I attended #n2hub last week and was originally planning to post my notes, but noticed the full presentations are now available online for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy:
Six years ago I worked on a project very closely with my Portuguese colleagues and was impressed by their mix of Iberian flair and European pragmatism. That project also took me to Lisbon for the second time (the first was interrailing back in the day) to one of my favourite cities in the world. It had been a while but work again took me to Portugal, and again it was an experience.
It took me a really long time to finally read this 2007 book (not related at all to the current Natalie Portman movie of the same name).
The whole point of this book is to make a long, winded argument about why the impact and occurrence of the highly improbably is consistently underestimated, with huge consequences for everybody. While it is a rambling, philosophical book whose point could have been put much more succinctly in half the amount of paper, it is also a very interesting (and some would say prophetical) way of looking at the world as one can see from the interview below.
Take impressionable kids playing with Nintendo Entertainment Systems 20 years ago, fast-forward until they become adults and musicians and you’ll get stuff like this (as featured on the Beeb):
#WINNING
Visited London for work. While still a little chilly, at least it looks like the first bits of spring are starting to arrive there.
Finally Audioboo is available for Nokia devices.
A meaningless word we use all the time that reflects our own experiences and expectations. Depending on your background, skiing on the frozen sea, earthquakes, millions of people or none around you, and an infinite number of things can be “normal”.
The challenges for all of us are understanding that my normal might or might not be your normal and vice versa and coming to terms that what is normal is not necessarily what is right.
The lack of posts lately has a very simple reason: I became a father two weeks ago. Feedings, diapers, sleepless nights, and peaceful moments show I’ve joined what a friend of mine calls “the happy insomniac’s club”. There are plenty of things that have already happened, and an unimaginable amount more in store, but it’s all worth it.
Our music collection has contributed to the mood, with lots of stuff from Cri-Crí, Finnish children’s melodies and classical music, but the little guy seems to also like the heavy rock we used to listen while he was still in the womb.
Even José Alfredo Jiménez seems to have a song for the occasion ;).
For some strange reason the French trailer made me want to watch the movie much more than the original Finnish one. 😉 Maybe Finnish cinema is finally taking over the world?
The 2000’s were the years that started with the menace of Y2K, gave us 6 years of Bush, the Argentine peso crash, 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the terrorist attacks in Madrid, London & Mumbai, the bomb in Myyrmanni, wars in Chechenya and Georgia, the Asian tsunami, the floods of Tabasco, Katrina, protests in Ukraine & Thailand, two stock market crashes, wars in Liberia, Congo and Somalia, the Jokela & Kauhajoki school shootings, the drug war & ended with the Haiti earthquake.
However, they also gave us the rise of the rest of the globalized countries and the formation of the G-20, the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka, the rescue of the Chilean miners, the spread of mobile communication, the fast adoption of broadband, the dramatic reduction of poverty in certain areas and the improving availability of basic sanitation in many others, though you won’t see that in the news ;).
The country where I was born has seen ten years of democracy, but also ten years of disorder and lack of statesmanship. The country where I have lived for most of this decade has experienced more change than some of its people would like, it’s showing itself more to the world but the world has also arrived in numbers to its shores. It’s not a homogeneous as it used to be.
Ten years might be a short time in geological or astronomical terms, but teenagers become adults in that time :).