ThinkingShift

Like most knowledge management practitioners, I’m always on the look out for ways to unlock experiences and anecdotes. We know about storytelling via the work of Dave Snowden and Steve Denning for example. But I came across this really interesting article in The Sentient Times about personal and community transformation. Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam defines social capital as “connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them”. And anyone who has read his book, Bowling Alone, will know that Putman looks at the waning of voluntary associations in the US, which facilitated a rich network of neighbours and friends who, through discourse, built strong social fabric based on face-to-face interactions.

Now that we have TV, reality show drivel, blogs that obsess us (yep, sadly I’m in the obsessed category for many reasons!) we perhaps don’t have as many opportunities for prolonged social interactions that build trust. Hence, the rise of storytelling, anecdote circles, Open Space, World Cafe and so on.

But what intrigued me about this article was the reference to two “social interventions” that the author experienced - The Mankind Project (MKP) “training adventure” co-created by Bill Kauth and the Heart Circles promoted and described by Tej Steiner. Sadly, for me the MBK adventure is a men only event :(- But it’s described as:

“…..a sort of basic training for emotional literacy, along with some 400 men living in the Rogue Valley (where it took place in the US) It is an opportunity for men to monitor and describe how they feel, confront their “shadows,” define their missions in life, and talk with other men about something beyond sports, politics, work or women. After a deeply absorbing weekend, the training continues in weekly “integration groups,” some of which continue for years past the obligatory eight sessions.“

As interesting as this sounds, the other technique - Heart Circles - is open to women as well as men. Heart Circles work by gathering together 3-10 people on a weekly basis and exploring what each member wants to create. As with Open Space, there are some simple rules - strict confidentiality; an ongoing commitment to attend weekly meetings; mutual support; honest questioning.

I decided to sniff out more information about Heart Circles as it sounds like one way of building a sustainable community. I found this website, which explains the essence of Heart Circles: “When people sit in a circle with each other to explore what they truly want to create in their lives and world, they connect quickly and deeply“. And there is a book on how to run Heart Circles. A talisman or talking stick is often used to signal that the person holding the stick is speaking and, when finished, the object is placed in the centre of the circle and everyone remains silent until someone picks it up to start the sharing process again.

So it seems this is another way of creating an open, safe space to share stories and reflections. I found this diagram, which explains the Heart Circles process:

Source: http://honoringalllife.org/TI_Organizational_Structure2.php

Further sniffing around - I find this video of Tej Steiner (founder of the Heart Circle model) outlining what’s it’s about. And the Heart Circle Network site and the Five Functions of the Heart Circle model.

Interesting stuff: perhaps a good addition to the KM toolbox and for those of us interested in bringing back some humanity to this world, Heart Circles quite clearly would allow us to tap into that deep longing humans feel for friendship and community.

Science (317: 482-487 (2007) has published a really interesting article on the secret life of economics. Economies grow by upgrading the products they produce and export. To conjure up a product requires a number of things - technology; skills; capital; infrastructure - and the more closely-related the product lines, the easier it is for economies to progress and attain wealth. The Science article looks at the theory of product-relatedness (aka ‘product space’).

Relatedness occurs when you have similarity of inputs such as technology, skills and so on. Nations create wealth based on how transportable the product line is to other products. So for example if a country exports technology-based products like software or computers, then the technology and skills required could be redeployed to other products that require technology input (mobile phones, plasma TVs, iPods etc) But if your country is busy exporting llamas, then it would be more difficult to redeploy the capabilities and skills to other products. Raising llamas no doubt requires a whole lot of capability around agriculture and animal husbandry (not to mention the ability to avoid the llama’s spit, which they only do to fellow llamas I hear) but it’s a narrower skill-set that may not be so easily redeployed and the related products might not be so easily definable. So it’s about relatedness and distance - llamas are more distant from technology; software and computers are more related and closer to other products that use micro-chips, software programs etc.

From a complexity perspective, countries grow wealth and progress by climbing uphill in the fitness landscape. The closer the peaks in the fitness landscape, the easier it is to jump to the next highest peak. But if the fitness landscape is flat or irregular with peaks far apart and and if you’re stuck on the periphery of the landscape, then the leap you’d have to make to a peak might be quite a long one. Network theory has been applied to try to understand why it is that poorer countries don’t seem to produce more competitive exports, whereas richer countries, in terms of the fitness landscape, seem to be located in a densely-connected core.

So if a map were to be produced: what industries or products might appear at the core? This is what the Science article is about. The article is entitled “The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations” by Hidalgo, Klinger, Barabasi and Hausmann. Albert-Lazlo Barabasi authored a book I really like - Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means. As for their research, Hidalgo et. al produced a map of the relationships between different products in economic space. You can see the map below or go here to see fuller detail.

What I think we can see from this map is that the centre or heart is occupied mainly by machinery/vehicles, chemicals and products made from metal. A number of clusters appear: garments, electronics and textiles. And then we seem to have a lot of disconnected stuff: oil out there on its own at the top of the map and disconnected from the core; cereals and tropical agriculture. So if you’re involved in exporting oil-related products, it might be harder to move towards the core; but if you’re in textiles or garments, you’re more closely connected to the densely populated centre.

Getting back to the llamas: animal agriculture is somewhat disconnected from the central cluster. So if a country is specialising in animal agriculture, they will have a harder time moving from this specialisation to another like chemicals, which is not related to llamas. But if you’re already specialising in products that populate the core (and China would be a good example of a country clustering around machinery/electronics), then you can jump around the fitness landscape with more agility. So where you are in the product space determines economic growth and progress.

Clearly, there are some key insights from this research. If a country is specialising in say mining, oil, animal agriculture, cereals (sound a tad like Australia?), then the capabilities, infrastructure and technology that supports these industries and products is quite specific and may not be easily redeployed to other industries or products.

The Science article is subscription only, but if you go here you can download a pdf version from Cesar Hidalgo’s website. I’ve only just finished reading the article, so some of my assumptions may be incorrect but I do think that using network theory to try to explain why some countries are not as wealthy as others gives us a deeper understanding of what’s going on.

You can also check out Country Maps here - Australia’s is interesting. And the site that accompanies the Science article is here.

I’m picking up some disturbing news from various sources (well, I think it’s disturbing - you can agree or not). I haven’t heard too much about these two separate pieces of news, but stitch the two together and you have a snapshot of a future world scenario.

First up is the fact that US domestic spy satellites are being turned on American citizens. In the Baltimore Sun, I picked up an article about the eye in the domestic skies. We already know that the Patriot Act in the US allows the US Government to check out your library reading list. And you probably heard that the new Protect America Act (rushed through by Congress in late July/early August) gives the Bush administration the power to order communication providers like mobile phone companies and ISPs to make their networks available to government eavesdroppers. So this would include services like Skype, Twitter, GMail, AOL, social networks and FedEx. The US Government likes to refer to this as ‘closing the surveillance gap’ - previously a court order would be required to snoop. If you want to learn more about this new legislation, check out Wired’s Threat Level blog.

But are you aware that the Department of Homeland Security is turning US military technology against its own citizens? After the Cold War suffered its meltdown, spy satellites were used for benign purposes such as cartography, snapping photos of damage caused by natural disasters, conducting environmental and scientific studies and so on. But the Bush administration has decided (under the usual veil of anti-terrorism) to expand satellite use to allow civilian agencies and law enforcement to enforce criminal and civil law within the US. This expanded use was authorised in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell.

Border security is the rallying cry behind this, as well as illegal immigrants and tracking down drug lords. But from all the documentation I’ve read to date on this initiative, there seems to be no legal limit to use of satellites on the domestic US population. It’s uncharted territory. Isn’t it against the US Constitution for the Government to spy on its own citizens? The Wall Street Journal was the first to go public with news about the satellites and what can only be rubber-stamping by Congress. Apart from abuse of privacy and legal issues, who exactly will have access to information and images collected by the satellites? (Apparently, the National Application Office will know what is being spied on from space). These are military satellites and are more powerful than civilian ones, so they can detect heat generated by people in a building and traces left by chemical weapons for example. The technology to be used is a closely guarded secret and you have to wonder if security concerns will override privacy issues.

Just as I was recovering from my attack of the vapours after learning about all this, I then stumbled on another article in Harper’s Magazine about the use of biometric identification in Iraq. Now, I know there are times when the military has to use high-tech stuff. What concerns me is whether anybody is thinking about how said stuff will be used once the “war on terror” is over and done with. The Pentagon is using biometric technology, which helps to create a database stuffed full of profiles and information about Iraqi adult males. So US troops and other American personnel are doing things like scanning fingerprints and iris patterns of people at home, in the workplace and at checkpoints.

All to make it easier to run background checks I’m sure but…let’s recall how identification cards and information were used in South Africa and other areas of the world. And let’s recall how this information was often used as the basis for ‘ethnic cleansing’. As the article pointed out, the biometric identification of Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd populations vastly increases the possibility that this information may be misused at some future point. What are the guidelines for use of biometric data being collected and maintained by the US military? A future regime in Iraq could most certainly exploit this database, which is eventually to be handed over to the Iraqis (this is already under discussion).

The Electronic Privacy Information Centre has waded into the fray. If you go to their site, you will find a lot more info on biometric identification in Iraq and the potential abuse of fundamental human rights.

I think these two snippets of news (which didn’t receive a lot of attention around the world it seems to me) need to be viewed against the backdrop of the whole surveillance society we currently are living in. Once the satellites are pointed down on citizens, they’ll remain doing so; once fingerprinting and iris scanning becomes the norm in Iraq, it is easily transportable to any other population.

We all know about MySpace, but did you know about MyDeathSpace.com? A little creepy if you ask me, but this site contains the MySpace pages of members who have died - a virtual graveyard. As CBS News says, the site caters to twin obsessions - memorialising death and prying into stranger’s lives. Around 2,700 deaths are recorded on the site. And I suppose there’s no reason not to have a site that immortalises those who have gone. We have digital biographies, which celebrate the actions and faux paux of the living, so why not a site that leaves behind a trace of someone who has gone with digital eulogies?

Here is a map of MySpace members who have gone and the stories they have to tell are often heart-wrenching and tragic. There’s the story of an 18 year old boy and his friend who were killed when their SUV swerved to avoid a deer in the roadway; there’s the story of a 16 year old boy who fainted in the shower and drowned. The MySpace pages of the departed have been abandoned as though the person had to rush away quickly, without warning. And the date of the last log-in is a telling reminder of how close the person was to exiting this world. I guess it’s like a wake-up call for us all, nudging us to contemplate our own mortality.

Last weekend, I visited a Memorial Park (fancy name we have in Australia for some cemeteries). A member of my family recently died and I’ve been considering the final resting place. As I wandered around, looking for a suitable spot, I was struck by what I think is a newish trend. I have to confess a liking for cemeteries (no, I’m not weird; they interest me from a historical perspective). When I lived in Dubbo (country NSW) in the 1980s, I produced a history of Dubbo Cemetery (not sure what happened to that piece of work, maybe it’s on some dusty library shelf somewhere). The cemetery was crowded with granite and concrete angels, perched high on their pedestals, jostling for position. There were huge, dark looking crypts; cracked tombstones; little concrete lambs sitting forlornly atop a child’s grave. You could read the stories of the silent “selves” - those who had passed from the Spanish flu in 1918; soldiers succumbing to the enemy in defense of country; those fallen to the fickle circumstances of fate or accident. What I didn’t see much of then was photos accompanying tombstones. This seems to be a European tradition - framed photos of fading loved ones, pleading to have you remember that yes, we once existed.

Twenty years later at the Memorial Park, I noticed graves marked by colour photos - snapshots of smiling grandparents; portraits of people who died way too young; images of children cut down by accident. And so MyDeathSpace is an extension of this - a testament to all the different voices of the digital age - the young girl sharing her frivolous teenage fantasies; a young soldier prepared to die in Iraq; young dudes sharing their music and poetry hoping to catch the attention of the music or publishing industry. The MySpace pages of departed ones serve as a memorial wall and no doubt families derive comfort from posting a birthday message as life goes on.

In a twist that has me intrigued from a legal liability POV, MyDeathSpace posts photos of alleged killers on the page of the victim. This has unfortunate repurcussions - a woman who carries the same name as an alleged baby killer was tainted with the brush of accusation even though the poor woman’s profile was taken down. Clearly, this is also a space for voyeurs or those fascinated with the macabre, who are curious about how a death occurred or like to speculate. And the ads that pop up on the site make you wonder about capitalising on death. And so death and grieving becomes public. Let’s just hope it is respectful.

Did you know that in 1997 a company in Texas, USA managed to get a patent for basmati rice, which meant that it would get a royalty payment when anyone else sold rice by that name? Or that two US University researchers were granted a patent for turmeric as a wound healing medicinal plant? Or that a staple food crop of the Andes - quinoa- is the subject of US patent 5,304,718 because two professors from Colorado State University are seeking to patent traditional quinoa variety, Apelawa?

Now, basmati rice and turmeric are simply part of the ancient cultural heritage of India and in the case of turmeric, its use is part of a complex web of indigenous medical knowledge. And quinoa (pronounced keen-wa and very tasty BTW) is a grain - the so-called Mother Grain of the Inca civilisation - that has a 5,000 year history.

But Western corporations and people seeking a fortune through patents increasingly raid the medicine chest of Indian and South American culture. The ridiculous patent on basmati rice was revoked in 2001 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after the Indian Government was forced to cough up 50,000 pages of evidence to show that the basmati rice grown for centuries in India was one and the same thing as the rice the Texas company had patented. This case highlights how patents are being filed for combative business purposes, rather than encouraging creativity or inventors. The problem with patents is that to check the validity of a claim, patent offices need to have access to and examine documentation relating to the claim and examine patents of the same kind. In Western countries, this means checking out journals, databases etc and does not encompass folklore or oral traditions.

But clearly when ancient knowledge is buried in poems, literature and music, patent offices have a difficult time accessing the information they need to grant the patent and indigenous knowledge is vulnerable to exploitation. Under British colonial rule, India’s cultural heritage and medicinal knowledge languished. Ancient plant-based remedies and information about herbs and plants were enshrined in the three main healing traditions of India: Ayurvedic, Unani and Siddha. Celebrating the colourful diversity of India’s history and culture, remedies are often found in old poems and in languages such as Tamil, Urdu, Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. Traditional medical knowledge was shared and transferred orally via stories, poems, music and so on. Without a single source or library for Indian expert knowledge, the West can freely plunder.

But NewsHour reports on the Indian Government’s efforts to protect and preserve medical knowledge against the onslaught of recent patents against time-honoured yoga positions. The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) project was established in 2002 and aims to digitise 5,000 years of ancient texts, manuscripts and traditional formulas in Hindi and English (and later French, Spanish and Japanese). Costing $2 million, approximately 30 million pages of medical knowledge will be digitised and made available as an electronic encyclopedia by the end of 2007. Photos, drawings of plants and scans of original texts will be included.

This is a great initiative by the Indian Government and patent offices will be able to access TKDL to check for existing knowledge in artistic or musical form before granting a patent. At least 150,000 plant-based remedies will be digitised and you can imagine the wealth of indigenous knowledge suddenly available, which could lead to new, natural drugs and herbal remedies. 1500 asanas (yoga postions and postures) will be digitally preserved. Hopefully, it will block bio-piracy as traditional knowledge will now be in the public domain and so we won’t see another company try to patent turmeric or basmati rice.

The Indian Government has waged long battles to have patents revoked: a two year struggle against the turmeric patent and a ten year tussle to revoke a patent on the neem tree. I can’t recall where I recently read too that the Government is slugging it out over the claims of an Indian chap living in the US who has or is trying to patent traditional yoga postures. Really, how absurb is that! And according to BBC News, of the 5,000 patents awarded by the US Patent Office on medical plants up to 2000, 80% of the plants originated in India. And approximately 70% of people living in India use traditional remedies as primary health care. A patent grants a property right to whoever holds the patent and therefore excludes anyone else the right to make, use or sell the invention. Just think about how Western companies or individuals could literally hold to ransom people who have for thousands of years used traditional remedies. And if you think that couldn’t happen, read up on the Monsanto vs Schmeiser case (a Canadian farmer was pummelled by a biotechnology giant for infringing the company’s patent because he was allegedly growing a special kind of GM modified canola without a licence).

ThinkingShift has a number of readers from India, so if anyone knows more about this exciting project or others that preserve traditional knowledge, feel free to leave a comment. I do know of the Honeybee network in India - where students and teachers gather indigenous knowledge from communities.

I have received a few emails from ThinkingShift readers asking me what I am currently reading - so I’m thinking about a regular post on the stuff I read. But to answer the question: I am currently reading a fabulous book by Eric Burns - Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism. Part of my ongoing love fest with history really. Burns is actually a journalist but has done a great job of writing an historical account about what can only be described as the wild, unruly west of nascent American journalism in the 1700s and 1800s.

There were no intellectual property or defamation laws back then so journalists could swipe slabs of text from incoming British newspapers and reprint. Or journalists (maybe more accurately described as muckrakers) could sling accusations and mud at such legendary figures at George Washington (first Prez of the US) and Alexander Hamilton (Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury). In fact, it’s suggested that Washington, after eight years as Prez, left office because his sanity was being worn down by the constant allegations that he had monarchical pretensions. From what I’ve read before about Washington, he was fairly tall and imposing but here’s what the Aurora had to say about this famous historical figure:

You seem to have entered life with a mind unadorned by extraordinary features or uncommon capacity. Equal to the common duties of private life, it emitted none of those sparks of genius, however irregular and inconstant, which mark the dawn of future eminence….Fortuitous circumstances yielded you in early life a small measure of military éclat, which arose chiefly from the barren talents of your predecessors in the Indian warfare. For some time after this you reposed in unambitious ease till the chances of a Revolution called you to the supreme command of the American army. An inoffensive neutrality had heretofore characterised your actions, and it was probably because you were in principle neither a Briton nor an American, a whig nor a tory, that you slid into this important station.

Phew…what a mauling! The Aurora was a Philadelphia newspaper (this city being the then-capital of the newly formed United States) and was printed by Benjamin Franklin’s grandson - Benjamin Franklin Bache. It was Republican in tone and was described as “filth” by contemporary critics. Washington (who I once read never uttered an expletive) commented on the Aurora and other newspapers of the time as a “malignant industry…persevering falsehoods” with which “I am assailed in order to weaken, if not destroy, the confidence of the Public”.

I’d love to go back in a time machine and check out the fur flying - Thomas Jefferson and Hamilton apparently hated each other’s guts. If you were for Jefferson you were a Republican; for Hamilton, you were a Federalist. And then there were the newspaper dudes who physically attacked each other on the street: Bache and Fenno (who published the Gazette of the United States) slugged it out for an hour or so before an audience of several thousand people in Philadelphia’s State House Yard. Apparently, everyone was at each other’s throats in those days. Can you imagine what the Aurora might say if it was around today and commenting on John Howard? Mmmm…..okay won’t go there!

People weren’t flush with money during the Revolutionary period, so papers were often handed on to family and friends, which was the only way information could really flow. They didn’t exactly have the Internet, radio or TV way back then, so the newspapers were the only information channel for political information or news about your city or town.

But you might wonder what on earth mouse pie has to do with all this? Well, what was also fascinating about this book was the contextual stuff: fashions of the time, physical descriptions of major historical figures and….a footnote that really piqued my interest. I’ve always wondered how people in that time period dealt with such regular horrors like smallpox and yellow fever. Of course, we live in a world where smallpox has been eradicated and a vaccine was found for yellow fever in the 1930s. But back then, a smallpox outbreak could wipe out a whole district or large slice of the population. So what remedies did they use to try and ward off infection? Well here’s a selection and let’s all take a moment to say thanks that we are not living in the 1700s or 1800s.

• if you were suffering from a toothache, your local dentist (well, actually doctor as modern dentistry wasn’t around then) would have rushed around helpfully locating a centipede for you. Said centipede would have a needle stuck into it and that needle would then be inserted into your gum.
• if you had a tumor, well basically I think you constantly prayed that you didn’t really have one, because here’s the cure - you or your doctor would dig up a corpse, cut off a hand and apply it to the tumor or area. The severed hand would remain in place “till the Patient feel the Damp sensibly strike into him”. I have no idea what “the Damp” is, but I would think the patient felt a whole lot of things - violent nausea from knowing you had the hand of a corpse strapped to you; socially ostricised because there’s no way anyone would want to come near you; probably in the divorce courts as your partner would be a little put off by sharing a bed with a corpse’s hand.
• should you have the misfortune to contract typhoid, your doctor would prescribe several cups of chimney soot mixed with water, sugar and cream - ditch your late night cocoa because I’m sure this concoction tasted good!
• and now to the mouse pie - and any mice reading this blog should run for their lives. If you suffered from bed-wetting, no problem. Your doctor would hunt down some mice, bake them up into a delicious mouse pie and serve up for dinner. The sight of a mouse tail sticking out from a pie would bring on bed-wetting if you ask me. And was the pie served with fries?

Regular ThinkingShift readers would know how I can suffer a touch of hysteria about privacy issues (wonder if a mouse pie is a cure for this?), so you won’t be surprised to find out I’m also reading:

• Trust and Crime in Information Societies by Robin Mansell and Brian S.Collins.
• Total Surveillance: Investigating the Big Brother world of e-spies, eavesdroppers and CCTV by John Parker.
• Understanding Knowledge as a Commons by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom (just in case I overdose on books about privacy and surveillance).

Expect posts soon on what I discover from these books.

Came across this article in The News Tribune - scary. Southern China’s streets are about to become the proud owners of 20,000 police surveillance cameras. I guess China is gearing up for the Olympics and all the security this will entail, but is this also an opportunity to sneak in surveillance technologies? These cameras will soon be powered by technology (from a US firm) that will enable face recognition.

But the scarier related news is that in the same area (Shenzhen) high-tech residency cards will be handed out to 12.4 million people. These chipped cards (provided by the same US company) will not simply have name and address details recorded. No, these identity cards will go much further and record - work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even more: personal reproductive history will be included to enforce China’s controversial one-child policy. Plans are afoot to also add credit history, subway travel payments and any small purchases charged to the card.

The official stance is that the identity cards will help police to combat crime and keep track of an increasingly mobile population. But it takes little imagination to think that the Communist Government wants to keep its claws firmly embedded in the flesh of an increasingly affluent nation. Apparently, if a citizen of the area doesn’t have an identity card, they will be denied Government benefits and turfed out of the area.

The 20,000 cameras will join 180,000 indoor and outdoor webcams already in Shenzhen and owned by businesses or Government agencies. That’s a heck of a lot of webcams amidst people whose lives and movements will soon be heavily tracked and watched. The police in Shenzhen also carry GPS equipment on their belts.

You know what I’m about to say: once the technology is available and switched on, there’s really no going back.

In a recent post, Is Privacy a Fading Human Right?, I talked about Google Street View and raised concerns about infringement of anonymity and privacy. Well for those of us concerned about Google’s unmarked vans cruising neighourhoods (in the US) snapping innocent citizens (and animals) going about their daily business, the Google Earth and Maps team has helpfully published a list of cities they’re about to hit with their cameras.

They’ve now expanded to San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston and Orlando. Like the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego apparently features high-resolution imagery (presumably better zooming ability and better quality photos you can be identified by). Google continues to insist that “…Street View only features imagery taken on public property. This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.” Legally correct but morally? Check out these hapless citizens caught in embarrassing or awkward moments - here and here.

And why does Google drive around in an unmarked rather sinister looking dark van - check it out here. Could they be concerned that if Average Citizen saw a Google-emblazoned van nearby, with a camera lens sticking out of the window that said Citizen might be on the alert and walk off before the camera clicks or, even better, walk up to the van and ask what the heck are the dudes in that van doing? Google sometimes dumps the van and goes for a more discrete looking car - check out the gallery of cars they use here at Gizmodo Australian edition. Also on the Gizmodo site is a map of the US showing you where the Google Street View camera cars have been spotted so far. If Google says it’s only taking pictures in public places, then why the secrecy?

Thankfully, should the Street View cameras land in Europe, European law will give Google a run for its squillions. The European Court of Justice does not allow snaps for commercial use where people are identifiable. Google would need to notify the individual and seek explicit consent. Somehow I can’t imagine Google rushing up to the individual just snapped with a consent form in hand.

Now, in the UK, the Information Privacy Commissioner has published a code of conduct for public webcam use, which states: “Signs should be placed so that the public are aware that they are entering a zone which is covered by surveillance equipment … [These signs] should be clearly visible and legible to members of the public“. I can’t see how Google would be exempt from this.

And there plans for Australia? I’m looking into it!

Well, here’s a surprise (not!) - apparently Australians are overweight, over-indulged and over-looked (by whom I’m not sure). The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released a report entitled “Australian Social Trends 2007” and I think there are some concerns.

According to the ABS Media Release, the snapshot into the national Australian lifestyle reveals:

• Australia’s total fertility rate has increased, reaching 1.81 babies per woman in 2005 – the highest level recorded since 1995. (Australia’s fertility rate fell to a historic low in 2001 - 1.73 babies per woman).
• the probability of marrying has declined. This is probably due to Gen Y’s focus on career and delaying have a family until they’re in their 30s. If current rates were to continue, 31% of men and 26% of women would never marry.
• 20% of children live in one-parent families, which places them at a potential disadvantage since in 2003–2004 almost half (49%) of one-parent families with children under 15 had both low income and low wealth, compared with 11% of couple families with children of the same age.
• In Australia’s labour force, more women are working, up from 74% in 1990 to 76% in 2005 for people aged 15-64 years (mmmm….what happens when you’re over 64 years?).
• 7.4 million Australian adults (54%) are overweight or obese - this is an increase of 2 million adults since 1995.
• we’re buying more “stuff” because many goods and services have become more affordable – including motor vehicles, clothing and footwear and household appliances – others, such as education and hospital and medical services, have become less affordable because price rises for these services have outpaced increases in income and wealth.
• there’s been an increase in household disposable income, increasing from 5.1 per cent per year between 1985/86 and 2005/06.
• but…..bankruptcy rates are near their highest point in 20 years. And so we’re sinking further into debt despite an increased disposable income (are you listening John Howard?)
• we’re better educated.

So we’re getting smarter but fatter - great.

Not too sure how good old Melvil Dewey would feel about this - the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system is being kicked out of some libraries. Maybe Dewey’s had his day - a classification system should reflect how users think about and search for information. This is why folksonomies are so popular.

The Wall Street Journal tells us that a library in Arizona has abandoned the DDC in favour of book spines that carry simple, plain English labels such as “History” and “True Crime”. They refer to these categories as “neighborhoods”. Now, those of us who hang out a lot in libraries would know that the DDC arranges human knowledge into 10 classes, 100 divisions and 1000 sections - so it’s numerical and hierarchical. But now that we have Google and Yahoo!, users are pretty used to finding stuff with their own keywords and subject headings (let’s leave aside the probability that a lot of it is useless stuff and let’s leave aside that they’re searching the world according to Google or Yahoo!). And librarians well know that the DDC has its flaws - the 600s (technology) has no topic area for computers, which have to be classified in the 004-006 section.

But I’m of two minds about this: as someone who also spends a lot of time in bookstores wasting time trying to work out how they classify books, I wonder how a simple label like “History” really helps patrons find things. But it does raise the issue of how libraries and librarians are being asked to become more “relevant” in an age in which Google is perhaps a patron’s preferred information seeking method.

Apparently, the Arizona library used to check-out 100-150 books a day; now that it’s de-Deweyfied (is this a term??) around 900 items a day breeze out the library doors - so there’s some argument in saying that the way this library is choosing to present subject headings to its users is more relevant than the DDC. And apparently the library spoke to its users before the decision was made to dump Dewey and 80% of patrons said they go to the library to browse rather than search for a specific item. So it’s the browsing versus searching debate. So I guess even libraries are now being Googlefied (is this a term too??).

But I’d like to know how many books this library (the Perry Branch in Gilbert, Arizona) actually handles. I don’t know how a large library with say 200,000 books as opposed to say 20,000 would be able to cope with classifying things according to ‘neighorhoods’. But full marks to them for an innovative approach and I wonder how many other libraries will follow?

And on another note: news from Libraries Interact (blog central for Oz libraries). Mark September 10, 2007 in your diaries. Librarians around the world will ‘invade’ various Answer sites (eg Yahoo! Answers, Amazon’s Askville, Wikipedia Reference Desk). It will be a day-long Answerfest, with librarians “marketing their services to an audience that has gone elsewhere”. Great stuff!