March 2007 Archives
The midterm presentations for Nick Law's thesis seminar went smoothly for all. The guest critics were great, and provided some excellent feedback.
My Presentation Slides [pdf]
The title of this post probably warrant some grandoise diatribe, ranting and fuming, and postulating, etc... Unfortunately, I've got thesis on my plate, so I'll keep it terse, per the recent usual.
So many urban planning exercises fail miserably - in the scope of the communities directly effected. This is at the least disheartening, at most - a catastrophic, apocolyptic premonition of things to come. In my Urban Computing seminar, we have discussed many such failed commitee-run endeavors. The relocation and modification of streets, planned projects, leisure deterrents (spikey things on surfaces upon which people could possibly sit)... Car culture and the suburb phenomenon. Starbuckification.
There just so happens to be a recent current case of community backlash at proposed urban modification — right up the street from my old digs — in Park Slope. The DOT had plans to convert two streets from two-way to one-way — a plan that proposed faster travel. The community, as represented by more than 400 people rejected the plans in a meeting last night.
The above referenced post on Streetsblog made direct reference to top-down vs. bottom-up engineering — public and community-evolved emergence vs. committee dictated planning. This is a great thing, and hopefully we will see more of this in the future.
I've been giving a lot of thought to the issues of ethical data collection and distribution practices that Abe brought up in his post on FreeBase. And while I've yet to arrive at any semblance of a conclusion, I think this [the Metaweb/FreeBase model] is entirely the wrong way to do these things. Succesfully complete undertakings in data classification, storage, collection, and distribution will and should require a different model than previously accepted; A model much more distrubuted, democratic, and tactile.
Lots of hype surrounding Freebase - Danny HIllis's new project that aims to tackle issues of the Semantic Web.
Tim O'Reilly's post over at O'Reilly Radar sparked a ton of controversy, and a bit of discussion of what the Semantic Web actually is, should be, etc. So much discussion that O'Reilly wrote a follow-up post.
I really enjoyed Abe Burmeister's thought-provocing post at Abstract Dynamics. Very critical and well founded, in my opinion.
As much as I hate Foucault...
No Passport For Britons Refusing Mass Surveillance [Slashdot]
This just blows my mind. How, in all that is holy, can someone or some group of people slip something into a bill or other piece of legislation? Do these people read the damn things? Yes, who dunnit is important, but who let it be done is as, if not more important. From the article...
Now, it's not necessarily outrageous that Sen. Specter didn't know what his subordinate slipped into the legislation. The Patriot Reauthorization was a long and hotly debated bill.
...complete bullshit. This isn't some high school book report.
How can democracy work with occurances such as these mishaps so common. I've been considering work in projects dealing with social-democracy [see Matt Burton's thesis for an example of a similar approach]. But what good will an informed public be, when the problem isn't just constituent apathy and ignorance, but real issues within the actual governmental entities themselves?
Jean Baudrillard, the French philosopher passed away yesterday. He was 77, and had been suffering an illness for some time. His mind and soul will be missed.
Last week I finished the Start Here site for T and E at Little Fury. It's been great working with them, and I think the site came out rather well.
The notebooks look awesome. Go buy some.
