Lessig hibernates his blog

After seven years of constant activity, Lawrence Lessig stops his blog. For an undetermined period no more posts or comments. A new child and a new job as director of Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard are the main causes. From now Creative Commons fonder will communicate only by twitter, blip.tv and his podcast channel.

So my blog turns seven today. On August 20, 2002, while hiding north of San Francisco working on the Eldred appeal, I penned my first (wildly and embarrassingly defensive) missive to Dave. Some 1753 entries later, I’m letting the blog rest. This will be the last post in this frame. Who knows what the future will bring, but in the near term, it won’t bring more in lessig.org/blog.

The reasons are many.

First, as I peer over the abyss of child number 3 (expected in a couple weeks), I can’t begin to imagine how I would be able to allocate the time to give this space the attention it needs. I’ve already fretted about my failure to give this community the time it deserves in REMIX. Things will only get worse.

Second, even if I could, I’m entering a stage of my work when the ratio of speaking to reading/listening/thinking is changing significantly. I’ve just taken up my role as director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. As announced, this means the launch of a 5 year research project on institutional corruption. While I expect that project will have a critical cyber-presence, I don’t want its life to be framed by this blog. The mission, the understanding, the community is different.

Third, even if I could, and even if the work I was doing meant I should, there’s an increasingly technical burden to maintaining a blog that I don’t have the cycles to support. Some very good friends — Theo Armour and M. David Peterson — have been volunteering time to do the mechanics of site maintenance. That has gotten overwhelming. Theo estimates that 1/3 of the 30,000 comments that were posted to the blog over these 7 years were fraudsters. He’s been working endlessly to remove them. At one point late last year, Google kicked me off their index because too many illegal casino sites were linking from the bowels of my server. I know some will respond with the equivalent of “you should have put bars on your windows and double bolted locks on your front door.” Maybe. Or maybe had legislatures devoted 1/10th the energy devoted to the copyright wars to addressing this muck, it might be easier for free speech to be free.

This isn’t an announcement of my disappearance. I’m still trying to understand twitter. My channel at blip.tv will remain. As will the podcast, updated as I speak. I will continue to guest blog at Huffington Post. And as Change-Congress.org enters a new stage, I hope to be doing more there. But this community, this space, this board will now rest.

Thank you to the endless list of people who have helped make this place as it is, or was. Theo and M. David especially. Marc Perkel for his free hosting at ctyme.com for so many years. And thank you especially to the inhabitants of this space, especially the fantastic commentators and loyal backbenchers (Three Blind Mice, you have to reveal yourself now and let me buy you a beer). I have enjoyed this wildly more than I have not (again, I whine in REMIX about the not). And I have been very proud to be responsible for certain bits of content — especially the guest blogging by the interesting and famous (Howard Dean was a favorite, and I will always be proud that I got Judge Posner to experiment with blogging, leading to his wonderful blog with Gary Becker).

Comments on this post will remain open for a week. And then comments on all posts will be locked.

Thank you to everyone, again.

A Microformat for touristic itineraries

Luís Nóbrega has proposed the development of a new Microformat for semantic description of touristic itineraries, collecting some real examples for a better implementation.

It could be very useful for marketing  and communication strategies, especially for aggregation or search of touristic offers, and for personal uses, like sharing with friends, integration in your personal calendar, photo album or to do list, in interactive touristic guides or with gps software.

A first application of this future standard could be in responsible tourism and international volunteering, helping people in their choice.

A Microformat for touristic itineraries

Luís Nóbrega has proposed the development of a new Microformat for semantic description of touristic itineraries, collecting some real examples for a better implementation.

It could be very useful for marketing  and communication strategies, especially for aggregation or search of touristic offers, and for personal uses, like sharing with friends, integration in your personal calendar, photo album or to do list, in interactive touristic guides or with gps software.

A first application of this future standard could be in responsible tourism and international volunteering, helping people in their choice.

Uscita Slackware 13

E finalmente è uscita Slackware 13, la distribuzione GNU/Linux adorata da molti Linux power user nella rete. Come compete ad una “major” release ci sono stati numerosi aggiornamenti, tra cui citiamo una versione “refactored” del server X, una nuova versione di pacchetti (.txz, basata su lzma, più prestazionale), KDE 4.2.4 ( a questo punto non più recentissimo) e Xfce 4.6.1, kernel 2.6.29.6  (anche se in testing è già presente la 2.6.30), gcc 4..3.3, Firefox 3.5.2 e altro. Cosa ancora più importante, da questa versione sarà disponibile una versione ufficiale a 64 bit, molto attesa dai possessori di pc recenti, siano essi Intel che AMD.

Slackware Logo

E’ possibile trovare l’annuncio ufficiale qui.

Quella beffa di Italia.it

La beffa di Italia.it
Arturo Di Corinto
Per L’Espresso del 20 agosto 2009

Se gli albergatori abruzzesi si aspettavano un rilancio della stagione turistica grazie a un portale capace di attrarre visitatori nel nostro paese, dovranno ricredersi. Il mastodontico progetto di Italia.it continua a slittare nonostante la promessa celerità del ministro al Turismo Michela Vittoria Brambilla. Il nuovo progetto, che dovrebbe far dimenticare lo spreco di denaro pubblico operato finora (58 milioni di euro a tre anni dalla nascita), presentato di recente dalla Rossa padana, non fa che raccogliere lamentele.
Il sito, copiato pari pari dal portale Spain.info, ma senza i filmati, le foto, i documenti, e i servizi interattivi dell’omologo spagnolo, è ancora in fase “beta”. Al Ministero promettono che la versione definitiva dovrà aspettare ottobre – per inciso, appena passata l’alta stagione turistica – e solo entro la fine dell’anno sarà riempito di contenuti “promocommerciali”, quando, grazie all’implementazione di social network e servizi B2B e B2C, diventerà la porta virtuale del Belpaese.
Però anche volendo credere alle promesse, il progetto già parte male. Ad esempio, il sito non rispetta le norme sull’accessibilità dei siti web volute dal precedente governo Berlusconi; scoraggia chiunque dal diffondere i (pochi) materiali presenti sul sito, ignorando una elementare regola del marketing al tempo di Internet; rimanda a siti e servizi esterni rigorosamente in lingua italiana per pianificare il proprio viaggio dalla Germania o dal Giappone. Se è inutile chiedersi come questo governo non rispetti le sue stesse leggi, alle dieci domande sul futuro del portale che Altroconsumo ha rivolto al ministro (che si fa negare) se ne potrebbe aggiungere un’altra: può un popolo di artisti, inventori e trasmigratori, accontentarsi di Italia.it?

presentazione italia.it

ShareThis

Italia.it

La beffa di Italia.it
Arturo Di Corinto
Per L’Espresso del 20 agosto 2009

Se gli albergatori abruzzesi si aspettavano un rilancio della stagione turistica grazie a un portale capace di attrarre visitatori nel nostro paese, dovranno ricredersi. Il mastodontico progetto di Italia.it continua a slittare nonostante la promessa celerità del ministro al Turismo Michela Vittoria Brambilla. Il nuovo progetto, che dovrebbe far dimenticare lo spreco di denaro pubblico operato finora (58 milioni di euro a tre anni dalla nascita), presentato di recente dalla Rossa padana, non fa che raccogliere lamentele.
Il sito, copiato pari pari dal portale Spain.info, ma senza i filmati, le foto, i documenti, e i servizi interattivi dell’omologo spagnolo, è ancora in fase “beta”. Al Ministero promettono che la versione definitiva dovrà aspettare ottobre – per inciso, appena passata l’alta stagione turistica – e solo entro la fine dell’anno sarà riempito di contenuti “promocommerciali”, quando, grazie all’implementazione di social network e servizi B2B e B2C, diventerà la porta virtuale del Belpaese.
Però anche volendo credere alle promesse, il progetto già parte male. Ad esempio, il sito non rispetta le norme sull’accessibilità dei siti web volute dal precedente governo Berlusconi; scoraggia chiunque dal diffondere i (pochi) materiali presenti sul sito, ignorando una elementare regola del marketing al tempo di Internet; rimanda a siti e servizi esterni rigorosamente in lingua italiana per pianificare il proprio viaggio dalla Germania o dal Giappone. Se è inutile chiedersi come questo governo non rispetti le sue stesse leggi, alle dieci domande sul futuro del portale che Altroconsumo ha rivolto al ministro (che si fa negare) se ne potrebbe aggiungere un’altra: può un popolo di artisti, inventori e trasmigratori, accontentarsi di Italia.it?

presentazione italia.it

ShareThis

A widget for Ieml semantic navigation

An article by Candide Kemmler explores the new possibilities of semantic navigation that will be fed by the IEML dictionary.

The software widget presented in this paper is a first attempt at providing end-users with a means to navigate an IEML space both for content annotation (USL notation) and for content navigation through their semantics. It was first presented at IEML’s international seminar in Ottawa on May 2d, 2009.

A bibliography on Ieml

A collection of articles about collective intelligence and Ieml.

2009

• Candide Kemmler, An IEML dictionary powered semantic navigation widget
• Pierre Lévy, From Social Computing to Reflexive Collective Intelligence
• Samuel Szoniecky, Les perspectives du tagging sémantique (in French)

2008

• Pierre Lévy, Algebraic Structure of IEML Semantic Space
• Pierre Lévy, La mutation inachevée de la sphère publique (in French)
• Pierre Lévy, IEML, bilan et perspectives (in French)
• Michel Biezunski and Steve Newcomb, Binary IEML
• Pierre Lévy, Internet, de quel séisme parle-t-on? (in French)
• Andrew Roczniak, IEML Initiative Service Oriented Architecture
• Pierre Lévy, Architecture of a Semantic Networking Language

2007

• Pierre Lévy, IEML Syntax
• Pierre Lévy, société du savoir et développement humain (in French)
• Pierre Lévy, l’intelligence possible du XXIème siècle (in French)
• Michel Biezunski and Steve Newcomb, Vers un Protocole de l’Intelligence Collective (in English)

2006

• Pierre Lévy, L’initiative IEML et les fondements de la sémantique computationnelle (in French)
• Pierre Lévy, IEML : Métalangage de l’économie de l’information (in French)
• Pierre Lévy, Un programme de recherche pour l’économie de l’information (in French)
• Daniel Memmi, Le modèle vectoriel pour le traitement de documents (in French)
• Pierre Lévy, Interprétation des chiffres sémantiques (in English)
• Pierre Lévy, Séries, arbres et matrices sémantiques (in English)
• Pierre Lévy, with the help of Andrew Roczniak, Formal Representation of the Information Economy Meta Language : IEML (in English)

A widget for Ieml semantic navigation

An article by Candide Kemmler explores the new possibilities of semantic navigation that will be fed by the IEML dictionary.

The software widget presented in this paper is a first attempt at providing end-users with a means to navigate an IEML space both for content annotation (USL notation) and for content navigation through their semantics. It was first presented at IEML’s international seminar in Ottawa on May 2d, 2009.

A bibliography on Ieml

A collection of articles about collective intelligence and Ieml.

2009

• Candide Kemmler, An IEML dictionary powered semantic navigation widget
• Pierre Lévy, From Social Computing to Reflexive Collective Intelligence
• Samuel Szoniecky, Les perspectives du tagging sémantique (in French)

2008

• Pierre Lévy, Algebraic Structure of IEML Semantic Space
• Pierre Lévy, La mutation inachevée de la sphère publique (in French)
• Pierre Lévy, IEML, bilan et perspectives (in French)
• Michel Biezunski and Steve Newcomb, Binary IEML
• Pierre Lévy, Internet, de quel séisme parle-t-on? (in French)
• Andrew Roczniak, IEML Initiative Service Oriented Architecture
• Pierre Lévy, Architecture of a Semantic Networking Language

2007

• Pierre Lévy, IEML Syntax
• Pierre Lévy, société du savoir et développement humain (in French)
• Pierre Lévy, l’intelligence possible du XXIème siècle (in French)
• Michel Biezunski and Steve Newcomb, Vers un Protocole de l’Intelligence Collective (in English)

2006

• Pierre Lévy, L’initiative IEML et les fondements de la sémantique computationnelle (in French)
• Pierre Lévy, IEML : Métalangage de l’économie de l’information (in French)
• Pierre Lévy, Un programme de recherche pour l’économie de l’information (in French)
• Daniel Memmi, Le modèle vectoriel pour le traitement de documents (in French)
• Pierre Lévy, Interprétation des chiffres sémantiques (in English)
• Pierre Lévy, Séries, arbres et matrices sémantiques (in English)
• Pierre Lévy, with the help of Andrew Roczniak, Formal Representation of the Information Economy Meta Language : IEML (in English)