mark-elliott.net

I just saw this this morning (emphasis mine):

THE Federal Government is planning to make internet censorship compulsory for all Australians and could ban controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.

Australia’s level of net censorship will put it in the same league as countries including China, Cuba, Iran and North Korea, and the Government will not let users opt out of the proposed national internet filter when it is introduced.

Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy admitted the Federal Government’s $44.2 million internet censorship plan would now include two tiers - one level of mandatory filtering for all Australians and an optional level that will provide a “clean feed”, censoring adult material.

…

Groups including the System Administrators Guild of Australia and Electronic Frontiers Australia have slammed the proposal, saying it would unfairly restrict Australians’ access to the web, slow internet speeds and raise the price of internet access.

EFA board member Colin Jacobs said it would have little effect on illegal internet content, including child pornography, as it would not cover peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

Aside from the obvious issues regarding censorship and freedom of speech (something not constitutionally enshrined in Australia and therefore not ensured) this is a very bad idea. This will at a minimum,

• introduce a ’state approved’ perspective on reality which can then be more readily extended,
• generate network inefficiencies for most of us, and for those who actually want to get to what is blocked, they will work it out (even most primary school kids I talk to these days know how to get around access restrictions imposed upon them).

To draw upon that a classic web quote attributed to John Gilmore: “The net treats censorship as damage and routes around it”.

I thought this kind of logic would depart our federal government with the Howard administration! Apparently I was wrong.

And why isn’t this making bigger news? Perhaps mass media doesn’t care? - after all, the medium is the message - i.e. if you’re interests and life are all bound up in broadcast (push) media, perhaps you aren’t so likely to care about distributed media etc?..

It’s been a few months since my last update on Cedar and Lucas, and of course a lot has happened in that time.

(in the photo: Cedar left, Lucas right)

They’re moving from the ‘telegraphic’ phase of speach (two word combinations) to the beginnings of sentence construction. The other day, Cedar said ‘nice day outside’, which was a surprise to hear. And then, the very same afternoon, while reaching up towards the moon in the sky, Lucas said ‘get moon, tricky!’, which, aside from being one of the cutest things I had ever heard, was also quite a big conceptual/lingual jump in complexity.

They had their second birthday last month (their bday is September 11th) and Keri made them an amazing Thomas the Tank Engine cake (this is currently Cedar’s favourite show).

Here’s Lucas giving a demo of that lovely blue frosting all over his face:

Here they are talking one of their first walks around the neighborhood (Lucas left, Cedar right). Walking with us while holding a hand really took some work - their initial impulse seems to be to run at full pace everywhere all the time. But finally, we seem to have made some progress and they are getting into it. Now Lucas comes up to me and says ‘daddy walk?’ and he’ll grab my hand and lead me all over the house :-).

They are active as ever, as the next video illustrates. Incidentally, only upon watching it did i realise that I had them confused - it is actually Cedar in the box. I wonder how often this happens but without the digital hindsight of video - and I would generally say (and I’m sure Keri would as well) that we always feel like we know exactly who is who…

Here’s a moment of calm (1 minute 10 seconds to be specific). The game that’s all the rage these days is playing ‘nitenite’ - getting a hold of anything blanket-like and then laying down where ever they are and covering themselves up. They also do a kind of snoring imitation - i have no idea where they picked that up, maybe from listening to each other sleep?.. Notice Lucas (on the right) is doing is silly face - he kind of stares off with a goofy smile, then starts sticking his tongue out. This is often followed by meowing, barking and or eating something without hands (this might be mocked eating, or the real thing). He’s a budding eccentric character, that’s for sure. I wonder where he got that from?.. The kiss Cedar gives Lucas is precious to be sure, however this is definitely the exception. How this clip ends (with them screaming over unlimited blanket rights) is more the norm…

More nitenite play (Cedar left, Lucas right):

Headwear has also been in fashion this spring with a wide variety of pieces trialed in a very innovative market (Cedar):

Cedar:

Lucas (on left) is having troubles getting his hat at the right angle. Meanwhile, Lucas is just fine:

Lucas at the park:

Lucas (left) Cedar (right) in their toy box:

Having a ’sit down dinner’ as Cedar calls it (Lucas on left, Cedar on right) this is distinguished from their tenancy to be always on the move - even when you’re trying to feed them!

Cedar on left, Lucas on right:

That’s all for now folks!

I’m in the process of migrating my phd from the wiki where I wrote it, to this site. I thought I’d write a post for each chapter as I get them up. You can find more out about my phd here, or in the links in the banner. So, here’s the first chapter!

This initial chapter sets the scene - how does a long time artist / composer move into the world of online collaboration? Easy:

• creative exploration + digital media + collaborative practice + research + synthesis = stigmergic mass collaboration.

Here’s an excerpt:

Having grown up in Alaska spending a great deal of time in small aircraft (my first fly-in camping trip was at the age of 3 months), I grew up accustomed to seeing and thinking about vast and variegated spaces from an aerial perspective (see figure 0.0). Later in life, I came to realise that my thinking had been dramatically shaped by this —I still experience a strangely disorienting feeling in new places if I don’t know what the terrain looks like from the sky. This desire for aerial, meta, holistic and encompassing understandings has stayed with me throughout my life, evolving in its application and complexity.

As part of One Web Day (a global event to celebrate and take stock of the value the web provides humanity) Future Melbourne took part, with Melbourne’s Lord Mayor John So as the 55th One Web Day ambassador, as well as hosting a event to communicate our experiences to those who are in positions to effect change in our local government towards participatory governance. It was my honour to be the keynote speaker for this event, talking about the wiki-base collaborative environment designed and built by my outfit Collabforge, as well as the experience of taking part in one of the world’s first large-scale collaborative endeavours for local governance. Here’s a video of my presentation:

It’s been a busy few months for me and have taken on a few new projects which I hope to talk about soon. Till then, peace out.

Via Future of Humanity Insititute:

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right - a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the component up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about 30,000 Euro. And it isn’t even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs will be about 400 Euro). … We are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence. … We hope to announce self-replication in 2008, though the machine that will do it - RepRap Version 1.0 “Darwin” - can be built now.

Is this the beginning of the Star Trek style replicator? Imagine, open source replicators - coding the capacity to create physical objects - boggles the mind really…