theo|digital

First, the rhetoric on this one has me mad.  One commentator calls the award “wicked and ignorant.”  She asserts that the award is a “great and prestigious award given by liberals to liberals. NCNA–no conservatives need apply. This is the way of the world, and so what? Life isn’t for prizes.”

Good thing this is an Op-Ed and not on the news page–it wouldn’t pass fact check.  Sure, it’s okay if she doesn’t like Al Gore’s prize.  And we wonder too why Reagan never got awarded one.  But she doesn’t mention that many of the candidates are relatively neutral in political affiliation (2006 – an economist  2004 – a zoologist ), but that recipients that are political in modern decades include iconic Republican Henry Kissinger and Conservative Party David Trimble (UK) in 1998.

More importantly:

Beyond the incivility and blithe assumptions of either corruption or idiocy (the ad hominem is always unbecoming), there is a intensely forest-for-the-trees like understanding that is missing from many of the critics.  Maybe we can understand what it is by watching the short interview of Committee Member Geir Lundestad explain the award:

Interview about the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize (8 minutes)

Lundested official’s official Nobel statement includes the following:

“he has produced a new global climate”
“changing the international climate IS a concrete achievement” (emphasis his)
“we have been trying to support these ideals for 118 years”

On the objection that Obama’s award is premature:

“we have gone over these arguments… they are very obvious.” … “there are the obvious counter-arguments” “but he presents this wonderful agenda and we feel we should support him.” ” We have been over these arguments many many times, obviously”

The reality is that discourse, covenant, promise, words with intent… *are* real action. Let’s please stop saying things like “just words.” Words are real action. We believe this daily in big and small things: every time we say a wedding vow or give a hug or sign a form to volunteer at a school. In systems of nations and families and trade networks, speech-acts have a multiplying real effect. The Nobel committee understands this.

What they might have missed is that there is a portion of the public that artificially separates “words” and “action.” They’re missing it.

The surprise at the award is entirely justified. It makes sense that some would be concerned. (Nicholas Kristof represents). Many (but not all) of the awards in the past seem to be given more as “lifetime achievement awards.” But as the committee has explained, this is was not Nobel’s intent for the prize. And I hope maybe their action (which, case in point: was ‘no more’ than words), helps us unite these ideas of communication and action in more thoughtful light.

Well, it’s Saturday morning 6 June.  You know what that means?

Official release day for the Palm Pre!

And since it also happens to be my second true day off since arriving in Estes Park for the summer, I’m off on an adventure to try to snag one.  I called two Sprint stores last night—Boulder and Longmont—which are my closest two stores at just about 50 miles away, whichever I choose.

Both stores said they are opening two hours earlier than their web-posted hours (8am instead of 10am), and both expect lines. Neither could/would tell me how many phones they expect to have in inventory or estimate if/when they’d sell out. Oh well, since I’ve never done anything like this before (chase an electronic product like a school girl), I figure their’s a first time for everything. Worst thing that happens? I don’t get one today.

This is one of those things where asking people to pray for you is really shady.

I could pee in my pants I’m so excited. This developer demonstration of Google Wave starts to make reality exactly the trends I have been predicting for filtering communities. This Google team notes that e-mail was invented forever ago–long before we had the Web, and is modeled on the metaphor of Postal Mail. I’ve been mentioning this for a while, now–that e-mail isn’t a native technology for a digital environment because it doesn’t think like a digital environment. We know from Pew Internet that among internet communications tools, today’s junior high kids use e-mail dead last, typically for communicating with teachers or older users–not friends.

This Google development team seeks to answer the question: what if we invented e-mail today?

Google Wave is what they’ve come up with so far. It’s exactly on the trajectory I think we’ve been doing (though we’ll see if they take it… notice many similarities to Facebook, which I still think is better positioned than Google to reinvent e-mail, etc).

This presentation is over an hour and half, but a few minutes of watching is prolly worth it.

Google Wave is getting plenty of attention, like this critic comparing it to a spork, but I think he like others is missing it. E-mail and IM and social networks are not irreducibly helpful tools combined, like the brew-and-grind. They are bring back together what naturally will be.

ps – other techy news:  Microsoft Bing.  Uses some Kayak looking tools with search.  Won’t amount to much.  Wikipedia vs. Scientology.  An interesting test case in filtering community ethics.

In yet another instance towards Facebook being the new Google, they held a VOTE this week to determine their terms of service. This makes perfect sense in the participatory media landscape, though traditional lawyers have thus far kept it from happening on other sites, where the terms are dictated. Interactive contracts (written by Wiki?) have to be a thing in the future…

Today, the Facebook site governance vote ended after a week in which you were able to voice your opinions as to which documents should serve as the foundation for governing the site. On behalf of everyone at Facebook, I’d like to thank all of you who participated by voting and the users and experts who earlier commented on the proposed documents.

The final results are now being reviewed by an outside auditor, but the preliminary numbers indicate that approximately 74.4 percent of users who voted chose the proposed documents – the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities – over the existing Terms of Use. More than 600,000 users participated in the vote.  More

The 600,000 participants is a small percentage of the 200 million registered Facebookers, but they (and I) would be optimistic that this number would change once people got familiar with the idea.

Every year, Chicago celebrates St. Patrick’s Day in style.  This year I finally made it down to the river with friends to see the famous plumbers union dye the river green .  Check out my photos:

St. Patrick’s Day Chicago River

Scot McKnight super graciously invited me to share some thoughts on my trip to Washington DC for the Presidential Inauguration.  He’s posted my article today on his Beliefnet blog, Jesus Creed .

I’m sure there are a variety of better thoughts in queue ready for me to post, but I liked the Daily Herald ’s direct and wry take on Blagojevich’s latest press conference explaining why he will refuse to attend his own impeachment in Springfield. (They add the little “Note:” parts, not me).

Watch the actual press conference below, which our favorite Governor . Rod Blagojevich compared himself Friday to an honest, hardworking (wait for it…) cowboy. Also the part where he says that if the state government can treat him this way, they can do it to any Illinois citizen–watch out! Too bad the “impeachment” part of the state constitution maybe doesn’t apply to, say, all of us.

Blagojevich’s talking points
Published: 1/24/2009 12:01 AM
Embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich talked for more than an hour at a news conference and during a morning radio program, Don Wade & Roma on WLS 890AM. Here are some key points:

On how some of his closest advisers and friends are now cooperating with federal investigators:

“I’m deeply hurt by some friends.”

Blagojevich has been accused of being crazy. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has called him ‘cuckoo’ twice.

“I feel my mental state is where it always has been … and you can judge whether or not that is a good place or a bad place.”

Federal investigators have been probing Blagojevich’s administration for six years. Didn’t he expect them to tap his phone as they did?

“I think anyone who comes out of Chicago politics should assume things like that … while it is shocking in so many ways that your home phone is tapped.”

On the profanity in the transcripts of the tapped phone conversations:

“I apologize for some of the profanity, but if I would have known they were listening, I wouldn’t have used those words.”

Any regrets?

“Knowing what I know now after the presidential election, I would have taken a two-month vacation and not talked to anybody.”

(Note: Two months was about the time span his phones were tapped)

On his haggling over the Senate appointment, which he was ultimately arrested for:

“At the end of the day, it was all about trying to do the right thing for the people of Illinois.”

(Note: Prosecutors say Blagojevich was taped telling his chief of staff the pick would be based on “the following order of importance: ‘our legal situation, our personal situation, my political situation. This decision, like every other one, needs to be based upon that. Legal. Personal. Political.’ “)

Blagojevich said he is “calling on the major newspapers in Illinois” to write about how the impeachment trial is unfair. He noted how journalism can’t be gagged by the government.

(Note: Prosecutors say they have Blagojevich on tape trying to get editors of the Chicago Tribune fired for writing editorials calling for his impeachment even before his arrest on criminal charges.)

Photos and thoughts will have to come later, but we had the kind of day that you couldn’t have made better.  Incredible opportunity and views of Inauguration Day.  For now… on this overhead photo of the Mall, taken pretty early in the day by Geo-Eye , I’ve marked about where we got to watch the swearing in ceremony.

You”ll prolly have a better view from here than I will, standing in front of the capital steps with 200,000 others (and 4 million others on the Mall). Thought they’ve warned that cell coverage could be spotty, I’ll be trying to live Tweet there on the right –>