Can the use of semaphore be useful today?

Ken Smith recently wrote about the use of semaphore and RSS in transmitting information. He relates an experience where he organized students to send a message across a university campus. The historic use of semaphore flags was to communicate between ships. In the 18th century, the “optical telegraph” was developed, and messages could be sent from Amsterdam to Venice in an hour. With the development of the electric telegraph, the use of the optical telegraph fell to the wayside.

Today, people can use RSS readers to monitor posts on websites, and use other social media systems (Twitter, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky) to do the same. The rssCloud protocol also provides almost instant notification. I think that the question Ken Smith is asking is “can a group of individuals use this to be able to respond to a crisis“. The answer is “Yes”, but people “would have to be trained to do more than just send or receive a message on the system”.

So – do we choose to do something here? What crisis should we work to avoid?

Knowledge management and organizing information for use

A short podcast on some of my recent experiences on knowledge management and organizing information for use:

Some references from the podcast:

Organizing information for use – A Github repo summarizing writings from Ken Smith on organizing information for use

Link Zettlekasten – My experiment in organizing bookmarks using OPML

Writings on Organizing Information – Frank McPherson list of essays on this topic, this is one on the value of indexes

Op-Ed Links – Source of information on writing op-eds/letters to the editor from Ken Smith

Knowledge management – My collection of knowledge management posts on my weblog

Commonplace book – Wikipedia

Chris Aldrich – Differentiating online variations of the Commonplace Book: Digital Gardens, Wikis, Zettlekasten, Waste Books, Florilegia, and Second Brains

Waste book – think of a “Field Notes” notebook that you capture ideas/info and transfer to something else

Chris Aldrich – Reframing and simplifying the idea of how to keep a Zettelkasten

The end of podcasting, chapter 63

More recent news items this month about layoffs at Chicago Public Media (WBEZ) and Colorado Public Radio, both affecting their podcast units. Key quotes:

The move to terminate nearly 15% of the 62 unionized content creators at Chicago’s National Public Radio affiliate comes amid a worsening financial crisis for the news organization marked by declining fundraising, listenership and philanthropic support.

https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-public-media-lays-off-14-staffers/451b3f28-338c-45bc-98c2-742a7106ecf2

In recent years revenue has grown but has not kept pace with expenses. CPR lists on its website that expenses had exceeded revenue by $1.3 million in fiscal year 2022 and $2.3 million in fiscal year 2023. Member giving has remained strong, but corporate sponsorship was down. Meanwhile, programming and fundraising expenses – driven in part by employee costs – have risen by millions of dollars.

https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/06/cpr-institutes-layoffs-in-audio-production-podcast-units/

Looks like my analysis from chapter 60 is still accurate:

If an organization is spending more money than it brings in income, they either figure out ways to increase revenue or cut expenses, or say goodbye! The technical term, I believe, is called “business”. 

https://andysylvester.com/2023/11/24/the-end-of-podcasting-chapter-60/

On the flip side, an informally produced podcast by Nick Hilton featuring people sharing their experience with Parkinson’s disease has won an award at the Broadcasting Press Guild in London, UK. A nice pull-quote from Nick’s post:

Podcasting has proved the perfect home for Movers and Shakers. It’s allowed us to access an audience of many, many thousands of people who either live with the condition, have loved ones living with the condition, or are fascinated by the banter between some broadcasting legends. It has allowed us to dive into a level of detail that makes people feel seen and heard. These are people who often feel let down by the health service, by their doctors and nurses, employers or benefits assessors. It is an entertainment product, first and foremost, but it’s also a support group. That’s why, despite the fact it’s a technical nightmare, we still record the show down at the pub: so that people feel like they’re having a pint with the gang, joining in with a laugh and a moan, and the sharing in the experiences of living with Parkinson’s.

https://nickfthilton.medium.com/what-an-award-winning-podcast-taught-me-about-podcasting-f83544fd34a7

Perhaps this is a better model for many podcasts that are trying to be money-makers – just sayin….

Postscript: NiemanLab says ” more people are listening to podcasts than ever before” – I guess the advertisers aren’t listening….

Democracy is not a spectator sport

Several weeks ago, I read a Substack post with this same title, as well as a Vox article titled “The courts were never going to save America from Donald Trump”. The bottom line of both articles were that the only way to defeat Donald Trump was going to be at the ballot box. But what else should we do? In my post/podcast earlier this week on “The Resistance”, I also pointed out that “doing something else” meant doing more than writing a blog post or a social media post or a podcast. I did review one of the resources I linked to in my resistance post, and it offered 3 concrete recommendations for taking action:

  • Once a month, show up to either a trigger event protest with game change potential or a small, group-led action.
  • Once a week, put pressure on decision makers with phone calls or at town halls.
  • Vote for and do get out the vote work for movement candidates in local, state, and federal elections.

In addition, the resource gives some good guidance about finding or forming a group to take action. Let’s get out there and win this thing!

There aren’t two sides to facts

Last week, the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Chris Quinn, published a “Letter from the Editor” concerning the paper’s coverage of news concerning Donald Trump (mentioned on PressWatch). He stated that they are receiving a fair amount of mail/email on this topic criticizing the paper. I think these three paragraphs hit the main point of his response:

The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.

The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/03/our-trump-reporting-upsets-some-readers-but-there-arent-two-sides-to-facts-letter-from-the-editor.html

After publishing this column, the Plain Dealer received over 2700 emails, mostly positive, thanking the editor for “…reporting as fact the threat Donald Trump presents to our democracy” (see new editor column on the response). The Plain Dealer also published a sampling of the responses. Perhaps there is hope for us yet…

What a difference 38 years makes in NCAA women’s basketball

The 2024 NCAA women’s basketball national championship has been decided – South Carolina beat Iowa today 87-75 in Cleveland, Ohio. The game was played at Rocket Mortgage Field House, home arena of the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team, with capacity of 19,432. From this shot, it looks like it was pretty darn full! I attended one of the regional semifinal games in Portland, Oregon, and was happy that Texas (my team!) beat Gonzaga. The arena (Moda Center, home of the Portland Trail Blazers, capacity 19,393) was pretty full, probably 8000-10000 (media coverage had total Portland attendance at over 40000). Attendance overall has been up (sources: NCAA.com, Front Office Sports overall season attendance, Front Office Sports Iowa-UConn attendance/viewership, Oregon Public Broadcasting).

To contrast, I attended the University of Texas from 1980-1985, and began attending women’s basketball games in 1982. The number of fans at games was so small, and so quiet, that the main sound during much of the game was the squeaking from the player’s shoes. As a member of the Longhorn Band, we had a great impact at games (since almost no one else was making any noise). At the Moda Center, although all teams playing had bands and cheerleaders, the general crowd noise limited the effect of those groups. In the Texas-Gonzaga game, there was a point in the second half where Gonzaga was making a run to get back in the game, and the Gonzaga fans were pretty effective in cheering “Let’s Go Zags” for 1-2 minutes, but when Texas stopped their run, that was pretty much it for the Gonzaga crowd. It was fun being able to make an cheering impact like we did in the 1980s, but I am glad that the sport has progressed through the excellent play of Iowa, South Carolina, Texas, Gonzaga, and many great teams, and has had great increases in attendance. I’m looking forward to next year!

Where is the Resistance? (post + podcast)

I decided to record a podcast about recent posts from Dave Winer and Ken Smith concerning “the Resistance”.

I am including some links to items I mentioned in the podcast:

Dave Winer’s original comment on Scripting News

Same comment on Twitter, with Ken Smith reply

Another Twitter post from Dave Winer, giving an idea for a resistance movement

Expanded post from Dave Winer

Ken Smith summary (part 1) (part 2)

Threads post from Ken Smith, with Dave Winer reply

Atlanta activism podcast post

Lifelong Activist site from Hillary Rettig

Activism links collected by Andy Sylvester collected as an OPML file

Americans of Conscience checklist for April 5, 2024 – concrete things you can do

“Resistance Guide: How to Sustain the Movement to Win” – Written in 2017, the PDF linked to this page gives a short history of resistance movements in the US and provides ideas.

Activism toolkit by Ken Smith

Not just a blogroll – it’s a feedroll

In mid-March 2024, Dave Winer rolled out a new feature on Scripting News – a blogroll with dynamic content. I think it is interesting, but it is more than a “traditional” blogroll, in that it is not just a list of sites, but is presenting content from those sites, and ordering them in terms of the sites most recently updated at the top of the list. Blogrolls of the past were a static list of sites. In his podcast announcing the rollout, Dave Winer comments that future development directions will be up to users (about 8 minutes into the podcast), as it should be.

Until recently, though, it was unclear how other users would be able to access this feature. However, some one at Automattic developed a WordPress plugin to display the Dave Winer blogroll on a WordPress site. Yesterday, the first new user (Doc Searls) announced that he had the blogroll plugin working on his site.

I think it is great when people are adding features to their sites. I also think it is great that Dave Winer is working to migrate his ideas to other platforms like WordPress, which have a large base of users. The base technology of this feature is based on the FeedLand service, so there is still a linkage between Dave Winer’s tool and deployment of this feature – something for users to keep in mind.

My last observation on this is perhaps a subtle one, but still significant. Following comments from Dave Winer over the years about RSS, and that new format creators should use a different name than RSS, I think there should be a different name for this feature, as it is a significant enhancement from traditional blogrolls. When I looked at Doc Searls’ implementation, I saw that the title of his was “Feedroll”. I think this is a great name for this new feature – let’s use it!