The Currion Meme

Getting back to Paul Currion's meme...

I dunno. Things that I refer to. Hmm. Well, generally speaking, most of what I come by is via email still - not RSS. So here's a short list of places that I reference regularly...

Reuters - the UK site - with RSS feeds and email alerts.

Wikipedia is a good start to any research on any topic.

DigitalDivide.net is an invaluable resource when it comes to ICT.

WorldChanging.com remains at the top of the list - it would be good to have some of the team members respond to this meme, because there are people with distinct specialties there... (whereas I'm more of a generalist - though they DO have generalists as well!)

CafeDiverso is a recent find which I am still looking at...

But What Really Happens?

In all, I would have to say that the thing I refer to the most these days is stuff that I have already written... not that it's better or worse, but because I tend to write about things that aren't easily found on the internet and part of the reason I write is to document them, understand them, and have them open to public scrutiny.

I read a lot - in fact, I read faster than most weblogs write - but the key to it all is found away from the keyboard. When I'm riding around in a vehicle, driving, feeding the birds, staring at a tree, whatever... noticing things in everyday life is really what gets my juices flowing. The world is full of data just waiting for interpretation from a different perspective. A fruit tree's structure can tell you more about what's fruitful than a dozen weblogs on marketing.

Watching 2 people negotiate over a pile of fruit is a much more complicated social interaction than hyperlinks in the blogosphere. Watching how birds interact at a feeder, or how they interact near the feeder... watching water flow downhill... The nuances, the small things... It's always the small things, and while that may sound cliche, I've found it true. Life is in the smallest things; the small things make the big things, the big things move mountains.

The key, of course, is to find the right small things at the right time. No one resource is worthwhile - all of them bring us to a closer estimation of the truth. Even, and perhaps especially, the bad resources.

This might be seen as a cop out, but... it's the way I do things, at least for now. The world outside the internet remains my greatest resource.