The Real Paul Jones

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My Representative – David Price

I was delighted today to get to talk a little with my Congressman, David Price, who has been a strong supporter of Network Neutrality and an opponent of Media Concentration.

David is highly clued on the issues and has made common cause with some unusual, for him, bedfellows such are the National Rifle Association and Focus on the Family. Not so unusual as voices that would be marginalized or excluded by the lack of Network Neutrality or the further increase of Media Ownership Concentration are at all parts of the political spectrum.

Plan the 15th year of ibiblio/sunsite

ibiblio logo
October 31, 2007 will be the 15th anniversary of the first public demo of sunsite.unc.edu at Educom in Baltimore. Yes there was a server named sunsite in place as early as May 1992 but our big debut and announcement was in October.

As some of you will remember, that announcement coincided with the complete and literal frying of the campus internet connectivity and if not for Judd Knott’s quick thinking there would have been no demo at all.

After the pipes — steam and water — broke above the routers and boiled the damn things like plastic and silicon lobsters, Judd had our server and disks driven out the MCNC and reconfigured so the demo could go on.

Now we’re back with servers at MCNC…

I’m asking you to help us think of ways that we can celebrate those 15 years. Some of the ideas might be related to raising funds, some related to raising our profile internationally, some related to raising support, and some to raising a bit of anniversary hell even.

Please add to the 15 year wiki and/or send me your ideas or leave comments here.

The Dollars and Cents of Place

In the South, the American South, the Southern part of Eastern North America, all the writers and such keep talking about having a strong sense of place.

Pascal Zachary, whose bio of Vannevar Bush I highly recommend, opines in today’s New York Times on why Silicon Valley, where he lives and writes, is the home of dollars and cents. His claim is that innovation is all about place and he cites some good examples.

There are of course counter examples all over. But the companies we think of when we think of the net are largely in Silicon Valley.

How can a lil ole epicenter of biotech, software and other innovations like RDU compete?

Brit Top 10 to be all Beatles?

What songs/singles are the Top 10 best sellers in the UK? With the new attention to music downloads changing the list, we now have unsigned bands like Koopa in the Top 40 and moving up.

More interestingly, if the Beatles catalog is made available for download in the next few weeks as is expected, the Beatles could completely dominate the charts possibly taking all of the Top 10 slots (reported on BBC here).

BTW: Koopa releases four versions of their song,“Blag Steal and Borrow,” on their website — regular, acoutic, live and remix — only about a minute of each tho.

Carrboro Commons latest edition

UNC Journalism students working with Jock Lauterer and Andy Bectel have just released the latest edition of the hyperlocal news site/paper Carrboro Commons. Looks and reads great.

I do wonder tho: Why editions? The direction of online news is always breaking news and constant updates — not editions. And the Commons format easily allows for that; it is afterall is said and done a hyperlocal blog. And that’s a good and powerful thing.

Feb 20 – 23 Tiemann, Copeland, Doctorow, Nan Lin

We have a big week of speakers coming up soon. Here’s a quick rundown:

At the upcoming Fred Kilgour Fest, Open Source Initiative President Michael Tiemann will be one of the speakers — Tuesday February 20.

February 22 – Blogads founder Henry Copeland will be visiting my class at 11 am. Cory Doctorow will be speaking at 2 pm.

February 23 – Social Capital and Social Networking theorist, Nan Lin (whose books I’ve used for some years now) will be speaking at about 2:30 (more on this in a later post).

Nobelist Stiglitz at Duke Feb 16th

Now that Duke basketball fantasies have been shattered, it’ll be good to go over there next week and hear Nobel prizewinner (2001 Nobel Prize in Economics) Joseph Stiglitz (who teaches at Columbia) give the the sixth annual Meredith and Kip Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property.

Who: Joseph Stiglitz
What: “The Economic Foundations of Intellectual Property”
When: Noon:15 pm, Friday February 16
Where: Duke Law School, Room 3041

With Second Life, I’ve already cloned myself (as Said Goodnight) so yes I can be two places at one.

(Thanks to Jennifer Jenkins for the alert)

Democratizing Music?

Yesterday in class, we discussed chapters in Eric von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation.

Holly asked: Using an example relevant to the present day music industry status, do you think that Apple Inc. would benefit more from the iTunes/iPod industry financially by making it free or open source software instead of the highly restricted software that it currently employs?

Steve Jobs was releasing his answer to this question during our class! Here it is from the Apple site.

Briefly. Apple does DRM on iTunes because the music companies demand it. People who buy the music hate the restrictions. People who buy iPods hate the restrictions. Steve says the restrictions don’t work anyway. Maybe things will get fixed in Europe.

FakeSteveJobs
has the window into RealSteveJobs mind on this in his essay on the essay “Thoughts on ‘Thoughts on Music'”— and he is a much funnier writer.

About that Blogger Ascertainment

NBC-17 Triangle Blogger Community Ascertainment (Invite here at eVite)

Host: Jason Clough
Location: WNCN-TV / NBC-17
1205 Front Street, Raleigh, NC View Map
When: Monday, February 19, 12:00pm
Phone: 919-835-6320

You are cordially invited to attend to the NBC 17 Triangle Blogger Community Ascertainment.

What: NBC 17 holds community ascertainments once a month in our viewing area. A community ascertainment is a casual meeting with representatives from the community and NBC 17. They are also referred to as Listening Tours.

We would like to invite you to our groundbreaking Blogger Ascertainment. We recognize the contributions bloggers are making to their readers and would like the opportunity to make a lasting connection with your important voice.

This meeting will be dedicated to finding out more about the important issues in your community, and suggestions on how we might be able to serve them better.

You talk…..we listen.

These meetings will not be taped. Notes will be taken by our staff. Tours of the station will be conducted.

If you are interested in attending please RSVP by February 16th

Jason writes below that all bloggers are welcome so here’s the invite. Enjoy.

Snark-Infested Waters with MSM

So I made a little joke without naming the victim recently when a local TV station sent ill-advised spammish invites to bloggers asking them to join in an “ascertainment.”

This somehow bruised the sensitive male feelings of David Kirk over at Tech-Recipes who has as near as I can tell no dog in this fight or more accurately no humor in his reading of my post.

I feel so bad that he calls me snarky; he does notice that I was having lighthearted fun.

I do feel bad that he picks on Bora and Brian who have worked as hard as anyone in this area to make blogging known and respected by local MSM.

Oh Lord, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (as Eric Burton sang in 1965).

Working group on Expertise, Science, and Democracy Spring Talks

One will be me. I’m not exactly repeating the talk I recently did at Duke; I’m asking folks who come to this upcoming talk to add, subtract, modify the wiki pages of that talk and/or to send me email (jonesATuncDOTedu) and/or post a comment on this blog entry as a way of participating in the talk before it even begins. So have at it! And do come to the talks. All three look good.

Thurs February 8, 3:30 pm @ Hanes Art 118:
“The Intellectual Commons”
Don Nonini, Professor of Anthropology, UNC-Chapel Hill

Thurs March 8, 3:30 pm @ Hanes Art 118
Paul Jones, founder of sunsite.unc.edu and director of ibiblio.org,
“Participatory Digital Libraries – Past and Futures; the ibiblio trends”

Fri March 30, 3:30 pm @ Saunders 220
Matthew Farish, Department of Geography and Program in Planning,
University of Toronto, “From Recognition to Regulation: Climate Laboratories and the Nature of War”*
*co-sponsored with UNC Geography

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