Seb's Open Research
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30 novembre, 2002
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Doug Engelbart 1968 Demo. Phil sez: "A video of a demo given by Doug Engelbart at SRI in 1968, of their online computer system. The first appearance of the mouse and includes hyperlinking, collaboration over a network and input by a chording keyboard. It's fascinating to watch the guy demo this groundbreaking stuff live." [Boing Boing Blog]
One of the seminal events of the modern computing age. If you want to understand the roots of much of what we now take for granted, understanding Engelbart and his work is essential. [McGee's Musings]
Howard Rheingold wrote an account of the event in the middle of chapter 9 of Tools for Thought. He wrote:
Those who were at the original event say that the sixteen-millimeter film is a poor shadow of the original show. During the original presentation, an advanced electronic projection system provided a sharply focused image, twenty times life sized, on a large screen.
By the way, Engelbart is still active - he's at the Bootstrap Institute. We're still far away from having fully realized his vision of four decades ago.
 10:53:13 PM
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Talk about replay value!
Long-term game replayability?. I was checking out one of these games nostalgia sites lately, and reading through tons of games I never heard about, I wondered which of these old games have, to this day, replay value -- not because of nostalgia, but because of their own playability merits. I certainly do know some games that fit to this description. Often these are games that many people I talk to never heard about. They also tell me about such "classics" that I have never heard about. It's quite logical to figure out, there must be a lot of great games out there hiding. [kuro5hin.org]
This is a must-bookmark for me. You witness the power of community when you look at the nostalgic stories that pieces like this draw. Just reading the titles mentioned in the comments gives me the shivers. Games from two decades ago that people still remember have got to have a little magic about them. While we're at it, share tips on finding old computer games on Know-how Wiki.
10:43:37 PM
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Reputation and you
State of the Art of Reputation. Matt Jones posted a Powerpoint presentation by Dan Dixon about the state of the art of reputation systems, along with a link to a Kuro5hin primer on reputation systems
First of all, a reputation is not something that's internal to you. Yes, it's *your* reputation, but you don't have a reputation with yourself per-se. Reputations only really exist within the context of your interactions with others, and therefore, a reputation can be viewed as existing in the space between you and others.
While a reputation can be thought of as distinct, separate and external to us all, it is inextricably linked to us. Reputation doesn't exist outside of the context of the owner to which it refers. In some instances, a reputation can become so independent from us that it 'takes on a life of its very own.' In these cases, reputations can actually drive how we act, rather than the normal case of how we act dictating our reputation. For example, sometimes we find ourselves acting in uncharacteristic ways, many times unconsciously, just to support an external perception of who we are amongst others that is no longer true to our being.
A reputation is comprised in part of what we say and what we do, over some period of time in some particular context of an interaction with others. As an individual, I might never know all of the different facets of my reputation, just as others might also never know every aspect of my reputation. Needless to say, reputations are important to us all because they affect us in very tangible ways, serving to make our lives easier or more difficult, depending on whether they are positive or negative.
[Smart Mobs via thomas n. burg | randgänge]
10:01:41 PM
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Who's got the biggest online revenue?
Richard Morais, Double Dutch No Longer, Forbes, November 11, 2002. Excerpt: "If you are not a scientist or a lawyer, you might never guess which company is one of the world's biggest in online revenue. Ebay will haul in only $1 billion this year. Amazon has $3.5 billion in revenue but is still, famously, losing money. Outperforming them both is Reed Elsevier, the London-based publishing company. Of its $8 billion in likely sales this year, $1.5 billion will come from online delivery of data, and its operating margin on the internet is a fabulous 22%." [FOS News]
I doubt even scientists will guess that. Librarians might, though; they've seen the cuts resulting from rising subscription prices and have been ringing the alarm for over a decade.
10:00:05 PM
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Science and Awe
Pascale: "Actually, every single scientist I've ever met ~ and I've been lucky enough to meet some of the very best ~ was a scientist precisely because of a well-wrought sense of "awe and wonder." They think the universe is a beautiful, marvelous place, and they want to understand it."
9:46:23 PM
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"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there."
-- Henry Miller [whiskey river via Open Space]
9:39:17 PM
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Thanksgiving
OK, so I'm a little late to the party, but I thought it would be a good thing to express gratitude to the many people who share their insights with me and are so consistently and openly being themselves. It means a lot to me.
So on this occasion I've started a Neighborhood Tour page where I try to acknowledge how the various people listed in my sidebar influence my thinking and actions. I'm only starting, so there are only seven people listed so far; I plan to fill this up over the coming weeks. If you don't already know some of these people, I hope it will be a good way for you to discover them. You can think of it as a blogroll on steroids.
12:38:30 PM
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Breadcrumbs and ThinkCycle
On the web, people can often lead you to interesting new places, even when they don't have a home page, just by virtue of leaving bread crumbs with their name on them here and there.
Here's an illustration. Duane Milne has just poured a number of good tips on finding good movies to rent in the Know-how wiki (a general-purpose free advice exchange). Looking his name up in Google led me to ThinkCycle.org.
ThinkCycle is an academic, non-profit initiative engaged in supporting distributed collaboration towards design challenges facing underserved communities and the environment. ThinkCycle seeks to create a culture of open source design innovation, with ongoing collaboration among individuals, communities and organizations around the world.
ThinkCycle provides a shared online space for designers, engineers, domain experts and stakeholders to discuss, exchange and construct ideas towards sustainable design solutions in critical problem domains. Join the ThinkCycle Community and make a difference!
The site looks pretty successful for such an ambitious initiative. 1746 members and counting. Lots of ideas in there; the design seems well-thought-out for facilitating productive open collaboration. I'll definitely have to dig deeper into this.
11:01:20 AM
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29 novembre, 2002
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Reality seekers unite
Wired: What Buddhists Know about Science.
The Science and the Mind conference, held last month in Canberra, Australia, explored areas of possible contact and cooperation between Tibetan Buddhism and modern science. [...]
While Tibetan Buddhism and other ancient practices like Taoism have developed scientifically accurate explanations of some phenomena, the Dalai Lama has also said Buddhists can abandon scripture that has been reliably disproved by science. No creationist controversies here, then.
The Dalai Lama has an intense non-specialist interest in science, and he believes there are points of contact (with Buddhism) in cosmology, neuroscience, physics, quantum physics, and modern psychology. He has even opened a school of science at his monastery in India.
"I feel it is basically the Buddhist tradition to try to see reality. Science has a different method of investigation. One relies on mathematics; Buddhists work mainly through meditation. So different approaches and different methods, but both science and Buddhism are trying to see reality," he said.
"When I meet with scientists, it has nothing to do with religious faith. It's just theory or the experience of experiment. So, today's meeting is using reason only, not faith. I'm not trying to convert scientists to Buddhism, and they are not trying to convert me into a radical materialist!" (Someone who believes all phenomena are physical only.)
Problems remain, however. While Tibetan Buddhists are keen to embrace science along shared points of contact, scientists frequently remain uncomfortable with that kind of intimacy. [...]
I suspect that the practice of attentive examination, which is the main way scientists obtain their insights, hunches, big pictures and all, has more to do with meditation than we usually think.
1:11:40 PM
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Compliance vs. Creation
From Whoosh: Business in the Fast Lane,Tom McGehee on what makes a company suck or rock:
| Compliance Companies |
Creation Companies |
| Policy driven |
Principle driven |
| Rule based |
Relationship based |
| Conducts training |
Allows for structured and unstructured learning |
| Forced organization |
Self-organizing |
| Reactive |
Proactive |
| Good of organization over good of individual |
Good of organization through good of individuals |
| Measures activity |
Measures outcome |
| Ordered |
Chaotic |
| Closed system |
Open system |
| Patterned |
Emergent |
| Internal focus |
External focus |
| Risk avoidance |
Opportunity creation |
| Confuses models with reality |
Understands modeling |
| Tries to re-create past success |
Tries to create new successes |
| Methodology based |
Model based |
| Expert's mind |
Beginner's mind |
| Tolerates diversity |
Thrives on diversity |
| Seeks equilibrium |
Seeks progress |
| Deficit focused |
Positive focused |
| Creates burning platforms |
Creates compelling opportunities |
Application to national governments or revolutionary organizations is left as an exercise for the reader. [istori/log]
1:05:47 AM
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The Public Knowledge Project at the University of Britsh Columbia has recently released the Open Journal Systems (OJS). OJS is an online journal management and publishing system. OJS assists with every stage of the publishing process for refereed journals including:
- Online Submission of Articles, Reviews, and other Items
- Online Management for Each Stage of Publishing
- Comprehensive Indexing of Published Articles
- Research Support Tool for Each Article Published
- Email Notification and Commentary for Readers
OJS is freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. For more information, contact John Willinsky (john.willinsky@ubc.ca). [FOS News]
1:01:53 AM
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Politics and the Classroom
Web Site Lists Professors Who 'Indoctrinate' Students. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over this initiative to identify professors who exhibit bias in their work. The tone of the article (as indicated by the scare quotes in the headline) and of the professors reviewed is that the students rating the professors simply don't understand the material. This condescending attitude won't help, particularly inasmuch as the students have a point: many professors carry their political beliefs into the classroom. But so what? Instead of denying the obvious, embrace it. Professors are not intended to be objective observers of society, they are expected to be interested participants. And as such, they should be encouraged to freely express their biases, and as part and parcel of that freedom, to be ready to take their criticisms like professionals, yes, even from students. By Thomas Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 26, 2002 [OLDaily]
12:58:15 AM
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Learning and world views
Learning is a Recursive, Self-Reflexive System Process. Summary: I'd like to tie together weblogging with my my own world view (individual ontology), relate my becoming to the developing ontology of some system of which I'm a part. This is a tall order... but I needed to signal this aspiration of mine in order to remind me that I'm headed there and to signal potential supporters, collaborators, and skeptics alike that I'm trying to get there.
Another excellent post by Spike. He talks about how personal world views (and thus the world as it is experienced) change as we learn, following Dewey and Piaget. Here's how Dewey defines "sense-making":
As Dewey (as quoted by Burke,1994, p22) said:
Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in ists constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole.
[Connectivity: Spike Hall's RU Weblog]
I believe the "unified whole" view is something we all instinctively yearn for, and think it is a source of deep satisfaction, but it is, unfortunately, seldom completely attained.
12:25:56 AM
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Learning resources: the user's perspective
Joseph Hart has started an interesting new weblog on online learning resources. I've subscribed to his RSS feed. In the following post, Joseph puts the finger on an important unsolved problem: locating relevant resources.
Sabbaticizing. [...] When I began this project I was focused on collecting repositories of online instructional resources and putting the collection together in a form that could readily be used by instructors at Eastern and other institutions, perhaps via a web site or portal.
Now, after just a few weeks, I've found that there are innumerable online instructional repositories (depending upon how "instructional" and "repository" are defined)--far too many to simply provide a listing and expect that instructors will be able to effectively use the list.
I've also found that there are many overlapping categories, concepts, interests and approaches: digital libraries, learning objects, metadata standards, open source software, instructional repositories, XML, etc. What seems most needed, at least for my purposes in assisting instructors to use online repositories, is a set of guidelines about locating, evaluating, acquiring, and fitting online resources into course planning and revisions/expansions of courses.
At this point there are many more repositories available and under construction than there are guidelines for using collections of learning resources. Instructors don't have the time to search hundreds of repositories containing thousands of learning objects. The promise of interlinked repositories or master repositories is just that, a research promise that may not be fulfilled for many years. So, the question is, How can online instructional resources best be used now? I do not yet have a good answer to this question. [EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online]
I'm concerned that many good resources are underused, not for lack of quality, but because they are for all practical purposes "unfindable". I suspect resource authors will each have to take up the responsibility of providing and maintaining part of a shared, overall map of what is out there, if they want their resources to be used.
12:15:50 AM
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28 novembre, 2002
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Music the way it ought to be organized
One of the central problems in my life has been to find music I really like. It's relatively easy to find music similar in style to something you already like. Music stores are organized according to style. People usually get to know artists in a style similar to artists they like. My problem is that, as far as styles go, my tastes are all over the place. But I've always felt there must somehow be a connection between all those artists I like.
Now get this. The All Music Guide database has a field for what they call the "tone" of an artist or band. While the site doesn't let you search the database by tone, Google comes to the rescue as it often does. As it turns out, my favorite artists seem to cluster around some favorite tones. Here's irreverent, cerebral, complex music. And there's music with a quirky, detached tone. Try this for intense, ominous, cerebral pieces, or check out reflective, intense music.
Of course those are my own preferences. Try it out for yourself: start by finding a band you like, pick a few of their tones (there's quite a palette), then Google them.
Now I'm thinking, if this works for music, it might work for other kinds of creative work. It might be interesting to categorize blog tones as well, perhaps with a collaborative rating system à la bloghop to let individual perceptions even out.
11:36:44 PM
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26 novembre, 2002
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Academic guest bloggers
[...] Now wouldn't it be cool for say a university department or a unit like Intermedia or HUMlab - places which would regularly host guest lecturers - to also have a (continuous or occassional) guest blogger column on their website? Not just blogging somewhere else with a link from the front page of the host, but on the front page, clearly as part of the main content, yet also as themselves. Either you could arrange for visiting speakers to also blog for the duration of their stay, or you could hire people simply to blog for a week, even if they were a completely different place. [...] [Jill/txt]
10:42:22 PM
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What I know for certain. There is very little I know for certain. I know that I am conscious of my own existence, and I'm aware of many changing perceptions of the world I appear to be in, and I have abstract thoughts and feelings related to my experience. That's about it. Anything that my perceptions or my thoughts or my feelings are telling me is something I'm guessing. An abstract over-simplification of something that possibly is real. I have formed a certain extensive mental model of what the world is like, based on what I have perceived and thought, and then tested and verified, but I know it is only my best guess, even when it works well. The only thing I know for sure is that I am conscious right now, and conscious of my own consciousness. One of the first things I notice is that my consciousness returns after times when I haven't been conscious, so one of my first logical guesses is that my own existence is more fundamental than my consciousness, and I keep existing even when I forget to notice it. All that it takes to bring me back is that I notice. more > [Ming's Meta Mechanics]
10:21:41 PM
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Structurelessness is an illusion
On the Old-School-Meets-Social-Software tip, Jo Freeman's marvellous essay from 1970, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" is a good antidote to the fear of structure in group endeavors. It was a critique of the design of groups in the women's movement, but is beautifully and broadly applicable to many arenas (including, near to my heart, the design of software meant to support group interaction.)
Says Freeman: "Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible, it may vary over time, it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed..."
This is just the tasting spoon sample, there's good stuff throughout. [Clay Shirky @ Boing Boing]
Freeman writes that groups or movements with the appearance of structurelessness are simply informally rather than formally structured.
For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can only happen if they are formalised. This is not to say that normalisation of a group structure will destroy the informal structure. It usually doesn't. But it does hinder the informal structure from having predominant control and makes available some means of attacking it. 'Structurelessness' is organisationally impossible. We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group; only whether or not to have a formally structured one.
Freeman also drives home the point that a group can't achieve much beyond sitting around and chatting if it doesn't structure itself in an explicit manner.
10:10:19 PM
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Science, Religion, Cooperation, and Social Morality. I am always pleased, and inspired, when I come across an article by Mark Bekoff. Earlier, I found myself quoting his wonderful article "Animal play: Lessons in cooperation, fairness, spirit, and soul" Today, from Science, Religion, Cooperation, and Social Morality: In my own research on social play behavior in animals, I’ve been concerned with the notion of behaving fairly. [DeepFUN Weblog]
Fascinating stuff. Reminds me of Howard Rheingold's question, Can Science Crack Cooperation?
9:59:59 PM
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For God's sake, people, use Google!
writes Brad DeLong:
I mean, it cannot be in any journalist's interest to lose credibility with their audience by saying stupid things, can it? It can't be in any editor's interest for his journalists to develop a reputation as people who don't do the quick-and-easy things you do to check your facts, can it? And in almost all circumstances in which you don't really know what you are talking about, a quick google search is a very good way to orient yourself, isn't it?
9:55:49 PM
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25 novembre, 2002
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The eyes of a child. "Something animated and vital looks out from our childrens eyes. Whatever it is, we recognize it and know it is precious. Yet except in rare cases today, that spirit is broken early and irreparably. The light goes out all too soon. We know, because at some inarticulate and dimly conscious level, we are those children. We feel the wind of spirit move us at odd moments, but put it down to nostalgia or temporary possession by some impractical flight of fancy. We shake it off and get back to work. Robbed of a voice to speak of these things, something animated and vital looks out from our own eyes, but only in rare, unguarded moments -- and even then, wary, circumspect, suspicious. We let no one see what we fear no one will understand." --Chris Locke more > [Ming's Meta Mechanics]
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