July 11, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM PAM GRIFFITH

“While the gendered politics of technology access and the creative ways in which children are able to work as embodied interfaces is interesting – and perhaps needs more space than is afforded here – what remains interesting to me is how this story disrupts the regular narratives of techno-euphoria. It cannot be explained away merely in terms of usage. It cannot be used to claim radical social change in community and gendered relationships. It is difficult to make a technology-empowerment argument though this. What is perhaps most interesting is that it shows how we need to start thinking about digital technologies as producing new ecosystems that reconfigure our understanding of who we are and the roles we play in developing social relationality. The digital natives in these stories are not merely the children – though their embodied interface produces startling insights into how personal relationships with technologies are produced. The men who have access to the phones and have mastered digital literacy in navigating through these phones, the women who become the last-mile consumers who have found creative ways of staying connected despite their lack of access, and the children who become the nodes in this technology-information infrastructure, are all digital natives of a certain kind. They might not have claimed that identity and indeed might never want to. And yet, the very conditions of everyday life, as they are mediated by the presence of digital technologies in Banni, help us understand the social structures and information relationships in ways which are more complex than theorized by our techno-euphoric attention to network visualizations which are heavily determined by usage and action.” via +Michael Chui Pam Griffith originally shared this post: “These children would not usually be recognized as digital natives because they are not particularly tech savvy and they do […]
July 10, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM JEFFREY J DAVIS

“Salesforce.com won’t disclose exactly how the Influencer algorithm works. It’s more than just tabulating number of posts, though. In fact, workers could actually be penalized for sheer volume, if colleagues don’t consider their content useful. “We don’t want people being noisy,” Chatter general manager Kendall Collins tells Fast Company. Instead, the algorithm looks at things like how many Likes a post gets or how often it’s re-shared. “It surveys all the activities you’re involved in and weighs them differently,” King says. He adds that managers wanting to evaluate worker influence will probably want to combine the machine-generated score with the output of an explicit recognition system, like Salesforce.com’s newly acquired Rypple, which allows employees to give each other badges for great work. When you add a system like Rypple, King says, “you get a complete picture–not only what’s derived [from activity on the system] but also what’s declared by peers and managers.”” #attentioneconomy via +Rebecca Spizzirri Jeffrey J Davis originally shared this post: Interesting , companies begin to use internal Klout-like influence ranking systems to include influence in performance assessments. Measuring An Employee’s Worth? Consider Influence The performance review of the future will include services like Salesforce.com’s Chatter and its Influencers feature, which measures how much weight you carry among your peers. Measuring An Employee’s Worth? Consider Influence The performance review of the future will include services like Salesforce.com’s Chatter and its Influencers feature, which measures how much weight you carry among your peers.
July 4, 2012

ATTENTION ECONOMY VIGNETTES CHAPTER 1: MA

Attention Economy Vignettes I recently posted a long excerpt from +Bruce Sterling‘s wonderful novel _The Caryatids_ as an example of a functioning #attentioneconomy in action. Sterling’s lucid prose highlights many of the functional aspects of an attention economy, including the central of role of experts and self-directed education, and the importance of Augmented Reality overlays for demonstrating the fruits of economic labor (through a visualization Sterling calls “Glory”). You can read the excerpt here: https://plus.google.com/117828903900236363024/posts/XjKhhHH8uJ9 Unfortunately, Sterling’s vision of the future takes place a few decades after the demise of the world’s governments and economic infrastructure, following devastating wholesale environmental collapse. I’d hope that we might start preparing for an Attention Economy in time to prevent such devastation, if at all possible. For this reason, I’ve been thinking about ways to visualize and present the Attention Economy in a more compelling way than my long, dense academic discussions. The easier it is to imagine alternative organizational structures, the faster people will start preparing for its eventuality. To that end, I’ve started compiling a series of science fiction shorts describing a not-so-distant future that operates on its basic principles. I’m pretty busy with my summer job at the moment, but I have a few of these shorts in the bag and I’ll be posting them over the next few weeks to get some feedback and maybe start some discussions. This is my first real attempt at fiction, and I’m not very comfortable with the medium, so any comments and suggestions are appreciated! ______________________ Chapter 1: Ma The light bulb is out. The blackened bulb in the lamp on my bedside dresser went unchanged for a week, and when I opened my eyes this morning it was the first thing that entered my field of vision. I witnessed it die a week […]
July 3, 2012

DECLARATION OF INTERNET FREEDOM +ELECTRONIC…

Declaration of Internet Freedom +Electronic Frontier Foundation PREAMBLE We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. To keep the Internet free and open, we call on communities, industries and countries to recognize these principles. We believe that they will help to bring about more creativity, more innovation and more open societies. We are joining an international movement to defend our freedoms because we believe that they are worth fighting for. Let’s discuss these principles — agree or disagree with them, debate them, translate them, make them your own and broaden the discussion with your community — as only the Internet can make possible. Join us in keeping the Internet free and open. http://www.internetdeclaration.org/freedom http://www.reddit.com/r/internetdeclaration via +Charlie Hoover via http://lifehacker.com/5923111/let-the-eff-convince-you-to-sign-the-declaration-of-internet-freedom #declaration of #internet #freedom #eff #digitalvalues
July 3, 2012

ATTENTION ECONOMY VIGNETTES CHAPTER 1 I…

Attention Economy Vignettes Chapter 1 I recently posted a long excerpt from +Bruce Sterling‘s wonderful novel The Caryatids as an example of a functioning #attentioneconomy in action. Sterling’s lucid prose highlights many of the functional aspects of an attention economy, including the central of role of experts and self-directed education, and the importance of Augmented Reality overlays for demonstrating the fruits of economic labor (through a visualization Sterling calls “Glory”). You can read the excerpt here: https://plus.google.com/117828903900236363024/posts/XjKhhHH8uJ9 Unfortunately, Sterling’s vision of the future takes place a few decades after the demise of the world’s governments and economic infrastructure, following a devastating environmental collapse. I’d hope that we might start preparing for an Attention Economy in time to prevent such devastation, if at all possible. For this reason, I’ve been thinking about ways to visualize and present the Attention Economy in a more compelling way than my long, dense academic discussions. The easier it is to imagine alternative organizational structures, the faster people will start preparing for their eventuality. To that end, I’ve started compiling a series of science fiction shorts describing a not-so-distant future that operates on its basic principles. I’m pretty busy with my summer job at the moment, but I have a few of these shorts in the bag and I’ll be posting them over the next few weeks to get some feedback and maybe start some discussions. This is my first attempt at fiction, and I’m not very comfortable with the medium, so any comments and suggestions are appreciated! ____________________ Chapter 1: Ma The light bulb is out. The blackened bulb in the lamp on my bedside dresser went unchanged for a week, and when I opened my eyes this morning it was the first thing that entered my field of vision. I witnessed it die a […]
July 1, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM KYLE BROOM

kyle broom originally shared this post: Short film inspired by the detention conditions of Bradley Manning.
July 1, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM KOEN DE PAUS

Koen De Paus originally shared this post: The Sentineli, a living memory of our history Part 2 Random thoughts on tribes vs mobs and how machines relate to both. “It is in the long run essential to the growth of any new and high civilization that small groups of men can escape from their neighbors and from their government, to go and live as they please in the wilderness. A truly isolated, small, and creative society will never again be possible on this planet.” ~Freeman J. Dyson For us city dwellers it is hard to imagine just how different a life in isolation must be. A lifestyle completely independent from the outside world where you have to be one with nature if you hope to survive. When given the choice, most of us would not go back to such a life. Our tribe has grown to include millions of people and we no longer farm our own fields but instead count on others to provide us with the goods required for life. From water and food to jobs and justice, we depend on the web that society has built. We have outsourced many tasks of our early tribal lifestyle to the mob and the mob or system has offloaded many tasks onto technology. We are now at a point where an EMP blast would cause a mass extinction. In a small tribe you are directly connected with the consequences of your actions. You need to catch a fish and know how to make a fire because you want to feed your family tonight. No bosses, no money, action > reaction. Our system is so complex that it can be very hard to keep track of actions and consequences. If you work at a chemical plant that produces plastics, you might […]
June 29, 2012

VIA +WINCHELL CHUNG

via +Winchell Chung
June 29, 2012

A COMPLEX SYSTEMS SCIENCE APPROACH TO HEALTHCARE…

A Complex Systems Science Approach to Healthcare Costs and Quality by Y. Bar-Yam at NECSI “There is a mounting crisis in delivering affordable healthcare in the US. For decades, key decision makers in the public and private sectors have considered cost-effectiveness in healthcare a top priority. Their actions have focused on putting a limit on fees, services, or care options. However, they have met with limited success as costs have increased rapidly while the quality isn’t commensurate with the high costs. A new approach is needed. Here we provide eight scientifically-based steps for improving the healthcare system. The core of the approach is promoting the best use of resources by matching the people and organization to the tasks they are good at, and providing the right incentive structure. Harnessing costs need not mean sacrificing quality. Quality service and low costs can be achieved by making sure the right people and the right organizations deliver services. As an example, the frequent use of emergency rooms for non-emergency care demonstrates the waste of resources of highly capable individuals and facilities resulting in high costs and ineffective care. Neither free markets nor managed care guarantees the best use of resources. A different oversight system is needed to promote the right incentives. Unlike managed care, effective oversight must not interfere with the performance of care. Otherwise, cost control only makes care more cumbersome. The eight steps we propose are designed to dramatically improve the effectiveness of the healthcare system, both for those who receive services and those who provide them.” More: http://necsi.edu/research/healthcare/healthcaresteps.html via +Kyle Crider #complexity #complexityscience #healthcare
June 28, 2012

USING PREZI AS A WHITEBOARD IN MY CLASSROOM…

Using Prezi as a Whiteboard In my classroom there is no easy way to both use the chalkboard and the LCD projector at the same time. Although I love chalkboards, today I decided to commit to the projector. I kept a Prezi editing window open, and took notes as I would on a whiteboard. I usually draw pictures and obsessively underline things and couldn’t do that as easily here. However, it resulted in a pretty neat document that worked really great for review at the end of the class day. You can dive into the Prezi here: http://prezi.com/ja-cumg1hhbd/philosophy-of-mind/ Any suggestions on other classroom whiteboard software that might work better?
June 27, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM CHRIS ROBINSON

#ants are #awesome via +Rebecca Spizzirri Chris Robinson originally shared this post: Although many ant species use chemical trails to organise themselves into food-collecting groups, the big-headed ant has an “extreme” chemical enlisting strategy, says the University of Sussex team. “When an ant finds something delicious,” he said, “she has to lay a trail really quickly, because competition is fierce. “The pheromone trail starts working immediately. Any ants caught in its net are funnelled towards the food item.” Make sure you check out the video. I could definitely use an “extreme” chemical enlisting strategy! How ants enlist emergency help Brazilian ants deploy emergency “chemical nets” to drag swarms of their nestmates into helping them carry large food items, a study shows.
June 27, 2012

ROBOT HAND BEATS YOU AT ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS…

Robot Hand Beats You at Rock, Paper, Scissors 100% Of The Time “It only takes a single millisecond for the robot to recognize what shape your hand is in, and just a few more for it to make the shape that beats you, but it all happens so fast that it’s more or less impossible to tell that the robot is waiting until you commit yourself before it makes its move, allowing it to win 100% of the time. You might be thinking that you could fool the system by changing your mind halfway through, but my guess is that the hand and vision system are faster than your reflexes could ever be, and that it would be trivial for the robot to adapt to any creative moves that happens on the human end.” More: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/robot-hand-beats-you-at-rock-paper-scissors-100-of-the-time via +Chryle Elieff Janken (rock-paper-scissors) Robot with 100% winning rate
February 1, 2006

SOMETHING OLD

AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre says something stupid again: From Financial Times: AT&T chief warns on internet costs “I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network – obviously not the piece from the customer to the network, which has already been paid for by the customer in Internet access fees – but for accessing the so-called Internet cloud.” … “If someone wants to transmit a high quality service with no interruptions and ‘guaranteed this, guaranteed that’, they should be willing to pay for that,” the AT&T chief said. “Now they might pass it on to their customers who are looking at a movie, for example. But that ought to be a cost of doing business for them. They shouldn’t get on [the network] and expect a free ride.” See Ars Technica for the same old criticism we have seen before. The congressional hearings on net neutrality will be starting soon, and I’ll definitely be keeping up with the game. Of course, this becomes much more interesting because…
February 1, 2006

SOMETHING NEW

From Wired: AT&T Sued Over NSA Eavesdropping The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on Tuesday, accusing the telecom company of violating federal laws by collaborating with the government’s secret, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens’ phone and internet usage. The suit (.pdf), filed by the civil liberties group in federal court in San Francisco, alleges AT&T secretly gave the National Security Agency access to two massive databases that included both the contents of its subscribers’ communications and detailed transaction records, such as numbers dialed and internet addresses visited. “Our goal is to go after the people who are making the government’s illegal surveillance possible,” says EFF attorney Kevin Bankston. “They could not do what they are doing without the help of companies like AT&T. We want to make it clear to AT&T that it is not in their legal or economic interests to violate the law whenever the president asks them to.” One of AT&T’s databases, known as “Hawkeye,” contains 312 terabytes of data detailing nearly every telephone communication on AT&T’s domestic network since 2001, according to the complaint. The suit also alleges that AT&T allowed the NSA to use the company’s powerful Daytona database-management software to quickly search this and other communication databases. This is a shociking reminder that Google is still a small fish in the big pond of information gathering, and explains why the government thought it could push them around. Being in league with AT&T, however, doesn’t bode well for our chances with net neutrality. Another story to follow.
February 2, 2006

PREOCCUPATION

I talk about net neutrality a lot, but I admit that it is a loaded phrase, and mentioning it makes me feel like a dirty socialist. ‘Preoccupation’ is given by dictionary.com as a synonym for ‘neutrality’ under the entry ‘indifference’, and it just works on so many levels in this context. From Business Week: Is Verizon a Network Hog? Documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission show that Verizon Communications is setting aside a wide lane on its fiber-optic network for delivering its own television service. According to Marvin Sirbu, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who examined the documents, more than 80% of Verizon’s current capacity is earmarked for carrying its service, while all other traffic jostles in the remainder. PAYING FOR PRIORITY. Leading Net companies say that Verizon’s actions could keep some rivals off the road. As consumers try to search Google, buy books on Amazon.com, or watch videos on Yahoo!, they’ll all be trying to squeeze into the leftover lanes on Verizon’s network. On Feb. 7 the Net companies plan to take their complaints about Verizon’s plans to the Senate during a hearing on telecom reform. “The Bells have designed a broadband system that squeezes out the public Internet in favor of services or content they want to provide,” says Paul Misener, vice-president for global policy at Amazon.com. The point, as BlackFriars notes, is that Verizon is trying to artificially limit bandwidth to create bottlenecks that will justify introducing their long-planned tiered service. However, as Ars technica reports, this might not change service much at all. We contacted Dr. Marvin Sirbu, Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and an FTTP expert to see how the numbers really add up. In short, there’s almost no cause for concern that Verizon’s own traffic will […]
February 2, 2006

THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE

This little gu]y has been poking around the news off and on the last few months; it sounds like a lot of forced enthusiasm to me. From Nature: Experts plan to reclaim the web for pop science The project also includes an encyclopaedia that will use similar technology to the popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, is helping to create it. But that’s where the resemblance ends. All content in the Digital Universe will come from vetted experts, and articles will be reviewed by editors before going live. There will also be links to approved websites. Sounds good, until you realize you need at 100+ meg download (it uses its own browser) to access the service, and once you get it, there isn’t much there (yet). Critics interviewed by Nature were unwilling to speak on the record. But some believe that the project is over-complicated, and that much of its underlying technology — which still requires significant development — runs against the trend to distribute information in lightweight formats that can be accessed by cell phones or PDAs such as the BlackBerry. “If you have to rely on a high-bandwidth always-on network environment, on devices with a lot of storage, you are pretty much going in the wrong direction,” says one critic, an expert in Internet information systems. He is also unimpressed by the Digital Universe’s concept of peer-reviewing material. “There’s more than enough content on the web, even substantive content,” he says. “I’m not sure that generating new content is really a breakthrough.” There are also questions over the business model, in which revenue would largely come from selling high-speed Internet access, with half the profits fed back into the work. “It’s an odd choice; that’s a dying business,” comments one observer familiar with […]
February 2, 2006

PROGRESS

All the major internet players snubbed their virtual noses at congress today, by not showing up for the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. But Google wrote a nice little letter explaining its actions in China, and the rest followed in kind and sentiment: From Google Blog: Human Rights Caucus briefing While China has made great strides in the past decades, it remains in many ways closed. We are not happy about governmental restrictions on access to information, and we hope that over time everyone in the world will come to enjoy full access to information. Information and communication technology – including the Internet, email, instant messaging, weblogs, peer-to-peer applications, streaming audio and video, mobile telephony, SMS text messages, and so forth – has brought Chinese citizens a greater ability to read, discuss, publish and communicate about a wider range of topics, events, and issues than ever before. We believe that our continued engagement with China is the best (and perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there.
February 3, 2006

BREAKING: RATS SYNTHESIZE SPACE

From Nature: Rats show off ‘stereo smell’ Researchers in India have discovered that a single sniff is enough for a rat to locate the source of an enticing aroma. Their work shows that rats can effectively smell in ‘stereo’: their two nostrils work independently in much the same way as our ears, with contrasting signals to the brain creating a spatial understanding of sensory information. The team at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore tested the ability of rats to discriminate between smells coming from their left or their right. They trained thirsty rats to drink from a water spout on the corresponding side in response to the odour. Such is the rodent’s skill that, once trained, they required just 50 milliseconds to decide where the smell was coming from, report Upinder Bhalla and his colleagues in this week’s issue of Science1. The rats selected the correct side with at least 80% accuracy, regardless of the odour presented; the researchers used banana, eucalyptus and rose water in the tests. When one nostril was covered over, however, the rats lost their ability, showing that they need both nostrils to locate smells, the researchers add. This suggests that the two different nasal passages send contrasting signals to the brain, despite the fact that a rat’s nostrils are a mere 3 millimetres apart.
February 4, 2006

IMG

http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/blog/pics/antigoogle.jpg Taken from Boing Boing
February 4, 2006

WELL I’LL BE

terrified of wasps. http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/blog/pics/Ampulex1.jpg http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/blog/pics/Ampulex2.jpg From Corante: The Wisdom of Parasites As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it’s time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg’s host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach’s mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head. The wasp slips her stinger through the roach’s exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use ssensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach’s brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears. From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach’s antennae and leads it–in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex–like a dog on a leash. The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp’s burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the […]
February 4, 2006

IMG

Dedicated to Andy Clark http://fractionalactorssub.madeofrobots.com/blog/pics/memorystick1fs.jpg From SA’s De-technologize Modern Technology! By Morgan Davis
February 5, 2006

HEY, IAN

(01:30:46) drcrawl: hey, Ian, I have a personal bet going… whos the ‘awesome’ guy in Deadwood? (01:31:03) ToliverChap: oh the awesome guy (01:31:05) ToliverChap: hmmm (01:31:14) ToliverChap: well maybe it’s the obvious (01:31:23) drcrawl: yeah, go the obvious (01:31:26) ToliverChap: I personally like the Doc since he’s sort of a decent fellow (01:31:36) ToliverChap: but Love Joy is really holding it all down (01:32:01) drcrawl: ok. And for the record, who’s the awesome guy in Godfather? (01:32:05) ToliverChap: I mean he doesn’t have the most money or smarts but by God that town works the way he wants it. (01:32:11) ToliverChap: hmmm (01:32:13) ToliverChap: Godfather (01:32:45) ToliverChap: aside: this seems weird as a bet. I mean it’s not like a game where the results haven’t been decided unless the bet is what I’ll say? (01:32:49) ToliverChap: any who (01:33:00) ToliverChap: Michael is the awesome one in GF (01:33:03) ToliverChap: obvious again (01:33:13) ToliverChap: I mean think of him as a young kid back from the way (01:33:14) ToliverChap: war (01:33:37) ToliverChap: with his finger in his pocket trying to look tough outside the hospital protecting his pop (01:33:48) ToliverChap: there was a man that did what he needed to do (01:33:57) ToliverChap: and he never let it get complicated (01:34:18) ToliverChap: two key elements to the “awesome guy” claim.
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