[or, how the ripples are continuing to spread]

this space continues to grow, in ways anticipated or otherwise. (that link will lead you to a talk i gave at the ATDP faculty orientation last May, in which I likened what we do at ATDP to the cosmologist Andrei Linde's bubble universes theory; scroll down to the last part of the essay, if you don't want to read the whole talk.)

many of you have already told schoolmates, friends and family of this new way to web, which -- starting from my little circle of students and mentees, just one part of this tiny program tucked away on the northwest corner of the Berkeley campus, in this gem of a Bay, on the west coast of this multifarious country in the northern hemisphere of this fragile blue planet in this smallish solar system on the edge of a spiral galaxy that is only one of hundreds of billions -- has taken root here and clearly become a meme worth commenting on.

some of the weblogs mentioned below have blinked on and off, much like stars in the real universe, becoming black holes but perhaps leading eventually to other universes. most of the weblogs remain vital and alive, ecosystems in their own right (either fragile or robust); some spawn off other ecosystems, other bubble universes. and all, without exception, becoming part of this newest and most dynamic face of the web, each individual log defining a feature of the landscape of this space, and all looking forward to what comes next...

as for me, it's a continuing story of weaving together the strands of 'family' -- or what family means to me in my life. clearly, in this day and age, we have tools at our disposal that make this weaving, this project, more dynamic and immediate. Marshall McLuhan long ago predicted the rise of the global village... well, here we are, friends, blinking our eyes as we wake up to the new century and millennium, finding the altered byways of our common humanity, bridging the separation of time, oceans, the thin layer of air that covers our one planet.

the foregoing flight of fancy is by way of me welcoming my relatives' weblogs on the new f a m i l y category on the left... hello Aunty Cher, Cousins Ping-Ping and Aaron! and as soon as i return to Maui, i'll get my mom and dad weblogging too. ;-) after all, they're regular posters on our family web-conferencing site at delphi.com anyhow. it won't take too long for them to weblog. mom and dad are both wonderful, evocative writers, befitting their lives and work as clergy people. we're all in for a treat, i can tell you now...

M A Y

J U N E

J U L Y

A U G U S T

{ net.casting }
^