Category — General

Everything is old… but we forget.

Mitch Ratcliffe: David Weinberger cites one of my favorite philiosophers, Richard Rorty, who nicely deconstructs the argument that everything is new at the forefront of history. In fact, everything is old and only newly considered.

This is an important point of humility that “visionaries” and “revolutionaries” conveniently forget, leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces. Pragmatic thinking about the whole of history, instead of just the recent changes, places society, individual life, business, investments, all of it, on a much firmer foundation.

[Seb's Open Research]

This is somehwat interestingly compared to my argument that social forms are fairly fixed and even reflexively repeatable throughout human history, whereas the objects that they form around or perhaps even concepts they form around develop in interesting and rhyzomatic ways, creating alternatives to the old systems which are in fact nothing other than the old system with new objects and subjective relations….

Blackboard alternatives. Cribbed from messages to BBAdmin-L (see link).Ê All open-source I believe.
- Bodington ( http://bodington.org/index.html )
- Claroline ( http://www.claroline.net/ )
- ClassWeb ( http://classweb.ucla.edu/ )
- Eledge ( http://eledge.sourceforge.net/ )
- Fle3 ( http://fle3.uiah.fi/ )
- Jones e-education ( http://www.jonesadvisorygroup.com/standard.php )
(not open source but “free”)
- Manhattan Virtual Classroom ( http://manhattan.sourceforge.net/ )
- MimerDesk ( http://www.mimerdesk.org/ )
- Moodle ( http://moodle.com/ )
- Whiteboard ( http://whiteboard.sourceforge.net )

For a number of these, there's a feature comparison at
http://www.edutools.info/course/
A few more at
http://www.bris.ac.uk/is/projects/violet/opensourcevles
http://www.stanford.edu/group/ats/coursework/tools_features.html

[Serious Instructional Technology]

This is a handly list to have around. End User LInux and schoolforge have similar lists underway.

Using the RDF referrer data.

The RDF data that I have available since yesterday, is now put to good use. Take a look at the archive page of January 26. At the bottom you see two referrers with excerpts. This information comes from the RDF data for that page. The XSL stylesheet for this site converts the RDF data to HTML.

This is a really nice thing about using XML/XSL for your weblog: the possibility to use several data sources at once. That I'm using XHTML 2.0 is hardly relevant. It's just the format I use for the textual content. The next datasource on the list to use is the OPML file I have for the sidebar. This would finally make it possible to change the sidebar without having to republish all the weblog pages.

Each page now also has a <link> element that points to the RDF metadata for that page. I used rel="meta" as suggested in the RDF/XML Syntax Spec. Does anybody know an application that might do something with this link?

[Sjoerd Visscher's weblog]

very interesting.

Celebrating Simpsons.

I'm trying to get back into the blogging spirit, so why not do it with something fun. My cousin Susan sends along the following:

Inside the Actors Studio

“Sunday, February 9, 7:00 p.m. CST, Bravo TV

In anticipation of the landmark 300th episode of The Simpsons, James Lipton sat down with the series' accomplished ensemble to meet the actors behind the voices in order to discover how they have managed to create such a wealth of believable and beloved characters.”

Sorry, but that link above is as close as I can get you to the episode information because the site is done as a separate browser window, with all of the content done in Flash. I really hate that. Personally, I'd love to see Matt Groening do a follow-up episode where James Lipton interviews the characters themselves, a “very special episode” like the Behind the Laughter one.

doh, i meant to post this earlier, but i didn't everyone loves the simpsons except those that don't of course.

The architecture of data-rich public spaces.
I looked out the window this morning and was greeted by a six-story-high image of George Bush. I was in Times Square, on the 19th floor of a hotel, facing the brobdingnagian information display that ascends and wraps around the Reuters building. Movies like Blade Runner conditioned us to expect these displays. Minority Report updated the concept with aggressive personalization. But the Reuters display is about something different, and far more interesting, than the advertising techniques imagined in those movies. Its designer, ESI's Edwin Schlossberg (yes, that Edwin Schlossberg), has profound ideas about public information display as a focus for interaction. From Wired 10.12:

Schlossberg's next big thing is the Reuters News Index, an addition to the sign that debuts in 2003. Roughly every hour, a 304-foot thermometer will appear onscreen measuring how “hot” the news day is on a scale of zero to ten. Schlossberg hopes it will inspire people on the street to turn to each other and say, “Did you see that? The News Index just shot up to 6 degrees — what have you heard?”

The Index is calculated using Satran's Algorithm – developed by Reuters and R/GA, and named for veteran Reuters editor Dick Satran. Every 15 minutes, the formula crunches four data points: the total volume of stories filed from Reuters' 200 offices in 97 countries; the number of priority one and priority two stories filed (editors assign a priority code to each report coming off the Reuters wires); and the total number of Reuters.com hits logged in the previous 15 minutes. At one early meeting with Reuters editors, ESI design manager Gideon D'Arcangelo recalls, “one of them said that if we really wanted to make the index true to life, we ought to factor in the blood pressure of Reuters editors, too.” [Wired]

… [Jon's Radio]

the postmodern megalith of information is upon us, falling from the sky into our vision daily, at least someone is having ideas about it.

Monk update. Monk has discovered the basic concepts of multiplication. This is amazing to me (although it should not be, considering what… [Full Bleed: Confessions of a Zine Girl]

children are amazing, and unschooling is quite important, i am consistently amazed at what some people think they know from school….

Towards open services. SOA (service-oriented architecture), we agree, is the way of the future. We'll build loosely coupled Web services now and wire them up into composite systems later. The benefits are clear: scalability, OS and language neutrality, easy integration. But as “later” starts to resolve into a date like 2003, or 2004, it's also becoming clear that SOA raises challenging issues. How, for example, do you monitor, test, and debug a distributed system when only some of its components are under your direct control? [Full story at InfoWorld.com.]
… [Jon's Radio]

the transformation of the web is forthcoming, again.

Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies: “The point of an argument is to give reasons in support of some conclusion. An argument commits a fallacy when the reasons offered do not, in fact, support the conclusion. ” [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]

While knowing all of these probably would not have helped me in any of my teenage discussions with my father, they are useful to understand. It often seems that the majority of arguments used by people quoted in the media fall into one of these items. At least you can now understand what you mean when you say 'post hoc ergo proctor hoc', as I do in casual conversation every day [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

This is very important material for most people to know and understand.

TIPPING POINT CRIB SHEET: For those of us that only manage to read the first 100 pages of important books, Robert Paterson's weblog has a FANTASTIC overview of the Tipping Point.  [Michael Helfrich's Radio Weblog]

A very good book and a nice synopsis. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

Hmm, this is interesting, have to go nab the notes for future reference….

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
CALL FOR PAPERS
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
TPRC Presents
The 31st Research Conference on
Communication, Information and Internet Policy
Hosted by the Center for Technology and Law
George Mason University Law School
Arlington, Virginia
Friday, September 19 to
Sunday, September 21, 2003
www.tprc.org
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
TPRC presents this annual forum for dialog among
scholars and decision-makers from the public and
private sectors engaged in communication and
information policy. The purpose of the conference is
to acquaint policymakers with the best recent research
and to familiarize researchers with the knowledge
needs of policymakers and industry.

The TPRC program is developed primarily from submitted
papers. The Program Committee will also be
considering tutorials, special panels, and guest
speakers. Suggestions for the latter can be emailed
directly to the Program Committee.

TPRC is now soliciting abstracts of papers for
presentation at its 2003 conference. Proposals should
be based on current theoretical and/or empirical
research relevant to communication and information
policy, and may be from any disciplinary perspective.
TPRC welcomes national, international, comparative,
and multi- or inter- disciplinary studies. Subject
areas of particular interest include but are not
limited to:

” Auctions
” Broadband
” Community Networks and Technology
” Comparative History
” Competition
” Convergence
” Digital Divide
” Economic Growth and Development, Local Economy
” Education Policy and Technology
” Federal Funding: Universal Service, Erate, TOP, CTC
” Identity and Authentication
” Intellectual Property
” Intercarrier compensation and Interconnection
” Internet Governance
” IPv6, Migration and Govt Policy
” ISPs and Internet Backbones
” Mass Media
” Mergers and Consolidation
” Online health care & policy implications
” Privacy
” Public Rights of Way
” Public Safety Policy
” Regulation of Online Activities
” Security
” Spectrum Policy
” Standards, Regulations, and Policy
” State and local policy initiatives
” Unbundling
” User Studies
” VoIP

An elaboration for each topic is available at
www.tprc.org. Abstracts should contain a clear
statement of the central ideas and outcomes of the
research, in addition to a description of the topic
being addressed. All abstracts must be submitted via
the submission form at www.tprc.org/submit/ and should
include contact information, a no-larger-than 500 word
abstract, and a brief CV.

Submissions are due by March 31, 2003. No submission
will be accepted after this date. Acceptance notices
will be emailed in early May. Primary authors may
have only one paper accepted. Contributors may act as
secondary authors of multiple papers, including
professors supporting the work of students. Primary
authors are expected to present the paper. Although
primary authors will only have one paper accepted,
they may submit multiple abstracts for consideration.
The availability of funding to reimburse presenters
expenses is expected to be limited.

Selected papers will be due to TPRC in late August.
TPRC will provide online access to all conference
papers. Inquiries and suggestions may be made to
members of the Program Committee at
www.tprc.org/TPRC03/ProgComm03.htm
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=