"Most everybody is overwhelmed. And they respond with various defense mechanisms. Denial, isolation, increased greed ('I'll get it while I can'), righteousness ('It's their own fault'). There are a whole set of mechanisms that people use to keep from being open, because the quality of the human heart uncontrolled by the mind is that it will give away everything... We have to find ways to exercise the compassion of our hearts, and at the same moment learn how to know what the limits are and be able to say no without guilt." -- Ram Dass

"There are a lot more voters downloading music than there are music company executives," Hayes warned. "If the RIAA was my client, I'd advise them to think this one through again."

"I live on Earth at present,
and I don't know what I am.
I know that I am not a category.
I am not a thing -- a noun.
I seem to be a verb,
an evolutionary process --
an integral function of the universe."

-- R. Buckminster Fuller

"I no longer want to know where my files are stored. I no longer care. I have hordes of directories on my various computers called stuff, downloads and documents, and the effort that it would take to organise them into a proper heirarchy is just not worth it. The heirarchical filesystem is a really wonderful thing for programmers and websites, but it just doesn't cut it for personal use. I no longer care where my files are stored."

"I'll be burned at the next stake over from Charles when the time comes, for this filesystem heresy. Just the other night, a co-worker was asking me about how diligent I was in organizing my email. I told her, "Not at all. I leave it all in one pile and then run the Find command on it later." She was shocked that I, alpha geek and info freako, didn't have some intricate taxonomy of folders into which mail was sorted by carefully crafted filters.

Here's what I want to see: Storage without explicit organization, but with super-rich metadata for super-fast searches. Allow me to create views made from persistent searches - my "project folder" is simply a collection of resources tied together by a common tag, one of many. And, if I want to form a project hierarchy, make my persistent searches into file objects too. The main thing in all this, though, is that it be woven very deeply within the OS. I don't want a helper app. I want this to replace the standard metaphor completely."

"Hello, m-r Funch!
I founded your books "Dialogues" and "Paths" in the internet in Russian language and I am very enthusiastic about the transformational processing.
Since 15 years I have read and made technics from Kastaneda, Osho, east religion, meditations etc. But I went on my road slow and blind.
For a few months with the help of the processing I made a great jump in my self improvement. I found many prickles in my self and took them out. I feel that I am making a progress for 10 lifes forward.
Thank you very much!
And I want to ask you-how can I work with the processing in my country? I already work with a few friends and we see a real progress in everybody.
But here there is no traditions, no even a psychotherapy has a tradition. But I think that all bulgarian people have a need for processing. The people say that we have many extrasenses, witches etc because we are very sensitive nation. But I think that we have such kind of people, because we don't have psychoterapists. And facilitators.
Can you give me some advice?
Excuse me for my English, please!
Nataly"

there are notes in boxes that are empty

every room has an accessible history

every place has emotional attachments you can open and save

you can search for sadness in new york

people within a mile of each other who have never met stop what they are doing and organise spontaneously to help with some task or other.

in a strange town you knock on the door of someone you don’t know and they give you sandwiches.

paths compete to offer themselves to you

life flows into inanimate objects

the trees hum advertising jingles

everything in the world, animate and inanimate, abstract and concrete, has thoughts attached

"The things to do are the things that need doing - that YOU see need to be done,
and that noone else seems to see need to be done."

"I look for what needs to be done.... After all, that’s how the universe designs itself."

"Here is something you can do right now. In this NYT op-ed, I describe a proposal that would move more work into the public domain than a total victory in the Supreme Court would have. The basic idea is this: 50 years after a work has been 'published', a copyright owner would be required to pay a copyright tax. That tax should be extremely low--this proposal says $50, but it could be $1. If the copyright holder does not pay the tax for 3 years, then the work is forfeit to the public domain. If the copyright holder does pay the tax, then its contacting agent would be made a matter of public record. Very quickly we would have a cheap, searchable record, of what work is controlled and what work is free."

We probably need a system where anybody who creates or perceives value also creates money, and the money is not a loan to be paid back, but a gift to be passed on.

In such a system new projects would be financed, not by borrowing money, but by gaining the trust of others who will believe in the project and voluntarily give money to it, because they want to see it happen. Or by producing value that people will feel like rewarding, thereby funding further production of value in the same vein.

That is not possible with scarcity money, but only with money that people can freely give without experiencing a personal loss from doing so. Money that gains value from being used on something desirable, and that retains no value from being kept.

Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well...

"The Internet was created to move bits around without knowing anything about what the bits encode: porn bits look exactly like biblical bits. So, at its heart the Internet values a non-partisan, unfiltered exchange of information. It is decentralized. It is permission-free. But these are exactly the characteristics required for the pursuit of truth in a diverse world.

The Web, built on top of the Internet, brought us pages, browsers and links. Of these, links are the most important because without them you only have a set of disconnected pages, not a Web. The Web thus begins with connections, not individuals. This mirrors the human context in which morality is possible: we find ourselves first in a world we share. Connections come first. If you start with the individuals instead of our connection, you can never build up to a moral world."

"Children and students are graded for their performance and behavior. Why should not governments be graded too for their performance? A yearly performance report should be produced by the UN or by an outside organization similar to Amnesty International.
A Performance International can show for example:

• the number of years a country has lived in peace with others,
• violence statistics,
• ratification of international treaties,
• implementation of UN recommendations on a host of subjects (human rights, labor relations, the environment, etc.),
• disarmament, shifting of military expenditures to peaceful, productive and social services,
• demilitarization, etc.

Such a report would lead to a lot of good in the world."

"The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions. But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet."

On flight LH 418 from Frankfurt to Washington, Lufthansa AG today began a three-month trial of a new onboard wireless broadband service that allows travelers to connect to the Internet some 30,000 feet in the sky... Users will be able to download from the Internet at speeds up to 3M bit/sec. and upload, initially, at speeds up to 128K bit/sec., according to Lufthansa. The upload speeds will later increase to 750K bit/sec.... Cisco Systems Inc. is providing technology for the onboard 802.11b-based network, which offers wireless connectivity throughout all cabins, in addition to wireline connectivity via an Ethernet connector in the passenger seats.

"Money is Free. Get Used To It."

"Equity markets systematically move money from the less informed to the better informed.

The problem with Managerial Capitalism is not that it's too pervasive and powerful (though it is), but that it is so poor at doing what it claims to do best — allocate people and resources skillfully and compellingly."