Young Scientists in the news - and I want to hear more about it!

Today, except for playing around some with a camera flash to see if I do want to buy one (do you have one to sell?!), I have been thinking some about locality and microblogging.

It just so happens that my good friends the Young Scientists were in the editorial debate page of NyTeknik (in Swedish). That's really cool, and I think they should be heard more in the education debate. But my point right now is that I didn't know about it, because as it happens, FUF's news feed is broken and I am not really in touch with any active members anymore (except now I've found one, but he's in the board like everyone else...). We've been trying to tempt people to join the IRC chat, with little success, and I'm just craving communication with the sort of cool kids which FUF members usually are.


Back in the day, we used to communicate with people through IRC - you chose one or a few rooms of like-minded, and that's where you'd stay, sometimes for years and it was tricky to find new places where you'd want to hang out. Lately, in microblogging platforms like Jaiku I've become excited by the "virtual rooms" continuously created as your friends participate in interesting discussions with their friends, and you may choose to follow the posts of a new acquaintance. No-one expects you to listen to all the conversations, but you end up shaping your "flow" of conversations towards what people and topics you are interested in.

Actually, currently this shaping of the flow is pretty blunt. You can select people (which by the way are few of my IRL friends so far) and channels (which are infrequently used), but not keywords, or most importantly, location. By combining keyword and location, my motorbike-riding brother could get all messages on the topic of "co-biking" in the Småland area if he'd feel like it, and myself, like a child playing with the walkie-talkie, I would just love to be able to watch the "buzz" of people in my own city. Somewhere dwells also the dream of resurrecting the concept of local communities and villages - if you could select to listen to the (public) messages of your neighbours, maybe they could start to matter to you again...

twitter, bloggy.se, FriendFeed and Voolife - except for Jaiku, Twinkle for iPhone is the only such service which currently truly excites me. Do you disagree? Tell me why!

I'll end this blog post with the thought that "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog", and the social internet version of it which now reads "If you as much as touch a keyboard, everybody kows you're a dog". It's extraordinary to compose an impression about someone from all the tracks he leaves online, somewhat like the guy who has gathered an amazing collection of material on Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett which I watched today...