A couple of years ago I and a number of amazing people put on a conference in Colorado called the Thin Air Summit.  At the time what we now call social media or online journalism or citizen journalism was still using the moniker “New Media”.  At this conference we talked about what this new media is, how to use it, how to create it, and what its potential was.  The conference was a great success.  Our goals, in addition to having conference that was of value to the attendees, was three part:

1. Have a tech/social media conference in Colorado
2. Help connect the local social media people so they can build on the local resources (instead of finding locals by going to a conference in LA).
3. Raise the visibility of Colorado in the tech/new media world.

Since then there have been many conferences (and unconferences) in Colorado on social media topics.  Sometimes only a little push is needed to open the floodgates. The people who attended the conference got a lot of meeting other people with like interests in the area.  Networking and connections were made.  Additionally Colorado, which was already a huge (if somewhat hidden) force in tech and social media has become increasingly visible.

Each year I ponder if there will be a Thin Air Summit II, and thus far the pieces haven’t come into place – many of the original people people who made the first one possible have been busy with other projects, and the timing hasn’t seemed right.  However, I was recently encouraged when I read the Wikipedia article on TED, and it mentioned that there was a 6 year hiatus between the first TED and the annual TED  that started in 1990.   In the mean time, I will leave you with my closing remarks from  The Thin Air Summit ’08.

Today I happened upon a few things relating to the mind, and how it analyzes data.
The first is a TED talk by Beau Lotto on Optical Illusions and how they show what we see:

It was fascinating to see how our eyes, or rather our mind, reinterprets color based on the context in which it sees.  It isn’t just video cameras that are affected by white balance, but our visual processing as well. 

Another bit of mind play can be found in a couple of toys that are recently on the market.  The Mindflex Game and the Star Wars Force Trainer both use the “power of concentration” to control the force of air on a ball thus levitating the ball.  Obviously the sensors are fairly limited sensors of the brain, but then the pricing does need to be within the bounds of a reasonable toy price.  When I saw these toys I was reminded of the original Star Trek episode, The Menagerie. In the episode Captain Pike is in a chair that allows him to speak by blinking “yes” or “no”.  When I first saw the episode lo those many years ago (likely around 1975, I wasn’t born when it was first released) I thought it preposterous that if they had developed technology to fly spacecrafts at warp speed that the best they could do for Captain Pike was something that blinked yes or no.  I remember spending days thinking about how they might do something better. Even with just an “on/off” sensor you could at least get something like morse code.  When I saw these toys I saw that we already have – in toys, much less in medical devices, sufficient technology to get what Captain Pike had in his huge chair.  It will be interesting to see how the “mind games” evolve.

Once again it is quite late to be going to bed, and I am writing up my post for the day.  A couple of years ago I did a month of “Me Today” videos.  Each day I would record something on video and post it up to Viddler.   With the me todays the idea was to post a bit about your day, and I usually ended up talking about my thoughts of the day.  Since it literally was about my day I could just say “I did x y and z today” and be done.   The practice was a good one, and I ended up with quite a few videos that I liked that were more than just a “dear diary” on video.  Those posts ended up embedded on this blog.

Blog posting seems a bit more challenging.  Since this blog isn’t just a diary I don’t just post “Today was really cold and I spend a minimal amount of time in the sukkah”.  Instead I look for a bit more meat. The challenge is, of course, that the reason I set a goal of a post a day was to get me in the practice of writing.  Just like the me todays got me in the practice of sitting in front of a camera and speaking, here I am attempting to do the same with my words. 

Today I tried writing about some further thoughts on the “global town hall” view of new media.  My husband and I had a great discussion on it last night and I thought I had the post in my mind.  However, once I started typing the words I found that I had so many thoughts all jumbled together that they could not make a coherent post, not even a one that I could “get away with and edit later.”  So, that post is sitting in draft. Instead, this post is a “me today” sort of post.   We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

One of the comments that I keep hearing about news these days is that if the news is important I’ll find out about it.  More and more people are choosing their community as a filter for information.  In Leo Laporte’s talk on New Media he said “If it is important I’ll find out about it on twitter.”  

New media is extremely powerful in that we can find the information we want and the news sources we chose.  The downside of this choice is that it is very much possible for people to only listen to one point of view, or only hear a single story.   If a person only listenens to that which their community filters to them they can get a very narrow, stereotyped view of the world.  (Admittedly with corporate media there is also quite a limit on what views you will hear, but at the same time there is a bit of breadth to the information.)

I sometimes wonder if we chose to only listen to the news tha finds us what the impact is on our views and on the nature of society.  A single story, as Chimamanda Adichie calls it in her TED talk, can be a dangerous thing.  The difference of course is that to some extent the mainstream media does give us a single story on many issues.  With new media we have the option to hear the many stories that are out there and in fact have a broader view of the world.  The question is is it easier to stay with the single view, or is there some reason that people, beyond those who naturally seek a broader view, will look for many stories. 

I’m just back from two days of Yom Tov (Jewish holiday).  During Yom Tov and Shabbat I am offline. Yom Tovs show up around three times a year, but Shabbat shows up every week.  There are a whole host of things I don’t do on Shabbat with regard to using electricity, adjusting fires, driving, traveling long distances and the like.

With so much of what I do on line, and so many of the people I connect with far away this can be frustrating.  However, even as I get frustrated with it it’s regularity and limits also are its strengths.  

For one day a week I can’t close out the world with iPods and websites and the like.  I can retreat to a book but the isolation is not as complete.  Also with 26 hours, or like this weekend 49 or so there is so much time to do something with and so I think.  Much of our networked always on life is a matter of mastering interrupts.  I see it in the nature of videos, writing, communication.  We go faster and faster and work more off of reaction than weighted thought because there isn’t time for that introspection.   With Shabbat there is…plenty of it.  Sometimes I take up that time with garbage – rehashing old things, what-ifing but that regularity and that limitation keeps bringing its pause, and occasionally I get to see patterns or have flashes of insight.

I don’t know that this weekend necessarily was as insightful as some, but as I went to write my post I thought of the limitation of Shabbat, and was reminded a brief quote by Warren Spector in Game Informer Magazine:

“We all felt like we were talented creative guys with big ideas, and if the big bad publishers would just get out of the way we can do amazing things.  It just doesn’t work out that way.  Real creativity happens within constraints, not without constraints”

Sometimes we rail at our constraints or the limitations of our situation, but sometimes those limitation can give us the boundaries we need for real creativity, real insight.  Sometimes those breakthroughs are relatively minor, and sometimes they can be life transforming.

A real example of transforming limitations can be seen in the TED Video by William Kamkwamba.  Without the ability to pay for school he turned to the books he could find.  Without the language skills he learned from the pictures.  Because of the need for water, he build a windmill for power and for water.   His story is amazing, and well worth a watch. 

This week we read a story about Maier Amschel Rothschild – the founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty.

This story is taken from volume 4 of The Storyteller by Nissan Mindel

This week we read the story that is in the epilogue of the book Truths Revealed: Modern Stories of Miracles & Faith which is written by a friend of mine. It is a story about darkness and light.

This story is from the epilogue of the book Truths revealed: Modern day stories of faith & miracles by Tzvi Jacobs

In today’s story we complete the stories from Legends of Judah the Macabee with the story of the Miracle of Chanukah.

If you haven’t caught the whole series here are the links to the series in order.

The Rise of Antiochus Epiphanes
The Hellenizers
Antiochus Takes Action
The Death of Eleazar the Priest
Hannah and Her 7 Sons
Rebellion in Modiin
The Death of Matisyahu
Judah the Maccabee Goes to War

And today – The Miracle of Chanukah

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Today’s story is a continuation of the book, Legends of Judah the Macabee, Today we read chapter 8 – Judah the Macabee goes to war.

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Today we continue the daily story from an adaptation of Aggadot Yehuda Ha Makkabi. Today’s story is about the passing of Matisyahu.

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky