A Rallying Cry for a Free Digital Future

I watched a part of the ThisIsUnfinished conference (partly because I assumed the timezone were New York time and made the manual change to my calendar and I attended another conference in person on the Friday)

Anyway all the talks are online (Vimeo) to watch now. I did a little sum up for work but found the conference fascinating, especially when Baratunde Thurston filling in for time asked a member of the audience what they felt so far.

You couldn’t hear the reply but it was longer than expecting. Baratunde summed it up, saying the member of audience had found the contrasts of the talks interesting. I would agree, because in some talks you had people talking about web3 (internet 3 really) in the scope of DLTs (blockchain tech) and on the other hand you had talks like Eli Parser’s section of talks about what we can learn for the future.

I’m still going through the ones I missed but this insight is summed up in A Rallying Cry for a Free Digital Future.

This is great quote from Anil Dash

Take a look at the phone in your pocket. Take a look at the tabs in your browser. Ask yourself. How many of those apps were made by people who you know, of know who they are there from your community. Maybe they’re local homegrown organic, just like the food that you eat, you know, where it’s tourist and do they share your values and care about the things you care about? And if you don’t feel good about what you’re putting in your eyes, when you put it in your mouth and make some changes. We do have a lot of power to make that thing a lot better.

This leads nicely into the potential of web3 beyond the short sighted put  everything on the blockchain stuff.

Re:Creating Europe at the time of a dictatorship

One of the very best Manchester International Festival events I went to this year was Re:creating Europe by Ivo Van Hove.

I can’t even express the living nightmare the UK is being dragged into by a  calculated Boris Johnson. Its clear Europe isn’t perfect but in this 90min play, you get a real sense of how momentous the building of Europe was and hope for a better Europe. However (sadly) it will be a better Europe without the UK…

Don’t forget to sign the petition for Parliament not be prorogued or dissolved unless and until the Article 50 period has been sufficiently extended or the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU has been cancelled.

Re:Creating Europe – MIF from De Balie on Vimeo.

What is Europe? Is it a continent or a culture, a bygone dream or a thriving reality – or all of the above? In a year when a deeply divided Britain is set to leave the EU, De Balie and Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA) present the performance Re:Creating Europe in Manchester.

Why I moved to Manchester…

#Manchester from Craig Murfin on Vimeo.

A video project inspired by the talented people and content featured on the @wearemcr instagram group.

Music mixed and edited by me
Wait For Me (Aaron Mist) / CC BY-NC 4.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode

What a great piece of work and really shows off why I moved to Manchester over 7 years ago.

Another video which must be watched…

Aral Balkan – Free is a Lie – Thinking Digital 2014 from Thinking Digital on Vimeo.

Aral drives me a little crazy, I end up writing massive long blog posts about his talks. But I have to give it to him, the showmanship and underlying ideas are pretty much good. You can see for yourself in the talk which got me writing about the 5 stacks.

Don’t forget to check out my blog for BBC R&D connected what happened at the Quantified self and Thinking DigitalThe panel discussion which I made reference to, is also up and Tom Scott’s video telling us its all going to be ok.

Maybe next time you should come to Thinking Digital and experience it for yourselves?

Instapaper added video support, since when?

The Magazine

I switched from Pocket/Read it later ages ago when instapaper started supporting Kindle deliver. I use it all the time and at some points, its been the main reason for having my paperwhite kindle. The nice thing is its pretty much automatic, and I tend to just turn the kindle on and it automatically gets the latest instapaper over wifi.

I side stepped the Kindle’s annotation system by having the same document on my phone and being able tweet it directly. Its all pretty great, although I did consider using diigo’s readitlater feature, especially now the mobile app is better.

However I have wanted a solution for saving non youtube videos (I use watch later for youtube at the moment). The amount of times someones posted a video to Vimeo and I have had to bookmark it or something else.

Well it seems somewhere in the updates, they added support for video from youtube and vimeo! Great stuff my pro payment is well spent, not only that the ifttt channel has been updated with a number of improvements, but I really need to start using the highlights/annotation feature more.

Another reason to go dutch… always!

Restaurant Tips From a Serial Dater Teaser from James Wotherspoon on Vimeo.

No I have never bumped into or dated Erin Wotherspoon but I had heard of her through the grapevine. Yes shes certainly a piece of work but to be honest shes not much worst that the likes of many wannabe tucker max’s and some of the likes of the redpill crew.

A little reminder of that passage in the new york times ages ago…

a modern girl will end the evening with the Offering, an insincere bid to help pay the check. “They make like they are heading into their bag after a meal, but it is a dodge,

At least Erin’s up front (well somewhat) about the fact shes never going to pay… and that she is a golddigger.

…sometimes women don’t have the best intentions. Toronto men of Reddit, hold on to your neck beards. This girl is looking for love in her lobster roll, not your academic achievements. … Reality check? Toronto gold diggers exist. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Cheers elvum for reminding me to blog about her.