67 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2023
  2. Oct 2023
  3. Sep 2023
  4. Jun 2023
    1. As Chris Aldridge says, for centuries the Zettelkasten approach was the standard and universal method for producing books and articles - until personal computers took over. Nearly every serious work ever published before the 1980s was drafted either with index cards or paper slips, or else with notebooks in a commonplace style. Every writer had their own take on these two options, but that’s what they all used. Then, in a single decade, word processing software took over. These days, most writers use something like Microsoft Word or Google Docs (just try persuading your publisher you’re not giving them a docx file). Scrivener became popular because it critiqued the ‘endless roll of paper’ model and reverted to an index card interface of sorts. But it remained a niche.Today, you either thrive on that word processor model or you don’t. I really don’t, which is why I’ve invested effort, as you have, in researching previous writing workflows, older than the all-conquering PC of the late 1980s and early 90s. At the same time, new writing tools are challenging the established Microsoft way, but in doing so are drawing attention to the fact that each app locks the user into a particular set of assumptions about the drafting and publishing process.The current academic scene is a brutal war to publish or perish. It’s not unusual for a researcher to write or co-write 30-40 peer-reviewed articles per year. General publishing is also frenetic. In the UK, 20 books are published every hour of the day. It all makes Luhmann’s ‘prolific’ output look lazy. Now though, AI is blowing the entire field apart. From now on, prolific writing is what computers do best. There’s no reason not to publish 20,000 books per hour. Soon enough, that will be the output per ‘author’. Where the pieces will eventually land is anyone’s guess. For example, the workflow of the near future might involve one part writing and nineteen parts marketing. Except that AI has got that sewn up too. Meanwhile, until the world ends, I’m just having fun doing my thing.

      Before the advent of the computer, the use of a zettelkasten or commonplace book to research was "common place".

      What happened with the transition? Perhaps the methodology was lost in the transition, people just dumping things into a word file?

  5. Jan 2023
    1. how important is the concrete syntax of their language in contrast to

      how important is the concrete syntax of their language in contrast to the abstract concepts behind them what I mean they say can someone somewhat awkward concrete syntax be an obstacle when it comes to the acceptance

  6. Dec 2022
    1. I just can’t stop dreaming about a perfect world where I could go back to any of my old JavaScript projects with an ease of mind and knowing that everything just works. A perfect world where my program is going to stand the test of time.

      That's a you-problem. The pieces are there—the language is stable, and there's a ludicrously backwards compatible World Wide Wruntime that you can trust to be around—it's on you if it fails.

    1. On the onehand we have our technical toolbox full but on theother, we cannot use these tools effectively becausea proper infrastructure is absent.
  7. Nov 2022
    1. it is principally a display technology

      It's not. It's a document markup language.

      Most Web developers, however—going back to 1999 and before—certainly treat it like it's a display technology.

  8. Oct 2022
    1. we must acknowledgethe root of the scientific-repeatabilityproblem is sociological, not techno-logical
  9. Sep 2022
  10. Aug 2022
    1. I think we can define an "archival virtual machine" specification that is efficient enough to be usable but simple enough that it never needs to be updated and is easy to implement on any platform; then we can compile our explorable explanations into binaries for that machine. Thenceforth we only need to write new implementations of the archival virtual machine platform as new platforms come along

      We have that. It's the Web platform. The hard part is getting people to admit this, and then getting them to actually stop acting counter to these interests. Sometimes that involves getting them to admit that their preferred software stack (and their devotion to it) is the problem, and it's not going to just fix itself.

      See also: Lorie and the UVC

    1. Finally, in anticipation of an argument that I expect to see, let me stress that this is not a technical issue. Computing technology moves at a fast pace, but that doesn’t mean that lack of stability is a fatality. My last Fortran code, published in 1994, still works without changing a single line. Banks have been running Cobol code unchanged for decades. Today’s Java implementations will run the very first Java code from 1995 without changes, and even much faster thanks to JIT technology. This last example also shows that stability is not in contradiction with progress. You can have both if that’s a design goal. It’s all a matter of policy, not technology.
  11. Jul 2022
    1. @2:10

      They didn't publish the code. They published the algorithm. And they prided themselves on—the computer scientists at the time—of describing the algorithm, not GitHubbing the code. These days we don't—we GitHub the code. You want the algorithm? Here's the code.

      This is not always reliable. There are some non-highly-mathematical things that you'd prefer to have the algorithm explained rather than slog through the code, which is probably adulterated with hacks for e.g. platform gotchas, etc.

      There is a better way, though, which is to publish a high-level description of the workings as runnable code that you can simulate in a Web browser. Too many people have misconceptions about the stability of the Web browser as a platform for simulations, however. We need to work on this.

  12. Jun 2022
    1. Want to animate navigations between pages? You can’t (yet). Want to avoid the flash of white? You can’t, until Chrome fixes it (and it’s not perfect yet). Want to avoid re-rendering the whole page, when there’s only a small subset that actually needs to change? You can’t; it’s a “full page refresh.”

      an impedance mismatch, between what the Web is (infrastructure for building information services that follow the reference desk model—request a document, and the librarian will come back with it) versus what many Web developers want to be (traditional app developers—specifically, self-styled product designers with near 100% autonomy and creative control over the "experience")—and therefore what they want the Web browser to be (the vehicle that makes that possible, with as little effort as possible on the end of the designer–developer)

    1. Under the new rules, consumers will no longer need a different charging device and cable every time they purchase a new device, and can use one single charger for all of their small and medium-sized portable electronic devices. We have also added provisions on wireless charging being the next evolution in the charging technology and improved information and labelling for consumers

    1. Augmented Reality can break down communication barriers – and help us better understand each other by making language visible. Google shows a preview of AR glasses yesterday that can translate speech in real-time. Although it's only a concept at the moment, the promise is incredible and underlines how #augmentedreality will increasingly & positively impact our daily lives.

    1. In 2010, we didn’t have ES modules, but once it was standardized it should have been brought into Node.

      Fun fact: the amount of time between 2010—the year Dahl mentions here—and ES2015—aka ES6, where modules appeared—is less than the amount of time between ES2015 and today. And yet people act like modules are new (or worse, just over the horizon, but still not here). It's a people problem.

  13. May 2022
    1. Yes, you could write Python utilities that are easy to install and run, but people don't. And the last bit of that sentence is the one that actually counts. "Could have" doesn't actually count in an engineering context.
  14. Mar 2022
    1. immediately purchased

      People are so quick to point out the lack of interest for people (and programmers, esp.) to pay for software. If this were distributed as HTML, maybe a way to hack around this unfortunate cognitive hangup would be to frame it as If you're buying an ebook: the manual for the software. It just so happens that this manual can be interpreted by a machine.

  15. Feb 2022
    1. This article is for those who want to keep traveling despite restrictions due to covid. Basically giving tips on how to navigate the multiple governmental restrictions and policies including links to airline or country websites for choosing destinations. Because of this trend in travel advice in covid times, we may see attitudes towards travel shift to travel knowing the risks involved (quarantine, masks requirements, etc.) and hence see tourism rise again. Last minute covid holiday packages. What if the trend for remaining home also stayed the same for next five years and the adventure seekers become the avatars for the folks who want to stay at home.

      The crisis is changing the way how people will enjoy their international holiday, with an extra concern on testing and quarantine expenses and risk taking. That may have an impact on the tourism market, asking the airline companies to provide flexible policies /products and may witness the booming of travel insurance market.

  16. Jan 2022
  17. canvas.ucsc.edu canvas.ucsc.edu
    1. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin

      1. Benjamin is part of the Frankfurt School at Institute of Social Studies in Germany.
      2. They are trying to examine the failure of Marxist revolutionary social change.
      3. The idea is that ideology disseminated through mass media are making it very difficult for Marx's prognotication are making it very difficult for social change to occur.
      4. 19th century modernity: mass transportation, factory work, dissemination of capitalism, movement to cities and experience of urban life

       These convergent endeavors made predictable a situation which Paul Valéry pointed up in this sentence: “Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.” (op. cit., p. 226) Around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the most profound change in their impact upon the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic processes. For the study of this standard nothing is more revealing than the nature of the repercussions that these two different manifestations—the reproduction of works of art and the art of the film—have had on art in its traditional form.

      Q: Why does it matter that film minimizes the aura?

      At the time, art reacted with the doctrine of l’art pour l’art, that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of ‘pure’ art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter. (In poetry, Mallarmé was the first to take this position.) An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.7 From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the ‘authentic’ print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice—politics.<br> Ritual: pre-modern timesPolitics: Despite the political painting the art piece will be associated with the aura of original piece of art.

      • Film is not auratic because in film: 1) spaces and times are constructed 2) actors performance is stitched together 3) actors do not share space with spectators 4) multiple points of view 5) appeals to a MASS AUDIENCE and a COLLECTIVE AUDIENCE 6) reveals new aspects of the thing reproduced (time alpse, slow motion).

      How do institutions put the aura back into film?

      In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance.

      The superstar is a way to put the aura back into film

      The film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the “personality” outside the studio. The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the “spell of the personality,” the phony spell of a commodity. So long as the movie-makers’ capital sets the fashion, as a rule no other revolutionary merit can be accredited to today’s film than the promotion of a revolutionary criticism of traditional concepts of art. We do not deny that in some cases today’s films can also promote revolutionary criticism of social conditions, even of the distribution of property. However, our present study is no more specifically concerned with this than is the film production of Western Europe.

      *Marx says capitalism produces the seeds of its demise. We can think of that as a guiding principle in which capitalism produces the neorosis that leads Chaplins character into a destructive set of behaviors that stops the Fordist capitalist production in a factory.

      Feelings of belongoing and togetherness and being overhwemed by a mass you want to be a part of , but for Benjamin this is a trynanny where people feel they are in control but they are not really in control. Thus communism replies by politicizing art. Art for art's sake is harmful when put in the service of a facist regime. Art for political progress.

      The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves.21 The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values.

      Film is not merely a translation of an in-person thetaer performance. Rather film is performing for future audiences and for the director and for cinematrography. This supports the idea that film is a collabroative creation that brings an object into the world.

      One film can be playing multiple times around the world and so this can be distributed on mass scale.

      Film is not merely a recording of reality. Film reproduced new aspects of the things reproduced through slow motion and it brings to light entirely new aspects of matter but discloses quite aspects within them. If Benjamin merely interested in the epistemological possibility of the film to expand our limited perceptual appartus, yes but think about how this reinforces his claim that film moves us away from the aura,...that if we can see unknown aspects by recording it then we can't rely on film to reproduce an original we have to keep in mind that the image is qualitatively distinct from our perceptual access to the thing. So film is not merely a copy of the thing that it records.

      Benjamin flips things and says that maybe film isn't art the way we see an art and this will get us away from the trappings.

      What is Benjamin's definition of art which he is defining with the aura, the transcendence of individual of ritual.

      1. substructure or base: factors that produce commodities and economic relations that result from these concrete aspects
      2. superstructure: culture, law, media that for a Marxist thinker emerges in the way that the economic structure functions; the more media/education/political cosumption that you do the less you are going to understand the conditions of your exploitation and the more you are going to think change is possible.
      3. What role does cinema play in the move from cult and aura to mechanical reproduction? See snapshots.
  18. Jan 2021
  19. Nov 2020
    1. aggrandizing

      Very important to note that Ellis acknowledges Dale Beran's perspective with his book, It Came From Something Awful, is aggrandizing, this means that she is intentionally shifting away from the Technologically Deterministic argument that the technology of 4chan is what gave the U.S. Donald Trump as President. She's definitely, with this single word, displaying a preference towards the Instrumentalism end of the Technological Determinism vs Instrumentalism debate, whereas Beran's very premise, "How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office," is inherently Deterministic.

  20. Oct 2020
    1. Pre-service Teachers' Practices towards Digital Game Design for Technology Integration into Science Classrooms

      This article looks at yet another new technology that has the potential to revolutionize the adult learning field. It examines the results of teaching educators about digital game design for technology integration. It looked at integrating this technology into science classrooms in particular. 9/10, very interesting new technology with lots of potential implications in the adult learning field.

    1. Integrating academic and everyday learning through technology: Issues and challenges for researchers, policy makers and practitioners

      This article examines the potential to connect academic with knowledge learned through life and career experience using technology and other traditional methods. Challenges and best practices are presented and all levels of individual and institution are included in the discussion. Rating 8/10. Very interesting idea and cool how many levels of organization are included.

    1. Preservice Teacher Experience with Technology Integration: How the Preservice Teacher’s Effica-cy in Technology Integration is Impactedby the Context of the Preservice Teacher Education Pro-gram

      This article discusses the need for teacher education to focus just as much on technology knowledge (regardless of grade level taught) as on educational theory and methods. It argues that teachers cannot be effective if they are not trained in not only current technologies, but also taught to be familiar with navigating new technologies as the emerge. 5/10 Very specific to K-12 teacher education.

  21. Sep 2020
  22. May 2020
  23. Feb 2019
    1. marked by revolutions in science, philosophy, and politics.

      Funny that (as the margin note points out) technology is left out of this list. Is this perhaps because RT addresses technology separately or that the significance of technological revolutions is overshadowed by these other changes?

  24. Jan 2019
    1. The Grid is based around ideas familiar to Bitwig Studio

      The continuity between these new modular features and the rest of the DAW’s workflow probably has unexpected consequences. Before getting information about BWS3, one might have thought that the “Native Modular System” promised since the first version might still be an add-on. What the marketing copy around this “killer feature” makes clear, it’s the result of a very deliberate process from the start and it’ll make for a qualitatively different workflow.

  25. Dec 2018
    1. One is to imagine that culture is a self-contained "super-organic" reality with forces and purposes of its own; that is, to reify it. Another is to claim that it consists in the brute pattern of behavioral events we observe in fact to occur in some identifiable community or other; that is, to reduce it.

      Geertz warns about the danger of reducing or reifying culture. While this may have been a debate in anthropology in 1973 (hopefully resolved), it still seems to resonate in HCI today between the factions of technological determinism and social constructionism

    1. As Heilbroner (1994) and other researchers have argued, technological tra-jectories are responsive to social direction. I make the case that they may alsobe responsive to intellectual direction.1Indeed, a central premise of HCI isthat we should not force users to adapt.

      Ackerman concludes the discussion about socio-technical gaps that people should not be forced to adapt to technology.

      Technology can and should respond to social and intellectual direction.

      Cites Heilbroner (1994) who writes about technological determinism that I should take a look at

      http://www.f.waseda.jp/sidoli/Heilbroner_1994.pdf

  26. Nov 2018
    1. Instructional Design Strategies for Intensive Online Courses: An Objectivist-Constructivist Blended Approach

      This was an excellent article Chen (2007) in defining and laying out how a blended learning approach of objectivist and constructivist instructional strategies work well in online instruction and the use of an actual online course as a study example.

      RATING: 4/5 (rating based upon a score system 1 to 5, 1= lowest 5=highest in terms of content, veracity, easiness of use etc.)

    1. Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration

      This article explores the interaction of student based learner-centered used of technology tools such as wikis, blogs and podcasts as new and emerging technology tools. With distance learning programs becoming more and more popular, software applications such as Writeboard, InstaCol and Imeem may become less of the software of choice. The article looks closely at the influence of technology and outcomes.

      RATING: 4/5 (rating based upon a score system 1 to 5, 1= lowest 5=highest in terms of content, veracity, easiness of use etc.)

  27. Sep 2018
    1. A radar station is of course less simple than a weather vane. To be sure, the construction of a high-frequency apparatus requires the interlocking of various processes of technical-industrial production. And certainly a sawmill in a secluded valley of the Black Forest is a primitive means compared with the hydroelectric plant on the Rhine River.

      Heidegger notes that the disparity between two alike objects (simliar in function) from the technological time gap between them. For example, he states "A radar station is of course less simple than a weather vane," inferring to the huge technological gap between the two alike metrological instruments. More importantly, he states that that in order for the construction of a radar station, technological developments and production must mesh together. He maintains that a sawmill and hydroelectric plant are different technologically, but their purpose to generate hydropower via a large turbine influenced by water current is virtually unchanged throughout the centuries.

    2. Everything depends on our manipulating technology in the proper manner as a means.

      The author suggests that technology can be both negative and positive. If used inappropriately it can create chaos but if used in the proper way it can be a tool to take humanity to new highs as it has been doing so, so far.

  28. Jul 2018
    1. The motivation in writing this paper is to examine some of these ideas about time and technology. The notion that digi-tal technologies in themselves have a temporal quality that is problematic is questionable.

      Lindley claims that previous HCI studies of time have tended toward moral panics and technological determinism. Brings to mind Wacjman's work and Hassan's book "Empires of Speed."

      I'm curious about what she means here, as the next section describing Shoenbeck's study doesn't quite fit the argument:

      "The notion that digital technologies in themselves have a temporal quality that is problematic is questionable."

  29. Jul 2016
    1. “innovation”

      The quotes are important. There are different approaches to innovation. The one described here may be pushed by politicians and administrators, but some would argue that it’s not innovation in the same sense as what either Eric Von Hippel or Michael Schragge might describe.

    1. what will happen to Tesla and the progress of autonomous driving as more people use Autosteer in situations it’s not good at

      Self-driving cars aren’t merely a technical issue.

  30. Jun 2016
    1. easily supported by Slack

      Although, honestly, forums also work fairly well for this. Still, it’s cool to appropriate a teamwork-oriented tool for something different.

    1. Students create multimedia work best in platforms they choose themselves.

      Students [create multimedia] work best in platforms they choose themselves.

  31. Apr 2016
    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.

    1. it is the responsibility of every ILT instructor to address injustice, power, and privilege through our study and use of learning technologies

      Difficult to address those issues without exploring usage of the tools.

  32. Mar 2016
    1. “appropriation” of a context

      My own (playful) pun, which I’ve been using for a while (long before this interview), is that appropriation is about making something our own and making it appropriate in a context. Was told (by an English teacher) that it wasn’t “what appropriation means”. Been prefacing it more since then. But it’s a way to distinguish the concept from the negatively-loaded “cultural appropriation” while keeping the same principles as drivers for a different kind of change. Been especially interested in technological appropriation, overall, and now in technopedagogical appropriation.

    1. To be playful is to appropriate a context that is not created or intended for play

      Hadn’t noticed this quote but it merges two of the concepts I personally find key (and been discussing ad nauseam): appropriation through usage and serious playfulness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivj6mx9dgqg

  33. Feb 2016
  34. Jan 2016
    1. Brenda has shifted her approach from providing turnkey solutions to the teachers that come to her for help. Instead she focuses on accompanying them on their journey, and wants to know what research they have done prior to coming to see her.

      Offering solutions doesn’t tend to help, in most cases. And since “magic bullets” don’t exist, focusing on pathways can help people integrate new practices regardless of tools.

    2. Today, she encourages the women she works with to NEVER say they know nothing about technology.

      Gender differences in self-assessments of technological skills are a well-known phenomenon, but it remains tricky. Brenda’s approach works really well, in no small part because of her own skills and personality.

    1. Coding is a really valuable skill to have and this an amazing entry point for that.”
    2. Some may engage and others may not, but those who do will be at a definite advantage in a world where more moments and objects within our lives will depend upon programming and be enhanced by it too. 
    1. social benefits it might bring in terms of user autonomy and community-building

      There are contexts in which these things matter more. Maybe worthwhile to start from there. Not focusing on business models or “does it scale”. But on a plethora of initiatives and pilot projects.

  35. Nov 2015
  36. Oct 2015
    1. it is vital that teachers become active agents for change, not just in implementing technological innovations, but in designing them too.

      One of the ultimate levels of technological appropriation may be in designing and implementing new tools related to a given technology.