All my recent posts have started with something along the lines of ’so it’s been a while but i’m finally back… ‘. I was just about to start this one off like that too but to be honest, I doubt I’ll get back to regular blogging anytime soon. So just dropping in with a bit of an update…

I just got back from two weeks in Goa with my girlfriend and well, it was really incredible! We had a great little hut on Palolem beach and believe me, two weeks of sunshine, awesome sea food and warm waters was bliss! But, sadly I eventually had to head back home so now I’m back in cold, wet London.

Only been back for a week and I’m already starting to feel the pace; two weeks lazing around definately softens you up! This year though, I’ve made the decision to avoid getting caught in the rat race. So to that end I’ve decided to cut back from the amount of time I spend on the net. 2007 will be an exciting year for technology and there will without a dount be plenty of significant developments to follow. The problem is, keeping track and writing about them all is a time consuming exercise. But if I hope to succeed at the things I’m setting out to do this year it cutting back on time on the net needs to be done.

I’ll still be around though! I’m doing an introduction to social science course this year. The course is called Understanding Social Change and touches a lot on what I’ve been blogging about here, except from a real world perspective. Topics like ‘Questioning identity’, ‘Ordering lives’ and Knowledge and knowing’.

It’s too easy to get totally wrapped up in technology, to allow it to become your only lense for looking at the world. Technology does not exist in a vacum and everyone will acknowledge that it has a profound impact on our individual and collective lives. But the view of those consequences from inside the Technology Bubble is more than just a bit warped. Technology gives us many powerful tools, toos that can effect great change. So it’s easy to see why many enthusiasts (myselff included!) have a rosey, utopian outlook on the state of the world. Technology, we believe, is the answer to all our problems. It’s not unfortunately, it’s just a tool, the answer lies in what we do with it, who uses it and how and why it’s used. The Bubble raises those questions but does not leave room for the pursuit for the answers, it’s just too concerned with sustaining itself…

But just because the technology industry is not looking doesn’t mean that those questions are not being looked at at all. That will be the focus of my studies and what I hope to be blogging about for the next while.

In the meantime! I almost forgot to mention that I’ve been working on another blogging project with Craig called Future Fragments. I don’t want to give too much away so go on over and have a look…

• HipSkine
  Hipskine is the methodology I have implemented joining the Tactile feedback pleasures of a Molskine planner/journal and the efficient tracking of my next actions in a GTD fashion with Tracks
  (tags: moleskine productivity gtd)
• TuxPhone - TuxPhone
  objective is to create an open (in every sense of the word) cellphone platform that is convenient for creating novel applications.
  (tags: free hacking hardware open opensource mobile wireless)
• SENSEable City reveals ‘friendspotting,’ new MIT social networking form - MIT News Office
  MIT researchers today unveiled a new social networking application that will make it possible for anyone on the Institute’s 168-acre campus to locate anyone else, via their laptop.
  (tags: wifi wireless social locationaware geo community MIT)
• The wisdom of the openDemocracy crowd Tony Curzon Price - openDemocracy
  An experiment in “predictive markets” will test the openDemocracy community’s forecasting skill in 2007.
  (tags: predictive-markets economics future forecasting politics)
• Jungle dumb: Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto Kanishk Tharoor - openDemocracy
  It is depressing - hardly ironic - that when marginalised peoples finally make it to the big screen, it is to violate the complexity of their culture, to reinforce the historical narrative of their current marginalisation, and then, only afterwards, to do
  (tags: film)
• P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Power, control and the internet of things
  The numerical language of control is made of codes that [allow or disallow] access to information. We no longer deal with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become “dividuals,” samples, data, markets, or “banks.”
  (tags: politics internet control theory)
• A Parallel Currency to Pay for a Basic Income in South Africa
  In most communities there is a great lack of spending power in terms of the national currency; however, local consumer power could be created by introducing a local complementary currency or voucher system. This could be done by providing people with a ba
  (tags: economics money currency southafrica readme complementary-currency)
• UoWiki - LETSGetTogether
  Catching up on developments over the last year
  (tags: complementary-currency lets london)
• WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: “Complementary” Currency Helps Local Communities
  The intention of local currency, explains Gerald Wheatley, a founder of the Calgary Dollars project, is to promote a sense of community and to stimulate the local economy by ensuring that cash stays in the region
  (tags: currency complementary-currency community social)
• institut francais londres - french institute london
  Cine Lumiere
  (tags: film london)