The Aesthetics and Beauty of Knowledge
Shih was the opposite of facts and raw information; shih was the elegance of knowledge, the insight and skill to organize knowledge into meaningful patterns. As an artist chooses colours or light to make her pictures, a master of shih chooses textures of knowledge – various ideas, myths, abstractions, and theories – to create a way of seeing the world. The aesthetics and beauty of knowledge – this was shih.
– David Zindell, The Broken God, 1993
Geek Attitude
The attitude thing is about flexibility, portability, creativity, sociability and jamming (ran out of suitable “ity” words!). It’s about improvising – in the practical and musical senses of the word; not getting tangled in boundaries and the “right” way to do things.
Definitely the only way to travel.
– Martin Delaney – “Laptop Music”.
Kuehleborn's Unfathomable Thoughts
Google+
I had to wait some time before I got my invitation; but now I’m on Google+. I’m not sure yet if it will be an improvement over Facebook, but some people claim it will change the Web as we know it. They’re definitely right: the Web is changing constantly. From what I’ve seen I can only say: it is an improvement to organize your friends in circles, because now I don’t have to annoy my transhumanist friends with holiday pics of my children – and I don’t have to annoy my kids with my latest tweets about MindUploading – if they bother to read what I’m writing anyway 🙂
SocialWeb-Website Mashable published a Google+ guide, with a very useful cheat-sheet:
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Having tried Google+ only briefly: two things are on my wishlist for now. One: how can I sync Google+ with all my other social networks? Until now I shared everything I wanted to share with Diigo – a small booklet in my browser (or the small app on my android) takes care of the job with only one click: saving to Diigo, bookmarking to Delicious, microblogging to Twitter, and from there it is automatically published in Friendfeed, Facebook and Hyves (the now almost obsolete Dutch Social Network). That’s where computers are invented for: to be a willing slave – a workhorse that allows me to be creative and to live my life without bothering about the tedious handwork. Emlyn O’Regan built a synchroniser that supports Facebook and Google’s Buzz, with read-only Google+ (and experimental WordPress support), so that’s a start.
My second wish – more a complaint – is about the Google+ app. It is rather heavy: currently a > 8 MB (initially > 11 MB!) and no option to move it to your SD card, so it eats a lot of the storage space on my Android. That could and should be done better.
BTW: if you still need an invite (a very boring strategy to give the appearance of exclusivity): contact me.