The wiki engine is now serving a shopping portal. This has potential to takes sites like shopping.com and shopzilla.com to a new level. Shop Wiki searches 120,000+ stores, allows customer reviews, customer shopping tip articles, customer video reviews. And in true wiki format, the content is out there for review and update by the community (though not the videos). Pretty cool.
Author: dougfloyd (Page 53 of 65)
Looks like the next Spiderman wrestles with the darkness within his own soul. This could be interesting. I sure wish those engaged in political dialogue in this country would have more awareness of their own personal weakness. Maybe the self-righteuos finger-point from left to right and from right to left would slow down. Maybe not.
Would that we all might learn the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian:
Yea, O Lord King, grant me to see mine own failings and not to condemn my brother. For Thou are blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen
Springwise highlights a co-creative venture between customers and Vodafone Netherlends. Customers create content in the form of videos via their cameraphone and then submit. If their videos are downloaded off the website, they get 10% of the revenue. Now that’s real co-creation and I salute!
If you have a big body bubble, why not make it tangible? Iconoculture reports on a new life dress for women by Anna Maria Cornelia. I guess you could sit in there and IM all your close friends.
And while I’m noting anti-relational trends, Iconoculture offers a succinct quote from a recent CNET article.
For many reasons, people bond with robots in a way they don’t bond with their lawn mowers, televisions or regular vacuum cleaners. At some point, this could help solve the looming health care problem caused by an enormous generation of aging people. Not only could robots make sure they take their medicine and watch for early warning signs of distress, but they could also provide a companion for lonely people and extend their independence.
While that certainly sounds convenient, I don’t think it sounds personal. The origins of the word “person” are fuzzy and may have several strands, but it was once a legal term for property owners (men) in the Roman empire.
When trying to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity, the Greek Church Fathers gradually came to link person with being to suggest that “God was being in communion.” In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) suggests being cannot being reduced to a substance or essence that precedes relationship.
Humans, as images of God, are persons in the sense that we are fundamentally relational with other humans. While dogs, cats and even robots may give us warm fuzzies they cannot enter into the messiness of a fully reciprocal relationship.
And in one sense that is what relationship is about: messiness, conflict, forgiveness, betrayal, redemption, and sometimes separation. Our capacity to wound one another corresponds with our capacity to enter into genuine loving relationships that cannot be duplicated with any other force, object or creature.
Sure caring for elderly can be difficult and messy and overwhelming. That’s part of what human life is all about. I guarantee it is not about sitting on the couch watching American Idol every night.
The story I cited yesterday seems to be taking legs. I’ve noticed several others folks writing and talking about social isolation and absence of friendships. Dr. Helen offers some interesting thoughts and questions what “friendless” means in terms of our behavior.
This is and has been a passion of mine for the last fifteen years. It part of why I’ve chosen to function bi-vocationally. Trying to learn how to pattern and live in a way that encourages the possiblity of lifelong intimate friendships drives much of what of I do.
I hope more will come of this article and more people will think deeply of their own friendships or lack thereof. Maybe some will rediscover ancient writings on friendships by folks like Cicero, Augustine and Aelred of Rievaulx. And maybe some will actually devote themselves to building lifelong loving relationships.
Just what I've been waiting for: Planet of the Apes seen as an episde of Twilight Zone.
I decided to keep my long meditations over at Floydville and use this blog to send out the interesting developments I am noticing on the web and in our culture so I renamed this blog Doug Watching. I will however notify when a Floydville post pops up.
Here's a game, translate, retranslate, retranslate, and repeat watch how you phrase shifts using this non-human translations software.
Best Buy is going to start selling Apples again, so I guess CompUsa is going to start selling peaches and cream.
Online communities are exploding across the web offering new opportunities to join social networks each day. This catches my attention with my longing and study of community over the last 20 years. I see it as part of a larger trends that has been in motion for over 100 years. The ideas that gave rise to the Enlightenment challenged the collectivists oppression of Europe and sought to make room for the value of the Individiual.
These ideas played a fundamental role in the shaping of America. When Alexis De Tocqueville visited America in the early nineteenth century, he was fascinated by our individualism and highly valued it. Yet, he warned of the dangers of unrestrained individualism that would destroy the common good. He suggested that America has certain restraining forces that held individualism in check: civic commitment, family, and communities of faith.
The power of these forces have eroded giving rise to a culture of individual right and lacking individual responsibility. The side effect is individuals feeling cut off from the whole resulting in alienation, loneliness, meaninglessness and desire for a connection to something greater then themselves. Kierkegaard noted this development in mid nineteenth century and many existintialists and postmoderns have built upon in the 20th century.
The current explosion of online communities is but another manifestation of humans trying to find a way to connect–just as we saw in the the communes of the 60s. Local manifestations include the rise of knitting circles, quilting and other clubs, smoking rooms, reading circles and even a small group movement in the church. I see online communties developing and reshaping for years to come, but our sense of individualism is so strong that I do not think they or many other attempts at building social networks successfully connecting people in authentic lifelong relationships.
There may be a few deep relationships of lifelong reciprical love emerging from these trends but there will also continue to be many lonely, disatisfied people. Just today Washington Post ran an article about the growing sense of isolation among American in spite of the explosion of social networks.
I think businesses, civic leaders and churches would be wise to study this trend and think deeply about what responsibility they may have in helping encourage the formation of community in the workplace, online, the local community and the houses of worship.
I see this struggle between individulism and community as a renewed struggle between the ancient philosophical problem of the one and the many. I will write more later about how I see the Trinity as a genuine response to this dilemna.
