Category Archives: Friends

UNDO Process At “The Guantanamo By The Hudson” (At The Republican National Convention)

This just in from Ryan Junell:

From: ryan junell
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 18:54:42 -0400
To: free.eddie@texasmonkey.com
Subject: FREE EDDIE!
the rnc video project is in a weird spot… while I was inside the convention hall last night holding up a sign that said “girlymen for arnold” (I voted green in cali, btw)… project producer eddie codel was following the action at one of the protests when he got fenced in by cops arresting everyone on the block. they arrested over 1000 people last night and have detained them at the piers for now over 20 hours.
honestly, I don’t know what to do. he has not even been BOOKED yet (I called central booking). I’m about to file a missing persons claim on him because he is really nowhere to be seen.
THE BIG FUCKING PROBLEM is that I think they are holding these protestors in cages down by the water for as long as they can possibly do it so that they don’t return to the streets to protest the second they are let out!!! this is BULLSHIT!!! what happened to due process!?!!
anyways…. I think you guys should know this and if you have any insight to the situation please let me know. I’m pretty sure the mass media has agreed to choke this story but there are literally thousands of people protesting this convention. sunday’s march was without question over 400,000 if not a full half million. seriously.
eddie is an inspired political activist. we started working together six years ago on an event series about independent publishing on the internet. he’s gone on to do work with indyvoter.org, the matt gonzalez campaign, and a ton of other non profit benevolent projects. he’s got a heart of gold and a really awesome and gnarly sense of humor.
I feel bad now that I convinced him to come to nyc and work on this project over burning man this year (he didn’t need much convincing). right now he could be delirious, tired, smelly and around the coolest people in the world out in the desert instead of delirious, tired, smelly and around the coolest people in the world in the guantanomo by the hudson.
throw money his way via the paypal link at www.junell.net or do a search for “girlymen” on ebay and donate there. or just drop him a line and let him know he’s a kickass fighter! eddie@eddie.com
and watch this:

http://in8.com/fucknewyork/Resources/fucknewyork.mov

Interview With Brewster Khale On OpenP2P.com

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Here’s
an interview that was published last month in OpenP2P.com with Brewster Khale.

“Universal Access To All Human Knowledge” is a motto of Raj Reddy from Carnegie Mellon. I found that if you really actually come to understand that statement, then that statement is possible; technologically possible to take, say, all published materials — all books, music, video, software, web sites — that it’s actually possible to have universal access to all of that. Some for a fee, and some for free. I found that was a life-changing event for me. That is just an inspiring goal. It’s the dream of the Greeks, which they embodied, with the Egyptians, in the Library of Alexandria. The idea of having all knowledge accessible.
But, of course, in the Library of Alexandria’s case, you had to actually go to Alexandria. They didn’t have the Internet. Well, fortunately, we not only have the storage technology to be able to store all of these materials cost-effectively, but we can make it universally available. So that’s been just a fabulous goal that causes me to spring out of bed in the morning.
And it also — when other people sort of catch on to this idea that we could actually do this — that it helps straighten the path. You know, life, there’re lots of paths that sort of wander around. But I find that having a goal that’s that far out, but also doable, it helps me keep my direction, keep our organization’s direction. And I’m finding that a lot of other people like that direction, as well.

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John Perry Barlow Has A Blog!

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John Perry Barlow has started a blog.
‘Bout time! Thanks John Perry!

I’ve been wary of blogs. Starting a blog looks a little like signing up for treadmill duty. Unless you like to write better than I do – and, personally, I’d rather pump septic tanks – consigning yourself to writing something every day looks like voluntary servitude. Furthermore, when I read some of the discussions on blogs, it looked a little like what you’d get if you invited all of your most socially dysfunctional friends into your living room and gave them plenty of beer.
But then – duh – it dawned on me that I’m under no obligation to post every day. I can continue to write BarlowSpams with my usual infrequency and post them to the blog in addition to sending them directly to you. And there we can discuss them together.
As to the civility of those discussions, there is no reason to think you are as inclined to flame at one another as other blog-posters appear to be. You’re a sweet and relatively civilized lot. I’ve never had to break up a fight at a BarlowFrenzy. Why should I worry about it here? (Actually, there was that party in New York years ago where the anarchists from the Lower East Side went to war with the Italian soccer contingent and they all started throwing hummus at one another, but that seemed unusual….)
Having settled these concerns in my mind, I still didn’t start blogging. There remained the simple matter of inertia and technological surface tension. I knew it couldn’t be that hard to put up a blog. Over a million others have already done it. But I had a hard time getting myself to believe it when I’d tell myself, “This afternoon you should get your blog going, Barlow.”
This is one of the things friends are for. Then, a few days ago, I fell into the too-rare company of my dear pal, Joi Ito, who is like the Blogdom equivalent of Zeus. (Check him out at http://joi.ito.com/.) He sat me down in the lobby of San Francisco’s snotty W Hotel – where there is at least free WiFi coverage – and within a few minutes I had a blog.

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Home Movies From Creative Commons Party – Craig Newmark, Willem Dakota Lessig and Friends

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This is footage of Craig Newmark playing with Lawrence Lessig’s son, Willem, while in the arms of Justin Hall. (As filmed by me.)
Hey these aren’t prepared to stream over the Internet – you’ll have to download them to your hard drive!
The “complete” version also has some shots of the party.
This footage was pretty dark so I had to lighten it in Premiere to make it watchable.
Highlights include Craig flapping his arms like a chicken (part 1)!!

Craig and Willem 1 of 2 (Small – 9 MB)

Craig and Willem 2 of 2 (Small – 9 MB)

Craig and Willem and Party – Complete Clip (Small – 32 MB)

Slightly higher res version of same clip (Small – 44 MB)

Attention: Job Available At NewsMonster For Linux and Java-experienced Search and Reputation System Programmer

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My buddy Kevin Burton is having a hard time finding just the right programmer for his NewsMonster company.
I know you’re out there, just waiting to hear about such a position, so I thought I would take a minute out from my blogging moratorium to let you know that your new job awaits!
Email Kevin at burton@newsmonster.org if you’re interested.
Here’s the conversation I just had with Kevin:

Kevin: We’re still hiring. We’re still trying to hire people.
Lisa: Who are you trying to hire?
Kevin: Well, we’re trying to hire people with Linux and Java experience. Hopefully people that have *really* strong skills — like PhD quality stuff. Knowledge of search experience, and knowledge of reputation systems. But they’re just impossible to find. Even in this job market. If you’re a smart person, you still get sucked up. So it’s just impossible to find anyone. It’s not impossible, but you just have to spend a lot of time looking.

Interview With Craig Newmark

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I interviewed Craig Newmark for a project in one of my graduate classes.
Here’s an excerpt (complete transcription below):

A: Craigslist, as I think about it more and more. What I’ve done, not consciously, but just implemented what I could of the philosophy that I guess I’ve adopted, not consciously, and that seems to be happening by many people on the Net. The deal is that, in the early 90’s, a lot of people, including myself, somehow figured that eventually the Net would change the way we do everything. That includes business, it includes socializing — the way we connect to people, plus online and in real life, and it might also change the world in terms of the way we govern ourselves, the way we get help when a country’s in trouble. I even felt that a little bit when I saw the ArpaNet in the early 70’s when I was at CASE tech. And this was pretty good.
And nowadays, after the bubble is over, we now see that the Net has started to change everything. It’s changing the way we do business in a number of areas. It’s changing the way we socialize in a number of ways, particularly dating and so on. The ubiquity of digital cameras has also accelerated online dating, and we’re now seeing, or beginning to see, the Internet changing the way we govern ourselves, at least in the U.S. The Net has strongly influenced the way the Dean people are doing their thing… another way to look at it is, in the early 90’s we had this technology we think is going to change the world. We had this bubble, which distracted a lot of people with a lot of money and, on the down side, the bursting of that bubble lost a lot of people jobs and lost a lot of people their retirement money. On the positive side, this world-changing, democratizing technology got developed a lot faster than otherwise. It got deployed a lot faster than otherwise. A lot of people go trained in that technology throughout the world who are, in my fantasy at least, now going around the world changing it. That’s not bad.
Q: Do you purposefully use technology to change the world?
A: That wasn’t my vision originally. I just wanted to connect better with people. To let them know what’s going on. To hear about what’s going on, and that worked pretty well. Doing this has helped me realize that we don’t save the world with big deal social activism normally. We change the world through many, many little acts of good will, and I just provided a platform where people can in fact implement many thousands or millions acts of good will. We’re not the only ones, but, you know, we do a good job of it, and we’re growing.

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Foo Camp Movies: Celebrity Death Aikido Match

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Foo Camp Movies: Celebrity Death Aikido Match
Here’s a celebrity death aikido match between Paul “Schmoo” Holman and Jeremy Borenstein.
This was shot on October 12, 2003.
Jeremy was nice enough to provide me with a little explanation:

“Pablos and I originally met because we were both training in the same
aikido dojo. This movie shows us, out of shape and out of practice
but still having fun trying to maul each other. There’s a variety of
aikido techniques more-or-less demonstrated there. Pablos takes some
nice high falls (when he leaves the ground completely for a time) and
doesn’t get hurt, which is a testament to his skill.”

Foo A-Z
Foo Aikido Match (Small – 6 MB)
After the Match (Small – 1 MB)
Foo Aikido Match – All (Small – 7 MB)

















John Perry Barlow: From Burning Man To Running Man

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Man does John Perry have a way with words.

If someone like Karl Rove had wanted to neutralize the most creative, intelligent, and passionate members of his opposition, he’d have a hard time coming up with a better tool than Burning Man. Exile them to the wilderness, give them a culture in which alpha status requires months of focus and resource-consumptive preparation, provide them with metric tons of psychotropic confusicants, and then… ignore them. It’s a pretty safe bet that they won’t be out registering voters, or doing anything that might actually threaten electoral change, when they have an art car to build…
Hey, maybe he’ll turn out to be a terrific Governor. Weirder things have happened, and lately in abundance. Maybe he will demonstrate such administrative genius that he will surgically remove 9 billion dollars of fatty deposits from California’s budget without devastating public services. Maybe he will get the state back on track without either raising taxes or holding Enron accountable for the billions they swindled from his state.
But I kind of doubt it. This is a man who wanted to be adored just like Hitler, as he himself put it. This is a man whose record of boorish sexual impositions would bar him from employment in any Fortune 500 company. Not only is he macho, he *is* macho. He is arrogant, distorted, and possibly the most narcissistic person in Hollywood. (Which would make him, I guess, just about the most narcissistic person in the Milky Way galaxy.) His primary assets are good bones, great teeth, killer name recognition, and a wife whose loyalty exceeds even Hillary Clinton’s. Yet the people of California turned out in record numbers a couple of Tuesdays ago and gave him everything but a blowjob.

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