A fascinating interview with Richard Thieme | Linux Journal who is described as a philosopher of information technology, describing the interactions between technology and human experience. A number of points stand out for me in this interiew by Mick Bauer. Here are three that I think are particularly worthy of consideration.

Thieme asserts that computer technology defines our reality in a similar way to language. Modern culture has been formed through its interaction with and interpretation of written texts:

I could see by contrast that interacting with text on computers created a different experience, shifted how we thought about our possibilities, our work, meaning, ourselves--everything.

Secondly, the long term impact of technology:

In the short term, we always overstate the effects of new technologies. But in the long run, we always understate them.

Finally, on the role of unconventional thinkers who cross the boundaries of disciplines and conventional ways of acting and thinking:

First, they sound crazy. Then, they sound funny. Then, people attack them. Then, everybody believes that they always agreed with them all along. That's when you know their way of seeing things has become the core of a new consensus reality, and already new truths that contradict that are arriving on the edges.

One of the major problems in managing a weblog, or any site where visitors can leave comments, is that there are some that abuse the open nature of the web in order to advertise either unsavoury goods or copied software. These are the spammers. Their ploy is to insert their url into as thousands of sites in order to achieve a high search engine rating.

Their are various solutions to this, none of them entirely effective, but I found an interesting discussion on the alternatives at Sitepoint.

The danger in all this, as in any community that includes those that abuse freedom, is that the security measures we find necessary start to undermine the very freedoms we wish to preserve. This is where measures taken at the individual level are inadequate. We also need action at government level to put web abusers out of business.

Firefox is an excellent internet browser that runs on both Linux and Windows machines. It can be downloaded here.

Some of the features I particulary like:

The search toolbar. You can add your own favourites here. Note for Linux users: You need to change the permissions of /opt/MozillaFirefox/lib/searchplugins to 777 (read-write-execute for everyone). The command is chmod 777 /opt/MozillaFirefox/lib/searchplugins I'm not sure whether its a security hole if you leave it like that, but you can set it back to 755 after loading the plugin.

Live RSS feeds. If you haven't discovered RSS, this is a great way of getting news feeds in a way that eliminates endless browsing from site to site. The bookmarks sidebar gives you all the current articles for each selected feed.

Tabbed windows. You can have as many browser windows open as you like, all arranged as tabs at the top of the page. Very convenient.

Its fast

and especially, its not M$ ...just goes to show that monopolistic and predatory business practices do not lead to better technology.

Here's a comment from an article by Steven Johnson at wired.com on the blogging phenomena:

Ever since the Web entered the popular consciousness, observers have noted that it puts information at your fingertips but tends to keep wisdom out of reach. In a space organized around connected minds, however, the search for wisdom becomes more promising.

I found this link from another blogger at elearningpost, which I think proves the point of what Johnson is saying in his article about the potential of blogging to build shared knowledge and even wisdom.

Another article by Stever Robbins at the Harvard Business School website is based on the premise that success in present day organisations depends on learning. In order to change we need to learn and this requires reflection and time, not something that is built into the structure of a global and web based economy, in which:

the expectation that responding immediately is far more important than responding thoughtfully

This comment from Knowledge@Wharton intrigued me:

In some ways the Internet is still more significant as a cultural phenomenon than as the basis for new ways of doing business.

One way of looking at culture is as a set of distinctive customs and patterns of behaviour. That is only at the surface level, and at a deeper level culture is about the way that we expect to solve problems which may include practical needs or the way that we deal with other people.

In this second sense, if the internet is a cultural phenomena then at some point it will inevitably alter the way that business is done. It cannot be otherwise since culture is simply one way of describing the kind of people we are and the way we do things.

There are one or two other aspects to this. The internet is a global phenomena. That means that this technology of information and communication is presenting a common global context for human interaction. People of disparate cultures and geographies are interacting, increasingly in real time, in a medium that presents a common structure. Will this have the effect of blurring the boundaries between cultures, or of imposing one culture on all others, a MacDonaldisation of virtual space? I think this is unlikely. Human nature has a way of bursting out of fixed constraints in surprising ways. There will always be local expressions of culture and ways of doing things. With the internet however, these local expressions are not geographically located. Instead of physical space providing a locus, it will be interests, tasks, and functions that provide the locus of culture for an interconnected society.

Another aspect that needs mentioning is that in terms of the implementation of information technology we are still at an early stage. I see three distinct stages to the introduction of any new technology. During the first stage the new technology enables the improvement of existing processes. These processes are component parts of some overall organisational objective. A second stage can be indentified in which the processes themselves begin to evolve and transform in conformity with the nature of the technology. The third stage is reached when the organisation and its fundamental objectives are transformed according to the nature of the new operating environment in which the technology has become embedded.

Going back to the starting point of the internet as a cultural phenomena, the way that business is carried out and the way that many other human interactions are carried out will be massively effected by the internet. The reason that is not yet the case is that we are little further than the first stage in the implementation of information technology. Some of our processes are indeed being transformed, but it will still be some time before the full implications for the way that we organise ourselves and the very goals and objectives that we work for will also be transformed.

When thinking of where we are going in the future, I always find it useful to cast an eye back to the past. The future of the internet and of information technology is a fascinating theme, and one that has profound implications for our future as human beings.

Developments including so called "trusted computing", digital rights management, and nano technology portend seismic changes in the geography of human life. Maybe the past is unable to give us clues as to what lies ahead, but at least it can help us keep our bearing as we remember from where we have come.

The internet itself has its beginnings in the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency) at the beginning of the 1960's. This was a collaborative project of research scientists sharing networked computer resources and communicating with one another to the benefit of their various projects. All very "white-coat", but what they have shared with the rest of us is a technology through which the resources of human knowledge can be shared to the mutual benefit of us all. I really hope we can hold on to that vision as technology advances, often driven by very different sets of motives. But even in the business world the metaphors of networking, partnership, and value community have become accepted wisdom. I very much hope that as technologies continue to advance, as old ways of doing things, and even old business models become outdated thus threatening the very touchy subject of profit, that we will be able to maintain the spirit of collaboration, communication, and community that marked the beginnings of the internet.