John Cumming

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John Cumming, Silicon Sorcery

This looks like a load of fun. Not that I care to dance all over the world. Visiting all these great places would be a blast.

I wonder how many had Internet access?

1. I am from Scotland!
2. I miss my friend Shirley who died on March 14, 2008 from breast cancer.
3. Sushi, What more can I say! Sushi, Sushi, Sushi.
4. Have not driven a car in 10 years.
5. Spent only one night outside Siskiyou County in 2008.
6. Missing the snow.
7. I hosted my own public access television show called 'Geek Central'.
8. Computers are an ever present part of my life.
9. I was a video game developer involved in over 20 Internationally published games.
10. I don't have the time to play video games.
11. I don't subscribe to cable or satellite television.
12. For video I watch Miro, Hulu and some YouTube over the Internet.
13. I volunteer for public access television in order to help make a stronger democracy.
14. My two brothers died at child birth.
15. My dad died in a car crash while heading to a divorce hearing. I was 6 at the time.
16. My grand mother looked after me everyday for years while my mother worked. My grand mother died when I was 11.
17. My mother tried to commit suicide. She passed away at the age of 47 from complications related to diabetes and stroke.
18. Offer I feel lost and alone.
19. Saw Rod Stewart in concert Jan 31, 1999. It was a blast.
20. Hiked up half dome. It almost killed me.
21. Did the Silicon Valley gold rush thing and made some money.
22. Never married. Time for a change perhaps?
23. I miss working with other geeks in technically challenging projects.
24. I am getting into social media. http://www.twitter.com/gotwiki
25. I like the simple life here in Mt. Shasta.

Well, I am still not a fan of email. It's fine for one to one causal communications. It falls away short when groups need to communicate and collaborate on a common project. There are many exciting online tools for better group communications.

Lets go camping ...

Please watch this short video, 'Wikis in Plain English' ... It will help us when planning for our camping trip, heck it just might help us with other group projects!

Why email? Despite there being better and more productive tools, the problem is getting your community to invest their time and energy in using these new tools. The older people get, the more set in there ways they become. We don't always do that we know is for our own good. Many people eat the cake knowing that it's not good for their health. These are the real challenges.

Why email? You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. When in Rome, do what the Romans do. It's that simply, then you can't get your team members to evolve their game you have to change yours.

Why email? Gmail makes email better. It's not a cure. Gmail handles junk like a pro. The threaded emails are nicely organized and displayed.

Have I given up. Do not bet on it !

 - John Cumming
Follow me at http://twitter.com/gotwiki

Join the conversation and listen to my talk show every Sunday 1pm-3pm ... http://www.telosnow.com
Follow telosnow at http://twitter.com/telosnow

The word telos means something like purpose, or goal, or final end. According to Aristotle, everything has a purpose or final end. If we want to understand what something is, it must be understood in terms of that end, which we can discover through careful study. It is perhaps easiest to understand what a telos is by looking first at objects created by human beings. Consider a knife. If you wanted to describe a knife, you would talk about its size, and its shape, and what it is made out of, among other things. But Aristotle believes that you would also, as part of your description, have to say that it is made to cut things. And when you did, you would be describing its telos. The knife's purpose, or reason for existing, is to cut things. And Aristotle would say that unless you included that telos in your description, you wouldn't really have described - or understood – the knife. This is true not only of things made by humans, but of plants and animals as well. If you were to fully describe an acorn, you would include in your description that it will become an oak tree in the natural course of things – so acorns too have a telos. Suppose you were to describe an animal, like a thoroughbred foal. You would talk about its size, say it has four legs and hair, and a tail. Eventually you would say that it is meant to run fast. This is the horse's telos, or purpose. If nothing thwarts that purpose, the young horse will indeed become a fast runner.

Here we are not primarily concerned with the telos of a knife or an acorn or a foal. What concerns us is the telos of a human being. Just like everything else that is alive, human beings have a telos. What is it that human beings are meant by nature to become in the way that knives are meant to cut, acorns are meant to become oak trees, and thoroughbred ponies are meant to become race horses? According to Aristotle, we are meant to become happy. This is nice to hear, although it isn't all that useful. After all, people find happiness in many different ways. However, Aristotle says that living happily requires living a life of virtue. Someone who is not living a life that is virtuous, or morally good, is also not living a happy life, no matter what they might think. They are like a knife that will not cut, an oak tree that is diseased and stunted, or a racehorse that cannot run. In fact they are worse, since they have chosen the life they lead in a way that a knife or an acorn or a horse cannot.

Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/aris-pol.htm

Watching UStream.tv and ended up listening to Chris Pirillo. He was running live twitter avatar's on his background screens. The geek in me fired of a tweet to @chrispirillo. A few sends later, my avatar was on UStream.tv feed. Fun stuff.

It was interesting to see that our new president Barack Obama is using Twitter to stay connected to the world. I added him as a friend. Seconds later he was following me on Twitter. The world just got a little bit more connected.

Check out this screen capture ...

- John Cumming
Follow me at http://twitter.com/gotwiki

Join the conversation and listen to my talk show every Sunday 1pm-3pm ... http://www.telosnow.com
Follow telosnow at http://twitter.com/telosnow