A good geek?

The New Shore

2010-02-22T16:22:00.002Z

It's hard to remember, sometimes, that this is still the other side.

When the tide of strangeness pulled us from the shingle where we paddled.
When we stopped resisting, and turned, and ran, then stumbled, then swam
down with the current over the shelf.
Lost and gone, the old shore.

When we gave up our last breath, knowing that air was for others,
knowing we would learn to breathe a different stuff.
At that moment, we knew the old shore was gone forever,
and land was the love of a different life.

But now the tide has gone, and we walk a new shore.
There are trees on this side too, and roads, and walls,
and all the other markings of solidity.

And it is hard to remember, sometimes,
that these are not the stones of the old beach.
That the same kite is not lifted by the same breeze,
That the ice cream here doesn't taste the same.

The map here is not the same, nor the walk back home away from the sea.
The front door, the pile of post, the desk, the screen
the phone, the worries, the work,
we would think it was all the same,

if we didn't remember that once, our lungs were full of water, and we breathed.
That once we turned, and joined our strength with the tide,
and swam with love into the dark.
Things look the same, but they are not.
They were left on the old shore.

This is the other side
and I will try to remember that.

The Stuff Commons

2009-10-22T17:03:00.005+01:00

This is the third episode in the serialisation of four ideas that I originally developed for SI Camp Scotland. The idea is based on attempt to reverse engineer copyleft, abstracting ideas developed for copyable abundant information to the world of scarce physical objects.

The open source and creative commons movements have shown how much can be achieved with licenses which permit intellectual property to be used under certain conditions. Legal ownership of the property does not change, but the current custodian does. Can we apply this to physical objects, which can't be freely copied?

I conjecture that we could create a parametric license system similar to creative commons which would be succesful for physical objects. (A parametric license is one where options about the license can be selected as dropdowns, like the choice of attribution clause in the creative commons.)

The license will mandate that the stream of custodians maintain a log for the licensed object. This is necessary to make the idea even slightly workable. The log will detail custodians' use of the object, its location and the terms for handing on to another custodian. An open question is whether to offer a portal to assist in managing object logs or to merely define a protocol for the object log which can stack on existing media is an open question. One possibility is an implementation via the twitter API - given the popularity of twitterstreams for constructed objects.

I'm particularly excited about the artistic implications: helping create a remix culture for physical art. I'm hoping there may be some excitement in the physical computing community around this idea. Ideally, development of the license would be funded by the community of projects and businesses which grow up around it. (Compare the relationship between wikipedia and creative commons licensing.)

As an example of artistic use of the license, consider the placement of a chisel into the object commons. This is borrowed and used to produce a sculpture. Due to the viral nature of the license, the sculpture is part of the stuff commons. A second artist becomes custodian of the sculpture and uses it as a prop in staging a play.

Parametric elements of the license will leave several controversial elements up to the licensor. These include the degree of virality, the option of commercial use, and the maximum duration of a custodianship. Another interesting question is whether to mandate an induced license for reproducible artifacts based on the nonreproducible artifact in the stuff commons. I.e. should photos of a stuffcommons object automatically be creative commons licensed. Yet further complexity surrounds the licensing of deconstruction, e.g. the shattering of the sculpture by a fourth artist.

The relationship between this idea and a municipal library is an interesting one. Many of the problems faced by libraries (loss or damage of items, abuse of renewal priviledges) also face an object commons. We can see, however, that by licensing the reuse, embedding, use-as-tool, and possibly deconstruction of objects we can move beyond the potential of a library. By mandating an object log, we can perhaps create a peer-to-peer solution to abuse of the commons. To an extent, the object commons is an attempt to create a generalised legal basis for the burgeoning set of open peer-to-peer object lending schemes like bookmooch, just as the open source definition and creative commons have helped to organise copyleft for information.

The log of an object in the stuff commons becomes a partial implementation of Bruce Stirling's "Spime" concept, without necessarily requiring the technological developments anticipated there. By practicing artistically with open licensing for dumb physical stuff, we can perhaps prepare ourselves for the near future world of smart geolocative networked objects, a world where 3-d printers make physical objects as freely copyable as information. The culmination of the idea is a stuff-commons licensed RepRap, twittering as it creates each object, and linking to the stuff-commons logs of each (necessarily) object commons licensed daughter object.

(This idea was first published as part of the Social Innovation Camp Scotland. I'm assigning the idea to the public domain, so anyone is free to implement or change the idea as they see fit, but informally I'd like some credit if you do.)

SI Camp Scotland Ideas - Part Two - Open Research Council

2009-06-30T15:12:00.004+01:00

What's the idea?

People post their academic publications to the site. These are peer-reviewed using a slashdot style moderation system. Those with strong positive moderation receive a small cash bounty for the research. Publications are smaller and more frequent than current journal articles.

What's the need?

There's much excitement about how the internet is disrupting the system of scientific publication. (Michael Nielsen's just written a great summary.) Publications charge people to read papers, which makes no sense in an age of free distribution of information. In some fields scientists have turned to preprint servers, but in other fields, publishing to these prohibits journal publication, and this clash of cultures prevents crossdisciplinary fertilisation.

A particular concern of mine is that publication of computational results is forced into static, serial, pdfs. Reproduction of the research often requires transcribing back into computer code formulae which the author transcribed *from* readable computer code during the preparation of the paper. Code which embodies the research can be placed directly on the site and made executable, resulting in one-click reproducibility.

I believe that the system of scientific funding and grants is similarly ripe for disruption, and that tying these two areas of innovation could be a great opportunity.

While research about measurement of scientific productivity continues, many feel that the "Research Assesment Exercise" currently used in the U.K. rewards narrow niches of work and penalises cross-department activities. Universities seek to appoint "paper factories" to game the RAE, with research which has a low probability of producing groundbreaking science being outcompeted by pedestrian but reliable activities.

Peer review by two or three reviewers is based on the idea that feedback is expensive. With the internet, feedback is cheap, and the massively distributed peer review that is now possible could restore the once wonderful social credit system of science that has been undermined by the pressures of the current institutional grant system. The moderation system of discussion boards such as slashdot, which allows insightful comments to rise to the top, is peer review for the digital age.

With Open Research Council, I propose to directly link the funding system with the publication system. Businesses and governments can pay a bounty into the system, rewarding financially authors of micropublications which are moderated positively. Currently, industries avoid funding research when they know governments may do it, or even fabricate research which supports their interests.

This approach could eliminate the overheads associated with the maintainance of the research grant infrastructure. Many forms of research now require only a mind and a cheap computer, yet currently must still pay to sustain university facilities and the administrators which manage the baroque grant application system.

What do we need?

Geeks and designers to build it. An idea for a small subarea of science which can be tackled by bedroom researchers. (Not one the developers are involved in to avoid a conflict of interest.) Prize money to use for the initial bounty. If there's a succesful outcome from the pilot project, we seek businesses and governments to pay additional bounties, and we take a cut for running costs.

SICamp Scotland Ideas: Part One - Open Currency

2009-06-09T14:48:00.005+01:00

I'm going to be gradually reposting here the ideas I submitted to the latest social innovation camp. None was selected, but apparently some did quite well. I'm still excited to develop them, and may resubmit them to future SICamps or similar events. The first is

Open Currency

What's the idea?

A website allowing people to develop their own currencies. This includes designing the images, deciding how it is backed, who/what can create new money, and if the user decides the money has a physical embodiment, ordering some of the money to be delivered.

What's the need?

The concept of currency is much more conflicted and contentious than we now realise. Money has taken many forms over the ages, freely exchangable or with severe exchange controls, printed in one place or produced all over, real or virtual, backed by gold or by nothing at all, restricted in what you can buy with it, and so on and so on. Examples of interest include gift economies with bead necklaces passed forward to measure the gift burden, rationing coupons after the war, and local exchange schemes now. Another example is the "wipeboard currency" my friends and I use to exchange value between us, with the central bank being a wipeboard in our kitchen.

Given the above, and given the current opportunities for deep economic change, a site such as that described can provide educational benefit to children and families, provide fun to people for parties and games, be used to orchestrate community events, (imagine using it to make currency for a grassroots fair, or even a college ball) and be used seriously for local exchange schemes.

What inspired me?

A few years ago being told I wasn't allowed to take money out of morocco started out my interest in this subject - I'd forgotten that money wasn't a freely exchangeable thing in much of the world. Then during the recent crisis I've been reading KashKlash, and learning about all the exciting ways people are rethinking the concept of money. (Learning about Corey Doctorow's Whuffie idea was interesting in this area as well). Various alternative currency projects are popping up everywhere (e.g. tipjoy) - I think it'd be cool to develop one service which subsumes them all.

So, I wanted to create a site which was fun, practical, and explained about the new ways to think about money. Then I thought of the idea of using moo cards to print it, and filling in security features and serial numbers with some gimp scripting on the image.

What do we need?

Geeks and designers to build it. People with economics knowledge and who've read the alternative finance literature (e.g. kashklash or The End of Money), to help write the ontology of different kinds of money. It should to be comprehensive and include everything from whuffie to ration coupons to points on BookMooch. We'll probably keep the structure simpler to start with focus on the basics like who is allowed to order new money for your design and the image
templating.

Making it sustainable:

Hopefully, take a cut from the printing of the money, perhaps by taking a referal fee from Moo.

(I claim alternative intellectual property ownership of this idea. Anyone can start a project to implement this, and I don't mind as long as you ask me to be involved a bit and give me social credit.)

Keyboard and Sickle

2009-05-27T00:39:00.005+01:00

Keyboard and Sickle by James Hetherington is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. It was built using the Gimp from two images in the wikimedia commons. I think it represents things like this, but you may use it for other purposes.

Buy things with this on from Cafe Press

Activist Moneymaking Ethical Enterprises

2009-05-05T20:13:00.010+01:00

Some readers may know that since January I've been working at the Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine. We provide carbon emissions science as a web-of-data service. Algorithms and methodologies as well as numbers. AMEE is a really important project and if you're interested in using the web to save the world, why not join us! AMEE can really show why the web is a perfect tool for bringing science into business and policy in an open, usable way. AMEE is a for-profit venture funded startup, but our purpose and philosophy of business is clear from the name!

I was also part of one of the winning teams at Rewired State, where we rebuilt government websites. Our project was Companies Open House. We're looking forward to taking that project forward, and I'm hoping to add public scrutiny of corporate activity and relationships to the participatory panopticon! We're also in the process of developing business models to make this project self-funding, which is exciting.

I believe that projects such as AMEE and Companies Open House work best to change the world if they can sustain themselves financially while continuing to be committed to their more important nonfinancial goals. One needs to have a plan to make money without that distracting from one's principal purpose of doing something useful.

One also needs to retain that purpose as companies or organisations grow, maintaining radicalism and agility while developing the right business communication strategies to engage with vested interests. I'm proud that AMEE is engaging with business organisations which some might see as part of the problem. If the world is to be saved, progressives must engage constructively with the status quo, while being careful to ensure that the flow of values is from our worldchanging organisations into the mainstream, not the other way round.

The principles of financial sustainability and engagement with wider society are key principles at SICamp, where those pitching ideas are always asked how they can be made sustainable financially. Another SICamper, Rohan, describes the process of taking the best ideas from the tech community and spreading them into wider society as ungeeking. Are AMEE, and our friends at Sandbag, therefore involved in untreehuggering? I am both a geek and a treehugger, so spreading those groups' memes to all and sundry is something I'm delighted to be supporting.

Also on the subject of SICamp, you may be interested to watch me explain how great it is.

The cryptic comment at the end relates to the fact that at SICamp I met a few people who told me about AMEE and said I'd be useful there. It was eventually through an introduction by Paul that I met Gavin and found my way to the wonderful, revolutionary, worldchanging, moneymaking business that is AMEE.

WeNeed

2008-12-09T17:00:00.005Z

Well, Social Innovation Camp was absolutely amazing. Look at some of our Guardian Coverage. I worked on WeNeed, building an accessible system for vulnerable people to express their needs for social support, and for providers (both local authorities and social enterprise) to visualise the needs in their area.

This was challenging in so many exciting ways: from making computational interfaces for people with poor motor control or literacy difficulties, to visualising need information clearly and accessibly, to building an interdisciplinary team and keeping all the skills working together. (The products of MIT's Simile were great for the visualisation side, Exhibit in particular.) The idea for WeNeed came from Craig Griffin at Fresh Voice, and we hope we'll be able to keep the project going, even though we didn't win seed funding at SIcamp.

The winner and runner up at SI camp were two more amazing projects, The Good Gym (visit needy people as part of your exercise) and Useful Visitors (knowledge transfer to projects in the developing world while on business or holiday). I hope to be both a good gym member and a useful visitor, and recommend you keep an eye on their development. There were seven projects in total, and all could change the world, and all should be funded and move forward.

The energy, vision, and hope that resulted when so many talented people got together for a weekend of prototyping and brainstorming about social enterprise ideas make me think that there really is a chance we can build a decent future. Now we need to discover how we can let this useful love fill the rest of our lives. This is what work should be like all the time.

OMG free books

2008-12-02T15:07:00.005Z

So I joined the local library system. I hadn't been part of a non-academic library since leaving home thirteen years ago. This was somewhat suprising. It really is quite remarkable the way they let you just take books away and read them for free! Public libraries are a shockingly radical social technology.

Why was I shocked by it? Because I've got used to free information being a consequence of new technology and of the new social structures that are emerging as a result of technology. But the current free culture movement is not at all the first.

Is it reasonable to think of the public libraries, which definitely have an old-fashioned feel to them, as fossils of an earlier age of economic and social experimentation? Why have so many of the younger members of society, including me until last week, completely forgotten about them? What other long-running social institutions, legacies of the old left, should the internet progressive community be paying attention to? Should we be looking to them for inspiration for social enterprises? What about similar ideas that failed in the past due to communication and organisation costs but which would now succeed?

It's embarassingly stupid of me to have got into the habit of going first to a bookshop when I want a new story to read. Not paying for something when there's a free version just as good is a cultural value of we open-source fans, yet this is exactly what I was doing. You wouldn't catch me automatically assuming I have to pay for software when I want to, say, edit a photo. So why would I do so when wanting to read a book?

Public libraries: like Book Mooch, but you don't have to wait for postage!

So it begins...

2008-11-25T18:42:00.004Z

Well, I've now had my first day of self employment. Mostly spent tidying up paperwork and filling in forms. I also had fun lifehacking shopping lists by building an inventory on google documents: augmenting daily chores with cloud computing for fun and profit!

The great news, however, is that I've been accepted to go along to Social Innovation Camp which I think will be really exciting. Seven great social enterprise ideas which need technical input, get seriously worked on over a weekend, resulting in real prototypes by the Sunday. This is the second S.I. camp, the winning project from the first, Enabled By Design is now going strong. Readers may want to sign up to come along to the final session on Sunday 7th December where we announce this year's winner and how we got on.

I hope to be able to be a real help at S.I. camp. There are a lot of talented web designers and developers in the community which has formed around it, which is as it should be. However, I think there is a niche for me: enough meaty problems should arise which my experience in the more sciencey-mathsey end of computing will be useful for solving.

Here's the cute youtube promo for S.I. camp, entitled "geek + heart":

Name the Network

2008-11-15T09:22:00.011Z

GoodGeeks is the name I've been using to develop ideas with the following linked purposes:

A shared brand identity for a small group of technical consultants working with progressive groups
A larger network of ethically minded geeks
A website containing content of relevance to the above

The time has come to think more carefully about the name I should actually use for this. GoodGeeks is a nice name, but it may be too aggressively geeky, and it is also in use by other groups in Australia, and America (1, 2). So, I think a new identity might be needed.

What do you think? In an attempt to crowdsource this question, I'm requesting input in the comments thread of this blog, or to me directly. Should I stick with goodGeeks, or go with something else?

In any case, I'm moving the URL for this blog to something more suited to an individual rather than an organisation: If you are still following this blog at goodgeeks.blogspot.com, please follow agoodgeek.blogspot.com instead.

A better geek.

2008-11-12T12:57:00.003Z

In the near future, I'll be leaving my job as a senior software developer in the Simulink model managment group at the MathWorks - a great employer with a mission to accelerate the pace of engineering and science.

I am going to try work out how to be the best geek I can be. I will try to understand how to use my skills as a scientist and programmer who understands complex systems to bring about a sustainable, just future.

To this end, I'll be building a role as an independent scientist and programmer working with third sector groups and other progressive organisations. I will also be developing something I'm currently thinking of as the Good Geeks Network, a piece of social entrepreneurship which will hopefully become a network of similar independent progressive scientists and programmers. I'll be chronicling these efforts here.

I'm also going to be working on novel writing and on role-playing game construction. I'll be writing about and posting extracts from these on this blog.

I'll also be writing about teaching work and about my continuing computational biology research interests. I don't yet know how the relative magnitudes of the different parts of my portfolio will balance!

Much of the money that helps me to take this risk comes from my partner, and I'm delighted that I'll be able to spend some time supporting her as a trainee domestic god. If you're amused by chronicles of a messy geek learning to be a frugal house-lover, you'll find that here too.

I will also, of course, be using this blog to publish my thoughts on all sorts of topics of interest to good geeks. This will include political, religious, scientific and social ranting, and comments on complicated board, card, roleplaying and computer games, programming issues, and speculative fiction.

I'll try to tag the posts appropriately so that if you're only reading for one of these strands, you can find the content you want.

Introductory quotations

2008-11-12T12:06:00.000Z

"... to point out some of the contributions which the scientific attitude of mind can make to the creative tasks of social reorganisation with which the world is faced. By this I do not mean merely an enumeration of new devices, new sources of power or techniques of production...We already have all, or at least most, of the techniques we need to provide a decent civilised life for everybody. They are not yet producing that result, ... partly because the old political and economic machine was unsuitable, directed to the wrong ends, and in obvious need of thorough overhaul... To the discussion of these social ends, science has a good deal more to contribute than has been recognised hereto." - C.H. Waddington, The Scientific Attitude, writing in 1948.

"With love alone, you can get a birthday party together. Add coordinating tools and you can write an operating system." - Clay Shirky, The Internet Runs on Love.

"We tell them the truth -- that an ecological collapse is on its way, and that avoiding it demands widespread transformation -- and then we suggest that they take some small steps whose meaninglessness in the face of massive crisis is self-evident. We ask them to care about everything, and do almost nothing. We ought instead to ask from them, and demand from ourselves, action commensurate to the crisis, which is to say heroic action... Dream big. Dream about living your one-planet life in a bright green city on a sustainable and thriving planet, and dream about it in the near term... We need to remake the systems in which live. We need to redesign civilization. Anything less is failure." - Alex Steffen, Don't Just Be the Change, Mass-Produce It

"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain M. Banks, The State of the Art