major transitions “brought about on a global scale by the Internet and by climate, economic, and geopolitical changes” suggest that industrial civilisation is moving into the “back-loop” of a planetary-scale adaptive cycle

the emergence of greater vulnerability because of the increasing number of interconnections that link that wealth, and those who control it, in efforts to sustain it

The front-loop phase is more predictable, with higher degrees of certainty. In both the natural and social worlds, it maximizes production and accumulation. We have been in that mode since World War II. The consequence of this is not only an accumulation and concentration of wealth, but also the emergence of greater vulnerability because of the increasing number of interconnections that link that wealth, and those who control it, in efforts to sustain it. Little time and few resources are available for alternatives that explore different visions or opportunities. Emergence and novelty is inhibited. This growing connectedness leads to increasing rigidity in its goal to retain control, and the system becomes ever more tightly bound together. This reduces resilience and the capacity of the system to absorb change, thus increasing the threat of abrupt change. We can recognize the need for change but become politically stifled in our capacity to act effectively.

From the S-1 Registration Statement

Flow, the secret to happiness7,449,106 views | Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi | TED2004 • February 2004

He compiled hundreds of them over the course of his career. Some were lost or given away as souvenirs, but 91 were recently discovered at the Reagan Library, stored in boxes that contained the contents of Reagan’s desk at his Los Angeles office on the day he died in June 2004.

May 19, 2004 #1 Hello everyone here at the forum. I want to thank everyone here for all of the helpful and informative advice on GTD. I am a beginner in the field of GTD and wish to give back some of what I have received. What is posted below is not much of tips-and-tricks I found it very helpful in understanding GTD. The paragraphs posted below are from the book Lila, by Robert Pirsig. Some of you may have read the book and some may have not. It’s an outstanding read on philosophy. Robert Pirsig wrote his philosophy using what David Allen does, basically getting everything out of his head. I found Robert Pirsigs writing on it fascinating and it gave me a wider perspective in using GTD. I hope you all enjoy it, and by all means check out the book, Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals. Thanks everyone. arthur

TiddlyWiki was inspired by @WardCunningham's glorious idea of wiki – more than anything by the way that wiki makes linking be part of the punctuation of writing.

Une authentique dérogation est à noter: la loi du 15 mars 2004 a introduit l’interdiction du « port de signes ou de tenues » manifestant « ostensiblement une appartenance religieuse » pour les élèves des écoles, collèges et lycées publics, qui sont des usagers du service public de l’éducation. Ainsi, les signes et tenues interdits sont ceux dont le port conduit à se faire immédiatement reconnaître par son appartenance religieuse, tels que le foulard, la kippa ou une croix de dimension manifestement excessive. La loi ne remet pas en cause le droit des élèves de porter des signes religieux discrets.Il est à noter que cette interdiction, strictement limitée aux écoles collèges et lycées publics, ne s’applique pas dans l’enseignement supérieur,et notamment au sein de l’université, que les élèves, usagers, sont libres de fréquenter en revendiquant leur religion, sous réserve, classiquement, de ne pas troubler l’ordre public.

Nowadays, it would be hard to find a humanist who doesn't use a com- puter in some aspect of his work. The computing humanist has evolved into a scholar who not only uses the computer in his work, but also engages with the methodological and theoretical aspects of computer use in humanities disciplines. The ways in which technology is used by humanists has diversi- fied to span everything from word processor use and web page creation to the development and use of complex software systems for analysis of a broad range of data types, including not only literary and historical texts but also databases of humanities information, images, and sound. As a result, in recent years CHum has come to serve an increasingly wide array of disci- plines and research areas - English, History, New Media, Music, Corpus Linguistics, Comlutational Linguistics, and many others - and received top- notch submissions in all of them. For most of its history, the diversity of disciplines and methodologies represented in CHum's articles enabled cross- fertilization of ideas which was highly valued by the community. However, as computer use in the humanities has come to span an increasingly broad range of activities, and as computational methodologies evolve and become more sophisticated and specialized, it has become more and more difficult to retain that diversity and at the same time provide enough articles relevant to a particular area of interest. It seems, then, that the time has come to narrow the journal's focus in order to best serve its readers

In 2004, she was a student in the human-resources department at King Abdulaziz University, in Jeddah, when the university announced that it would be opening a degree program in law for female students. It was the first such program in the kingdom, and Zahran immediately switched her concentration to law.

2004, Saudi Arabia introduced reforms allowing women’s colleges and universities to offer degree programs in law.

So a major challengefor future research is to investigate the use of task analysis techniques in context, assessing theefficiency and effectiveness of these techniques for particular tasks, situations, design problems and organizational structures

Empirical evidence is crucial here, but this research is still nascent, as many techniques have been proposed with littleempirical evaluation.

Usability engineers already rely on simple techniques such as cognitive walkthroughs andheuristic evaluation,but these approaches sacrifice the richness of true task analysis

toolittle is beingsaid about the use of cognitive task analysis products in discussions of cognitive task analysis

For task analysis to realize itspotential, researchers must improve its usabilityand degree ofintegration.

HCI research has evolvedover the past fifty years from focusingon technical (ergonomic) aspects, to conceptual (information-processing) models, towork-process (contextual) models (Kuutti and Bannon, 1991; Grudin, 1990).

Activity theory anticipates and can help to model contemporary ecological approaches to cognitive psychology, such asdistributed cognition(Hollan et al., 2000)

ctivities are not seen in isolation. They are under continuous development, so their historyaccumulates and serves to inform their evolution. This is possible because of the presence of artifacts. Artifacts carry culturein the form of “historical residue,” delivering the lessonsof the past to the future, mediatingbetween different elements of an activity, and enabling the coordinationof complex actions.

Compared toHTA or cognitive modeling,CTA has increasedunderstanding of many important cognitive aspects ofmodern task environments. However, it is unclear how effective CTA techniques are in representing these aspects in a systematic and usefulway (Shepherd, 2001).

CTA requires “making explicit theimplicit knowledge and cognitive-processing requirements ofjobs” (Dubois and Shalin, 2000:42)

GOMS analysis produces a descriptionof a task, often in the form of a hierarchical plan similar to those produced byHTA. However,while HTA generally describes high-level activity, GOMS typically works at the keystroke level. This low-levelfocus arises fromthe requirement that the lowest-level operators in a taskhaverigorousestimates of execution time.

HTA recognizes the responsibility of the operator (user) to planthe use of available resources to attain a given goal, but ittreats the operator’s cognitive processes as a black box: “howbehavior is actually organized is a question for cognitive psychology” (Shepherd 2001:16).

The strengths and weaknesses of HTA flow from its strong system-centric stance

HTAbreaks tasks into subtasks and operationsor actions

Task analysis nowincludes a range of techniques aimed at obtaining descriptions of what people do, representing those descriptions, predictingdifficulties, and evaluatingsystems against functional requirements(Jordan, 1998)

failed to fully integrate technology with user needs to improve the tasks being performed

analyzing the movement of individuals or material, theinteraction between human and machine, and body movement

oncluded that performance was influencedmore strongly by the attention givento workers during the studies thanbyenvironmental effects such as lighting

I share that bizarre thought with you because it underlines how difficult it is to decode imagery createdbya vanished culture.

Attempting to read even the most seemingly obvious of these signs can lead us astray.

So, how can yougroup the symbols of a culture that no longer exists?

We, however, can change rapidly, through invention,discovery, and communication