“For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment”
-Mark Twain

Truer words have never been spoken. I don’t think anyone can look back on their actions and have no regrets, unless you have the strongest self-confidence in yourself. Or if you have a 4.0 GPA.

To me, what this quote says about the future of social media is spot on. What, indeed, does the future hold for us, who can truly tell what will work as the next big wire that manages to connect everyone together? I did some research on the Internet, and here are some of the more interesting findings.

Mind-Reading Technology

From images in your mind to images on the computer screen

Invented by the people who brought you anime, ninjas, and sushi. Using a fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine, volunteers were supposed to think of alphabets manually to form sentences and words, which the computer reproduced in black-and-white.

Granted, this technology may still be in it’s infant stages, but the possibilities are limitless in the future. For example, handicapped people unable to use their arms – they can use the technology to tweet in the future. Physical limitations would no longer be an issue in a digital, social, world.

Optical Pattern Recognition

Optical Pattern Recognition - The future is upon us

The film, Minority Report, could have been on to something. The police are now using biometric face recognition technology to identify criminals, much like how the eyes hold the entirety of a person’s identity.

Now, Google uses Nevan Vision for its Picasa site, a similar technology that organizes and tags photos for users without any hassle. It definitely isn’t a stretch to say that popular social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr, or similar site would eventually pick up the technology to save their users the hassle.

OpenID/Universal Password Systems

Already starting to gain acceptance by smaller websites and even Facebook, this system allows users to use a universal password and fill in registration details in online forms automatically, without the need to register individually for each website.

How cool is that? Imagine a future where all you need to do is use a OpenID user/pass to register for workshops, bootcamps, or whatever floats your boat.

In conclusion, we are looking towards a very, very lazy future. And to think that films like Minority Report were right about some of these technologies that we have currently.

Minority Report

Watched snippets of Minority Report today, in particular the new technologies featured in the film. Minority Report is a film set in the future that both portrays  a utopian and dystopian society. The technologies featured  in the film include e-paper, iris scanners, devices that react to gestures, 3-D videos, computer guided vehicles, spider robots and jetpacks.

E-paper

In Minority Report, a scene shows David Anderton taking a busy subway train. At first glance, it looks like an average commuter scene, businessmen reading newspapers.. until you notice that the pictures and headlines on the newspapers are moving. The technology being featured here is a flexible, electronic paper-like material that can access the internet and update itself all day long. It looks futuristic.. but this technology is just round the corner. Researchers at PARC http://www.parc.com/ (formerly Xeroc PARC) are researching something called “Gyricon”. It is a flexible plastic that produces colors and readable text when a voltage is applied through it. Researchers claim that it requires very little electricity, is made of a light material and can be reused.

Iris Recognition

In Minority Report, your movements are always tracked, and your identity continually verified through the use of iris recognition systems that scan your eyes. In order to escape being recognized, David Anderton had to undergo an operation to change his eyes. This technology is actually present today. Known as biometrics, it is used at some airports. The users’ eyes are photographed, and saved in a database. Whenever the user wants to check-in at the airport, his or her eyes are taken again and compared with the existing pictures in the machine’s database. The only downside of biometrics is that the user has to stand still, and in close proximity to the machine. We do not have the technology used in Minority Report, where iris recognition systems are capable of picking out individual people in a crowd and scanning their irises as they walk.

Gesture Recognition Systems

In Minority Report, David Anderton is shown using gloved hands to manipulate different windows, open files and images. Compare that to a mere human of the present, who was to stoop over his computer while using a keyboard and a mouse. This technology is already in use today. The popular ParaParaParadise dance machine uses motion detectors to detect users’ movements.

Robot Spiders

In Minority Report, robot spiders are used to scout down criminals (David Anderton). While the technology is already available today in the form of bomb disposal robots and such, the robots available as of now are big clunky machines that are nowhere near the robot spiders shown in the movie.

So what do I feel about new technologies? I await the development of new technologies eagerly. Imagine being able to bring a piece of e-paper anywhere and read news off it, without the need to buy a “new” newspaper. Imagine sitting in a maglev car levitating above the ground, being free of the need to steer the car manually. Great, no? Of course, with all new technologies, the research has to be done, and the kinks ironed out. I wonder if the technologies shown in Minority Report will be made available in my lifetime.

I for one welcome our new technological overlords.

Row row fight the power.

by Jane Hart.

Yayoi Anzai. International Journal on ELearning. Norfolk: 2009. Vol. 8, Iss. 4;

China has been in the news often, especially since President Obama’s visit this week.  There has been  much news-worthy information about China.  They have developed a “Top-1000 Energy Consuming Enterprises Program”, which focuses on energy-efficient improvements in large enterprises.  So far they have produced more than 10,000 energy saving projects.  At the rate they are going, they will be able to exceed their goal of saving 100 million tons of coal – an emissions reduction of about 250 million tons of CO2.  China generates 80% of its electricity from coal, the least “friendly” fossil fuel.  China burns more coal than any other nation. and they are pioneering technologies in CCS.  China is taking steps to capture carbon.  CCS is “carbon capture and storage”, and is one approach to curbing global greenhouse gas emissions.  The idea is to capture CO2 produced by coal-fired power plants and store it underground.  China is starting storage experiments – some in partnership with the US.

China’s cities also are an environmental concern, but they are trying to correct this through a range of policies designed to improve building efficiency, mass transit and energy use.  They are already seeing improvements.  Real progress is possible in the future.  China is developing systems for collecting accurate energy and emissions data.  This week China and the US announced agreements to tackle climate change and grow our respective economies through clean energy.   It looks like they are already on their way toward that goal.              sustainable business update  Nov 09             China FAQ.org

One might think in Canada, with all its emphasis on social programs, that the government provides a larger percentage of funding to nonprofit organizations that does the United States. According to Charity Village, that’s not true. In Canada 31% of revenues to charities come from government; US governments provide 57%.

The differences don’t end there. Canadian charities rely on fees for service (51% of revenues)  more often than their US counterparts (31% of revenues). Revenues from philanthropy in Canada are 9%, compared with 12% in the United States. 

Who knows what the benchmark should be, but Charity Village reports the following: “The global average of civil society sector revenue breaks down as follows: government contributions contribute 35% of revenue, fees and charges contribute 53% of revenue, while philanthropy contributes only 12% of revenue.”

So what does it all mean? First, philanthropy is currently not the major financial fuel for charities, which is probably important to keep in mind. Relationships with governments and their various granting streams are probably more important for most service providers than focuing on growth in revenues from donors.

Second, in Canada, hard economic times which result in government cutbacks to charities will impact service recipients to a greater extent, given the already high dependence on user fees and a lower rate of revenues of philanthropy compared with the United States or worldwide.

One current unknown is if the above data includes health care in the equation. If not, Canada’s data would look different that that of the United States (i.e. universal healthcare compared to market driven healthcare).

Implications for Canadian charities:

1. Get more adept at your relationships with governments is probably the first priority or work to ensure those organizations that represent you (associations, Chambers of Voluntary Organizations) are doing that.

2. While your own capacity to solicit donations from individuals may not be strong, work on relationships with United Ways or, if appropriate to your “field” with federated fundraisers.  For some organizations it might be possible to take advantage of some of the new ways to fundraise that meet the needs of younger people who tend to raise money and mobilize volunteer support in non-traditional ways (I will write more about that another time).

3. Explore ways to leverage new technologies, many of which are free or low cost, to handle communications and operational functions. Not only will technology help decrease costs in the long run, they provide new – and often better – ways to connect, communicate, and engage your constituents. Collaborative use of technology is another option.

If you want to know more about how to think about, plan for, and execute some of these changes, let me know. (Email)

Christine Dearnley, Jill Taylor, Scott Hennessy, et al. International Journal on ELearning. Norfolk: 2009 Vol. 8, Iss. 2; pg. 193.

Abstract

This article presents the outcomes of the Mobile Technologies Pilot Project for the Assessment and Learning in  Pactice Settings (ALPS) Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL). ALPS is a partnership of five Higher Education Institutions (HEI) that aims to develop and improve assessment, and thereby learning, in practice settings for health and social care students. It is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The aim of this project was to identify the readiness of the institutions to adopt mobile technologies for learning and assessment in practice settings, which may include hospitals, health centers, and community locations; and to identify the available and required infrastructure. We report here on five case studies and explore the variety of ways in which mobile technologies were used, highlighting benefits, challenges, and constraints. We conclude that new technologies demand new approaches to learning but remain cognizant of the need to base new approaches firmly
in established pedagogy. Recommendations for practice are provided.
[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

The new shape of information

Yesterday Vicki Butler and I attended an online presentation through LMC@The Forefront. The subject -  Personal Learning Networks – was presented by David Warlick, a nationally renowned school technology advocate.  You can read more about it here at the ISTE Technology site.

Here is an excerpt from the link above:

As we work in a time of rapid change, with students who are digital natives, from within a dramatically new information landscape, the best description of the 21st Century teacher is Master Learner. Participants in this presentation will learn how to utilize a variety of new web-based applications to construct and cultivate personal learning networks. Educators will learn to attract information from other professional educators, experts in the fields of study, current news and news searches, student perspective, relevant resources from a growing library of web-based digital content, and other content sources to assist them in adapting to this age of change. (diagram from: http://davidwarlick.com/wordpress/?p=413)

I advanced my thinking on a number of fronts after this short presentation.  Learning networks are quite familiar to Librarians but for a long time I have been thinking that the tremendous fragmentation of information has been a negative thing:  something to manage and hard to keep up with.  Now my thinking is shifting from:

Fragmentation  ——>   Networking

David talked about these shifts as well:

Classroom Learning —–>  Network Learning

Institutional Learning —–> Independent Learning

Learning Literacy —–>  Learning Lifestyle

It’s given me a lot to think about. Personal Learning Networks are more convenient to build in a networked environment. What I think is very new is the fact that “conversations” too have become information artifacts and I am still trying to get my head around the implications of that.  Information and communications are converging in strange new ways. Now that we have the tools to train these conversations to find us (as in RSS, iGoogle pages etc.) they become more managable.

Envirodigital client National Theatre Wales launched their programme last week via webcast!

They have also been increasingly busy establishing their wider webpresence – today they have 1058 Facebook fans, over 100 Twitter followers @NTWtweets, a YouTube Channel and of course the ever-growing membership of the online social network.

The depth of the participation and interaction and the quality digital assets are excellent: a real best practice exemplar: well done NTW team, social network gurus Native, top web developers Hoffi, stellar film makers wideload, pithy Communications Consultants Stop The Pigeon, and elegant branding and graphic designerss, Elfen. Its been a pleasure working with you all )

The ground itself, newspapers, radio, television, internet… what is next in this significant line of possibilities to watch live-sport? The answer was introduced today and is not surprising at all: The mobile phone.

Today Sky and Apple announced that I-phone users will be able to follow live sport on their mobile phone with the help of an Apple store application. Now, sport fans do not have to go to the stadium or the pub, they do not even have to be at home.  The question is raised, where would you actually need this new possibility in a world where so much sport is already accessible.

The ordinary sport fan watches his sport(s) on TV and will make sure that he or she is in the right place for the actual event. The possibility that an important match will be missed, is very very rare. Also, there is no lack of public TVs or other possibilities on the internet to follow sport at al if the viewer has no access to the appropriate TV channel at home. But why getting Sky, a pay-TV channel, on your small mobile phone if you do not want Sky on the big 40-inch-TV in your living room? For Sky and Apple the answer is simple, they only want to make money. They know that there are millions of sport fans out there that want to have the possibility to watch live sport “just in case” they miss out on the first 2 minutes and 33 seconds on their way to the pub. An application for which they will have to pay more than £20 pound a month. We live in a world full of information and we think that we can not miss even seconds of sports or other important events and live-sport on the phone will make this feeling even worse. Less than five years ago, the only opportunity to watch sports was at home in front of the TV or in a public place. Then the internet gave us an additional possibility, now its the mobile phone.

It just proves that the media and technology wheel keeps on turning faster and faster, and many consumers do their best to increase the speed even more to simply signing up for every little detail. Now, I am just waiting for the first Facebook Status Message: “Just watched the Arsenal game on my phone”.

I have always been excited by the amazing potential of Deep Zoom in Education ever since I was given a demonstration by Stuart Ball (Microsoft Innovative Teachers Network, @innovativeteach on Twitter), when he showed me what the Hard Rock Cafe’ did for it’s Memorabilia. I tried to use the Deep Zoom Composer across the network in my School, but it did not work (apparently it conflicts with our RM network, any suggestions?). So, I was apparently stuck, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet and coming to a unit on Reproduction with my Yr 7 class I came up with a simple solution, which proved the inability to use the composer on individual PCs to be a blessing rather than a curse.

The objectives of the project:

-  To develop interdependence through a collaborative project in which all learners had to take into account the needs and objectives of other groups

-  To encourage collaboration between different groups by getting my pupils to develop and peer teach different aspects of Reproduction

-  To enhance Communication Skills through the creative and collaborative use of Deep Zoom, Community Clips and Movie Maker

-  To develop Thinking Skills by developing the project using the TASC Framework

The management of the project:

In the first lesson the groups were introduced to the project and were given an area of Reproduction to develop. All the work undertaken by the groups was their independent work and research and was carried out using the TASC Framework (see the TASC section below). In the second lesson one member of each group could use a PC to research appropriate images and diagrams to use in the whole class Deep Zoom composition, while the other members of the group continued the preparation of their displays and presentations. In the third lesson each group took it in turn to add their pictures to the Deep Zoom composition while the other groups worked on the scripts for their presentations. This was a very important part of the project, because, in composing a whole class Deep Zoom, each group had to take into account the contributions of other groups and make sure that their interventions would not affect negatively the work of others. This approach developed interdependence, creativity, flexibility and adaptability skills, and of course ICT skills, as every learner could use Deep Zoom Composer. In the last lesson each group used the Deep Zoom Composition made by the efforts of the entire class and zoomed in and out the relevant parts while they were explaining their topic to the class. They also recorded their presentations using Community Clips, but at this stage we became aware of a challenge. When they zoomed in or out Community Clips would skip a short bit of the narration, so when we played back the first clip, we realized we needed to pause between each zooming action. That has slowed down the narration a bit and it doesn’t sound as fluent as it could have been, but the results were still very good. The groups’ presentations could then be edited in Movie Maker to minimize the pauses introduced because of the above problem.

The impact on my students:

During the project I could witness a maturity I had not noticed before in my pupils. The class I run the project with behaved in a more responsible way than they had previously done in other projects not involving Reproduction and they were genuinely interested in discovering how their body works. I also noticed much improved behavior compared to the classes I taught Reproduction to in the past and I believe this is due to the collaborative nature of the project and the ownership the learners had not only on the format (as they could choose and collate their own photos in Deep Zoom), but also on the content, as they conducted all the research and produced all the resources they needed themselves (all I gave each group was a topic to develop). This proved to be successful, because many groups found interesting information that the usual text books did not have and that was a curiosity or a concern for some members of the group. In that my pupils were not only consuming knowledge, but became creators of a knowledge that better suited their needs and those of their peers. In addition, retention of these concepts was much higher than in the past and pupils from different groups could recall many aspects of the topics not developed by themselves, or their group.

A couple days ago, I mused about how Google might monetize newly integrated features such as voice-activated GPS in the latest version of Android, its mobile operating system.  Almost in answer to my question, Google announced today that it will acquire AdMob for $750 million in stock. AdMob is a three-year old mobile advertising start-up that is a leader in the growing mobile advertising sector.  Already, AdMob provides advertising for mobile phones such as the iPhone and smartphones running Google’s Android.

Google believes that the acquisition will clear regulatory hurdles — but that remains to be seen.  The company faces a very different regulatory environment now then it did in March 2008 when it acquired Doubleclick.  At that time, Commissioner (and now FTC Chair) Jon Leibowitz acknowledged the concerns expressed by privacy advocates but supported the transaction on the grounds that online privacy needed to be addressed on an industry-wide basis (and not through a single merger decision).

Since then – and in large part to Leibowitz’s own initiatives as FTC Chair – a perfect storm has been brewing over how privacy should be regulated online.  The FTC will examine online privacy through its upcoming roundtables entitled “Exploring Privacy” and it’s likely that the mobile web will be part of the discussion.   For instance, the FTC’s April 2009 web commerce report notes concerns with spam and children’s online privacy on certain devices (such as those which have internet browsers and GPS technology).  And that’s just the FTC.  We’re not even delving into FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s interest in promoting wireless competition – a topic that has been well-covered in recent weeks.

Will regulators take this opportunity to better define what role privacy should play in web competition?  It’s an unanswered, yet important question – particularly for an industry whose growth is fueled by data and financed by advertising based on that data.  With the acceleration and developments in mobile advertising, the question is especially ripe for discussion. Let’s see who takes the bait and dares to provide an answer.

I found this (…while looking for a semi-gift-resonant way to make some money) and had to add my $0.02.

http://baris.typepad.com/venture_capitalist/2009/10/the-internet-was-designed-for-the-pc.html

My Comment:

“I live’n’breathe in the “why” and the “design/purpose” and the technology space – I love it here.

My work and writing speaks to essential and magical pragmatism (Yes, pragmatics can be magical, ask Williams James) of the “why” of the internet” as a function of an innate and unstoppable, although seemingly detour prone, process of individual, innate and gift-based human evolution… and whole human-systems gift-based or gift-centric social evolution, and more specifically, the evolution of 1) an individual and naturally disposed and gifted human mind, and 2) all of these human minds doing that same thing.

… and a “why the internet exists” design/purpose founded on the innate NEED of all these evolving and inherently gift-driven-at-the-core human minds finding fuller and better and more synergy-rich “connecting” along the way.

My innately disposed preference is to think of the internet as simply a mind-mirror and interactive functional projection and manifestation thereof, the human mind. And over time, guess what, it actually looks more and more like a human cortex, this felt-work of connective tissue, of fibrils, like glial cells and dendridic networks, enmeshed and encapsulating directly, and indirectly and over time, all minds on the planet. And these minds “connected” – consciously, most not – are trying really, really hard – as it is what they are designed to do… is their ultimate and pre-ordained purpose – to be all they can be… to be innately and naturally gift-driven and along the way, trying very, very hard to more effectively resonate (socnet) and connect (socnet) to optimizing “partners” along the way, and over generations of our humanity.

It is this fundamental process and direction of human evolving that feeds the evolution of da’Net itSelf, and reciprocally, the further evolution of the natural and innately disposed and gifted human Self.

Nice that the internet helps in all this, and was mirror-designed in fact, for that express purpose, whether we see it as such or not, i.e. it’s purpose within and without and pertaining to the unknown.

Okay, done spewing.

Thanks
Brian”

CNN had an article last week on how we use technologies as archives of our past Do digital diaries mess up your brain? (yes it is indeed a very sloppy title!):

“…today’s technology creates opportunities for greater, moment-by-moment record-keeping. Archives of your blog, Facebook or Twitter feed — both in text and in pictures — might reveal exactly what you ate on important occasions, the papers you were proud of and the outfits you wore”.

The article made me think of Leonard in Memento who says: “The present is trivia, which I scrible down on fucking notes”. Actually, as a media studies student at Goldsmith’s College many years ago, I remember writing an essay about the film Memento using it as an example of the contemporary virtual/human mind where the present moment in a way suppresses the past. As Leonard so elegantly puts it at the end of the film: “Now, Where was I?”. (Perhaps a too extreme and pessimistic description of the state of things. But I was a student. I don’t know what CNN’s excuse is…).

I have lost the essay now, but I remember that I was using my all time favourite Henri Bergson’s description of “the memory-image”, which are past experiences, that are unrepeatable because in our consciousness they are placed in the past in spatial and temporal contexts. The “memory-image” was to Bergson that what constitues “actual memory” – the essence of human consciousness.

I often regret that Bergson does not live today to experience the effect of technologies in our everyday lives. I wonder what he would have thought about Microsoft’s SenseCam (described in the CNN article) – an attempt to create “memory-images, that is, exact recollections of what happened. Or the status updates on Facebook that places our narratives of the present in a temporal context with the exact time of the status update.

However, what intrigued me the most in the CNN article was the thought that our behaviour and path in life might be effected by our consiousness about the technological archives we are creating about ourselves on e.g. Facebook, Twitter etc. As Barry Barry Schwartz, professor of social action and social theory says in the article:

“If we have experiences with an eye toward the expectation that in the next five minutes, we’re going to tweet them, we may choose difference experiences to have, ones that we can talk about rather than ones we have an interest in,”

Increasingly, and I really think this is the case, we will change our actions according to the archive we are creating about ourselves. Of course we are nothing without a memory of the past, as Bergson believed and as Leonard 100 years later became the perfect image of in Memento. And thus we are everything our past presents; that is, both our physical actions in the past and our (and others!) virtual actions on social network services such as Facebook and Twitter. This is really what is interesting about the technological archives we are creating – that they influence the way we choose to live our lives. This is also what Joshua Meyrowitz refers to as a new “sense of caution” effected by the different “sense of place” that we are experiencing with digital/electronic media. But then again, is it a new thing? People have always been more or less aware about the narratives they present about themselves. Perhaps the new thing is an issue of control. Who or what controls the individual’s personal narrative today?

It’s a bit scarry actually that in my work with raising children in the network society, I am working exactly with this issue. Telling kids to be aware of the archives they create, telling them to be cautious when developing their  identity. It’s a dilemma between letting kids develop their identity in their own generational framework and attempting to mold them in my own generation’s image. But I guess this has been the all time dilemma. Being an adult that has to protect both children’s right to free expression and participation and to protect their rights – and others – to exercise this right in a somewhat “risk reduced” framework.

(I am in a way saying the same thing in this article: “”When moblogger met little brother – Or how new technologies influence behaviour”)

The App Phone is about to create waves in the world of mobile computing … again.  The original App Phone – the iPhone – is purportedly the most successful gadget ever ever.  Now, Verizon will shake things up  with Droid, which runs on Google’s Android operating system and which, like the iPhone before it, is likely to have a significant impact on the mobile web.

App Phones illustrate the complexity of mobile web competition. It’s the killer phone, not the killer app – but it’s also the app that drives demand for the phone.  And to further this complexity, the competitive impact of App Phones and certain smart phones now reaches into other device markets thanks to powerful mobile web applications that mimic functionality seen on other devices.  And the most successful applications eventually get assimilated within the device itself, leading to a next generation of innovation in this dynamic market.

This is well illustrated by GPS – a must-have feature in today’s advanced smartphones, especially App Phones.  Until a couple years ago, GPS-navigation devices were sold separately from phones or smart phones.  But today, GPS mobile applications can give certain phones the same GPS functionality as an advanced (and pricey) standalone GPS device.

Droid will be the first phone to include Google’s GPS Service for mobile phones – with innovative features like voice-activation, turn-by-turn directions and live traffic updates.   The feature list should be enough to make GPS device makers cringe; the fact that Google is now offering the service on a free (eventually ad-subsidized?) basis makes the competitive picture even more interesting.  In fact, news of the Google GPS announcement recently sent shares of GPS device makers Garmin and Tom-Tom into a precipitous plunge.  It’s unclear what the future of pricey standalone devices will be – particularly if consumers can get that same functionality for free on their App Phone.

Innovations like GPS navigation are just one of the forces that are shaping mobile and App Phone competition.  There are other forces that are important to the future viability of this market – such as wireless broadband availability and deployment.  And then there’s the regulatory concerns with privacy on GPS enabled mobile phones as seen in the FTC’s report on mobile commerce issued earlier this year, as well as the much publicized interest by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in regulating a wireless market which he sees as being “all about mobile.”

Regardless of how mobile computing and App Phones evolve, it’s likely that these advances will continue to benefit a great many people.  The fact that voice-enabled GPS will be available for “free” will likely stoke consumer interest and demand for such features in future devices.  And advanced devices like the App Phones will continue to lead the explosive growth in mobile internet (which continues to outpace desktop internet adoption).   In many emerging economies, the phone is already a cornerstone of growth thanks to its portability and the power of today’s mobile applications.  In Kenya, for instance, mobile computing is replacing a national banking system, and allows villagers to send and receive money without a bank account.  Within this framework, the possibilities for App Phones are endless.

For now, I’d be contented with voice-activated GPS on my phone that actually works.  That’s why I look forward to purchasing my first Droid tomorrow.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am currently a Verizon Wireless customer who looks forward to purchasing her first Droid.  I do not have a business or client relationship with Verizon or any other company mentioned in this post.

Dr Marianne Hicks, Lecturer in International Studies at Monash University, South Africa did an interesting presentation on 5  November 2009 on New and Converging Technologies: New and Traditional Media Coming Together. To view her presentation Click Here!

So I’m working through artwork for the publication (it’s long and detailed. keep your eyes peeled for more) and decided to look at this animation as a bit of a side track/take a break.

This is just fantastic! Absolutely amazing.

I’ve got a few more photos of Barcelona to add . . . but first, this:

In a recent edition of the International Herald Tribune, David Brooks comments on a new phenomenon observed at least in some parts of urban America. It’s worth going to that link to read the article, but the points he makes are these:

1. first, there’s an odd phenomenon of people posting their sex diaries online (which also for me confirms one of the editorial comments made in the Guardian Weekly a few months ago, to the effect that there may be less interest in privacy these days, as modern social media – Twitter, Facebook, Flickr etc – encourage an extraordinary degree of self-disclosure; and the risk is that the gains in the protection of privacy might be lost if there is less passion about the cause);
2. second, and more interesting/troubling is the role of mobile media in fostering social and sexual networking: “On nights when they are out, the diarists are often texting multiple possible partners in search of the best arrangement.”
3. third – without commenting on the issue of multiplicity of options, the point he makes is that there’s a tendency to see relationships as contingent – that is, the simultaneous texting of possible partners means that the current one will do unless a better offer comes along (by way of SMS). Referring to an article in the New York magazine, he comments: “As the journalist Wesley Yang notes in a very intelligent analysis in the magazine, the diarists “use their cellphones to disaggregate, slice up, and repackage their emotional and physical needs, servicing each with a different partner, and hoping to come out ahead.”
4. and fourth, it’s not an issue of the diminished moral values of those engaged in this world, but rather a concern that this is a sign of disaggregated, episodic, instrumental contacts. And, perhaps more to the point, the social networking, while it appears to enhance connections – and in many ways does so – ironically leaves people more isolated and without the familiar contexts of community, friendship and family: “Suitors now contact each other in an instantaneous, frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and commitments.” (This also brings to mind a recent reference to the work of Christopher Lasch, whose Haven in a Heartless World, on the importance of the family, I recall reading many years ago).

This is not necessarily an exercise in nostalgia (though that’s easy to get into!) but rather a kind of social-anthropology puzzle about the norms and conventions that haven’t yet emerged to shape the phenomenon of the behaviour. The parallel for me, also involving cellphone use, is the assumption that answering a text of a mobile call is more important that engagement and participation in a class. Even if we have an agreement as to mobile [non-]use in classes, the surreptitious texting under the desk indicates that other priorities take over. It also says something of the imperatives that social networking have created – if you’re not connected, and not immediately accessible, you’re out of the loop. When I ask my classes who amongst them uses Twitter, I get a pretty strong response. And the reason for using Twitter is in order to stay constantly in contact – even to “chat”, during class, with chums who happen to be in another class (and whom they’ll see over lunch later).

At the same time, there are articles my students are happy to point me to about the social, political, negotiation and even activist uses of Twitter: indeed, the defence of the use of Twitter to keep in touch with your pals in the next class room is that protesters in the streets of Iran were using Twitter to tell the world about the regimes crackdown on post-election protests. I somehow don’t think the uses are comparable! My colleagues recently met in Barcelona, whose concern is with the importance of narrative, story telling, and the ways in which shared stories are the ways in which we collectively create sense of the world, might be anxious about this disaggregation of stories in the world of twittering.

Why Lévi-Strauss? Well, the grand old man of structuralist anthropology died, on 1st November, aged 100. He’s been the leading name in anthropology for so long that I didn’t imagine he was still around – after all, when I started dipping into anthropology in my second year at university (in, ahem, 1968!) his was one of the key names . . . but 40 years ago, he was 60! Whether we still follow his school – which most seem not to – is of less importance right now than the fact that he believed that all social behaviours were in some way explicable. Well, mon vieux, explain the foregoing!!

And, to invoke the other influential anthropologist, Malinowski, and his work on reciprocity (especially in patterns of trade in the island groups of the Western Pacific), I note Brooks’ closing comment: “Today’s technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust.”

Vinyl production has been completed and box construction is near completion.

The following image, shows Reuben and Tom looking over the physical layout of the boxed product. Only object that is ready to be placed is the Record/Vinyl, the booklet/dvd/cd/usb are not ready to be added in.

This time we are not going to ask you  for a Majorcan recipe with pomegranate, but remember I’m still waiting for a tasty recipe with pumkin!

We have done the work for you and copy here the definition of pomegranate./ˈpəmgrænət/ from a very good on line dictionary called wordnik

1. noun A deciduous shrub or small tree (Punica granatum) native to Asia and widely cultivated for its edible fruit.
2. noun The fruit of this tree, having a tough reddish rind, and containing many seeds, each enclosed in a juicy, mildly acidic, red pulp.

This time the beautiful pomegranate comes to our blog shaped as a phone.

Before you watch a video about this new pomegranate phone guess which of the following features might be true?

The ultimate all in one device can…….

Now watch the video and find out if your guesses were right!

Would you like to have such a phone?

Do you think it exists?

As usual, copy the answers in your notebook and post your comments to the blog.

Post 52

I got this fantastic online resource from Dan Roberts (@chickensaltash on twitter) who blogged about some fantastic work his pupils did with it! Dan’s blog

So, here is how I used it so far! I got my pupils in yr 10 to split into nine groups and develop a 5W activity on energy resources. Each group was assigned one type of energy resource and the power stations assiciated with it. In the 5W activity they had a pentagon shape with an image in the middle and they had to find information to include in each box to answer the 5 questions starting with W, Who, Where, What, When, Why.

When they were presenting their work back to the class, I asked each pupil to look at the presentations and post a sticky note on our Wallwisher whenever they spotted an advantage/disadvantage of renewable/non-renewable energy resources, so they were taking shared notes about topics created by other members of the class. I have uploaded the link to the wallwisher I created on our VLE, so they can now use those shared notes for revision!

Here is the link to our Wallwisher on energy resources

Please, comment on this blog and share with us how you use Wallwisher!!!

Last Saturday I rolled out of bed at a leisurely 8:45 a.m. …   jumped onto the computer and into a live presentation on Diigo with colleagues from all over the country. It turned out to be the best thing I’ve done all year.  Everyone bookmarks their favorite sites right?  If you are a fan of Del.ic.ious (currently the most prominent social bookmarking tool) then you will love Diigo.  I know, another cutsie Web 2.0 name – but don’t let the name fool you.  There is power under the Diigo hood and power in the Diigo Hood.

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Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff    (link to site)

Here are some of the features that make it so compelling. You can:

• bookmark items into categories (download the toolbar)
• highlight important information (first time I’ve seen this really work)
• see a list of your sites annotated with your highlights
• see the original site even if the live site goes away (your site is archived)
• can customize your own keywords for sites (tags)
• share and collaborate in groups
• make lists of links on any topics and share lists
• can “follow” people just like you can on Twitter
• can have Diigo bookmarks automatically populate your del.iou.us account

Right now I am most enjoying the highlighting feature.  Students – you can set up a research paper  “List”,  gather internet sites, highlight them, and access them from any computer. It’s all in one place, highlighted and secure.  Well, as you can probably tell, I can’t say enough about it.  Email me if you’d like a list of Diigo tutorials. You can be up and running in five minutes.