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I remember back in the days when everyone was using ICQ on their dial up machines, one night a big giant called microsoft suddenly took over the sky of the web and had everyone using MSN. I also remember when I started using MSN I was so amazed by how the amazing free hotmail allowed me to import contact from my MSN messenger. It was a glorious year. I was a teenager, I was hooked that moment on. I also remember the day when I started using google instead of altavista, how I was amazed by google’s inner beauty other than its search engine. (*note: Altavista gets a link because I didn’t even think the site exists still)

In the article from WolrdChanging Blog it talks about Fractal Democracy.

small numbers of people, let’s say somewhere around 7 form the base cell of the organisation. Out of these, the group agrees on who represents their group will the best, and these selected persons form together with others who are selected to form the same kind of grouping, and these people then select one out of their group which goes up to the next level, where the same thing happens again. This method of distributing the will of the people is guaranteed to be totally representative, because it is the collective decision which ultimately feeds up to the top level, which irons out all the kinks.

As I mentioned in 43things, I would like to be more involved in physical and online communities. I have actually taken action in doing that. I am building a community website for a coffeeshop that has a strong community around it already. As I would like to put it, The physical space will reinforcement the online space, and the online space extends the interaction of the physical space. It’s a really tricky thing about community. The whole web 2.0 / social portal movement has pushed “community” into a buzzword. I am doing the coffeeshop’s website partially pro-bono as a way of giving back to what they have given me. (All the free wireless and all the warm coffees.)

Recently I read a post in a discussion thread by Filippo A. Salustri about Latour’s usage of agency. (I personally do not know …

In the SAFE: Design Takes on Risk exhibition, James Patten from Tangible Media Group had a very ethical project called the Corporate Fallout detector that helps people make better choices when shopping. (The video is hilarious by the way) It’s one of the projects that I liked the most after going through the whole website (And I wish I can fly to MoMA just to see the exhibition myself.) The awareness for ethical and fair trade product is heightened in the recent year. I just met a person who is a buyer for an organic shop in Seattle. She was telling me about the conference and trade-shows she attended. The accomplishment in her work, according to her, is the power she has of deciding what gets into the market. As a smaller shop, it works as a portal for new …

What’s the 80/20 rule? Looking at the income distribution, we can find the existence of power law distribution. We all understand the idea of Pareto’s law of economics, which emerges from his understanding of 80% of the Italy land, was owned by only 20% of the population. The 80/20 rule then later emerges into different areas. Examples like, 80% of profits are produced by only 20% of the employees. 80% of customer service problems are created by only 20% of consumers. It might be hard to see the relation between the 80/20 law and power law in these examples, but we can clearly understand power law if we think about 80% of the money is made by 20% of the population. There are only very few rich people out there (We don’t have 10 Bill Gates or Mr. Trump running …