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I'm always coming across more shipping container ideas and I've recently built a platform above SLHQ for prototyping shipping container-based development of future Empowerment arcologies.

Habitable Shipping Container Design

The Habitable Shipping Container is a design I developed after reading of similar concepts already in use around the world. My initial design (shown here) is for an entire dwelling in one 8' x 40 container. A home like this could be the ideal solution for someone without a lot of money to put into the construction or for an individual looking for an easy way to move around every-so-often without all the unnecessary accessories of an expensive RV.

 

Kill Switch X-Files Episode Had A Hacker and an AI In A Box

A Cafe in a Shipping Container

Where there are computer programmers, there must also be caffeine. Consider the fact that the nerd store ThinkGeek has a whole section devoted to the substance. One of my favorite sayings was adapted from a line in mathematician Paul Erdos’ biography, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: “A programmer is a machine for converting caffeine into software.”

It logically follows that if there are computing centers in shipping containers, there should also be some kind of caffeine dispensers in shipping containers as well. Here come artist Adam Kalkin and fancy-pants coffee vendor Illy to the rescue:

The Washington Monument makes me think perhaps a new kind of geometric symbol would be more appropriate to symbolize empowerment.

I recently created The Activist Memorial and the Gold Star Monument as first steps towards creating symbols of empowerment culture akin to the symbols of American democracy in Washington DC like the Vietnam Memorial, Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool.

How about The Monolith? You know, the one from 2001 Space Odyssey through 3001: Final Odyssey. The late, great Arthur C. Clarke was a great innovator who gave us many high-speed ideas including geosynchronous orbiting satellites.

The Monolith symbolizes a spark of inspiration for evolution, technological advancement and space exploration.

What does a monolith look like?

• It is a tall, smooth black cuboid artifact of precisely 1:4:9 proportions (the first 3 primes squared).
• It can change size, or, in the words of Monolith experiencer David Bowman, "It has only one size: As large as necessary." 
• It can appear suddenly where it is least expected.

The monolith could form a nexus for all the other monuments around it much like the Washington Monument does in DC between the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol.

I have begun prototyping the monolith on a new platform above the current Second Life HQ.

What do you think?

by Moses Silbiger —http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/459

click here to download accompanying poster image.

Learning is at its best when it is goal-oriented, contextual, interesting, challenging, and interactive. These same winning characteristics also define the best computer games … Learning can and should be hard fun!
- Clark N. Quinn, E-learning & video game designer, and author.

We are already the most overinformed, underreflective people in the history of civilization. Is it possible the twenty-first century needs a new kind of learning and a new kind of leader to help us …? Perhaps [we can] begin building not simply an information highway but a transformation highway.
- Robert Kegan, developmental psychologist, professor, and author, Harvard University.

Introduction

As odd or paradoxical as it may seem, I envision video games being increasingly designed to facilitate human development, as virtual reality technologies continue to evolve and integrate with leading edge developmental practices.

Most of us have played a video game at least once in our lives, or at least watched somebody else play, often a close one. Can you remember what you felt when you played a video game for the first time, or watched another player deeply engaged in one? I invite you now to engage in a brief Phenomenological exploration. Try to access how you were feeling, what were your emotions about it? … Who were you at that moment? Can you identify what “self” was playing, or observing somebody else deeply immersed in the game? What were your thoughts about it? Was there something “magical” or “different” about that? Just pause a little moment and close your eyes to really access and embody that memory…

Read more... http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/459

In exploring Indiana we've run across some interesting spots at which to meet, eat and check out.

Indiana History Center's Stardust Terrace Cafe 450 West Ohio St.

Internets! Great atmosphere, lots of round tables, food was closed when we went but reliable Internet and awesome WWII victory posters.

Enzo's Pizza

It doesn't get any more Snow Crash than Enzo's Pizza. I forgot to ask if they do deliverations.

 

So as I mentioned before, there is now an announcement: Facebook's new simplified tabbed interface is coming next week. Try this preview link to see what it looks like in advance. I wish they had an ALL tab to show the whole profile like before and I wish there was a sort of table of contents of tabs at the top of all the boxes that let you filter to them all without scrolling.

Many people are pointing out how iPhone is a potential Gameboy DS killer. My mind is buzzing with the possibilities presented by a game platform that combines serious application interface design with entertainment.

You get both wii-style gesturing and movements AND DS-style touchscreen gameplay WITHOUT needing a pesky stylus.

And you get things no other game platform has: Always-on high-speed internet and GPS tracking EVERWHERE YOU ACTUALLY GO WITH IT.

Imagine locationally connected gameplay, altearnate reality gaming, etc...

My mind is buzzing and I think the real-world Empowerment tools on the iPhone and Facebook will become married to simulated gameplay on both platforms using almost the same interface.

Here's something an Empowerment writer contributed that is a work in progress that I want to share because the ideas and the related video is so exciting:

James Carse, in his wonderful book, Finite and Infinite Games, suggests:
There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
The finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play,
...and bringing as many persons as possible into the play.
Finite players play within boundaries;
infinite players play with boundaries.
Welcome to the Game of Empowerment!

You ARE already a Member of the Game! 

Twitter is a growing phenomenon for what amounts to mass public instant messaging.

Their upcoming iPhone interface is commented on here and it is relavent to our own design.

Empowerment for iPhone will be ubersimple.

I actually designed a handheld interface for Sling Technologies for their handheld parking enforcement devices based on Windows CE but I scrapped Windows' widgets in favor of large iPhone-style thumbable buttons, so my interface design was essentially an iPhone app.

I look forward to coming up with screenshots of what the iPhone UI will look like!

Ideas, anyone?

People are drowning in infotainment. "Information" that is essentially novelty-clad superficial frivolous trivia.

So many forms of information are not actionable knowledge.

Even Wikipedia is like an application program with no buttons. You can look at all the screens but it is in demo mode and you have to pay to unlock the actual features.

It is time to build a system where knowledge means knowledge of action opportunities, the what can be done and how to do it, not simply knowledge of inert, demoralizingly abstract concepts.

That's what Ideapedia, Skillpedia, Toolpedia, Mediapedia, Missionpedia and all our other projects are about: Creating actionable knowledge.

If I were to give it all a name I would call it Dopedia, because the idea and the skill which we are enabling most of all is simply doing.

A related video about drowning in information vs knowledge:

Facebook is about to add tabs at the top of profiles much like the ones that we have started implementing. Here's a screenshot. I think it suggests we're on the right track with this idea: tabs make more sense than expanding and collapsing a ton of stacked boxes.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080521/ap_on_hi_te/facebook_facelift

I have always anticipated Steve Jobs' keynotes with excitement and admired his ability as a presenter of the creative excellence that Apple produces.

It is my goal to deliver Empowerment keynotes with the greatest skill I can achieve to present the most empowering things we can offer.

I'm also quite impressed with the technical setup of Jobs' keynotes. I'm designing our Second Life HQ to have a presentation similar to a combination of an Apple Store and a WWDC Steve Jobs Keynote hall.

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/772.html

 

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/04/spy_games

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In the wake of the intelligence bungles that propelled the United States into the Iraq war, it's no secret that the nation's spies have been working to improve the quality of their analysis. Now the top U.S. military intelligence agency has come up with a new tool for teaching recruits critical thinking skills: videogames.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has just taken delivery of three PC-based games, developed by simulation studio Visual Purple under a $2.6 million contract between the DIA and defense contractor Concurrent Technologies. The goal is to quickly train the next generation of spies to analyze complex issues like Islamic fundamentalism.

Given a choice between a droning classroom lecture or a videogame, the best method for teaching Generation Y was obvious. "It is clear that our new workforce is very comfortable with this approach," says Bruce Bennett, chief of the analysis-training branch at the DIA's Joint Military Intelligence Training Center.

Wired.com had an opportunity to play all three games, Rapid Onset, Vital Passage and Sudden Thrust. The titles may conjure images of blitzkrieg, but the games themselves are actually a surprisingly clever and occasionally surreal blend of education, humor and intellectual challenge, aimed at teaching the player how to think.

All three games put the player into the shoes of a young, eager but sometimes hapless DIA analyst.

Read the full story...

 

When we get to the stage of putting barcodes on our materials, I want them to be cool like these.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/04/japanese-creative-pa.html

Creative Japanese packaging designers at D-Barcode have come up with delightful ways of incorporating the UPC bar-codes into their products. Link, Link to Dark Roasted Blend roundup of creative barcodes (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Oprah is featuring Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth chapter-by-chapter in video seminars. I even found links to it in the "empowering" section of a women's fashion web site. Tolle's ideas are really interesting.

I just met author Bret Hughes at the Infoshop and he is a really interesting fellow with an excellent book called "Wisdom In Perspective" that you can read on Google Books.

It reminds me of Barbara Marx Hubbard's conscious evolution, another Santa Barbara local. Methinks the three of us should meet up some time and brainstorm how we might work together to advance our shared ideas.

 I think iPhone apps could provide really powerful empowering augmented intelligence tools in the field. We use augmented intelligence tools every day: calendars, to-dos and sticky notes are all ways of augmenting our intelligence by reminding ourselves of things we've written down. Professionals such as doctors already use mobile apps to help them do their jobs by giving them quick access to their huge databases of medical information for things like medicine recognition and diagnosis. Apple is proposing a fitness system for the iPhone that helps you plan and execute exercises to meet your fitness goals. Instead of having an abstract wishy washy conception of what you ought to be doing in your head that you may or not follow, an augmented intelligence system gives you step-by-step suggestions to spur you onwards to next step after next step.

Empowerment for iPhone could do much more in my daily life than an EmpowerThyself web site that requires me to interrupt my day to use a computer. Let's just call it iPower for a second (I looked up other uses of iPower and there's a really cool iPower philosophy of activism being promoted through YouTube videos. I should learn more and contact them!). iPower could be with you throughout your day. You could use this to think of things to do and to get help doing things.

Any time you wanted to do something useful you could use iPower to see your mission list of things to do, skills to learn and tools to obtain. For example, I have some free time and I see I have a mission to learn to drive manual that requires a car and a teacher. I have both my car and my buddy Dave to teach me, so I begin that mission and I'm on my way to learning a new skill and accomplishing a goal.

When working on a mission you could use iPower to reference all your skills, ideas and tools to learn and review what you already learned to help you get things done. For example, I could review the Driving Manual skill to get some tips and watch some youtube videos so that I know about the basics before I start getting direct experience with my teacher in the car.

The implementation of an iPhone app could start simply by making a custom theme with a vastly simplified iPhone-style web app interface that would show just a single menu or info panel on the screen at a time with rapid sliding between screens.

Once we got the tools working reasonably well through the browser, it would be more powerful to develop a native iPower application. The native app would have the advantage of bein faster, using less battery power, and working when Internet access wasn't available, such as with an iPod Touch. It would sync back with EmpowerThyself.com all the changes the doer and the site made between syncing.

 
A newly published patent application reveals that Apple has been exploring the possibility of expanding their Nike + iPod sport kit into a full fledged fitness system.

The first segment of the interview process would poll the user on their fitness goals, desired activity level (moderate, advanced), fitness interests (such as jogging, pilates, and swimming), fitness goals (lose weight, firm and tone, and get back into shape), weight goals, desired workout schedule, and so forth.
....
Once the interview process is completed, the computer-based application would create a profile of the user and a workout regiment based around their feedback on goals and fitness interests. For instance, a user interested in weight training would be provided a work out schedule broken down into warmup cardio exercises and a weight training session comprised of sets, reps and weight levels.

The iPod or iPhone would then guide the user through their training, with the possibility of adding additional hardware sensors to track progress.

—http://www.macrumors.com/2008/03/27/apple-digital-fitness-companion-system/

 

My friend Jonah asked me if I had heard of http://www.antiapathy.org and looking at their very cool site led me to a site that tracks how many times people do a list of 100 suggested actions. Their #1 action is one that I also think is easy to promote far and wide: reusable shopping bags.

http://www.wearewhatwedo.org/actiontracker/action.php?action=1#vote

http://bestuff.com/stuff/internet

I like the way the categories on the right expand automatically. It reminds me of stuff Apple has been doing on their pages with sidebar boxes.

There's an article on AppleInsider about how Jobs ensures Apple's successors for leadership by making sure all the leaders get involved in the full spectrum meeting, not just their own domains. I like the idea of making sure everyone gets involved in many areas of an organization so that if someone wants to take a break they don't feel enslaved to their responsibilities because no one else can do it as well.

In his discussion with Fortune, Jobs notes that top staff at the company meet every Monday to review the company's entire direction for the past week -- a practice not often seen at other companies, but one which the company co-founder says is essential to coordinating the larger company strategy and fostering independence among the others.

"When you hire really good people you have to give them a piece of the business and let them run with it," he says. "I want [them] making as good or better decisions than I would. So the way to do that is to have them know everything, not just in their part of the business, but in every part of the business."

The technique explains Jobs' confidence in finding a replacement should he ever leave. Echoing his remarks made on Tuesday at the annual shareholders' meeting, Jobs observes that there are multiple prime candidates for the top spot, particularly chief operating officer Tim Cook. Senior officials at Apple are reportedly skilled enough that there would be little risk. "Some people say, 'Oh, God, if [he] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble," Jobs adds jokingly. "But there are really capable people at Apple."

He also uses this approach as justification for his at times legendary reputation for harsh criticism. Pushing employees to their limits improves them beyond what they thought possible of themselves, he says.

 

MY POWER LEVEL: IT'S OVER 2000! Today I have over 2000 gold stars.

When I get to 9000 I'm going to have an OVER 9000! contest for people to catch up to me
With a special OVER 9000! badge people get awarded as a silly but well-deserved recognition for majorly empowered people.

It will also probably spur a crazy posting frenzy. 

Check out this video about the Haken Fingerboard, a continuous multitouch musical control surface!

http://www.gearwire.com/haken-fingerboard.html

My friends from The Away Team showed me this. I want one. 

ChangeEverything.ca is a Drupal that Google Maps its users.

I found a free online version of the new Army combatives field manual which includes a heavy emphasis on the simplest-to-learn BJJ ground fighting. This is a good place to start to learn a practical set of fighting skills.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-25-150/i...

 

I made two upgrades to the comment system this morning.

I completed a Drupal Development mission called "Email notification upon replies to your nodes and comments so you can follow threads and respond".

Now when someone replies to your comments, you get an email so you can continue the conversation!

I'm not sure if you get an email when someone replies to your node in the first place yet though. Comment here to test this new feature. 

I also gave comment headers a light blue background to make it easier to see which reply buttons replied to which comments. 

 

Okay it's officially time for me to start blogging because I'm kicking so much ass that it's becoming inefficient to explain it to people over and over again whenever I am asked "What's new?"

Hack Sabbath Rock Band School of Rock Glory! I just composed an entire awesome song live using the Rock Band 360 controllers plugged into Reason on my Mac. I just bought Rock Band for $170 to do Hack Sabbath every weekly. I was tired of borrowing it and being iffy on promotions. Now I can promote the hell out of it consistently and 20-50 people a week is my target. And now I have the setup for performing Rock Band as a free style music system along with my full on keyboard and mic and sound interface. Hack Sabbath just became Rock Band + School of Rock. When I post a video how-to this will hit Digg.com and rack 30K unique easily.

History channel has a new show called Life After People that is pretty hardcore end-of-the-world survivalism stuff! What do you all think of this?

http://www.history.com/minisites/life_after_people

"Would you know how to survive if you were all alone? In this exclusive Survival Guide from History.com, survival expert Greg Davenport outlines all you need to know to stay alive. The first step to survival is to know what your needs are. Make a note of these five survival essentials:

1. Personal Protection

To keep your body temperature in its safe zone, you'll need protection from the elements: heat, cold, precipitation and wind.

Clothing is your first line of defense, keeping you warm or cool by trapping air between its fibers and layers. It is important to keep your clothes clean and dry and wear them in layers. Clothes that are wet or dirty can't trap air, and thus can't keep you warm. Loose and layered clothes allow you to take off or add layers as needed for comfort. Wear a wicking layer, like polyester, next to the skin, an insulating layer, like fleece, in the middle, and an outer layer, like Gore-Tex, that protects you from the wind and rain. In a crisis, leather and foam padding from a car, plant fibers and animal hides can be used as personal insulation.

Shelter. In urban and suburban areas, find shelter in an existing structure. In the wilderness, you'll need to improvise a shelter from manmade and natural materials. When creating a shelter, use the same principles seen in home construction. Create a stable framework that will support the weight of the walls; a roof with enough pitch to repel rain and snow; and insulation in the roof, walls and floor to keep you warm. If the shelter is airtight, make a ventilation hole in the roof (to avoid asphyxiation).

Fire. Although it's nice to have, meet your clothing and shelter needs before you consider fire. When building a fire, remember that you'll need heat, oxygen and fuel. Your heat source may initially be matches and lighters but over time, you'll use this resource up. Better options are flint and sparkers. For fuel, don't limit yourself to wood. Consider other options like bundles of grass or scavenged wood products.

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2. Signaling

Don't be left behind because potential rescuers didn't know you were there. A signal can be as simple as blowing a whistle or scanning the horizon with the flash from a mirror. Other options include honking a car's horn, beating metal objects together, painting a big S.O.S on your roof or creating a big ground-to-air signal out of sheets or other material that contrast with the ground. The key is to catch someone's attention so they decide to take a closer look. On the flip side, you never know who might be out there and what their intentions are, so use caution.

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3. Sustenance

Without water, you'll perish in three to four days; without food, you can live for 3 or more weeks.

Water. Our bodies are composed of approximately 60 percent water, and it plays a vital role in our ability to get through a day. During a normal, non-strenuous day, a healthy individual will need 2 to 3 quarts of water. This amount increases with activity or extreme weather conditions. In urban and suburban areas, look for water in home gutters, drains and open containers where recent precipitation may have settled. Perhaps the town had a water storage tank or treatment plant you could access. In all situations, consider surface sources like local ponds, rivers, creaks or natural springs. If able, you should treat your water. The best treatment is to boil your water for one minute. Other choices include the addition of iodine and chlorine.

Food. If you have water, you can eat. Otherwise, don't--the digestion of food can speed up dehydration. To survive a disaster, first look to canned and dehydrated foods for nourishment. As soon as you can, create a garden using seeds found in decaying vegetables and fruit. Other food options include indigenous vegetation, bugs and small wild game like squirrels and rabbits. Don't eat any vegetation or bugs that you can't identify as edible. To avoid a parasitic infection, bugs should be cooked whenever possible.

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4. Travel



As long as the area you are in meets your needs, stay put. If it doesn't, consider traveling to an area that does. Make sure you pack enough gear to meet all your needs during the trip or plan your route so that water, shelter and other needs can be met along the way.

5. Health

Survival stress will play a big role in how well you meet your other needs. Focus on positive events like a successful fire or catching that squirrel for dinner. Put the negative thoughts into perspective, and don't dwell on them. Avoid environmental injuries like cold and heat-related problems (hypothermia or hyperthermia) by staying hydrated and dressing appropriately. Treat all traumatic injuries immediately and do everything you can to prevent secondary infections in cuts and abrasions by keeping the area clean and protected from outside contamination.

 

I'm in the new Empowerment HQ and it rocks.

 

My Profile: I was unaware until Forrest pointed it out that the most important page on the entire site was inaccessible to non-admins for over a month since I introduced it!

My Profile is the page that begins to show what "Empower Yourself" really means. Everything you create and do comes together here as you empower yourself. It's not the final polished interface, but it puts it all together in one place for the first time.

Next step is to make a user's profile visible to other users just as nicely and unify it with Account Info / Interests / Etc.

Tag Cloud: Tags now have a nice icon link that goes to a tag cloud where you can see which tags are most popular and click any tag to see every node tagged with it.

Mac-like list view colors: I made table lists use alternating blue and white table row colors with just a thin line at the top to make exploring pages like My Profile on the site easier on the eyes. This gives me perverse pleasure. Why this isn't Drupal's default I don't know. I would love to have an influence on future Drupal defaults once the site gets more refined, especially with our Icons module which should become Drupal core.

Missions: I've rebranded tasks/doable actions as MISSIONS because it is a whole lot cooler and more exciting to take an important mission assignment than it is to have some petty tasks "to-do". The icon for Missions is a checkbox to represent the "as good as doneness" of a mission assigned to an empowered doer.

Ideapedia.org, Skillpedia.org, Toolpedia.org, Mediapedia.org: I've rebranded the content sections of EmpowerThyself with a consistent "-pedia" suffix naming convention. This is in keeping with our connection to the Encyclopedist tradition begun by the late Denis Diderot and the more recent Wikipedia in the question to make all human knowledge freely available. Domains are still being redirected but you can reach them all through empowerthyself.com for now. Giving each section an identity will appeal to users who come looking for specific content like how-to skill guides, tool reviews and ideological discussions. They will feel at home within the section they begin, but they will be introduced to the larger scope in which their entry point fits. I will work on adding more distinctive "branding" to each section in the layout.

New "Groups" icon: Groups is now a cool trio of empowered doers showing that the two extra doers have got the first doers' back.

New "Empowerment.tv Podcast" Icon: The generic feed icon now has waves emanating from the empowered symbol with a .TV next to it.

What's New now includes Popular Content: See what has been getting clicked the most.

http://www.blackhawk.com/product1.asp?P=87IT01&C=C2076