David Weinberger's Blog, page 101

[2b2k] Me on the radio

Here's a 20 minute interview on KUOW in Seattle from last week. We talk about networked knowledge, science, echo chambers, long form thinking, and the irresoluteness of experts.

[2b2k][eim] Needlebase going? Nooo! We need le base!

Google has announced that it is retiring Needlebase, a service it acquired with its ITA purchase. That's too bad! Needlebase is a very cool tool. (It's staying up until June 1 so you can download any work you've done there.)

Needlebase is a browser-based tool that creates a merged, cleaned, de-duped database from databases. Then you can create a variety of user-happy outputs. There are some examples here.

Google says it's evaluating whether Needlebase can be threaded into its other offerings.

Four messages from the dark

The black that covered so many sites yesterday spoke well. I think there were four messages.

First, This is our Internet. We built it. We built it for us, not for you. We get to turn off the lights, not you.

Second, we are better custodians of culture than are culture's merchants because we understand that culture is what we have in common. We feel pain every time something is held back from this Commons.

Third, just as we can make someone famous rather than having to passively accept the celebrities you foist upon us, we can make an idea politically potent. Going dark was the self-assertion with which political engagement begins.

Fourth, there's a growing "we" on the Internet. It is not as inclusive as we think, it's far more diverse than we imagine, and it's far less egalitarian than we should demanand. But so was tbe "we" in "We the People." The individual acts of darkness declared a start of the We we need to nurture.

[2b2k] West Coast book tour this week

I am doing by dangdest to overcome my reluctance to directly self-promote myself (although I seem to be fine with indirect self-promotion), so here's my list of public stops over the next few days on the West Coast:

Today: Seattle Town Hall, 7:30pm

Thursday: 1pm: Corte Madera, Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd

7pm: Mountain View, Books Inc., 301 Castro Street

I also have some media and corporate stops.

See you there, I hope.

Elmore Leonard and Morgan Freeman

Meredith Sue Willis, novelist and teacher (and my sister-in-law), has a hunch about a "newish" Elmore Leonard novel:

I have a theory that Elmore Leonard came up with the idea for DJIBOUTI from a combination of headlines (piracy off the coast of east Africa) and a interview in which movie actor Morgan Freeman complained that he gets lots of work, but never gets to have sex in his movies. He has played Nelson Mandela, the corner man in MILLION DOLLAR BABY, not to mention God a couple of times- -all pretty much asexual. So my little scenario is that Leonard, who always has his eye on the movies, wrote the character of seventy-ish Xavier in DJIBOUTI for Freeman. Just a thought.

Nice!

Stephen Colbert on running for president, exploratory committees with actual members, and free speechiness

[2b2k] Jeff Jarvis' review

Jeff Jarvis' review of Too Big To Know is not only lovely and complimentary (aw gosh, Jeff!), but he pulls the right quotes and does a great job explaining what I'm trying to get at in the book.

Berkman Buzz

This week's Berkman Buzz

Dan Gillmor explores the role of the news ombudsman[link

danah boyd is "Generation Flux"[link

Ethan Zuckerman liveblogs Wael Abbas's talk on video and social media in pre-revolution Egypt[link

metaLAB reviews Jeffrey Schnapp's new Electric Information Age Book[link

Herdict needs help with a mystery[link

Weekly Global Voices: Kenya/Somalia: Twitter War: Kenyan Army Versus Al Shabaab[link

(This was scraped from the Berkman page via ScraperWiki)

So you think you can scrape?

If you're thinking about scraping a web page to extract the delicious data bits from it, ScraperWiki looks like a great place to start. It's got tools, examples, and a community. Right now the tools are in Ruby, Python and PHP, but they're thinking about adding Javascript.

If I have time this weekend, I'm going to give it a try scraping the weekly Berkman Buzz post. Until a couple of weeks ago, I was fairly routinely posting the Buzz on this blog, because I had written a little scraper and formatter that let me go from the email version to the blog markup I prefer. But then those bahstahds at Berkman went all HTML on the weekly email, which completely broke my scraper. But the Berkman page that lists the Buzz looks like it's ripe for trying out the ScraperWiki tools. Looking forward to it…

Lincoln on Shakespeare

Douglas L. Wilson has a lovely article that tries to make sense of what we know about Lincoln's love of Shakespeare. He argues that one fact about the performance of Shakespeare at the time illuminates comments Lincoln made to actors and friends. (No spoilers here, my friends!)

BTW, we learn early on in the article that Lincoln thought Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy was outdone by the one in which Claudius wonders whether forgiveness is possible for his murder of his brother.

Oh, my offence is rank. It smells to heaven.

It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't,

A brother's murder. Pray can I not.

Though inclination be as sharp as will,

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,

And, like a man to double business bound,

I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect. What if this cursèd hand

Were thicker than itself with brother's blood?

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy

But to confront the visage of offence?

And what's in prayer but this twofold force,

To be forestallèd ere we come to fall

Or pardoned being down? Then I'll look up.

My fault is past. But oh, what form of prayer

Can serve my turn, "Forgive me my foul murder"?

That cannot be, since I am still possessed

Of those effects for which I did the murder:

My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.

May one be pardoned and retain th' offense?

In the corrupted currents of this world

Offense's gilded hand may shove by justice,

And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself

Buys out the law. But 'tis not so above.

There is no shuffling. There the action lies

In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled,

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,

To give in evidence. What then? What rests?

Try what repentance can. What can it not?

Yet what can it when one can not repent?

O wretched state! O bosom black as death!

O limèd soul that, struggling to be free,

Art more engaged! Help, angels. Make assay.

Bow, stubborn knees, and, heart with strings of steel,

Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe.

All may be well. (kneels)

[(SparkNotes' translation is here.]

I'll stay away from the cheap psychologizing about Lincoln's interest in the forgivability of unforgivable crimes during a war waged at least in part against slavery. Instead I'll offer cheap psychologizing about the theme of the doubleness of self — with the attendant heightened perception of one's self as always at issue — that seems to go through Lincoln's favorite passages.

Finally, I might note that articles like this one show the value of experts, something we dare not lose in the networking of knowledge (in case anyone was wondering).