Monday, November 24, 2014
let's play nsa!
By CNu at November 24, 2014 1 comments
Labels: count zero , open source culture
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
network mapping of urban environmental stewardship groups...,
By CNu at November 06, 2013 31 comments
Labels: open source culture , quorum sensing?
Sunday, October 06, 2013
peer-to-peer science and fukushima's century-long challenge to humanity
By CNu at October 06, 2013 5 comments
Labels: open source culture , People Centric Leadership , Possibilities
Saturday, August 24, 2013
projects that develop open-source data or software
By CNu at August 24, 2013 0 comments
Labels: open source culture , People Centric Leadership
the spectacular power and potential of open-source biology...,
By CNu at August 24, 2013 3 comments
Labels: Genetic Omni Determinism GOD , not gonna happen... , open source culture
Friday, August 23, 2013
lockhart's lament
Everyone understands that poets, painters, and musicians create works of art, and are expressing themselves in word, image, and sound. In fact, our society is rather generous when it comes to creative expression; architects, chefs, and even television directors are considered to be working artists. So why not mathematicians?
Part of the problem is that nobody has the faintest idea what it is that mathematicians do. The common perception seems to be that mathematicians are somehow connected with science— perhaps they help the scientists with their formulas, or feed big numbers into computers for some reason or other. There is no question that if the world had to be divided into the “poetic dreamers” and the “rational thinkers” most people would place mathematicians in the latter category.
Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depend heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.
So let me try to explain what mathematics is, and what mathematicians do. I can hardly do better than to begin with G.H. Hardy’s excellent description:
A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
For example, if I’m in the mood to think about shapes— and I often am— I might imagine a triangle inside a rectangular box:
I wonder how much of the box the triangle takes up? Two-thirds maybe? The important thing to understand is that I’m not talking about this drawing of a triangle in a box. Nor am I talking about some metal triangle forming part of a girder system for a bridge. There’s no ulterior practical purpose here. I’m just playing. That’s what math is— wondering, playing, amusing yourself with your imagination. For one thing, the question of how much of the box the triangle takes up doesn’t even make any sense for real, physical objects. Even the most carefully made physical triangle is still a hopelessly complicated collection of jiggling atoms; it changes its size from one minute to the next. That is, unless you want to talk about some sort of approximate measurements. Well, that’s where the aesthetic comes in. That’s just not simple, and consequently it is an ugly question which depends on all sorts of real-world details. Let’s leave that to the scientists. The mathematical question is about an imaginary triangle inside an imaginary box. The edges are perfect because I want them to be— that is the sort of object I prefer to think about. This is a major theme in mathematics: things are what you want them to be. You have endless choices; there is no reality to get in your way.
On the other hand, once you have made your choices (for example I might choose to make my triangle symmetrical, or not) then your new creations do what they do, whether you like it or not. This is the amazing thing about making imaginary patterns: they talk back! The triangle takes up a certain amount of its box, and I don’t have any control over what that amount is. There is a number out there, maybe it’s two-thirds, maybe it isn’t, but I don’t get to say what it is. I have to find out what it is.
So we get to play and imagine whatever we want and make patterns and ask questions about them. But how do we answer these questions? It’s not at all like science. There’s no experiment I can do with test tubes and equipment and whatnot that will tell me the truth about a figment of my imagination. The only way to get at the truth about our imaginations is to use our imaginations, and that is hard work.
By CNu at August 23, 2013 0 comments
Labels: ability , culture of competence , open source culture , What IT DO Shawty...
Sunday, May 26, 2013
the programmer's stone...,
When people become focused on the part of a shared problem that they are dealing with, and shift their attention from avoiding blame to achieving success, jelled teams can form. Because the problem has its own deep structure, the whole team grows an authentic structure by mirroring the problem that does not need to be imposed arbitrarily by management. Effectiveness increases, and innovative products are designed and built at lightning speed. Turning the focus on avoiding blame inside out so that it becomes achieving success removes the system boundaries between workers and that turns everything else inside out: |
By CNu at May 26, 2013 1 comments
Labels: open source culture , People Centric Leadership
Saturday, May 25, 2013
creating a STEM-based innovation lab in your crib...,
By CNu at May 25, 2013 0 comments
Labels: culture of competence , open source culture , People Centric Leadership , truth
observational learning...,
By CNu at May 25, 2013 0 comments
Labels: monkey see - monkey do , open source culture , paradigm
Thursday, May 23, 2013
MOOC's still about Delivery of Instruction rather than Student Learning - why MOOLOS are coming....,
Talk is about MOOC's - it will shift to MOOLOS..., |
By CNu at May 23, 2013 1 comments
Labels: open source culture , tactical evolution , What Now?
Monday, February 18, 2013
is it really?
By CNu at February 18, 2013 6 comments
life in a networked age...,
By CNu at February 18, 2013 9 comments
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
mitX aims to enhance education
“Our goal is to use this as a platform to strengthen the residential student experience,” Grimson said. The informal meeting was one of a series of sessions with undergraduates and graduate students to explain MITx, as well as to gather input and suggestions on “how you would imagine using this, and what you would like to see,” he said.
The MITx concept, Reif explained, grew out of a series of meetings over the last five years in which faculty, administrators and student representatives explored “ways we could use technology to enhance what we do on campus.”
MITx’s pilot class is now under way: 6.002x, Introduction to Circuits and Electronics. So far, more than 120,000 people worldwide have signed up for the course, which is now about halfway through its semester, Grimson said. At least 20,000 of those students have been actively keeping up with the course’s lectures, exercises and online tests.
For MIT’s own students, Reif said, materials developed for MITx classes will add an extra dimension to their on-campus experience. In some cases, he said, MITx might replace existing lecture components with online versions students could watch at their own pace, repeating segments if necessary to make sure they understand. Instead of a classroom experience defined by passive listening, MIT students might actually “experience increased face-to-face interactions” with each other and with instructors, Reif said.
When MIT students used online lectures and exercises, instructors would also have access to data about which sections students sailed through and which were more challenging. When students got to recitation sections, teaching assistants would have a clearer sense of which topics they needed to focus on, Grimson said.
MITx itself is an experiment, Reif said, and will be closely monitored so that course materials and the interactive experience can be improved as needed. The software platform developed for MITx is open-source and will eventually be released to the public: Beneficial modifications made or suggested by anyone around the world will be incorporated into the platform at any time.
“We believe this is the future,” Reif said of interactive online education as a supplement to campus learning. The software platform will be offered to other institutions for use in their classes — providing an alternative to a trend toward online educational materials developed by for-profit companies, he added. Fist tap Dale.
By CNu at April 11, 2012 4 comments
Labels: culture of competence , open source culture , Possibilities
personal informatics for self-regulated learning
How personal informatics can help learning
There’s a problem here: learning on one’s own is not easy. Researchers have repeatedly found that people hold misconceptions about how to study well. For instance, rereading a passage gives the illusion of effective learning, but in reality quizzing oneself on the same material is far more effective for retention. Even then, people can misjudge the which items they will or will not be able to remember later.
The process of self-regulated learning works best when people accurately self-assess their learning and use that information to determine learning strategies and choose among resources. This reflective process fits well into the framework of personal informatics used already for applications like keeping up with one’s finances or making personal healthcare decisions.
For most people, their only experience quantifying learning is through grades on assignments and tests. While these can allow some level of reflection, the feedback loop is usually not tight enough. We are unable to fix our mistakes, making grades feel less like a opportunity for improvement and more like a final judgement.
How personal learning data can be collected
With computer-based practice, there is a great opportunity for timely personalized feedback. Several decades of research in the learning sciences have developed learner models for estimating a person’s knowledge of a topic based on their actions in a computer-based practice environment, often called an intelligent tutoring system. For example, a learner model for a physics tutor may predict the error rate of responses in defining the potential energy as a step in a physics problem — we see that the error rate decreases over the number of opportunities to use that skill, indicating learning (see below; from the PSLC DataShop). Such systems can not only track progress and give feedback but also make suggestions for effective learning strategies. Fist tap Dale.
By CNu at April 11, 2012 0 comments
Labels: open source culture , self-sufficiency
3 major publishers sue open-education textbook startup
A group of three large academic publishers has sued the start-up Boundless Learning in federal court, alleging that the young company, which produces open-education alternatives to printed textbooks, has stolen the creative expression of their authors and editors, violating their intellectual-property rights. The publishers Pearson, Cengage Learning, and Macmillan Higher Education filed their joint complaint last month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The publishers’ complaint takes issue with the way the upstart produces its open-education textbooks, which Boundless bills as free substitutes for expensive printed material. To gain access to the digital alternatives, students select the traditional books assigned in their classes, and Boundless pulls content from an array of open-education sources to knit together a text that the company claims is as good as the designated book. The company calls this mapping of printed book to open material “alignment”—a tactic the complaint said creates a finished product that violates the publishers’ copyrights.
“Notwithstanding whatever use it claims to make of ‘open source educational content,’ Defendant distributes ‘replacement textbooks’ that are created from, based upon, and overwhelmingly similar to Plaintiffs’ textbooks,” the complaint reads.
The complaint attempts to distance itself from attacking the legitimacy of open-education resources, but goes on to argue that Boundless is building its business model by stealing.
“Whether in the lecture hall or in a textbook, anyone is obviously free to teach the subjects biology, economics, or psychology, and can do so using, creating, and refining the pedagogical materials they think best, whether consisting of ‘open source educational content’ or otherwise,” it reads. “But by making unauthorized ‘shadow-versions’ of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, Defendant teaches only the age-old business model of theft.” Fist tap Dale.
By CNu at April 11, 2012 0 comments
Labels: not a good look , open source culture
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
occupy as a business model...,
In other words, the current so-called "knowledge economy" is a sham and a pipe dream - because abundant goods do not fare well in a market economy. For the sake of the world's workers, who live in an increasingly precarious situation, is there a way out of this conundrum? Can we restore the broken feedback loop?
Strangely enough, the answer may be found in the recent political movement that is Occupy, because along with "peer producing their political commons", they also exemplified new business and value practices. These practices were, in fact, remarkably similar to the institutional ecology that is already practiced in producing free software and open hardware communities. This is not a coincidence.
Let's look back at the workings of Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park, when it was still in operation in the autumn. At its centre was a productive public, reaching consensus through the General Assembly and offering all kinds of templates ("Mic Check", "Protest Camping", "Working Groups", et cetera) which, in a true open-source way, could be copied and practiced by similar communities the world over, but also modified to suit local needs.
This community had all kinds of needs: physical needs, such as food, shelter and healthcare. Did they resort to the market economy for this?
The answer isn't a simple yes or no. Occupy Wall Street set up working groups to find solutions to their physical needs. The economy was considered as a provisioning system (as explained in Marvin Brown's wonderful book, Civilising the Economy), and it was the "citizens", organised in these working groups, who decided which provisioning system was appropriate given their ethical values.
For example, organic farmers from Vermont provided free food to the campers, but this had a negative side effect: the local street vendors, generally poor immigrants, did not fare too well with everyone getting free food. The occupiers cared about the vendors and so they set up an Occupy Wall Street Vendor Project, which raised funds to buy food from the vendors.
Bingo: in one swoop, OWS created a well-functioning ethical economy that included a market dynamic, but that also functioned in harmony with the value system of the occupiers. What is crucial here is that it was the citizens who decided on the most appropriate provisioning system - and not the property and money owners in an economy divorced from ethical values. Fist tap Arnach.
By CNu at March 12, 2012 0 comments
Labels: open source culture
Friday, March 09, 2012
everything is a remix...,
Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
Everything is a Remix Part 3 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
Everything is a Remix Part 4 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
By CNu at March 09, 2012 2 comments
Labels: open source culture , roots
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
murmuration
It is obvious that we are in the early stages of this process in the USA (and Europe), as giant institutions such as the Federal Reserve, the Executive branch under Mr. Obama, the US Congress (the ECB), the SEC, the Department of Justice, the Treasury Department, and other engines of management all fail in one way or another to discharge their obligations.
The people of the USA, having been let down and swindled in so many ways by the people they placed their trust in, and even freely elected, appear to be in a daze of injury. Maybe this accounts for the obsession with zombies and persons drained of blood - who yet seem to carry on normal lives (at least in TV shows). This odd condition is best defined by the familiar cry from non-zombies: "where's the outrage?" Which brings me to today's point.
Investment guru James Dines introduced another seminal idea on Eric King's podcast last week. Dines's work over the years has focused much more on human mob psychology than technical market analysis - which he seems to regard as akin to augury with chicken entrails. Dines now introduces the term "murmuration" to describe the way that rapid changes occur in the realm of human activities. The word refers to behaviors also seen in other living species, such as the way a large flock of starlings will all turn in the sky at the same instant without any apparent communication. We don't know how they do that. It seems to be some kind of collective cognitive processing beyond our understanding.
By CNu at January 25, 2012 3 comments
Labels: odors , open source culture , quorum sensing?
Friday, January 20, 2012
at this very moment...,
By CNu at January 20, 2012 0 comments
Labels: micro-insurgencies , open source culture , truth
Trash Israeli Professional Boxer Spitting On And Beating On Kids At UCLA...,
sportspolitika | On Sunday, however, the mood turned ugly when thousands of demonstrators, including students and non-students, showed ...
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theatlantic | The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers...
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Video - John Marco Allegro in an interview with Van Kooten & De Bie. TSMATC | Describing the growth of the mushroom ( boletos), P...
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Farmer Scrub | We've just completed one full year of weighing and recording everything we harvest from the yard. I've uploaded a s...