To ensure your future, some freedoms must be surrendered …
We will save you
We will save you
We will save you
From your selves

– Robot Revolution (Say no to SOPA remix), Virtual Light vs. Wizack Twizack vs. ?,

San Francisco over the holidays was a lot of fun but by early January we were really glad to be back in Washington.  We got there Thursday afternoon and spent the next few nights at The Atrium: psytrance Thursday, stompy darkwave on Friday, and then more psytrance on Saturday at Brightness.  The next week it was a darkwave set Wednesday, psytrance Thursday … happy 2012!

Saturday, it was all night psytrance at Gibbous/Deadly Snow. The drinks were strong, the snacks were tasty, the place looked fantastic, and DJ Anomaly was on a roll. Monday night was stompy darkwave at Dead Snow … hey wait a second, I’m noticing a pattern here. Continue Reading »

Today’s the anniversary or Roe v. Wade, and this year’s Blog for Choice Day topic is “What will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?”  Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but reproductive rights remain under assault.  The Obama Administration’s hand-wringing before finally denying an religiously-affiliated hospitals an exemption from the requirement that they provide contraception, and the strident anti-choice rhetoric from all the Republican candidates, show just how far the window has shifted.  It’s time to move things back.

Here’s what I’m doing:

• My vote and my volunteering time are “in play” in 2012.   Along with civil liberties and LGBTQ issues, one of the things I’m judging Obama, Cantwell, gubernatorial candidate Jay Inslee and other candidates on is how assertively they’ll fight for women’s right to choose.
• And I’ll continue to raise awareness, with friends online and off, and discuss the issue.  Yes, I get in people’s face when they make excuses for anti-choice politicians — or downplay the importance of the issue.  [I'm looking at you, Ron Paul supporters.]

What are you doing?

2011 wasn’t the year I expected it to be.  But while it’s easy (and depressing) to look at what didn’t happen, one of my resolutions was to take a more asset-based thinking approach to life.  If I look at what I — and we — accomplished this year, it’s pretty impressive.

– NanoEvolution

In keeping with the goal I overachieved on the most in 2011 (”spend more time with family and friends”), we decided to spend a quiet New Years Eve at home hanging out with a few people … most of whom got sick and cancelled. So it was a very low-key wrap-up to 2011 and start to 2012, quite a contrast to the last couple years.

Which seems like a good thing to me.

Continue Reading »

Both houses of Congress have passed the #NDAA codifying indefinite detention — and Obama’s happy with the language, so won’t be vetoing it.

Meanwhile even as I write this, the House is debating #SOPA.

Remember back in 2006-8 when the Bush Administration rammed through PATRIOT Act reauthorization and FISA? Obama was on the right side for a while — at least until July 2008, when he broke his promise to filibuster. Now, he’s continuing and building on Bush policies. Senator Chris Dodd was heroic on FISA; now, he’s working for the MPAA and using China’s internet policies as a blueprint for the US. And how about Patrick Leahy, bulwark of civil liberties — and co-sponsor of the Senate equivalent of SOPA?

It’s not that I think the Republicans are any better on the whole. Both parties have a few standouts on civil liberties — Wyden, Nadler, the Pauls. But on the whole, the political establishment continues to show itself remarkably unconcerned with Americans’ rights.

Here’s hoping that in 2012 we’ll start to do something about it.

End-of-year schedule overload led to an intense week, complete with meetings trickling over to the weekend.  Sigh.   But Friday afternoon was sunny, so I knocked off early and went for a walk in the woods.  After dinner I took a short nap and a good thing too.

What leads to a pivot? You don’t just wake up one day and decide to do something entirely different. It’s a gradual process.

– Tara Hunt, The Pivot (or How to Learn Humility in 4 Steps), Inc.

Continue Reading »

The past few weeks have been pretty crazy for us here at Diaspora*. It is unbelievably painful to lose such a close friend and collaborator as Ilya, and we want to thank our countless community members, friends, family, and professional contacts for all of your support as we try to take care of ourselves and plot a course for Diaspora*’s future. We are forever grateful to the amazing community of people who have stepped up to help us get things back in order.

– Maxwell and Daniel, Diaspora * is Back in Action

Diaspora * co-founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy’s idealism, passion, and vision touched so many people — even those who like me who never had the pleasure of meeting him in person. So many moving tributes have been written that there isn’t much I can add. My heart goes out to his friends, family, and colleagues.

“There’s something deeper than making money off stuff,” he said. “Being part of creating stuff for the universe is awesome.”

Ilya, quoted in the New York Times obituary

It’s gratifying to see so many people in the community reaffirm their commitment to the vision in such difficult circumstances.  Now that the core team is back in action, after a few weeks for grieving and replanning, it’s a natural time to step back and look at what’s next.

First, though, there’s something I want to get off my chest.

Ilya struggled with depression, and the stress of people like you constantly badgering him and pestering him and constantly making him feel like nothing he ever did was good enough certainly did not help his situation.

– Ilya’s roommate David Kettler, on Diaspora

Continue Reading »

Yeah really.  DJ Anomaly keeps getting better and better, the crowd was totally into it, the lighting made everybody look good, and at 5 a.m. cinnamon rolls appeared as if by magic … epic indeed!

We had both spent most of the week sitting and working so had a lot of pent-up energy.  D had hit her milestone and had that “I’ve earned it” feel.  I had gotten a lot done as well, evaluating potential platforms for the next iteration of qweries, although wasn’t as thrilled with the results: most of the options have glaring problems like “doesn’t work on mobile phones or iPads”, “logging in via Twitter doesn’t work”, or “sends passwords in plain text through email”.  Really?  In 2011?  Oh well, it is what it is; and by the time we got to the Atrium I wasn’t thinking about technology.
Continue Reading »

Why yes, I have been quiet for a while now that you mention it. 

We spent almost a month on the road, starting with Sacramento for a privacy coalition meeting,  and SF for Olli Wisdom at Space 550.  We had juggled our plans to be at IllumiNation, and it was totally the right call.   550 Barneveld is a great venue, and we ran into plenty of familiar faces from back in 2003/2004 when we used to hang out there all the time.  Musically, DJ Dragn’fly was great, and Olli was Olli — not as good as his legendary 2004 (((thump)) set, but still.  One of our friends was at her first psytrance party.  How cool is that?

The rest of the weekend was sunny in SF.  We took it easy on Saturday, and I spent Sunday hanging out in Dolores park with a friend.  Life is good.

Monday morning, it was on the train to DC.  Well, more accurately, the train to Chicago, which got there eight hours late.  So we missed our connection.  So we wound up on an overnight thirteen-hour bus ride to DC.  Fun!  Well no, not actually.  But still, we made it; and BORDC’s board retreat (the main reason we were there) was excellent.  From there it was on to Charleston to see my Mom; very weird not celebrating Halloween, but it was great to see her.  And then back to SF again, and finally home to Seattle.  After sleeping at four different hotels, three residences, the train, and the bus (or at least trying to, on a 14-hour overnight trip from Chicago to DC) … can I just say how good it is to be home?
Continue Reading »

It’s hard to believe but #privchat — the Tuesday morning Twitter Privacy Chat — has been going on for almost a year. CDT, Privacy Camp, and EPIC have done a great job moderating, and the attendees are a great cross-section of the privacy and civil liberties community: non-profits, privacy-focused startups, academics, privacy professionals at large companies, and activists (hiiiii!).

So let’s build on that success with a road trip, and bring the same kind of social networky goodness to Diaspora *!

If you’re thinking that you don’t have time for yet another social network, I feel your pain; the plan I’m suggesting only requires an hour of your time. Before we get there, though, I want to talk a bit about why I think it’s worth doing.

Why Diaspora *?

Diaspora shot to prominence last May, as four NYU undergrads raised money on Kickstarter for a distributed open-source privacy-friendly social network project just as a Facebook privacy storm kicked off. Good timing!

Eighteen months and $200,000 later, Sarah Mei and Yosem Companys have joined the core team, and there are dozens of public installations with tens of thousands of Diasporans. Liz Gannes’ Diaspora Prepares to Launch Open Source network on All Things D and Not vaporware, not a Nigerian prince on the team’s blog give an idea of the current status: an engineering team focused on getting to beta, a growing community, another round of fundraising in progress. Hanging out on Diaspora a lot for the last month, I’ve had interesting discussions with interesting people from across the world.

And one thing everybody that I’ve run into so far has in common:

They care about their privacy.

Continue Reading »

I’m getting hit by a ton of spam so am turning off comments temporarily.

Carry on.

I love social networks.

They’re how I follow the news, get different perspectives, stay in touch with friends — and make new ones. When people complain that online connections are just a poor substitute for “real life”, I just shake my head and tell them they’re doing it wrong. And as I’ve argued passionately in Cognitive evolution and revolution, The future of civil liberties, A grassroots social network activist’s perspective, and Freedom not fear, combining social network and real world activism is a great opportunity to regain our rights online and off.

But there are downsides as well. Facebook constantly changing its interface and finding new ways to violate my privacy, the arrogance and elitism of the guys running Google+ and their evil naming policy (along the incessant circling over the last few days), Diaspora*’s inability to edit posts or block obnoxious people … and the time I spend checking FB, G+, D*, Twitter, Quora, Dreamwidth, tribe.net, free-association and elsewhere.

So it’s time for a break from social networks.

See you in a week or two!

jon