P'unk Avenue Window

I led a barcamp philly session today titled MAMPCamp: testing websites on your own Mac. You can find considerably expanded slides, notes and links here.

I’ve also promised to deliver a complete writeup on how to use dnsmasq to let coworkers easily view each others’ test sites. More importantly, I’ve promised to deliver Z-CAMP (Zero-Configuration Apache MySQL PHP), a really really easy way to set up and test sites on your Mac. That should be along in a few weeks.

In January of 2008, we organized a Junto on music distribution. Kristin Thomson of the Future of Music Coalition and Mike Kiley of The Mural and the Mint were on the panel. As a bit of a lapsed musician, I find a great deal of pleasure hanging out with people that love to make music. The passion for music is infectious and uplifting, however, the realities of having a career as a professional musician have become more uncertain in this transitional time.

At the Junto, we touched upon many of those issues and it got me thinking about the future of the music industry. About a year and a half later, I spoke on a panel at DIY Days and met two more people that are deeply invested in figuring out ways to enable musicians to make and distribute their music: Brian McTear of the Weathervane Music Project and Jesse von Doom of CASH Music. In the green room, Jesse, Brian and I had a free-ranging conversation about music, Philadelphia, our personal histories, Weathervane, and CASH Music. It was one of those conversations that gets you pumped up and makes you want to figure out ways to help.

Fortunately, both have ways to kick in a few bucks to help make things happen… but both campaigns end TODAY! Please consider contributing to Weathervane’s Kickstarter fundraiser or CASH Music’s Public Fundraiser.

Addendum: You can also help out by attending the First Annual Weathervane Music Year End Concert-Fundraiser on Thursday, Nov 12, 2009 at Johnny Brenda’s featuring {{{Sunset}}}, East Hundred, Danielson and BC Camplight.

P.S. The Danielson video above is a recently released Weathervane project that is part of one of those interesting loops in life. My wife and I went to Rutgers with Dan. Isn’t life magical?

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As any Mainer will tell you, you can’t get there from here. And as any Heinlein fan will tell you, you there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

Much to the consternation of both, SEPTA has taken a bold step into the 21st century by not only signing on to Google Transit, but also releasing freely available GTFS (Google Transit Feed Specification) feeds of their transit data.

Free feeds for getting there from here… get it?

Anyway, as a fella who has dabbled in creating transit-related software in the past, I’m thrilled that doing so in the Philadelphia area won’t be an exercise in screen-scraping for too much longer, even though it worked out well for my own septime.org site as well as iSepta (neither of which are affiliated with SEPTA).

iSepta in particular should now be able to quickly move to the official feeds and add subway and trolley stops, since those are included in the new GTFS feeds.

SEPTA is also releasing a somewhat iSepta-like service of their own, to be called Next to Arrive. That service will include realtime information about the actual locations of trains, which is a step up from simply knowing where they are supposed to be.

SEPTA has not yet released feeds for bus routes, so septime will continue to screen-scrape for the time being. Although I expect I’ll soon get around to using the official GTFS feeds for regional rail, subway and trolley information. That way I’ll be ready to rock when the bus feeds arrive.

When SEPTA finally releases feeds for bus routes, it should be practical to plan a trip via Google Transit that involves both sides of the Ben Franklin Bridge… much like the lives of so many PhilaJerseyDelphians. Hoo rah.

Everyone who is encouraged by this news should take a moment to thank SEPTA for doing the right thing via their official comment form. I am assured that these are read by real live human beings, so be nice. And ask politely how soon bus data can be added to Google Transit and the public feeds.

Google Transit is a game-changing social tool because it makes transit accessible to people who don’t have time to make a second job of mastering the transit system in their new city. And it makes the planning of spontaneous trips to unfamiliar destinations practical even for those of us who do know the system well enough for our usual trips. This is especially important in a city like Philadelphia with six different modes of transit (*), counting SEPTA services alone.

GTFS feeds, incidentally, couldn’t be simpler. You might be expecting some sort of whizzy high-concept XML. Nope, it’s just a collection of CSV files any Excel power-user would know what to do with. There’s a .csv for the stops, a .csv for the routes, and so on and so forth. And they include GPS coordinates! Whee.

This is all very handsome stuff, but it makes me nostalgic for an analog transit trip planner I once encountered in a subway system many moons ago: every station had a little lightbulb next to its name. You pressed “from” and “to” buttons located next to the two stations you wished to travel between. Boom, the shortest path between them lit up.

The principle behind it? As simple as they come: electricity takes the path of least resistance.

Of course, that trip planner wouldn’t tell you what time to expect the train, or whether that particular train was even running on Tuesdays after 10pm. For that, I’d suggest Google Transit. Or if all else fails… a printed schedule [shudder].

(*) Regional rail, subway, trolley, El, bus and light rail.

Bringing together great people for Ignite Philly on a weekday evening has been great… imagine what a Saturday night Ignite Philly will be like! That’s right, we are beginning planning now for Ignite Philly (3). It will take place once again at Johnny Brenda’s on the evening of May 2, 2009.

We are looking for inspiring speakers that are doing cool things in Philadelphia. Are you working on a rad project, have something interesting to say or know someone that is? Please comment with links and we will do our best to follow up and get them on the stage. Keep in mind, this is not a sales event. This is about sharing ideas.

I have been reading Clay Shirky’s new book, Here Comes Everybody. The early chapters talk a lot about how new web tools are lowering the cost for self-organization. As a result, we are able to solve problems that a profit-driven market would not be incentivized to tackle. It also means that we can self-organize for other goals that would typically also not be supported by the market.

One of those unsuppoted goals is joy. I am a huge fan of using web tools to bring people together and to increase the joy per capita ratio in the world. Improv Everywhere has been doing a great job of this since 2001. I wish them many more adventures and I hope that more people are out their scheming about how to put a smile on a stranger’s face.

Cornices were originally created to help keep rainwater away from the building and as a structural element. I find them very beautiful and one of the rewards of looking up in Philadelphia.

Unfortunately, many of these building “crowns” are covered, in disrepair or were removed. In order to gather a quick sample, I took a short walk on the blocks surrounding P’unk Avenue and photographed some of them with my iPhone. (An interesting side-note: I have been told that the decorative vinyl and aluminum covered ones are a home-grown solution.)

I want to propose the great cornice restoration project. However, I am not sure what would be the most effective way to return these jewels to their former glory. A law could be passed that required all cornices to be protected so that no one could remove another one. Understandably, too many people would object to that kind of government interference.

My gut reaction is to provide an incentive program that offers homeowners a small grant to pay for the restoration (mostly painting) of them. I think local civic associations could do fundraisers and manage these programs, since I realize that our city government is pretty busy right now with a deficit. I know it is a small thing, but I think of the sidewalk as our shared living room. That makes the buildings facades (and cornices) the walls to this shared space.

In the spirit of transparency, I should admit that the cornice of P’unk Avenue is an ugly brown that needs repainting. I did have a new copper ball fabricated and replaced on it a few years ago, but wouldn’t it look really cool painted a couple of beautiful colors?

What do you think? What could be done to encourage more cornice restoration?

The notion of popularity used to be a hierarchical, fascistic one. Stereotypes were developed and fine-tuned in popular culture and broadcast media. We then absorbed them and the privileged among us went to the mall to buy what we were sold while watching TGIF.

Those fascistic systems rely on random punition to enforce cultural norms. If you didn’t have a Stussy shirt you were a loser; if you had one, but didn’t skateboard you were a poser. Hecklings came when you least expected, and were most easily avoided by getting a skateboard and a Stussy shirt and spending two to four hours a day learning to kickflip.

Skateboarding and sixth grade power structures are an edge case, however. By-and-large America has become a super power by employing the inverse of a fascistic system. We have the lottery, we have coupons, sweepstakes, Publisher’s Clearing House, random acts of kindness, e-cards, candygrams, Amazon wish lists. America is built on conformity by random reward, we never know when we’re going to get ours, so we’d better keep our heads down and get that gold star for the day. It’s a sort of cultural Stockholm Syndrome. (I first read about this idea in a super old issue of Hermenaut magazine, which is most definitely now-defunct.)

Zeldman Minus Zeldman

So, the last few years have seen technology rapidly increase the democratization of everything. Access to media and deceasing costs of production have caused an increase in the rate of “aristocratic inflation.” It’s a lot harder to flaunt your privilege when everyone (in the ever-expanding middle class) has a flat screen TV, computers with internet access, cell phones, etc. I read yesterday that private jets are on fire sale since the stock brokers had to give them up.

Now then, if you can leverage this new democratic paradigm of popularity, you can quickly gain influence. Influence has long been the hidden spoil of war. What good is land if not for the cooperation of its inhabitants. As we all become more and more plugged in, more cerebral, war becomes an intellectual battle of influence. Whoever speaks loudest (and with the most valuable message) gets the readership, gets the militia. Ideas can’t be shot at and ideology can’t be blown up.

Since no one is forcing you to read this or that you now get a choice—unless your government is trying in vain to filter your consumption. This places the burden on the influencer to create quality content, to have the best ideology, to give out random rewards.

It’s easier to achieve and maintain popularity, and perhaps that popularity is now more rightful. But wait, if everyone becomes popular, then no one will. We will be Commander in Chief and Private First Class.

Forward this to ten of your friends or no one will post on your wall ever again!

Today I looked out our window and saw someone delivering Grid, a new magazine about sustainablity in Philadelphia. It spurred me to write about some ideas that I care about.

If you know me, you know I am pretty passionate about solving urban problems, and that I am constantly cooking up schemes to this end.

One of these is to create neighborhood compost spots. I hypothesize that people can join the neighborhood compost co-op, get a key and drop off rotting vegetables in a centrally located, locked compost bin. Co-op members would take turns aerating the compost. Possible locations could include a small area in a city park or community garden. Locked. Community-run. Feel-good fun.

Needless to say, I have not gotten around to this initiative. Fortunately, it looks like the Pedal Co-op in Philadelphia is taking on the problem of urban composting. For $2.50, they will pick up a 3 gallon bag and delivery it to compost bins in a community garden. Currently they give the compost away to community gardens.

As an urban pedestrian, bike rider, and mostly mass-transit user, I have often dreamed of a car-less city. When people say I am crazy, I have always said, “If you remove the cars, other businesses and solutions will spring up to replace what the car does.” The Pedal Co-op is an example of the type of business that I mean. Human-powered delivery and transport would certainly flourish. Subways and trolleys would benefit. Cities would become more livable, and asthma rates would drop.

What else?

Last week, I posted some thoughts on what a modern library should be, and promised to follow it up with a post on how a website could support that mission. In case you didn’t read the previous post, it can be summed up as: learning needs a clubhouse, so why not the library? Of course, libraries have always been a place that supports learning with it resources, but I envision a place where the library community facilitates that pursuit further.

This is where the website comes into play. I envision a library website that has an Ebay reputation system, a Digg voting component, a room reservation system, a Google Books repository, a WorldCat list and notes feature, Amazon reviews and Facebook profiles. (I realize that it can be annoying to read a sentence like that if you do not have intimate knowledge of the way the sites work. However, it is good short-hand for me as I explain what I mean.)

Let me start with the obvious. Everyone assumes that a library website should have digitized information. I do not disagree, and in many ways that part it is a forgone conclusion that sites like Google books will replace the need for extensive physical repositories. Recently, Steven Johnson wrote an inspiring story about how he used Google Books to research his recent book, The Invention of Air:

An amazing number of Priestley’s original writings (along with other texts from that period) are available from Google as downloadable PDFs, with scans of the original page design and typography, along with full-text searching. Many of these are texts that would be very hard to find even in a major research library, and of course, even if you could find them, you wouldn’t be able to search them. (You’d barely be able to turn the pages, given how old the books are.

Online repositories are better in lots of ways. They allow for searching, hyperlinking, multiple displays of the same information, aggregation and calculation to be done on them, and they are more accessible. Libraries should be glad that they can get out of the boring business of maintaining acid-filled pieces of paper and cardboard as a means to preserve human knowledge. If we, as a collective society, can move our stored knowledge to a more searchable and accessible medium, I am all for it. I don’t think it is valuable to be sentimental about the codex book format. At one point, it was the most convenient portal medium for spreading human information, but its day has come.

I think it is fair to say that information that you would formerly access at a library is already online, and that it is only going to get better. With this in mind, I ask once again, what should a modern library’s website be?

Before I answer that, I am going to take another step back to talk about how professors earn their rank and reputation. The basis of the promotion and tenure system for universities is peer review. This process of having other peers read or review your work has a long history, but it is not without fault. At its root the process is intended to provide a mechanism for checking the accuracy of work before it is published. It has been accused of slowing things down and bringing up petty disagreements, but when it is working well it embodies the possibility for mentoring and sharing.

There is no reason why this type of peer-based reputation system could be not be brought over into the library environment. In last week’s post, I brought up the idea of peer learning, mentoring and apprenticing happening at the library in a Barcamp-like style. One way to facilitate that process would be to have an Ebay like reputation system built into the library website. It would provide a publicly accountable way to track the quality and integrity of one’s contributions to this learning community. I see it as a way to bring out the best in people since they know that if they lead a session without doing a little research and preparation in advance, they might get rated poorly. Everyone has the potential to lead a discussion session, so there is less incentive to be malicious. (What comes around goes around in this system.) Pragmatically, these reputation ratings help people make decisions on what sessions to attend or who to approach for information in this community in the same way that people use Ebay reputation ratings to decide to buy an iPod from this seller verses that seller.

Reputation can also be increased by making thoughtful commentary to the online collection. I find the story of marginalia to be romantic and often talk about it. In short, it is the notes that scholars would write in the margins of manuscripts. Other scholars would often travel to certain libraries to read the marginalia of a respected scholar. (In my mind, I envision a scholar making an arduous journey to read the notes of someone that passed away 100 years ago for the sake of sharing in human knowledge pursuit.) A book could exist in multiple places, but the marginalia was only in a specific library. Digital marginalia is much more accessible. (In many ways, the reviews that people write on Amazon products are a commercial cousin to this scholarly practice.) Digital marginalia also has the potential to be voted on. In a Digg-like way, commentary can be rated or voted up so that the well regarded posts rise to the top. If you make a lot of respected comments, your rating would increase (and vice-versa.)

Another component of the system would be a way to track your own progress. WorldCat lets you create public or private lists of books, cds, dvds or articles you recommend, have read/viewed, or any other custom list you determine. It also lets you review it, share it and tag it. Features like this should be folded into your personal profile on the library website. It will allow you to track your progress and also allow people to see what type of interests and expertise that you possess. So for instance, someone may connect with you because they have read the same book. In the course of their interactions they may realize that you have a lot of knowledge to share in the area and then encourage you to lead a session at the library so that people can gather to talk and learn.

You agree and you go over to the room reservation section of the website and reserve a small informal space since it is a more focussed topic. This reservation triggers an announcement to the community of people that have opted in to get notified about this subject. It also goes on the library calendar and shows up on your profile as an upcoming way to connect up with you. If someone signs up in advance to attend, their profile page would also note that they are attending.

I think you get the point.

If you think about it, this proposed website would allow for an alternative university or educational environment to exist. (I discuss this in more detail in my previous post on modern libraries.) The system replaces the functions that the administration at most schools provide. This is not to say that this will replace all formal schools or universities. They certainly have their roles in our society. Much in the same way that vinyl still has a role in the digital music age. (It has a unique sound quality, but it is not a necessary medium for most people that want to listen to music.)

As an aside, I would see this as a positive in terms of quality of experience for those that are part of a traditional university or school environment since only those that want that experience would attend. I could imagine a decrease in the size and number of these institutions, but on the positive side they would be freed from the mission of trying to be everything (job training, scholarly training, coming of age facilitation) for everyone and have the opportunity to focus and refine.

The library would also evolve in new and rich ways. It would provide the physical local gathering hub, the clubhouse, for all of this activity. The website would provide access to information, track reputation and progress, augment the exchange of information and ultimately encourage people to get together in real space.

A couple of things should be noted. These kinds of online interactions can already happen if you have Facebook and WorldCat or other combinations of social media accounts. I know that people are already connecting over shared interests and engaging in peer learning and mentoring. If you are not, I would certainly encourage you do so. Also, there is a good chance that libraries will be able to tap into existing web infrastructures through the use of APIs and plug-in architecture as they build out these modern websites. This will reduce the investment and time necessary to get these websites up and running.

The real value add that the library provides is that physical space that already has a long history with encouraging and supporting self-learning.

There are lots of nuances to the role that the website could provide that I want to delve further into, but I will stop now because I want to hear from you. What do you think? Can we make this happen? What would you add?

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I wanted to add a quick addendum. We are going to be holding a Junto on rethinking the library on February 5th at 6pm. Hope you can make it to continue the conversation.

I won’t bore you with too much of a history lesson, but through a certain sequence of events we (you and I) have taken over the role of industry (since industry totally sucked in 2008).

For the purpose of this post, “media” and “technology” are going to mean the same thing. (Everyone and their mom should totally read Understanding Media, it’s excellent.) They both represent any extension of humans, like a wheel lets us move around quicker and easier, extending our range. Paper, the same thing, you can give a note to a messenger and he or she can deliver your thoughts to someone very far away. All media until the telegraph had an explosive effect on humanity—better roads made for faster travel, the printing press let thoughts travel those roads, money allowed for power transfer and commerce to spread across regions. This explosion facilitated nationalism and shortly thereafter imperialism.

Electric media had the opposite effect, the complete implosion of culture. The telegraph connected people across the atlantic, making global synchronization possible. The radio, telephone, movies, television, cell phone all furthered the trend.

The addition of the Internet to this equation has curbed the implosion, or at least interfered with the trajectory of all those imploding particles. Many of us no longer rely on strictly one-directional broadcast media for news and other information. The internet has facilitated a retribalization of culture, not based on geography, but interest. I can read the hipster pinko news and chat it up with my post-conceptual photographer friends, while someone else can join a vintage rifles of famous assassinations message board.

One more step back before the final step forward. All this media is primarily used for political power, the variable is how it derives influence. Mechanical technology: making war and moving that war around faster. Early electric technology: making sure the war is going well because it’s really far away now. Broadcast electric technology: unify the masses by entertaining them with all the same entertainment, it will create fraternity. Consumerism: the war is over, let’s use all this industry to sell things to people and keep the economy going.

A long long time ago we all made everything we personally needed for survival (or at least someone in the family made everything). Then we got caught up in all that war and imperialism. Then we didn’t know how to make things, but we could go to the store and get everything we need. But we felt a longing for making things. In the last two decades there has been a trend of “creative consumption” or “authentic consumption.” Thinkers like Sharon Zukin posited that we buy the sneakers that express how we feel about ourselves, shopping is a creative act.

More recently this has changed. Buying culture wasn’t enough. We still feel empty. We need to create. We have entered Post-Consumerism. I refuse to buy stuff for the logo, the logos are all crappy. The shoe companies don’t design their own shoes, they have contests to have us design them. The number of tshirts has outnumbered the people buying tshirts.

So, we have in-a-way reentered an age of localized production and mass creation, but not for the same reason. I don’t create out of necessity, I don’t create for the process, I create in order to be consumed. We enter the world of Post-Modernism, scary. We all need a consumer base. We all are that consumer base. I have a flat file full of my friends’ art. Geoff has two. We have taken over the role of industry. I can buy handmade and feel good about it. The authenticity in consumption is restored. But only as long as we keep up both ends of the bargain. We are producer and consumer, so we can’t stop doing either. The economy would collapse.

Thus enter the Weapons of Mass Reproduction. We need factories: magcloud.com,
blurb.com, lulu.com, cafepress.com, threadless.com. We need storefronts: blurb.com, lulu.com, threadless.com, etsy.com, shopify.com, our own wordpresses. We need consumers: us!