cleansing while posing as a great friend and sympathizer of Palestinians, supposedly proven by his opposition to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and support for a "two state solution." More>>

ALSO:

Get More From Scoop

 
 
TEDxAuckland
 
 
 
 
 
Top Scoops
Search Scoop  
 
 
Powered by Vodafone
NZ independent news