Just Bru

Ieri sera c'è stata la prima lezione del nuovo corso di teatro che sto seguendo.
Si tratta di uno dei corsi organizzati dal LES per il comune di Milano.L'insegnante è un tipo un po' tenebroso, voce impostata, chimono blue e faccia da Xabaras (quello di Dylan Dog), ma è simpatico.La classe è decisamente variopinta, 26 casi umani che spaziano dal programmatore stressato alla modella in erba (!), passando per la maestra alla ricerca di nuovi stimoli per i suoi allievi.Nella lezione di ieri abbiamo dato il "do" di questa nuova avventura all'insegna dell'improvvisazione: ci è stato richiesto di presentarci, interpretando ognuno un ruolo diverso...

Rullino i tamburi, lunedì sera ho partecipato alla seconda lezione di teatro...

che poi uno dice, che sarà mai: "metti una sera a teatro...", beh, quello che è successo è che, ancora una volta, mi sono ritrovato circondato da persone che stavano riscoprendo la gioia di stupirsi. È una bella sensazione.

Sì perché a forza di andare in giro a fare corsi di formazione, inseguire lo sviluppo della coscienza, e tutte queste cose straordinarie che danno un senso alla mia vita ormai da molti anni, a fare tutte queste cose, dicevo, si rischia di perdere un po' il gusto della sorpresa, cadere nel tranello del "già visto" e, in buona sostanza, rendere tutto piatto, meccanico esattamente come chi non riesce a vedere oltre l'orizzonte della propria quotidianità.

Lunedì sera ho osservato proprio questo, l'ennesima conferma e riscoperta della gioia di stupirsi di fronte alla novità... sono tornato un po' bambino insomma!

Quanto alla lezione in sé, che dire, ci è stato chiesto di utilizzare per un po' la sacra arte dell'imitazione, e di seguire ciò che gli altri proponevano dando così vita ad una specie di "cassa armonica", dove ogni stimolo e proposta era amplificata dai 26 corpi presenti. Affascinante.

La seconda parte della lezione è stata dedicata al controllo del respiro, e al contatto con la voce (vocalizzi, per intenderci).

Ah, un'ultima cosa...

la lezione è cominciata con un brano che mi sapeva di già sentito, a tema "Sapere ed essere". Sono andato a verificare: Frammenti di un insegnamento sconosciuto, capitolo IV.

Altro Lunedì, altra lezione di teatro.

Questa puntata è stata dedicata all'acqua, alla sua rappresentazione fisica e a ciò che evoca in noi questo concetto.

Sessione molto "fisica" da un lato (ti voglio vedere ad interpretare l'acqua), molto emozionante dall'altro (condivisioni illuminanti su come tante persone possano dare una diversa interpretazione e legare un'emozione diversa ad un concetto tanto semplice).

Incredibile, più mi "inoltro" in questo nuovo territorio che è il Teatro, più ne scopro la profondità ed il valore.

E così il primo corso è giunto ad una conclusione, sob sob... l'ultima lezione è stata dedicata alla comicità.

Meno male che mercoledì prossimo si ricomincia: nuovo corso, nuovo gruppo, magari questa volta anche con un saggio, chissà!

certo non sarà Vi o Emacs, ma devo ammettere che, dopo poche ore di "cazzeggio" con gli strumenti Macromedia, l'ambiente di sviluppo esibisce, ahime, molti elementi interessanti :)
Ma perché un vecchio geek come me dovrebbe reinventarsi e riadattarsi ad un nuovo mondo? è presto detto...

prima lezione del secondo corso di Teatro... mi aspettavo un lavoro un po' diverso, invece abbiamo praticamente ripercorso i punti salienti del lavoro fatto nel primo corso... sicuramente utile, ma poco gratificante!
Abbiamo fatto anche una cosa nuova: improvvisazione sul tema della... seduzione!

Martedí ho avuto la mia prima lezione bi giapponese... Che é cominciata dalle buone maniere, in quanto appena arrivato, mi é stato subito richiesto di togliermi le scarpe. L'ora di lezione successiva mi ha xmesso di chiarire la differenza tra l'utilizzo dei diversi alfabeti (hiragana, katakana, kanji), ed imparare i caratteri elementari dell'hiragana. Alla fine Ai mi ha anche insegnato i saluti + usati, cosí ora il mio vocabolario di giapponese ammonta a ben 6 vocaboli ;)

Stasera seconda lezione di Giapponese. Abbiamo fatto un po' di esercizio sull'hiragana, devo dire che me la cavo abbastanza bene, anche se ci sono alcuni simboli che ancora devo farmi entrare in testa :P
L'altro argomento della lezione sono stati i numeri: ho imparato a contare fino a dieci!!!!

Scenario: Mercoledì sera, lezione di teatro. Lorenzo non c'è, lo sostituisce in qualità di insegnante Enzo, che ci fa lavorare sulla percezione dello spazio (hai presente mosca cieca? ecco, solo che anche chi deve "scappare" è bendato, bellissimo!), sull'improvvisazione creativa, sul movimento. Non c'è male, grazie!
Ore 20.35, fine lezione, e comincia la serata...

finalmente ho finito di studiare l'hiragana, e credo di averlo più o meno assimilato.
Che bello, ora mi aspettano solo un'altro alfabeto e circa duemila ideogrammi!!!!!!!!!!!!!

La lezione di mercoledì è stata spumeggiante! Abbiamo imparato a lavorare sullo spazio creativo, improvvisando una situazione a partire da ciò che la musica, l'ambiente e la nostra sensibilità ci suggeriva; abbiamo poi lavorato sulla gestualità legata al testo, e al personaggio, creando sequenze di gesti che esprimessero, senza rappresentare, una frase scelta da noi... Come sempre la lezione è voltata...
Dopo sono rimasto fuori a bere qualcosa con alcuni compagni di corso, anche questa volta la birretta si è prolungata ad oltranza, e ho consolidato la nuova tradizione di farmi una mega-passeggiata per tornare a casa... sto cominciando a prenderci gusto!!!

Lezione di Giapponese... ancora arranco un po' col katakana, uff, perché?
In compenso abbiamo finalmente iniziato ad affrontare i Kanji!!!!!! Per ora ne conosco 5 o 6, la lingua giapponese ne prevede circa 2000... è meglio che non mi metta a fare calcoli o mi deprimo! :)

Piuttosto, perché noi occidentali abbiamo la tendenza a cercare costantemente la "scorciatoia"?
Mi spiego: ad ogni nuovo simbolo, ad ogni nuova parola, ritorno con insistenza alla caccia di una "regola", qualche teorema unificatore della grammatica nipponica, e magari, perché no, di tutte le grammatiche.
E invece la mia buona Ai, con paziente fermezza, mi ripete ogni volta resta qui, non c'è regola (anzi, legola), devi solo imparare le parole.
Eppure, ogni volta, ci ricasco: cerco un pattern nei simboli dell'hiragana, ad esempio...
perché ぬ (nu) deve essere simile a �?� (me), cosa li lega? Per non parlare di に (ni) e �? (ta), o そ(so) e �??(ru)...
Chissà se è una benedizione o meno? Questo tendere alla via breve, intendo, certo permette forse di andare più veloce, ma le si potrebbe obiettare che questa velocità viene al costo di una minore penetrazione, profondità!
Del resto non era il buon vecchio Einstein che, parlando di sé, affermava:
"sono solo uno che cerca di stare con le domande più a lungo degli altri"
<zen>Probabilmente, come in tutto, dipende dall'attitudine</zen> :)

sto cominciando ad osservare un certo pattern nel modo di tenere un diario/blog.
Innanzitutto il vantaggio di avere degli strumenti in qualche modo "intelligenti" per gestire le informazioni, permette di utilizzare un approcio "progressivo" alla stesura dei pensieri.
Io ad esempio, grazie a Kung-log, dapprima scrivo di getto una serie di draft che , a mo di post-it, mi permettono di tenere traccia di tutte le cose che voglio dire ed inserire nel blog.
Poi procedo metodicamente producendo, per ogni entry, una scaletta e poi espandendola, un po' come faccio per gli articoli. Infine ricostruisco il filo temporale, assegnando ogni entry alla data corretta e alla relativa categoria.
Lo svantaggio principale di questo approcio è il rischio di produrre tonnellate di draft che non verranno mai evasi. Anche questo è abbastanza nella mia natura...

sto notando una certa difficoltà nel procedere lo studio dl giapponese.
L'hiragana ed il katakana sono relativamente facili da imparare, ma ora che si viene al sodo (gli ebraici direbbero "tackles", il concreto), cioé alla costruzione della frase e al ricordare le semplici parole, sto trovando più difficoltà, i progressi sono meno entusiasmanti e le lezioni più noiose, perché sovente bisogna per mia incuria tornare su passaggi già fatti perché la memoria mi sostiene meno che sugli argomenti puramente "sintattici".
Alcune osservazioni su questo:

1. Da buon visivo, mi ricordo moooolto meglio le parole che fanno riferimento ad oggetti concreti (ad es. 新聞, giornale), piuttosto che le costruzioni, gli avverbi, ecc.
   
2. È veramente necessario un addestramento costante: ciò che fa la differenza tra non solo mantenere la qualità ma aumentarla a dismisura e arrugginirsi alla velocità della luce sono 20 minuti di addestramento al giorno...
   
3. Mi trovo chiaramente in un "intervallo": continuerò a seguire lezione, e regolarizzerò le sessioni di allenamento.
   

All'ultima lezione di teatro abbiamo proseguito il lavoro sul testo.
Mi è stato ufficialmente affibbiato il ruolo di Otello, che probabilmente sosterrò anche in questo fantomatico saggio di fine corso di cui tanto ho sentito parlare, ma nulla ancora ho visto concretamente.
Ovviamente non faremo tutta l'opera, ma solo dei brani scelti.

Per il momento sto mandando a memoria il dialogo dell'uccisione di Desdemona, e devo dire che mi sono stupito della rapidità con la quale è possibile memorizzare un brano: poche letture per 3 pagine particolarmente intense!
Potenza delle istruzioni neuro associative...

Another neat little (great) app from Adriaan. It displays words in kanji, then in furigana, and finally their translation in english. It's a great gym for those of us who are trying to build a decent Japanese dictionary.
There is also a page where kotoba users can exchange their custom dictionaries.

An interesting article on Idearium about Mobile Entertainment Portals.

Spent lot of time in the past years thinking about how to build the cyberspace (today we'd say "the Matrix")... but now, now I begin to question the real usefulness of such a thing... What's the real advantage of an immersive environment against a sinthetic (but straight) communication? where's the line, the border between more data/information and sheer waste of bandwidth (and the risk of getting cognitively lost in the details)?

Neal Stephenson, in his book SnowCrash, described a nice point of view about this kind of problem: his own cyberspace (called Metaverse) had one specific special feature: the designers put some very special effort in the rendering of visual expression of the "avatars", in such a way as to transfer the real "feeling", along with every movement and micro-modification, to enable real social interaction between the users/inhabitants of the Metaverse.

Adriaan just released a new version of Kotoba.
Cool as usual, with a new killer feature: displaying Kanji right in the dock! That's definitely great!

So, aside from having my main Kotoba window somewhere on the desktop teaching me new Japanese words, there will be also this little docklet cycling through known kanji!

That's a good way to use the dock, boy! Complementary information, that's it!!!

Update: now what would be ultimately cool would be a way to check which kanji is in the dock icon. Maybe by tooltip or in the dock menu... :)

I was studying a little bit of how eyes and brain communicates each other when I rediscovered stereograms. I haven't seen one of these things in years, almost ten I think.
But now I'm again here, loosing my sight on this messy thing, trying to see the USS Enterprise in it! :)

It's been a while since I read a good novel. Too much time.
The chance to atone for this terrible sin was given to me by Lu... uhm, she's been kind of a muse these days...
Anyway, I heard her talking about this "His Darkest Materials" trilogy by Pullman with such enthusiastic words that I simply HAD to read it. :)
Got the first in Italian, then found the whole trilogy in english and bought it this morning.
I'm taking a dive into it as soon as I'll finish this post.

About the books, they're really good. I read the 350 pages of the first book in a couple of hours.
I like the story, linear but not boring; the setting, that are quite original (!) and the fact that, as every good book, you can read it at many different levels.
But the characters.... the characters are simply incredible. Even when describing "alien" creatures like witches or "armored bears", Pullman's words flesh it out perfectly, and you start thinking that it must be real alive and breathing just in front of you.

On Friday, April 2, 2004 - Florence (Italy) -> Natural Interaction Workshop.

You can register freely on the website. Here you can also find the preliminary program (in PDF).

I'll be there. Will you? :D

Discovered yet anoter übercool site today: World66.
They propose a kind of open travel guide. Under CC license. Interesting, at the very least.
Moreover, they have a set of cool hacks to build "my world" maps. Definitely worth a visit!!!

Read more below to see my world ;)

Well, today it's been a full day.
I've learned a few things about inDesign and I've get most of my todolist done. Good boy...
Yet, there are things I can't manage so easily... one of these is just making phone calls. It looks like I got a sort of idiosynchrasy for making stupid calls to ppl.
So I spend lot of time saying "ok, now you have to call x" and answering even more stupid things like "ok ok, I can do that in half an hour...".
Boys, that makes me mad :)

On a geekier note, Ado just released a fix for Ecto, so if you use it you should take a look.

Moreover, I spent some time today reading Tim O'Reilly's FOSDEM presentation about a possible paradigm shift in Open Source... quite an interesting reading, IMHO.

Almost missed this highlight on Joi's blog. almost ;)
It make much sense and looks cool enough to catch my attention and make me read through the plenty of info that are on loaf's site. Take a look and share your opinion, if you like ;)

LOAF

Loaf is a way to share your address book without abandoning your privacy.

Check out the web page.

I'm currently in S.Marino, attending an extraordinary seminar by Patrizio Paoletti about emotional intelligence and time management.
The seminar just begun, but I'm in charge of a multimedia booth in the hall, so I'm fixing the last details. The booth is about an about-to-be-released new exciting project by my about-to-be-founded new ubercool company.

I'm quite proud of how the whole thing is coming up... I'll try to make some decent photos in the next hours/days.

Linda Stone, Smart Mobs, Joi Ito, were in the latest hours blogging about the concept of "continuous partial attention".
As opposed to "multitasking", for example.
Among the comments on SmartMobs there is who suggests this is nothing new, and that any couple that has a 2 years old child knows something about "continuous partial attention" and being subject to too much input even if it's got nothing to do with email, news and TV ;)
Joi also does an interesting digression, starting on how "continuous partial attention" may influence the design of mobile device interfaces, and then goes to write about how it would be good to switch from a "loss-less" concept of understanding to a more "lossy" way to learn things. Lossy meaning that you should better get the "picture" of the things you want to know, rather than trying to catch with everything you come across.
Obviously we are all conditioned to the latter behaviour, so this is both interesting and quite difficult to achieve ;)

I agree on almost everything Joi wrote, and add that I was jotting down some thoughts about this topic a while ago, while attending a biz communication workshop.
The basic Idea I was exploring is that direct ("wet") communication is such a redundant media...
And luckily it is, if we consider how many times we "get it wrong"; and we do that since each of us has got a different "map", different memories, a different language as a whole.
We can "approximately" describe something by using cognitive patches in a way similar to how fuzzy systems approxymate a curve with a rule patch.
Seen by this point of view, it's clear how direct communication is so much powerful and "fast" than written or mono-mediatic communication. That also describes why two close friends can communicate without even talking, but just through slight posture changes, frowns or silences.
Even more, put one of those friends has undergone a rapid change in behaviour or "thewayheseestheworld", and he'll probably suffer some troubles in communicating with his mate. That because the agreed level of common lore won't be the same anymore... it's like going trekking in a park with an old map: some paths will still be there, but others won't.

From this, the need to estabilish the communication common ground, each and every time you talk with somebody, in order to be able to exchange the most, with the maximum possible detail.
I'm sure that I'm not the first to write about this, but that's cool ;)

Going back to the Continuous Partial Attention concept, there's a precedent to it in the psychological literature: Gurdjeff, in 1915 called this kind of thing "divided attention", and it was used as an exercise to grow one's own self-consciousness and will power. In the end, that would be good I think :)
Obviously, there's always a danger, and that's the risk of getting stuck into the information web, not able to deal with the load of data.
But I think that, as in every field, it's just a matter of training.

In the end, the transmission metaphore is great, but instead of looking for a lossy compression that can let you still have an understanding of the thing for what it's of use to you by now, I'd look for a way to get the rules that generates the image. Data In, Rules Out, much like how neural networks works, I think.
Vector Graphic against Lossy Compression ;)

Yet another blogquote from Joi.
This time the topic is full-time intimate community.
For materials on the subject take a look at the links below; most of the material is in Japanese though.
Anyway, what really interests me is the fact that people, given the opportunity, tend to create this close circles of intimacy through the constant flood of information.
I agree with Joy when he states that the focus here shifts from the information being transmitted to the intimacy and the fact that, the more you use a communication channel, the more it grows stronger.
Again, here I see a parallel with neural networks and brain structure: the more you follow a path (be it cognitive, behaviour, or a track through the woods), the more the path widens.
So this continuous stream of information keeps the bond between two people strong, no matter what goes through.

At the same time, it would be nice to explore more deeply the "network" metaphore: we know that a neuron is not so interesting as a standalone thing, but it's power come from the bonds with other cells (synapses), so that the stronger are those bonds, the more powerful are the concepts the network represent and therefore the strenght driving the network to that state of balance.
So, I think it could be interesting to verify (I already observed this in my life, but it would be hard to demonstrate it scientifically by now) that something similar happens in social networks too: creating a bond so strong tends to make the "network" reproduce the same scheme, concept, behavior, again and again.

I've been talking a lot about the Full-Time Intimate Community lately. I comes from work that Misa Matsuda is doing at her lab and I heard about this from my sister who is doing a lot of work in this area. It's a study about the mobile phone email communications of people in Japan and how people seem to keep in close contact with four or five people using a constant stream of messages. The point is that the content of the messages aren't as important as the fact that the people in this "Full-Time Intimate Community" are aware of the current state (awake, in bus, at school, happy, sad) of each other. It's a Granovetter "strong tie" community. Granovetter talks about how more valuable content flowed over "weak ties" and talked about the "strength of weak ties", but in the FTIC, it's not the "content" but rather the intimacy that is being transmitted. (Help me out here academics. I'm getting in a bit over my head. ;-p ) It's very much part of my "context vs content" rant about how presence and context is, in ways, more interesting than content and that content is just the carrier signal or substrate upon which community is built.

The fact that Glenn picked up "Full-Time Intimacy" as his title for the blog entry about the NPR SXSW audio postcard by Mary Bridges and Benjamen Walker makes me think that this word/meme has legs. ;-)

Tomorrow in Perugia, at the "Centro della scienza POST", there'll be an event called Un giorno su marte (A day on mars).
There'll be workshops & speeches... a good way to spend sunday :)
Paolo and Ale will speak too.

...without assuming any kind of sugar: no croissant, no cakes, no biscuits, no cream, no nothing. :-/

Why? Well, I ate a LOT of sweets under easter time, and I heard one time too many that sugar is bad for brain, so I decided to try and stay without it for a while... I'll try to resist for a few weeks bur, boy that's tough!!!

Found this very interesting article on Wired News about a game called september 12th.

The very interesting bit is that this new game is not about onslaught and hate and so on... well, at least not in the meaning of its makers: the idea is that you have a lot of arabs walking a through their town and a few terrorists among them... you can shoot missiles at them, but doing so you'll eventually kill some civilian. Many more civilian will then come mourning the dead one, eventually turning into terrorists themselves.

Very interesting article, and good game. Take a look at it.

You may find also interesting to have a look at newsgaming.com. It's the home of the people who wrote the game mentioned above. From their main page:

We are a team of independent game developers who believe video games are not simply an amusement.

Games and simulations can also make us think about what is going on in this world.

Periodically, we will use games and simulations to analyze, debate, comment and editorialize major international news.

Come and join us.

Play with fire.

Ye olde mother Europe is 10 countries bigger now.
Congratulations and Welcome :)

From Loic's blog I know that on June 3 and 4 there will be Culture Digitali. Hope to be able to go there!!!!!!!

Leaving now... have a few things to do in Milan today, then I'll dash to Padova for Webb.it.
C'ya on saturday!!!

So this first day is almost over.
I've attended to a few very interesting seimnars; I focused on blogging and natural interaction related seminars...
Had the chance to talk a little bit again with Alessandro Valli, who's always successfull in giving me interesting insights on the natural interaction thing.

This afternoon the lack of sleep begun to weigh on me, and by 7 p.m. I was almost cathathonic :)

Decided I'll spend the night in Bologna and will go back to Perugia tomorrow morning. webb.it's been a beautiful experience, but there are far too many things to care about at home right now...

So bye bye to all dear old friends and all the new ones I met here and... c'ya next year!!!

• I didn't like the old look anymore
• It had lot of visalization bugs (especially under Microsoft platforms)
• It was not clean and clear enough

1. mainly text (blog and wiki)
2. visual (fotolog and gallery)

1. linear and (mainly) personal (blog and fotolog)
2. persistent and shared (wiki and gallery)

We are excited about the contest too, but unfortunately, we had to abide by international laws now that we're bigger than Ben and Mena's living room. I don't know the details, but our lawyers looked it up and there are issues that make it very difficult for us to include Italy. Very sorry...but I swear this wasn't our choice. :(

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First question: Why a pKM management model? Do I really need it?
Well, in short, yes. For a longer argumentation... I could just take a look at my desktop (either the physical one or the one drawn on the TFT in front of my nose) to
understand how deeply I need it.
As I was recently reading on this article on KnowledgeManagementMagazine:

“Over the years we have equipped everyone with PCs and taken these support positions away, but we have neglected to tell the knowledge workers that they have been given new tasks. Worse still, we have since made 95 per cent of work invisible.” McGee notes that it is easy to see a messy, disorganised office, but a messy, disorganised hard drive or e-mail inbox is invisible.

• a way to quickly organize (categorize?) so that people will find what they suppose to find where they suppose to find it.
  
• a way to quickly find what I am looking for (and when I say quickly I mean very fast)
  
• a way to describe (or map) my knowledge network. How do all the things I'm interested in connect? And, even more interesting, which are the point of contact and which the unexplored (enexploited) borders?
  
• a way to make contamination possible by others. even if I'm not there. I mean, everytime I come back to the office after being away, I find post-its, some of them just with messages or "to-do" items, others with ideas. Sometimes I even leave unresolved tasks or "problems" (say, a routine if I'm programming, or a layout, or whatever) written in the form of a question on my huge planner, and some goodhearted fellow often leaves me insights on the solution of the problem, or maybe the solution itself!!!
  
• A way to summarize results of my work, and a way to go back if I make huge mistakes.
  
• A way to describe (both to me and to my co-workers) what's influencing me at the moment, or where I'm finding the best sources of inspiration.
  
• A way to quickly find what's related to this topic around the web, both in knowledge repositories and in evolving repositories (blogs, mailing lists, etc.)
  
• A way to (with less possible hassle) track where in the world I am at the moment, so that nearby friends can show up and have a beer with :)

Second question : How? Wiki? Blog? (was: why not just my pencil and a paper notepad?)
I used to have a diary. I used it to keep track of my moves and actions, at first just to keep record of it and to "not let things go", then I started to feel the need for a more organized structure (i.e. keeping separate entries for memories and ideas).
I switched to blogging a couple of years ago, for three reasons: 1) because I was able to write entries without having a book and a pen always with me 2) because it let me better categorize entries and 3) because I found that sharing my ideas with others was a good motivational thrust (since I got little or no comments, peer review was not to take into account) in order to keep the diary (blog) always up to date.
Now, when it comes to choosing a tool for doing "serious" knowledge management (as I feel the need now), the probem is that each and every tool has its own interesting features, and looks like it's focused on a main, specific, task:
- blogs let you follow the knowledge making process, step by step, from muddy ideas to "distilled" solutions.
- wikis' got the great "refactoring" thing, so that in each moment you (in theory at least) should get the organized snapshot of the whole thing. Moreover, wikis harness the collaboration between users, which is (usually) good (see below).

So, is it Ergonomy versus Completeness?
I definitely don't wanna loose the visibility on the solution-setting process, since I learnt to know that far too often understanding the procedure is the real "precious", while the deliverable is just a consequence.
Yet, since I'm being payed on deliverables (and on meeting deadlines), I wanna be able to constantly and thoroughly monitor the "big picture", and being able to submit the work for peer review, collaborate on it and eventually refactor it.
But I do not want wikis everywhere! For example, blog-like entries shouldn't be subject to wikification (wikification? cool), since, as I wrote earlier, they represent kindof "milestones" in my personal knowledge process, so refactoring it would ruin the emerging definition of the procedure,

So, the better solution seems to be the integration of a blog and a wiki.
The blog will hold the procedure (consisting of entries, comments, trackbacks), while wiki will hold the knowledge state-of-the-art. [...]

There's one more thing that's not being taken into account: the knowledge ecology system: what surrounds me and inspire me at the specific time that made me take that specific choice?
The easier way to handle this (quite naturally) is through a bookmark archive tool like del.icio.us!!!
This can be easily done, and chances are that most blogging engines already supports it.
The same approach could solve the question on how to find related material on the web (through content from google, waypath, and so on).

More to come on the subject, stay tuned!

Edit:

• ups! I see on my aggregator that I'm not the only one to write about personal knowledge management models this night (even if I was thinking of a model as a set of tools and procedures, rather than a formal scientific model as Lilia's :) ...maybe I should give a break to this "duct-tape" behaviour and adopt a more formal approach... :P )
  ...and it also looks like we got similar ideas on wiki + blog architecture... gosh! :)

• These considerations are actually a follow-up to the new codewitch.org, which I posted a couple of weeks ago.
  

Managed to chat a little bit with Lilia last night about lack of "bandwidth" during communications through text only media like chat/IM, and the fact that the mind goes looking to "fill in the gaps" by taking bits and pieces from archetypes.
Already discussed the basis of this theory some time ago, in reference to continuous partial attention and again about full-time intimate communities.
It's been really interesting to discover that someone else reached similar conclusions from different starting points / ways...
This time realized that this kind of communication pushes the interaction towards having a "best picture"; that is where both parties are "looking" at an interpolation of different archetypes that matches the behaviour pattern played by who's on the other side of the screen.
Lack of para-verbal and non-verbal channels makes verbal interface overloaded: the mind needs an answer, quickly, and goes for this kind of identikit, best guessing from semantic bits extracted from the conversation.
By far the nemesis of the concept of natural interaction :)
Moreover, line after line, recontestualization of the digital language will be more and more complete, letting small changes in language patterns lead to huge recoil in perceived interaction. Much like a puppet.

Although, observed "out of band" signals that, little by little, help in shaping the image of the other party toward a better fitting mask (alter ego)... thus shifting away from the pure archetypical paradigm and toward a more "exception" filled, realistic character.
work still in progress...

Nature.com

High metabolic rate gives mice a longer life Mice with sky-high metabolic rates live far longer than their sluggish cousins, UK researchers have found, raising the prospect that human lifespan might be lengthened [...] The group of animals with the highest metabolic rates lived over a third longer than the group with the lowest rates, they found, and had metabolisms that ran about 30% faster

I realized recently that I'm definitely not the only one thinking and designing about the idea of a "personal *** management".

Today, I came across this entry by Matt Webb:

Matt Webb

I want to read the Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, but there are 1,565 pages and I have too much else to read. At a page a day it would take a little over four years, but be manageable.

So I knocked this up: Day-by-day Da Vinci. There's an RSS feed to subscribe to which carries a new page every day (and some recent ones too). You can read along with me or start from page 1 whenever you like. It's only the text, but Good Enough I think. I'm hoping to find some hidden gems.

This immediately lit a candle in my head, for that was just another of the stem cells of the p*m thing that's buzzing in my head (and slowly becoming reality):
more specifically, this time the perfect acronym could be a progressive learning manager.

So i coded up pageaday.pl as a proof of concept.
By now it still very basic: no embedded html, no backlog. It just takes the current day, finds out what is the "page of the day", and creates an rss with just that page in it.
Take