4iP Blog

Would love to hear more of your story… I worked on the Channel 4 building as a structural engineer and am now Head of Web Technologies at Arup.

congratulations. looks like 4iP is building momentum. We can’t wait to get stuck in [with pitching for 4iP support] this end either…

Hi Tom

Welcome aboard. Please make a few simple things your priority:

1. 4IP website sucks. Please move off C4 infrastructure (onto Wordpress perhaps?), expand the no of admins and make it a truly vibrant community. It’s kinda empty at the mo. Much as I respect Ewan, i am a bit bored of his Twitter feed being the only thing that updates on this site.

2. Your link doesn’t work!!!

3. The Be Inspired link doesn’t inspire. There is so much more stuff out there for the less 2.0 people to learn from.

Best

M

Hi Mark, it would be good to hear your thoughts on all the stuff out there for people to learn from. There are 3 easy ways to contribute your suggestions flagged up at the top of http://www.4ip.org.uk/inspiration Tim Wright of XPT will be writing a monthly post going forwards to highlight a selection of the suggestions.

(This site is not running on C4 infrastructure - it uses ExpressionEngine.)

Hi Mark

Thanks for the comments.

I’d love to know more about what you’d like on http://www.4iP.org.uk  - I’ve a hundred ideas, but am keen that it should evolve to meet the real needs of people with the ideas.

What I do know for sure is that I’m keen to have open conversation about the kind of ideas 4iP should support. Am tempted to try something along the lines of http://www.ShowUsABetterWay.co.uk

Which link was borked BTW? I hate a broken link, me.  Sinful.

All the usuals
-Tom

Hi Kevin

I got a job with Ove Arup in London after I graduated as a structural engineer (‘95),  but the lure of the Web was too great and I had to say thanks but no thanks at the end of my induction week. 

The nice man running Arup’s graduate recruitment was v perplexed and wanted to know what Arup were doing wrong (nothing - it’s a v cool firm). Not sure he understood my explanation back then, - but am v glad to see that Arup now has a Head of Web Tech. who follows his incoming links!

All the usuals
-Tom

Very good news that Tom is here. There is a sense I think that the website has been waiting for him to arrive before progressing from its first iteration to something that might address Mark Rock’s criticisms.

I’m mentioned above as someone who is hoping to help gather up more examples of sites and services that might excite and inspire us all. I’ll be starting on this task very soon, so if people out there have suggestions for ‘Be Inspired’, please do get in touch as per details with the section: http://www.4ip.org.uk/inspiration

The Jon Katz article is as inspirational as Tom Paine himself - it blew me away when I read it last year….

“Because Paine is for the taking and he is worth having. If the old media - newspapers, magazines, radio, and television - have abandoned their father, the new media - computers, cable and the Internet - can and should adopt him. If the press has lost contact with its spiritual and ideological roots, the new media culture can claim them as its own.”

http://yoz.com/wired/1.01/features/paine.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_paine

Glad someone else spotted it. It blew me away when I first read it, and still does…

Wow! This particular sentence stood out, for me because of what I know about another writer of the same time.

“He would bombard Congress and the White House Internet site with proposals, reforms and legislative initiatives, tackling the most explosive subjects head-on, enraging - at one time or another - everybody. “

It began with the opportunity to pitch an idea at the White House, for a new economic paradigm catalysed by the power of information technology.

http://www.p-ced.com/about/history/

As Paine discovered the renunciation of copyright may the ideas redistributable, a model usable by all.     

He was then able to leverage a development project in Russia, followed by replication in Georgia.

He’s railed about poverty and fasted for economic rights, speaking out about human rights abuses. A story which would attract a furious smear blog, hosted by Google.

http://eng.maidanua.org/node/581 

He’s continued to influence the American left, prompting John Edwards to create the Center for Poverty Work and Opportunity. His papers delivered to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, through me in the last few years are made visible to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. This includes the only fully detailed ‘Marshall Plan’ strategy proposal which can be viewed on line, a document already influencing decisions of a goverment in the area of childcare reform.

http://www.p-ced.com/projects/ukraine/national/

So, no need to imagine it. It already happened longer ago that you might imagine.

What I should have mentioned above, is that part of the Katz article doesn’t take into account the vested interests of media, in my case ABC News.

When I found this activist, he was homeless living in a tent and blogging from his local library. I got the attention of an ABC news reporter and pitched the Capra pastiche of ‘Meet John Doe’.

I was dropped like a hot brick when she realised that their powerful sponsors were being criticised for capitalism based on greed, abstract numbers in front of people. Today what he concluded back in 1996 before the paper on social capitalism reads a lot more clearly as it hits us full in the face.

http://www.p-ced.com/about/background/

“Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings.  Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion.”

Jon Katz was excellent. Good luck with this - and do keep us in touch with what’s new.