BBC News: "Why don't we, instead of trying to sell our knowledge over the internet, just give it away." ... "There is no revenue objective for OCW, ever. It will always be free."
What a great idea. Of course, MIT has a great reputation for quality. The long-term implications must scare many, many people shitless. Also see Anders' post.
Very intelligent article on trust, a fundamental but often overlooked success factor, by John Moore over at the KnowledgeBoard (registration required). A meaty discussion follows. (It was the first time I visited this community. I'm impressed so far.)
By the way, I see blogrolling lists as explicitly defining webs of trust, and as instrumental towards furthering generalized trust and disinhibited self-expression in the weblog community.
Trust multiplies creativity[...] What makes a full connection possible is trust. I won’t share my half-formed thoughts, interests and concerns with just anybody. I need to feel confident they won’t run off with them without sharing the benefits with me, and – perhaps even more significant – I need to know that they won’t set out to ridicule or destroy them.
Trust saves energy[...]
Trust is generative If trust is established at the core of an organisation, it is likely to spread, as trust begets trust.
Two people who have established trust can create more value in their relationship as each has more access to the other’s resources. One can compensate for the other’s weaknesses and each is more free to focus on the things they are personally best at. Two people who work together well will be more able to connect with a third person, and so on. Contagious trust can build fantastic creative communities.
(Similarly, once distrust is established between two people, their energy gets channelled into defensiveness. Which reduces openness, and further diminishes trust, in what can be a vicious circle.)
So trust is clearly a jolly useful thing. More so now than ever. Little to argue about there. But what do I do about it?
Being a lazy kind of person, the energy-saving aspect is a killer feature of trust for me.
Professor Emeritus Anthony Barnett from Australian National University in Canberra, speaking on the radio program Ockham’s Razor:
So in a recent book I brushed memes off as vacuous, as explaining nothing. But I now feel that I was too hasty. Memetics is about communication, and the more we understand how we communicate, the better. Memetics can be developed further. It can do this by observing how we learn from each other. [...]
And now for something that needs emphasis but doesn’t get it. Speech makes possible an activity that’s central in all human communities, even the simplest; it’s special to the human species, it’s perfectly familiar, and it begins early, even among children as young as six. What is it? Teaching.
Deadly serious (just don't look at the button GIFs). A great manifesto.
One thing is certain: a great unbalance between the mentalities of the actors and the inner needs of the development of a particular type of society always accompanies the fall of a civilization. Although a civilization never stops proliferating new knowledge, it is as if that knowledge can never be integrated within the interior being of those who belong to this civilization. And after all, it is the human being who must be placed in the center of any civilization worthy of the name. [...]
How can a theoretical particle physicist truly dialogue with a neurophysiologist, a mathematician with a poet, a biologist with an economist, a politician with a computer programmer, beyond mouthing more or less trivial generalities? Yet, a true decision-maker must be able to dialogue with all of them at once. [...]
This process of "Babelization" cannot continue without putting our own existence into danger because a decision-maker becomes increasingly more incompetent regardless of his or her intention. Without exception, each of the major challenges of our era -- for example, the challenge of formulating an ethics adapted to the contemporary world -- require more and more compe tencies. However, it is obvious that even a group comprised of the best specialists from all the various disciplines would only be able to develop one generalized incompetence, for the simple reason that the sum total of competencies is not competence: on the technical level, the intersection between different domains of knowledge is an empty ensemble. Now, what is a decision maker, individual or collective, if not capable of taking into account all the givens of the problem being examined?
The indispensable need for bridges between the different disciplines is attested to by the emergence of pluridisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity around the middle of the 20th century.
166 members; OK, I'm impressed. Plus, they do not look pedantic (God forbid that there should be pedantic transdisciplinarists). But, alas, no forum, and no weblogs.
Mike Batt was accused of plagiarism by Edition Peters, publishers of the late Cage's work, after he put a track called "A Minute's Silence" on his latest album "Classical Graffiti," performed by pop-classics group The Planets. The piece was credited it to Batt/Cage.
Cage's ground-breaking silent composition, 4'33," was first performed half a century ago. The piano piece, divided into three movements, consists entirely of silent notes and takes four minutes 33 seconds to perform. [...]
Earlier this year, the parties attempted to prove their points by each staging a performance of their piece. The result was inconclusive.
"If a child has been murdered in your area and found buried in a shallow grave, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding people with plenty unfocussed pent-up anger."
According to the article "No URL Left Behind?: Web Scrub Raises Concerns," in Education Week, the US Department of Education is in the process of overhauling its Website. One of its main goals is to remove reports, research, statistics, etc. published before 2001, especially material that doesn't support the Bush Administration's approach to education. However, The Memory Hole will be preserving much of this material.
Michelle R. Davis reports:
A directive that went to senior staff members and the Web site office at the end of May mapped out just how that sweep would take place. Some of the problems with the site, according to the memo, include difficulties with navigation, mediocre graphics, and information that is either outdated or "does not reflect the priorities, philosophies, or goals of the present administration."
Note: This is an electronic Fahrenheit 451. Straight out of 1984.
I'm not against redesign, but I don't see why they couldn't set up a virtual data junkyard for curious people on a neighboring, separately indexed, site.
Learnin' on kuro5hin. [...] Back when I was first watching kuro5hin grow, I never imagined I'd see active discusions on what amounts to pure mathematics. It really is stupefying to think that people are spending their time interacting, understanding, and bonding, over math. And there isn't a single ad for coke to be seen. I think hollywood has a very real problem here...
The future is landing... who knows, maybe one day participating in open online communities will be more useful towards learning than attending university courses. In some areas (e.g. programming) it already is the case. So maybe schools also have a real problem (assuming they don't change fast enough).
