1,110 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2017
    1. ut, however small the units decided upon, always abruptly from one unit to the next. If the units are made small enough-say billionths of a degree centigrade-the effect is equiva- lently 'smooth' or totalizing, approximating more and more that of an analogue computer

      Hmm, not something I usually think of in terms of computers, but it actually makes sense--binary language really does mean binary, even if we compound it out enough to conceal that.

  2. Apr 2017
    1. Todays ballpoint pens, not to mention our typewriters and word processors or the paper we use, are high-technology products, but we seldom advert to the fact because the technology is concentrated in the factories that produce such things

      I feel the situation with this has evolved in the past few years in how we look at "technology." Ian Bogost has an article about this, and how Facebook is called a tech company, while General Electric, which extensively develops new technology, is not. Technology has left behind the factory and gone into the cloud, but all of those places are technological.

    1. The sight offered by a train does not offered privileged insight but does offer a different way of being in the world, one that continues to be exercised even after the ride ends. In a related example, we might be exercising a similar posthuman practice with the rise of aerial photography drones, tuning into a “landscape vision” that contributes another materially informed way of seeing (theoria) or another way of being in the world

      I like the idea of how technology very literally changes what we see/how we see it, but I also think the train and the drone are interesting choices. I tend to think of the train most frequently as representing concerns of the industrial age. And of course with drones, there's creepy voyeurism and warfare. I don't know where I'm going with this other than its surprising to use these two examples (train and drones) to describe how they provide different ways of seeing when their impact extends far beyond that.

    1. Uploading

      I like the playing with language in the piece, which shows how technology and our interactions with it create/expand language (upload, memory, hacking).

    1. rather than, for instance, a telephone conversation, in which the in-terlocutors' contexts are not simply present to one another)

      I feel that Ong addresses this, though? He draws a lot from McLuhan's point that fascism emerged from radio broadcasts, and while skimming my Ong books, I'm not finding much on the telephone, he certainly looks at technologically-mediated orality as something distinct from the usual paradigm?

    2. Shortly after this im-age was released, the modem environmentalist movement in the United States began

      James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis originated slightly before 1967, but he was working for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, so in many ways, he already was working off a mental image of the Earth seen from the outside.

      Sidenote, but I first encountered the Gaia Hypothesis because the game SimEarth (which is built around modeling and playing with the concept) had a whole essay about it bundled in the game. I was way too young to really grasp the game without blatantly cheating (which feels like a worrying allegory), but I really remember the essay, along with SimCity's hidden essays on urban design and the character of cities. I'm trying to think if any video game since the Sim series has had a similar connection to an academic discipline.

    1. Like money, the (thinging of the) techno-logical thing changes everything

      I've alluded to this earlier, but I'm fascinated by the saga of Juicero, a 400 dollar kuireg for juice, only you can hand squeeze the juice out of the packages. Which means that the only function of the Juicero itself is to connect that package with an internet database that tells you when the juice is expired. What's really interesting, though, is the investors grumbling that they wouldn't have invested in juice packs--internet of juice is sincerely what they wanted in the world.

    2. "[ d]igital language makes control systems invisible; we no longer experience the visible yet unverifiable gaze, but a network of nonvisualizable digital control"

      The speaker at the Ong symposium this year was all about how digitization of books encourages a singular location and instance of a book, and all the problems that entails. That's interesting with this essay, and how Facebook and Google work to encourage a singular instance of a person. Google+, for all it's glaring issues, let you cultivate multiple categories of friends who could see X, Y, or Z, but I only have one facebook profile, for professional colleagues, family, and friends. Youtube doesn't like that I have two Gmail accounts, and tries to switch up which one is ending up on my user history. The language of control suggests guidance, someone directing the system, but there's also the risk of how blind, automated systems guide us.

    3. We often use terms such as "portal" or "site" or even "entry"

      This is a 2008 book, but by then, we were already seeing a shift away from related, three-dimensional spaces, like forums and a chatroom, towards walls and feeds. Video games still keep the image of the "cyber world," but the internet's gotten much flatter since I first started browsing.

    4. The name iLife itself suggests that these are not just a group of applications but something more fulsome, a range of digital practices that encompass one's life

      They seem to be picking up on a trend that would be exemplified in the Apple Watch, which was designed as part of a push to interface your home network of digital systems (TV, thermostat, $400 Juicer) through your phone, and controlled through a device strapped to your body.

    1. Heisactuallylookingforanaudienceandforconstraints;evenwhenhefindsanaudience,hedoesnotknowthatitisagen-uinelyrhetoricalaudience

      I've been thinking about the internet arguments, mentioned in class, where neither side seems interested in persuasion, and instead just sort of perform their side's argument. On the Internet, audiences are vague, shadowy things (I'm fond of the forum term of the "lurker," someone who reads the forums but doesn't post, and might not even have an account) that come across these arguments through retweets and crosslinks from friends-of-friends. These audiences are the actual target of these arguments, either to rally the base or to persuade moderates to take a more extreme side because they break the situation down into a binary between the one side and the enemy. Every content aggregator article that contains the word "eviscerates" demonstrates that this is a popular form of argument, but does it actually have a situation? Or is its audience entirely fictional?

    2. primitiveutterances

      It's interesting that "primitive" is the keyword here, we still use basic, monosyllabic commands and signals in our technological, complex society when we're in similar circumstances (for instance, signaling someone for backing up a truck with "Keep going" and "STOP"), and nowadays we have a greater presence of voice commands in technology ("Okay Google Navigate Home" "Siri Call Jenna"). But at the same time, this line really speaks to me as a teacher, when I annotate a student's paper and try not to just write "Interesting" or "Don't do that," and try to contort it into a full paragraph of advice, because that's What Advice Looks Like. Even if it's just "I laughed at your joke"

    1. transportation networks were evolved

      In this sentence, Berger refers to how transport and industrial activity expanded heavily over this time period when many Americans were moving out west. This is a massive part of North American history because of the opportunities it opened up for rich and poor people alike. The first railroads in North America were established in the 1820's and quickly altered the face of life on the continent. The rapid expansion of the railroad industry led to the development of other industries like oil and steel. For a time in the 19th century these were the largest economic factors in the United States and whoever controlled these essentially controlled the country. However, Berger here is referring to the opportunities that railroads opened up for expansion across the west and north. The incredible development of railroads made travel to the west coast of America much easier than it ever was before. This changed the idea of the "frontier" in many people's mind. Because travel was much easier, the idea of the west in North America being a rustic and dangerous environment changed overtime and culminated in western economic opportunities like the Gold Rush. "Gold discoveries in the Far West preceded the gold rush of 1849 and encouraged migration from eastern cities." As western movement became more and more popular, the idea of a pristine, wild, and natural American west began to fade. The idea of a getting rich quick from the California Gold Rush was translated to the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon of Canada in 1896. This had similar affects on how people viewed the Northwest region of Canada and its wilderness.

      "Railroad Promotion and Economic Expansion at Council Bluffs, Iowa, 1857-1869." Annals Of Iowa 42, no. 5 (Summer1974 1974): 371-389. America: History and Life with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed April 6, 2017).

    1. p. 12 Heintz 1987 is not in bibliography. A search for the quote suggests it is the same as this: Heintz, Lisa. 1992. “Consequences of New Electronic Communications Technologies for Knowledge Transfer in Science: Policy Implications.” In Washington, DC Congress of the United States. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) Contractor Report.

      I can't find a full text though. Presumably because it is a contractor report, it isn't in either of the OTA archives:

      http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/ http://ota.fas.org/

  3. Mar 2017
    1. Small, portable medical devices can offer patient's newfound mobility. Engineers at the University of Pittsburgh developed an artificial lung that can be carried in a patient’s backpack. Trials have so far shown that the device works on sheep and could offer relief and mobility for people who suffer from lung failure.

      This is incredible!

    1. Earlier this week, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport held a private ministerial meeting with news publishers and technology platforms to discuss the issue of fake news and the programmatic environment which supports it.
    1. Either we own political technologies, or they will own us. The great potential of big data, big analysis and online forums will be used by us or against us. We must move fast to beat the billionaires.
  4. Feb 2017
    1. Gardner Campbell on Doug Engelbart's Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework.

      even as modes of comprehension increase for some, modes of incomprehension increase for others. The person who sits with “Joe” as Joe demonstrates his new symbol-manipulating capacities reacts in ways that many of us may recognize

      ...

      It takes humility, and hospitality, to spend time with new ideas ... to go deep and go long with concepts that ask us to re-examine many things we take for granted.

    1. went viral on the Internet

      I'd like to connect this with Latour's notebooks, specifically my comment here that defends the slow, tedious, low tech approach.

    2. This meme is frequently introduced with the example of Galileo's defense of the heliocentric model of the solar system against the orthodoxy of the Catholic Churc

      To continue from my comment on Blair, I'm curious about the way technology and the extension of a sense encourages this way of thinking. Galileo's ability to pull away from the crowd's general wisdom (or perhaps, COMMON SENSE????? ) comes from a telescope that extends his sense beyond any ability by practice.

    1. hey who deal in microscopical ob-servations

      Might be a practical inquiry to look at how technological developments, like telescopes and microscopes, historically impacted this discussion on taste. When technological mediation means that someone with normative eye functionality can beat the best in terms of distance or detail, it has to shift the perception somewhat.

    1. Some or the new instruments or science arc, ./ """\ \ themselves, sciences; others arc arts; still others, c\v,W{' . producL'i of either art or nature

      How is his usage of "sciences" and "arts" here different (or not) from "technology"? In other words, to what extent is he saying that instrumental developments in science and art are the result of new technology?

      He explicitly describes technological advances like the microscope, telescope, and mariner's needle, but can the other developments be attributed to technology in more implicit (but nonetheless important) ways?

  5. Jan 2017
    1. Sites that masquerade as legitimate college resources have been proliferating exponentially, deeply entrenching themselves in the information highway. Five years ago, there were fewer than one hundred of these sites. Today, an innocent "Term Paper" search string on Yahoo reveals only the surface of this mammoth iceberg, yielding well over one million hits!

      So cheating and learning from technology is a fine line and people are using the technology more to cheat than to receive a better education?

      Seems like the laziness human nature kicking in.

    2. The Internet is, after all, a recognized research tool, not a societal subversion. In fact, it can be both.

      He means that technology is causing the downfall of society. But what in society is being subverted?

    3. The university landscape of today is foreign terrain even to graduates of just ten years past. Many of the once indelible foundations of higher learning have been gnawed away, gradually rendered impotent, soon perhaps even obsolete. Libraries, books, teachers, and the classroom itself--all are facing extinction because of what promises to be a century of rampant technological change.

      Is technology to blame for the downfall of education? It certainly seems that a lot of people think so.

  6. Dec 2016
  7. Nov 2016
    1. Past few decades have seen a sea change in the education system, especially with the advent of the information technology. The wave of this new networking technology and it’s amazing capacity for exchanging information on the real-time basis across the borders of the nations have significantly transformed the world of education and along with it the private tutoring system.

    1. this is not exclusive to Facebook and Twitter, or just during this election. We suck at understanding history or considering the future when we adopt new technologies -- this is often intentional. We need to make sure we are this critical when any new technology comes along, and work hard to understand the historical motives and ideology behind the tech, as well as get better at exploring possible dystopian futures brought on by each technological tool

    1. can be

      Or it can do the opposite. It can reify longstanding practices, diminish and undermine relationships between educators and students, widen the gaps between wealthy and poor students, and lock students into step-by-step online curriculum.

    1. equity of access to transformational learning experiences enabled by technology

      Love this careful distinction: tech is not enough, and tech can provide learning experiences for youth that can't be attained without technology.

  8. Oct 2016
    1. Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology;

      Every institution around the UE is trying to develop in a critical sense the main goals of the different subjects. In fact it doesn't makes too many differences between all this goals we have already read there: proficency and fluency, cross-cultural connections, managing information, etc. So the main point of this read is, in our opinion, to show the proper features to have as a complete citizen of the 21st century along literacy as a part of a common project.

  9. Sep 2016
  10. Aug 2016
    1. WISP (Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform), a computer chip powered by existing radio waves, developed by the U. of Washington Sensor Lab and Delft U. of Technology.

    1. Top 10 Tech News Of 2016 Technology is growing rapidly, daily new products, smartphones, updates, application are introducing in the market so it is very important for you to be updated with all the news and updates related technology. So read what is going on in the tech's world.

  11. Jul 2016
    1. New technology has often been introduced in schools without the necessary long-term planning and training that should have accompanied it. SMART boards were notorious for being installed in classrooms (at great cost) and then used in the same way as the static blackboards that preceded them. One-to-one device programs have been ridiculed for the same reasons.

      Was just discussing the SMART boards roll-out with a friend and colleague.

  12. Jun 2016
    1. it requires less computing power, and hence the developed educational games can be executed on the computers of most elementary schools in Taiwan; third, we wanted to avoid situating elementary school students in a complex 3D interface, which may increase the difficulty for them to learn with the game.

      I like the focus on minimilism

    1. Not every perceived ill turns out to be bad. Socrates famously decried the invention of writing. He described its ill effects and never wrote anything, but despite his eloquence, he could not command the tide to stop. His student Plato mulled it over, sympathized—and wrote it all down! We will likely adjust to losing most privacy—our tribal ancestors did without it. Adapting to life without community could be more challenging. We may have to endure long enough for nature to select for people who can get by without it.

      This is a very nice analysis: The technology appropriation is definitely a long-term/cultural question.

    2. In a 1992 paper in Organizational Science titled “The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations,” Wanda Orlikowski applied the structuration theory of sociologist Anthony Giddens to technology use and reached a similar conclusion. Giddens argued that human agency is constrained by the structures around us—technology and sociocultural conventions—and that we in turn shape those structures. Software, malleable and capable of representing rules, is especially conducive to such analysis.

      Love this paper!!!

  13. May 2016
    1. Headrick, Daniel R. 2000. When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850. Oxford University Press.

      Notes (American spelling).

  14. Apr 2016
    1. Great Principles of Computing<br> Peter J. Denning, Craig H. Martell

      This is a book about the whole of computing—its algorithms, architectures, and designs.

      Denning and Martell divide the great principles of computing into six categories: communication, computation, coordination, recollection, evaluation, and design.

      "Programmers have the largest impact when they are designers; otherwise, they are just coders for someone else's design."

    1. It is easy to allow technology to replace memorization and other skills. We should be mindful of what we allow it to replace. Martin Luther King had a large store of writings memorized -- and it served him well when he wrote the Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

      We need more tools that will aid skill development instead of replacing useful skills. Spaced repetition software to assist memorization is one example. Phrase-by-phrase music training programs are another. The same ideas can be applied to memorization of text.

    1. Things stayed civil because the system aligned incentives correctly.

      Sounds like there were many other reasons that most Internet-based initiatives stayed civil in their early days. Some of them have to do with human diversity.

  15. Mar 2016
  16. Jan 2016
    1. stack fallacy - Tech companies often fail when they create a new product by building upward from their existing product. They may know the technology well -- but fail to do enough research about what customers want. It is easier to innovate downward, by developing a product that you need yourself.

    1. Democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens. It must therefore foster and support a form of education, and access to the arts and the humanities, designed to make people of all backgrounds and wherever located masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants.

      Originally intended as upholding the virtues of the humanities in opposition to science and technology, I'd like to co-opt the argument for the humanities within, mainly, technology. We need more humanists in tech!

  17. Dec 2015
    1. this week’s announcement by Google that a machine made by a Canadian company, D-Wave Systems, which is marketed as “the world’s first commercial quantum computer”, had shown spectacular speed gains over conventional computers. “For a specific, carefully crafted proof-of-concept problem,” Google’s Hartmut Neven reported, “we achieved a 100-million-fold speed-up.”
    1. Reality Editor is an iOS app for programming and controlling Internet-enabled devices. It was created at MIT with their Open Hybrid platform. http://openhybrid.org/

    1. In addition to the improved performance, Big Sur is far more versatile and efficient than the off-the-shelf solutions in our previous generation. While many high-performance computing systems require special cooling and other unique infrastructure to operate, we have optimized these new servers for thermal and power efficiency, allowing us to operate them even in our own free-air cooled, Open Compute standard data centers.

      Facebook's Open Compute Project releases open-source hardware designs created with energy efficiency and ease of maintenance as priorities.

    1. even if an interconnected skein of nanotechnology were toextend into all aspects of everyday life

      recent research has proven that personal use technology (internet, smartphones, gaming systems) have decreased the skills of interpersonal communication and emotional intelligence (mostly of the millennials generation)... should we be pushing for technology to be involved in all aspects of everyday life?

    2. The appearance of the cyborg has engendered a newwaveof fear and trepidation towards the invasion of the body by strange technologiesthat threaten to eliminate or overwhelm the human subject

      It sounds like we're creating our own aliens and then essentially putting them inside of a subject/form that we recognize and are quite familiar with so our initial response to the subject will be favourable.. but we're being tricked.. overpowered.. Has anyone read The Host by Stephanie Meyer? Similar concept...

    1. For me the interesting part of Stiegler’s work is the idea that it is technics that invents human beings; it is technics that constitutes the human.

      We make the tools. Then the tools make us.

      "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" -- Pink Floyd

    2. All technologies create cultures of use around themselves; they create new techniques and new ways of doing things that were unthinkable prior to the technology.
    3. If we look back to the beginnings of the university in ancient Greece, there was a struggle even then against a new technology – writing. Plato thought this new-fangled device would ‘implant forgetfulness in [men’s] souls’; it would destroy their memory. People in his day were taught to memorise thousands of lines of poetry and long speeches as part of rhetoric, the art of ‘enchanting the soul’. He thought writing was an artificial memory that would eat away at our natural skills.

      Memorization of poetry and epic stories is rare in Western culture today. But musicians, comedians, and stage actors work largely by memory What are we missing, if anything? Verbatim memorization of long texts might be nothing more than a waste of brain power. Or if memorization is worthwhile, then books and computers can be used toward that goal, with advantages over oral transmission.

    4. Tertiary education must adapt to the technological changes that are occurring at the moment, from the way that courses are written and delivered to the way that students are assessed. This is not just because we will ‘lose’ students, but because what we teach will become irrelevant.
    5. Most mobile applications incorporating location-based services (LBS) are about finding information, which is like the first phase of the web discussed above. I think we’ll be seeing a second phase soon, where location and community converge, which will be really really interesting. For a while there on the web it didn’t matter where you were from, and in a way this will make location important again.
    6. Over the last five years in particular I think the shift in usage has been dramatic; the web is not just a place you go to find information, to do your banking and shopping; it is a place to actively create and publish fragments of your life, to develop a virtual persona in a virtual community, to build stories and objects and then share them.
    7. In the early 90’s I was convinced that the internet was going to revolutionise literature, art and even education. Many writers and artists were at that time. This initial period of excitement tends to happen with the introduction of every new communications technology – radio, TV, computing, and now mobile devices.

      To some degree, the Internet already has revolutionized literature, art, education -- and government and international relations. It's just a slower revolution than some might have hoped. Written language and the printing press are comparable. Telegraph, telephone, movies, radio, and TV rarely approached their potential to accomplish something beyond business or commercial entertainment.

    8. It’s a useful term if you work in marketing, PR or business development – but I think academics and media students should be more critical. The idea of Media Studies 2.0 is quite funny; is that where the students collaboratively write the course material and give the lectures to each other? Love it.
    9. The term "Web 2.0" is useful to describe some recent trends, but we need to remember it’s a marketing term. It was coined by the online publishers O’Reilly Media to describe a whole grab-bag of different applications and business models.
    10. Mobile users have a constant low-level awareness of their device; the possibility that communication may arrive at any instant inhabits their awareness. It’s like you’re expecting a visitor sometime or have a pot slowly boiling in the other room, your attention is split.
    11. So for the first time in history, we have a citizenry who are in perpetual contact with the network, who are able to send and receive images wherever they are, who are never ‘offline’ unless they choose to be. If there is any kind of news event, a natural disaster or celebrity sighting for example, then someone is usually there with a camera in their pocket to capture it; perpetual surveillance.
  18. Nov 2015
    1. PC gaming has enthusiastically embraced crowdfunding. On Kickstarter, video games (most of of which PC games) is the highest-funded category
    2. Another form of video game remixing happens on broadcasting sites like Twitch, where you can watch live videos of people playing games (while they chat with the audience — the end result is an interesting mix between video games and talk radio).
    3. Remixing books is popular on services like Wattpad where users write fanfiction inspired by books, celebrities, movies, etc. From a legal perspective, some fanfiction could be seen as copyright or trademark infringement. From a business perspective, the book industry would be smart to learn from the PC gaming business. Instead of fighting over pieces of a shrinking pie, try to grow the pie by getting more people to read and write books.
    4. In the gaming world, “mods” are user created versions of games or elements of games. Steam has about 4500 games but about 400 million pieces of user-generated content. Dota itself was originally a user-created mod of another game, Warcraft 3.Contrast this to the music industry, which relies on litigation to aggressively stifle remixing and experimentation.
    5. PC games are so popular they can also make money from live events. Live gaming competitions have become huge: over 32M people watched the League of Legends championship this year, almost double the number of people who watched the NBA finals.
    6. The types of games on Steam vary widely, as do the business models. The most popular game, Dota 2, is free. It makes money selling in-app items, mostly “cosmetic items” that alter the appearance of characters.
    7. if the future is already here, where can I find it? There is no easy answer, but history shows there are characteristic patterns. For example, it’s often useful to look at what the smartest people work on in their free time, or things that are growing rapidly but widely dismissed as toys.
    8. Today, billions of people carry internet-connected supercomputers in their pockets, the largest knowledge repository in the world is a massive crowdsourced encyclopedia, and a social network is one of the 10 most valuable companies in the world. Ten years ago, someone who predicted these things would have seemed crazy.
    1. Blockchains can also implement business rules, such as transactions that take place only if two or more parties endorse them, or if another transaction has been completed first.
    2. Blockchains are also the latest example of the unexpected fruits of cryptography. Mathematical scrambling is used to boil down an original piece of information into a code, known as a hash. Any attempt to tamper with any part of the blockchain is apparent immediately—because the new hash will not match the old ones. In this way a science that keeps information secret (vital for encrypting messages and online shopping and banking) is, paradoxically, also a tool for open dealing.
    3. The blockchain is an even more potent technology. In essence it is a shared, trusted, public ledger that everyone can inspect, but which no single user controls. The participants in a blockchain system collectively keep the ledger up to date: it can be amended only according to strict rules and by general agreement. Bitcoin’s blockchain ledger prevents double-spending and keeps track of transactions continuously. It is what makes possible a currency without a central bank.
    4. But most unfair of all is that bitcoin’s shady image causes people to overlook the extraordinary potential of the “blockchain”, the technology that underpins it. This innovation carries a significance stretching far beyond cryptocurrency. The blockchain lets people who have no particular confidence in each other collaborate without having to go through a neutral central authority. Simply put, it is a machine for creating trust.
    1. Manhas,asitwere,becomea kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent.

      So... our inventions (technology) and how we implement them throughout society can make us god like? Makes me think of how we acquire different skill sets so that we can adapt to different tasks or work responsibilities (wearing different hats - if anyone has heard that metaphor)

    2. Placing the system at the center of analysis decenters a focus on technology and offers a moresynthetic perspective, bringing into our conception of machines all sorts of nontechnological ele-ments.

      So it is not really about the technology, but more about how we are implementing the use of it throughout the different areas where these systems are constructed.

  19. Oct 2015
    1. More to the point, in situations of breakdown, whether epic or mundane, the humble mobile phone has extended the city's interactivity and adaptability in all kinds of ways and may well have been the most significant device to add to a city's overall resilience by adding an extra thread to the urban knot

      Technology is tying cities together, making them stronger, quicker to adapt to changes, and more able to respond to threats.

    1. The confrontation with technology at the level of creation is what distinguishes electronic literature from, for example, e-books, digitized versions of print works, and other products of print authors “going digital.”

      Confrontation with technology as a way to elaborate and create literature differs widelly from just using tecnological devices to display literature.

  20. Sep 2015
    1. The spatial order, including the built environment, is not only the product of classificatory collective representations based on social forms but also a model for reproducing the social forms themselve

      Are we allowing the technology we use to build around us reform the way society interacts with itself and its surroundings?

    2. illustrates how architecture as an institu- tion contributes to the maintenance of power of one group over anothe

      Countries with better technology can build bigger cities, hence having an advantage by sheer size

    1. If you have a Centre for Teaching and Learning or a Learning Technology unit, they should have such specialists. It would also be sensible to make sure that an instructional designer also attends your first meeting, as their skills are somewhat different, although related.
    1. However, the dynamic of post-secondary institutions is such that this direction could and probably will change dramatically. In the future, we will need instructors who have the skills to decide when and how to use online learning as part of their jobs, and not see online learning as a specialty of someone else.
    1. How Peru is using drones to protect its archaeological treasures

      Interesting read on the usage of drones in mapping archaeological sites. The composite image is made by taking overlapping aerial photographs. From this, 3D models of the sites can be made. This article discusses not only the archaeological benefits of drone use, but also how drones can help to keep tabs on any destruction occurring on the site.

  21. Aug 2015
    1. Dinerstein explores the idea of technology as a kind of secular American religion, focusing primarily on the exclusionary practices of such a posthuman theology.

  22. Jun 2015
    1. Teachers Know Best is a multi-year research effort to better understand how teachers use digital instructional tools and how these tools can be improved to foster personalized learning.

      Important potential partner/collaborator. Here's their site.

    1. How has culture developed technologies to extend and enhance the senses, cre- ating an “exosomatic” array of devices that compensate for the limits of our crea- turely nature?

      Always a bit allergic to the supplementary/extension framing for technology. Seems prevalent lots of these discussions of sense (cf. McLuhan).

  23. May 2015
    1. Transhumanists are at war with the bioconservatives. This just sounds like a William Gibson sci-fi novel. We live in amazing times. That said, global bans on technology and science never work; they just really mess things up. Regardless of what the bioconservatives think, there are cultures that will embrace these technologies (and already do). Historically, and possibly without exception, countries that ban or hobble new technologies eventually regret it because at least some of their neighbors will not follow suit. Further, by outright turning their back on the technology, they lose any voice they might have had in determining how it will be employed.

  24. Apr 2015
    1. "Racism, sexism, and other forms of exclusionary behavior are in and of themselves nuanced and multilayered," says Freada Kapor Klein, a prominent advocate for tech diversity and founder of the not-for-profit Level Playing Field Institute.
  25. Mar 2015
  26. ronja.twibright.com ronja.twibright.com
    1. Ronja is a free technology project for reliable optical data links with a current range of 1.4km and a communication speed of 10Mbps full duplex. Applications of this wireless networking device include backbone of free, public, and community networks, individual and corporate Internet connectivity, and also home and building security. High reliability and availability linking is possible in combination with WiFi devices. The Twibright Ronja datalink can network neighbouring houses with cross-street ethernet access, solve the last mile problem for ISP’s, or provide a link layer for fast neighbourhood mesh networks.
    1. Links, thoughts and research into using drones, UAVs or remotely piloted vehicles for journalism at the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
  27. Nov 2014
    1. Nice article. Along with discussing imitation vs innovation and cult of creativity, can provide another level to discussion of progress.

  28. Aug 2014
    1. Phones can only work when they know where they are and are telling the phone company that. It’s not surveillance, it’s how radio waves work. This is the first reason for the network to work the way it does. The second? Billing. In fact, most of the surveillance networks in the world weren’t built to surveil at all, but to make things work at a fundamental level, and to bill people. Surveillance and intrusion are opportunistically inserted into good infrastructure.
  29. Jun 2014
    1. Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.

      "Technology leadership is....defined by...the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world's most talented engineers."

      The key components of this applied "open source philosophy" seem to be about increasing input, visibility, and collective motivation by taking fear out of the interaction equation.

  30. Feb 2014
    1. TISP (Technologies and Innovation for Smart Publishing) is the European project aiming to foster the meeting between publishing companies and ICT enterprises, in order to stimulate new partnership and business models.

      great project!

  31. Jan 2014
    1. Policies and procedures sometimes serve as an active rather than passive barrier to data sharing. Campbell et al. (2003) reported that government agencies often have strict policies about secrecy for some publicly funded research. In a survey of 79 technology transfer officers in American universities, 93% reported that their institution had a formal policy that required researchers to file an invention disclosure before seeking to commercialize research results. About one-half of the participants reported institutional policies that prohibited the dissemination of biomaterials without a material transfer agreement, which have become so complex and demanding that they inhibit sharing [15].

      Policies and procedures are barriers, but there are many more barriers beyond that which get in the way first.