Category: Uncategorized

IT Conversations: Meg Hourihan – Memory Lane I loved this podcast. Especially enjoyed the end where Meg talks about the future – and she is seeing the same sort of major shift happening that I have been blogging about. Web 2.0 stuff. Flickr. Comes through really clearly when she says “I will not read stuff I can’t link to, or that my friends cant link to.” She’s right, how long before that becomes universal? Media is just not one way, if you read it you want to be able to spout on about it and link to it. No more One to Many. Media that lock themselves out of the feeds and the conversations will just die.

I have been full up in my practice for a long time. A lot of f2f clients, a lot of clients online and also some personal commitments. The latter two have eased off and I can now take on some more clients. I have taken the “full up” notice of my website and it will be interesting to see how long it takes before it is back up!

I love doing psychotherapy online. I know that it has a potential for depth and healing. I don’t think it is useful to compare it to f2f work. I have had some clients who prefer it, others who do both, and some who have come because of geographical isolation or for financial reasons ($NZ is more affordable than $US). I know it works and I love doing it, but it does not replace my f2f work. I can only do about a quarter of my case load online. I need time away from the computer, and spend a lot of time there already!

The other thing I love about doing psychotherapy online is that it is an exploration of the psyche. How does medium affect the work? I have learnt a lot about that over the years and I have some surprising insights. They surprised me.

tags: psyber empathy virtuality psyberspace cyberspace waltzzz psychotherapy psyche

A while back I participated in some sort of “six degrees” type research. I forget what I had to do or what I did. I was not really involved, my heart was not in it even though I am very interested in the psyche of social networks. The results are summed up here: An Experimental Study of Search in Global Social Networks — Dodds et al. 301 (5634): 827 — Science:

Our results therefore suggest that if individuals searching for remote targets do not have sufficient incentives to proceed, the small-world hypothesis will not appear to hold (13), but that even a slight increase in incentives can render social searches successful under broad conditions. More generally, the experimental approach adopted here suggests that empirically observed network structure can only be meaningfully interpreted in light of the actions, strategies, and even perceptions of the individuals embedded in the network: Network structure alone is not everything.

I think it is a good result. It simply points to the fogotten Sociometry of J.L. Moreno, proving his point: incentives, motivation, participation are important! Here are Moreno’s criteria for good sociometry, which I have summarised in an article I am writing and which will put on the net soon.

1. Participants are informed, ready, willing and able to participate.
2. Participants in the group are “researchers”, and the leader is also a participant.
3. Participation is done in action. Learning is experiential, it is learning by doing.
4. There is acknowledgment of the difference between process dynamics and the manifest content. To quote Moreno: “there is a deep discrepancy between the official and the secret behaviour of members”. (1951:39) Moreno advocates that before any “social program” can be proposed, the director has to “take into account the actual constitution of the group.” (ibid)
5. Rule of adequate motivation: “Every participant should feel about the experiment that it is in his (or her) own cause . . . that it is an opportunity for him (or her) to become an active agent in matters concerning his (or her) life situation.” (ibid)
6. Rule of “gradual” inclusion of all extraneous criteria. Moreno speaks here of “the slow dialectic process of the sociometric experiment”.

References are to: Moreno, J. L., 1951, Sociometry, Experimental Method and the Science of Society . Beacon House, Beacon, New York. Page 31

tags: psyber networks

It is interesting how in a day of sessions a theme will recur from one session to another. One could say that it is because of me – I am the common factor in all the days sessions after all. I am entertaining the idea that it is not “me”, at least not my usual day world self. Though just how I am not sure.

A recent theme was the simple exploration of what sheltered under the exterior presentation of an unwanted habit. Each exploration followed a similar path:

Lets take the habit of speeding… what is under that? A bit of a thrill, a surge of adrenalin. Where would you really like to have thrills and adrenalin? … In my relationship.

The habit of brooding and not acting… what is under that? Fear of not being able to achieve. What would you like to achieve? A good relationship.

The habit of getting into arguments… what is under that? Relieves boredom, gets attention. What would not be boring, what sort of attention do you really want? A good relationship.

These three hypothetical situations illustrate the essence of the theme, it continued all that day. Now why would it do that? It is as if once Eros enters the room he does not leave.

Desire for love and attention is a powerful force! The addictions work very briefly and then make things worse. However, they point to what is needed. The psyche is pushing for something, but trapped. The instant gratification needs to be suspended to actually heal the underlying wound. The “attention seeking” is not totally silly, loving caring attention to an inner child is on the agenda, on top of the list!

Noticing the real need hidden under the craving heals. Noticing a lost child heals. Awareness helps. Awareness is love. There is no awareness without attention. Attention is love. In that very moment the sought attention is achieved. Consciousness of the process that overrides the old pain is all that is needed to sustain the repair of the soul.

tags: psychnote waltzzz psychotherapy psyche
The psychnote tag collects posts with reflections about the psychotherapy I practice.

Esther Dyson once had a blog it now tells us she has a new blog home at Flickr: Photos from Esthr. Now that is an example of a great mind and spirit really. (note the way she spels her name on flickr) To be able to reconceptualise flickr as a blog & then act on it. No wonder she is good at what she does.

Reconceptualising the blog is a great idea though. I had a thought today that I would write purely psychological stuff on here – professional creative inspirational notes about psychotherapy. Then, not having a good category system here I thought – why not just tag them, so they create a technorati blog. My psyber posts should be doing that! I’ll tag this one that way & see what the psyber tag does over there. Well all from Waltr for now.

tags: psyber folksonomy ontology virtuality psyberspace cyberspace waltzzz psychotherapy psyche estherdyson

It will happen, even thoug early attempts have not quite made the grade.

Here is the Kate & I chatting about Horse Treks our very first, now stored on Ourmedia. Testing if that will be the place to store the files! Let me know if the download works.

I have uploaded another small test but its not visible (yet?).

My renewed interest in this is that Ron our friend at Plains FM is interested in linking community radio in Christchurch to the Net. I suggested Ourmedia as a way to do it. But will it do it?

And what the hell would be a good model for that? They have a wealth of old audio, they have reach into the Christchurch community but how could that be deepened and broadened?

property for the people More review of the Koepsell Ontology book, and also of another: Peter Drahos & John Braithwaite
INFORMATION FEUDALISM

Here is the first chapter of the book by David Koepsell –

The popular culture, and unfortunately, even the few philosophical works pertaining to cyberspace, do not challenge the assumption that cyberspace is intangible, or that its objects are somehow special. In actuality, cyberspace is just another expressive medium. Since the sixties, however, notions about the nature of media have been confused in no small part due to Marshall McLuhan whose confused and confusing mantra — “the medium is the message” — survives in almost every existing account of cyberspace. The medium is the medium and the message is the message. There is, as we will see, no theoretically sound basis to conflate the two. Moreover, everything we create purposefully is an expression in some medium.

Mistakes about these concepts have led to a confused ontology, or categorization, of cyberspace and its constituents. These mistakes have also, as a result of parallel developments, come to be reflected in a legal scheme which no longer works. What follows is an argument in support of these contentions, and a proposal for a new ontology of cyberspace and of intellectual property in general. The new ontology avoids the mistakes outlined above, and serves as a rational alternative to the myths which surround cyberspace and all computer-mediated phenomena.

amazon

Saved Search – MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Thunderbird has a Saved Search function that is really the best idea yet for email. Rivals Gmail’s Labels – (Thunderbird also has support for labels). I am testing it now to see if this will replace ALL my folders and allow me to have ONE BIG inbox plus virtual folders? And no filters at all to sort thee mail as it arrives? Could that work? Right now it is working well for me in some test folders. I particularly like the way I can set it up to have my replies go into the folder next to the sent messages. The fuctionality is very like playlists in iTunes and Sets in Flickr. So far I have not been able to mix AND and OR searchers. In iTunes a smart playlist can search other playlists, and that is how I acheive that there.

A Saved Search folder is a “virtual folder” in the sense that it merely displays a set of messages that meet the search criteria, while the actual messages remain stored elsewhere. If you select and delete a message inside a Saved Search folder it will get deleted from its actual location, but if you delete a Saved Search folder itself all of the actual messages will remain intact. Moreover, unlike a normal folder, if you modify the search criteria for a Saved Search folder its virtual “contents” will be accordingly updated. Your Saved Search folders will remain in the folders pane even after you exit and restart Thunderbird, until you delete them, thus giving you quick and convenient access to your pre-defined searches.

PCTronix Ltd Cheapest Audigy 2nx I found in NZ, though also looking at thison Trade me. But will it actually work?

* USB 2.0 audio support is required for 24-bit/96kHz Multi-channel playback, and simultaneous playback and recording. USB 2.0 is only supported in Windows XP and requires online software update from Microsoft and Soundblaster.com when available.

Comments would be appreciated.