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Roger Critchlow-2

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

http://yann.lecun.com/ex/pamphlets/publishing-models.html proposes a new model for publication in computer science.

-- rec --

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

The peer review process itself is flawed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

From the article:

"Slow and expensive"
"Inconsistent"
"Bias"
"Abuse of peer review"

--Doug

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 12:43 AM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 1/19/13 10:24 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

Not to fan any flames, but I am curious about the stereotypes we all carry... "Academic" being the current one at issue...

Peer review is the mechanism for determining quality work in academia. Researchers that can get their work past peer review get jobs, and others do not. A common way for junior people to get work through peer review is to have senior researcher (typically their mentor and boss) guide the process. The senior researchers do this for their own benefit, becoming senior authors on the papers, and in this way they accumulate an impressive publication record and prominence and for a good bang for the buck. At the end of the day, in certain academic cliques, one will find that peer review means that a few powerful people see that it is in their interest to get papers published. This is not to say that the papers are wrong, or haven't been reviewed, but they may not be particularly innovative. It's an economics based on reputation and professional networking amongst the Players, and it depends on having a pipeline of junior people of various investment to do the work.

The idea of taking mailing list discussions and converting it into a publication has a similar smell.
Instead of having students do the work, there's the brainstorming, analysis, argumentation of the community as an energy source. It just needs to be refined.. where the `refinement' is presented as the crucial contribution of the grown-ups. I could go on, but it gets more cynical from here on out..

Marcus

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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

<a href="tel:505-455-7333" value="+15054557333" target="_blank">505-455-7333 - Office
<a href="tel:505-672-8213" value="+15056728213" target="_blank">505-672-8213 - Mobile

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Eric Charles

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2

There is tremendous interest in new publication models these days. In psychology, one of the big champions is Bjoern Brembs (another very active blogger fairly early in his career).

There is also increased general awareness in psychology of the negative consequences of our current system. Sure, there have been complaints for decades, but always at the fringes. This year saw the first full-issue treatment of the problem in a top 10 journal, and the implications of that level of coverage are still emerging. Incidentally ;- ) I cover that and some of psychology's other current problems in this year's edition of Holiday Special: A Year of Scandals in Psychology.

--------
Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State, Altoona

From: "Douglas Roberts" <[hidden email]>
To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2013 2:47:50 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "Academics" and other Stereotypes

The peer review process itself is flawed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

From the article:

"Slow and expensive"

"Inconsistent"

"Bias"

"Abuse of peer review"

--Doug

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 12:43 AM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 1/19/13 10:24 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

Not to fan any flames, but I am curious about the stereotypes we all carry... "Academic" being the current one at issue...

Peer review is the mechanism for determining quality work in academia. Researchers that can get their work past peer review get jobs, and others do not. A common way for junior people to get work through peer review is to have senior researcher (typically their mentor and boss) guide the process. The senior researchers do this for their own benefit, becoming senior authors on the papers, and in this way they accumulate an impressive publication record and prominence and for a good bang for the buck. At the end of the day, in certain academic cliques, one will find that peer review means that a few powerful people see that it is in their interest to get papers published. This is not to say that the papers are wrong, or haven't been reviewed, but they may not be particularly innovative. It's an economics based on reputation and professional networking amongst the Players, and it depends on having a pipeline of junior people of various investment to do the work.

The idea of taking mailing list discussions and converting it into a publication has a similar smell.
Instead of having students do the work, there's the brainstorming, analysis, argumentation of the community as an energy source. It just needs to be refined.. where the `refinement' is presented as the crucial contribution of the grown-ups. I could go on, but it gets more cynical from here on out..

Marcus

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-672-8213 - Mobile

Owen Densmore

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

Administrator

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 1/20/13 10:43 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
What would Good Academia look like?
Overall, I'd say "Good academics" are just members of the set of people that develop skills to satisfy their curiosity.

Now the problem is not the difficulty of getting word out, it's the active obstacles to free access to information (e.g. the JSTOR lawsuits against Aaron Swartz), or the enduring pay walled scientific journals. The professional incentives that result in non-disclosure agreements is the problem.<snip>

For those interested in more on Aaron Swartz:

http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N62/swartz.html

..from this we might assume a good academic is a dead one. Aaron is being painted as a nut case after his suicide. He wasn't. The article is worth reading.

There is a lot of support for freeing academic papers. A whole bunch of Mathematicians have joined together against Elsevier:

http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-its-downfall/

.. and indeed are doing "open source mathematics:

http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/

They'd agree, I think, with the quest for an answer to "what is Good academics".

-- Owen

Prof David West

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

re: marcus' comments about programming - see Peter Naur's "Programming as Theory Building" paper of long ago.

davew

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013, at 11:49 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

Nick wrote:

"And I Just Plain Believe in collaborative essays as a tool in the development of thought. "

I think a little recognized outcome of open source software development is the development of thought, and perhaps for some of the same reasons as a collaborative essay.

Creating and maintaining a useful program often involves an understanding of a large network of artifacts.

The understanding needs to be precise enough to make correct small changes, and general enough to be able to approach re-design and re-implementation of those artifacts that aren't adequate. It requires being literate, because the artifacts will have designed and built over time by a team. Some artifacts will come from third parties.

Open source software development is different than closed proprietary development in that the people that are participating are not trained or motivated to do a particular job. Two people may see completely different uses, or infer completely different purposes for an abstraction. Some programmers see things in terms of use and abuse of abstractions, depending on the author's intent. As a functional programming enthusiast, I prefer to think about the discovery of abstractions rather than the design of them. Useful combinator libraries seem to arise through an iterative process of construction and deconstruction, not one-time design.

Unlike collaborative essays, computers are unforgiving but patient. If two authors can't reconcile interfaces, dependencies, etc. the program or framework just won't work. It won't be a `interesting but flawed' argument.

Marcus

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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Merle Lefkoff-2

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

Hi Nick,

A model for Good Academia is distance learning. As universities disappear in the next decades (they're all elite now considering the cost of higher education everywhere), we will see the birth of a new democracy based on the opportunity for all to be educated. This is the most exciting movement toward economic justice in the U.S. since the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Good Academia is web-enabled academia for everyone! Yea!

I'm under contract in Canada to develop on-line curriculum in applied Complexity, using a "hybrid model" that includes just the type of reflective dialogue you're talking about. And because Stephen has been a big influence on me, I'm incorporating a lot of visualization, which I suspect enhances learning as well, eh?

Merle

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 4:29 PM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

re: marcus' comments about programming - see Peter Naur's "Programming as Theory Building" paper of long ago.

davew

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013, at 11:49 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

Nick wrote:

"And I Just Plain Believe in collaborative essays as a tool in the development of thought. "

I think a little recognized outcome of open source software development is the development of thought, and perhaps for some of the same reasons as a collaborative essay.

Creating and maintaining a useful program often involves an understanding of a large network of artifacts.

The understanding needs to be precise enough to make correct small changes, and general enough to be able to approach re-design and re-implementation of those artifacts that aren't adequate. It requires being literate, because the artifacts will have designed and built over time by a team. Some artifacts will come from third parties.

Open source software development is different than closed proprietary development in that the people that are participating are not trained or motivated to do a particular job. Two people may see completely different uses, or infer completely different purposes for an abstraction. Some programmers see things in terms of use and abuse of abstractions, depending on the author's intent. As a functional programming enthusiast, I prefer to think about the discovery of abstractions rather than the design of them. Useful combinator libraries seem to arise through an iterative process of construction and deconstruction, not one-time design.

Unlike collaborative essays, computers are unforgiving but patient. If two authors can't reconcile interfaces, dependencies, etc. the program or framework just won't work. It won't be a `interesting but flawed' argument.

Marcus

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff
============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Pamela McCorduck

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

My heart hopes you're right, Merle. My head wonders. Much education takes place not in the instructor-->student exchange (though that is big) but in the student<-->student exchange, at least in many topics. This might not hold for certain kinds of science and engineering courses, but it certainly holds for many courses in the humanities. Believe me, I think MOOCs are better than nothing, and maybe even much better than nothing when certain topics are addressed.

On Jan 20, 2013, at 8:04 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Nick,

A model for Good Academia is distance learning. As universities disappear in the next decades (they're all elite now considering the cost of higher education everywhere), we will see the birth of a new democracy based on the opportunity for all to be educated. This is the most exciting movement toward economic justice in the U.S. since the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Good Academia is web-enabled academia for everyone! Yea!

I'm under contract in Canada to develop on-line curriculum in applied Complexity, using a "hybrid model" that includes just the type of reflective dialogue you're talking about. And because Stephen has been a big influence on me, I'm incorporating a lot of visualization, which I suspect enhances learning as well, eh?

Merle

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 4:29 PM, Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

re: marcus' comments about programming - see Peter Naur's "Programming as Theory Building" paper of long ago.

davew

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013, at 11:49 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

Nick wrote:

"And I Just Plain Believe in collaborative essays as a tool in the development of thought. "

I think a little recognized outcome of open source software development is the development of thought, and perhaps for some of the same reasons as a collaborative essay.

Creating and maintaining a useful program often involves an understanding of a large network of artifacts.

The understanding needs to be precise enough to make correct small changes, and general enough to be able to approach re-design and re-implementation of those artifacts that aren't adequate. It requires being literate, because the artifacts will have designed and built over time by a team. Some artifacts will come from third parties.

Open source software development is different than closed proprietary development in that the people that are participating are not trained or motivated to do a particular job. Two people may see completely different uses, or infer completely different purposes for an abstraction. Some programmers see things in terms of use and abuse of abstractions, depending on the author's intent. As a functional programming enthusiast, I prefer to think about the discovery of abstractions rather than the design of them. Useful combinator libraries seem to arise through an iterative process of construction and deconstruction, not one-time design.

Unlike collaborative essays, computers are unforgiving but patient. If two authors can't reconcile interfaces, dependencies, etc. the program or framework just won't work. It won't be a `interesting but flawed' argument.

Marcus

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff ============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Ron Newman

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

Merle,

Perhaps you and I should be talking, comparing notes on what's effective and what's not. I'm working in visualization for MOOCs.

Pamela,

Doesn't online education lend itself to inter-student communication even more than it does to instructor-student communication? And being worldwide, humanities students especially would benefit cross-culturally. That being said, I'm sure that some things are being lost that I'm not sure I can codify right now. At any rate, when there's a MOOC football league then traditional education should be seriously worried.

Ron

--
Ron Newman, Founder
MyIdeatree.com
Skype: ronlnewman

Santa Fe, NM

Roger Critchlow-2

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

I expect they'll organize flash semesters where students pursuing similar courses will gather.

-- rec --

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Ron Newman <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle,
Perhaps you and I should be talking, comparing notes on what's effective and what's not. I'm working in visualization for MOOCs.

Pamela,
Doesn't online education lend itself to inter-student communication even more than it does to instructor-student communication? And being worldwide, humanities students especially would benefit cross-culturally. That being said, I'm sure that some things are being lost that I'm not sure I can codify right now. At any rate, when there's a MOOC football league then traditional education should be seriously worried.

Ron

--
Ron Newman, Founder
MyIdeatree.com
Skype: ronlnewman
Santa Fe, NM

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

In reply to this post by Ron Newman

These comments from the NYT via a Stanford web site regarding the state of MOOCs will possibly be of interest:

http://edf.stanford.edu/readings/measuring-success-online-education

Frank

Frank C. Wimberly

140 Calle Ojo Feliz

Santa Fe, NM 87505

[hidden email] [hidden email]

Phone: (505) 995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Ron Newman
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2013 7:41 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "Academics" and other Stereotypes

Merle,

Perhaps you and I should be talking, comparing notes on what's effective and what's not. I'm working in visualization for MOOCs.

Pamela,

Ron

--
Ron Newman, Founder
MyIdeatree.com
Skype: ronlnewman

Santa Fe, NM

Ron Newman

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

Clay Shirky points out the obvious but overlooked re: accessibility of traditional education:

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/11/napster-udacity-and-the-academy/

Ron
--
Ron Newman, Founder
MyIdeatree.com
The World Happiness Meter
YourSongCode.com

Bruce Sherwood

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

The Shirky article is thoughtful. Thanks for the pointer. A key issue, which Shirky handles well, is the need to compare apples with apples. Many university courses are just plain not very good, for all the reasons he gives. I've seen the kind of criticism of MOOCs that he rightly challenges. Comparing a small seminar taught by an actual professor with a giant lecture is daft.

Ruth Chabay and I took the Udacity CS 101 course to see what a modern MOOC is like. The course is superb. It has a very clear, very challenging goal: "In about 7 weeks you will write a small search engine, even if you've never written a computer program before." Along the way, all CS concepts were introduced in the context of the goal. The "chalk talks" were in general excellent, there were frequent meaningful quizzes, and there was challenging homework in the form of having to write Python functions that were checked by the uploaded program being given data different from sample data and seeing whether the function produced the correct output.

On the other hand, historically, failure and dropout rates have typically been huge in distance courses, as would seem to be the case with current MOOCs. You have to be highly motivated to keep at a challenging course without the usual social contract implicit in traditional course settings. Maybe MOOCs + social media will change this, but I have my doubts.

Bruce

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 8:45 PM, Ron Newman <[hidden email]> wrote:

Clay Shirky points out the obvious but overlooked re: accessibility of traditional education:

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/11/napster-udacity-and-the-academy/

Ron
--
Ron Newman, Founder
MyIdeatree.com
The World Happiness Meter
YourSongCode.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Ron Newman

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

Bruce,

Yeah, MOOCs and social media, or some hybrid of a MOOC with face-to-face in the form of local interest groups, or something like I believe Prof West is doing, if I understand correctly: online, remote learning in combination with hands-on, in-person learning.

Ron

--
Ron Newman
MyIdeatree.com
The World Happiness Meter

Edward Angel

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

In reply to this post by Bruce Sherwood

There was a very interesting article in Time last October. The reporter took three versions of an introductory physics course: one at an elite university, one at an inner-city community college and one with a MOOC. Her observations were that each was suited for some and not for others. The elite university course was the "best" with the best instructor and best labs and demos. All the students finished the course but all the students had similar backgrounds, came to the class prepared and had their own computers. The MOOC had a good but lesser quality of instruction, a low completion rate but did provide access to students who had no other access. The students at the community college were older, less prepared and came from poorer backgrounds. Almost all finished the course but needed and were given all the one-to-one help they needed. This group would not have succeeded with either the elite course or the MOOC.

Some of you may also be interested in reading Stuck in the Shallow End which details the difficulties in trying bring Computer Science education to under-represented groups in LA high schools. It is available from MIT Press or Amazon and because it is the result of an NSF project can be downloaded for free. Although the results are very depressing, its analysis of the issues makes it clear there is no simple solution to the equality issue whether it be MOOCs, more teachers or just putting more money into the system.

__________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

On Jan 20, 2013, at 10:30 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:

The Shirky article is thoughtful. Thanks for the pointer. A key issue, which Shirky handles well, is the need to compare apples with apples. Many university courses are just plain not very good, for all the reasons he gives. I've seen the kind of criticism of MOOCs that he rightly challenges. Comparing a small seminar taught by an actual professor with a giant lecture is daft.

Ruth Chabay and I took the Udacity CS 101 course to see what a modern MOOC is like. The course is superb. It has a very clear, very challenging goal: "In about 7 weeks you will write a small search engine, even if you've never written a computer program before." Along the way, all CS concepts were introduced in the context of the goal. The "chalk talks" were in general excellent, there were frequent meaningful quizzes, and there was challenging homework in the form of having to write Python functions that were checked by the uploaded program being given data different from sample data and seeing whether the function produced the correct output.

On the other hand, historically, failure and dropout rates have typically been huge in distance courses, as would seem to be the case with current MOOCs. You have to be highly motivated to keep at a challenging course without the usual social contract implicit in traditional course settings. Maybe MOOCs + social media will change this, but I have my doubts.

Bruce

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 8:45 PM, Ron Newman <[hidden email]> wrote:

Clay Shirky points out the obvious but overlooked re: accessibility of traditional education:

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/11/napster-udacity-and-the-academy/

Ron
--
Ron Newman, Founder
MyIdeatree.com
The World Happiness Meter
YourSongCode.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Owen Densmore

Re: Preserving email correspondence

Administrator

In reply to this post by Eric Charles

Nick: Just in case it wasn't clear, the friam list is on two mail "archives" that are searchable, although not particularly well.

Try Googling:

friam redfish nick thompson

or:

friam redfish Preserving email correspondence

or simply searching

http://www.mail-archive.com/friam@.../

http://news.gmane.org/gmane.org.region.new-mexico.santa-fe.friam

We could make it more public by becoming a google group like sfx is:

https://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/discuss

Don't give up, aggregation tools are getting pretty good. Flipboard is awesome. Check this out:

http://flipboard.com/

Its mainly designed for tablets .. which you should probably consider anyway .. a giant leap into the unwashed social internet!

-- Owen

Owen Densmore

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

Administrator

In reply to this post by Edward Angel

I'm not surprised MOOCs have a high dropout rate: they're designed that way. You sign up for 2-3 of them and stay in the one you like most.

MOOCs are likely to have a great impact on the firewalled papers problem (JSTOR etc) by providing enough clout to build their own open repositories.

And even tho MOOCs are the buzz now, there is also a lot on sites like Kahn Academy which are not courses in the usual sense but a learn on your own pace site. In its own way, it may be even more revolutionary and one of the heros of the JSEverywhere revolution has gotten involved (John Reisig https://github.com/jeresig). John's work is likely to have a huge effect on the actual course-ware world.

-- Owen

Owen Densmore

Re: Preserving email correspondence

Administrator

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

Nick: could you do me a favor? After all the input, could you sorta play "scenarios" or "prototypes"?

These are common design practices that take an idea and actually mock it up. Scenarios include "workflow" .. i.e. how the design is used on a daily, weekly, and archive basis. Prototypes are a crude model of the design. The Treo .. the first widespread PDA, started out life as blocks of wood of various sizes carried around .. in pockets, purses, hands etc .. to determine the appropriate size and form factor. It included paper for "writing" (leading to Graffiti, the first touch writing trick) and "memory" (the paper wound around the block of wood.

Designers think that way and have huge success.

I think you're on to something but it has to be taken out of the idea realm into the tangible to make the next step.

BTW: Fabio once said that much of the stuff on Friam should be a blog. And a very early "electronic community", The Well, actually published some of their stuff.

-- Owen

Ron Newman

Re: Preserving email correspondence

I'm willing to donate a FRIAM license of MyIdeaTree (drag and drop building of network graphs from links). I'd learn a ton about usability from that. The email / blog content would have to be located on the web somewhere.

Ron

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 10:46 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick: could you do me a favor? After all the input, could you sorta play "scenarios" or "prototypes"?

These are common design practices that take an idea and actually mock it up. Scenarios include "workflow" .. i.e. how the design is used on a daily, weekly, and archive basis. Prototypes are a crude model of the design. The Treo .. the first widespread PDA, started out life as blocks of wood of various sizes carried around .. in pockets, purses, hands etc .. to determine the appropriate size and form factor. It included paper for "writing" (leading to Graffiti, the first touch writing trick) and "memory" (the paper wound around the block of wood.

Designers think that way and have huge success.

I think you're on to something but it has to be taken out of the idea realm into the tangible to make the next step.

BTW: Fabio once said that much of the stuff on Friam should be a blog. And a very early "electronic community", The Well, actually published some of their stuff.

-- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

--
Ron Newman
MyIdeatree.com
The World Happiness Meter
YourSongCode.com

Nick Thompson

Re: Preserving email correspondence

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

Thanks, Owen.

I fooled around with the problem a bit more yesterday and immediately encountered a problem I hadn’t expected. It was easy to collect all the emails from one them in one place, but NOT easy to get an email, with it’s headers, into text. Apparently in email (unlike in the forums where I have tried this before) the headers are kept in a separate file.

Anyway, buried in other stuff right now. Nick

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 10:07 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Preserving email correspondence

Nick: Just in case it wasn't clear, the friam list is on two mail "archives" that are searchable, although not particularly well.

Try Googling:

friam redfish nick thompson

or:

friam redfish Preserving email correspondence

or simply searching

http://www.mail-archive.com/friam@.../

http://news.gmane.org/gmane.org.region.new-mexico.santa-fe.friam

We could make it more public by becoming a google group like sfx is:

https://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/discuss

Don't give up, aggregation tools are getting pretty good. Flipboard is awesome. Check this out:

http://flipboard.com/

Its mainly designed for tablets .. which you should probably consider anyway .. a giant leap into the unwashed social internet!

-- Owen

Bruce Sherwood

Re: "Academics" and other Stereotypes

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

All of which is true, Owen, but I'm afraid you're making the natural mistake of extrapolating from your own interests, experiences, and high capabilities. The people like you and others on this list are in the world at large a set of measure zero, albeit a set we don't want to neglect or fail to nurture, and MOOCs are a way for an exceptionally bright rather poor kid in Pakistan to educate herself or himself. The vast majority of US college students do not have the discipline and burning desire to know that may be required to succeed in distance learning.

Bruce

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm not surprised MOOCs have a high dropout rate: they're designed that way. You sign up for 2-3 of them and stay in the one you like most.

MOOCs are likely to have a great impact on the firewalled papers problem (JSTOR etc) by providing enough clout to build their own open repositories.

And even tho MOOCs are the buzz now, there is also a lot on sites like Kahn Academy which are not courses in the usual sense but a learn on your own pace site. In its own way, it may be even more revolutionary and one of the heros of the JSEverywhere revolution has gotten involved (John Reisig https://github.com/jeresig). John's work is likely to have a huge effect on the actual course-ware world.

-- Owen

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Nick Thompson

Re: Preserving email correspondence

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

Right, Owen. I will try to mock it up. But perhaps not immediately. My thought was to take one of the recent FRIAM orgies and organize it “by hand” as I think it should be when it has been processed by the program I hope to invent for myself (stifled laughter in the background). Somebody has encouraged me to look into “regular expression.” I used to be pretty good at word macros and perhaps I can put those things together. But first I have to solve the problem of getting the whole email messages, with their headers, into a Word file. You have been most helpful, and I will get back to you when I have conquered that problem. Somebody has suggested that this would all be easier of I cc’ed my entire mail archive to a gmail account. Perhaps gmail doesn’t keep its headers in separate file? But I am overwhelmed with other stuff right now and shouldn’t even be on email.

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 10:46 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Preserving email correspondence

Nick: could you do me a favor? After all the input, could you sorta play "scenarios" or "prototypes"?

Designers think that way and have huge success.

I think you're on to something but it has to be taken out of the idea realm into the tangible to make the next step.

BTW: Fabio once said that much of the stuff on Friam should be a blog. And a very early "electronic community", The Well, actually published some of their stuff.

-- Owen

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