Idealistic Content Warning:this post contains considerations based on personal ideals and tenets.

This morning a couple of titles in Boing Boing caught my eye:
. London’s panopticon of CCTVs aren’t solving crimes
. DRM violates Canadian privacy law

Mixed feelings. On one side I’m happy to see an evidence that intrusion in people’s privacy is not helping to fight crime, and is thus useless from that perspective (meaning the Eye will need to come up with a different excuse), on the other hand I’m not impressed at all by seeing reported as “news” a sideways attack to DRM.
DRM (well, not only digital, let’s say RM) is wrong. Fullstop. No need to hide behind the rotten corpse of privacy.

Besides, let’s admit it: the whole concept of privacy just jumped the shark. It’s the fruit of a dystopian culture based on secrets, harass, blame and deceit; we should aim at composting it, and ultimately It should be seen, at the very best, as a necessary evil, not as a coveted holy grail.

That said, I was very happy to read the headlines above: and many many kudos go to the University of Ottawa. Well done guys!!!

After the summer exile, here I am, walking my way back in the crazy London’s event vortex…

Last week has been emphasized by a random meeting, an unexpected dinner and a long expected evening.
Tuesday, on my way to the FOWA Road Trip, I literally stumbled upon my old couchsurfing fellow Lily and her aussie friends, on their last night in London. Needless to say, the Road Trip was foresaken at once, and I enjoyed a nice dinner, by the end of which I was almost able to understand the peculiar Perth accent once again.

Thursday was the night for an unexpected invitation, by Amanda, to join the San Lorenzo tasting in poshy Osteria dell’Arancio, King’s Road.
There, I finally met Antonio and Sara and had the chance to taste again the wonderful San Lorenzo products, that I drooled so much on at the RitaliaCamp ;)
Among the other participants, Walid of TrustedPlaces asked me to guest blog the evening for their site, so probably you’ll see a more complete review there soon ;)
A snapshot I want to remember was the walk to the Osteria through King’s Road with Amanda, chatting about life in London and Italy: an Italian expat and an English ex-expat-just-returned-to-homeland-from-Italy walking their way through the one of the most iconic road in London to an Italian flavoured evening. Patterns.

Saturday was the time of the Ides of September, the dinner Stowe Boyd organized, excellent and not-so-stranger attractor for likeminded social geeks. Finally met Otu, and had a chat with Leisa, Ian, Stephanie and Euan who were sitting close enough (that’s the problem with long tables…). Tara joined us too, on her way back to SF, was curious to see her again after february and having exchanged so many threads on BarCamp and CoWorking‘s lists.

Oops… just found this draft that has been hanging in my wordpress limbo for a week or so. Time to shoot it out even if still a bit gross.

Last night (that is, last week) had a little chat with Feba, who kindly updated me on the RomagnaCamp, the latest Italian BarCamp.
She meticolously collected links to the presentations happened during the event, and also pointed me at other threads of conversation all over the spaghetti blogosphere… a natural born technorati, she is.

Following the event from the outside, and without paying too much attention on it, what I perceived on saturday was a general atmosphere of joyful relax, facilitated by the beach setting. I’m sure I missed a really enjoyable event (and a chance to challenge Amanda in a Wii-boxing match :P ).

Some of the participants though… palmasco, samuele silva, mantellini are introducing an interesting topic: Are BarCamps, in Italy at least, dying?
Orientalia, on the other hand, wonders if that was a barcamp at all, with the easy going atmosphere and the slow pace and people engaging in all sort of recreational activities (from long walks on the seashore to playing with and entertaining the “next generation” – barcampers’ children ).

Imho it doesn’t make sense to talk about the death of BarCamp. BC is a format, and one that proved to be successful and very flexible. Quite the contrary, it seems to me that the use of the format is simply evolving, being conditioned and interacting with the local environment and culture: as I often pointed in the last few years, Italy tends to be a self contained system in the global blogosphere. We see what’s happening outside, sometime we bring in conversations, memes and trends but seldom the other way around: hence the dynamics are unique to the Italian ecosystem, (almost) completely detached from the rest.
The way it evolved in Italy then is less about sharing achievements, intuitions and propositions, and more about creating a social circle, through which jointly explore topics of common interest.

So the bottom line is that, yes, the BarCamp experience is dead in Italy, but just because the original concept was composted through the interaction of the local culture and transformed in a new one.

Speaking of the BarCamp format instead, well, my (and Folletto‘s) presentation for the ZenaCamp was supposed to be quite on topic, as the title (Dead is the BarCamp, Long Live the BarCamp) suggest.
My point there was (and still is) that this format’s strength is that, by the means of enforced participation and lack of structure, it creates a game space where the participants experience a suspension of formal social rules: everybody is peer, and all are (supposed to be) making an effort to contribute to the experience and share their knowledge.

So, in the end, a BarCamp is just as good as the people who make it.

Almost on a whim, after watching Serenity a couple of weeks ago, I spent the last day or so going through the 14 episodes of Firefly.

Now, I’m usually immune to tv series but I’m starting to see a pattern: sci-fi gets me. Battlestar Galactica first, Firefly now (well we should mention Star Trek too, but that’s somehow part of the classics, that layer of shared cultural texture and thus doesn’t really count ;) ).

Weird thing is that they don’t share much, those two series: dark, claustrophobic, conspiracy driven the first, solar, fast paced, more light hearted and reassuring the second.

They don’t share much, I was saying, but starships and a certain fascinating retrò flavour.

So maybe it’s the idea of a somehow simpler life, where the “global village” and the social dance are actually constrained to the decks of a ship in the middle of cosmic void, or maybe it’s the charme of a life always on the move (possibly at faster-than-light speed), or even the theme of exploration of unknown places and cultures, echoes of a more adventurous, younger humanity, still striving to get itself acquanited with its own home planet.

Fact is, stars & ships make my mind spin.

or, as Tennyson puts it:

“[..] Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die. [...]“

Going through a few months worth of feeds, noticed Anu’s post about him leaving Headshift. Of course I’ve been knowing the fact for a while, but still, seeing his feed there in the same page where the voices of other friends and now-ex-colleagues are collected and aggregated, makes me think of this whole crazy spinning merry-go-around that is the social media “world”. People join for a round or two, then leave, others stay for some more time, new faces jump in the wagon, and so it goes, on and on… Still, everybody is somehow changed by the experience and share something with those who, even if for a little time, were part of the same “spin”. It’s not just a matter of memories, it’s like resonance.

Let’s face it: it’s one hell of a good time to be out in the open, offering skills to the best (or most remunerative, depending on your ethics) cause, and the thrill of self employment, or of thorough changes (oh, sweet memories of the early dot-com era) is surely tempting.
Nevertheless,  I came to believe a while ago that the days of pure free lancing are gone for me, at least in this chapter of my life: if a change is going to happen, I’d probably rather go back to enterpreneurship… oh my, forgive me, this is another story, one for which too many elements are still missing (a good setting and a decent raison d’être above all else).

So coming back to the here and now, I found that Headshift has the most peculiar characteristic of being a constantly challenging (not always because of exciting projects, but that’s what life’s like) environment, and that’s – after all- what I always asked for; furthermore, I foresee some very interesting developments on the horizon, and I’m just too curious to find out what’s the shape of things to come…

but I’m letting thoughts run free once again, I guess it’s time to go to bed.

I think the whole point in this post (if one has to be) is that I’m glad and proud to have met and worked with all the headshift team members (past and present), clever human beings, and I’d like to get this chance to say thanks to all of you. And good luck with your current and future adventures!

I’m sure there must be some kind of odd cosmic alignment going on today, whose most unfortunate side effects on planet Earth have undoubtly manifested as the sudden unavailability of Twitter and extreme slugginesh of services like Flickr and de.licio.us.

If you add to this the apocalyptic amount of white noise generated by yesterday’s release of the latest Apple gadgets, what you get is an eerie, almost numb feeling, like the whole internet instantly fell silent.

Blogs are still there, of course, as are Facebook, myspace and other self contained experiences… but they suddenly seem to me like quickly aging pictures hung on the walls of our mindscape: they stay there, silently displaying their more or less colorful message to those who take the effort of taking a glance at (i.e. devote their attention to) them, but without filling up the air…

Some, like Facebook for instance, are like hatchlings of new media to come, info-caterpillar waiting to fully grow up and explode into a cognitive epiphany. Others, like personal blogs, seem like aristocratic statements of stubborn individuality: piercing, precise, if somehow slow.

Amazing, isn’t it? If only somebody told me, just two years ago, that I’ll ever call blogs a “slow media”… go figure.

And, by the way, this is just a snapshot of my current, intimate feeling, so don’t take it personally: I’m sure other people (maybe less exposed to networks or, on the other hand, more immersed in new communication experiences, or just taking a different approach to them) will have different perceptions and therefore opinions…
but the lines above describe where I stay now, contemplating how fascinating is that by gradually loosing structure and seriousness, we’re also recovering (more and more) the aural form of communication over the visual: once again, and (maybe more surprisingly) despite written words being still the main vessel of content.

P.S.: the photo above is from a wonderful workshop on Dead Media by Thomas Purves I attended at LIFT 07, where we discussed some of these same concept from a different perspective.