I finished this book yesterday. It is really an incredible read....it's amazing how many facts you can consume in a two hour read. Now, I just need to convince my daughter to read it too.
The book focuses on how the genetics will become the dominant language of the future. It also addresses what will be required to adapt to this new language and the opportunities that will be possible. However taking advantage of those opportunities will require skills that most of the world is not prepared for. The result will be a widening gap between have and have nots.
The scary part of this is that is an incredibly accurate representation of everything that is going on today. Kids not only don't want to work, but they don't want to learn. It is hard to imagine how they will ever get back on the train with it moving at this speed if they choose not to get on.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Web 2.0
I use a few web 2.0 tools:
- Wikipedia
- Flickr for photos
- Blogspot (mostly for this class) / Oracle blog (for work)
- Twitter (for this class)
- Second Life (for school)
- Google Maps
- Moodle / Blackboard
The biggest problem is the finding the time to actually use all of these tools. It would be great to have some spare time to work with all of these tools and figure out how they could be helpful. It would also be great to use them to focus on specifically the information that I'm interested in.
Here's a great site with a Web 2.0 explanation: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Statistics Training
We learned today that the statistics portion of the program is being removed in the future. This is a huge mistake. In CS, especially for research, we need more of this type of training not less. This is important because research is showing how truly weak our skills are:
http://blog.carnegielearning.com/blog/default.aspx?id=23
http://blogs.eweek.com/careers/content001/education/us_students_rank_lower_than_ever_in_science_and_math.html
This decision should be reconsidered.
http://blog.carnegielearning.com/blog/default.aspx?id=23
http://blogs.eweek.com/careers/content001/education/us_students_rank_lower_than_ever_in_science_and_math.html
This decision should be reconsidered.
Last Residency
Today brings to a close our last residency. While it good to be almost done, I will definitely miss meeting with such a wonderful group of individuals. Hopefully, we will keep in touch and cross paths again at some future point.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration
I viewed this talk from www.ted.com
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html
Clay Shirky focuses on the rising usefulness of decentralized technologies such as peer-to peer, wireless networks, social software, and open-source software. New technologies are enabling new kids of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done.
Coordination costs - How do you organize a group of individuals so that the output of the group is coherent and of lasting value instead of just being chaos? The economic framing of that is called coordination costs which are all of the financial or institutional difficulties in arranging group output.
Currently, we use institutions to coordinate the output of a group. This is a costly proposition. However, recently the costs of communication have fallen through the floor and this was previously a big part of the coordination costs. The falling communication costs have allowed us to put coordination directly into the infrastructure. This allows us to coordinate the output of a group without the infrastructure.
One of the issues with the communication is a coordination problem. How do we get the answers to those who need them? This is accomplished with Tagging. Tagging is a cooperative infrastructure that enables cooperative classification. (For example, the categorization of photos on FickR so they can be easily found.)
This new coordination allows us to take the problems to the individuals rather than taking the individuals to the problem (institutionalization). Traditional things like planning are replaced with coordination. We can coordinate the group effort and decide as we go.
There is something called the Power Loss Distribution (80/20) that occurs when people are allowed to contribute as much or as little as they want. Typically less than 1% of the participants will contribute as much as 25% of the content, but that doesn't make the contribution from a onetime participant less valuable.
This is a revolution that represents a profound change in the way human affairs are arranged. This revolution will result in a change in equilibrium. One example, web blogging, allows you to publish what you think globally. In addition to the upsides of these abilities, there are downsides. Currently, the normative goals come from the infrastructure. In the future, a support group can consist of a group that wants to maintain a way of living without reference to the traditional institution imposed normative goals.
How will society be informed? What does the future look like? We are going to go from Point A to chaos. During the next 50 years, there will be loosely coordinated groups with increasingly high leverage. Institutions will come under more pressure. The more rigidly managed and the more they rely on information monopolies, the greater the pressure will be. The forces are general and the results are specific. This requires a massive readjustment now to get better at surviving in this environment.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html
Clay Shirky focuses on the rising usefulness of decentralized technologies such as peer-to peer, wireless networks, social software, and open-source software. New technologies are enabling new kids of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done.
Coordination costs - How do you organize a group of individuals so that the output of the group is coherent and of lasting value instead of just being chaos? The economic framing of that is called coordination costs which are all of the financial or institutional difficulties in arranging group output.
Currently, we use institutions to coordinate the output of a group. This is a costly proposition. However, recently the costs of communication have fallen through the floor and this was previously a big part of the coordination costs. The falling communication costs have allowed us to put coordination directly into the infrastructure. This allows us to coordinate the output of a group without the infrastructure.
One of the issues with the communication is a coordination problem. How do we get the answers to those who need them? This is accomplished with Tagging. Tagging is a cooperative infrastructure that enables cooperative classification. (For example, the categorization of photos on FickR so they can be easily found.)
This new coordination allows us to take the problems to the individuals rather than taking the individuals to the problem (institutionalization). Traditional things like planning are replaced with coordination. We can coordinate the group effort and decide as we go.
There is something called the Power Loss Distribution (80/20) that occurs when people are allowed to contribute as much or as little as they want. Typically less than 1% of the participants will contribute as much as 25% of the content, but that doesn't make the contribution from a onetime participant less valuable.
This is a revolution that represents a profound change in the way human affairs are arranged. This revolution will result in a change in equilibrium. One example, web blogging, allows you to publish what you think globally. In addition to the upsides of these abilities, there are downsides. Currently, the normative goals come from the infrastructure. In the future, a support group can consist of a group that wants to maintain a way of living without reference to the traditional institution imposed normative goals.
How will society be informed? What does the future look like? We are going to go from Point A to chaos. During the next 50 years, there will be loosely coordinated groups with increasingly high leverage. Institutions will come under more pressure. The more rigidly managed and the more they rely on information monopolies, the greater the pressure will be. The forces are general and the results are specific. This requires a massive readjustment now to get better at surviving in this environment.
GINA
Geometry (shapes and function) In N (number) of Adaptations
Check this out:
http://www.just-auto.com/blogdetail.aspx?ID=1860
It's amazing how current events are driving innovations that will change the face of the future. As discussed in the book, I'm not sure anyone could have accurately predicted these changes. I can't wait to see Nigel fly down the road in this.
Check this out:
http://www.just-auto.com/blogdetail.aspx?ID=1860
It's amazing how current events are driving innovations that will change the face of the future. As discussed in the book, I'm not sure anyone could have accurately predicted these changes. I can't wait to see Nigel fly down the road in this.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Here's a link with a very interesting article regarding this class: http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6643
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
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