2004.03.20 - Saturday - Equinox / Spring, 4:38 a.m. (next morning]

Earth Day / Spring Equinox - the First Day of Spring

It's been an amazing day that began while I was riding the 1 train - reading A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash - on my way to the annual Earth Day Equinox ceremony at the United Nations Peace Bell - with the Peace Bell to be rung by John McConnell, founder of Earth Day.

I have been taking part in several of these celebrations - including two at which I had made a contribution - in 1996, when I presented Habitat II Online: Invitation to a Journey, and in 1997, when I had created a web site for Earthday on the Equinox on the Internet and dedicated the Virtual Light & Colour Cubes as Peace Cubes. Actually at the time, I hadn't become aware of the significance of their being twin cubes -photographic negatives and mirror images of each other.

Today's ceremony marked the seventh anniversary of the Peace Cube dedication, and it had become clear to me since Wednesday - at which point I registered www.light-cubes.net - that the Peace Cubes needed to be re-dedicated as Light Cubes - their name having become, as it were, self-evident - and that the re-dedication needed to take place at today�s Earth Day Equinox ceremony - which took place in silence as John McConnell rang the Peace Bell. I have set up an initial Light Cubes web site with links to old and new pages and sites.

I had hoped to get to the International Institute for Education - across from the UN - to meet some people and get a bite to eat, however, I didn't get there until 12:0 am, and ran into Mary Carlin and John Drysdale who were on their way ... I will fill in the details later, as I need to summarize - at least in outline form - some of the other amazing things that have happened in this single and singular day, and I can only begin to record some of the highlights.

Earlier I had received an email message from Chris Parrish, my son Andrew�s half-brother, who is serving on a U.S. Aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific Ocean and had just discovered the result of a Google search for "weapons of mass destruction" choosing the "I�m feeling lucky" option - ie a brilliant simulated error message saying that weapons of mass destruction cannot be found, and proving additional details. Chris had commented that it showed that Google had a sense of humor.

I began a reply to Chris - that I have yet to finish - explaining that it was not so much Google�s sense of humor as a very clever initiative by a group, based in England, who had a very good understanding of how Google works, and I began to describe the goal I had set - when I registered the domain - of a comparable result for a Google search for CIA, combined with a brief introduction to the foundation of a collective intelligence agency.

In the course of writing my message to Chris - I realized that I needed to set up a home page with at least a handful of key links - for www.collective-intelligence-agency.net. This led to a process of using and revising the web page template I have been developing for several new domains - www.digital-commons.net & for www.light-cubes.net. Btw, for some obscure reason the domain forwarding from GoDaddy.com has encountered an unexpected error and these domains do not yet take one to the intended destination, however the interim pages are accessible online.

This led me to go back to Wikipedia, where I had discovered the day before how to create a new page at Wikipedia, after having learned how to edit one the day or two ago. I began a page on information ecology but the time wasn�t right, and I suppose I wasn�t really ready, so I ended up not saving the page.

Anyhow, after looking up Wikipedia on Collective intelligence and then discovering there was no entry for Collective intelligence agency, I realized that there could not be a more perfect place or time - the first day of Spring - to set up as, in effect, the home page of www.collective-intelligence-agency.net

Shortly after I had begun writing the page, I got a phone call from Justin who had come to New York from New Haven for the Equinox and for his friend Andy Wanning�s birthday, and it felt good that I saved the first version of the wikipedia entry soon while he was here.

It�s getting late, about 1:10 am and I need to stop soon - let�s say by 1:49 am - except that coming back to this, I see that it is 4:30, and defintiely time to call it a day - I just have to post this, as is ... incomplete

I won�t have time to tell all that happened however, I have fallen in love with the medium / platform of Wikipedia, and see how it can become a wonderful framework within which to develop the various open source curriculum project that I have been cultivating.

You can get an idea - if you are interested - by going to Collective intelligence agency at Wikipedia.

You can get a bit of an idea of how the Wikipedia process works by going to page history, where you can see the succession of revisions I made - some major, some minor.

I had begun my entries with a login name of Ecology2001 - and my normal email address - ecology2001 at mindspring.com. However, as I was discovering how much I appreciate the Wikipedia process, and how well it suits my style and my strengths in facilitating, editing, organizing and publishing collective documents.

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