Friday, July 20, 2007

Simple statements

I've been asked by some of you if I can summarize the 90 some-odd posts of the Long Island Idea Factory into a couple of simple statements. So here goes ...

Long Island Congress Mission: To establish an effective, flexible methodology and structure so that organizations and the public may work cooperatively and dynamically to promote positive change for Long Island.

Long Island 3.0 Mission: Utilizing web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies, create an environment which will give organizations and the public the ability to meet the Long Island Congress mission.

There it is. For details, please use the search function of this site or look at the "Label Cloud" on the right hand column and click on the subject that interests you.

Thanks for all the kind words, encouragement and commitment thus far. We should be ready to get underway shortly. 

As always, please send me your comments good or bad. 

If you are interested in any of the projects in the Long Island Idea Factory, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Interesting reading ...

A new report on restructuring the New York Empire State Development organization has been issued.  Another "static" report, but helpful nevertheless.

It contains a number of proposals that coordinate with the Long Island Congress/Long Island 3.0 concepts as well as some other positive programs currently proposed or underway on Long Island.

Connect the dots ... use the Long Island Congress.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Excellent Idea, a few suggestions ...


Suffolk County Executive Levy has an excellent idea with his proposal to pool municipal resources for greater investment power and inter-municipal cooperation. Some Long Island municipalities have been utilizing the MBIA for a similar program for some time now.

But do we really want the New York State Comptroller managing Long Island's money? We may like and trust the current comptroller, but will it remain that way in the future? We believe Long Island must maintain some level of independence.

Perhaps a reasonable alternative to consider is to, through the MBIA or another entity, create a financial organization that keeps control of Long Island's money on Long Island and, among other ideas, allows each political sub-division to be a voting "officer" in the organization (Long Island Municipal Cooperative Investment Group [LIMCIG)?), and encourages investment on Long Island and in companies and organizations that benefit Long Island in some manner.

Keeping the money on Long Island opens the door for a wide array of possibilities, including investment in "workforce housing," purchase of open space and development of recreational facilities and job creation by assisting appropriate business development on Long Island. Perhaps we even have financial institutions here on Long Island who would like to participate in this project. The list of possibilities is only limited by our collective imagination.

Obviously, investment of municipal money must be in a safe place. However, we do ourselves a disservice by not controlling our own destiny as best we can.


A LIMCIG type organization fits very well into our Long Island Congress/Long Island 3.0 proposal as one type of "economic engine" that propels Long Island forward.

We must continue to create "economies of scale" within the various disciplines here on Long Island, but we must also ensure that all of these "concept clusters" work together as a harmonious whole.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Thank you, but I can think for myself ...

"But really the biggest myth is that these shifts in media consumtion are all about blogs. Blogs are just one of the little pieces of social software that knit my life together. Flickr, instant messaging and Skype help too. I often say that my network is my filter, and whether it's on friends' blogs, via e-mail or via IM, I'm constantly getting a feed of information that is more relevant to my life than the crap that passes for 'authoratative comment' - as Simon Kelner Editor of The Independent called it. What a load of self-important tosh.

Interesting article on blogging, news and opinion.

The important point for us and the Long Island 3.0 project, is that even in this "web 2.0" work we live in presently, many people are already creating their own information environments. Some are more sophisticated than others.

The vast majority of young people use social networks of one type or another. Are they likely to settle for  "pre-packaged" traditional media as they get older? I don't think so.

As we morph into the Web 3.0 environment, news and information will become more available and more easily "manipulated" by the end user. Long Island 3.0 (and the Citizen Media Network) anticipates this shift in news and information utilization, and attempts to create a framework in which we may use all existing and emerging technologies for a positive purpose.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

The case for "verifiable vendor-neutrality"

"Open standards are clearly a good thing. Hurrah for open standards, etc. Nail my hat to the ceiling! But anyone who has been involved in community and consortium committees where there are commercial rivalries engaged knows that the thing that kills or corrupts a standard is when the spirit of mutual accommodation is overtaken by the spirit of competition. When I look over the standards that I have been to one extent involved with, at ISO, W3C and tangentially at IETF and OASIS, the golden rule is that the standards that come out of a nasty process have problems. The rancour during the Open XML debates does not auger well either for ODF and Open XML, in this respect, but I am an optimist."

Excellent analysis of how we should approach the "open standards" or "verifiable vendor neutrality" issue.

100% on point for our Long Island 3.0/Long Island Congress project.

Thanks to the Information Innovation Exchange ...

... at Long Island University for adding the Long Island Idea Factory to their blogroll.

Nice people doing excellent work.

Thanks again.

Also, a good idea here in  Suffolk County. Sounds like it has the potential to be a great program.  The MBIA has been providing a similar service for some time now.

Its called the "Shared Services Initiative" and part of its mission is to share information technology. Again, we repeat. Please make sure this integrates with other initiatives on Long Island.

 It will be a perfect component of the Long Island 3.0/Long Island Congress concept if designed properly.


Now we're on the right track.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Long Island 3.0 Problem Solving: Part One

The above chart (click for larger image) is an initial conceptual diagram of how Long Island 3.0 might be used to arrive at a rational decision on a particular issue.

"Knowledge, the object of knowledge and the knower are the three factors which motivate action; the senses, the work and the doer comprise the threefold basis of action." - Bhagavad Gita (400BC) Sanskrit Poem incorporated into the Mahabharata

Monday, July 9, 2007

Change for the sake of change?

How does "change for the sake of change" affect the long term health of Long Island?

We define "change for the sake of change" as those acts which have as their primary motive the appearance of facilitating a substantive change for the public good. 

The initiators of these acts, whether government officials, members of the media or others, may do so for a variety of reasons. 

Some feel the only way to get any change at all is to get some change, no matter what it is. This is done primarily out of frustration, legitimate or not, as to the pace of the change they feel is important. 

Is the change important for their future or circulation or legitimately important for Long Island's future? Sometimes the legitimate and self-aggrandizement/financial elements suit a common purpose. More often they do not.

The danger in this type of change is that sometimes it causes more damage than the problem it purports to fix. 

The public perceives the minor change which got so much attention and required so much effort as a major change. The natural reaction to a major change is then to call for a "rest period" before any other change may take place.

Ultimately this start and stop routine results in little if any substantive progress and generally causes individuals and organizations to grow further apart.

We must be able to think and act on multiple levels simultaneously.

What we propose in out Long Island Congress and Long Island 3.0 concepts is a "perpetual process" in the best sense of the term. Not a "perpetual process" which doesn't lead to solutions, but the type of "perpetual process" which comes to solutions but makes sure those solutions are constantly "recycled" into the process to ensure their continued viability.

Think, communicate, act. Repeat.

Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.     Wislawa Szymborska 

Friday, July 6, 2007

"Smart" Radios


"Mobile-gadget makers are starting to take advantage of software-defined radio, a new technology allowing a single device to receive signals from multiple sources, including television stations and cell phone networks."

Good article on an "open source" approach to mobile communication here. It explains the pros and cons with a helpful chart. 

As we've explained in multiple previous posts, secure open architecture is a vital component to the Long Island 3.0 (and New York 3.0) concept. With great institutions like Stony Brook leading the way in wireless communications, Long Island is poised to be a world leader in this field.

Moreover Long Island is poised to be a world leader in demonstrating how this technology and compatible technologies can lead to a regional renaissance.

Good work on Long Island



Some good thinking at the United Way of Long Island

Yes, we should learn how to be more efficient within our own sphere of expertise. But we need more. We need a multi-disciplinary approach for Long Island as proposed in Long Island Congress and Long Island 3.0. 

It is good that the United Way is getting the process started in their field, but it will only be a part of the solution unless coordinated with other elements of Long Island society. The same can be said for other efforts underway aimed at "consolidation." 

As we have stated before, one may "consolidate" in different ways. Consolidating functions and organizations may be a part of the solution if it makes sense after an unbiased empirical analysis. But "consolidating" how one approaches problems and arrives at solutions into a "unified theory of regional coordination" will have a longer and more positive effect on Long Island. 

No form of consolidation will eliminate the desire for people and organizations to express their ideas and try to do a better job, nor should it. Consolidation, in any form, should not stifle creativity and original thought.

The consolidation we are speaking about in our "unified theory"  is a process. We are giving people and organizations the tools they need to cooperative voluntarily, while enabling original thought and growth. "Give a man a fish, and you've given him a meal. Teach him to fish, and he'll have food for a lifetime."

Some other good work being done here at  Long Island biz2biz.com  and 411 Karma.com (in fact I would encourage the United Way to look into this concept as a part of its mission).

I believe both sites, and the United Way, would benefit from the Long Island Common API(s) idea we offered some time ago (among many other ideas available on this blog and elsewhere we can use to form a common Long Island language).

We need to speak the same language (or at least have competent interpreters!) if we are going to communicate in a positive and productive manner.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Meta-editorialism: Part Five

A logical outgrowth of the Long Island 3.0 concept is a virtual mass communications network.

This would include all of the elements we have previously talked about including LIWIKI, Long Island Metadata Portal, Long Island Alert System(s) and the Long Island Congress (Virtual Community Congress, Long Island Citizen Media Network/Long Island Citizen Alert Network) inclusive) among the major concepts.

What does this mean for the traditional forms of mass communication? As the semantic or knowledge based web advances it obviously allows more choice not only in the type of information available, but how we receive it.

Traditional sources will still maintain a level of respect, but people will expect more from them. As the web 2.0 is beginning to demonstrate, there is an explosion of information and ideas available and the manner in which we interact with one another is becoming more and more sophisticated.

What is needed now is more structure to, what seems to be, chaos. It isn't really chaotic, its just that we have not fully developed the tools or the conceptual approach to use the abundance of information at our disposal in a consistently productive manner.

Long Island 3.0 in all its various current and yet to be developed forms, is an attempt to give some structure to the chaos so that we may use all available information for productive purposes.

Monday, July 2, 2007

Long Island WIKI (LIWIKI): Part Two

We talked some time ago about an advanced Long Island WIKI (LIWIKI) which would be a segment of our Long Island 3.0 concept and pointed to a good initial attempt to create a basic Long Island WIKI already underway.

The New York Times magazine had a good article this past weekend which I encourage you to read. It demonstrates how there is a large, mostly voluntary group of folks who constantly check facts and attempt to block inaccurate information. This, to me anyway, indicates a hunger for the "truth" and the scale of the project demonstrates a dissatisfaction with depending solely on "traditional" sources although they remain a large part of the news gathering effort (especially Google News).

What if we could take the WIKI concept and expand it to essentially create a "universal" information exchange for Long Island? What would we need to do?

As we stated before, multiple open standard data structures are required so that all Long Island data has the opportunity to be included, vetted and analyzed. This does not mean there is only one data method or one main database for the information. As we have stated before, we must make the information exchange flexible and easy to accomplish. I have no doubt we have the brainpower here on Long Island to accomplish this and I know there are models already employed that we may emulate and modify.

If we make the process flexible and easy to accomplish and we get some of the "major" players on Long Island engaged in the process (some of whom have already expressed an interest), we can create the type of synergistic model that will propel Long Island and Long Islanders to create an environment for positive change.

More in part three. Stay tuned.