my contemplations

I’ve been intrigued by the Web 2.0 developments for more than 18 months now, trying to understand it, trying to follow the developments, and trying to see the implications. Most of this has been in blogging, and more and more I realize that I simply do not seem to have time keep up to date with everything happening and changing.

Although I’ve been a huge wikipedia fan, as you will find out if you follow the links I use to, for example, movies, I think I’ve only made one contribution ever, and that was the birth date of Anne Clayborn on the Mars Trilogy page, if I remember correctly. Recently, however, I’ve been introduced to wikispaces by someone in the congregation. We started generating the content for our new church website on wikispaces, and then I set up another wikispace for an alternative camp we are attempting in July.

But my current idea is to actually produce my whole mini-dissertation which need to be written in the next few months on a wikispace. It will be on something like: David Bosch as Public Theologian: the public role of the church in the theology of David Bosch. As I proceed I’ll publish parts I’ve written, and thoughts I have, there, which would provide the opportunity for anyone interested to fine-tune my thoughts through questions, alternative formulations, thoughts I haven’t had yet etc. Obviously in the end I’ll have to publish a final version for which only I can take responsibility, but by then I’ll have the advantage that many people have sharpened my thoughts.

So, if you have interest in the topic, or interest in the idea of producing the dissertation like this, or interest in David Bosch, do follow the wikispace here, you can also sign up for the RSS feed.

What do you think? How would copyright laws and plagiarism rules and everything apply to this? Is this possible? Can I legally do this within a university system? Would anyone even think of actually taking part in the conversation around an others Masters dissertation?

Just heard about the latest fight concerning Rowling’s copyright of the Harry Potter books and the encyclopedia that Steven Vander Ark want’s to bring out. It stands in a comical contrast to the previous post. Blog writers are generating content at a tremendous rate, and some are saying “please copy my content”, not caring where it is discussed as long as it is discussed. Book writers are generating content and fighting about copyright. OK, so some blog writers also worry about copyright.

I just can’t see how the extreme copyright fights of the past can be sustained in this climate. Can Rowling, or any blog writer, claim the copyright for everything they write? Doesn’t the community in which it was written, which provided the environment for the creativity to come out also have right on the “intelectual property” of what was written? Can an individual really claim “intelectual property” of anything? Obviously plagiarism is just wrong, but is that because it is stealing, or because it limits the conversation between humans if we don’t take you back to the source of an idea? Well OK, this was just a short thought, maybe I’ll put my thoughts into writing some other day.

I guess the religious blogs ain’t always clued up with what’s going on in the IT world. With IT blogs the medium and content have such a natural link that these blogs will generally be more clued up on the newest in Web 2.0 technologies. But for the rest of us, we are using blogs, readers and all the rest, so we might as well try and use it well.

So I follow scobleizer from time to time, and yesterday on this post, he linked to a post by Louis Gray in which the current trends in RSS readers are explained. What seems to be happening, as far as I can understand it, is that RSS readers are creating their own communities with discussions going on, comments being posted, which never get onto the blog of origen.

Some are mad about it, some not. As for me, I’ll just keep on generating content, and if someone is discussing is, wherever, whenever, and whether thye like it or not, I’ll be happy. Obviously it would be nice to take part in discussions around content you create, but I don’t think I create content to see how much comments I can get.

I’ve been a sci-fi fan all my life, since I can remember. I don’t know why, neither of my parents has ever been very fond of the genre, my brother two years younger haven’t made much of it (I have indoctrinated my little brother, 7 years younger than me, with this however). I never had friends that fond of the genre until getting to university. But we always had an interest in technology, and at age 7/8 I started looking at the stars, I was reading the parts in encyclopedias on the planets since I could read. My parents had an important influence in getting me interested in these things, told me all about the Apollo program ever since I could listen, but never knew that rather than becoming a scientist, I would end up reading stories about astronauts.

I remember looking for every sci-fi book I could find in the junior section of the library. And when moving to the adult section at age 15/16, I discovered a whole new world of sci-fi. A big part of this world was Arthur C Clark, he eventually led me to Stephen Baxter while at university. But the best I’ve ever read remains the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.

I’ve been blessed with awesome friends, both while in high school, and also at university. This has been people who challenged by thoughts, with whom I could dream up rockets, planes, programs, robots. Discuss whatever was going on. At university conversations turned to politics, economics, and especially poverty. But at some point in the past year or two, I can’t remember when or how it happened. We started discussing ecology and global warming. This was some time before an inconvenient truth, and before everyone around us was discussing it.

The last few months more and more people are discussing this, we’ve seen the coming to light of two popular documentaries (here and here) which are shaking the world, and a number of books. But still many of us have the feeling that nothing is going to change, since it’s still a selected intellectual group of people taking part in the conversation.

However, I belief sci-fi can help us with this. Already in the past sci-fi writers have touched on the topic of ecological disaster in the future, the Mars Trilogy was one, and also global warming (although not on global warming, see the recent Sunstorm by Clark and Baxter for how the human race react when the temperature of the earth rise at a tremendous rate).

The point at which I think these writers can help us, is by capturing the imagination of the public. Documentaries will never be able to do that. But stories and movies, they are able to capture imagination. By addressing questions like the following:
- How will ecological friendly living look like in the future, and thus, what can it look like today?
- What will happen if a worst case scenario happens?
- What will happen if we do nothing?
- What will communities look like in a post-warm, over-crowded earth, not only technologically, but also sociologically?

This and other questions can be addressed in stories in a way which will probably find a much wider appeal, especially if put into film, and help to grab the imagination of all the people of the earth. But still, even if doing this, the question of poor communities remain…

We went to see the 11th hour tonight. It’s basically a documentary, with experts all over the different fields talking about global warming and ecological disasters, and some video footage inbetween. It’s good. But walking out through Brooklyn mall I told Maryke that the call is simply too big. Everything I do should change. The clothes I wear, the light currently burning, the car I drive, the electricity I buy, everything. And in all honesty, I’m not sure if I am ready for this… but I firmly believe that I should change what I do and how I do it to become more ecology friendly.

The documentary touch on some thoughts I’ve been having the past few months, on how communities should change and function in order to provide a more ecological alternative. It’s about use of technology, but it’s about much more than that, it’s looking holistically at how we “do community” with the shadow of ecological disaster looming.

One of the things they talk about a lot by the end is how our buildings should function to make them more ecology friendly. Buildings with solar panels providing energy, where waste is reverted back into the system, which is better insulated, using some form of natural air conditioning, buildings functioning like trees, buildings with lots of plants in them. It’s really like putting onto screen some of the visions I’ve been having for how we should live! So I enjoyed it.

But I have some questions. It’s very nice for America, but how are we going to put solar panels on every shack in Mamelodi? How are we going to change every house in Soweto to be better insulated? How are we going to green Shoshanguve, with plants growing on the roof of every home, plants growing everywhere?

I agree with the conclusion of the documentary, that the answer is not in taking of our clothes and going back to living in the wild, for one, that would mean killing of abour 6 billion people, because earth cannot support all of us if we dump all our technology. No, we are a technological society, and that is fine, but clean technologies do exist. They predict that we can cut the “human footprint” left on earth by 90% by using cleaner technologies already available, or nearly available. But again, how do we implement this in poorer countries?

You could use the argument that the developed countries are the largest users, and thus, if we can change their energy output, and CO2 output, we will make a large difference, and that would be correct. But do we really expect the poor countries to sit around in poverty, not digging up their fossil fuels, because the earth is warming up, not using or outputting lots of energy, because that will cause warming of the earth, if doing this could give them the same opportunities which they saw the developed countries take 50 years ago? Not gonna happen!

We need to take the problems serious. Very serious! But the developing countries would need to be helped to get “clean” as well. How about this for an idea: Tax polluting companies, the fossil fuel industries, and use the tax to install clean energy forms in developing countries, and improve housing to be more ecological friendly. Why, we could also put a tax onto running armies, for all the pollution they cause, and maybe just for suffering in general, and then tax the huge American fleet, airforce and army for all the fossils they are burning.

Any thoughts? How do we make poor areas and countries ecologically friendly, and furthermore help to put things in place which would help them not to become polluting countries?

You will find by facebook status in the sidebar. I got the idea from Adam Cleaveland Walker. For the facebook fans also blogging.

Log into facebook, onto your profile, go down to mini-feeds.

In the right hand corner, click on “see all”.

Now click on Status stories.

At the bottom of the stories, you’ll find My Status, right click, and copy shortcut.

In WordPress.com, go to presentation, to the widgets.

Drag the RSS 1 widget in.

Open the text, and past the shortcut into the URL box.

Set it for the amount of feeds you would like to see (mine is set to 3 feeds at the moment)

Wahlah! You have you’re Facebook status shown to everybody who visits your blog. Now everyone will know that you are down, having a bad time, and leave you a comment to chear you up, or something And now Maryke will actually know what I’m doing with my life

I just read Is google Evil? in Popular Mechanics, March 2007, and the largest part of A Head for Detail in Popular Mechanics, May 2007. And I read The Light of Other Days a few days ago. So, put these together, and you’ll realize that we will have to develop a whole new way of thinking about ethics.

I’m using Engineering Ethics, and although published in 2005, this book is totally incapable of helping us sort out the ethical questions brought forth by these articles. Something like privacy has been a generally accepted norm for all of mankind. You had the right to have secrets. Yeah, we said that honesty should be a key moral value, but still, you had the power over what others know and do not know.

How would our ethics look if everyone can know everything that anyone has ever put on the internet about you? It was unacceptable to dig in someone else’s file cabinet. But is it unacceptable to run a google search about them, and gain the same information that way? All of us get the opportunity to start over, not because people give us the opportunity, but because we decide to take it. High School kids decide to go to far-off universities, so that no one will know them, so that they can start over. But for how long? People end of bad relationships, decide to start over. But who of us haven’t ran a search on people we love. Why, we do it just for the heck of it, not to catch them out or anything. But already you won’t only find your loved ones on a list showing all the names of people attended a conference, but how about on the blog of some x-boyfriend freak telling you about all the things she wished she could just forget about. I think I’m just scratching the surface here.

May we put together profiles of people, that will give us a better picture about all their dark secrets than we could have gotten by just getting to know them the “normal” way? Yes, you pastors. What if google leaked your search info. What if everyone would find out 10 years from now that at one stage in your life you ran searches for porn? Leak your surf history? No longer you that decide to store those nasty magazines (don’t get me wrong, I’m TOTALLY against porn) under your bed, with no one knowing about it. No way, someone else hold the key now.

What if, and in many churches this might even be worse, your church council would find out that you are thinking about theological questions which is “out of line”? They might find out that you’ve searched for that new book which is supposed to be herecy, or visited the website of that certain theological group which ask questions that’s not allowed. How will we develop an ethic which will give people the necessary categories (there must be a better word, please help me) which will guide them through this? And this is but the beginning! The challenge ying ahead of us might not be that our memories get erased, like in Men in Black or Heroes, but that what happened never get erased, that anyone can know!

We’ll be needing a whole new ethics in while. I realized that a few weeks ago at the synod. The question about homosexuality is just the beginning. I think we might get through the next synod (2010) without having some serous medical ethics question to worry about, but I believe that will be the last one for many decades. Genetic engineering is coming up. Will you “fix up” your “potentially incorrect” children?