The document discusses two perceived myths about the internet: 1) That the implicit wisdom of online crowds guarantees the emergence of truth, and 2) That increased access to information online necessarily leads to progress. It argues that most internet users lack expertise in many topics, and the low barriers to posting online allow misinformation to spread widely. While some high-quality academic discussions exist, they are small compared to the large amount of false or low-quality user-generated content. Increased access to information does not guarantee people will make good use of it or understand what they find. This has led to a decline in education and critical thinking skills.
Creating Abundant Communities: The second human potential movementLucian Tarnowski
I'm in Nashville today doing the closing keynote speech at the Global Action Summit. My talk is titled 'Creating Abundant Communities: The Second Human Potential Movement'. Check out my slides here
Creating Abundant Communities: The second human potential movementLucian Tarnowski
I'm in Nashville today doing the closing keynote speech at the Global Action Summit. My talk is titled 'Creating Abundant Communities: The Second Human Potential Movement'. Check out my slides here
Sex, Violence, and "Hail Mary": Censorship in the Public LibraryAhniwa Ferrari
This paper will focus on two major issues concerning censorship. First and foremost, it will examine the definition or definitions of censorship in different contexts, as well as examples of the different types of censorship that take place regularly. Secondly, it will examine the role of the library, particularly, in the use of and fight against censorship, and will speak to the library’s responsibility to its community, to itself, and to intellectual freedom.
6 thinking hats approach to decision making by Edward De Bono explained.
Decision Strategy
Team building
Lateral thinking
full spectrum thinking
Unbiased decision making approach
The connecting machine. Librarians' mission after the Fourth revolutionMatilde Fontanin
Presentation given at the IFLA Reference and Information Services Section virtual event: Enabling information ethics in a technologically saturated world - 7 Oct 2020 -
https://www.ifla.org/ES/node/93288
We are made of information, it shapes our lives and reality. After the Fourth revolution (Floridi, 2014) our self is moulded also by data, much involuntarily generated when we use technology.
The ethical issues involved in information sharing and using affect its evaluation, fair use, privacy, openness. Educating users to awareness has always been a mission of the Reference and Information services librarians, pursuing the goal of fostering an informed and active citizenship also envisioned by the Millennium Development Goals and the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy strategy.
The same technology generating information can help govern it, disclose science to citizens, foster social justice, yet it also stimulates the spread of fake news and misinformation.
Machines do not act of their own will, they must be governed to guarantee a Human use of human beings (Wiener, 1950), this demands a multidisciplinary effort, as Wiener demonstrated.
Raising citizens’ awareness on the way algorithms work requires bridging differences in mathematicians, computer scientists, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, economists and more: librarians and digital humanists could step in as connectors.
In 1948, upon reviewing Wiener’s Cybernetics, Dominique Dubarle provocatively advocated the advent of a “machine à gouverner”, which might do better than inept politicians. Nowadays, society is facing the problem of self-driving cars: for the first time in history, a “Moral machine” (Awad et al., 2019) will be enabled to decide on people’s lives. Some lessons could be learnt from the interdisciplinary approach of the past.
This paper will review literature, consider recent facts and offer some proposals for the renewed ethical commitment of the digital humanist and the librarian facing new technologies and bearing in mind the IFLA Code of Ethics for Librarians and other Information Workers.
Propaganda with a mission (for ASREC Conference)Bex Lewis
Propaganda with a Mission: Learning from the Second World War for the Christian Sector in a Digital Age
In the Second World War, British propaganda posters were circulated using the techniques of persuasion, education, information, celebration, encouragement, morale boosting, and identification of enemies to encourage civilians to understand and undertake their responsibilities in ‘The People’s War’.
In the face of oft-reported declines in church membership, there is urgency for the church to recognize the possibilities of online spaces. The author of a PhD on the above topic developed the BIGBible Project in 2010. The Project blog curates contributions from #DIGIdisciples, questioning what it means to be a Christian in a digital age and in the digital environment. What do digital technologies allow us to do differently, and what can we learn from the past?
The conference paper will draw from the rich collection of over 2,750 #digidisciple posts to demonstrate the potential that the digital has offered the Christian sector, whilst also emphasizing continuity with the past.
http://ww2poster.co.uk/phd-research/phd-the-planning-design-and-reception-of-british-home-front-propaganda-posters-of-the-second-world-war-creative-commons-drbexl/
This was presented to a group of senior citizens from Westmoreland County, Pa. at Redstone Highlands Senior Living Communities. They wanted to know more about social media so I started with the basics: Facebook and Twitter.
Doing the Digital: How Scholars Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ComputerAndrew Prescott
Slides from keynote presentation to Social Media Knowledge Exchange meeting on Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century, University of Cambridge, 4 June 2015. Examines my changing relationship to scholarly communication, current pressures and drivers, and likely future trends.
Beyond the Academy—engagement, education, and exchangePip Willcox
This was presented on the introductory workshop strand of the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School 2016. It introduces the practice and practicalities of public engagement, drawing on personal experience to explore means and methods of widening access to the humanities, to foster dialogue and participation.
Slides for "Fake News: Why It Matters and How to Fight It" an event hosted by Eugene Public Library, May 23 2017.
"UO Journalism professors Damian Radcliffe and Peter Laufer
explore the current debate about fake news. These information experts will offer historical insights, contemporary analysis, and practical tools to empower the public in telling fact from fiction." https://www.eugene-or.gov/Calendar.aspx?EID=12837
IntroductionOne of my family’s legends (unverified) was th.docxnormanibarber20063
Introduction
One of my family’s legends (unverified) was that my great-grandfather
invented the coin-operated newspaper-vending machine. He never pat-
ented it, however, so watching the gradual disappearance of this sturdy,
useful invention—first from my apartment building’s lobby, and then from
the sidewalks outside my office—leaves me with no sense of grand, de-
spairing loss. Today, I can read whatever I want digitally, without ever
having to bash a frequently failing machine that eats my quarters.
For me, the saddest loss from my youth is the soda fountain, that coun-
tertop fixture in just about every drugstore in the United States a half a
century ago. Folks could have a quick meal of grilled cheese sandwiches
and cherry Cokes, and then buy sundries on the way out. As the car-crazy
nation spread our lifestyles out into suburbs, it became easier and faster to
order food at drive-through windows. Cars with cup holders reigned su-
preme, and the soda fountain disappeared.
So, what else might disappear in the next 15–20 years? And will we miss
these things much? The loss of newspaper vending machines hasn’t af-
fected our access to news, for instance. Soda fountains were replaced by al-
ternative methods of meal dissemination. But in some cases, things have
disappeared irrevocably and irreplaceably, some for better (smallpox) and
some for worse (passenger pigeons).
One thing we might not see disappear: predictions. Though many futur-
ists believe we would be better off learning to make “robust” decisions
that enable us to adapt and succeed in a variety of potential future scenar-
ios—without benefit of definitive forecasts—humans have always felt a
compulsion to know the future with as much certainty as possible.
And that is why we have gone to members and friends of the World
Future Society, once again, to seek out their informed and eye-opening in-
sights about the future—in this case, the future we may not see.
—Cynthia G. Wagner, editor
Contents
1. Intolerance and Misunderstanding .... 23
John M. Smart, Daniel Egger, John F.
Copper, Alan Nordstrom, Jed Diamond
2. Educational Processes ................... 24
Jason Siko, Jason Swanson, Dan Tuuri
3. Europe (Maybe, Maybe Not) ............ 26
Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira, Neill Perry
4. Jobs and Workplace Processes ........ 27
Thomas Frey, Paul Rux, Carrie Anne Zapka,
Lawrence Loh
5. Stores ...................................... 28
Barry Minkin, John P. Sagi
6. Doctors ..................................... 29
Joe Thomae, Benjamin C. Yablon, Morton
Chalfy
7. Paper—and the Places It Goes ......... 30
David Pearce Snyder, Lane Jennings, Karl
Albrecht
8. Human Experiences ...................... 32
Brenda Cooper, Lisa Gualtieri, Apala Lahiri
Chavan, Richard Yonck, Elizabeth D. Leone
and Jean Georges Perrin, Josh Lindenger,
Michael Rees
9. Smartphones .............................. 34
Paul Saffo, Harish Shah, E. Scott Denison,
Alexandre Pupo and William E. Halal,.
IntroductionOne of my family’s legends (unverified) was th.docxmariuse18nolet
Introduction
One of my family’s legends (unverified) was that my great-grandfather
invented the coin-operated newspaper-vending machine. He never pat-
ented it, however, so watching the gradual disappearance of this sturdy,
useful invention—first from my apartment building’s lobby, and then from
the sidewalks outside my office—leaves me with no sense of grand, de-
spairing loss. Today, I can read whatever I want digitally, without ever
having to bash a frequently failing machine that eats my quarters.
For me, the saddest loss from my youth is the soda fountain, that coun-
tertop fixture in just about every drugstore in the United States a half a
century ago. Folks could have a quick meal of grilled cheese sandwiches
and cherry Cokes, and then buy sundries on the way out. As the car-crazy
nation spread our lifestyles out into suburbs, it became easier and faster to
order food at drive-through windows. Cars with cup holders reigned su-
preme, and the soda fountain disappeared.
So, what else might disappear in the next 15–20 years? And will we miss
these things much? The loss of newspaper vending machines hasn’t af-
fected our access to news, for instance. Soda fountains were replaced by al-
ternative methods of meal dissemination. But in some cases, things have
disappeared irrevocably and irreplaceably, some for better (smallpox) and
some for worse (passenger pigeons).
One thing we might not see disappear: predictions. Though many futur-
ists believe we would be better off learning to make “robust” decisions
that enable us to adapt and succeed in a variety of potential future scenar-
ios—without benefit of definitive forecasts—humans have always felt a
compulsion to know the future with as much certainty as possible.
And that is why we have gone to members and friends of the World
Future Society, once again, to seek out their informed and eye-opening in-
sights about the future—in this case, the future we may not see.
—Cynthia G. Wagner, editor
Contents
1. Intolerance and Misunderstanding .... 23
John M. Smart, Daniel Egger, John F.
Copper, Alan Nordstrom, Jed Diamond
2. Educational Processes ................... 24
Jason Siko, Jason Swanson, Dan Tuuri
3. Europe (Maybe, Maybe Not) ............ 26
Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira, Neill Perry
4. Jobs and Workplace Processes ........ 27
Thomas Frey, Paul Rux, Carrie Anne Zapka,
Lawrence Loh
5. Stores ...................................... 28
Barry Minkin, John P. Sagi
6. Doctors ..................................... 29
Joe Thomae, Benjamin C. Yablon, Morton
Chalfy
7. Paper—and the Places It Goes ......... 30
David Pearce Snyder, Lane Jennings, Karl
Albrecht
8. Human Experiences ...................... 32
Brenda Cooper, Lisa Gualtieri, Apala Lahiri
Chavan, Richard Yonck, Elizabeth D. Leone
and Jean Georges Perrin, Josh Lindenger,
Michael Rees
9. Smartphones .............................. 34
Paul Saffo, Harish Shah, E. Scott Denison,
Alexandre Pupo and William E. Halal,.
Mitchell StephensThinking Through Moving Mediasocial r.docxraju957290
Mitchell Stephens
Thinking Through Moving
Media
social research Vol. 78 : No. 4 : Winter 2011 1133
WhAT reVoluTIoN IS IT, ANYWAY?
That we are in the midst of a major communications revolution is hard
to miss nowadays. Individuals who only had a decade or so to get used
to sitting at their desks and accessing an overwhelming collection
of information, products, news, and entertainment can now sit in a
restaurant and involve themselves in what has grown to include much
of the world’s available supply of information, products, news, enter-
tainment, and people. We have begun to divert ourselves, socialize with
each other, educate ourselves, and update ourselves in ways that did
not exist when anyone over 20 today was born. Our old communica-
tions machines—typewriters, music discs, film, landline telephones,
wireless transmitters, and the printing press—have been overthrown
or are tottering.
But what exactly is perpetrating this revolution?
There are many candidates for the “invention” of our time—the
one that seems to have pressed the “refresh” button on a significant
stretch of human culture. What was the key breakthrough? Was it
the computer, the personal computer, the Internet, the World Wide
Web, Google, the smart phone, or perhaps even Facebook? Or was it
the digital coding of information in general that has been leading us
into a new era? This essay will employ a historical perspective in an
attempt to sort out some of these contributions and it will propose
that the truly revolutionary invention of our time may turn out to
be none of the above. Instead, it may prove to be an invention with
older roots: the moving image and its younger companion, the moving
word.
1134 social research
Looking back it is not difficult to see the vast transformative
power of writing and print. But what is our communications revolution
doing to us? Certainly, it is—as did writing and print—radically easing
our access to information. Certainly, it has—as did writing and print—
made possible entrancing new ways for us to communicate with and
entertain each other. Certainly, it is in the process of eradicating—as
writing and print began to do—geographical and financial boundaries
to information and communication.
But my thesis is that this communications revolution, like those
led by writing and print, will have a more profound effect, a more
thoroughly revolutionary effect, than merely facilitating our access
to wisdom, diversions, or each other. This essay will argue that this
communications revolution in its most radical manifestations will help
us develop new ways of thinking.
What are those radical manifestations? One way of approaching
that question is to consider the curious incident of the old men in the
beginning of the twenty-first century.
The old MeN Who dIdN’T gruMble
New communications technologies inspire complaints. Usually the
attacks are launched by t ...
Sex, Violence, and "Hail Mary": Censorship in the Public LibraryAhniwa Ferrari
This paper will focus on two major issues concerning censorship. First and foremost, it will examine the definition or definitions of censorship in different contexts, as well as examples of the different types of censorship that take place regularly. Secondly, it will examine the role of the library, particularly, in the use of and fight against censorship, and will speak to the library’s responsibility to its community, to itself, and to intellectual freedom.
6 thinking hats approach to decision making by Edward De Bono explained.
Decision Strategy
Team building
Lateral thinking
full spectrum thinking
Unbiased decision making approach
The connecting machine. Librarians' mission after the Fourth revolutionMatilde Fontanin
Presentation given at the IFLA Reference and Information Services Section virtual event: Enabling information ethics in a technologically saturated world - 7 Oct 2020 -
https://www.ifla.org/ES/node/93288
We are made of information, it shapes our lives and reality. After the Fourth revolution (Floridi, 2014) our self is moulded also by data, much involuntarily generated when we use technology.
The ethical issues involved in information sharing and using affect its evaluation, fair use, privacy, openness. Educating users to awareness has always been a mission of the Reference and Information services librarians, pursuing the goal of fostering an informed and active citizenship also envisioned by the Millennium Development Goals and the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy strategy.
The same technology generating information can help govern it, disclose science to citizens, foster social justice, yet it also stimulates the spread of fake news and misinformation.
Machines do not act of their own will, they must be governed to guarantee a Human use of human beings (Wiener, 1950), this demands a multidisciplinary effort, as Wiener demonstrated.
Raising citizens’ awareness on the way algorithms work requires bridging differences in mathematicians, computer scientists, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, economists and more: librarians and digital humanists could step in as connectors.
In 1948, upon reviewing Wiener’s Cybernetics, Dominique Dubarle provocatively advocated the advent of a “machine à gouverner”, which might do better than inept politicians. Nowadays, society is facing the problem of self-driving cars: for the first time in history, a “Moral machine” (Awad et al., 2019) will be enabled to decide on people’s lives. Some lessons could be learnt from the interdisciplinary approach of the past.
This paper will review literature, consider recent facts and offer some proposals for the renewed ethical commitment of the digital humanist and the librarian facing new technologies and bearing in mind the IFLA Code of Ethics for Librarians and other Information Workers.
Propaganda with a mission (for ASREC Conference)Bex Lewis
Propaganda with a Mission: Learning from the Second World War for the Christian Sector in a Digital Age
In the Second World War, British propaganda posters were circulated using the techniques of persuasion, education, information, celebration, encouragement, morale boosting, and identification of enemies to encourage civilians to understand and undertake their responsibilities in ‘The People’s War’.
In the face of oft-reported declines in church membership, there is urgency for the church to recognize the possibilities of online spaces. The author of a PhD on the above topic developed the BIGBible Project in 2010. The Project blog curates contributions from #DIGIdisciples, questioning what it means to be a Christian in a digital age and in the digital environment. What do digital technologies allow us to do differently, and what can we learn from the past?
The conference paper will draw from the rich collection of over 2,750 #digidisciple posts to demonstrate the potential that the digital has offered the Christian sector, whilst also emphasizing continuity with the past.
http://ww2poster.co.uk/phd-research/phd-the-planning-design-and-reception-of-british-home-front-propaganda-posters-of-the-second-world-war-creative-commons-drbexl/
This was presented to a group of senior citizens from Westmoreland County, Pa. at Redstone Highlands Senior Living Communities. They wanted to know more about social media so I started with the basics: Facebook and Twitter.
Doing the Digital: How Scholars Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ComputerAndrew Prescott
Slides from keynote presentation to Social Media Knowledge Exchange meeting on Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century, University of Cambridge, 4 June 2015. Examines my changing relationship to scholarly communication, current pressures and drivers, and likely future trends.
Beyond the Academy—engagement, education, and exchangePip Willcox
This was presented on the introductory workshop strand of the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School 2016. It introduces the practice and practicalities of public engagement, drawing on personal experience to explore means and methods of widening access to the humanities, to foster dialogue and participation.
Slides for "Fake News: Why It Matters and How to Fight It" an event hosted by Eugene Public Library, May 23 2017.
"UO Journalism professors Damian Radcliffe and Peter Laufer
explore the current debate about fake news. These information experts will offer historical insights, contemporary analysis, and practical tools to empower the public in telling fact from fiction." https://www.eugene-or.gov/Calendar.aspx?EID=12837
IntroductionOne of my family’s legends (unverified) was th.docxnormanibarber20063
Introduction
One of my family’s legends (unverified) was that my great-grandfather
invented the coin-operated newspaper-vending machine. He never pat-
ented it, however, so watching the gradual disappearance of this sturdy,
useful invention—first from my apartment building’s lobby, and then from
the sidewalks outside my office—leaves me with no sense of grand, de-
spairing loss. Today, I can read whatever I want digitally, without ever
having to bash a frequently failing machine that eats my quarters.
For me, the saddest loss from my youth is the soda fountain, that coun-
tertop fixture in just about every drugstore in the United States a half a
century ago. Folks could have a quick meal of grilled cheese sandwiches
and cherry Cokes, and then buy sundries on the way out. As the car-crazy
nation spread our lifestyles out into suburbs, it became easier and faster to
order food at drive-through windows. Cars with cup holders reigned su-
preme, and the soda fountain disappeared.
So, what else might disappear in the next 15–20 years? And will we miss
these things much? The loss of newspaper vending machines hasn’t af-
fected our access to news, for instance. Soda fountains were replaced by al-
ternative methods of meal dissemination. But in some cases, things have
disappeared irrevocably and irreplaceably, some for better (smallpox) and
some for worse (passenger pigeons).
One thing we might not see disappear: predictions. Though many futur-
ists believe we would be better off learning to make “robust” decisions
that enable us to adapt and succeed in a variety of potential future scenar-
ios—without benefit of definitive forecasts—humans have always felt a
compulsion to know the future with as much certainty as possible.
And that is why we have gone to members and friends of the World
Future Society, once again, to seek out their informed and eye-opening in-
sights about the future—in this case, the future we may not see.
—Cynthia G. Wagner, editor
Contents
1. Intolerance and Misunderstanding .... 23
John M. Smart, Daniel Egger, John F.
Copper, Alan Nordstrom, Jed Diamond
2. Educational Processes ................... 24
Jason Siko, Jason Swanson, Dan Tuuri
3. Europe (Maybe, Maybe Not) ............ 26
Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira, Neill Perry
4. Jobs and Workplace Processes ........ 27
Thomas Frey, Paul Rux, Carrie Anne Zapka,
Lawrence Loh
5. Stores ...................................... 28
Barry Minkin, John P. Sagi
6. Doctors ..................................... 29
Joe Thomae, Benjamin C. Yablon, Morton
Chalfy
7. Paper—and the Places It Goes ......... 30
David Pearce Snyder, Lane Jennings, Karl
Albrecht
8. Human Experiences ...................... 32
Brenda Cooper, Lisa Gualtieri, Apala Lahiri
Chavan, Richard Yonck, Elizabeth D. Leone
and Jean Georges Perrin, Josh Lindenger,
Michael Rees
9. Smartphones .............................. 34
Paul Saffo, Harish Shah, E. Scott Denison,
Alexandre Pupo and William E. Halal,.
IntroductionOne of my family’s legends (unverified) was th.docxmariuse18nolet
Introduction
One of my family’s legends (unverified) was that my great-grandfather
invented the coin-operated newspaper-vending machine. He never pat-
ented it, however, so watching the gradual disappearance of this sturdy,
useful invention—first from my apartment building’s lobby, and then from
the sidewalks outside my office—leaves me with no sense of grand, de-
spairing loss. Today, I can read whatever I want digitally, without ever
having to bash a frequently failing machine that eats my quarters.
For me, the saddest loss from my youth is the soda fountain, that coun-
tertop fixture in just about every drugstore in the United States a half a
century ago. Folks could have a quick meal of grilled cheese sandwiches
and cherry Cokes, and then buy sundries on the way out. As the car-crazy
nation spread our lifestyles out into suburbs, it became easier and faster to
order food at drive-through windows. Cars with cup holders reigned su-
preme, and the soda fountain disappeared.
So, what else might disappear in the next 15–20 years? And will we miss
these things much? The loss of newspaper vending machines hasn’t af-
fected our access to news, for instance. Soda fountains were replaced by al-
ternative methods of meal dissemination. But in some cases, things have
disappeared irrevocably and irreplaceably, some for better (smallpox) and
some for worse (passenger pigeons).
One thing we might not see disappear: predictions. Though many futur-
ists believe we would be better off learning to make “robust” decisions
that enable us to adapt and succeed in a variety of potential future scenar-
ios—without benefit of definitive forecasts—humans have always felt a
compulsion to know the future with as much certainty as possible.
And that is why we have gone to members and friends of the World
Future Society, once again, to seek out their informed and eye-opening in-
sights about the future—in this case, the future we may not see.
—Cynthia G. Wagner, editor
Contents
1. Intolerance and Misunderstanding .... 23
John M. Smart, Daniel Egger, John F.
Copper, Alan Nordstrom, Jed Diamond
2. Educational Processes ................... 24
Jason Siko, Jason Swanson, Dan Tuuri
3. Europe (Maybe, Maybe Not) ............ 26
Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira, Neill Perry
4. Jobs and Workplace Processes ........ 27
Thomas Frey, Paul Rux, Carrie Anne Zapka,
Lawrence Loh
5. Stores ...................................... 28
Barry Minkin, John P. Sagi
6. Doctors ..................................... 29
Joe Thomae, Benjamin C. Yablon, Morton
Chalfy
7. Paper—and the Places It Goes ......... 30
David Pearce Snyder, Lane Jennings, Karl
Albrecht
8. Human Experiences ...................... 32
Brenda Cooper, Lisa Gualtieri, Apala Lahiri
Chavan, Richard Yonck, Elizabeth D. Leone
and Jean Georges Perrin, Josh Lindenger,
Michael Rees
9. Smartphones .............................. 34
Paul Saffo, Harish Shah, E. Scott Denison,
Alexandre Pupo and William E. Halal,.
Mitchell StephensThinking Through Moving Mediasocial r.docxraju957290
Mitchell Stephens
Thinking Through Moving
Media
social research Vol. 78 : No. 4 : Winter 2011 1133
WhAT reVoluTIoN IS IT, ANYWAY?
That we are in the midst of a major communications revolution is hard
to miss nowadays. Individuals who only had a decade or so to get used
to sitting at their desks and accessing an overwhelming collection
of information, products, news, and entertainment can now sit in a
restaurant and involve themselves in what has grown to include much
of the world’s available supply of information, products, news, enter-
tainment, and people. We have begun to divert ourselves, socialize with
each other, educate ourselves, and update ourselves in ways that did
not exist when anyone over 20 today was born. Our old communica-
tions machines—typewriters, music discs, film, landline telephones,
wireless transmitters, and the printing press—have been overthrown
or are tottering.
But what exactly is perpetrating this revolution?
There are many candidates for the “invention” of our time—the
one that seems to have pressed the “refresh” button on a significant
stretch of human culture. What was the key breakthrough? Was it
the computer, the personal computer, the Internet, the World Wide
Web, Google, the smart phone, or perhaps even Facebook? Or was it
the digital coding of information in general that has been leading us
into a new era? This essay will employ a historical perspective in an
attempt to sort out some of these contributions and it will propose
that the truly revolutionary invention of our time may turn out to
be none of the above. Instead, it may prove to be an invention with
older roots: the moving image and its younger companion, the moving
word.
1134 social research
Looking back it is not difficult to see the vast transformative
power of writing and print. But what is our communications revolution
doing to us? Certainly, it is—as did writing and print—radically easing
our access to information. Certainly, it has—as did writing and print—
made possible entrancing new ways for us to communicate with and
entertain each other. Certainly, it is in the process of eradicating—as
writing and print began to do—geographical and financial boundaries
to information and communication.
But my thesis is that this communications revolution, like those
led by writing and print, will have a more profound effect, a more
thoroughly revolutionary effect, than merely facilitating our access
to wisdom, diversions, or each other. This essay will argue that this
communications revolution in its most radical manifestations will help
us develop new ways of thinking.
What are those radical manifestations? One way of approaching
that question is to consider the curious incident of the old men in the
beginning of the twenty-first century.
The old MeN Who dIdN’T gruMble
New communications technologies inspire complaints. Usually the
attacks are launched by t ...
Jon Spayde Learning in the key of lifeWhat does it mean—and mor.docxpriestmanmable
Jon Spayde: Learning in the key of life
What does it mean—and more important, what should it mean—to be educated?
This is a surprisingly tricky and two-sided question. Masquerading as simple problem-solving, it raises a whole laundry list of philosophical conundrums: What sort of society do we want? What is the nature of humankind? How do we learn best? And—most challenging of all—what is the Good? Talking about the meaning of education inevitably leads to the question of what a culture considers most important.
Yikes! No wonder answers don't come easily in 1998, in a multiethnic, corporation-heavy democracy that dominates the globe without having much of a sense of its own soul. For our policyheads, education equals something called "training for competitiveness" (which often boils down to the mantra of "more computers, more computers"). For multiculturalists of various stripes, education has become a battle line where they must duke it out regularly with incensed neotraditionalists. Organized religion and the various "alternative spiritualities"—from 12-step groups to Buddhism, American style—contribute their own kinds of education.
Given all these pushes and pulls, is it any wonder that many of us are beginning to feel that we didn't get the whole story in school, that our educations didn't prepare us for the world we're living in today?
We didn't; we couldn't have. So what do we do about it?
The first thing, I firmly believe, is to take a deep, calm breath. After all, we're not the first American generation to have doubts about these matters. One of the great ages of American intellectual achievement, the period just before the Civil War, was ruled by educational misfits. Henry David Thoreau was fond of saying, "I am self-educated; that is, I attended Harvard College," and indeed Harvard in the early 19th century excelled mainly in the extent and violence of its food fights.
Don't get me wrong: Formal education is serious stuff. There is no divide in American life that hurts more than the one between those we consider well educated and those who are poorly or inadequately schooled. Talking about education is usually the closest we get to talking about class; and no wonder—education, like class, is about power. Not just the power that Harvard- and Stanford-trained elites have to dictate our workweeks, plan our communities, and fiddle with world financial markets, but the extra power that a grad school dropout who, let's say, embraces voluntary simplicity and makes $14,000 a year, has over a high school dropout single mom pulling down $18,000. That kind of power has everything to do with attitude and access: an attitude of empowerment, even entitlement, and access to tools, people, and ideas that make living—at any income level—easier, and its crises easier to bear.
That's something Earl Shorris understands. A novelist and journalist, Shorris started an Ivy
League-level adult education course in humanities for low-income New Yorkers ...
EDUSs Acquisition of MCUThe Situation The CEO of EducUS .docxtoltonkendal
EDUS's Acquisition of MCU
The Situation:
The CEO of EducUS Corporation (EDUS), in conjunction with the EDUS board of directors, has decided to increase the corporation’s footprint and expand its international operations. After identifying global opportunities, the EDUS board of directors decided to explore the possibility of purchasing the Mekong Cham University (MCU) located in downtown Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This university is a small academic institution which has a strong technology school but is short on resources. Specifically, the Mekong Cham faculty members are highly acclaimed technologists who are widely published in the field of information technology and enterprise software application. However, while MCU enjoys an exceptional local reputation as an educational institution, it has difficulty in recruiting students outside the Southeast Asia region. One reason is that MCU has no capability, due to lack of funding, to provide online course offerings. Another reason for the low enrollment at MCU is the poor physical condition of the university building complex. EDUS Corporation also enjoys an excellent reputation as the third largest provider of nontraditional education in the U.S. EDUS is the parent company of 26 universities located throughout the U.S. and Canada. It has a strong international business and management program offering in most of its holdings and is known for its exceptional online delivery capability.
You have been selected to work on the EDUS research team in support of the steering committee for this acquisition. You are part of a high performance work team which will focus its research in 5 separate areas. The EDUS CEO has briefed the team and expressed the need for comprehensive research to ensure that the acquisition of MCU will be right for both organizations. She tells you and the team that acquisitions, like this, are often unsuccessful because of incompatible cultures, clashes in management styles, poor integration strategies, and inadequate communications. So she has requested that you particularly focus on these areas of inquiry. The EDUS CEO also informs you and the team that although she understands that this project will take some time, it is imperative that preliminary recommendations be presented within the next eight weeks. To meet the guidance of your CEO, you will lead the project team in a presentation of the team’s findings within this designated period.
What We Have to Lose
Theodore Dalrymple
Whenever we learn of events of world-shaking significance, of catastrophes or massacres, we are
inclined not only to feel ashamed (all too briefly) of our querulous preoccupation with our own minor
tribulations but also to question the wider value of all our activities. I do not know whether people who are
faced by death in a few seconds' time see their lives flash before them, as they are said to do, and pass
final judgment upon them; but whenever I read something about the Khmer Rouge, for.
Spayde, Jon. Learning in the Key of Life.” The Presence of Ot.docxwhitneyleman54422
Spayde, Jon. “Learning in the Key of Life.” The Presence of Others. Ed. Andrea A.
Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. 4th ed. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2004.
64-69.
---
What does it mean—and more important, what should it mean—to be educated?
This is a surprisingly tricky and two-sided question. Masquerading as simple problem-solving, it
raises a whole laundry list of philosophical conundrums: What sort of society do we want? What
is the nature of humankind? How do we learn best? And—most challenging of all—what is the
Good? Talking about the meaning of education inevitably leads to the question of what a culture
considers most important.
Yikes! No wonder answers don't come easily in 1998, in a multiethnic, corporation-heavy
democracy that dominates the globe without having much of a sense of its own soul. For our
policyheads, education equals something called "training for competitiveness" (which often boils
down to the mantra of "more computers, more computers"). For multiculturalists of various
stripes, education has become a battle line where they must duke it out regularly with incensed
neotraditionalists. Organized religion and the various "alternative spiritualities"—from 12-step
groups to Buddhism, American style—contribute their own kinds of education.
Given all these pushes and pulls, is it any wonder that many of us are beginning to feel that we
didn't get the whole story in school, that our educations didn't prepare us for the world we're
living in today?
We didn't; we couldn't have. So what do we do about it?
The first thing, I firmly believe, is to take a deep, calm breath. After all, we're not the first
American generation to have doubts about these matters. One of the great ages of American
intellectual achievement, the period just before the Civil War, was ruled by educational misfits.
Henry David Thoreau was fond of saying, "I am self-educated; that is, I attended Harvard
College," and indeed Harvard in the early 19th century excelled mainly in the extent and
violence of its food fights.
Don't get me wrong: Formal education is serious stuff. There is no divide in American life that
hurts more than the one between those we consider well educated and those who are poorly or
inadequately schooled. Talking about education is usually the closest we get to talking about
class; and no wonder—education, like class, is about power. Not just the power that Harvard-
and Stanford-trained elites have to dictate our workweeks, plan our communities, and fiddle with
world financial markets, but the extra power that a grad school dropout who, let's say, embraces
voluntary simplicity and makes $14,000 a year, has over a high school dropout single mom
pulling down $18,000. That kind of power has everything to do with attitude and access: an
attitude of empowerment, even entitlement, and access to tools, people, and ideas that make
living—at any income level—easier, and its crises easier t.
General Education courses A gymnasium of the mindKnowledge.docxbudbarber38650
General Education courses A gymnasium of the mindKnowledge beyond one’s specialtyWriting and thinking across disciplinesWorking in collaboration with othersThinking critically & reasoning logically Developing some computer skills Sensitivity to others’ cultures & problems
*
Have Fun But Not Too Much!
“But perhaps the biggest reason why intellectuals excoriated entertainment was that they understood all too well their own precariousness in a world dominated by it. For whatever the overt content of any particular work, entertainment as a whole promulgated an unmistakable theme, one that took dead aim at the intellectual’s most cherished values. That theme was the triumph of the senses over the mind, of emotion over reason, of chaos over order, of the id over the superego, of Dionysian abandon over Apollonian harmony. Entertainment was Plato’s worst nightmare. It deposed the rational and enthroned the sensational and in so doing deposed the intellectual minority and enthroned the unrefined majority.
Therein, for the intellectuals, lay utmost danger and deepest despair. They know that in the end, after all the imprecations had rung down around it, entertainment was less about morality or even aesthetics than about power—the power to replace the old cultural order with a new one, the power to replace the sublime with fun.”—Neal Gabler, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1998, page 21.
Critical thinking tipsThink about thinkingLearn how to unlearnKnow the ‘what’ and the ‘who’Synthesis versus analysisWisdom versus knowledgeAcademia versus the mediaFacts versus judgmentsTruth as a thinking virtue Action versus reactionJustice as a social virtueResist appeals to prejudices Be prepared for different perspectivesDon’t believe everything you thinkLearn the habit of gathering and examining
evidence before forming conclusionsBe always aware of illusionsThink sometimes outside the box
Truth that Matters to Society
“Scientists must seek not just truth in general but truth that matters, and truths that matter not just to scientists but also to the larger society in which they live and work”
Philip Kitcher, “On the Autonomy of the Sciences,” Philosophy Today, 2004, pp. 51-57.
Consider the Big Picture
“Many people fall for mistaken common beliefs regarding their health because medicine today does not look at the human body as a whole. For many years there has been a trend for doctors to specialize, looking at and treating just one part of the body. We can’t see the forest for the trees. Everything in the human body is interconnected. Just because a component found in a food helps one part of the body function well, it does not mean that it is good for the entire body. When picking your food and drink, consider the big picture. You cannot decide whether a food is good or bad simply by looking at one ingredient found in that food.”
Hiromi Shinya, MD, The Enzyme Factor: Diet for the Future that wil.
Positive side-effects of misinformationJim Lippard
There are positive side-effects of misinformation, e.g., for identifying paths of information and source reliability and filtering. Given at SkeptiCamp Phoenix, March 28, 2009.
cancel culture in racial & queer communities of blackTamsaPandya
This PowerPoint presentation studies the concept of cancel culture in communities of black this PowerPoint presentation prepared by Tamsa Pandya from Department of English Mkbu
21 Lessons for the 21st CenturyBOOK DETAILHardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau; 1st Edition edition (September 4, 2018) Language: English ISBN-10: 0525512179 ISBN-13:978-0525512172 Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) CustomerReviews:Book Description#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In Sapiens, he explored our past. In Homo Deus, he looked to our future. Now, one of the mostinnovative thinkers on the planet turns to the present to make sense of today’s most pressing issues. “Fascinating . . . a crucial globalconversation about how to take on the problems of the twenty-first century.”—Bill Gates, The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONEOF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FINANCIAL TIMES AND PAMELA PAUL, KQED How do computers and robots change themeaning of being human? How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news? Are nations and religions still relevant? What should we teach ourchildren? Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today’s most urgent issues as wemove into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic ofwar, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorientingchange and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive. In twenty-one accessible chapters that are bothprovocative and profound, Harari builds on the ideas explored in his previous books, untangling political, technological, social, and existentialissues and offering advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in: How can we retain freedom ofchoice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it? How should wedeal with the threat of terrorism? Why is liberal democracy in crisis? Harari’s unique ability to make sense of where we have come from andwhere we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Here he invites us to consider values, meaning, and personalengagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. Presenting complexcontemporary challenges clearly and accessibly, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is essential reading. “If there were such a thing as arequired instruction manual for politicians and thought leaders, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century woulddeserve serious consideration. In this collection of provocative essays, Harari . . . tackles a daunting array of issues, endeavoring to answer apersistent question: ‘What is happening in the world today, and what is the deep meaning of these events?
2. Whenever I put forth on the Internet's numerous
newsgroups, discussion fora and Websites a
controversial view, an iconoclastic opinion, or a much-disputed
thesis, the winning argument against my
propositions starts with "everyone knows that ...". For a
self-styled nonconformist medium, the Internet is the
reification of herd mentality.
3. Actually, it is founded on the rather explicit belief in the
implicit wisdom of the masses. This particularly
pernicious strong version of egalitarianism postulates
that veracity, accuracy, and truth are emergent
phenomena, the inevitable and, therefore, guaranteed
outcome of multiple interactions between users.
4. But the population of Internet users is not comprised of
representative samples of experts in every discipline.
Quite the contrary. The barriers to entry are so low that
the Internet attracts those less gifted intellectually. It is a
filter that lets in the stupid, the mentally ill, the
charlatan and scammer, the very young, the bored, and
the unqualified. It is far easier to publish a blog, for
instance, than to write for the New York Times. Putting
up a Website with all manner of spurious claims for
knowledge or experience is easy compared to the peer
review process that vets and culls scientific papers.
5. One can ever "contribute" to an online "encyclopedia",
the Wikipedia, without the slightest acquaintance the
topic one is "editing". Consequently, the other day, I
discovered, to my utter shock, that Eichmann changed
his name, posthumously, to Otto. It used to be Karl
Adolf, at least until he was executed in 1962.
6. Granted, there are on the Internet isolated islands of
academic merit, intellectually challenging and
invigorating discourse, and true erudition or even
scholarship. But they are mere islets in the tsunami of
falsities, fatuity, and inanities that constitutes the bulk
of User Generated Content (UGC).
7. Which leads me to the second myth: that access is
progress.
8. Oceans of information are today at the fingertips of one
and sundry. This is undisputed. The Internet is a vast
storehouse of texts, images, audio recordings, and
databases. But what matters is whether people make
good use of this serendipitous cornucopia. A savage who
finds himself amidst the collections of the Library of
Congress is unlikely to benefit much.
9. Alas, most people today are cultural savages, Internet
users the more so. They are lost among the dazzling
riches that surround them. Rather than admit to their
inferiority and accept their need to learn and improve,
they claim "equal status". It is a form of rampant
pathological narcissism, a defense mechanism that is
aimed to fend off the injury of admitting to one's
inadequacies and limitations.
10. Internet users have developed an ethos of anti-elitism.
There are no experts, only opinions, There are no hard
data, only poll results. Everyone is equally suited to
contribute to any subject. Learning and scholarship are
frowned on or even actively discouraged. The public's
taste has completely substituted for good taste.
Yardsticks, classics, science - have all been discarded.
11. Study after study have demonstrated clearly the decline
of functional literacy (the ability to read and understand
labels, simple instructions, and very basic texts) even as
literacy (in other words, repeated exposure to the
alphabet) has increased dramatically all over the world.
12. In other words: most people know how to read but
precious few understand what they are reading. Yet,
even the most illiterate, bolstered by the Internet's mob-rule,
insist that their interpretation of the texts they do
not comprehend is as potent and valid as anyone else's.
13. When I was growing up in a slum in Israel, I devoutly
believed that knowledge and education will set me free
and catapult me from my miserable circumstances into a
glamorous world of happy learning. But now, as an
adult, I find myself in an alien universe where "culture"
means merely sports and music, where science is
decried as evil and feared by increasingly hostile and
aggressive masses, and where irrationality in all its
forms (religiosity, the occult, conspiracy theories)
flourishes.
14. The few real scholars and intellectuals left are on the
retreat, back into the ivory towers of a century ago.
Increasingly, their place is taken by self-taught
"experts", narcissistic bloggers, wannabe "authors" and
"auteurs", and partisan promoters of (often self-beneficial)
"causes".
15. Dismal results ensue: fads like environmentalism and
alternative "medicine" spread malignantly and seek to
silence dissidents, sometimes by violent means; the fare
served by the media now consists exclusively of soap
operas and reality TV shows; Reading is on terminal
decline; with few exceptions, the "new media" are a
hodgepodge of sectarian view and fabricated "news";
the few credible sources of reliable information have
long been drowned in a cacophony of fakes and phonies.
16. It is a sad mockery of the idea of progress. The more
texts we make available online, the more research is
published, the more books are written - the less
educated people are, the more they rely on visuals and
sounds rather than the written word, the more they
seek to escape reality and be anesthetized rather than
be challenged and provoked.
17. Even the ever-sliming minority who do wish to be
enlightened are inundated by a suffocating and
unmanageable avalanche of indiscriminate data,
comprised of both real and pseudo-science. There is no
way to tell the two apart, so a "democracy of
knowledge" reins where everyone is equally qualified
and everything goes and is equally merited. This
relativism is dooming the twenty-first century to
become the beginning of a new "Dark Age", hopefully a
mere interregnum between two periods of genuine
enlightenment.