Here's a nice piece about mutual aid, social networks, and the 9/11 attack.
Note that most of the positive social behavior that saved so many lives was not organized by any formal agency, much less by any command-and-control mechanism. People saved themselves. Other people converged from all over the city to help.
Cambridge University is changing its copyright policy. Formerly most creative work done at the university belonged to the creators. Now it will belong to the university. Dissenting faculty have launched a web site explaining how the new policy will harm academic freedom, faculty, students, and industry. (Thanks to Red Rock Eater.) [FOS News]
I don't like the sound of this at all. Universities behaving more and more like companies... where are we headed?
For a well baked blog, add topics. Michael DeMaria over at Network Computing wants weblogs to have topical lists of posts. He points out that the time-based format isn't the easiest thing to use when looking for specific posts on selected topics. There are obviously two ways find posts contain a specific topic:
1) Use a search engine. This is the best approach to use when people are resistant to entering metadata.
2) Use a metadata tool like LiveTopics by Matt Mower. Matt has built a tool for Radio that makes it easy for authors to enter in metadata with each post. This makes it easy to provide directories that list post by topic (through use of the outliner). Basically, Livetopics can create a simple list of topical links to posts, or a complex hierarchy of topical links. Matt has a complex hierarchy on his site.
Clearly I think Mike makes a very valid point. Weblogs make great diaries, but the by-date navigation structure sucks for locating topical information. More information about liveTopics can be had by either clicking the liveTopics see-also reference under this post, or going to the liveTopics page on the Novissio website.
What kind of learning skills do we teach most students? None. We have teachers who can’t teach teaching students who do not know how to learn. In this Darwinian process, those students best able to excel under these strange circumstances go on to get their Ph.D.s and become the next generation of teachers. Students are not taught how to take notes, how to get organized, and how to deal with the universe of data that obscures the information they actually need to understand. At some universities students have access to millions of books and everyone has access to billions of Web pages, but most have no idea how to use either effectively.
Tapping customer knowledge. Yet another example of organizations refusing to take advantage of knowledge sitting around available for them just for the effort to reach down and pick it up.
While we are spending endless hours and resources trolling the often unwilling and uninformed public for "the next big idea" relevant to our business, something very interesting is happening. Our own customers are contacting us through our Interaction Centers (via Web, phone, VoIP, email, etc.). And these customers are more eager than ever to offer us as much feedback as we want. All that our agents need to do is listen. We must capture it, analyze it and use it for business intelligence. But almost none of us do. We continue to view our Interaction Centers as a must-have expense designed to handle customer complaints.
Imagine how much faster an organization can learn if it properly exploits its customers' intelligences. Actually, smaller organizations have an edge there, because they have better ears and a more personal contact with customers. Weblog software developers are the luckiest of the lot: their tool provides a natural way for customers to support one another.
Actually the same can be said of education providers. A virtuous cycle arises when learners are able to support one another: the service grows in usefulness and demand rises.
I heard "Hello, Chicago!!!". I wonder if the signal will degrade with further syndication... Phil, next time why not give it a surrealistic spin: "Ceci n'est pas un audioblog"?
Building the underground computer railroad. Anti-globalization activists in Oakland, Calif., are recycling old machines, loading them with free software and shipping them off to Ecuador.
The Undoing of a Star ScientistThe defenders of traditional journals - esteemed publications such as Science and Nature - argue that online publications are not able to provide such rigorous screening. The widely publicized case of a scientist sending numerous - and fudged - articles to these journals undermines that claim. True, the journal editors argue, reviewers cannot be expected to spot every flaw.
But reviewers should be able to pick up on identical data submitted for separate results, unrealsitically precise data, or data that violates the laws of physics. Shouldn't they? The thing is, these articles wouldn't have lasted ten minutes on the web before someone spotted the anomalies - and saved scientists (and readers) two years of wasted work. [OLDaily]
From the article:
Schön substituted data in his published papers, supplying fake graphs that he told investigators "looked better" than the real graphs.
He also used the same graph in a dozen papers on different experiments. And his data were often far too precise, far beyond reasonable statistical probability.
Also:
Bell Labs isn't the only scientific institution to be smacked with charges of fraud recently. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced in June that it had disciplined a researcher for fabricating the results of a published experiment.
The experimenters claimed to have discovered the world's heaviest atom, element 118. These are cases of high-publicity research where the work was given much attention. But how many unreliable articles like this, but with less extraordinary claims, pass through? How many people are out there trying hard to build on card castles?
Let me quote a scientist from this piece in New Scientist:
"There is nothing more important for a laboratory than scientific integrity. Only with such integrity will the public, which funds our work, have confidence in us."
Amen to that. And who could imagine a better integrity-enforcing, trust-generating self-correction mechanism than a thoroughly open process? Especially now that we have had the means to implement it for a long while...
Stephen Downes: Most people - I am not sure how many - do not work for large corporations. They cannot afford a learning management system that costs $100,000. So why is everybody in this room (the trade room floor) focusing on selling large LMSs and the like to corporate purchasers? What will all of this look like when the e-learning is provided for the rest of us?
The future is in the most accessible system, it would seem.
Education goes open source.. While the computer industry is seriously considering the open-source ethos as a possible way forward, it seems like other industries are slow to catch on. So in steps MIT and drops a bombshell on us all. [kuro5hin.org]
Also see this thread on the (growing, in my opinion) distinction between getting educated and getting credentials.
I agree with Ray. I don't want pingback, trackback, or refererback. I get enough feedback with comments, spam free e-mail, and links to IM. If I wanted to host a discussion group, that is what I would have instead of a weblog. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
» I can't afford to pull up the draw bridge.
PingBack may not be good for John, Ray, and others on the path well trodden. But I think there are lots of people like myself who see things differently. I want to know when someone is talking about what I am talking about and especially when they are talking about something I've written.
Right on the money, Matt. And there are many, many more people in this situation than there are people who are already very visible. So things like this are going to become successful. If UserLand doesn't provide them, others will.
Jill: Anders suggests two cards for the pack we obviously have to make for PhD students and other stuck academics, you know, like Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's "Oblique Strategies" pack of cards for artists.
For me, the point in Oblique Strategies is that understanding happens when you stop thinking. I don't know why I keep forgetting it. Getting the big picture is not something you do, it is something that happens to you. It is instantaneous and can only occur when you finally let go of all those little individual puzzle pieces you were fiercely tring to fit together.
Why is it that they always tell us to work hard, if those crucial a-ha moments only come about when we stop? Because we need the raw materials. Chance favors the prepared mind.
Paul Ginsparg has won a MacArthur Fellowship for his work on arXiv, the pioneering open-access repository for physics, mathematics, and computer science. Venerable by internet time, arXiv was founded in 1991, and is by far the most used and most useful open-access archive for any discipline. It has been indispensable not only for accelerating research in its fields, but for an exemplary "proof of concept" that has accelerated the FOS movement itself. Congratulations Paul! [FOS News]
For a long time Ginsparg has been thinking years ahead of others. While most everyone is timidly thinking of, perhaps, using the Internet instead of paper to organize peer review and making research papers available online in the exact same format as they look on paper, Ginsparg has sensibly rethought the entire research communication infrastructure.
1. Tacit agreements that are wrong have to be uncovered, described, before they can be put into question. Outsiders coming in are much better at doing this than people who've spent their lives living with them. This is why the younger folks embrace disruptive ways.
2. There are very few things that I have been able to rule out beyond all possible doubt, when I've tried. Each time, I found so many basically unproven assumptions.
1+2. Many things seem "obviously impossible" to people because they violate implicit laws that they take for granted and can't examine, much less reexamine. Thus, obviously impossible things are invariably achieved by people who didn't know they were impossible.
Rebecca Blood at the recent panel on weblogs and journalism: The thing I've seen happening that's disturbing to me is I've seen echo chambers being created in the weblog universe. People who link only to people who agree with their point of view. Back in the day when there were only 100 of us, there were real discussions going on. There are now so many weblogs out there that you see people linking only to those who share their basic world view.
Via blogging news: J. Neil Doane in an essay on why he hates blogs: "Clearly weblogs are fucking retarded as a general rule... What can be plainly seen is that most weblog authors need something to push them back into the real world from the self-centered and delusional world they have created for themselves."
Weblogs enable groupthink circles to form. This is only natural and mirrors any real-world social aggregation process. The nice thing about this is that it does not spoil the fun for those who seek intellectual diversity. As a reader, you get to choose your neighborhood on a fine-grained, per-person basis - and this is unlike any other social situation I've seen. You can make that neighborhood as diverse as you want. So you're not stuck with echo effects unless you want them.
This is perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of weblogging from a "knowledge input management" point of view. Developing skill at selecting sources, in order to make the best use of one's limited perceptual bandwidth, is quickly becoming critical for making sense of what's really happening in our complex world. Two keywords for building a good neighborhood are diversity and quality. The corresponding skills one has to cultivate are open-mindedness and critical thinking.
J. Neil's essay is really interesting; I just hope its incendiary style won't put people off and prevent them from seizing the occasion to take a good critical look at themselves. A little overall balance to the piece is provided by Chapter 6, "Acceptable Uses of Weblogs":
The 'Expert in a Field' Model - comparatively advanced/expert commentary on an area of interest.
The 'Celebrity Figure Information' Model - insight into the lives of persons of public interest.
The 'Opinion Of Worth' Model - opinions from someone of notoriety.
The Chronicle Model - chronicling the history of something that someone else might find useful.
The Author Model - a weblog that tries to legitimately attempt daily writings.
Basically it seems Doane's criteria for legitimacy are 1) either seriously attempting to contribute to culture; or 2) being a celebrity.
I'm not really at ease with the second criterion, as I am more inclined to evaluate a blog according to its content rather than its author. Personally, few of the people I find interesting are notorious (look at my blogrolling list.). Those who are are also domain experts and this the reason I read them. Even then, I need not subscribe to their blog. I know I'll hear about them when the people I read point to them.
How would you search for this?. Okay a friend of mine is writing a company memo about a senior staff member leaving. As I joke I want to suggest to her to include a Dilbert cartoon, the one where "Herb Klepford" (or some other such name) is leaving and "The Boss" thanks him for all the office supplies he's stolen over the years.
Now, assuming it was out there somewhere, how on earth would you go about searching for it? [Curiouser and curiouser!]
I'd ask everyone in my blog neighborhood if they recall it, and hope that some will repost the query. Perhaps someone has bookmaked it or sent the URL via email.
Fly by wire. Disenchanted explores how computer systems that interpret our intentions and act on our behalf gradually disconnect us from reality.
Actually, there's another, much older, filter between people and reality: culture. But nowadays cultures are clashing and competing more than ever, which results in many people thinking of upgrading their own, many people getting confused, and many others becoming more rigid.
BBC News: "Why don't we, instead of trying to sell our knowledge over the internet, just give it away." ... "There is no revenue objective for OCW, ever. It will always be free."
What a great idea. Of course, MIT has a great reputation for quality. The long-term implications must scare many, many people shitless. Also see Anders' post.
Very intelligent article on trust, a fundamental but often overlooked success factor, by John Moore over at the KnowledgeBoard (registration required). A meaty discussion follows. (It was the first time I visited this community. I'm impressed so far.)
By the way, I see blogrolling lists as explicitly defining webs of trust, and as instrumental towards furthering generalized trust and disinhibited self-expression in the weblog community.
Trust multiplies creativity[...] What makes a full connection possible is trust. I won’t share my half-formed thoughts, interests and concerns with just anybody. I need to feel confident they won’t run off with them without sharing the benefits with me, and – perhaps even more significant – I need to know that they won’t set out to ridicule or destroy them.
Trust saves energy[...]
Trust is generative If trust is established at the core of an organisation, it is likely to spread, as trust begets trust.
Two people who have established trust can create more value in their relationship as each has more access to the other’s resources. One can compensate for the other’s weaknesses and each is more free to focus on the things they are personally best at. Two people who work together well will be more able to connect with a third person, and so on. Contagious trust can build fantastic creative communities.
(Similarly, once distrust is established between two people, their energy gets channelled into defensiveness. Which reduces openness, and further diminishes trust, in what can be a vicious circle.)
So trust is clearly a jolly useful thing. More so now than ever. Little to argue about there. But what do I do about it?
Being a lazy kind of person, the energy-saving aspect is a killer feature of trust for me.
From the article:
