The Longest Now

Aaron took his life yesterday. I am still finding it hard to believe.

His ongoing court case overshadows his death, so let me get that out of the way: 
He was living through a two-year federal case which had only become more nightmarish since last year.  (JSTOR stated it did not want a trial, and has steadily been releasing the PD articles in question and more for free public use; yet the prosecution, continuing its outrageous abuse of discretion, declined to settle and tripled their felony charges to cover up to 35 years in prison.)

Friends and family were helping him plan a campaign to spread the word about the unreasonableness and inequity of the trial. Its uncertainty was intensely stressful, even for those of us who lived only the tiniest fraction of it.  As Lessig notes, the prosecutors – Stephen P. Heymann (and at times Scott L. Garland), working in Carmen M. Ortiz‘s Cybercrime unit – should be taking a long hard look in the mirror and asking themselves what they are doing with their lives.

Aaron was a dear friend, and one of the most decent men I have known.  The only times I have seen him truly angry was in response to some social wrong; and he actively looked for ways to find and eliminate injustice. He always considered how to act morally – even when this meant being at odds with local social norms – and regularly paused at forks in his life to think about how to live so as to benefit society.

He kindled ideas from those nearby, and freely passed on his own.  Made mistakes often and tried to learn from them, usually publicly. His transparency was a useful meterstick for me. Ages ago, when we first met, I remember him brainstorming ideas about community and wiki design with Zvi and me; about learning and unlearning, society and ideals, civics and collaboration.  Once his curiosity was piqued about a subject he would pursue it until he could write about and explain it.  

I spent last night with mutual friends who live now in his old apartment, in a room that was once his; remembering the many great projects he started and inspired – especially the little gems, the personal quirks and insights, the inspiring ideas that became single-purpose services, or calls to arms. (We never did start a dog-walking service for data, but the idea abides.) Rereading some of his writings, I remember the many opportunities missed for synthesis, reframing, and clarity – about how life works, and how to live it.

Everyone has idealized dreams — what would you do with an unlimited wish? — about long-term projects worth devoting one’s life to, to transform the world. Dreams cherished but rarely attempted.  Aaron was the only person I felt completely comfortable sharing mine with.  We had a little game: a couple times a year we would meet in a nameless cafe, and he would ask for ‘rabbinical’ advice on moral quandaries, and I would ask for ‘professional’ advice on realizing societal dreams. I don’t know that he needed my advice, but I always looked forward to his. There was usually at least one book suggestion from his endless reading list that answered an open question of mine. And no matter how grandiose the dream, he would understand, clarify, laugh, counterpoint, help tune mental models, and remind me to get to it. And we never had quite enough time.

I miss him very, very, very much.   Part of my own future has gone missing too.

Somewhere, celestials are being taught to tune the cosmos.

In Memoriam:
Quinn. TBL. Grimm. Cory. Larry (^2). Cyrus Farivar.

The court case.
Alex Stamos (on the wrongness of the case).
New York Times (front page).
The Guardian (front page + 4 more articles)
The WSJ.

In his own words:
How to work.
How we stopped SOPA.
On feeling low and key limes.

From the Boston Wikipedia Meetup on August 18, 2009, by Sage Ross:

Last year Google acquired Metaweb, providing a reliable future to their many projects, including Refine and Freebase.

From earlier this year, here’s a quote from Amit Singhal, Google’s SVP responsible for their Knowledge Graph:

We hope this added intelligence will give you a more complete picture of your interest, provide smarter search results, and pique your curiosity on new topics. We’re proud of our first baby step—the Knowledge Graph—which will enable us to make search more intelligent, moving us closer to the “Star Trek computer” that I’ve always dreamt of building. Enjoy your lifelong journey of discovery, made easier by Google Search, so you can spend less time searching and more time doing what you love.

In the near future, I expect both Google’s knowledge graph, and the increasing awareness of the usefulness of such graphs, to change the structure and scope of industrial-scale knowledge processing. Thanks to all those working on these tools and solutions; see you in 2013!

via Global Voices, the Top 10 Chinese Internet Memes of 2012.

A lovely short policy brief on designing a better copyright regime was published on Friday – before being quickly taken offline again.  I’ve reposted it here with light cleanup of its section headings.

If you care at all about copyright and its quirks, this is short and worth reading in full.

:A pinch of poise, a twist of wit,
:    Suffice to foil the darkest fit of  pique –
:      or set the mind  at  ease when seeking
:              ancient   remedies   for  tweaking  the   e t e r n a l    drive
:                                              to make, sing, see, feel, learn, & thrive.

The 7-lesson schoolteacher.

"I teach school -- and I win awards doing it.  These are the things I teach, these are the things you pay me to teach.  Make of them what you will:"

So begins one of the great essays on the modern school system.

Via Doc Searls.

The original, and updated to modern lingo.

Comphysic relief:  arXiv vs. snarXiv

You can learn a lot from browsing the arXiv that way; I discovered Tang’s variation on a neutrino counter-nuke.  Along with some papers which would be awesome if anyone managed to write them.

I was delighted to rediscover David SD’s homepage and musings, and reminded of my long-term bet with Matt Gline about the progress in semantic clustering and searching.[1]

…the age of lawsuits.

you thought this would involve SPACE, didn’t you?

A great multi-sided discussion from the AFP blog, with at least three incompatible views worth considering (and unifying in one moral code, if you’re looking for a challenge).  

How should artists set expectations for how large popular shows and venues play out, when they each draw on dozens of performers, from pick-up –> auditioned one-night –> well-known drop-ins from past collabs –> long-term tour staff?

Geeks Without Bounds is an inspiring Seattle-based group that I learned about through the Awesome Seattle foundation. Their work is similar in ways to NetHope and Benetech in terms of the sorts of networking and sustainability-review they hope to provide. But they are primarily volunteer-run, founded in the work already supported by hacker spaces around the world.

They focus on making hackathons and prototypes for humanitarian tech work in practice — implemented through local practitioners, and embraced by active communities of develoeprs once they have proven their use. I wish them and their network-building success. We need better circles of shared practice in this area of life!

Here’s an introductory video via Dailymotion.

An idea born in 2010, by the American Mathematical Society and friends, now bearing fruit at a beautifully burgeoning MPE 2013 website.

The mathematics of interest includes everything related to four themes: Discovering the planet, Supporting life on the planet, Human organization on the planet, and Risks to the future of the planet.

From his ‘Gov 2.0‘ O’Reilly blog:

Why propose principles for Internet freedom and a “Digital Bill of Rights” when existing ones will do? We the People need our existing Bill of Rights to apply in the digital domain.

Still in its infancy: “A collaborative platform to organize complex knowledge, visualize systems that propel our lives and build a universal exchange for knowledge, wealth and value.”

I love it when one of the seventeen pillars of society starts to emerge anew.

Club Floyd collects collaborative IF meta-stories. via Jacqueline A. Lott Ashwell.

For ages, learning was assumed to be social, interactive, oral. Written knowledge, where available and somewhat portable, was a specialized complement that few scholars, recordkeepers, explorers and other specialists used or needed.

As long as you needed a tutor or guide to learn, whether or not good static (lifeless) written material was available was a lesser concern.

In the last three millennia, it gradually became cheaper to produce text, commonplace for scholars to learn to write concisely and convey ideas so that others could learn them on their own. In every field, books eventually replaced ritual and oral record as the standard for precipitating knowledge into a lasting, canonical form, and passing it on. This was driven forward by personal memorials and finance and law – pillars of clan- and city-building.

Certain forms of knowledge were considered a shared good of society – from how to find resources to social and practical norms. And some were actively disseminated as necessary, such as legal and religious dictates. Other knowledge was something that could be sought out, or bought and sold. During the time when knowledge about the world was a scarce resource, yet easy enough to write down and transmit, even basic information about the shape of the planet was bartered and sold like any other good.

Today we both have bounteous knowledge, and pressing problems that better global education can address. The opportunities that could result from a more broadly educated world society are far greater than the short-term opportunities of a commodity market for practical texts.

And we will get more thorough, more accurate, and better texts of all sorts – once we think of general knowledge as a part of culture and civic infrastructure, not as something that can be owned and hoarded. We made this transition with scientific discoveries centuries ago, with mathematics before that, and today we reap tremendous benefits from that. It is time for all knowledge to join their ranks as a cornerstone of our civilization.

How can we help this come about? Take a piece of awesome, inspiring, practical knowledge that you currently buy or rent as a commodity, and make a free version of it. Publish it to a shared commons that makes it easy to maintain and update over time. Tell others who get it from the same source you did. Stop using general knowledge that you can’t repurpose, and your use of the alternative will make it the best in the world in its niche.

He’s a war-weary devious gentleman spy who knows the secret of the alien invasion. She’s a vivacious mute advertising executive with an incredible destiny. They Fight Crime!