Internet

I’m sitting in the train and get passed a link to a piece from Süddeutsche Zeitung about the internet and its sharing culture. This being my more-or-less favorite German newspaper, I dig into it expecting it to yield a solid piece of thought that will cause me to reflect on my online behaviour.

Work on the Pigs continues though my part is sort of finished now. The rest of the team is very busy getting the thing into the stable.

I just pulled out this stuff from my weeknote into a separate post because I think it merited it.

A rather interesting capitalist reflection on Facebook by Rob Horning at The New Inquiry and why online activism never changes anything.

A couple of days ago I got an answer on behalf of Ms. Neelie Kroes with regards to my inquiry about computational literacy (which I asked during her visit to Berlin during re:publica):

Culture flat rates are named both in the Netherlands and in Germany as a solution to the problem of copyright piracy.

Writing these notes on a Sunday afternoon wit a mug of steaming coffee within reach as they are meant to be written.

We’re seeing this more and more among the edgiest of shops. The Netherlands has already had a massive shift towards freelancers (ZZP’ers). It is only natural that they would band together regularly to accomplish company level work but without the ties and inertia normally associated with employment.

Last Wednesday I was at a gathering by the Institue for Internet and Society here in Berlin in collaboration with Deutschlandfunk called “Berliner Gespräche” about how the internet influences society.

Going over the list of services that the municipality of Amsterdam offers this week, I couldn’t help but notice this:

In 2011:

Ik heb hier wel vaker geschreven over de beroerde webstreams beschikbaar voor Radio 1 bij de omroep. Daar is nu verandering in gekomen en het is nu af te spelen in Windows Media, Quicktime of Real.

In the beginning of the week I spotted an interesting dataset on Sargasso, requested to play with it and got the following visual published the next day (our write-up).

Some remaindered weeknotes that have been the casualty of an international move.

I think most of the thinking around The Filter Bubble comes from people who are not very procedurally literate to begin with. That is to say they are not very adept at understanding the rules that govern interactive systems nor are they well equipped at reconfiguring them to suit their ends. I touch on this because the same tired argument was parroted in this Zeit interview with Miriam Meckel, a leading German communication scientist 1. It starts off with some very sensible sentiments but then it quickly derails on the topic of algorithms and concludes on several sidelines.

I had a great time last week working at the Makers Loft in Kreuzberg while our friends of Gidsy were out and about in San Francisco.

I’m incredibly proud of the team and events coming together in our organization of the biggest Hack de Overheid feature yet. Looking back on the past year, it has been an incredible ride with the various Apps for… competitions and no small amount of personal and professional changes.

It has become even easier to find your way to our office in the Coop. Just follow the green yellow line.

This was a short week. Work on Apps voor Nederland and then off to Playful.

To all you who have won awards (and to all you who haven’t):

Ik was twee weken geleden op een bijeenkomst van de STT over serious games en ik was een beetje teleurgesteld dat de enige kritische reflectie op het onderwerp van de dag —kansen in serious games en gamification— kwam van super-filosoof Jos de Mul. Hoe goed zijn kritiek dan ook was, kritiek van een filosoof is te gemakkelijk weg te wuiven door mensen uit de praktijk. Nederland blijf een land van handelaars en nering is hier de makkelijkste manier om de handen op elkaar te krijgen.

Mensen die mij kennen weten dat ik nooit echt dingen retweet en me bezig hou met goede doelen. Alleen één keer per jaar maak ik een uitzondering voor Bits of Freedom omdat ik wat ze doen echt heel belangrijk vind en omdat ik weet dat ze het heel goed doen.

I thought this piece: “Amazon and the reintermediation of the spectacle” my Michael Smethurst was well worth reading. Here are some choice excerpts, but these are mainly for me. You should read the entire thing.

So this was announced: A Netherlands wide apps competition called Apps voor Nederland was announced by several ministries today at PICNIC. Minister for the interior Donner delivered a video message as well.

Another long form weeknote, history recapping brought by the fantastic Memolane service which aggregates my various media chronologically so I can quickly write this overview.

A new experiment, extended weeknotes combined with assorted reading and outtakes. I think this may be more fun for me to write and more fun for you to read.

Monday I went off exploring a fort for an upcoming Hack de Overheid event. The industrial scenery and weather at the sea locks of IJmuiden was positively apocalyptic that day.

Last week a bunch of visual progress was made on culiacán. Expect an August release on that.

Last Monday I paid an information architecture house call at a friend at one of the beleaguered (a somewhat redundant word when discussing print publications here) Dutch weeklies. Looking forward to advice taken to heart and maybe some online Dutch media that I can consume with pleasure.

Monday I spent all day planning the Statlas release and encountered some showstoppers still. That night I went to Utrecht for This Happened.

We zijn al een tijdje bezig met Statlas en het is de hoogste tijd dat een eerste versie het daglicht ziet om te laten zien wat voor iets tofs we hebben gemaakt en te horen wat jullie ervan vinden. Dus voor jullie ogen: Statlas

Monday I did some support and then went off to the UvA to present on data journalism together with Stef.

Sommigen hebben het al gezien, ik heb een kleine site gemaakt waar ik een fotoportfolio kwijt kan.

Lifting choice quotes from the proceedings of the Berkman Hyperpublic event graciously compiled by Ethan Zuckerman.

Seeing this presentation in Amsterdam as the culmination of Mobile Monday, was something great. The far reaching vision and reality based optimism Kevin Slavin lays down (his comments) are something we should aspire to. It is worth watching and watching again.

Lots of writing last week. We submitted the maguro project as a practice report to the DiGRA conference. Also wrote a bit of damage control on the Apps for Amsterdam contest regarding the implications of a certain submission: “Dude! Where’s my car?” Decisions made border on the ludicrous and it falls upon us as Hack de Overheid to choose the side of sanity. Finally I punched out some meta-writing about the conundrums of writing (or trying to write) for larger audiences: “Why write about games?”

Adam Greenfield’s keynote at Cognitive Cities prompted several thoughts about the nature of public space.

Is it Wednesday already? We’re a bit in a production down cycle, but you wouldn’t notice for the lack of administrativa that needs dealing with.

The weekly bit of media consisted of a brief Radio 1 excerpt about the issue of new anti-piracy legislation. This is of course futile and I did my best to explain such in a couple of minutes and a blogpost.

Update: Het staat al online!

There’s a bunch being said about Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows”. Most notably a lot of print media jumping onto the the Ever-Betters bandwagon. Obviously Carr stating that reading long form print is being drowned out by the internet is right up the alley of the old media in their death throes.