...which are, after all, also part of the round of life.

today dawned cold and dreary in the East Bay, and fog persisted until noon. even now, as i write this, it hasn't quite lifted yet, and dampens my spirits. my friend Jane's godmother passed away yesterday. i spent this morning talking and just hanging out with her at a Berkeley cafe and keeping her company. makes me wonder where my own godparents are now, and how they're doing. or even if they're still alive. the southern island of Mindanao in Philippines of the 60s is another time, another culture, and another universe away. i still feel it in my bones, but also feel that it's irretrievably lost.

these days, Mindanao is in the news as the Philippine government carries on a campaign against insurgent Muslim rebels who have kidnapped Westerners for ransom, or political purposes. the Muslims want part of the island for their own separate state or country, and have waged war against the largely Christian Filipino government for decades now. i grew up in Mindanao when that war was just beginning, and have stories to tell about that, but that's for another weblog. (this image is of a Japanese cemetery in the small, seaside town of Paia in Maui. the graveyard is slowly being reclaimed by the ocean, and gravestones are falling into the sea. click on the image if you want to see a few pages of pictures i put up a couple years ago.)

in recent weblogs, Trev talks of losing an old childhood friend... (and no, it wasn't Bean)... Evi tells of her pet fish that died and is now "in the big blue ocean in the sky"... and Giancarlo refers obliquely to death. of whom, or how, we don't know, as his weblog was mysterious and cryptic, to say the least. and white noise, silence, which is a kind of death itself, continues to emanate from Aaron's deadlog, the echoes from which are growing fainter, dimmer.

comments culled and paraphrased from some smart people watching web developments: on significant obstacles facing XNS:

• It's possible people aren't actually bothered by the way things are on the Web (and in their lives) in terms of information exchange and privacy. If so, XNS will fail.
• XNS may not capture enough trust to succeed. Instead of being viewed as a cool technology that protects your privacy, it may be seen as a single point of failure. After all, if an agent carries confidential information, having your password stolen could be disastrous. (OneName is not allowing agents to have easily guessed passwords, but they can't prevent users from storing those passwords in insecure ways.)

• Microsoft (or some other large company) could try to crush XNS by exercising its considerable muscle in a variety of ways. The classic FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) approach has served many large companies well in the past and could again here.

• Although there are very smart people working on the technical infrastructure, if problems crop up with data integrity or ongoing performance, XNS could end up being too much trouble to use.

• If no one steps forward to help with XNSORG's tasks, we'll be faced with a situation where there's too much work to do and whatever is done could be criticized as coming from a non-representative body. In short, apathy and a desire to criticize without participating could seriously hamper XNSORG's efforts.

{ net.casting }
^