Jana's blog

I must admit that I am personally not a fan of broadcasting my location broadly on the internet. For that reason, I haven't been a user of either Foursquare or Gowalla other than looking at them with the curiosity I give any other new piece of technology. However, I was intrigued by the Berlin-based Aka-Aki, a location based service begun in 2007 by recent art school graduates. Stephanie Hoffman, one of Aka-aki's founders and their CTO, Gabriel Palomino, were both in San Francisco last month for O'Reilly's 2010 Web 2.0 Expo.

Tim O'Reilly says that he has always defined Web 2.0 as 'the internet as operating system.'

What would most folk definitions of an operating system include? Operating systems include Windows, OS X, Unix, Linux and more obscure systems such as BSD, Plan 9 and so on. These are pieces of code that allow a human to interact with a computer and manage hardware usage with respect to the programs running on the system. The internet as operating system should thus be pieces of code that allow human-internet interaction and manage the resources of the web with respect to the component pieces of the web. If that's the direct correlation, then the internet as operating system would be web browsers and RFC specifications.

In a recent press teleconference with Tim O'Reilly concerning Web 2.0, a broad range of topics were covered. Among these topics were social media, cloud computing, the rise of mobile computing, and the Semantic Web. Social media is about connecting people to other people and ideas. The Semantic Web is about, in the words of Dag Kittlaus "making the computer understand what the human using human language." Mobile computing is simply computer usage shrunk down to fit in your hand and be usable anywhere. Cloud computing is the non-localized use of computing resources. None of these alone can be termed an operating system.

Tim Berners-Lee essentially has said that the Web is defined as the interaction between people. One could also refine this definition as the Web is the interaction of people with other people, ideas and a marketplace. It is a redefinition of the way we engage with the world, both static events - such as the reading of news and blogs -- and active -- shopping or chatting online -- or the strange blend of the two that the web has allowed, such as email and collaborative editing of documents.

Conversations these days with my co-workers and friends are abuzz with the changing state of technology -- the shifting lines of alliances and competition between Apple, Microsoft and Google, the empowerment that both mobile computing and social media allows, and all of the subtle new ways that the web has changed the way we live, socialize, shop and even make decisions. Web 2.0 is perhaps a term whose time has passed, if it ever was necessary to begin with. Maybe it's time for a new term to describe the way that the web has become the integral tool of the post-modern world in which we now live.

-Jana

I left SXSW Interactive this year with a feeling of hope and inspiration for the world -- there seemed to be so many good panels and discussions about how developers and social media tools were working on issues of social justice and increasingly in traditionally underdeveloped and under-served populations. I wanted to continue and follow up with many of the things I had heard about at SXSWi this year, and Ushahidi was one project I had heard of and wanted to know more about.

Today I sat on a train mostly full of men going to tech jobs in Silicon Valley -- it reminded me of being in college and being one of the few women in a math class.

Being a woman in tech or math or science can sometimes be a very lonely and socially awkward place to be -- and this is 2010. I try to imagine the way the English noblewoman must have felt in the mid-nineteenth century -- she seems to be utterly singular in her social milieu. Ironically, it is said that she was taught mathematics from a young age to root out the madness her mother saw as inherent on her father's side of the family. Ada Lovelace worked with Charles Babbage to develop what are considered the world's first computer programs -- despite such a start, women are still underrepresented in much of technology outside of marketing, technical writing and recruiting.

If you have a few minutes today, check out Austin's own Girlstart, which seeks to educate and stimulate interest among teenage girls in math, science and technology. This organization was founded in 1997 and has probably influenced girls that are now old enough to have graduated from college and who have probably began careers in technology -- I reflected upon that at SXSWi this year after I saw Julie Shannan at the Duh...It's Like Tech for Girls session.

Also, over at Adafruit, they are posting every hour about another fabulous woman in technology, from electronics crafting and DIY to cryptography.

-Jana

"The future is a process, not a destination" – Bruce Sterling, SXSW Interactive talk 2010.

I missed Bruce Sterling's talk -- I was at dinner with TMS Ruge (@tmsruge) and Tracy Pell (@tracy1314), co-founders of Project Diaspora. The Africa 3.0 talk that TMS Ruge had given a few days previous had been a stunning example of the best SXSWi has to offer -- Skype presentations by software developers in Nairobi and Kampala, the Skype call to a mobile in a Ugandan village. These were examples of how technology is making a difference in people's lives -- from the localized solutions of developers such as those of AppAfrica to the way that mobile connectivity has given rural Africans conveniences we in the United States have had for almost four generations. People in Africa can now make their own future instead of having to buy or rely on donated solutions that do not make sense for their lives.

SXSW Interactive has grown so much in the last decade, it feels harder to sort out what to go to and what to skip, but this year I feel there are a few that are ones that can't be missed:

Yesterday, CrisisCamps met in 12 cities across the country to continue work started the week previous in the first CrisisCamps after the Haitian earthquake. Crisis Commons had its origins in discussions by participants in Transparency 09 and Government Camp 2.0 in 2009, as a way for people with technology skills to get together during times of humanitarian or political crisis and help out with their skills and social networking.

In contrast to last year's mellow SXSW Interactive Mixer in SF, the 2010 event was high-paced and, quite literally, packed into Slim's at 11th and Folsom.

too crowded for a good picture