• Cervical Surgery for Nick “FeedDemon” Bradbury
• Back to Weblogging, Finally!
• Weblog Functions
• More on Social Capital
• Social capital, bonding, and bridging
• Preparing for the Coming Era of Participatory News
• Online Communities and Weblogging

Cervical Surgery for Nick “FeedDemon” Bradbury

Condolences and prayers to Nick Bradbury who looks to be headed for surgery for a herniated disc in his neck. Nick is the author of FeedDemon, the news aggregator I use that saves me hundreds of hours visiting key websites for news and perspectives. Having gone through a lumbar disc surgery myself four years ago, I know that the road back was not easy yet the practices I used during recovery of appropriately trained, professional massage and craniosacral therapy and now yoga have me more flexible and resilient than I certainly was prior to the injury. I wish the same for Nick. If you are looking for an RSS aggregator to follow this website and others that support RSS, http://www.FeedDemon.com is where you should look.

Back to Weblogging, Finally!

January 2003, my copy of Radio Userland died. The weblogs (I had several) at http://www.leaders.net stopped at that time. Now they are back, using a new technology platform called ExpressionEngine by http://www.pmachine.com. It is a content management system and weblogging tool based on templates. It uses a PHP/MySQL technology base (the same I use for my recent development work).

I went back and re-pasted entries that still interest me from my old Radio blogs, from http://www.Godswork.com where I used to post my poems and spiritual writing, and imported postings I’ve been making over at http://www.healthfulhands.net. Alas, the Healthful Hands Network had to dissolve as a corporation. I and the rest of the board will continue to provide support to our region, and I am planning a new home for a revised provider directory.

MUCH of this site is incomplete. I’m in the middle of UI changes and fixing a number of the templates. No need to report any such problems to me YET. With quite a number of interesting projects at work, and my part-time massage therapy work, it may be awhile before things settle completely into place here. ExpressionEngine is in beta, too, so expect some problems there, such as with search. It’s good to be back publishing again!

Weblog Functions

“To me, a weblog is:

a journal
an editorial column
a URL favorites manager
a messenging application
one side of a discussion group tool
a news reader
a project management assistant
a knowledge repository”

[ from Seblogging News]

More on Social Capital

[Jon’s Radio] Re: Robert Putnam’s data on social capital show that social connectedness in America was on the rise through most of the last century, until its precipitous decline beginning in the late 1960s. Why the decline? He blames television, urban redevelopment, single-parent households, two-career families, and other factors.

A corollary to the sharp decline of social capital in our generation, by the way, is a sharp rise in the number of lawyers per capita. Fifty years ago, Americans thought that most people were trustworthy. Today most think the reverse. Lawyering flourishes, says Putnam, because it is the “production and sale of synthetic trust.”

Interesting. For years I have interacted online with people I have never met face-to-face, and may never meet. Yet I trust them.

I think people who are at their own core trustworthy in thought and attitude tend to be less fearful or focused on protecting themselves from “the other guy.” Perhaps it is just niavete, and perhaps it is just a decision to try and live without secrets or ulterior motives. Honesty and forthrightness has an energy to it. Mayhaps such honesty will attract frauds, but in my experience the frauds are attracted to those with an underlying greed, working hard to appear generous or helpful, and who like to think they are “taking” and not “being taken.” (I am reminded of the Nigerian fraud). And in such environments, trust disintegrates and you need lots of lawyers to cut off the last pounds of flesh from the dying bodies.

Social capital, bonding, and bridging

Social capital, bonding, and bridging. I attended a talk tonight by Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, a study of the sharp decline of social capital over the last 30 years. The decline is measured as a loss of connectedness: people less willing to join organizations, to be civically involved, even to entertain friends at home. [Jon’s Radio]

Jon makes the point that right now, there is more ‘bonding’ going on between people of like interests than ‘bridging’ across lines. I certainly see that as well, as the number of non-tech, non-news channels is quite limited right now.

For example, one of my interests is health and healing. I’ve got a category of my overall blog that addresses just that area. Yet, I also know that I may be the sole geek/massage therapist using Radio for blogging right now. That doesn’t stop me from watching the wires for health topics, and adding my own thoughts to my blog at http://www.leaders.net/health. Someday, someone will find it, find it useful, and subscribe.

I believe web communities and blogs are powerful and offer opportunities for global thought leadership to “anyone” whether or not they are inside typical power structures. Yet, the face-to-face interactions I have with people are what fill my heart and give me perspectives worth sharing. Ultimately, the best bloggers are those that “see” the faces of friends (and challengers) when they write.

Preparing for the Coming Era of Participatory News

Preparing for the Coming Era of Participatory News at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/future/1017170352.php: The Internet means now everyone is a journalist - or can be.

Outside the newsrooms and the boardrooms of our news companies, the road ahead looks bumpy:

1. Communication is king, not content.
2. News is a distant fourth - behind entertainment, communication and transactions - on consumer’s hierarchy of desires.
3. News evolves into collaborative, a participatory activity. Everyone is a journalist, or can be. Peer-to-peer news will eclipse business-to-consumer news.
4. The expected synergies and efficiencies associated with consolidation, centralization, and clustering prove to be overrated.
5. Convergence happens to consumers, not to newsrooms.
6. Every company becomes a media company. They succeed or fail on the basis of their stories.
7. Services replace products as the foundation of local, regional and global economies.
8. The decline in the traditional markets for news accelerates. As media become ubiquitous and pervasive, fragmentation of markets also accelerates.
9. A new group of consumers - the Millennials - emerges. They have no loyalty to news organizations. They don’t read newspapers. Their habits and behaviors have no context in traditional news products. By sheer numbers, they have the power to transform consumer markets.
10. The news industry fails to innovate, to change, and to create catalysts for growth.

Online Communities and Weblogging

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” --Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892)

I am new to weblogging. Yet I have 20 years of experience with online communities (early Arpanet messaging, BBS systems, CompuServe forums, email lists). While some people enjoy flames, I just find them nauseating. Now, I can tap into feeds of considered opinion and expertise from old friends and get a very high signal-to-noise ratio.