Teilhard’s Noosphere concept is so compelling in our digital age that he’s sometimes called the patron saint of the Internet.

Last month, I posted a mind map called “the coming Noosphere”. It was frankly confusing and quite cryptic, heavily influenced by my work at that time: a proposal for an EU research project.

I worked on that concept and I believe the core ideas to be worth exploring. In a sense, they are my plan for a generalized improvement in human productivity and decision making capabilities.

If you lived before the Internet and fully embraced it now, you’ll understand what a cumulative effect it had: the ability to access, process and transfer such vast amounts of knowledge was a true turning point in history. Science builds on itself; improving the speed of information exchange and the size of recipients has an exponential effect on the speed of scientific progress.

I’d like to generate a similar effect in decision making and learning skills, I hope that it will have a great impact on human productivity.

I want to make learning and thinking processes as easy to capture, improve and share as we can grab, change and transfer pictures or videos today. I will focus on us as a collective, not as single individuals. I have a plan.

So long, for now. I’ll leave you with a small hint.

We can model decision making as a process with five activities:

1. Gather Data.
2. Analyze Data.
3. Generate Options.
4. Choose an Option.
5. Implement it.

Yesterday, Wolfram Alpha opened to the public. It will officially launch next monday. Check it out.

social web + semantic web + computation engines = self-improving data analysis

You can click on it to go to flickr and see the mind map with hyperlinks.

I don’t know yet what will come out of it: a book? some blog articles?  a next-gen e-democracy platform for the EU?

Is it a dead end or worth exploring further in your opinion?

Plus, I noticed that you can dowload a copy of EventBox fo free, even if you don’t buy the bundle. It’s my new favourite twitter, flickr and facebook client. It’s a really nice app. Grab it!

For those interested in video production, it includes Kinemac – a tool for live 3D animation (think TV news opening and cut scenes) and -once enough people buy the bundle- we’ll hopefully get BoinxTV – a tool for green screen livecasts from multiple sources.

Even if you don’t get the bundle, check out the awesome EventBox. A single inbox for many of your social sites. It works with facebook, twitter, flickr and it can also read RSS and sync with google reader. It’s my new favourite twitter and facebook client.

My updated HUD will sport an interface made up of just two prims, one for the HUD itself and another one for a folding tab:

A separate UI library will manage:

• the folding tab and the HUD position, supporting the four corner attachment points
• the user interaction, mapping touches in texture space to actions (implemented through messages between scripts)
• the appearance, supporting skinning by loading textures (UUIDs) and UI elements position from text notes (skin files).

Eventually, I’ll add support for multi-prims HUDs and sub-elements (eg. multi-state/multi-texture switches).

I will release the UI library as open source.

The details of the case are not important. Stop listening to the clowns of media who point to the moon but, too weak or complacent, repeat hysterically: “Look at the finger! Look at the finger!”

I will give you a little background to really understand what is at stake here.

Berlusconi and his center-right coalition won the election for the third time in April last year. They won not because of real and measurable merits, they won because the alternative would be chaos. The previous center-left government fell apart under its own weight, the fattest in Italy’s history by the number of ministers and secretaries, and their inexistent majority in the Senate, they had to resort to unelected members of that chamber to rule.

Berlusconi won by a generous majority. The center-left coalition has been dazed, stunned from the failure. Almost unconscious ever since, they posed no real opposition. The far-left was obliterated, out of the parliament for the first time in our history since World War II and fascism.

The economic crisis was about to unfold. The government spent the summer on populist laws and on Berlusconi’s own interests.

We should have known from the start, from their very first few actions. Among them, the so called “Lodo Alfano”, a law that suspended all ongoing and new trials for the prime minister, the head of state and the heads of the two chambers of the parliament. It came at a time when Berlusconi was at risk in a trial involving corruption charges along with the shady English lawyer, David Mills.

Ever since, it’s been a fight between the politicians and the courts. Saying that our judiciary system is under stress and in disarray is a gross minimization, it’s outright broken. For its own faults. It’s been used and abused as a lever of power. A few judges were able to work through this mess and pushed charges against politicians of both sides. They were ostracized, fought hard both by politicians and other judges. Eventually, they were removed and their trials dismantled.

In the meantime, the global crisis precipitated. I still remember Berlusconi’s face when he came out of the EU summits last fall. He said that the game has changed: before the crisis the rule was no state aid for private companies, now it was full state aid for private companies. His ear-to-ear smile had the silly flavor of Alice-in-Wonderland’s cheshire cat.

The last month saw an alarming acceleration in his grab of power.

He’s pressing for a law that would make intercepting phone calls ineffective if not technically impossible. Judges must have incriminating evidence to ask for an interception and its length will be limited to a fixed amount of time. It’s a chicken and egg problem, you don’t need an interception in that situation. You ask for an interception precisely because you do not have incriminating evidence. In any case, criminals will be able to just out wait justice.

They reformed the Italian law for the European elections like they did for the political one in 2005, just months before the vote: the law that lead to a fragile left-center coalition and Berlusconi second coming in 2008. It imposes a 4% threshold, effectively cutting out most true-left and true-right parties. In an election like the European one where there is no issue of governance, it’s just a political land grab.

Our constitution naturally gives to all citizens the right to assemble in public and march. The government decided by decree that the local police chief would be able to refuse this constitutional right – not for public order issues, but for political ones – when it’s exercised in front of a church or commercial malls. It was a reaction to a public and peaceful mass pray by muslims for the Gaza strip under Israeli’s bombs. It was held in front of Milan’s Duomo.

I can hardly think about a single large square in Italy that doesn’t have one church or more.

In an amendment to a law being discussed in the parliament, the Court of Accounts would be reformed and put under political control. It’s the part of the judiciary that looks over the government’s actions for fraud and wrongdoings of financial nature.

Facebook has grown exponentially in the last few months, moving from a few thousand to six millions Italian users. Those are six millions mainstream people who aren’t listening to the narrow vision of the old media. Berlusconi’s own media – TVs, newspapers and magazines – on which he built his empire. He’s surely frightened to find this pillar starting to shake and shrink.

This time the casus belli were pages in Facebook for convicted mafia bosses and people who became “fan” of them. The right-center coalition passed another truly unspeakable amendment. It forces ISPs to filter “any communication” that the interior minister consider an apology of crime or talks about breaking laws. It’s full blown state censorship and a lethal hit to civil disobedience and organized dissent.

The last straw is Berlusconi and Napolitano’s clash. In Italy, the government can use decrees to act on matters that are urgent and essential for the nation. Eluana Englaro had an accident in 1992 and she has been in coma ever since. Doctors have declared it irreversible 14 years ago. We don’t have a law on euthanasia or on biologic will yet, so Eluana’s father has fought through all of Italians judiciary levels for the right to stop her ordeal and let her die. It’s the Italian edition of Terry Schiavo’s story without the internal fractures in the family. It is firmly on the right-to-die side. They say they are acting on Eluana’s own will and that she expressed it many times before the accident. Eluana’s family fought hard with nails and teeths until they finally got a ruling from the highest court. A ruling that cannot be appealed anymore.

Italy, however, is Catholic church’s courtyard.

Eluana was in a Catholic hospital. They had to find a new structure. No public structure was available to take this politically charged burden and the minister of health publicly threatened all private hospitals who offered help. Eventually, one private structure stood up and Eluana was moved there a few days ago.

In a week there will be important regional elections in Sardinia. Berlusconi was on the first line to push his own right-wing candidate. It was almost comical, the actual candidate talked much less than the prime minister during public events. If his name was not on the ballot, you’d doubt he’s the one being elected. Even the symbol of its list carries Berlusconi’s name as a stamp of approval. The candidate looked much more like a silent soldier guarding the back of a talkative general.

In this scenario, Berlusconi made his last move. You have to admit he’s good at it. It’s a political masterpiece.

There is a law being discussed in the parliament banning euthanasia and regulating biological wills. Promoted by the pro-life side, stonewalled by the pro-choice one. If the law were approved in its current form, the doctors wouldn’t be able to stop feeding and hydrating Eluana.

Berlusconi tried to stop her death by decree. He knew that the head of state would refuse to sign it and thus it would be ineffective, Napolitano made it clear to him in writing that he can’t sign an urgent decree to subvert a ruling of the highest court. The executive branch cannot overtake the judiciary one. It’s one of the main principles of democracy and it’s the basis of our Constitution. Napolitano’s main duty as head of state is being the guardian of that Constitution.

Berlusconi knew, but acted nonetheless. Knowing that the head of state would refuse, knowing that Eluana would die in any case. Two days after they cut food, there is no way back. They stopped force feeding her today.

Berlusconi invoked an extraordinary parliamentary session to pass as a law the decree that Napolitano refused to sign. Eluana will be dead by the time they approve this law. He doesn’t care about her. Remember the election? It’s a political move.

It’s also an authoritarian one. He told the media that he wants to go back to the voters. He called for a referendum, to give the prime minister the power to make urgent and needed decrees without supervision from the head of state – obviously including subverting judiciary rulings.

That’s absolute power. He’s calling for fascism and dressed it as a pro-life/pro-choice issue that is going to split Italy in two.

Hi
The sim Isle Of Phoenix is almost empty now and LL will be converting it in the coming days. Since you are a landowner on the sim, we are proposing you to move to another sim. We will transfer your tier duedate to the new plot and on top of that, we will give you 1 week free tier to allow for transition time.
Pls check our land sales website at (…)
Let me know which plot you want and we’ll immediately set it to you at L$0 You can also go ahead and buy any plot and we would refund you the purchase price. We wont charge you any purchase price EVEN IF the plot you choose is slightly bigger than the one you currently own.
To avoid loss of objects from your land, please pickup your objects from the land within the next 5 days.
We are sorry for any inconvenience that this causes and thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Thanks and Regards
(…)

It’s not completely unexpected. I gave the same advice – consolidate to reduce costs – to friends in the land business, but I am very upset at the short therm they gave me. The purpose of my mall is to host people who sell addons for the Teleport Effects HUD, my main product. I owe to these people its very high product longevity, the action of my landowner puts these symbiotic partnerships in jeopardy.

Prokofy thinks that it’s a sign for the coming Thereization of SL. That is a movement toward more centralized control.  A change whose ultimate result could be communism-style committes who approve what can be put on sale and what should not be put on sale. There won’t be any outright bans, products that foster LindenLab’s goals could be shown prominently on LindenLab’s homepage, those who don’t will be buried down in the last pages of search results. LindenLab’s goals are not necessarily in line with SL merchant ones.

I think there is one more interesting reason why LindenLab wants to control OnRez and XStreetSL. They were in a position that gave them a global view the SL economy. In a global climate of crisis, LindenLab may expect an SL economic downturn and may want to conceal it, they couldn’t do it without risk of getting caught if independent entities exist that could refute their statements.

Good aspects of the change:

• It will reduce or remove merchants fees. (If they don’t, SL residents and merchants should push hard for it).
• Due to a deeper integration in SL infrastructure, it could make online sales more reliable. (For LindenLab’s values of “reliable”).

Bad aspects:

• Without competition, there will be little innovation in the one and only online marketplace.
• They choosed XStreetSL, which was not the best one from the user experience point of view. OnRez had, in my opinion, a much better website and their search engine was much better than XStreetSL. (Due diligence: I sell only on XStreetSL, I have never used OnRez as a merchant).
• LindenLab may favour or push down a product or product category for non-economic reasons.
• LindenLab increases its grip on SL economy. They could released tweaked or ourightly faked economic statistics with little risk of being caught, since two of the independent entities who had widespread statistics on the SL economy disappeared. That’s not a point to underestimate in a climate of global, real world crisis.

I will eventually catch up, even if it means repackaging Christmas presents in Easter eggs and sending them out in February… for once, I will actually ship gifts before the holidays instead of after them.