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Simon posted mention of TiddlyWiki. This is a Javascript-based, client-side wiki. Interesting concept, and interesting coding. Must study…. ¶

Enabling Distributed Learning Communities Via Emerging Technologies - Part One: "Many groups have experimented with learning communities for teachers and for students confined to classroom settings and centered on the instructor and archival materials (in libraries and online) as the primary sources of knowledge. Transformational learning of 21st century skills, instead, requires a bolder strategy of infusing learning communities throughout students’ and teachers’ lives, orchestrating the contributions of many knowledge sources embedded in real-world settings outside of schools - but with teachers still in central roles as facilitators and interpreters."

Because you were probably wondering what it is I do when I piddle around the apartment.

Cooking: Lately I've been into steaming vegetables; usually I sauté them, but then I remembered I have a steaming basket and thought, oh yeah, there's another way to cook vegetables. Last night I steamed spinach and cherry tomatoes, then doused them with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Yum. Then tonight I steamed some broccoli to accompany my pork chops. Also, I've discovered that a banana covered in provençal fig jam is a delicious snack; I think I'll have one while I watch The Apprentice.

Knitting: I'm working on five projects right now, including a baby blanket in primary colors, a cushion in hot pink acrylic/wool blend yarn, K2 P2 rib, an forest green oven mitt which I'll be felting, a red and orange merino wool Windy City scarf with matching hat, and a purse I'm quite excited about. I was trying to figure out what to do with that ballet yarn, and then the other day I was going through my sock drawer getting rid of those threadbare-at-the-heels socks. Remember those trenchcoat-length cardigan sweaters that were in style a few years ago? The sash from one of those was in the drawer, and I was going to throw it away but thought, wait, I could probably use this thing in a knitting project. I think it looks nice with the ballet yarn:

The New Literacy: (via EduResources)"The challenge to us as educators lies in keeping up with an information environment that has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, a decade during which the very nature of information has changed in appearance, location, accessibility, application, and communication. Thus, it is crucial that when teaching literacy to our students, we emphasize skills that reflect the information environment of the present, not the past."

Wiki software provides free shortcut to cost savings: "Wiki technology, invented by Oregon programmer Ward Cunningham, is server software that allows users to quickly create and edit on-line content using any Web browser ("wikiwiki" means "fast" in Hawaiian). The software is available from commercial developers, and there are also free open-source packages."

Via Max Sawicky, a new parody paper with an explicitly political twist. DC Pox. The graphic on the front page is pretty great.

UK columnist Guy Kewney discusses potential ramifications of the loose language of the INDUCE Act on folks who don't even live in the US.

...just remember: when video cassette recorders first appeared, American movie makers sued Sony to prevent them from being made and sold.

The Supreme Court, in 1984, decided that this was stupid. It said there were "significant non-infringing uses" for the technology. By one vote: five judges thought it was fair to let Sony sell VCRs, four thought it wasn't.

The point is, it's insane to imagine that the US can pass laws prohibiting copyright breaches on the Internet unless, somehow, it thinks it can prevent them across the whole of the web. Not just in California, or Utah, where Orrin Hatch resides, or in Afghanistan, but everywhere.

And all based on a completely bogus understanding of how technology advances.

Thanks to Copyfight.

And just as a side note, this is what I miss most when I don't read Anne's blog...her enthusiasm:

Let's get our students writing - and what better avenue than weblogs! Let's hear it for a weblog writing revolution!

The current reward system depends on certain formulas of academic publishing that encourage exclusivity and the fear of being robbed of thoughts and ideas. Since the real currency in the trade of academia is originality of thought and imaginative development of theories, there is more to lose than to gain in exposing your own ideas too early. The danger of having thoughts, ideas or questions copied before they have been published is not just a matter of some petty game between jealous professors with too little time on their hands, it's a very real matter of being robbed of the currency which measures academic success.

From this point of view a weblog that reveals the thoughts, arguments and questions of the scholar continuously during the process of research and long before academically accepted publication in print seems like a waste of perfectly good imagination and theory development, an invitation to having your ideas looted. On the other hand, published and archived in the World Wide Web, the same ideas and thoughts are in fact published and as such better protected than if they were for instance given away over a cup of coffee, randomly at a conference.

I'm glad that we're reading the section on codes from A Theory of Semiotics rather than the (fairly similar, but differently focused) section from Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. I read both of these sometime in my late undergrad years - I think probably in Bob Clougherty's critical theory seminar - but haven't really touched them very much since then. Both sets of graduate school applications I've sent out in my life - once for MA programs, the second for PhD programs - have included something along the lines of "I think semiotics is very cool and complicated and worth thinking about in detail".

The chapter folks are reading this week from AToS is 'better' than the one from SatPoL because of the focus - on meaning and interpretation, rather than on pure message storage, encoding, and transmission. The section in SatPoL is a bit too much like the Dretske that people have already been reading - very focused on the nuts and bolts of messages, where the section from A Theory of Semiotics has a laser-like focus on communication - chains of meaning, unlimited semiosis (in which messages are made of messages are made of messages - it is turtles all the way down, Eustace...), and only the smallest bit of hearkening-back to things like Turing machines and mechanistic coding. [That material is all embedded in chapter 1, which is probably worth reading because it has a radically different style of presentation than the Dretske.]

Interpretants

The most interesting part of this chapter, I think, is the section where Eco talks about interpretants. To quote a bit out of the chapter:

The interpretant can assume different forms:

In his (Peirce's) semiotics the interpretants are much more than this: they can be complex discourses which not only translate but even <> develop all the logical possibilities suggested by the sign; in other words the interpretant can also be the entire syllogism deduced from such premises as /all men are mortal/ or /Socrates is a man/.

This is damn cool for a number of reasons.

First of all, Eco (and Peirce, apparently in parallel with Saussure) states that these five things can happen *at the same time*, together, or seperately. Depending entirely on the perspective from which they are considered, examined, seen, perceived, et cetera. That these relationships are somehow discrete and independent of 'human consideration' - that there are inherent possibilities for their relationships *to each other* within the semiotic system. Eco does later discuss 'cultural systems' as sort of oceans within which semiotic systems swim and are placed into context; I think that this is one of the most complex (and yet crucial to our understanding) bits of Eco's theories.

Semiotic chains - chains of meaning - can be broken down or composed *nearly without limit* (and what would those limits be? hmm...). This isn't like physics where you can't break down the fundamental particles - we might not ever be able to *get to* the most fundamental bit of a sign-system. If we got there, and thought we had a grasp of it, our interpretation would change and the nature of the smallest bit would slip away from us again. The interpretation is the real problem - we can't get at bare essences without context. And context interferes with what it is that we're about.

Infinite Semantic Recursivity

Just for the sake of amusement - and because the imagery is so striking - another block quote:

We can imagine all the cultural units as an enormous number of marbles contained in a box; by shaking the box we can form different connections and affinities among the marbles. This box would constitute an informational source provided with high entropy, and it would constitute the abstract model of semantic association in a free state. According to his disposition, his previous knowledge, his own idiosyncracies, each person when faced with the sign-vehicle /centaur/ could arrive at the unit <> or <>.

But we are looking for a semiotic model which justifes the contentional denotations and connotations attributed to a sign-vehicle. And so we should think of magnetized marbles which establish a system of attraction and repulsion, so that some are drawn to one another and others are not. A similar magnetization would reduce the possibility of interrelation. This would constitute an s-code. Still better, we could consider every cultural unit in this Global Semantic Universe as emitting given wave-lengths which put it in tune with a limited (though possibly very large) number of other units. Except that we have to admit that the wave-lengths can change according to new messages emitted and that therefore the possibilities of attraction and repulsion change in time; in other words, that a componential tree may change and enrich its markers, proving the hypothesis of De Mauro (1970) that the components of the meaning are not closed in number, frozen into a system of relevant units, as happens with the units of expression, but form an open series. In effect the model Q supposes that the system can be nourished by fresh information and that further data can be inferred from incomplete data.

Wow. That's a lot to get one's mind around. It furthers the notion that the amount of potential meaning in the world/semantic galaxy/semiosemantic universe is very large - so much so as to be nearly, but not completely unlimited. The metaphors here are just beautiful, the complexity staggering. Some of this is hard to get a handle on, other than intuitively. For weeks we've been so focused on the fine details and quirks of Dretske's model of information, and now we're jumping very quickly toward a conception of information / messages / communication that can encompass *all of human (and inhuman) knowledge* in one fell swoop.

My brain is now officially melting down, so I'd better stop writing. This is some of the best reading that I've done this semester.

...I've come to believe that honesty in academia is the best policy. If we can't talk about what's wrong, we'll never fix it. Then again, I'm not sure I really care to fix it anymore. What innoculates me against that kind of callousness is the thought that students deserve better, so I'm not quite prepared to abandon them just yet.

...apathetic?

I've scarcely thought of writing here recently. I'm finding that since I'm no longer teaching, the raison d'être for this space being around has kind of fizzled. I need to refocus, reinvigorate, or something. I have some things planned, but it's kind of a series of backburner things that, while I'll enjoy doing them and think they'll be rewarding, I'm not entirely sure I want to sit down and hammer them out. Not that rewarding, I guess.

The last thing I want to do is turn this space into (even more of) a place where I enumerate my daily activities and moods like some obsessive-compulsive narcissistic teenager, but recounting my daily routine, the latest codswalloping thing T. has said, and my obsession with trees in trays is just that. I was inordinately tickled to see that Joe Duemer is also a budding (har-har) bonsai enthusiast. I knew treeheads were an interesting bunch, as a rule, but there's no end to the degree to which eccentricity loves company. Leave it to me to focus on the pine tree and completely elide the thoughtful, meditative words that provide the context that makes it worth looking at.

I have, in related news, officially become the second-most boring person in the world (I know the title holder). It's only the odd habits & hobbies I seem to be collecting that keep me from winning first place?

I’ve not written much over the past couple weeks as it’s been an interesting beginning of the quarter. First, my wife had to have unexpected surgery (appendix) two days before the quarter started. That slowed some of my last minute prep, and really shifted my focus out of the classroom. ¶

She’s getting along much better now and will be back to her own teaching next week. I’m getting my focus back and things are slowly getting back to normal. Can’t wait…. ¶

The "blogosphere" has been claimed to be a densely interconnected conversation, with bloggers linking to other bloggers, referring to them in their entries, and posting comments on each other's blogs. Most such characterizations have privileged a subset of popular blogs, known as the 'A-list.' This study empirically investigates the extent to which, and in what patterns, blogs are interconnected, taking as its point of departure randomly-selected blogs. Quantitative social network analysis, visualization of link patterns, and qualitative analysis of references and comments in pairs of reciprocally-linked blogs show that A-list blogs are overrepresented and central in the network, although other groupings of blogs are more densely interconnected. At the same time, a majority of blogs link sparsely or not at all to other blogs in the sample, suggesting that the blogosphere is partially interconnected and sporadically conversational.

1) How interlinked is the blogosphere from the perspective of a random blog?
1a) Which blogs are central?
1b) Which blogs are more interconnected? Are there cliques?
1c) Is the blogosphere a "small world"?
2) Do other types of "conversation" take place between linked blogs, and if so, to what extent?

ABC's of VoIP (via Maish): "Just a few years ago, only tech geeks and a few hobbyists made phone calls over the Internet. Now, Net telephony is starting to find widespread acceptance among consumers and corporate customers alike."

Blogs continue to force their way into a position of prominence in relation to other media formats. Blogging the Story Alive and A Blogger's Creed detail the media shift as evidenced by the recent CBS incident.

And so, my missing the blog isn't about an addict finding withdrawal a torture. It's about being denied a powerful tool in my teaching set, and if I don't get it back by the end of the week, I don't know what I'm gonna do...

So anyone know how to get five columns with feeds from five different blogs on the same page???

The following is from a thread of email between myself and Katy Borner back in August. I'm posting it because I'm afraid that I'll lose track of it otherwise.

> You wrote in response to the social infrastructure:
> 
> > [as a reminder to myself, i was thinking about RDF and Hermann Hesse's
_The Glass Bead Game_ when i wrote this...]
> 
> Can you elaborate in this?

ok, I got the title wrong the first time around. the actual title is _Magister Ludi_ - the game in the book is called the glass bead game. have you read it? this may not make so much sense if you haven't...

what i was thinking was sort of along these lines - large graphs are pretty much intractable, computationally. RDF data is trivially transformable into a graph structure [honestly this is how most tools process it - as a set of lists of nodes and edges.

in the book, the glass bead game is also an intractable problem. very beautiful problems, very artfully handled interactions, rules defined in situ rather than out of a rulebook. computationally impossible (and improbable) to deal with - with master players, 500 to 1000 times more complex than chess. so there's ultimate variance in every session of the game. skill comes with experience and the ability to quickly experiment and reason, not from pure mathematical ability or raw intelligence.

these two tracks of thinking are not terribly far apart - both are intractable problems, both can be represented as graphs, both are simpler to solve by human beings and their unique intellect than they will ever be by machines - at least under our current paradigms.

so what i'm thinking (at the end of all of this) is that the way we try to solve graph-based problems is perhaps a little backwards. more horsepower is not going to solve all of our problems; more attention to the quirks of problems (and the ways in which we can re-adjust our starting points to avoid those problems) are necessary.

we need more art combined with graph theory. lots more art. :)

this probably doesn't make a terrible amount of sense - these thoughts are still pretty undeveloped.

elijah

Now, all we need is a list of the 4,500 news sources that Google News uses...and for the Cubs to get into the playoffs...

A new service I just noticed for Google in Canada: Google Local. Worked quite well for businesses I tried in my community...neat.

From ALAWON:

Senate Hearing on the SAFE Act This Week

[The following has been reprinted from the Bill of Rights Defense Committee]

In a surprise move, the US Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the SAFE Act (S-1709) this Wednesday, September 22, at 10am EST. The SAFE Act, authored by Senators Larry Craig of Idaho and Richard Durbin of Illinois, both increases the effectiveness of antiterrorism efforts and protects the civil liberties of law-abiding U.S. citizens and residents. It is a bi-partisan bill supported by Republicans and Democrats that, among other things, restores protections for the privacy of bookstore and library records that were eliminated by Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.

If you live in any of the states listed below, please call your Senator on the Judiciary Committee (numbers provided). If you live in other states, please call your home Senators. Express your support for the SAFE Act and, if the Senator is a supporter, thank him or her for standing behind civil liberties.

BORDC thanks the Campaign for Reader Privacy for compiling this information. If you have not already, please
sign their petition.

How can you tell when a historic work is back in the public domain? You can't, or it's getting harder and harder, since current copyright law doesn't require copyright holders to register or renew copyrights with the US Copyright Office. Works that are no longer being marketed or made available are still not in the public domain. No one benefits from this arrangement. Wired News has an article about these artistic orphans and how, while we weren't looking, copyright in the US changed from an "opt-in" system to an "opt-out" system.

"These works are important parts of our culture, and now that students are shifting to using the internet as their library, we want to make sure they continue to have the breadth and depth of what people have created," Kahle wrote in an e-mail. If the case loses, "the libraries that we grew up with will be effectively shut to this generation of kids that use the internet as a major source of information."