Woody Evans

Matt Blaze on beating Randi with mad info-critical skillz:

“It’s tempting as a cryptographer to suggest that all this could be fixed simply by using a better cryptographic commitment scheme, such as one based on a widely-scrutinized pseudo-random function. But in fact, digital bit commitment really isn’t a good fit here. It won’t help us to find an unambiguous cryptographically strong collision-free one-way function unless we can also explain — even to people who believe they possess magical powers — what that would prove. Remember that the underlying purpose of the JREF challenge is educational, aiming to produce persuasive evidence that refutes (or confirms) supernatural claims. Bit commitment protocols are, as we’ve just seen, hard to get right; good ones depend on subtle interactions of esoteric mathematical functions. It can be very difficult to convince even an expert in the field that a proposed protocol is secure and fair. I’m not aware of any such protocol that’s also easily understandable to a non-specialist. Arcane complexity is a regrettably common feature in modern cryptography.”

(Thanks to A for the link.)

Wow. This has gone from street marketing in Shinjuku to mainstream American semi-desktopism in no time!

Windows Confucius

So what makes for a 2.0 experience in a physical space?

Old values (high-touch) re-emerge. Conversation. Contact. Quality.

2.0 has made the Web more like we want our RL to be… alienated post-industrial folk want friends too. So a 2.0 “place” (like, say, a library) might use social Web tools as a shot of ether into the latent social engine that already exists in the community.

You drive the old folks out for a quilting bee on the 4th Saturday.

Invite the local comics illustrator out for a how-to for the kids.

Establish a Hyde Park style soapbox in the corner of the side lot… you know, there by the azalea bushes and the bus stop.

Programs. Social programs. This ain’t new, folks. Programs for your patrons to do more than listen to a lecture. Programs where people come to participate, have say, and where they have a stake in the outcome of the program and the direction of the community/library.

In building a 2.0 house, we’ve gotta remember why people want 2.0 tools like Facebook. They want to connect and participate.

bq suggested I look into cse’s some while back — two years ago? Anyways, this last Fall I finally did. The differences between Google’s Custom Search Engines and the crop of Swicki search engines by Eurekster probably deserve a long post (or article) as a topic unto itself, but after evaluating both on my own, I have to say I’m a Google CSE man for now. Some control falls through the cracks in both systems.
Here’s one of my Swickis:

http://archival-swicki.eurekster.com/

Here are my GCSEs:

http://woodyevans.com/?page_id=4

And here’s where you can find an article I did over at bq’s house on Swicki searching (last year): Searcher, Nov/Dec 2006

More on this later.

A new crop of students, new things to do this year.  I’ll be working on a literacy outreach project with North Texas public libraries, and working on a book about building the “2.0″ library.  Got plenty of work ahead.

We went home to Mississippi and got to rekindle the embers with all the disparate folks in our families.  Good, that.  Makes me very happy (even though they’ve put in a housing subdivision on Pine Grove Road!).

I’m a bit foggy headed with the dregs of some spooky road cold.  Wife made a good wintry soup, though, with lots of curry — that should help burn the virus out.

A new iteration.  Please see the link to WE.FIND to the right, top.