Cross-posted on ReadWriteWeb!

The problem with working to change United States foreign policy is that you're never really sure what it's going on behind the curtain. By the time you have submitted a FOIA request and the government deems your information save, the present has passed into history. Which raises the question, will Wikileaks bring us the transparency we need to be able to understand the internal workings of US covert operations? more

Cross-posted on Read Write Web. more

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Karnani makes the case that corporate responsibility is a distraction from the true purpose of companies, to maximize shareholder value. Reading through his article, I found myself persuaded in the opposite direction.

At EchoDitto, we are engaged in a continuous conversation about what it means to be a responsible company: who we want to work with, what we want to do, and how we work for a sustainable world. more

The problem with most sorts of planning and organization, is that if they're not ingrained into you, at the first hint of a crisis, it all goes out the window. This is particularly true about the use of technology. As the technologist for disaster-driven nonprofits, I found that technology, for many nonprofits, is much like the umbrella, most needed when it rains suddenly, but somehow always left at home. more

The time has come, I'm buying an iPad. I am writing to tell the world of my transition in thought, from Luddite to Early Adopter.

I am perhaps the last person who owns a dumbphone. Yes, I have reveled in my un-wired-ness. I was the last person I know to get a cellular phone. In college, I developed for a Java class on a computer without internet. I have not owned a TV since I threw mine over the balcony in a symbolic (drunken) ritual at age nineteen. (We had to throw it off several times until we were satisfied.) more

iHobo: bad taste, yes. You can read more here.

But I'm inclined to think that bad taste is better than no taste at all. more

I am fascinated by the intersection of humankind and machines. I often watch the rain as it strikes the puddles, and am entranced by the question of whether or not their pattern is chaotic or ordered. Likewise, I ask whether or not we have free will, are we perfect chaos or perfect order? That is, an imperfect order would be chaos. And, perhaps more to the point, I ask what we become when we make the perfect order that is the machine a part of our minds. more