"While writing his book The New New Thing, Michael Lewis found "so" endemic to Silicon Valley. Microsoft employees claimed it as indigenous to Redmond, Washington, with the rest of their rich lexicon of geek-speak and corporate jive. Employees at Hewlett Packard survived boring meetings by counting the number of "so"s. A joke even circulated: What's the sound of Santa Claus at an HP Christmas party? "So so so!"
(shout out to Jerry Michalski for twittering this one - NY Times link)
Today David Brooks wrote a column about how scientific advances can cause massive cultural changes. An understatement right? The central figure in this article however is religion. Brooks argues the literature which is beginning to combine science and spirituality (not religion per se) in new ways, will lead to a kind of "neural Buddhism" defined by the following elements:
"First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is."
Aside from how interesting that is, what struck me is when Brooks describes a general sense of the more recent thoughts on how the brain works, he argues that:
"Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development."
I was just struck by how understandings like this really reveal a gap between the mechanistic production models of instruction that we use versus how the brain may really and truly operate. These differences were a bit more hidden when we believed th brain operated like a computer but the further we drift from that model the more wrong-headed our design models appear.
Turns out that everything worthwhile to blog has already been blogged so we will be shutting down operations immediately. Thanks for playing.
M. Oehlert, Editor
(Penny Arcade) You don't know who Gary Gygax was? He was just the co-creator of a little social phenomenon known as Dungeons and Dragons. Time has a great article on how D&D has impacted our culture and WIRED was actually working on a big series article on Gygax and his impact (more coverage from Time and TerraNova coverage). More on D&D here. I also love this image from ICANHASCHEEZBURGER....
All that being said, Arthur C. Clarke has also passed away (Gygax was 67 and Clarke was 90). Author of something like 100 fiction and nonfiction works. Little-known books such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous with Rama (a personal fav) and Songs of Distant Earth. This the man who thought of the space elevator, using geostationary satellites for global communications, here is a list of the inventions that Clarke imagined and the stories in which he first mentioned them. Originally published in the early 60's,Clarke wrote Profiles of the Future, which laid out many of his imaginings of what the future wold hold. He also put forward his Three Laws of Prediction:
Other fav quotes include:
Hard to overestimate this one man's impact on our culture and our relation to and vision of what science can do.
from the Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State.....
Over on the Many2Many blog, Clay Shirky has a thoughtful and decently cited look at the basis of the Luddites' protests and how Andrew Keen's current argument against all things user-created, is essentially a Luddite argument, "This is what makes Keen’s argument a Luddite one — he doesn’t oppose all uses of technology, just ones that destroy older ways of doing things. In his view, the internet does not need to undermine the primacy of the copy as the anchor for both filtering and profitability."
For me that gets to the heart of why I can't stand to watch Keen spout his nonsense for longer than 10 or 15 seconds. He is not defending culture or art or literature...he is defending the status quo of the industries that have grown up behind movies, music, and publishing.
This is what I love about blogging. A couple of weeks ago, I had a little rant about learning in the context of the debate over PLEs; Ray Sims picked up on this and turned my lump of coal into something valuable. Ray created this great post that goes deeper than I in terms of looking at learning and what it means - thx Ray for all the great cites as well.
Back to back baby!!! That's right...the Oregon State Beavers (grad school - class of 1995 checking in here) win back to back College World Series titles (hasn't been done in 10 years!). They overcame a losing conference season that followed in the wake of the Beavs losing so many players after last year's win...they were not supposed to be here again and they clearly were not supposed to win another title.
Congrats to the players, coaches and a big Orange and Black shout out to the BEAVER NATION!! ...now excuse me, I have some shopping to do...
I helped a guy out of his demolished jeep this morning after he had just had an accident. The jeep was off the side of the road (the truck he hit was on the other side of the road). The jeep was still smoking (just radiator steam) and the guy was unconscious for about 15-20 seconds.
What struck me are the 5 or 6 cars in front of me that did not stop. I'm no hero but c'mon people, the man's car was SMOKING...time to pull over and DO something.
How do you train that?
We'll get back to normal broadcasting here in a moment but I did want to point to a raging firestorm going on in other parts of the blogosphere. Kathy Sierra is the author of a tremendous blog, Creating Passionate Users. I have always found her optimism and outlook refreshing and helpful (check out this post on a Crash Course in Learning Theory)- others apparently thought differently. You can read Kathy's original post about the death threats and the threatening photoshopped images here but fair warning - this is vile stuff (also see Chris Locke's initial post and Chris and Kathy's joint post). I don't want to recount the whole saga but links to do so are at the following: 1,2,3,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,). This whole episode is vile and repulsive, I feel awful for Kathy and to some degree Chris. We must however use this moment as a way to go deeper; past the language and images that are distubing and get to some root questions. I feel that this is a particular moment when those of us who are interested in learning, really need to bring some thinking to bear on what is going on here - this is my small attempt.
I wanted to point to Dave Cormier's post on this topic here - thx Dave. One of the reasons that this whole things disturbs me is because I have always encouraged people to blog or post on a wiki or do something that puts you out there - because I have always believed that the experience can change your perspective in a positive way - especially the criticism. I have received my share of critiques and am better for them (it's kinda like a knife being sharpened on a stone - it might not always be pleasant but you always come away sharper). I have NEVER though been exposed to anything like what Kathy is having to deal with. Death threats? Really? No, I'm not really surprised that this happened on the Web - its not the first time - it kind of reminds me of how I laugh when people talk about all the sex and porn in Second Life like they are somehow surprised that activities that make up so much of our real life and the rest of the Web - have also manifested themselves in this virtual world - not surprising at all. I am surprised that it is this kind of design community that this is coming out of - this is the kind of fare I'd expect on blogs talking about race relations, the Middle East or Roe v Wade - not web useability measures.
