The Omega Institute recently posted this clip on blip.tv - It’s a very poignant clip, cut from an interview they recently did with Rev. Michael Beckwith, discussing this period of transition and transformation at this point in the history of the Human Race. It’s over all a positive message - making specific reference to the new forms of media emerging to lend voice and ear to the new evolutions that mainstream media is not attending to. Great media.
I’ve been reading the latest issue of Fast Company for the past couple of days. My blood is running better now. Such a damn good magazine. Tonight I read the most healing article - “A Mighty Wind: Texas Oil Tycoon Tackles Renewable Energy”
It’s an interview with T. Boone Pickens, a corporate tycoon of the old school. So brutally honest, rational, and to the point- I had little choice but to fall in love with the guy. The kind of American that scares the piss out of me on one hand, but who I also secretly adore.
In the interview, he comes off as the billionaire Granddad that wouldn’t give you a dime of your inheritance until you got off your ass and did something with your life. I’d be afraid to reveal to him the once-upon-an-America-Norman-Rockwell fantasies that he reminds me of, for fear he might squash them as “pathetic gestures of sentimentalism.”
What is inspiring about this Article is that you have a rational-capitalist-oil-man making clear decisions about business ventures (which are in alignment with ecological necessity):
How important is wind to America’s future energy needs?
The United States today runs on 987,000 megawatts, and the demand is going to increase 150,000 megawatts in the next 10 years — 15%. We could supply most of that with wind from the Great Plains, from Texas to North Dakota, but we’ve got to set up corridors to the West Coast and to the East Coast.
He’s a staunch republican making intelligent economic moves that hint towards a free-market that really is ecologically responsive.
You recently announced plans to build the world’s largest wind farm, in the panhandle. Is that about money or the environment?
Money! First thing, it’s about money. Of course, I’m also a good environmentalist. I can pass the saliva test. But I’m not going to go do a 4,000-megawatt wind farm for the environment first and money second. I’d rather go give money someplace else. You’re talking about $10 billion.
He’s making clear no-bullshit statements about the practical reality that confronts us:
I’m going to take action. Opponents say it’s going to cost so much money to address. And I say, well, hell, go ahead and spend it. I’d rather take a chance that I’m right than that I’m wrong. I don’t want to wait around until the house burns down ’til I decide whether it’s a serious fire or not.
I can’t express, the joy, laughter and hope I felt for my own confused American Psyche while reading his words. I hope to hell someone from the Ayn Rand Institute reads this article and maybe a light will go off in their dogmatic mind. The best moment by far in the interview was in regards to Capitol Hill in Washington:
The leadership is absolutely, totally pissy in Congress — a real conglomeration of fruitcakes. I mean pitiful people.
Pour yourself a Scotch, pull out a cigar and read the Article.
picture credit: (nz)dave
I’ve been brewing this post for a couple days, since I first read Robert Scoble’s post theorizing the impacts of a Microsoft purchase of Facebook and Yahoo. Scoble’s post clearly reveals his Ideology towards a universally “Open and Public Web.” And that is where I stand in opposition to Mr. Scoble: I like my two webs, my three webs, my many webs.. locked off and seperate from eachother. I find value in that.
I have found that the closed web actually cultivates intimacy and privacy amongst smaller networks.. and this leads eventually to a deeper digital authenticity, which, in turn, bleeds out into Scoble’s open and public web (furthing a culture of empowered transparency). If we are talking about a web blooming with truth, heart, reality and real deep soaring community… I have found value in having that womb where that community can form, take root, get comfortable, discover intimacy with the medium. Find the the psychological skill and comfort in pursuing a publically transparent and socially collaborative life pattern.
Yes, the collision of the Microsoft Brand with Facebook would be the absolute shits. It would suck. And I would probably have to wonder off and find another closed network to play in. But I still want my closed web.
Scoble refers to this biforcation of the net as some dark manifestation that will stunt the evolution of the human net.
This is a fight for the Web. We all just crawled inside a box that locks Google out…Google is locked out of the Web that soon will be owned by Microsoft. We will never get an open Web back if these two deals happen…
If all this is true there is no way in hell that Facebook will open up now.
Can the open public Web fight back? Yes. It’s called FriendFeed. Notice that FriendFeed replaces almost all of Facebook’s killer features with open ones that are open to Google’s search.
This writer, in particular, has found extreme value in the closed off web that Facebook cultivates. I enjoy being able to interact with the vast network of my social history in a private and none-searchable arena. 
I enjoy and find value in being able to communicate intimacies, daily life, plans, and stupidities in a digital playground that his neatly tucked out of reach from the tendrils of Google.
In that closed network I have allowed myself to explore a deeper digital authenticity with my friends and family; I have been able to cultivate real communication within my network.
None of that would have been occurred in an open and public web. We all would have continued to quietly pass notes under the table via email. It is through facebook that siblings and cousins and old classmates and ex-girlfriends and I have come together and begun experimenting with what it means to be REAL online. Where a deeper human-ness finds an online vocabulary. Where we can begin to test the waters gently with our toes.
Even as I delve into twitter, friendfeed, etc - I’m still discovering which elements and feeds of my daily life I want to offer up to the open web. And there are many aspects, many feeds, I don’t feel inclined to make public - yet, I do find value in offering them up to my private web.
I don’t feel in opposition to Scoble’s deeper truth. I get a sense the man has a deep, true and good heart. When he talks about this ‘open web’ he is talking about a web for the people and by the people.
Remember though, Mr. Scoble, you’ve been of the for-front of public and digital transparency… there are others of us, however, who are still finding rhythm in the world of social media. For us, Google can be scary, and it feels nice to have a little shelter from the Eye of Sauron. As the net evolves into a true medium for human intimacy and social evolution there is still a culture and comfort for the human psyche to be discovered and exlored.
I have faith in the free-market. I have faith in the evolution of human-kind. I have faith in the evolution of the net. And I feel that a diverse range of web ‘localities’ serves our greatest potential more than one would.
May the Force be with you.
image credits: window - SingSkateRocketLuv, girl - Ged80, hand - svenwerk
