The WELL: inkwell.vue.430: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2012

#240: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Sun 30 Dec 12 10:46

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 10:46:00 PST

If you're tempted to post here, this is last year's SOTW topic. Topic 459 is SOTW 2013. [Read entire topic]

#239: Jeffrey W Kramer (jeffk) Sun 30 Dec 12 09:55

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 09:55:00 PST

<scribbled by jeffk Sun 30 Dec 12 09:56> [Read entire topic]

#238: Chris Marti (cmarti) Sun 30 Dec 12 06:54

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 06:54:00 PST

How do you engender an appreciation for complexity? Seems to me that human beings are just not wired for it. We like stories. Linearity. Simple cause and effect with one cause and one effect. [Read entire topic]

#237: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 30 Dec 12 01:48

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 01:48:00 PST

<scribbled by bruces Sun 30 Dec 12 01:49> [Read entire topic]

#236: Karim Brohi (julieswn) Mon 23 Jan 12 18:53

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:53:00 PST

Underlying many of the issues you discuss, it seems to me that there is a fundamental unwillingness to understand, appreciate and acknowledge the complexity of the world we live in. Be it economics, politics, healthcare, climate, technology - the underlying systems complexity is increasing dramatically, while the media, statesmen, policy makers etc insist on the soundbite, the easy answer, the executive summary - and more worrying are supremely confident in their understanding of the system and how to change it for the better.

Until we have a big push at understanding complexity - and how to communicate that complexity to the public - there will be very little meaningful progress in any direction.

Karim [Read entire topic]

#235: Gail Williams (gail) Mon 23 Jan 12 10:02

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:02:00 PST

There's a differentiation of meanings on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz where a distinction is made between the modern German use of the word and the original idea from the early 1800's [Read entire topic]

#234: Ed Ward (captward) Sun 22 Jan 12 04:44

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 04:44:00 PST

And given that the German means world-pain, that makes more sense. [Read entire topic]

#233: David Gans (tnf) Sat 21 Jan 12 23:19

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:19:00 PST

That's M-W's definition, really? I was taught that it had to do with feeling the pain of the world, not just being disappointed in it. [Read entire topic]

#232: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Sat 21 Jan 12 11:29

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:29:00 PST

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weltschmerz

Weltschmerz: mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state

Thanks and a tip o' the hat to Garry Golden for the pointer to this relevant definition. [Read entire topic]

#231: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Fri 20 Jan 12 13:05

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:05:00 PST

I just wandered in from a very good talk at the University of Texas by Elizabeth Churchill of Yahoo Research (http://elizabethchurchill.com/). I was there with my pals Gregory Foster, Bill Anderson, and David Ryan, all Austin-based technologists. Another friend, tech entrepreneur Tristan Slominski, was across the room. The rest were mostly UT students.

Churchill is a psychologist and user experience expert whose done a ton of research for Yahoo - much of it about how and why people engage with websites and web communities. Google, Facebook, and Twitter get a lot of attention for their social and collaborative spaces, but Yahoo was there first, and has dug as deeply as anybody into the study of online behaviors. I was reminded of a couple of things - how long we've come in evolving the web environment, and how it's a totally human environment... it's all behavior manifest in technology-mediated environments. I've been working on and with the web for two decades now, and I'm still completely fascinated. I love this work, even (or especially) with the challenges we face today.

Churchill mentioned core values of Computer Human Interaction... I think about most of these every day:

fulfillment agency identity equality subjectivity reflection empowerment social justice

After two long weeks of discussion here on the WELL, itself a seminal online community that's been operating for over 25 years, I'm feeling perky: the world can work, we're going to do just fine.

Hope some of you will show up at Chuy's later today.

And we'll be here again next year (maybe by then we'll have bought a huge hippie house and started a commune...) [Read entire topic]