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café, confessions, cuisine, domaine culinaire, français, joie de vivre, nostalgie, papillon social, Personnel, restaurants, taste

Diète stricte

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J’ai pas vraiment l’habitude de bloguer sur des trucs du genre, mais si jamais ça peut être utile à d’autres…

En guise d’avertissement: je parle ici de santé et de digestion. Vais pas entrer dans des détails, mais c’est pas nécessairement agréable à lire à n’importe quel moment. Si vous êtes sensibles à ce genre de truc, ce billet peut avoir un mauvais effet. Aussi, je n’ai aucune formation dans le domaine de la santé, je ne parle que de mon expérience personnelle.

Depuis trois semaines, je suis sur une diète très stricte, recommandée par une naturopathe. Nous essayons d’identifier la cause exacte d’un trouble digestif que je subis depuis une dizaine d’années. Je vous épargne les détails (!) mais après seulement quelques jours (moins d’une semaine), je pouvais déjà voir des effets positifs. Essentiellement, si mon trouble digestif est pas disparu, il a déjà une toute autre proportion que ce qu’il a eu, au cours des dernières années.

Un truc important à noter, c’est que comme n’importe quel aspect de la santé, aucune solution ne convient à tout le monde. Ce que je suis, comme diète, est très spécifique à mes propres ennuis de santé.

Parmi les hypothèses, j’en note trois, principales:

  1. Maladie de cœliaque (intolérance au gluten)
  2. Candida (infection fongique)
  3. Parasite (assez logique, puisque ces troubles ont débuté au Mali)

Quoi qu’il en soit, voici les détails de ma diète…

Permis

  • Riz brun
  • Amande (y compris le lait d’amande non-sucré)
  • Graine de citrouille
  • Petits poissons blancs
  • Millet
  • Sarrasin
  • Saumon du Pacifique
  • Truite
  • Riz blanc
  • Tapioca
  • Maïs
  • Thé vert

    Légumes cuits (en petites quantités)

  • Courgette
  • Courge
  • Algue
  • Chou frisé (“kale”)
  • Carotte
  • Panais
  • Fenouil
  • Oignon
  • Poireau
  • Céleri
  • Pomme de terre
  • Pois
  • Haricot

Restreint

  • Sucre
  • Gluten
  • Produit fermenté
  • Alcool
  • Produit laitier
  • Fruit
  • Viande
  • Levure
  • Champignon
  • Tomate
  • Œuf
  • Poivron
  • Légume cru
  • Café
  • Thé noir
  • Saumon de l’Atlantique
  • Noix (autres que les amandes)
  • Légumineuses (autres que les pois et les haricots)

Honnêtement, c’est pas facile à tenir, comme diète. Au début, ce sont surtout les fruits qui me manquaient. Ces temps-ci, j’ai surtout envie d’œufs. Il y a eu plusieurs moments où j’aurais vraiment aimé pouvoir boire du café. Et je m’ennuie de la viande. Sans compter que je peux pratiquement rien manger en resto.

Faut dire que plusieurs de mes plaisirs passent par la bouffe ou par des situations qui tournent autour de la bouffe. On a beau dire, le thé vert a pas le même rôle que l’alcool ou même le café. Et comme je suis maniaque de café et que j’ai été brasseur maison, c’est pas très agréable de devoir me passer de tout ça. Compte tenu, surtout, de mon approche hédoniste.

M’ennuie de la diversité!

Sans compter que les restrictions alimentaires forment un sujet de conversation assez peu stimulant. Parler de ce genre de chose, c’est le contraire de briser la glace. Pas que ça cause un froid, mais c’est un sujet qui peut facilement monopoliser l’attention et qui amène rien de très utile.

Donc, pour un papillon social, c’est spécialement difficile, comme situation. Oh, je m’adapte. Je suis pas comme quelqu’un qui essaie d’arrêter de fumer ou de boire. Mais ça bouscule beaucoup de choses, dans ma vie. Ma joie de vivre est difficile à maintenir, même si les choses se passent bien dans d’autres dimensions de ma vie.

Mais il y a des bons côtés. Y compris les effets positifs sur ma santé.

Un effet intéressant de tout ça, c’est que je me suis mis à cuisiner tous mes repas, parfois en assez grandes quantités. Ça faisait un moment que je voulais m’y remettre et c’était pas idéal comme moment, mais ça s’est assez bien passé jusqu’à maintenant.

Et j’ai fait quelques «découvertes pour moi-même». Par exemple, je me rends compte que j’aime bien le millet, le chou frisé et les algues. Aussi, les graines de citrouilles grillées font un peu l’effet des graines de sésame grillées. Certains craquelins de riz (“rice cakes”) sont plus intéressants que d’autres. Et mon goût pour le thé vert se modifie.

Selon ma naturo, je vais peut-être pouvoir ajouter des éléments à la liste des aliments «permis», une fois qu’elle aurait les résultats de certains tests. J’espère vraiment que ça va être le cas. Si je devais m’astreindre à cette diète sur le long terme, ce serait difficile à vivre. Quelques restrictions à la fois, c’est déjà pas évident. Mais tout en même temps… Ouf!

Mais, bon, il faut ce qu’il faut.

comment-fishing, Placeholders, playfulness, shameless plug

Playful Living / Jouer notre existence

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[En français plus bas…]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivj6mx9dgqg]

Playing Next

This evening, I’ll be a guest at a public conversation on playfulness. This event is organized by University of the Streets Café, a community development program at Concordia University’s School of Extended Learning.

This post will serve as a placeholder.

The video above is something I did for Ignite Montreal, and contains much of what I’ve been thinking about, in terms of playfulness. The content can be found here, in different versions:

http://Playfulness.in/

Guests: Marleah Blom, Alexandre Enkerli
Moderator: Jimmy Ung
When: 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Where: Arts Café, 201 rue Fairmount Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, H2T 2M8

More info in this Facebook event: http://lar.me/playtalk .

Let’s have fun!

[English above…]

Mise au jeu

Je participerai ce soir à une conversation publique au sujet de l’amusement, organisée dans le cadre de L’Université autrement: dans les cafés (un programme de Concordia). Ça risque d’être amusant. (Plus d’infos ici: http://lar.me/jouons ).

Le 31 mars, j’étais à l’émission La Sphère de Radio-Canada, histoire de parler de ludification. J’y étais en compagnie d’un autre ethnographe, Sylvain Letellier de BeSpoke Montréal (croisé lors d’un 5à7 sur l’innovation ouverte), qui voit des bénéfices à la ludification en marketing et en recherche qualitative.

Conversation intéressante. Mon intention était de parler d’alternatives à la ludification, y compris le jeu ouvert et la conversation. Pas parlé de conversation (à part une mention de notre conversation de ce soir), mais j’ai pu amener le point au sujet du jeu ouvert, ce qui est déjà pas mal.

Pour la conversation publique:
Invités: Marleah Blom, Alexandre Enkerli
Modérateur: Jimmy Ung
Heure: 19h à 21h
Lieu: Arts Café, 201 rue Fairmount Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, H2T 2M8

academics, adaptation, Anthropology, Clueing, Communities, community-building, ethnocentrism, globalisation, globalization, glocalisation, glocalization, identity, Nation-States, nationalism, networking, Placeholders, podcasts, rants, social networking, social networks, sociocentrism, Sociology

Ethnic Diversity and Post-Nationalism

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I normally don’t enjoy Quora. But I was just asked an anonymous question there which made me react. It’s close to the kind of question I get in my intro-level courses in sociology or anthropology, so I like to “do my job” of elucidating these issues.

Here’s the question:

Can there be such a thing as too much diversity?
Up until recently the rule for all immigrants was “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” This appears to have been replaced by “We’re not going to integrate but live as we did back home.”

Is it possible that at some point diversity becomes a detriment that divides society? Just look at how segregated some cities have become

Here’s my answer:

Funnily enough, I’m preparing an exam on material where this very issue appears. Unfortunately, this material isn’t online.
One of sociology’s core perspectives, functionalism, had “extreme diversity” among the conditions under which social order breaks down. The idea, there, was that it went against society’s integration, since the model was based on well-delimited groups.
That theory has been challenged multiple times. For one thing, very few groups have been that well-integrated. The modern notion of “what The Romans were” comes from a biased view and a limited understanding of what went on at the time. In fact, an episode of the Entitled Opinions podcast contains useful discussions of the very issue.

Same thing can be said about a number of other societies, including contemporary ones.
And this is where things get interesting. We’re probably living a transition from a period marked by the Nation-State (19th and 20th Centuries) to a period marked by fluid groupings, including social networks.
In the Nation-State (contemporary Somalia and Japan, along with the fiction of 19th Century France and possibly a short period of time in Ancient Rome), ethnic homogeneity is presumed and ethnicity is managed through a very complex bureaucratic system related to citizenship. The way ethnic groups are treated then is based on what Benedict Anderson called “Imagined Communities”.
In more fluid systems, which include most of human history, diversity is taken for granted and social integration comes from other dimensions of social life.
In the current context, we have an unusual mixture of rigid Nation-State identities in parallel with the reality of transnationalism, postnationalism, Globalization, and blurred boundaries.
So, to answer the question: is it so clear what the limits of the group are? If so, what are those limits based on? If not, why would diversity be a problem?

For those interested in fluid boundaries, a classic work is Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth’s “Ethnic Groups and Boundaries”.

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“Booth Babe” Controversy

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I posted the following to the class forums for my two sections of SOCI203 “Introduction to Society”.
This might be a useful context to discuss journalism, gender issues, feminism as equality between genders, and feminist sociology.
Some context…
As Wikipedia says, Violet Blue (her real name) is an author and sex educator.
(Blue’s main site is somewhat NSFW (“Not Safe For Work”, meaning containing some potentially-offensive material), so I won’t link to it in this context, since the point isn’t about risqué blogging.)
Blue has a column about technology and, as far as I can tell from mentions of her name in the “geek scene”, her reputation is quite positive overall.
Like many others, Blue has issues with what she has called “booth babes”. As stated in HollyHen’s aforelinked blog comment, Blue’s description of said “booth babes” specifically paints them as women whose sexuality, sexiness, or sexual attributes are exploited for marketing purposes during trade shows.
The controversy erupted (!) from a picture labeled “The Saddest Booth Babe In The World” which Blue posted in relation to a blogpost she wrote about a Mac-centric trade show. Reactions to that picture came quickly, especially from people who were questioning Blue’s labeling of someone in that picture as a “Booth Babe”. As, again, HollyHen said, it’s hard to interpret anyone in that picture as a “Booth Babe” and there’s even something strange about using such a label in this context.
Where it gets perhaps more interesting (or, at least, sadder) is that the woman labeled as a “Booth Babe” in the picture is likely to be a software developer and Blue has refrained from apologizing for calling her a “sad Booth Babe”. Maybe the label isn’t slanderous or even insulting, in Blue’s mind. But the overall feeling from many readers is that there’s a missed opportunity, here, especially since Blue didn’t dare talk to the subject of her picture.
Instead, Blue has taken a very defensive stance.
I eventually became aware of the controversy through Mac-centric blogs, firstvia John Gruber then via Shawn King. Both King and Gruber have posted followup comments about the controversy. (King’s followup is clearly sarcastic and includes some comments people may easily find offensive.) In my experience, Mac-centric bloggers and several of their readers tend to go through a fairly unique dynamic by which key figures in that scene are frequently defended vigorously in something of a counterattack. In many contexts, it can indeed feel like a “pile on” effect. But I haven’t noticed any occasion where claiming that one is a victim of a Mac-centric pile-on has had an overall positive effect on the conversation or on the person’s overall reputation.
(By the way, what I call “Mac-centric” blogging includes some work by people who have been labeled “Apple fanboys”, but my labeling isn’t meant to carry any specific connotation, whether positive or negative. I just mean people who write about diverse issues using the Mac and other Apple products as a basis for a number of their comments. In journalistic terms, you could say that these are people who have Apple as their “beat”.)
So… Where does that leave us? I already gave something of my opinion about this. I do think the “sad booth babe” label was negative, that it could easily be taken as an insult, and that it seems ill-suited as a description of a software developer who holds a booth at a trade show in order to show off her work. Even if it turns out that the woman in the picture isn’t the Hungarian developer people surmise she might be, I do find it strange that Violet Blue would use her image as a representation of a “sad booth babe”. While the label isn’t as negative as, say, “bimbo” or “ditzy blonde”, I have to agree with HollyHen and others that using it in the legend of that picture has little positive impact on discussion of the issues at hand (exploitation of women to sell computer-related products and services).
But you may disagree.
So, let me know.
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Open Letter: UnivCafé Testimonial

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Here’s a slightly edited version of a message I sent about University of the Streets Café. I realize that my comments about it may sound strange for people who haven’t participated in one of their conversations. And there may be people who don’t like it as much as I do. But it’s remarkable how favourable people are to the program, once they participate in it.

Having taught at eight academic institutions in the United States and Canada, I have frequently gone on record to say that Concordia is my favourite context for teaching and learning. By a long stretch.

Concordia’s “University of the Streets Café” program is among the things I like the most about my favourite university.

Over the past few years, I have been a vocal participant at a rather large number of “UnivCafé” events and have been the guest at one of them. Each of these two-hour conversations has provided me with more stimulation than any seminar or class meeting in which I participated, as a teacher or as a student.

In fact, I have frequently discussed UnivCafé with diverse people (including several members of the Concordia community). As is clear to anyone who knows me, UnivCafé has had a strong impact on my life, both professionally and personally.

Given my experience elsewhere, I have a clear impression of what makes Concordia unique.

  • Emphasis on community development.
  • Strong social awareness.
  • Thoughtful approach to sustainability.
  • Seamless English/French bilingualism.
  • Inclusive attitude, embracing cultural and social diversity.
  • Ease of building organic social networks through informal events.

In a way, UnivCafé encapsulates Concordia’s uniqueness.

Yet it goes further than that. Though it may sound hyperbolic to outsiders, I would not hesitate to say that UnivCafé captures some of the Greek academia (Ἀκαδημία) while integrating dimensions of contemporary life. More pithily: ”UnivCafé is a social media version of Plato‘s Academy”.

It seems to me that academia is in a transition period. For instance, the tenure system could be rethought. With social and technological developments challenging many academic models, universities are often searching for new models. I sincerely hope that the UnivCafé model is a sign of things to come.

I have discussed this on several occasions with students and colleagues, and this notion is gaining ground.

There is something remarkable about how appropriate the UnivCafé model is, in the current context. To my mind, UnivCafé does all of the following:

  • Encourages critical thinking.
  • Gives voice to people who are rarely heard.
  • Exposes participants to a diversity of perspectives.
  • Brings together people who rarely get a chance to interact.
  • Integrates practical and theoretical concerns.
  • Allays fears of public speaking.
  • Builds valuable connections through the local community.
  • Brings academics outside the Ivory Tower.

As may be obvious, I could talk about UnivCafé for hours and would be happy to do so in any context.

In the meantime, may this testimonial serve as a token of appreciation for all the things I have gained from UnivCafé.

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iCloud Dreams

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Got lots more to blog, including something about “received knowledge”. And a list of things I love about Google. (I’m also getting started on “logical punctuation”, as you may already be noticing…)

But, at the risk of attracting trolls and Apple haters, I thought I’d post some notes from a daydreaming session. In some ways, it’s easier to write than the rest. And it’s more “time-sensitive”, in that my thoughts will likely sound very silly, very soon.

But I don’t care.

So, yes, this post is about iCloud, which will be officially unveiled in a few hours. No, it doesn’t mean that I expect anything specific from iCloud or that I trust Apple to deliver something awesome.

Contrary to what some people seem to think, I’m no Apple fanboi. I use a number of Apple products and I find several of them to be close to the ideal in my workflow, but I don’t have any sort of deep involvement in “the Cult of Mac”, Apple Inc., AAPL, or even Apple-focused development. I use the tools and like them, but I don’t think Apple will save us any more than will Facebook, Dell, Google, Amazon, Twitter, HP, or Microsoft.

[Automattic, on the other hand… 😉 ]

So, back to iCloud…

According to many, “cloud computing” (whatever that means) is a domain in which Apple has been relatively weak. I tend to share that opinion, despite the fact that a number of tools that I use have to do with either “the cloud”, Apple, or both. What might give trolls and haters some ammo is that I do have a MobileMe subscription. But there’s a lot I dislike about it and the only features I really find valuable are “over-the-air” syncing (henceforth “OTA”) and “Find My iPhone”. And since I use GSync on my iPod touch, MobileMe’s OTA isn’t that incredibly important. Depending on what iCloud may be, my MobileMe renewal (which comes up in a few days) could be a very hard sell. I don’t regret having it as it did help me retrieve my iPad. But it’s rather expensive if it’s the only thing it does. (Then again, so is insurance of any kind, but I digress…)

So, I’m no MobileMe poweruser. Why would I care about iCloud?

In some ways, I don’t. Or, at least, I didn’t. Until very recently, though I saw rumours about Apple’s new “cloud services”, I was only vaguely intrigued about it. I did think that it might solve my MobileMe issue. But I treated these rumours with a lot of skepticism and a rather low level of interest.

Yet, today, iCloud has been giving me a drift-off moment. Like Android did, at some point.

It’s not that I have predictions to make about iCloud. I’m not even speculating, really. But it got me to think. And, I admit, I enjoy thinking.

Without further ado (about nothing), my fanciful thoughts stemming from a short daydreaming session about iCloud…

The main thing people seem to be expecting  (based on rumoured negotiations with music publishers) is a music streaming service similar to Music Beta by Google or a digital file storage service similar to Amazon Cloud Drive. Both of these are quite neat and I could see myself using something like this. But it’s not exactly what makes me dream. While iTunes integration might make Apple’s version of a music streaming service somewhat more useful than the others. Besides, rumours have it that, through agreements with the recording industry, iCloud might sync music without requiring long uploads. It’s quite possible that this only works with tracks purchased on iTunes, which would upset those whose expectations are high, but could already be useful to some.

Where I’m beginning to drift off, though, is when I start thinking about OTA for podcasts. It’s been high up on my wishlist, as a feature, and you might say that it’s a pet peeve with iOS devices for podcatching. Having to sync my iPod touch to my main desktop just to have my podcast list up-to-date is a major hassle. Sure, there are apps which sync podcasts OTA. Problem is, they can’t add podcasts to the native iOS media player, which is a dealbreaker in my case. (As absurd as it may sound to others, one reason this is a dealbreaker is that I now listen to everything at doublespeed. Hey, it’s my podcast library and I listen to it as I want, ok?)

So, OTA podcasts would constitute a significant enhancement to my experience. Nothing absolutely required and possibly not that significant for others, but it’d really help me in more ways than one could imagine.

Thing is, syncing my iPod touch isn’t just about podcasts, even though podcatching is my main motivation to sync. After all, I don’t listen to podcasts yet I still sync my iPad. So, what else? Well, backing up is the main other thing, and it might be one of the core reason for Apple’s implicit insistence on syncing. That’d be classic Apple. Data loss can be such a big problem that they’d “do what they can” to prevent users from losing data. Far from perfect, in my experience (I ended up having some problems when I lost my “iTunes Library” file). And quite annoying when it meant that the sync would take a very long time to finish at precisely the point when I’m trying to leave home. But a classic Apple move, even in the way Apple haters may mean it.

So OTA synchronization of the whole iOS device, and not just podcasts or music, would be a definite plus, in this perspective. If it does end up coming with iCloud, it’d provide support to the idea that the tethering of iOS devices to desktop computers is really about ensuring that users back up their devices…

…and stay up to date. Firmware updates aren’t that frequent, but they’re probably a major part of the equation for Apple.

But not so much for me. If OTA podcasts were available, I’d still sync my iOS devices on occasion, through whatever means necessary. In fact, were I to use an Android device, a backup app would be essential, to me. So still not much dreaming from the backup aspect of iCloud.

Although… Sync is much broader than preventing device-specific data loss and making sure your device has the latest firmware.

For one thing, it does encompass some of the aforementioned OTA functionalities in MobileMe. Useful, but still not dreamworthy.

We get a bit closer to a “dream come true” if we talk about Xmarks, a bookmark-sync service originally meant for Firefox.  Sure, it sounds incredibly prosaic. But OTA bookmarks would open up a wide range of possibilities. This is about a qualitative difference from going OTA. In the case of backups, it’s about avoiding an annoyance but, arguably, it’s not really about changing something major about our behaviour. (Then again, maybe it is, with people who don’t back their devices up.) Point is, with something as simple as bookmarks, OTA is “disruptive”. At least, it gets me to daydream. One reason is that:

…no matter how fundamental they have been for the Web, links and bookmarks have yet to find their full value.

Hmm… Ok, perhaps a bit hyperbolic… So let me rephrase…

There’s still a lot to be done with URLs and, as simple as they are, I love thinking about links. Maybe I’m just obsessed with URLs.

As it so happens, I have a full list of thoughts about “link processing” and I’ve already blogged about related topics (on more than one occasion, in different contexts, going back to relatively early blogposts). And I even think social science can help.

I mean, think about it! There’s so much you can do, with links! Much of it is obvious, but I’d argue, rarely discussed. For instance, it’s very clear that we can post links pretty much anywhere. Doing so, we’re sharing their “content”. (In a semiotic sense, links are indices. I wish we can move from the “semantic Web” to the “semiotic Web”. But that’s another issue.) Sharing a link is the basic act of the social Web. It’s so obvious and frequent that it seems not to require discussion”.

Another obvious thing about links: we can measure the number of times they’re followed. In 2011, more than thirty years after hypertext has been introduced as a stable concept, much of the Web’s finances still relies on “clickthroughs”. Seems important.

And there’s a lot of processing which can be done with URLs: shortening them, adding them to “to do” lists, checking them for validity, keeping them in link libraries, archiving their “content”, showing them as external or internal links, preventing them from “rotting away”, showing the wordcount or reading time of the item they “target”, display them as QR codes, abuse them, etc.

As you can notice, it’s easy to get me on a tangent simply thinking about URLs. What’s this have t’do with iCloud, you ask? Probably not much, in terms of the actual service which will be announced at Moscone. But I’ve been dreaming about iCloud as a way to integrate Diigo, Instapaper, Delicious, reddit, digg, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Spurl, The Nethernet, Xmarks…

Hey, I told you I was dreaming! Something as simple as managing, processing, sharing, and archiving links in iCloud could lead to just about anything, in my imagination.

And speaking of Xmarks… It’s now owned by Lastpass, a company which focus on password management. IMHO, some Lastpass-like features could make their way in diverse products, including iCloud. Is this far-fetched? Possibly. But secure handling of passwords can be a major issue in both of Apple’s new operating systems (Mac OS X Lion and iOS5). From “keychains” to SSO, there’s a lot of work to be done which relates to password management, in my mind.

Which leads me to think about authentication in general and the rumours about “deep Twitter integration in iOS 5”. (Not directly related to iCloud, but who knows?) Again, something which can send me (and others) on drift-off moments. What if this integration suddenly made iOS devices more useful in terms of social networking services? Something to ponder, if one has a propensity for pondering.

At the same time, given the relative lack of activity on iTunes Ping, I wouldn’t bet on Twitter integration having that major an impact by itself. Not unlike Google, Apple has a hard time making a mark on the social Web. Now, if Twitter integration does connect to everything else Apple does, it could lead to interesting things. A full-fledged online identity? Access to contacts for not only messaging and photo sharing but for collaboration, group management, and media sharing? Not betting on any of this, but it could be fun. Again, not specific to iCloud, but quite related to “The Cloud”. If Twitter integration is deep enough, in iOS 5, it’d be possible to use iOS devices for “cloud computing”, getting further into the “post-PC era”.

An iCloud feature which is expected by several people, is something like an OTA version of the “iTunes file sharing” feature in iOS. Several apps (especially Apple’s own apps) use iTunes and a USB cable to share files. It was a welcome addition to iTunes 9.1 but it’s rather inconvenient. So many other apps rely on Dropbox for file sharing.

Which leads me to dream about iCloud as a replacement for Dropbox. Sounds extremely unlikely that it’ll have the full Dropbox feature set, especially if one thinks about the “Pro 50” and “Pro 100” plans on Dropbox. But I dream of the day when Apple’s iDisk will compete with Dropbox. Not that I’m convinced it ever will. But it’d make Apple’s devices all the more useful if it did.

Something similar, which isn’t frequently discussed directly, in connection with iCloud rumours, but which would rock: Mozy– or Carbonite-style backup, for Mac OS X machines. Sounds very unlikely that Apple will ever offer something like this but, as crazy as it may sound, the connection between Time Capsule and iCloud would be great if it went that far. From a user’s perspective, the similarities between Time Machine backup and “backing up in the cloud” (à la Mozy/Carbonite) are quite obvious. The advantages of both are clear. And while no hardware announcement is supposed to make its way to the WWDC 2011 keynote, I’d give the Time Capsule some consideration if it provided me with the equivalent of what I currently have with Mozy. Not to mention that Mozy has already sparked some drift-off moments, in me, before they announced their new plans. What if I could have a single service which combines features from Mozy, Time Machine, Dropbox, and YouSendIt?

I even think about the possibilities in terms of web hosting. As it stands, MobileMe does allow for some Web publishing through the iWeb application in its iLife suite. But iWeb has never been a major effort for Apple and it hasn’t been seen a significant update in quite a while. What if iCloud could become a true webhost just like, say… iWeb.com? (Semi-disclaimer: I won a free account with iWeb.com, last Fall, and I host some sites there. I also know some of the people who work there…)

Yet again, I don’t expect this to happen. It’s not speculation, on my part. It’s a daydream.

The reason this makes me dream is that I find all these things to be related and I wish they were integrated more seamlessly. Something about which Apple haters may not care much is the type of integration represented by iTunes. As clunky as iTunes may be, in some respects, it’s quite a success in terms of integrating a lot of different things. In fact, it probably overextended its reach a bit too much and we need to replace it. Apple needs to replace iTunes and we should also replace iTunes in our lives.

Like Gruber, I end up thinking about iCloud in relation to iTunes more than in relation to MobileMe. But I also dream about the ideal cloud service, which would not only sync and backup files between iOS devices, hundreds of millions of iTunes store accounts, and Macs, but replace several of the services for which I’m paying monthly fees.

Here’s to dreaming…

Other parts of this crazy, iCloud-infused daydream, in notes form:

activism, advocacy, Africa, amateurs, applied anthropology, audience, blogosphere, brouillons, comment-fishing, Communities, community-building, consumerism, Creative Commons, creativity, cultural awareness, cultural capital, democracy, diversité, enthousiastes, experimentation, geek culture, glocalisation, idealism, innovation, Institutions, linkfest, media, Montreal, networking, online communities, participatory culture, Personnel, Placeholders, Places, public, public domain, Québec, quickies, réseaux sociaux, shameless plug, social butterfly effect, social capital, social change, social contract, social dynamics, social media, social networking, social networks, social sciences, social support systems, socialisation, sophistication, specialists, technology, trends, wishful thinking

Espace social et innovation ouverte

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Présentation pour le panel « Innovation ouverte et living labs, la divergence cohésive par les réseaux sociaux ?» organisé par Patrick Dubé dans le cadre de la dixième conférence internationale webcom Montréal.

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Africa, Concordia University

CVAP Training: Representations of Africa

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Some resources for a training session I’m giving for the Concordia Volunteers Abroad Program.

musings, personal, personal life

Given Time

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It’s something of a paradox. “Time Away from Time.” These special moments are constrained yet they feel as free as can be. They’re the very definition of “free time” but they’re boxed in.
One key example is time spent traveling between two very different places. Liminality at its best. Neither here nor there, between and betwixt, as if in a bubble of non-existence. In initiation rituals, it’d be the time when a sense of belonging is built, from shared experience. Alone, it’s a moment to reconnect with a forgotten self.
Marcel Aymé may have had these moments in mind, when he wrote The Ration Ticket («La carte» in Le passe-muraille). The paradox is particularly salient: freedom during France’s Occupation.
Time is often given more casually. During a daily commute. In a queue. Or, as today, by an unexpectedly early rise from bed.
Instead of being taken away from my sleep, this time was given away as a token of appreciation.

Thank you, life!