The Openness Bug Revisited
June 15, 2009
I am reminded of the other meaning of openness – that of openness to new ideas, to new challenges and to play.
I don’t think that it is coincidence that some of the core ideas behind being creative use the same term as the discourse of truth. When was the last time that you played ? I don’t mean on a Nintendo playing Super Mario (yes I’m that old). I mean, really had unstructured fun with something or someone, where you tested boundaries in a naive way, where you threw an idea into the mix that was just plain silly, where you built something with no realistic use.
The last time that I remember was while struggling with a group project. We all had different points of view, everyone was compromising in order to retain group cohesion, we were all being pragmatic, but we were failing to reach the goal of producing an innovative exploration of systemic change in technical systems. We’d tried looking at theoretical analyses, historic studies, gap analysis, all sorts of approaches, but each came to a dead-end because one or more of us didn’t buy-in or because it was just plain dull.
So we started to play instead. Random ideas, quickly pitched ( a few seconds), silly things, we were laughing and having fun with it. We took one of the ideas, thinking ‘Well, we didn’t come up with anything great, but at least it’ll be fun’. Once we started working on it seriously it became more and more obvious that, in fact, the fun idea was actually quite a good one. We developed it and researched it to the point where we eventually found that a major international company had already sunk $10′s millions into developing the same idea to prototype. OK, we didn’t get there first but our hydrogen-powered fuel cell agricultural vehicle was born of openness to play and to new ideas.
The Openness Bug
June 11, 2009
I’ll admit it, I have a thing about openness. Whether it be personal or professional I strongly prefer ‘open’ communication. It can be coded if you like, to save blushes where social norms preclude a frank discussion, but if you can’t be honest then there is something in what you are doing or saying that doesn’t sit well somewhere along the line.
I’ve advocated quantifying veracity as a way to pry apart the doors of truth and I am 100% with Tim Berners-Lee when he asks for access to previously closed databases. So it is really heartening to see that, firstly I’m not the only nutter out there, but secondly that even the US administration is taking this topic seriously. Take a look at the US Chief Information Officer’s (Vivek Kundra) Blog and see what you think.
The US has always been miles ahead of the UK in terms of accountability and a big part of that is because the raw data is available. Until relatively recently this didn’t really help that much because all data was compartmentalised in its originating department. Things are changing.
Check out Data.gov. Its not perfect and I don’t have a clue whether it is ALL the available data (the fact that they are asking what other datasets we would like to see suggests that it isn’t), but its a step in the right direction.
We need the UK and the EU to do the same and more.
PhD Place
May 28, 2009
I’ve just heard that I have a place to do my doctorate, to start this September.
My research question is about how information flows between individuals (such as you and I) interacting online (as we are doing now) are translated into actions in face space.
I won’t bore you with the whole text, but I’ll be using the debate around energy, how its ‘won’, distributed and used, to explore how directly what is said here online relates to the actuality.
Around that are issues of subjective and objective truth, leadership, social network formation and evolution and the formation of social norms within those social networks. In a wider context there are applications within future political debates and engagement, cross-boundary politics, establishment of new social norms, assessment of online veracity and even interpretation of citizen journalism.
I’m looking forward to it. I just need to find a few extra quid to make sure that I don’t go hungry doing it 
A Grand Opening with Streamers and a Band
February 28, 2009
So.
This is my first blog. I’ve been published before in the real world, many times, but these are my first words directly into the blogosphere. I’m going to approach this as a child and learn as I go rather than reading pages of techniques and such. Learning by doing is so much better than theory, don’t you think ?
I guess that I should try and explain a little of who I am and what I do to fill my time.
I’m a full-time student right now. A balding, bearded, portly full-time student doing my second masters degree in my mid-thirties. I live in England in a very pleasant spot near the sea. Its one of my favourite places in the world. I have seen a fair bit of the world, most of Europe, bits of Japan, Australia, Tanzania and the US. I used to travel around Europe with one of my old jobs maintaining the computer systems that run mobile telephone networks, so am used to working with and in other cultures.
To my mind I’ve had several successful careers already. I’ve been an oilman, working the rigs in the North Sea. A computer systems guy making sure that some of the brightest folks in England had the things that they needed to push the boundaries of science and technology. A mobile telephony engineer, as I mentioned above. A financial analyst looking at mining stocks. Never been sacked, never been pushed out, always left on pretty good terms. Mostly I moved on because I stopped learning.
I like learning new things and trying to put together the pieces into a coherent whole.
That’s why many of us are here I suppose. An exploration of thought and deed through shared expressions in a digital universe.
Let the thinking commence !
