Enjoying Tasty Tagging on Del.icio.us

As part of my Web 2.0 self-education I have been getting more and more accustomed to using tags. Especially, with the del.icio.us program created by Yahoo. I recently went through their new Update Tour. One item that particularly impressed me was a tag cloud of popular tags on del.icio.us. It focuses on many of the areas that I am interested in and give me some ideas for new ones.

What I like is that the organization of the network is based upon knowledge sets and the interrelationship between ideas rather than popularity. I am impressed enough that I have decided to create a del.icio.us cloud for my real life/day job. I have also seen how others use del.icio.us in their blogs and websites. Most merely allow you to put their post onto your del.icio.us account but some allow you to see how they organize their tags. It was Serendipityoucity, a blog that has impressed me for its organization and content a number of times in the past, that got me bundling my tags. I figure if it works for a PhD candidate it should work for me.

I am keeping my note at the bottom of this weblog page on tagging. All of a sudden, despite having written about combining tags, I started noticing the little + signs in front of the "related" tags. Of course that only works with your own tag search box not the del.icio.us search box. So I am going to keep it in even if it is a bit newbie sounding. There is always the chance that somebody with less experience than me will drop by one day, and it could help. In the meantime I will keep on learning more. It would seem that tagging can get pretty involved.

Reconnecting to MIT Low Technologies High Aims

There are a few past posts that I did not give the full attention that I wanted to at the time I placed them. One of those was MIT Low Technologies High Aims back in October. One goal of this weblog is to make meaningful connections from different sources. MIT continues to be a source of information and nspiration for this Weblog. The New York Times article cites Amy Smith, a lecturer at M.I.T, as the primary brainchild of the International Development Design Summit and a MacArthur winner. The article also feature the D-lab nicknamed “Amy’s World” "In homage to Ms. Smith’s passion for attacking poverty from the ground up".

“Nearly 90 percent of research and development dollars are spent on creating technologies that serve the wealthiest 10 percent of the world’s population,” Ms. Smith said. “The point of the design revolution is to switch that.”

The article also features Dr. Polak, who has become something of a guru to the design revolution movement, and Mr. Brandis who now helps run the Full Belly Project, which develops machines to simplify village work.

“What you try to do in virtually every situation is make their lives more efficient,” Mr. Brandis said. “That’s what the big revolution in America was between 1860 and 1960 — that a person doing a day’s work can produce a lot more product. And that means time is more valuable and that means he has more time to do other things.”

This weblog has also featured other MacArthur winners with an interest in design.

Below is a video of Amy Smith lecturing at TED.


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Can't Talk Your Way Through A Paradigm Shift., Especially With Your Foot In Your Mouth

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends left a kindly worded comment to my post "You Can't Talk Your Way Through A Paradigm Shift". The full comment is at the original post.

First, I want to thank Anita for taking the trouble to respond to my post. She wasn't responding to a comment that I had made on her blog but still went to the trouble to write me. She does take me to task for a few things but does it in a very cordial manner, making a number of valid points and perhaps giving me more credit than is warranted.

One issue she has is with my lack of perspective in my writing. She wrote, "I'm wondering who is this person, an activist? A student? A corporate employee? A PR flak?" I can understand her confusion because I can't claim to have a perspective that I am trying to communicate to the world. I am a bit of all of the above, now going through my own mid-century paradigm shift trying to come up with new perspectives to face the future. She does try to understand my lack of perspective, “Probably because you just naturally assumed that anyone reading was coming at it from your perspective." In truth, its more like I just naturally assumed that nobody was going to be reading it.

Now I may have disagreed in my post with what Anita wrote in her article, but I should be clear that her articles have been a very important resource for me in creating my own new paradigms. I am not a small business person (actually small government), but I can take insights from her writings that can be applied to a positive means of creating beneficial change in the world. As I have said before, the social change activists need to start doing this more.

I may not even be in full accordance with her in general, but then I'm not really in full accordance or agreement with any of the blogs I connect with, Seth Godin, Tyler Cowen, Entrepreneurial Mind, or even TED. I do, however, find them all far more useful, because they challenge my thinking more than reading blogs that I might agree with more.

She then explains that "from the perspective of a business owner, I wanted to point out that business owners may be trying to do good. But they need to make sure their own house is in order. You can't be hypocritical as a business owner. You can't for PR purposes take on some cause if in reality you are doing something adverse to the cause. And not only can't you whitewash, but by taking on some cause you make your business a bigger target because there are groups out there that won't let you get away with it." I have to confess that I did always suspect that this was true from my other readings of her writing. I took unfair advantage because it made a good contrast with the BusinessPundit article. Actually it was only the term “anti-social responsibility” activists”, that I had any real issue with.

As to the question. "Are they for or against social responsibility causes? I honestly can't tell what your position is from your article." I am for it. My criticism, in truth, was not directed at business owners. I have seen some rather superficial attempts at social responsibility from government and from activists and was really going after all of them. I was also going after myself, continuing to vet what my position is. Anita however makes it clear, " I write for small business owners, not for individuals." and is obviously successful at it. It is I, who should have been clearer. I probably did sound too judgmental and preachy.

I do find Anita's discussion of trends informative. This one in particular about activists who call out companies for hypocritical cause-based practices was of interest because I could put myself on both sides of the fence. Anita says, “Some blog posts are mere observations and don't necessarily argue a position. My purpose often is simply to observe and by observing, it gives people a nugget of information.”. Though I am trying to take a position, it is often more times than not formulating a position and her blog whether I agree or not as been an important resource, and again I thank her. This is actually one of the highlights of this endeavor.