Patti Smith Dream of Life – Cineworld Shaftesbury Avenue, 13 Coventry Street, W1
21:30 on Friday 3rd October.

Arguably punk rock’s poet laureate, Patti Smith occupies a curious position within the rock world. Having influenced generations of future icons, from The Smiths and REM to PJ Harvey, she retains something wholly unique within modern rock. This is exemplified by the hypnotic beat-style spoken word fused with three chord riffs of her early albums through to her brave and unconventional cover versions of the likes of Nirvana and Prince in her later works.

Steven Sebring’s documentary, narrated by Smith herself, was shot over a period of ten years on a mixture of colour and black and white 16mm stock, capturing the artist perfectly in an archive-like manner. Each frame resembles a meticulously planned still photograph, even in it’s verité moments. One of Smith’s powers as an artist is to draw you into her thoughts and views, to the extent where you hang onto every word communicated through her iconic and hypnotic voice. Sebring uses this to his own advantage, compiling clips and still images that reinforce the enigmatic presence shown in her music. That’s not to say however that his portrayal is fantastical; at one point Smith is shown struggling in good humour with simple guitar rhythms, which comes across as a comfortingly human.

Utilising years’ worth of live footage and interview clips, some dating back before the release of the seminal Horses, the film is essential for anyone with even a passing interest in this striking performer.

In the meantime, great posts like yours are a bracing antidote to the cyber loudmouths.

Great work.

You think this sort of thing doesn’t happen between genome researchers? In the NGO/non-profit world? The tech world is no different.

But it’s not a zero-sum game. It’s not ‘go to Gnomedex’ OR ‘find a solution to poverty’ and pitting one against the other is just plain silly.

For good or bad, we’ve all chosen to work in the tech industry — which means our presumable ‘goal’ is to facilitate the exchange of information. Dave and Jason bashing heads is just another part of the process. I wasn’t at Gnomedex, but from all evidence the whole thing should have been quickly shunted over as a ‘meta’ discussion (a la MetaFilter) to not get in the way of the real discussion.

I hope someone who was there writes about the larger topic of the disagreement which is whether conferences like Gnomedex are venues for discussion of commercial work. That should take all of thirty seconds and then we can all get back to work.

P.S. Enjoyed your writing and will continue reading what you have to say.

SHOE ON HEAD.

http://techdumpster.com/2007/08/13/gnomedex-is-a-joke-scoble-is-still-a-tool/

There quite a few organizations attempting to use technology for good. Here are a few that I am aware of:

Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship, http://rdvp.org/
Benetech, http://benetech.org/

Grameen Bank Technology Programs, http://www.grameenfoundation.org/what_we_do/technology_programs/

Stanford Social E-Challenge, http://bases.stanford.edu/site/socialechall/index.jsp

Kiva, http://www.kiva.org/

Acumen Fund, http://www.acumenfund.org/

The Skoll Foundation, http://www.skollfoundation.org/

Partners In Health, http://pih.org