Tensegrities

Enough said.

Wow. Here are two St. Olaf students who collaborated in writing a symphony (and the corresponding texts for choir) out of part of the Silmarillion (the story of Ainulindale). The video is the panel discussion of the symphony and how it came about, and you can listen here to the concert of the symphony (starting about 38:00). I’m so impressed — what incredibly creative young people!

(Hat tip to Greg Walter)

I’d love to participate in a class like this. Imagine what it could be like in a theological environment! Some excerpts:

Collaborative services (services that are run through the collaboration of a group or groups of people, both for and not for profit) are emerging as key in both public and private offerings. Consumers turn out to be producers, becoming “prosumers”. Cooperating and collaborating can also be a way to create areas of collective identity and meaning for one’s own experience as it links to others’ lives. Through codesign, or collaborative design processes, innovation capacity, as well as creativity, can be widely spread

and again:

Cooperation, above all, involves developing and honing capacities and tools for engaging with otherness, learning about the contexts in which people and systems exist, and having a sensitivity towards the alterity, what is different from us. This implies the capability to get in touch with other people with a wide range of experiences and circumstances, sometimes quite different from those of the designer, to understand their positions, to learn from what they know – discern their expertise and actively seek it out, to gain their trust and to find a common ground and language to work together.

(Hat tip to Bob for the link!)

From an orbiting satellite:

One of my favorite songs– it stretches all the way back to my childhood:

New data out from the Pew Internet and American Life Project: