fisharepeopletoo

a lot more

Holly's reply is a lot more insightful than my lazy bit of self publicising, and a lot better than it deserved.

But I can't quite get rid of the feeling (or the hope), dumb as I am.

That if everything isn't as much in play now as it can ever be, then when will it ever be?

That this can't be the only time that people have thought, or hoped, so.

And that we are trying to keep everything in play for as long as we possibly can, because it will end.

Why MPs Were Right to Fiddle their Expenses

Because we let them.

Corruption is the UK is structural not personal.

What are those structures?

Is it because we are the second most centralised country in the world after North Korea?

Which means we are all victims of invisible analogue corruption that is far worse than the cost of a few tins of cat food*.

And, if you want my opinion, the way to end that structural corruption is to

• break up the English nation state* completely - it shouldn't even have a darts team, let alone a "parliament"
• replace it with a constellation of self governing city-states and regions
• give them power to make their own laws, raise taxes, conduct foreign policy and have their own darts teams

that way, the people to whom you grant authority to act on your behalf won't need a "second home allowance" because they will live on your street and work in your town hall, and if they abuse your trust, you can go round and wring their necks.

Of course, my opinion isn't worth sh**e (but nor is anyone else's from outside the centre of real, analogue, power).

And it's not very likely to happen anyway (but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying to make it happen.)

But if we are up in arms about the cat food, we have a responsibility to ask how it happened, be honest about who else has benefited from letting it happen*, and take responsibility for doing what is needed to stop it happening any more.

Asterisks:
*What do you think Peter Mandelson was doing on that Russian oligarch's yacht last summer? Talking about the football? A Lord and a gangster were carving up your life. How do you think the world's financial institutions got so "de regulated"? Anyone ask you if you thought it was a good idea to put your job and your mortgage at risk so that over-networked smug idiots could pay for their single estate first press olive oil importing businesses?

*nation states are sooo 19th century.

* And among those who benefit are the very same people stirring up the outrage in order to sell a few more copies of the Pyongyang Daily Worker.

Birth. School. Work. Death.

"six months of anonymous cell phone records from more than 100,000 people in a European country, obtained from a European cell phone provider. Those cell phone records gave an approximation of each person's location at the time of each call, because cell phone calls are routed through the nearest cell tower.

He and his colleagues found that people tend not to stray far -- almost three quarters of the people stayed mainly within about a 20-mile circle for the entire six months, and nearly half the people rarely strayed outside a six-mile circle. They also tended to go back and forth regularly between only a few locations, such as home and work."

link

Why Twitter didn't break the MPs expenses scandal

Because real political power is analogue, and so completely invisible to the rest of us.

If you know enough to know that MPs are fiddling their expenses, this is how you "tweet" it: you walk up to a lobby correspondent in a Westminster pub and tell them.

Is local government the Cinderella of politics?

We don't care about politics because we understand, quite rightly, that no one in positions of power over nation states and beyond (elected or otherwise) gives a flying f**k about us or anything we might ever need, care about or wish for.

Maybe local government is, or could be, different?

"we are at the stage of the invention of the television camera"

"In the development of the internet and connected, two-way media, we are at the stage of the invention of the television camera...

We have not yet created media or entertainment native to the internet. We will not for a while, it’s going to take us time."

From the blog of one of the blokes who runs the internet story company Six to Start.

I'm not sure about it being the invention of the TV camera - "birth of cinema moment" sounds cooler.

But otherwise I'd pretty much agree with that.

Which is why I've been trying to figure out  what are stories for mixed realities?

Here are some of the states of the art  so far.

"Would you buy a mixed reality narrative from these men?"

Des and Tony at the Mid Yorkshire Region Used Car Dealers Association Annual Black Tie Gala Dinner Dance and Awards Evening with the coveted Best Reconditioned Family Touring Saloon Award.

Thumbprint featured in today's Guardian @guardiantech #Guardian @mobileactive

Thumbprint is featured in Victor Keegan's column in today's Technology Guardian in an article about hyperlocal.

The column emphasises the way Thumbprint is designed for quick and easy development of new models of use in any number of contexts, from historical tours to neighbourliness and helping to reduce the fear of crime, and highlights how easily Thumbprint integrates mobile with web based tools and services such as Flickr and Audioboo.

It's nice that the history element is mentioned because one of the things I'm working on at the moment is about how everyday-mobile technology can be part of the ongoing process of contest to make, and remake, the history of very diverse public places like London's Brick Lane.

It's something I'm working on with academics in museum and heritage studies, and unlikely as it might sound, they have very sophisticated ideas about mobile technology for civic and social innovation.

Thumbprint is the perfect tool for the contest about history of public places, especially in places where the communities are diverse, changing and mobile, and I might get chance to talk about it at the first UK Mobile Active meeting next week.

But maybe I'll just mention monsters and Foldups instead ;-)

A Box of Foldups #futr09

If you are at Futuresonic ask me for a copy. I'll have a pocketful.

Foldup launches tomorrow at @Futuresonic09 #futr09

OK so "launches" "at" "Futuresonic", if you put it like that, might not be strictly true - Futuresonic is too cool for comics and monsters after all ;-)

But I'll be at Futuresonic with a pocket full of Foldups which I will be leaving around the place and handing out to unsuspecting strangers.