I received an email this morning.

The text had a very small inline thumbnail image accompanying it. In it “my Kristina” stands fully dressed, with a look that suggests that she very much wants to go to the cinema.

Last week Hasbro announced that, from this autumn, Mister Potato Head would become the gender neutral Potato Head in order to be more inclusive and so that all could feel “welcome in the Potato Head world.”

Among the right wind commentators that lap this sort of stuff up, a entirely predictable outrage erupted within milliseconds.

In Spring 2006 a group (of which I was a member) began to explore the concept of a “bliki”, a piece of software that combined the alleged advantages of a blog with the supposed strengths of a wiki.

We looked at this from several angles: the cultural, and conceptual, as well as the technical. What follows are my personal reflections on this process, and my tentative conclusions.