Thursday, April 13, 2017

Worldly Affairs

Using Antiprism

The Synergetics 101 playlist is complete at least for now. I've turned my thinking towards Synergetics for Dummies or whatever.  In the meantime, I'm content to watch imitators pick up the dropped baton and carry forward and/or jump on the bandwagon.

I spent some time this morning, in response to an email, researching InnerSource, which is now mostly what OSCON is about.

Portland, an Open Source capital, whatever that means, no longer gets to have OSCON.

Moving what used to be the Perl conference to Austin sends a new message.  Portland is no longer in the loop as much. I wasn't able to offer any suggestions.

My MOOC is going well. I finished the first week, however the way Coursera works my report on the "AI bicycle network" has to be evaluated by peers.

I've been talking to someone just recently in Shanghai and comparing notes regarding how cities now may provide bicycle transportation to people who don't want the headache of actually owning such a device.

Portland's system is not quite the same as Shanghai's, in terms of scale obviously, but also in many other ways.

What's going on in the background these days in the mainstream media is some cabal with a lot of friends in high places is going ballistic about stuff.  Literally.

So-called North Korea is angering to various species of control freak, as it might be a threat of some kind someday.

A high ranking Pentagon employee just decided to use that establishment's biggest non-nuke bomb on an enemy. They say that sent some kind of message to the defiant NK. I'm sure that will inspire more patriotism among Kim Jong Un fans.

Then of course many people watched the cruise missile show on CNN etc., with viewers invited to gather around the HDTVs in sports bars, and maybe cheer on social media. Many complied I'm sure, though some maybe more out of a sense of obedience.  North Koreans understand I'm sure.

Quakers don't usually find outward war either sexy or attractive, so in my Portland-based circles we probably weren't as glued to our screens as some.

We don't ignore worldly affairs though as the brand of Quakerism I practice is not about grooming Friends to become hermits, much as the Internet of Things is making such lifestyles more attractive.

I don't know who at West Point is in charge of teaching about literary movements and philosophy, American history. You can't really fight for a nation you haven't studied or don't understand.  I'm pretty sure they read Wittgenstein at least.

InnerSource means using a lot of the same technologies used by public developers, including version control, Agile, collaborative teams.  How open source gained so much market share in the first place is the subject of Revolution OS, dated by now, but still worth a look.

One may own a bicycle privately, and still choose to use a public bicycle routinely.  Software works the same way.  Many people who work on public projects and contribute their time liberally to such endeavors, are also hired guns inside of private organizations, where their work is appreciated by a smaller audience.

Antiprism Hexapent