Category: Random observations

The DSTC failed to secure third round funding. Therefore, Karen and I are moving to Nimbin to "retire".

Try this link for the Alan Jones Editorial I blogged earlier. For some reason the printable version links properly, but the "readable" version does not.

Here is a case study that documents the way in which Groove Virtual Office is being used by Sanjana’s organisation, Info-Share to help facilitate the peace process in Sri Lanka.

One feels very small when one is crapped on by a bird.

Alan Jones said it.

I just attended a very interesting presentation by Sanjana Hattotuwa about using CSCW in conflict transformation and peacebuilding. What is really great is that initial efforts are already underway to use this software in Sri Lanka. There has already been some success in getting the opposing factions to sit down and use this tool so that each party can describe the conflict from their point of view, air grievances and so on. Great to see technology being used for things that really matter, though, as Sanjana stated, lasting peace will not be brought about by technology but by the people involved in the conflict.

During his presentation, Sanjana said a few things that made me wonder about how context can be used in conflict transformation/resolution. He emphasised the difficulties introduced by cultural differences. A nod in one country means something else in another country (or even within different regions of the same country). It seems to me that the current context has a lot to do with the way you gesture, the way you speak and so forth. This is no different in a virtual setting than in a physical setting, except that in a physical setting the human needs to be aware of these cultural differences, whereas in a virtual setting (like the CSCW system presented by Sanjana) it should be theoretically possible to remove the burden of understanding cultural differences from the human, at least in part, and place that burden on the software.

Another possible channel of research is looking at the ownership of the virtual space that these peace negotiations take place in. Perhaps the paper written by KMH et al about security and access control in context management could throw some light on this?

Unbelievable.

An update on the Merrylands fiasco: somebody decided to fix the error. There is no state of Merrylands any longer.

The US election is still too close to call, with everything unfolding as predicted. But there was one big surprise. According to a story from ABC News Online, the USA has spawned a new state called Merrylands! None of the pundits predicted this.

I’m astonished to find that, according to Google, there is only one weblog called Reality Check, and it’s a long defunct weblog at that. Right now I’m thinking Reality Check with the subtitle The fly in your Chardonnay. I was also puzzled to find that there is not a single web page indexed by Google with that exact sentence. However, a fly in your Chardonnay uncovered many Alanis Morissette misquotes.