Perhaps my delight comes from knowing the winter coats and boots can truly be packed away for a season. Or knowing that the days are longer with more sunlight to give energy to so many ideas and activities. It’s definitely a sign that this bear is coming out of hibernation.

Hello, glorious spring!

When the blossoms disappear, I settle in for a summer viewing of green. When the leaves disappear, I know the blossoms are only a few dark months away. Sometimes, those dark months drag on, but the blossoms always erase those memories and the cycle starts again.

The gorgeous flowering tree in my backyard

There was a time when people stayed in one place their entire life. Everyone you ever knew was most likely in that same place. The world of an individual probably knew in full when that individual drew his or her last breath.

Now we move about, but more importantly, we are in contact with people all over the world. What happens when a person with global contacts dies? How do other people learn about this event?

The Idea Behind This Blog Post

I started to write this post one year ago. The idea came to me about seven years ago when I was exchanging emails with a friend in another country. He travelled a lot as an independent consultant and spent much time away from his family. This was in the pre-Twitter, pre-TripIt, pre-Facebook, pre-all-sorts-of-social-networking-applications days. I wanted to give him my contact information because we were working on a project, and I wanted to be sure that he could get in touch with me when necessary.

Suddenly the topic was out there: what if you don’t hear from a virtual colleague for quite a while? How do you find out what happened? He also realized that his wife might not know everything she needed to know if something happened to him. We both concluded that we ought to write a list of important information that our partners, families, and friends could use if something happened to us.

If you are living with someone, you probably know where the bank papers and insurance policies are stored. We bacame aware of a possible lack of knowledge about our online lives. It was not merely a matter of writing up bank account details. We wanted our virtual circle of acquaintances to know what was happening. We had online activities that needed to be suspended or cancelled.

Real-Life Examples

In the seven years since this topic first came up, I have realized many times over that it is a highly relevant topic.

• I recently noticed a friend listed in my Gmail contact list, along with the music he was listening to. His name was marked as “Away”. He was more than away. He was dead, and he had died many months before. I rarely look at that contact list, so it was a creepy shock to see. Obviously, the email account was still active for whatever reason. Could it be that the wife didn’t get around to closing it or didn’t know about it? It made me think a checklist for survivors would be handy. When you are grieving, you a) cannot think straight and b) have a ton of things to do.
• On one of my email discussion lists, I have seen three obituaries in the past few years. One person wondered “where’s so-and-so” and put in the effort to find the answer; he reported his findings to the list and told us about a memorial page where we could express our condolences. It was nice that this person cared enough so that the group could show their respect. The family was very grateful. In another case, a woman died and her spouse contacted the group. Apparently he did have some kind of list of “things to do”, one of which was to contact the person’s virtual networks, where she had spent lots of time and energy over the years. Again, we could show our respects to a person who had given much of her knowledge and friendship over the years. Again, the husband was very grateful and comforted by our condolences.
• When my mother died, I discovered first hand all the effort involved in contacting her large circle of friends. Due to her age, many of those friends were contacted via letters. I was very relieved when I found friends who had email addresses. Getting email accounts and other online activities closed was time consuming and sometimes required a death certificate. I found that when a person dies (at least in the U.S.), you can request several death certificates and you should do so. They cost a lot of money later on, and you will need copies for various things – like requesting accounts to be closed.
• In another case, a friend nearly died in an accident. Fortunately, he survived. I helped the non-tech-savvy wife contact his large circle of online friends. I knew many of the online contacts because that is how he and I met. I could write to a group and ask them to pass along the news. I would then get mails from strangers who had heard the news via forwarded mails. I printed out all the mails of support that I received and gave them to the wife. I also needed to cancel an engagement that the friend had – the event was arranged entirely online, so the wife had no phone number to call. I notified the event coordinator by email and the issue was resolved. I had one great benefit from helping the wife. Replies came to me from my mails and my forwarded mails. I saw firsthand the outpouring of support and love. It was beautiful and moving to witness. This convinced me that our networks do want to know what happens to us. They care because many connections in these networks become genuine friendships.

Things and People

My point here is to make sure someone can tie up all the loose ends in your life when you are gone. For example, I have a rough list of all the subscriptions I have online. In some cases, who cares about cancelling a newsletter subscription? (Maybe it’s because I’ve administered those and dislike all those bouncing mails!) There are also newspaper subscriptions, car payments, debts, and so on that fall into the things category.

From a practical point of view, “things” are most important. Can your partner cover outstanding debts and get at critical information for the authorities.

For me, people are the most important part, and this feeling has grown over the years. Make sure you have a list of people who should be told about your passing. I have seen outpourings of condolences in emails and on Facebook and Twitter. These condolences do provide comfort. It is beautiful to see the love and friendship that exist.

I found two articles on this topic last year, and the New York Times published one this year:

• Dan Howe: What happens to your Twitter after you die?
• Dave Winer: Leslie Harpold’s Archive
• Cyberspace When You’re Dead

Last, but not least, make a will and make your wishes clear. A lawyer told me that there can be ugly scenes when families disagree about, say, cremation versus burial. You need to tell people what you want while you can. It can feel uncomfortable, but it does have to be done, you know.

Now go hug the one you’re with.

I was struck by the beauty of the colors of this pen.

The black wood is “bog oak” – oak that has been buried in a bog for hundreds of years, even thousands. This particular bog oak comes from the area around Roskilde, Denmark. One of Gunnar Langemark’s friends discovered it when he was out riding in the forest.

The lighter colored wood (my photograph doesn’t do it justice) is called “Purple Heart”, which is a popular name for a tree that is native to Central and South America. It has a nondescript story, but it is beautiful to hold and behold.

Gunnar has videos on his site so you can see how he makes the pens. I hope you can sense the care he puts into bringing these bits of wood to life again.

Most of my writing is on computers these days, but owning a gorgeous pen seems a must. It is like having a magic wand – as though I can write powerfully and beautifully when I set this pen to paper. Maybe it can be my muse and inspire my writing. I will definitely use it for any important notes, and I may even doodle with it!

Today has been an odd day in history. It started out with news of twins being born to the Danish crown prince and princess. It ends with the sad news of a tragic shooting in Arizona. I planned to write a blog post today, but the news of the shooting affected my mood. Discussions of “violent rhetoric” had floated by on today’s twitter stream, and when I saw my pen on the desk, the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword” came to mind. I thought about the way we communicate these days: we need criticism, but it should be given in a constructive and open manner.

This year, I want to be more conscious about penning my thoughts and ideas in a way that can build and encourage constructive discussions. If I get involved in discussions that have a negative slant, I hope I have the strength to refrain from participating in the negative talk and the courage to bring up more positive angles. This pen will be a symbol of this wish.

Many years ago, when I worked at Computer Associates, they produced a product called CA-7/OLC. (I think that was the abbreviation.) It was an enhancement to their CA-7 software, which is still used for scheduling jobs on big old mainframe computers. The interface for CA-7 was, of course, the good old green screen – green text on a black background. The software came on – are you ready, kiddies – magnetic tapes.

CA-7/OLC was different. The demo included a large piece of hardware that played a 12-inch laserdisk. (Gee, I forget the names of all the parts after all these years.) The product was on a PC using 3.5-inch diskettes, and the laserdisk had some additional magic not possible on the PC back then.

When you ran the program, you saw the usual green-screen interface. Slightly boring, with a lot of numbers and the command line. The difference was in the Help section. You could look up something in the Help section – and bookmark relevant passages. That was revolutionary!

The real jaw-dropper was the video. You triggered the video somehow while researching some topic in the Help section. A video appeared in the upper-right corner of the monitor. This was in color! It had a talking head! The video showed a recording of a real person speaking to you about your selected topic! I think this was in the early 90s, so this was rather revolutionary, especially for a mainframe product.

CA had fun with the demo. When discussing the length of a data field, the woman in the video held out her hands to show the desired length. She smirked! To demonstrate the fact that you needed information in different languages, they had the same instructions in different languages, one of which was Valley Speak – Valspeak, as it is called in Wikipedia. OMG, it was, like, totally, amazing, you know, like? I was the only American in a room full of Danes watching this demo. I was in hysterics watching this part. It was so out of character for the usual dry, geeky mainframe products. It was a breath of fresh air.

The product was never sold. I think the main reason was that the setup was too expensive. Technology continued to develop and made the 12-inch laserdisk a dinosaur.

However, it showed us the future. It showed us interaction with a product. It showed up possible ways to use new technology. I am bit vague on some specifics, but I do remember the overall excitement so many years later. It was someone’s imagination brought to life. Breathing life into impossible or impractical projects stimulates us to make breakthroughs.

Watching the video in Alan’s blog post about our augmented future revived the memory of a demo, which is probably 20 years old. It reminds me that although there can be issues with these visions, those issues bring something tangible into the discussion that we can begin to analyse and test and evaluate. It helps us create our future.

Alan closes with this sentence:

Technical documentation is not just about the written word, it is about the communication of ideas and knowledge.

If we think like this, we will always be prepared for the future.

As a member of the reboot book crew, I took notes on all the speakers presenting in the main hall. It didn’t take long to see a pattern emerging – there was actually a sequence to the topics. Speakers were referring to topics already raised – and building on or enhancing those topics. It was stunning to watch this happen right before me.

I asked Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, the driving force behind Reboot, whether he had planned it that way when lining up the speakers. He said that if I saw it that way, then that was my contribution – interpreting the pieces brought together at Reboot.

Here is what I saw emerge at the end of Day 1 of Reboot11.

The Meditation

We Reboot11 activists need the superpowers that let the body become all eyes. Anything we see can be touched. We can see where we are and where we can be – the macroscope. It shows us where we can see and point and trigger the action that is needed.
With such superpowers, it will take very little effort to effect change.

100 hours.

100 hours, or 8 hours a week for the next 12 weeks, can be a simple contribution to a project that can solve problems and invent culture! (1)

Do we need tools for our world-changing project? The world is becoming increasingly complex – more complex than our skills can handle. We cannot work alone. We must connect with others for a collective and scalable effort to make change. We shape the tools we need for our task, but the tools are also shaping us. We co-exist and co-evolve as we shape our digital habitat. (2)

We reach out and connect with others – finding them and conversing with them via our technology. We harness that technology so that it can be shared and used by everyone. Out of the depths of corporations and into simple, everyday devices. We seek, map, find, and connect with each other. We can act on our own time. We own the data. (3)

Our tools have a huge effect on us, and we know it. Reflection, response, reflection, response – that is what we need when we shape our world. Together, we can build our habitat, our cities from the bottom up and up and up. Not necessarily up in height, but up in increased participation from the individuals inhabiting the cities, up in inclusiveness, up in liveability, up in community. (4)

We are linked in our communities. They, too, shape us as we share them. They, too, touch everything and anything! They point AND they fetch, bringing us what we desire, building a cycle of sharing and giving. Generosity. We share a world of different people, throughout our geographical and virtual communities. We have a moral imperative to act and draw upon our deepest hopes for this world of ours. (5)

But how do we achieve and maintain those cities, those communities? Let’s go open source. Our language and comprehension varies and fluctuates. We must begin with transparency and openness. Our collaboration leads to skill sharing and learning. Visibility becomes the norm, participation increases, and … we grow. (6)

As we grow, we work toward common goals and principles through our many layers of communities. Our place shapes and enables our action. Our community is our self-identification. It is how we control our future. It is our macroscope. (7)

Our efforts catch on. We no longer have one-way communication channels shaping the way we think. We are all drawn into the conversation. It is two-way, three-ways, many ways. We control the conversation, the news, the dissemination of knowledge. We share. (8)

We develop our own ecosystem where everything serves some purpose and does not go to waste. We link and we flow. Our civilization dawns. (9)

The Sources

Each of these sections was inspired by a specific speaker. The words are a combination of phrases or words from that person and my own words and thoughts. The sections are also in the order that the talks were given. Those speakers are

1. Matt Webb
2. Matthias Müller-Prove
3. Steve Coast
4. Francesca Birks
5. David Weinberger
6. Leisa Reichelt
7. Andrew Turner
8. Dave Winer
9. Tor Nørretranders

I will post notes from these speakers over the coming days and weeks. My first blog posts from Reboot11 were from Day 2 (Euan Semple and Niels Hartvig). Who says Day 1 should be written up before Day 2?

By the way, Reboot11 was held in June 2009. The thoughts shared then are still very fresh and strong.

There are so many people who made 2009 a wonderful year. I want to thank all of them. I will do so over time in 2010. I want to make the thanks personal and meaningful. For now, know that I am thinking kind thoughts of all of you!

Two turning points for me in 2009 were my mom’s death March 9th and my decision to walk away from a full-time job November 30th in the middle of a world-wide financial crisis.

There is a connection. I am rediscovering who am I and what my values are. You can sense the direction I am going in from this posting on my quickie blog at Tumblr. I feel very good about 2010. I have no clue what will happen, but I feel good.

I am wishing a happy, healthy, and peaceful 2010 to everyone I know and to everyone they know and to…

Why? I am not a physicist. I have not attended any physics classes at school. That doesn’t matter. You don’t need schooling to recognize the barely contained excitement in someone who wants to share ideas. I remember how he could hardly stand still because he was bursting with all that he wanted to tell us.

The audience was a group of Mensans at their annual gathering. The location was a campground with barracks owned by some church for their own get-togethers. Holger spoke in the only place available – a whitewashed, wooden church building. He became desperate to draw illustrations of what he was telling us. We could only find some white A4 paper and a purple marker. Volunteers taped the paper to the wall and Holger began to draw. He didn’t stop.

The paper hanging became a bit panicky as Holger drew larger figures and almost too quickly for the paper hangers to keep up with him. It was like one of the old cartoons where they lay down the tracks moments before the train came whizzing through. People mused about the possible reactions if purple marks were found later on the clean white walls – and if it was revealed what possibly heretical subjects were discussed under that roof!

In my mind’s eye, so many years later, I see joy in this episode. As I said, I was clueless about the physics. (Biology is more my thing.) It is just the vision of someone eager to explain and share and discuss (he was very eager to find those people who did understand him), and an audience providing a home for all that energy.

Maybe we won’t understand everything that crosses our path in life. That is OK. That should never stop us from encouraging others to learn and exchange ideas. Just watching others toss ideas about and create new ones is beautiful.

This is an utterly unmotivated post. Or perhaps it was motivated by the strong influence of my immersion in the world of reboot11 last week. I am still exhausted from all that (because I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since then), and many thoughts are churning about in my mind. I, too, am eager to share my impressions and ideas. I want to trigger even more conversations so that you can go off and trigger other discussions and so on and so on. In the midst of all that, this memory surfaced and merged with some of those reboot thoughts.

To be continued, as all conversation is in some form or another….

The TV and the internet kept me going. They were a perfect team for me. I saw President-elect Barack Obama give his speech, and not long after that, Shakesville posted the full text from the Guardian.

What a night! I didn’t get to sleep until 8.30 in the morning. I thought McCain gave a very gracious speech. Obama’s acceptance speech moved me to tears (of joy). Granted, I am a fan of his rhetoric. It could get me interested in politics! What a delight if we move from sound-bites to proper discourse, dialog, conversation, listening – communication.

I know there are many challenges ahead of the US and the world. There is work to do. Our work. We can do it.

Peace.

The real motivator for reading it is an upcoming keynote by Rheingold at the STC conference in Philadelphia, June 1-4. I’d like to attend the keynote having read the speaker’s book.

The book is slightly historical, but I find the mix of history, internet, geeky stuff, and human behavior utterly fascinating. I thoroughly enjoyed the Victorian Internet, I have Where Wizards Stay Up Late in my to-read pile, so reading Virtual Communities is a no-brainer. Oh, and I borrowed his Tools for Thought from the library in MIT’s reprint from 2000. The online version of Tools for Thought looks like it might be from 1985.

Despite its age, the online version from 1985 can still be an interesting read. I think Rheingold has something to say that isn’t locked down to a specific point in time. Other people can make long-lasting statements on this still young topic. For example, Rheingold emphasizes these words:

Will “to be on-line” be a privilege or a right?

They are taken from a 1969 article by J. C. R. Licklider, Robert Taylor, and E. Herbert entitled “The Computer as a Communication Device”. Nearly 40 years later, we are discussing net neutrality, online accessibility, One Laptop Per Child, and more – issues that concern who controls the access to information and who has the know-how to get the information. This is just one tiny example of how this not-so-very old field or phenomenon raises some very fundamental human or society issues.

That is what makes this a fascinating read.

Some of Rheingolds anecdotes from the early WELL years illustrate clearly to me how the term “virtual community” popped into his head. Being a member of several virtual communities, I am fascinated by what makes them tick, so reading about early examples is enlightening. It also shows you that there is really not that much that is new under the sun. People share love and flames alike – then and now. The caring stories, such as Elly’s health issues in India or another family’s encounter with leukemia, restore your faith in humanity. They are not there so much for the feel-good effect; they are there to show how the virtual community reflects the power we have in our face-to-face communities – and vice versa.

I feel that these stories can demystify computers and the internet for those people who still hold computers at arm’s length. Oh, they may use them by necessity at work, but not one second more. I can respect the desire for a work/life balance, but I think placing them in a mental leper colony is bit much. I think we need to embrace the role of computers and the internet to stay in control, both of the tools themselves, but also of the privileges and potential they bring.

Chapter 2 includes a section about “Gift Economies and Social Contracts in Cyberspace”. Many sections had me nodding in agreement, such as

Virtual communities can help their members, whether or not they are information-related workers, to cope with information overload. The problem with the information age, especially for students and knowledge workers who spend their time immersed in the info flow, is that there is too much information available and few effective filters for sifting the key data that are useful and interesting to us as individuals.

Recognize that overwhelming feeling?

This one justifies my information junkie habit:

This informal, unwritten social contract is supported by a blend of strong-tie and weak-tie relationships among people who have a mixture of motives and ephemeral affiliations. It requires one to give something, and enables one to receive something. I have to keep my friends in mind and send them pointers instead of throwing my informational discards into the virtual scrap heap. It doesn’t take much energy to do that, since I have to sift that information anyway to find the knowledge I seek for my own purposes; it takes two keystrokes to delete the information, three keystrokes to forward it to someone else. And with scores of other people who have an eye out for my interests while they explore sectors of the information space that I normally wouldn’t frequent, I find that the help I receive far outweighs the energy I expend helping others: a marriage of altruism and self-interest.

As an interested and active member of several virtual communities, I am eager to read more. I’ll blog about my thoughts as I go along.

Earlier this year, Nancy White shared a beautiful celebration of numbers in celebration of turning 50. Now I can do the same.

I find this parade of numbers fascinating. I see so much variety and so many stories. This is not even over-analyzing the film. The variety and stories – the depth – are there in a flash. It awakens my curiosity. Who are we, the many-numbered inhabitants of this planet? Don’t worry – I am not attempting to get to know all 6 billion plus inhabitants of the planet! I can narrow down my fascination to a simple daily dilemma: who is my audience? Who are the people who read the technical documentation that I write each day. It is said that the technical communicator’s mantra is “know thy audience”, which means that you must know your audience if you are to provide them with the information they want.

The moral of my rambling is: watch out for complacency! You may think that you know your audience, and then, someone else comes along – the next in line – and the image of your carefully defined audience falls apart. Don’t despair. A new challenge can stimulate your creativity and take you to a new level, so let’s see what is coming up.

Next, please!