Random Connected Ideas

2004¦~9¤ë17¤é

Apple forces developer to remove free iTunes plugin [The Macintosh News Network]
8:31:01 AM

IBM fits PCs with new hardware-based security chip. NEW YORK - IBM Corp. has begun using new security hardware from National Semiconductor Corp. in its desktop PCs in an effort to fend off viruses and hackers. [InfoWorld: Top News]
8:29:36 AM

The Wrath of Kaa: A Letter to the Editors of The Register. I love people. I care about them as human beings. I feel somehow disappointed in myself when I say things like I'm about to say. Maybe one day the little voice in the back of my head will prevent me from saying things like this:

Kaa's law states: "In a sufficiently large group of people, most are idiots." I would soften it just a tad: "In a sufficiently large group of people, you can always find some who are currently acting like idiots." Unfortunately the group of people interested in providing open access to educational opportunity is apparently becoming sufficiently large.

Recent stories in The Register attack contributors to Wikipedia as not only being completely unrealistic idealists, but also as just plain stupid. A little poking around the site shows that, in fact, some of the authors have been making claims and defending the same with very little thought whatsoever. For example, claims that your pet project will eventually up-end millennia of educational practice somehow come off as less than credible when a single paragraph contains four or five misspellings and several grammatical problems.

I feel the need to respond to a few points in The Registera£á?s pieces. The authors who poke fun at the self-righteousness of the Wikipedia contributors sound no less self-impressed:

Citing the excitable young wiki-fiddler who claimed, 'It should come as no suprise a journalist and teacher ganged up on Wikipedia. Both have much to loose. Their claim? Authority.' Kevin replies - "Indeed. Authority. And training. And experience. And having received guidance from a predecessor who had those same advantages. And the ability to fucking spell!"

Feel like there's no authority, training, or experience among the people who want to give information away and change education? How about OpenCourseWare? How about the Open Learning Initiative? How about Connexions? How about the seven or eight similar projects at other universities around the US? How about the Chinese Open Resources for Education consortium of over twenty Chinese universities? How about the Universia consortium of over 700 South American universities? Any authority, training, or experience here? Credentialed, certified, authoritative, PhD-hooded professors who actually understand that education is a fundamental human right ARE giving away their materials. For free. DONa£á?T try to act like they arena£á?t just because a couple of people at Wikipedia who are trying to do the same are less articulate or less credentialed.

(As a side note, I don't think the Wikipedia people are idiots, though some of them may recently have been acting like they are. No, I believe the Wikipedia people are well-meaning people who are just doing their best. What else do you want from them? Should we censor them because they dona£á?t hold terminal degrees? Should a Masters be good enough? Could a Bachelors degree suffice? Would an Associates degree cut the mustard? Does a high school diploma qualify someone to provide the best answer they can? Perhaps we should disband all middle school sports programs while we're at it, cause by and large those kids are just pathetic... I honestly thank God that such "expertise-based censorship" doesna£á?t exist. Determining the point at which a person is "experienced" or an "expert" is a Sorites Paradox of the nastiest sort. (Oh, by the way, that last link is to a widely available collection of high quality information, which becomes important in the context of the next quote.))

It's hard to imagine anyone other than a Wikipedian arguing the wider availability of high quality information collections - at which point, you begin to realize it's a religious issue.

How about MIT President Chuck Vest, whose passion about what education could be got MIT OpenCourseWare off the ground? How about Marshall Smith, former Harvard professor, dean of the School of Education at Stanford, and acting deputy secretary of education under President Clinton who now runs the Hewlett Foundationa£á?s open education program? How about Rich Baraniuk at Rice, who has won national young investigator awards from NSF and ONR, the Rosenbaum Fellowship from the Isaac Newton Institute of Cambridge University, and runs the Connexions project? With a PhD, a Postdoctoral Fellowship, and only one award to my name (a National Science Foundation CAREER award) Ia£á?m a small, under-credentialed fish in the pond of really smart people working on completely opening access to high quality information collections. Maybe I should just give up now since I'm so underqualified. DONa£á?T try to tell us only daydreaming fools are interested in a£á?wider availability of high quality information collections.a£á?

"Personally I'm happy to accept their information on Klingons as being authoritative," writes Andy Toone. "However, the people who get overexcited about the social effects of Wiki/ Blogs/ Open Source seem to be far less reliable when it comes to the economics and practicalities of providing time, effort and information to such projects."

What is overexcited supposed to mean? If you mean "to claim that the entirety of mankind will be fed, clothed, and cuddled as a result of these technologies and the social uses developing around them," then I agree. But if you mean "to claim that these technologies and the social practices developing around them could have significant impacts on formal educational practice and even greater impacts on extending educational opportunity into spaces where none or little previously existed," then apparently the National Science Foundation, European Science Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Rice University, and even my own humble Utah State University beg to differ. DONa£á?T try to act like very smart, very well credentialed, very well funded people aren't hard at work here.

Do I, too, sound self-righteous at this point? Yes. Some journalists take a sample size of one project and a tiny partition of its defenders and try to extrapolate to all situations in which people might try to extend people their basic right as human beings to educational opportunity?!? Something tells me that in addition to not knowing about the other projects, people, and funding agencies involved in this effort, The Register authors and those whose quips they so happily echo have never read any of the research, attended any of the conferences, or taken any of the courses offered in this area. The irony of their complaining about people who lack credentials treading in where they have no business is delicious. Just because they dona£á?t understand the economics or practicalities of our field of research (or any of the rest of our field, apparently) doesna£á?t mean that others dona£á?t. It's the worst sort of generalizing - judging a whole group based on the few interactions they have had with an extraordinarily small sample of its membership.

Perhaps my softening of Kaaa£á?s Law holds for journalists and the readers of their articles, too. Instead of encouraging The Register's reporters with letters like Kevin's "Please do not let up on these [Wikipedia] people for a second," I'll encourage the reporters to do a little more research before they negatively stereotype an entire field and come out in opposition to a group trying to help people enjoy their basic human rights. [wiley.ed.usu.edu - autounfocus]
8:24:18 AM

Longhorn's Copy Protection Standard [Slashdot:]
8:21:37 AM

PVR's Head-to-Head: MythTV vs. Microsoft MCE [Slashdot:]
8:19:31 AM

Sun-Microsoft deal raises Open Office questions. Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday said that it is looking for ways to work more closely with developers of the Open Office open source project, while at the same time, apparently reserving the right to sue them, according to a legal agreement between Microsoft and Open Office's major sponsor, Sun Microsystems Inc., made public this week. [MacCentral News]
8:16:23 AM