NetDynam 2.0

I can’t help it—when I see LHR being attached to my baggage, I get a feeling which is hard to explain. A sense of romance, of promise, of something bigger than me creeps into my mind. It isn’t something you explain in words, but the feeling is there, from just those letters, by themselves, intimating I am going somewhere of great significance. This feeling does not come from seeing the letters SYD either, even though it means I will be going home. It might evoke these feelings if the code for SYD was instead KFS for Kingsford Smith, similar to NY’s main airport being JFK. It does not come when I see NRT, although those letters also speak to me of excitement, visual interest, a world of wonder and possibilities to come. No, it is LHR which creates a special sense. A sense of history and staid conservancy overlaid with memories and feelings from the late 20th century when London was the centre of the cultural universe for a young me interested in fashion, music, and art. It means the place where Concorde regularly took off and landed, and the place which handles the highest frequency of air traffic in the world. It means I am travelling to the capital of the English-speaking world, a cornucopia of a place, a multicultural circus of a place, an old-fashioned, hip-hopping, vibrant and miserable place.

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In reflecting on the Web 3.0 presentation by Kevin Kelly mentioned by Frank and the posting of the Hans Rosling presentation (courtesy of eldon) on data as visualized by his (then) new software, I came across this presentation by Tim Berners-Lee at this years TED discussing “The Next Web”:



Together, the three presentations focus our attention on where the web has been, where it is today, and where current development efforts around the world look to take it.

But it is the very pace of change that seems to overwhelm any individual effort to come to terms with it, resulting in what Michael Wesch has called Context Collapse.   The emergence of participatory culture as documented in his “An anthropological introduction to YouTube” is an organic response, a humanizing response, to the crisis of individual significance.



This signaling of the changing nature of the web and the tools it puts at each of our fingertips coalesces into a larger picture – the ecosocial environment in which we find ourselves, in which we carry on our discourse, and ultimately, in which to acknowledge the group impetus to carpe diem.

This is why I consider Hoon’s posting of the excerpt from Paul Thibault’s book  Brain, Mind, and the Signifying Body particularly significant in understanding what links the various individual efforts comprising this eclectic NetDynam group.