Sunday Open Thread – November 19, 2006

Posted on November 19, 2006 by Dave Pollard
What I’m thinking about this week:

  • The fact that I haven’t followed up on my previous open threads on October 29 and 22 — getting to the tipping point for bottom-up initiatives, Vail/rhizomes, rail transportation, scenario planning, how to be an effective blog/forum ‘commenter’, and the inherent effectiveness and inefficiency of the long tail.
  • Experience-based decision-making — this is an aspect of knowledge management I’ve just discovered, and which has both great promise and a dark side; more about this as my research allows.
  • The four necessary prerequisites, as I see it, for Let-Self-Change: attention, openness, information and energy; all of them are in short supply, and in my recent zeal about the first three, I’ve been ignoring the fourth.

My computer is still out of order, and I’m pledging that, within the next year, I’m going to move everything from my hard drive to cyberspace, so that I will be able to use any computer anywhere, to do anything I now do on ‘my’ PC. And then ‘my’ PC will become nothing more than a convenient backup storage device.

My health is still fine, despite some recent stresses. In fact I just ran my fastest 5km in thirty years.

So what’s on your mind?
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5 Responses to Sunday Open Thread – November 19, 2006

  1. David Parkinson says:
    November 19, 2006 at 11:21

    3 rejections this past week for jobs I applied to: 2 were simple stopgaps, but the third was something I thought would have been very interesting & for which I thought I was the perfect candidate (although it only paid for one day per week spread over almost a year). I have decided to accept these rejections as confirmation that I need to push on with what looks like a quixotic but fascinating business plan. So that’ll be 2007 for me: diving into self-employment, which is something I NEVER would have predicted a couple years ago. Life continues to challenge and surprise me.

  2. lavonne says:
    November 19, 2006 at 15:07

    I’m glad to hear your health is fine; sounds like your self-experimentation is working!

  3. Michael Yarmolinsky says:
    November 19, 2006 at 19:24

    I am sorry to hear about the jobs, but I think things will work out better in the end. You definately are capable of succeeding by working for yourself, and look forward to your posts in the future regarding you being the happiest you have ever been in your life :).Keep up all the great work (and health!)

  4. David G. Jones says:
    November 19, 2006 at 20:03

    Well after a very long period without every having touched a Mac our house has gone total Mac wireless. Observation: in many ways superior to PCs (speaking of use, not just the super security) but in some ways clearly designed and built for the nerds among us. Not, in my opinion, intuitive to a non technical person. Have a great week David and keep up the good work, and your amazing spirit.

  5. Thomas Watson says:
    November 21, 2006 at 21:04

    always thinking about something….Societial break down in australia: An article on peak-oil was published in a major newspaper based magazine. Of course, none of the material in it was new to me, its just interests me that subjects that were quite fringe a few years ago are peeping into the mainstream media here in Australia. So, as the article suggests, societial break-down is on the way….What I have been pondering about is how it would pan out in Australia, particularly how the more violent scenarios could pan out. The level of gun-ownership in Australia is little to none, so I would suggest that this places overwhelming physical power into the hands of those in and out of the military that have access or knowledge of the various armouries and ammunition stocks around australia. I suspect that such power will still be limited to a local setting, given the difficulties of transport or moving around but its fearful none the less, having scores of well-armed bands roving the country-side.This sort of societial break-down scenario always reminds me of your argument David, about what a truly sustainable level of human population is. I always feel that while you never state it, you imply that some sort of mass violence, mass famine, mass disaster, etc etc will be the only way for us to attain this more desirable small population.Hmmm. Well, Australia is quite big. Would there still be somewhere that one might be able to hide, if the water hasn’t run out anyway?Sigh, off to write a bid application, back to the near-near future

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