Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Sent to Jeff Brown, Executive Director, RideBuzz (non-profit), Amherst, Massachusetts, in response to an introductory e-mail that included this description:

For the new-forming Radical Research Collective, we asked ourselves to share our influences (and the project we want to work on). Here's my attempt.

Influences

Number one largest influence on my understanding of the economy and some other aspects of society:

Jane Jacobs.
I read her in books, though some essays are online (some bad links) http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Jacobs.html
Most usefully http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Jacobsbiox.html

More than two percent of otherwise eligible-to-vote citizens of the United States of America are denied the right to vote for felony convictions.

In total numbers and in the political tendencies of the disenfranchised, that's about the same as denying Jews the vote in the U.S.

in 1998 "an estimated 3.9 million U.S. citizens are disenfranchised, including over one million who have fully completed their sentences."

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/usvot98o.htm

Sean Donahue, Green Man Rambling, writes about the new rise of ancient practices of how people interact with each other and nature as (he says, I think it needs more help) capitalism crumbles:

Best question ever:

how much can board members donate? If they can donate to their own charity their the board member of? And, how often can they donate? What's the limit of the donation?

[funny thing is he began with acknowledgments and thoughts -- and he's right, it would have been a much better flow with that having been a running loop of images while everything got settled!]

I think I know what you want: more!

Jacquelyn Novogratz - Acumen - singlehandedly changing the way philanthropy - did this

advertisements for cigarettes with babies and doctors

[used to be]
interrupt people, spam them, because it's our job

then, Internet: ideavirus, people talk about us because we deserve it

those days are ending

[Santa Clause 1836-2000 picture]

if important news were naturally viral, if it spread rapidly and were easily monetized, there would be no need for the Knight News Challenge. If important news were always sexy, funny, comfortable to share, and socially rewarding, Digg's front page and YouTube comments might be constant fonts of vital information.

The question is not "do you think this will be popular?"; the question is "do you think this is important?".

People's behavior changes

No secret algorithms. No complicated algorithms. Come to think of it I better stay away from the word algorithm.

People have always needed something better than mailing lists— or other communication tools as they exist now. We need something that can reach millions of people (or billions– everyone) and still be open to everyone on an equal basis. Reaching everyone means filtering to reduce quantity and increase quality. Staying open to everyone means that the filtering must not be controlled by any group, must in some true sense belong to everyone.

Douglas Rushkoff tells it like it is in the economy:

the money is itself crap. It’s based on a centralized lending scheme and has no intrinsic value. The Fed no longer even releases the metric telling us how much money is out there.

All this means is that you can’t count on capitalism anymore. Your wealth is not how many paper assets you have. It’s not even how much land you have (or think you have). It’s what you can do. It’s your value to other people.

There are too many items to keep track of in my Chandler calendar / tasklist, so for lack of anywhere else to keep track of them I'm posting some important priorities to my blog.

Big pieces:

• Community Related Taxonomy before Chicago taxonomy code sprint
• Eclipse PDT IDE

The big ultimate goal: