THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700
rodwelch@pacbell.net
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 18:37:38 -0800
03 00050 61 05022202
Mr. Henry van Eyken
Webmaster
Bootstrap Institute
6505 Kaiser Drive
Fremont, CA 94555
Country
..
Subject:
Civic Journalism Living the Dream
Break from Fleabyte Well Earned
Dear Henry,
Thanks for your letter today commending Peter's support, and
noting the challenge of maintaining Fleabyte. Your goals on
January 10 for a platform to advance civic journalism represent
the good side of knowledge management for advancing traditional
literacy. Your letter today shows the dilemma of limited time,
which, as
Drucker
notes in his book "Management Tasks and
Responsibilities is our most perishable resource.
.. How then to allocate time so that Fleabyte is a pleasure and not
a burden to its guiding light?
.. Retiring Fleabyte may be the answer, and certainly giving things
a rest by all means. Looking ahead, one might envision Fleabyte
or a progeny publishing monthly, quarterly or even annually as
the voice of reason making sense of a chaotic world.
In other words, reduce the work load to fit the time and
resources available for the project.
.. An example of such a project might be to update Doug's wonderful
paper on groupware cited in your letter on 050111. How have
Doug's vision and planning in 1992 for an ABC system of
collaborative intelligence been implemented, and what lies
ahead? Do Wiki's, collaboratoria, blogging tools and Microsoft
technologies begin the journey to realize Doug's goals. What of
efforts at SRI, the CIA, DOD, NSF, et al, along with
entrepreneurs like Ted Nelson, Jack Park, Eugene Kim, Murray
Altheim, and many others -- what have they discovered in the
struggle to advance beyond information technology (IT) to a new
paradigm of knowledge, intelligence, what have you...?
.. There are now some 5 years of communications collaborating with
OHS/DKR and follow on teams from which to draw inspiration and
ideas for such a project. This could be aided by Doug outlining
his take on where things stand today in relation to goals for a
new kind of technology to solve world problems.
Eric's letter on August 24, 2000,
Eugene's letter on November 26, 2000, and
..
Jack's letter on September 8, 2001, seem
especially illuminating, along with recent discussions last June,
and again the past few weeks. What discoveries emerge when we
"connect the dots" that help release the power of knowledge?
.. Foremost, of course is your health and well being of your
family. So, I promise not to write any more, until such time as
you indicate the path is clear to resume the journey.
.. Perhaps in six months or a year we will be blessed with "what say
you" on these big ideas. In the meantime, don't be a stranger.
Fleabyte aside, we are all blessed by your wisdom, talent,
diligence, and of course good humor.