What’s in a herd?

I got to work on a lot of exciting projects when I was at the Berkman Center.  Today, one of them officially launches: Herdict.org. Herdict (herd + verdict) came from the idea that when something goes wrong on the Net, it is often very difficult to tell where the problem is coming from.  A web page doesn’t load: Is it my own connection?  My ISP?  My government?  My typos?  Or, am I the only one getting this weird error message every time I boot up a program?

Even a very skilled user has a limited number of places to go for information when something doesn’t work.  They call a friend, check a message board, and run some diagnostics on the computer and the connection.  Herdict Web is part of a much bigger solution.  It’s a web site and a browser plug-in, and it’s a clearinghouse for web site accessibility.  So, if you can’t get to a site you can report that to herdict.org and that informaiton can be seen by anyone else.  Or, if you’re curious where a site isn’t accessible around the world you can see if anyone has reported the site as accessible or inaccessible.

I remember when this idea was a paragraph in Jonathan Zittrain’s law review article on Generativity.  I was roped into meetings with the designer early on, where Jonathan acted out his vision for the sheep icon: “It’s not an oblivous herd sheep, it’s an indignant sheep, on hind legs with one hand (foot) on hip.”  This is a major crowd-sourcing effort, of Internet users not content to be merely consumers but active participants in their online environment.

For me, about to return to places where the Internet is widely available but connections are slow and prone to hang-ups and blocking, it’s helpful to be able to see how widespread my browsing problems are.

And exciting to see a project I helped shape come to fruition.

Tibetan reverie

I am in the midst of planning my return to Asia in early March, and I stumbled upon some more notes I made during my time in Tibet in the fall.  It happened to be November 4, and while my fellow Americans were preparing to go to the polls I was arriving in upper Tibet.

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I bought this notebook from a little Chinese stationery shop. It is “Brilliant New Century” brand. It is early morning and I write from under four layers of blanket in a tent on the shores of Nam Tsho. Yesterday we left Lhasa and headed north, stopping along the way. Fist we stopped at Yangpachen monastery, the Sharmapa’s seat.  This place has been in the midst of controversy, and Shamar Rinpoche’s challenge of the recognition of the 17th Karmapa rings strongly in my mind.  It is situated at a bend in the valley on a hillside they say is like the back of an elephant. Hot springs nearby are capitalized upon for Chinese tourism and geothermal electricity. I am there to deliver a hello from a friend in America to the monks. They say there are around 60 monks, but I don’t see many around. I see a few, and a few villagers, whitewashing the walls in front. Prayer wheels are stacked in the courtyard, awaiting some kind of refurbishing or construction. Ruins of other monastery buildings surround the main assembly hall, and lie between the hall and a brand new Chinese-built shedra (monastery school) next-door.  We visit only briefly and then head on.

Next stop was a village outside Damshung, where some of our driver’s family lives. We have tea and thukpa, and reject half a sheep’s worth of mutton that they wanted to sell us, at some outrageous price. (The driver’s brother in law brought in the whole sheep’s rear half and chopped it longitudinally beginning at the rear.) As we leave, the sister stands by the stone wall, daughter hanging around nearby – the youngest of 3 children, maybe 5 years old. I touch my forehead to the grandmother’s in the traditional way and she breaks into peals of laughter.

I crave news from home, though everyone is more interested in where I am than the other way around.

Nobody was stopping traffic at the entrance to the pass to Nam Tsho to collect entry fees. Not surprising, as the road has been mostly closed recently, with heavy early-season snows. On the road last night, an eagle swooped across the windswept snowy plain. Two yaks in the road faced us. We pitched our camp by the lake shore between the two halves of Tashi Do headland, our spot windy and sacred, just behind a mani wall. The sunset arched over the western headland as we set up tents. At 15,000 feet, I am acclimatizing again. I sleep here higher than I have ever ventured before.

It is a quiet morning. Election day in America. I wonder what is happening, which polls will come in first.  I write, under four layers and on top of five. In this high mountain place, I finally feel free – standing (sitting) on my own. Yet here everyone must depend on each other for survival. (Why was man created so helpless, such that we must kill and wear other animals to stay warm?) Perhaps it is that innate sense of interdependence that allows for the feeling of freedom. The Tibetans are an unembarrassed people. The language doesn’t handle the concept of self-esteem. Yet they are struggling to maintain their identity as a people; even the local handicrafts are made in Chinese factories. It makes me want to help people be good leaders. Somehow it seems like a piece of the puzzle that would be helpful, to help individuals find new ways to solve problems and compromise.  I write small in this journal, as though I will fill it up quickly, but I doubt I will.  Soon the day will begin, weather moving in and work to do.

the etymology of words

With the coming and going of another year’s TED conference (as so wonderfully reminded by Ethan’s fantastic conference blogging), I’ve wasted many perfectly good hours listening to TED talks from past conferences.  Ranging from the musical to the comedic, to the scientific, inspirational and doomsaying, if you have 20 minutes to learn something I highly recommend spending it watching one of these.  Just be warned it’s hard to turn off the TED tube after just one.

One of the idiosyncrasies of these talks is that they’re sometimes posted LONG after they were filmed.  And so some older gems are cropping up now.  I’m particularly taken, at the moment, by this one by Dr. Sherwin Nuland, given in 2003.  He’s a surgeon, but in this piece talks about hope.  Not like Obama’s hope, but academic, 2003 hope.  He pulls out the dictionary and the etymology of the word to make a point about hope.  He says, the indo-european root of the word hope is keu, pronounced coy, and is the same root of the word curve — a change in direction, going in a different way.  (Nuland mentions the convenient association with Kuhnian paradigm shifts — a shift in basic assumptions about science) The willingness to go in a different direction.

What characterizes this willingness?  Nuland goes on to discuss the human spirit: “… this ability that each of us has to be something greater than herself or himself, to arise out of our ordinary selves and achieve something we thought we might not be capable of.  It is an elevation of us beyond ourselves.”  So hope is fundamentally about the spirit.  Moving on,

Nuland quotes romantic poet Percy Shelley’s essay,  ‘A defense of poetry’, where he introduces a concept, ‘moral imagination’.  Here’s what he says (roughly): Man, to be greatly good, must imagine clearly. He must see himself and the world through the eyes of another, and of many others.

Nuland sees us, the American, privileged us, as stepping into the role of the world’s healer.  He says “if we are to be the worlds healer, every disadvantaged person in this world, including in the US, becomes our patient.  Every disadvantaged nation, and perhaps our own nation, becomes our patient.  So it’s fun to look at the word patient.”  And what does he find?  The latin, patior, means to endure, to suffer.  The indo-european stem is paen, the same root as the word compassion.  How nice!