Originally appeared on Kasabi’s Blog:

This last weekend, I found myself wearing a lab coat, meeting people working on some of the most interesting projects on the web, while in the queue to an entirely free espresso bar. And, I kept seeing human-sized foxes walking about and dancing. I was fairly sure I needed to wake up.

In fact, I was at this year’s Mozilla Festival, so all the interesting people I was meeting were gathering in London to hack and learn. The lab coat was because Chris and I from Team Kasabi were “Human APIs” at the event, and Kasabi was involved and partnered with the Mozilla Foundation. The espresso? That was because the event organisers were saints, and I’m still not sure about the giant foxes…

The themes broadly covered data-driven journalism, education, and multi-media web tools; and the Festival was organised into learning/sharing sessions and design challenges. In the lab coat, Chris and I were able to dip in and out of many different sessions, and try and help people with any questions they have. As a result, I got to see people hacking the news, writing a data guide for journalists, and playing with an eight-bladed helecoptor-camera with Popcorn.js (I hereby coin the word: octopoptocoptor).

The hacks and learning/teaching sessions covered a lot of ground, and touched on many aspects of using the web to further society, tell stories, and uncover the truth in journalism. Data played a central role in this, especially around data journalism, and it’s a topic that needs even more coverage over the next year, I think. Many of the ideas and projects planned this weekend will need to develop strategies for dealing with vast amounts of data, and to get the most out of it! The Mozillian organisers seemed very keen on keeping the momentum rolling, too, with plenty of emphasis on this being a kind of kick-off for projects to develop, grow and mature, so I think there’s a lot of scope for great ideas getting traction.

Before the Festival, I wrote about some of the things I’d like to cover at the event:

There is a growing, and important, trend for stories to include more than just words. I’m keen to see more data behind journalism. Partly, this is because it’s more transparent, and encourages wider fact-checking and accuracy. But it also enables a lot more interesting things to be done with stories.

The Mozilla Festival blog has a lot of round-up info, so I won’t try and re-write the whole thing. It was a great event covering a huge amount of ground, and I’m looking forward to catching up about data-driven projects over the next few weeks. I’d also like to hear from anyone who’s interested in journalism and media on the web, to discuss getting your own datasets published, or building on top of others as part of your project.

“You’ve had an accident on your bike,” a familiar voice gave me something I knew.

“You’re in the hospital,” and the familiarity fled with being awake.

A few more dreams, and I slowly recognised myself lying in bed, surrounded by scrubs and unfortunate people.

I pushed myself upright, and oddly felt the mattress move beyond my arm’s length, and the man opposite me moved from the floor to the ceiling. So, I stayed half-way up for a while, wondering which plane I was on, and where I was supposed to be comfortable. My shoulder suddenly stopped supporting me. I landed face-first in the bed, and the pain in my collar pushed its way into my understanding.

“Bloody hell” didn’t quite make it past my throat, partly thanks to the pillow surrounding my face.

So I fell asleep again, it seems, because my memory kept blinking.

Eventually, I came round more like a morning’s awakening in the dark, and again felt unfamiliar. I kept trying to patch together what was happening, and couldn’t remember anything leading me to here. I remember feeling hungry towards the end of the day, then the blinking of pastel colours, unpleasant smells, and suddenly the sound of someone screaming: “Scratch my bum! Fuck you! Scratch my bum!”

Towards the morning, I started to understand where I was. The familiarity I first experienced came from my wife, who had been by my side all night. I also noticed the number of people around me in medical clothes: nurses, staff, and who I assumed to be doctors. It was comforting that so many people about would look after me. I was able to put a rather disturbed face to the voice asking for his bum to be scratched, too.

I also began to work out which bits hurt more than others, and start to patch together what happened. I was completely deaf in one ear, but fortunately my wife sat on the other side of my bed and helped me understand why I was there. I kept asking her simple questions:

“Where was I? Did I hit anything? When was that?”

Weeks later as I write this down, I am still missing any memory of the reason for waking up in hospital. I remember working from home on something rather exciting, and feeling enthused about the things I’ve been pulling together at work for the past few months. Then, the blinking started and settled slowly into being in hospital. I’ve lost 12 hours. My wife filled in the details for me, and we’ve managed to piece together the rather underwhelming story of what lead me to pastel-coloured blinking, and a lot of pain.

After work, I took our dog for a run alongside my bike up and down the street just outside our house. This had been a bit of a treat for the past couple months for both of us. I enjoy him relishing the speed and bursts of energy as he effortlessly lopes along the wheels having more fun than the boring pace of two legs. Recently, we had taken him round a reservoir and ran him for 8 miles. He loves it. I got him a lead that attaches to the handlebars so he can’t wander into traffic. That evening, this seems to have been a mistake, as he must have paused suddenly, or bolted into a familiar patch, pulling the handlebars to a sudden stop while I kept going.

Some neighbours found me face-down on the road, creating a rather splendid puddle of blood. They knocked on my door and my wife called an ambulance, which sped her and me to the hospital. I was assessed as an emergency, scanned and kept in the resuscitation area while they made sure I wasn’t immediately likely to create a bigger mess. They kept asking me questions, but I kept repeating myself, and demonstrating my inability to think clearly. I was conscious the whole time, but cannot remember a single blink of it.

The next few weeks were occupied with many trips to and from hospitals, and I picked my way through a few important lessons. I learned how good my wife is at looking after people who mostly cause her trouble. She came with me in the ambulance, through the critical area and past weeks of me mostly sleeping and failing to do much housework. She seemed unruffled by my being basically bed-bound, and helped me to smile (even when my face stopped working). She helped me make sense of medical discussions, often using examples she knows from dogs, cats and other mainly quadrupeds. The first lesson—alongside not cycling with a dog tied to your handlebars—was to marry an incredibly gifted and kind person. If they happen to be a vet, that’s an added bonus.

Fortunately, I was also looked after in the form of my colleagues and friends as they supported me. I was sent dozens of messages from the online world of twitter, facebook and my inboxes. My boss informed me in no uncertain terms that he wanted me to go back to bed instead of trying to work, despite my rather bad timing of being ill during the public launch of our project.

Unfortunately another lessons was not pleasant. The comfort I had received from the scrubs and medical uniforms as I woke, wore thin. After coming round to my limited senses, I ended up asking half a dozen people if my collar bone was broken. It was hurting a lot, and I could not lift it properly at all. It seemed obvious to me that it was broken: I could feel the bones moving where there should have only been one, and the big bulge over the most painful bit was a beacon.

Each time I asked, I watched as they read my chart and assured me it wasn’t, that I just had a concussion and nothing broken.

“Keep it moving, so it doesn’t become stiff.”

I cannot remember a single doctor or nurse looking at my shoulder, just my notes.

I sadly learned not to trust the advice that comes first if it seems wrong. Eight days after the accident, my reluctance to move the arm (in case it went stiff) became clear as a consultant took a few minutes to look at my shoulder and nod to himself: “That’s almost certainly a fracture. It looks painful.” The X-Rays he took did not need much explanation, but made me wince. I was told to keep it still.

This lesson was repetitious, and I cannot list every study-session I had on the topic. I must admit I am still depressed about the treatment I received in hospital. Some of the stories were painful at the time, and funny now; but I am trying to work out the final thesis of the lesson. So I will tell one more story here.

After a few days of being home, I went to bed saying: “My face feels very odd. Half of it feels tired and the other half tingly.”

The next morning, half my face was paralysed, calling for another trip to the hospital. Actually, it called for 4 trips to hospital over the next two weeks. Eventually, I saw a specialist. He was optimistic, though, and I think he half-read from my face that I was shocked by his diagnosis:

“Well, you’ve done an impressive job by breaking the hardest bone in the body!”

He explained that I’d fractured my skull, through my ear canal and pinched the facial nerve. I’d known for a while that my eardrum had ruptured, but this seemed to be the cause. He was reassuring, though, and said that he could see some small movement in my face, and that he did not believe the nerve had been killed but was just impinged, and that my course of action was to let my body put itself back together.

That was my main occupation for around five weeks. Though I did have my shoulder put back together with some screws and a plate, which made it a lot more comfortable. Over the whole time, I was astounded at how tired I was, and a lesson I’ve picked up is that a body needs rest to recover. It was a shocking lesson. It was shocking because it’s obvious, but I’d never known just how much rest my body demanded of me. More weeks later, and I still struggle to stay awake for a whole day, and run into fatigue sometimes quite suddenly.

I now seem to be mostly mended, with only a few niggles remaining. My face is only slightly lopsided now, making my giving a talk to a conference last week a lot more fun than it would have been otherwise. I can now hear about half-way through my right ear too. My arm is supposed to be in a sling for another two weeks, meaning I’ve put my most useful arm out of serious action for a total of around 8 weeks! But I can type and make coffee, so it’s not unsurmountable.

Looking back through this post, I’m struck by how much this has been full of experience alongside a series of painful instances. Before a few weeks ago, I had never broken a bone—so took up an introductory offer and went for 2. I had never had surgery of any sort, and have learned not to be too nervous of general anaesthesia. I also learned not to stand up after surgery too soon. I am hoping that as I get back up to speed with work and life that I don’t become depressed, though the fatigue is beginning to become annoying.

The internet is full of information of dubious quality, and I have recently spent quite a bit of time trawling a particular subsection of this by trying to trace family information. I have found many lists of names, and I appear to be lucky that my maternal side seems to have been recorded doing things (been born, married, and buried in the main) for quite a long while. There is a frisson of expectation when climbing the family tree, hoping to find an interesting branch or two and praying not to find any thorns or rotten fruit. Certainly the most interesting character I have found so far was a bloke named Richard, and his story is one that stirs up something confusing to me.

Richard Peyton Bailey

You see, Richard Bailey—my seventh or so great grandfather—was born in Lancashire around 1740. One story says he was a carpenter, and he made the long voyage across the Atlantic as a young man to seek his fortune in Virginia. Nothing I have seen even hints at the motivation for this travel, but several of his family made the journey as well: his father and possibly even grandfather made the same journey. For whatever reason, he settled in a place that I remember visiting as a child, a part of the world which would later become West Virginia. He and his family were pioneers of Western Virginia, long before the time that would split the West from the rest of Virginia.

He seemed to have lived a vivid and dangerous life. He defended his family and friends from Indian attacks, and built a structure called “the fort” that seemed to have been a long-lasting local landmark. His family settled and set-up and set about creating the kind of America that I learned about in my school lessons in US history. His was an archetype of American life: so much so, it almost feels that but for a twist of fate, we could all have learned about Richard Peyton Bailey instead of Daniel Boone. When we sang “Land where my fathers died…” it never struck me at the time just how many of my fathers had done their perishing in America.

It was another story that was most exciting. A single line from a document stored on a genealogical site:

“He served in the Virginia Militia as a spy during the Revolutionary War between 1776 and 1783.”

If this is true, Richard Peyton Bailey, my great grandfather fought in The American war in the very regiment commanded by a certain George Washington, Godfather of all American symbol-folk and the fellow on quarters and dollar bills.

There is no way of knowing whether Richard was a man who fought for a cause or a creed. He could have been a mercenary, or a conscript (though I have some doubts that a commander would trust a draftee as a spy). I cannot ask him whether he believed in a land of freedom (from monarchy) and bravery (in the face of tyranny), or whether he approved of using Boston Harbour as a teapot. But his life is symbol enough. He was to leave the old country of England, and build a wildly independent life with his own two carpenter’s hands. He would defend it by all means, even against the forces of the land of his birth. He would leave his family an inheritance of freedom.

But I’m not a Republican

For me, Lancashire is now a couple hours up the M6. It is the county of my wife’s family, and I’ve spent time visiting her relatives less than 20 miles from where my 7th 8th and 9th great grandfathers-Bailey were born, Christened and sometimes married. My wife was born there.

I shall be publishing this piece on a day that I wonder how Richard would have celebrated: a British Royal Wedding. I imagine him issuing me a rebuke in a heavy Lancastrian accent, refusing to lift his glass with me in toast. He is far removed from me in time, but his symbolic life is at the heart of a mindset opposed to Monarchy. That is part of my heritage: leaving kingdoms to join a republic, build a new life, and to defend it.

But I’m not a Republican. At least, I have no particular aversion to the British form of monarchy. I am instinctively drawn to its sense of stability, and its wholly different symbolic tradition. I do not find the idea of living under an autocratic regime appealing, of course. And I have no doubt that it was the powerful grinding away of the royal office over centuries that we are left with the polished and relatively non-offensive institution of the current monarchy. There is, however, something stable in the idea that the head of state has been raised and trained to office from childhood. In a time of short-term professional politics, the heritage and context of political and symbolic positions being woven into family encourages me.

This, then, leaves me in a bit of a bind. I am drawn to the stability and heritage of British royalty but I am equally repelled by its seemingly mindless adoration from arch-conservatives and the cultural baggage that comes with it. The benign symbols to which I am drawn become something hideous in the publications of the nationalists and bigots. They become something, in the unlikely hands of the American “Tea Party”, that is altogether reprehensible.

I also think about this event in more human terms. There are strong elements of the intrusive, the voyeuristic, and imperfect catharsis in the ubiquitous Royal coverage. Everything is recorded, broadcast and consumed. From my relatively sequestered channel of social media, I have read about the dress, the carriage, the cost, the Queen and the bride’s family. The papers publish every detail, and their commentaries are full of criticism on grounds of cost, taste, politics, and seemingly whim. From people minutely dissecting every possible aspect of what otherwise should be a celebration of a day.

It is a wedding, and I was not invited. What right have I to see and comment and titter and snarl.

As disturbing as the adoration of bigots may be, and as much as any may have a political stance against monarchy, or a justifiable complaint, you demean yourself by being… by being simply rude.

To be Upstanding

So, today will not be watching the Royal Wedding. Partly this is due to my not having a TV, but mostly because I would feel like I were gatecrashing an event to which I was not invited. On balance, however, and in light of the official and public nature of the occasion, I will be lifting my glass and throwing a party. I shall wish my best to the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. I shall pray for their wisdom, and for their future reign. I shall pray that they make it safely through the mindless criticism of the rude reformer and the unwanted baggage from the unwanted fanatics. I shall bear in mind my own inheritance of equality and think on the past reigns of less welcome monarchs, and hope for the balance of stability they might, in their official role, bring to the world.

The more I use it, the more conflicted I am about the iPad. It’s bright and renders images beautifully. I love the way designers are now taking this big screen into account when they produce apps like Pulse news reader and FryPaper. It’s really fun for showing photos to people.

But—and there are so very many buts—it’s not brilliant for writing or taking notes. It’s super fast on slideshows, but takes ages to type, correct, select, copy, and paste. Editing text is still annoying after weeks of practice.

Blogging, as I’m doing now, keeps reminding me how much easier this would be on my trusty laptop. That image I want to use isn’t quite right, so I’ll skip it. What I won’t do is try to find a good image editor app that actually doesn’t resize, then find another that does but hides the file somewhere I’ll never see it deep in the workings of the iPad, I assume. So i won’t do that…again.

Dedicated apps can be brilliant, but the ones for services I use aren’t always. The WordPress app, for example, is terrible. There isn’t an iPad version of the excellent tumblr app for iPhone at all. So, for most things, it’s site-based tools missing letters like tumblr and flickr. But these don’t always render well, and if they need Flash, you’re obviously stuffed.

I’ve also just discovered that I can’t scroll within a frame. This means that I can’t edit—or even see—the text I’ve typed here. So I’ll have to trust that it’s ok. (It isn’t, I’ve switched to my laptop, and have corrected a typo and fixed a missing markdown link.)

More often than not, I’ve got my laptop or my iPhone with me, and more often than not, the iPhone impresses me with its usefulness and size. Indeed, my relatively new iPhone 4 is the best piece of kit I think I’ve bought this year. It’s fast, the resolution is stupifying (I can finally read books on it without feeling eye-strain). Its battery life is great, and it replaces a camera, flip video recorder, sat nav, pad and paper and pen relatively painlessly. There are more dedicated apps for it than for the iPad, and they’re usually better. So the iPhone continues to impress me, and the iPad continues to fail to impress me. When I’m sat at home, coffee shop, or office, the Mac reliably does everything it’s possible to do, and is only slightly bigger than the iPad really.

It’s not that I think the iPad is a terrible device; far from it. It is an impressive piece of kit, and its screen and speed and battery life are great. I do enjoy the times I’ve passed it around to show photos, for example. I was impressed that my two-year-old niece was able to make swirlly patterns on it, and she did it without needing any explaining. It’s great for consuming: for reading Kindle books and magazines and blogs and watching video. It’s got something fun about it, and did I mention that screen being brilliant?

So, I don’t understand tablets. I don’t get the desire to touch the thing you want to work on: your hand blocks what you’re looking at! It’s also awkward compared to a laptop which angles so you can see it and work at the same time. The iPad is constantly falling off, and its keyboard only makes sense if it’s mostly horisontal, making it difficult to see. The screen is so reflective that it’s useless out of doors, even in relatively sun-free Britain. They don’t multitask in the same way that a laptop does, and they’re not as portable as a smartphone.

So, unless a tablet is running a kick-ass operating system, is small enough to be truly portable and has thousands of dedicated applications written for it (hmm, sounds like an iPhone…), I don’t think I’m sold.

Friends very often ask whether I feel myself to be American or whether I’m English yet; and I find I always stammer a bit, and hedge.

Do I feel like an American?

I don’t know.

I spent the first 18 years of my life in Colorado, so you could say I’m definitely American. But it also means that every post 18-year-old thing I’ve done has been carried out on foreign soil. My childhood was American: Thanksgiving, baseball, and some kind of vague but persistant instinct to salute and tear up when I hear the Star-Spangled Banner.

But my adulthood has been British: married life, university, career and (the more I think about it) mindset. Even using the word “foreign” is difficult: I often think of the US as a foreign country. I say “we” when I talk about England playing rugby, but also “we” when I think I’m correcting a misconception about America. I’ve caught myself saying “we” meaning “Americans” and “we” meaning “Brits” in the same sentence. I suppose I’m grateful I don’t also have to say “oui” to include my family name in my confused national identity.

Politically, I seem to see the US as something foreign, something other than mine. And I’ve felt this recently like no other time while watching stories about the “Tea Party,” and the bludgeoning of the American progressive movement at the previous mid-term elections. I supported Obama two years ago almost entirely because I saw him as the best candidate for America’s perception abroad. Europe does not understand conservative America, it cannot see the charm in folksy anecdotes and it cringes when Sarah Palin speaks. It’s as foreign to the rest of the world as a pungent delicacy or disinclination to queue. So, regardless of what I may or may not consider to be reasonable US domestic policy, I can see that certain aspects of American culture do not translate well. Obama translates well: his administration simply makes more sense to the rest of the world, while still being hopefully and enthusiastically American.

A conversation on Facebook brought this into focus when a friend asked how America is perceived abroad. I hope that my own position might help others understand both cultures better, but I’m also more aware than ever that my own perception is confused. I hope what follows might help both of understand America from outside.

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about the way the US is understood is that it isn’t, but people feel they do. Through TV, music, film and multi-national organisations (Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC etc), many people in the UK think they are familiar with American culture. This is probably true in reverse: through music, TV formats, film and a vague feeling of historical connection. Through media, ideas like: rich, racially-tense, belligerent, generous, loud, capitalistic, introspective, neurotic, extraverted and untraveled are associated in the British mind with America.

This sense of familiarity can make it difficult to explain that the US is extremely heterogeneous. Its political, racial, cultural, historical and geographic differences would make the average European’s head spin. These are differences a European would experience through travelling across different countries, not through a single nation. It’s hard to express adequately to a British audience how far apart say: Seattle and New Orleans are culturally, or that New York City is hugely different even from the rest of New York State (though this may resonate with London, which is also very different from anywhere outside the M25).

But, there is something about being American, about resonating with a strong national ideal that is certainly seen. The US is paradoxically very American, despite its diversity. There’s a patriotism and an optimism that is understood but is confusing: it’s admired and distrusted at the same time.

American foreign affairs have been watched with extreme discomfort and apprehension: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were extremely controversial in the UK. Tony Blair’s decision to take the UK into combat without the remit of the UN was seen as following too closely in America’s wake. A lot of the satire here from a few years ago featured Tony Blair as a self-conscious lacky to George Bush’s violent and bumbling foreign policy.

Social divisions within the US are noticed but not understood. Coming from a relatively poor part of the US, it’s difficult to hear people talking about rich Americans as if there are no other kinds. I don’t know if this is something that’s completely part of the stereotype, but it’s probably safe to say that although the US is certainly relatively rich, the difference between rich and poor are huge and not necessarily understood outside the States—or inside, for that matter.

It is probably true that American culture contains something in particular that is difficult for the British to like: it takes itself seriously. I think that Americans generally have a higher opinion of their own culture than the British do of theirs. That’s not to say that Brits aren’t proud to be so, but that they seem to be more tempered and also make light of the foibles they know about. A lot of British humour, for example, is self-deprecating and makes fun of itself for how it must be perceived abroad. Americans more easily default to seeing the rest of the world as foreign, and seeing itself from another perspective is harder. This, even as I type it, brings out another conflict, however. It is probably more true of “middle America”—of the South, the MidWest and the Southwest—than it is of the coasts. But, I do think it is broadly applicable to American culture as a whole.

Some truths are better understood, but still only partially: America is seen as not caring about its poor because of its system of non-public healthcare provision and social services. It’s shocking to people that anyone would have to pay for emergency medical treatment, or be saddled with debt through misfortune. The American misunderstanding of socialism is seen as silly: anything socially beneficial is seen in the US almost instantly as socialism (this is something that’s at least true in the conservative parts of the US) and therefore evil. I don’t think most Americans know the difference between socialism and liberalism or progressivism. It’s not a distinction I made very well until far more recently than I care to admit.

It’s probably true that the average Brit knows far more about America than the average American knows about just about anywhere else. In a pub this very week, I overheard a conversation which ended with an old standby of fireside bollocks-merchants that happens to be unfortunately true: most Americans don’t have passports. America is introspective, putting America first, and not fully understanding that the rest of the world doesn’t really see it that way. It’s probably the case (I don’t have any statistics to hand) that more Brits have met Americans than Americans have met non-American.

People who travel to the US, or who meet many Americans will be more familiar with the complexity of being American. They may be likely to say that Americans are generous, hospitable, friendly and gregarious, as well as shockingly ignorant of the rest of the world. I have heard some hugely funny stories-one even included me, when one of my relatives asked my wife what language she spoke in London!

British travellers to America often talk about friendly waiters and portion sizes being shockingly huge. On my last trip, after ordering a steak, I tried to work out how they had mistaken my order for a single meal for a request to feed a family of four.

People can only see through the lenses they have access to, I guess, and the things that bring America into focus come through pop music, movies, large companies, TV and news. America cannot be ignored by the rest of the world: it’s too big and has too much economic influence. So it’s covered in world news, and it’s talked about in pubs. I think that through its huge presence, and by travelling more, many Brits probably do understand many of the differences I’ve outlined above. But I think that even many well-traveled Brits find it hard to see from the perspective of Middle America.

I’ve found it helpful writing this, because it’s shown me something very important about the way I think. I feel American sometimes, and feel familiar with it. But I don’t feel at home there or with the unqualified label of “American”. It’s very like walking past an old house: you immediately remember what it’s like to live there, but you don’t recognise the flowers or the dog. It’s under new management, and it feels odd to trespass.

Guest post by Stephen Leighton

So who am I? My name is Stephen Leighton and I’m the owner and head roaster at Has Bean Coffee based in Stafford. Has Bean is an online retailer, roasting and selling fine specialty coffees from all around the world direct to home consumers. So, before I go into the main part of why Zach has kindly let me guest post here, here are some basic:

What is specialty coffee?

Specialty coffee—simply—is coffee that is grown for the specialist market. It differs from coffees grown for the commodity, mass-produced market in price and quality. Specialty coffee is bought by conscientious importers and roasters who care about the sustainability (of course this is a broad brush and there are some unscrupulous buyers) of the product they are buying. If a fair price isn’t paid then it ceases to exist.

Fair Trade is fair enough isn’t it?

Fair Trade in the commodity market is indeed fair—much fairer than the prices they would normally get. It also imposes guidelines for growers to have social programs to look after the people that work for them and the environment. But in the specialty sector of the market, Fair Trade has no place as prices paid to farmers are much greater than the Fair Trade price. In a very sustainable way, good products fetch higher prices that can be fed down the line.

What about the social responsibility for non-Fair Trade coffee?

Well, you tend to find that good people sell good coffee: its just the way it tends to go. Good farms need good people to pick because quality in selection is vital. These people demand good conditions and good wage; and they themselves are rare commodity.

But to make sure of this there is nothing like going to visit the farms.

This post is about one of these visits and the coffee that came from it. This is no hard sell—we don’t even have any of this coffee yet—but an insight into what it takes to find coffee and what relationships go into this.

Back in 2008 I was invited to go and be a judge for a program called the Cup of Excellence that was being held in Bolivia. This was my second time in Bolivia judging this competition (the previous being back in 2006) and one of many jury’s I have participated in. Bolivia is one of the best-kept secrets in the coffee world: small farms great altitude make for a fantastic climate. Unfortunately, coffee buyers are put off by the unstable economy and political situations along with the issues of coca and illicit drugs that are legally allowed to be grown in Bolivia.

At the end of the competition, we had cupped many coffees over and over again and one, for me, really stood out. But until you get home from the competition, you really don’t get to find out which farms are which. Before we left, we went to an event where the farmers could meet the jury members and ask them questions. I remember this particular time, it was being held in what could only be called a greenhouse, and it was sweltering. Being of fair skin and not being good with the sun, many breaks for me were taken to creep outside to a breeze. On one occasion, I got talking to one of the farmers who spoke great English. It was his first time competing and he didn’t know where he had finished, but was just proud to have made it to the international jury. We chatted and swapped business cards and went on our way.

When I arrived home, I dived into my emails and there was one from this chap just saying he was pleased to meet me and that he hoped I had travelled safely home. Intrigued by this contact, I got my cupping scores out and was able to match my scores to the coffees we had cupped. I found that not only had Mario’s coffee made it to the finals, but it was the one coffee that had stood out head and shoulders for me in the cuppings.

Excited by this, I waited in anticipation for the auction of this coffee—hoping we would be able to secure it. With a lot of jostling and a really high bid, we were able to fight off the competition and secure the lot.

Negotiations ensued, and we have taken all of the coffee from the farm ever since! We also found out that we are the only people ever to buy the coffee. In the past they had never been able to find a route for their fabulous coffee to market.

But I had never been to the farm, so this year I decided it was time to do so. So I made a marathon journey of 36 hours from home in the UK to La Paz, then another 3 hour car journey to the farm.

I spent the whole week picking with the pickers eating with the family, living on the farm, in the community. I kept a diary of my time there at the links at the bottom of this post, so I wont repeat whats already been written, but it was amazing! The local community heard I liked football so arranged for us to play a game of farm workers and me against the community. Afterwards we spent the evening chatting and drinking beers watching the sun go down. Truly magical.

We also recorded a special video for our weekly videocast we do called “In My Mug” which you can see below (link here if it doesn’t load for you):

So when we get asked: “Do you do Fair Trade coffee?” we push out our chest and say “No! We can do better than that.”

This article © 2010 Stephen Leighton; all rights reserved. Images via flickr licensed as stated and used here with the author‘s kind permission.

I was asked on Formspring.me: “Do you think it’s possible for a religious politician to put aside the teachings of their religious institution, and make decisions purely on evidence and for the benefit of the population as a whole?”

What follows is an edited version of the answer I gave there.

My immediate reaction was simply: “Not any more than anyone else can put aside their own experience, philosophy, intuition, insight and individual knowledge or understanding when making decisions.”

Surely, when you make a particular decision you bring to bear a vast collection of understanding. Not all of this is “evidence-based” in the strict terms I believe you’re probably referring to. The same is true for a religious person and a non-religious person, because both have brains that work like people’s brains should, right? Unless you’re suggesting that the religious are somehow less than human?

And, why would they or anyone else want to? Is it always bad for a person to base a decision on their own experience with morals, teachings, understandings and even faith? I’m personally delighted when someone I distrust makes a decision based on something bigger than himself. It, at the very least, shows an ability to consider multiple perspectives.

But I began to think more about the question, and what it suggests. It seems more or less bigoted to suggest that a minority of people in the world have a monopoly on sense because they have chosen—based on their own experiences, morals, understandings, intuitions and the rest—to reject religious teaching.

And I know that many people who read this will immediately become cross. They’ll accuse me of saying that people who reject religion have no sense. I may get more angry comments about thinking of some atheists as religious people, and thinking of some Christians (and, indeed, people of other moral traditions) as not really religious at all. I hope that people will read the whole paragraph above, however. It’s quite a statement to suggest that anyone with a professed faith should set aside that faith whenever a political decision is made. Most people in the world do profess some form of faith, and suggesting that most of humanity is incapable of making trustworthy decisions is dangerous ground. It’s potentially elitest ground.

I agree—I think—that there are times when the idea of having a decision made by someone whose understanding of a situation may be compromised by their idiosyncratic state is preposterous or unpleasant. I’d find sexual tips and marriage advice from a celibate priest harder to trust than from a friend celebrating his 25th anniversary, for example. But, political decisions are, by definition, decisions involving many people, and a minister for homes and families (or whatever they’d fall under) who happens to be a celibate priest might not be a bad thing. Political decisions would demand skills like being able to see the fullest picture possible, to balance the needs of an important minority with the majority, and the ability to think clearly and take advice.

Then we come to “evidence”. Do you always base every decision on “evidence”? Do you double-blind, placebo-control, clinically trial every decision you make?

“Blimey, I need to choose one toothpaste over another, Fred. You squirt a bit of each on these sixty identical toothbrushes, and we’ll find randomly-selected volunteers to brush their teeth with one or the other, and one group using a toothbrush full of jam, and follow their progress for a year…”

Of course not. You bring a shared, social and cultural understanding to every decision. OK, maybe toothpaste isn’t the best example, because it is possible to gather evidence anyway. What about deciding which colour shirt to wear, or how to tie your tie? Part of this will include an individual’s convictions, faith, teachings and understandings. Can you set them aside?

Can you set aside your nationality, gender, culture, intuition or “gut feeling” when making any decision at all?

Also, how do you make a decision on a topic where “evidence” is contradictory, difficult to interpret, or simply lacking?

I’m a huge fan of the whole notion of “evidence-based ” policy and medicine. I think a minister for health who believes vehemently in homeopathy or spirit-healing would be unlikely to receive my vote. But I think we’re in danger of over-stretching the meme of “evidence-based” as an adjective. It’s a cultural token amongst the moderately-well educated to indicate a trust in scientific method over tradition, marketing or simple bullshit. But that’s what it should be. It shouldn’t be stretched to include a life-style, a culture, or a token for an atheistic life.

I believe in evidence in every area of life where it’s possible to apply it. It’s important to make informed decisions. But I also believe that there are areas of life where “evidence” is lacking, difficult to interpret, or simply inapplicable. There is no evidence-based conclusion to why I should prefer a certain song to another, to why I may be drawn to a particular form of beauty which may bore or disgust you, to why I find solace in sunsets and fear sleeping.

Don’t over-stretch the idea of “evidence”. It’ll lose its meaning, and eventually, it’s significance.

Ebooks are doing rather well, with Amazon announcing them outselling their print counterparts in bestsellers lists. I’ve enjoyed using the Kindle app for various reasons including:

• Instant purchase/download (even Amazon Prime can take too long!)
• One device, not many books
• Reading in the dark (on the iPad, any way)
• Searching and smart(ish) bookmarking

Now I’d love to see various improvements, and a novel things I’m not sure I have a fully-formed idea around yet (I’d like new things with the power of computing devices, but I’m not sure yet what they might be.)

But something has interested me a lot with a piece I read in ReadWriteWeb. The piece talks about various ways in which ebooks are better than paper ones, and it mentions “social highlighting”, that is: the ability to share electronically highlighted text and notes. Richard MacManus goes on to suggest better features and improvements, and I’m fully in agreement here: the social aspect of ebooks has yet to be developed much at all, it seems.

Now, these social tools could follow a very predictable path, taking in the evolution of social tools elsewhere: multi-site sharing options, tweets, facebook connecting (I “like” the Kite Runner) etc. No doubt they will. But the thing that really grabbed me was the little gem of a site showing the most highlighted passages in the Kindle bookstore. This means that Amazon knows what’s being highlighted. It means—I’m just guessing here—that publishers could begin to know how much books are actually read. You know that copy of A Brief History of Time you bought?

That’s a very straightforward metric, but one that’s immediately useful to amazon, publishers, and authors. What else could be gleaned from vey simple and anonymous data like these?

What other data are Amazon using, and what else could be done with finer-grained data from users? Imagine language studies over tricky phrases in intralingual dictionaries! Finally, how can this be turned directly over to consumers?

I’d love to know my own reading patterns, which words and phrases I highlight.

photo: “kindling” by oskay via flickr. CC by

Here are a few shots taken from around the place I grew up in Colorado. It’s been a long time since I lived here, but I have never forgotten just how arid and stark it can be. There is a beauty here, but it’s a harsh, unrelenting beauty. The plants are tortured and frail or designed to torture others. As are the animals. Behind everything is the backdrop of the mountains, from where our hope comes (here, in the form of water).

I hope you enjoy.

Following my post about using the iPad recently, I’ve spent some time using more of the content-focused apps. As I mentioned before, the iPad has turned out to be a great device for consuming, reading and just experiencing media. This has obvious benefits for video, and many of the examples I’ve seen have made use of multi-media and show off the screen. But I tend to read a lot. I tend to read news from content publishers (BBC, Guardian, Gizmodo) and blogs.

One of the first apps I downloaded was Stephen Fry’s “FryPaper” app. It’s basically Stephen Fry’s blog manifested as an iPad app, and it’s one of the most exciting things I’ve seen. This isn’t because it’s swish, flash, or gimmicky. Indeed, it is none of those things. It simply provides the content from Stephen’s blog in a format that is very, very easy to read on the iPad. It seems to focus on simple design, and that’s it. It’s got a very limited set of features, all of which I’ve used—like using the sharing feature to tweet or email links to individual articles.

So, why is this so exciting?

Because it’s a glimpse of the future of well-published stories. It’s a snapshot of a time when anyone can buy/download an app for a single blog, and get all this content beautifully laid out.

So, I contacted Stephen’s FryPaper person, Andrew Sampson of SamFry about building FryPaper.

Here is that quick interview:

Zach: Why make an app for a blog? What does the iPad bring to the table that a browser doesn’t?

Andrew: Stephenfry.com’s blog is a very popular website in its own right. We wanted to offer that content in a newspaper format, for free on the iPad. We wanted to show how you could strip back other contend and concentrate on what was popular. Less is more, was our rule. It was a good first stepping stone for our company to develop an iPad App on our own.

Zach: What did you have to consider in designing it?

Andrew: We considered that the iPad is a new device and that whilst newspapers and magazines are glamouring for it, many would argue that a user interface is yet to be defined. We went for the most elegant and simple user interface we could develop. We also wanted to make sharing it easy. I might add that I don’t see how magazines and papers will be able to sustain the large multimedia elements of their initial iPad offerings. It’s brilliant that they did but it cost them a fortune to produce the content, let alone the app itself.

Zach: Any major challenges or hurdles?

Andrew: Cost. We were very lucky to find a Canadian firm that presented their credentials and production pipeline from the beginning. We’ve had many false starts on app development in the last year, primarily because of cost. Marco Tabini and his team became SamFry’s partners for FryPaper.

We were also lucky to secure the sponsorship of G-Technology by Hitachi. This was the first time we’ve ever had another company believe in what we were doing. They showed extraordinary faith and trust in us, even to the degree of letting us design the sponsorship placements within the app. It only adds up to two ads but boy, it’s allowed us to fund the FryPaper for iPhone, which is due out in the next few weeks.

Zach: From your experience, is there any advice you’d give to someone wanting to build a similar content-focused app?

Andrew: Be confident in the depth of your content. Stephen, Nicole, our graphic designer and I, have a strong focus on design. We think content and the user interface synergy is the single most important aspect in delivering electronic content. It harks back to our traditional theatrical beginnings.

Zach: Thank you Andrew!

Image taken from stephenfry.com.

Two weeks ago, I counted myself one among the hoards of silly sods who queued early in the morning for the chance to see, touch and indeed buy the much-hyped iPad. My justification for this lameness is that the next day, I was scheduled to fly out for a week-long conference and wanted to try the new device in that context. Talis, my employer, has purchased a few now, but I was the only fool to queue for one. No doubt this is something the support team continues to find justifiably humorous.

Standing in the line and being offered croissants, coffee and advice by brightly T-shirted and strangely too-good-looking Apple staff, my expectations were mixed. As I’ve tweeted before ever actually seeing an iPad, I’m not entirely convinced by the form: the tablet layout and touch screen. It looks slightly awkward to hold, and even that huge keyboard doesn’t look particularly useful for anything beyond quick notes. A screen that big that you’re supposed to touch pretty well continuously will surely be begrimed very quickly. I kept trying to work out what the iPad would be for. Does it replace the laptop for most things? Does it replace the TV, the book, the bedside lamp? (In fact, the thing it’s most usefully and utterly replaced is the shaving mirror, but more on that below.) The fact that it needs the now hugely-inflated iTunes to sync and run, and the fact that it’s running iPhone OS are both factors I’ve been unhappily anticipating for a few months.

But I was exceedingly interested in trying it out, in seeing the way the designs are different, and the way content feels when it’s not part of a computer. The idea of holding a page in your hands, and flicking through images, text and ideas does appeal enormously. Also, the power behind the device, the clear display and proven track-history of innovation piqued my curiosity to see how clever developers will put them to use.

So, with all these factors swirling around in my mind, and the desire for my not having to take a stack of printed books, papers and PDF files with me overseas, I looked into the Kindle and a few other e-readers. The Kindle is expensive, virtually impossible to justify given the multi-purpose nature of the iPad. Even if it proved to be a poor overall experience, the iPad would at least allow me to do everything the Kindle does, plus check email, twitter, blog and browse the whole web of content for only a little more money. The Kindle’s main advantage in the market, however, is access to far more books and resources than any other. So, with the announcement of the Kindle for iPad app, and my boss’s suggestion I pick up an iPad to test for Talis, I found myself among 50 or so pony-tailed die-hards and chirpy Apple Geniuses waiting for my chance to be kitted out with the most lusted-for piece of kit since the last Apple device.

Below are the notes I sent to the Sysadmin team after two weeks of use.

The iPad has been a very interesting thing to use, with it’s novel form-factor and innovative UI (though it’s like nothing more than a big iPhone…). It’s a brilliant device for consuming information, so long as one is indoors. I’ve been very happy to read whole academic papers and about 1/4 of a novel so far on it, and for that alone, it’s been a useful tool for travelling and research. Also, it’s more interactive than the iPhone for email/twitter and, surprisingly, colloquy [IRC client].

So, for being exceedingly portable and present at conferences, it’s been great. Also, because the battery life is actually up to scratch, you don’t have to join the fray of geeks fighting over the single power strip in an undignified yet necessary battle in the corner of any given keynote presentation.

It’s got some strong shortcomings which have proven annoying, however.

While it’s great for consuming, it’s cumbersome and slow for producing. It’s OK for taking quick notes, and perfect for tweeting/short emails, but I wouldn’t want to write a whole blog post on it. (I got the bluetooth keyboard and WordPress app, which together work a treat, but require you to drag around an external keyboard).

It fails in even the tiniest bit of sunlight. So, on Crete [where I was for a week at the ESWC conference], it made a fantastic shaving mirror.

I think there may be some potential for RSI, too, if one types for any extended period of time on it. I touch-type, meaning that I end up resting my fingers on the screen, printing many ffffffffffffffffff’s and llllllllllllllll’s and needing to tap the backspace again and again.

Finally, as a team device, I’m not sure how useful they’d be. So far, the majority of the benefit this has made has been through personalising it a lot. So, if I wanted to share a quick photo with folk, I need to sync it with my photos. If I wanted to blog, I’d need to sync with flickr or similar to have a ready supply of licensed images to use. Likewise with reading (Dropbox, Kindle and Goodreader) all need to know who I am and what I want to read. Same with video, Keynote etc… Unless Talis made them into extremely corporate-oriented devices (which would suck, methinks) and filled them all with Talis-only designs, images, videos and generic slides, they’re pretty person-specific.

So, after just under two weeks of use, I’d say it’s great for travel (I’m looking forward to having it on the 14hr flight to and from San Francisco in a couple weeks, for example), and it’s great for reading (Kindle App, GoodReader and Dropbox). I could see, with additional apps, it being an interesting device for sharing information to a small group. As another colleague pointed out, as a presenting tool for a large audience, it fails at a few hurdles. Firstly, the Keynote app that is so fantastic to use on OS X is woefully lacking on the iPad. Any presentations imported from the Mac lose fonts and transitions (even if they’re possible to re-create in the iPad itself!), and the presenter’s screen doesn’t display next slide and presenters notes. It lacks all the things that make Keynote so great to use. The VGA tie-in means it’s even more awkward to hold, so you’re left leaning it against the lectern in exactly the place your laptop would have been. The form factor is exceedingly social, however, so showing a bunch of select slides at a table, or having a shared mini-whiteboard could be cool.

It’s made much, much better with the bluetooth keyboard, and I couldn’t imagine using it without the Apple cover (which props it up in a variety of ways, and makes it less slipperyf). Some key apps are: sketchbookpro (for white-boarding), Kindle, Goodreader, Dropbox, Colloquy and the twitterrific twitter client.

I couldn’t see it replacing a laptop at any time soon, and if it weren’t for the vast amount of reading I tend to do, I probably wouldn’t feel particularly comfortable with Talis buying this one for my sole use. As it is, I’m happy to use this one for the trip over to the States, and it is growing on me the more I use it for reading and consuming information on.

I hope, as has been said, that version 2 will be more useful, and that OS4 will be a lot more useful even before then.

|This is based on a post which appeared on formspring.me/zbeauvais

I think the instinct—for lack of a better word—that draws people to act religiously can also affect people with no official religion. While there may be no organised creed, there is organisation in a sort of tribal way. This may be in some way related to a culture of the tribe. It’s the same thing that allows me to identify the tribes of midwestern Christians from America by their handshake, clothing, and sociolect. It’s the instinct that makes people buy into a group mentality like Apple fanboys, football supporters, and wine snobs.

I believe there to be a culture developing around Dawkins and Hitchens and others. There are events like Godless and books like An Atheist’s guide to Christmas which are somewhat organising, I suppose. Also, given the list of people who have contributed (among whom are many people I admire) I would be surprised if they don’t make compelling, interesting and probably very funny reading. But I think the compelling and funny part of the atheist culture is not part of being fundamentally against others’ beliefs, or against God or “a god”. I think the idea of “antitheism” is a far less compelling mindset. I don’t like the idea that one sets their belief and rhetoric as an antithesis.

A possibly relevant illustration would be to look at this in terms of other antithesis positions, like political rhetoric based entirely on the principle of “not being them.” It makes your position one relative to the existence, status, and nature of your opposition, which I think is at least silly and at most dangerous. If I were to consider myself to be an “antiTory,” then I am simply diametrically opposed to the ideas of a party over which I have forfeited any constructive influence. What then for instance, if they do something I agree with? Being convinced for yourself that there is no god is different from setting yourself against the whole notion as the basis of your beliefs.

I don’t think all people who disbelieve in God are “fundamentalist atheists.” I don’t equate a person’s belief and perspective with religiosity. What I do think is that people can religiously follow a group or concept. The word fundamentalist itself is difficult to work with. It’s something that is understood to be positive by people I wouldn’t always think of as fundamentally fundamentalist themselves. For some, the idea of being fundamental is to be true to an idea, and this is not a bad thing in itself. I can fundamentally believe it is best to to act selflessly, to edify others, and this would clearly not be negative.

But I think the word has been used commonly to refer to a kind of self-subsumation into the tribe, culture and ideology of a group. News reports of “fundamentalist terrorists,” which is probably unhelpful, but the word seems to convey a meaning that is useful sometimes, when talking about individuals who surrender their own perspectives to the tribe.

So, in a similar way to how I think of fundamentalist religious people, I would probably consider a “fundamentalist atheist” to be one who believes strongly that there is no god. One who believes that he is in a superior position for believing this way, and that those who believe otherwise are in some sense inferior (pagan, heathen, barbaric perhaps?). And, it would be a person for whom atheism fills a sociological need to belong to a tribe more than it fills the answer to a personal question about the meaning(s) of life.

I fully understand the desire to break free from religious thinking and teaching, and the need to feel unconstrained by a tribal group. I also understand the social desire to feel looked after, cherished and loved and affirmed by being part of something bigger than myself. These tensions are difficult to balance, and I think people find their own ways to do so. I think the balance shifting uncontrollably toward seeking the approval or support of a social group organised around a set of ideas (teaching, creed, reasoning, books and the rest) can only lead to a loss of one’s own, unique perspective. It’s a loss to the world.

Regarding atheists, are you sure you haven’t mistaken a refusal to believe anything without verifiable evidence for a “belief”? Atheism is grounded in rational thought and a rejection of superstition. It is not yet another religion to choose from.

No, I haven’t mistaken, though I do wish whoever you are had read my response in its entirety. I did not say that atheism is a religion, I said that atheists “can be religious themselves.”

I don’t really want to get into an impassioned, anonymous argument about atheism and deism. I feel the world confirms my rational belief in design and benign order. I believe that selfless love is a better way to live than pseudo-altruistic opportunity, and that God exists. I don’t call all atheists evil, nor do I think their belief system inferior to mine. I disagree with it, and I have experienced a God of Love greater than my own doubt (which is often the greatest thing in my own life).

I do, however, think that there is a religion of atheism. To me, religion is evident whenever people flock to an order (and hierarchy, perhaps) to be exclusive. They tend to disparage others. The implied insult—that I, as a believer in God am superstitious—in the question makes me wonder whether the questioner may have religious tendencies him/herself.

I don’t know, sounds like a clinical trial might be in order?

I’m uncomfortable with the idea of religion, and that discomfort is growing into something akin to distrust.

I sort of see “religion” as a way to organise faith and belief into a structure. Traditionally, this structure has been a default in many cultures—because the organised belief and faith were heavily integrated into the social structures too. In the West, this tradition has become eroded. I don’t see this as bad in itself. It may prove to be hugely good, because it makes a person’s faith their own responsibility and maybe allows for a stronger connection with Love. Religion can get in the way of faith, and in the way of Love, especially if the structure of the religion is particularly authoritarian or the ideas closely controlled.

I do believe in a loving, creative God, and I follo the teachings of Jesus, but I’m uncomfortable with the structures and manifestations of “religion”. The way I see it, I think, is that if God is infinite and also benign (Loving), then those who want to Love, and those who question will ultimately find Love somehow. Religion might limit this questioning, and limit our own understanding of Love.

That’t not to say I don’t see truth in religious teaching, or that I am a complete non-traditionalist (my instinct is to embrace tradition, though my conscious thought is conflicted where I don’t see the truth in a tradition). Some traditions are good, or contain good or are useful or are beautiful. I think the ones which are narrative rather than proscriptive are most close to Love, at least for me.

So, I might surprise you by saying perhaps a religious person can hide behind an institutionalised version of the truth to justify not thinking for themselves?

Oh, I also think many athiests can be “religious” themselves, by the way. If the profound belief that nothing beyond their potential state of empirical knowledge becomes a structure, then it resembles nothing more than religious thought-laziness. So, be athiest, be religious, but don’t hide behind either. Be you, and I pray you find Love.

I was recently asked a very interesting question via formspring. An anonymous person asked me:

I think the ability to “filter” — to absorb information from many sources and produce a useful result, quickly — is what really defines the “digital native.” Your thoughts?

Below is my response. I’d be interested in what you think.

Interesting…

Ok, so this idea is pretty loaded: it’s full of meaning. “digital native” is a phrase which is semantically rich, and possibly not very precise. It sounds like the kind of topic which could have an entire book’s worth of words written to describe the meanings.

I’ll take one crack at it, though, by using a subject I better understand: linguistics.

In linguistics, we talk about different kinds of language users. Generally, there are native users and non-native, with many exceptions and all sorts of complications when you start looking into the ethnography of the topic. But, essentially, native language users absorb a language through their childhood (the ability to “acquire” language in this way seems to disappear around puberty), and they develop a fluency in it. Many linguists believe that this also shapes their thought patterns—i.e.: a native of English thinks in English in some way. Most at least agree that there is also cultural acquisition of some nature too. It’s all context.

Now, if I don’t speak a language and I want to learn, I can learn through what many linguists call “competencies”. The idea is, very basically, that people think and learn in different ways, so develop different tactics. So, some might have a natural tendency to learn words, grammatical forms and therefore develop strategies which allow them to learn vocabulary. Others use a communicative competency, and learn by trying to communicate rather than learn a form and learn basically through trial and error. (It’s closely tied with personality: some people are happy to make mistakes verbally, others are more happy to learn on their own etc…).

I’m going this circuitous route, because I think the way someone learns a non-native language might be a helpful metaphor for the way people work with trends with which they’re unfamiliar. So, in this metaphor, a “digital native” will have the natural acquisition and competencies which come from existing in an online (I assume that’s at least part of what you mean by “digital, by the way) world. They’re used to many sources, ubiquitous connection, visual information on any topic instantly, multi-media content and hardware that’s actually quite complex to use. The thing is, to a native, it’s not a very conscious thing. Someone born into an interconnected world would be more frustrated with NOT being able to find out about anything, about not having some form of connection to information and by being unable to understand their hardware. Filtering information is less of a conscious act and more of a subconscious process. They live in a very full world, so they have already developed ways to work with all this information.

You might see more clearly the idea of native and non-native through different competencies, and perhaps whether the way someone thinks and frames their conscious efforts are affected by the presence of connection. Does a “digital native” think to try terribly hard to remember someone’s phone number, working out some sort of pneumonic or rhythm to memorise it? Or would they only have to if their connection were severed?

So, this is a long road to one context in which filtering might be a part of the competency of a “digital native”. I don’t, however, think it’s definitive; any more than saying someone who can pronounce the “th” sound is therefore defined as a “Native of English”. There are myriad concepts which are begged to be explored in the idea of being a native anything: context, competencies, aspirations, metaphorical constructs etc etc etc. But, I think the idea that someone born into a community which has lots of information will develop a certain fluency in dealing with it. They might think differently, or simply have had the tools in their “hands” for longer—moving from conscious cerebral thought about information to more subconscious, automatic use of digital tools. Filtering, in this construct, is a competency—a skillset and general tendency of a digital world. Natives would be better, non-natives would have to learn by comparing with their own skills and adapting.

But, I think the phrase “digital native” could be too full of loosely-encoded meaning to be very precise, or even useful without a wider, shared understanding of what you mean by it.