Monthly Archive for July, 2003

A Cosmology Episode

Published
by
Paul
on 31 July 2003
in Knowledge Management
. 0 Comments

Interesting terms — “sensemaking” and “cosmology episode” from elearningpost

Staying with Weick, here’s the definition of another one of his frequently used terms — cosmology episode.

A slight edit:

A person feels like he has never been here before, has no idea of where he is, and has no idea who can help him. An inevitable state of panic ensues, and the individual becomes more and more anxious until he finds it almost impossible to make sense of what is happening to him.

Can you have variuos levels of this? If so perhaps I’m having an edited episode - I know where I am and have been here before but the rest is about right…

Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.

Published
by
Paul
on 31 July 2003
in Actions
. 0 Comments

In my life
Why do I give valuable time
To people who don’t care if I live or die ?

and

In my life
Why do I smile
At people who I’d much rather kick in the eye ?

Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now by The Smiths

(via It May All End Tomorrow)

Point & Connect Wireless Devices

Published
by
Paul
on 31 July 2003
in Creativity, Design, Home Networking, WIFI and Wireless
. 0 Comments

New Scientist

‘Point-and-connect’ links for wireless devices

18:09 29 July 03

NewScientist.com news service

Linking devices via a wireless network could be considerably simplified using a “point-and-connect” technology being developed by Sony.
The camera-based system, developed by researchers at Sony’s Interaction Laboratory in Tokyo, Japan, lets users instantly transfer data from a laptop or handheld computer to a device in close proximity connected to the same wireless network.
Researcher Ayatsuka Yuji says the prototype system, dubbed Gaze-Link, removes the need to manually configure networked devices for this purpose.
“It is so troublesome, especially when there are many networked devices,” Yuji told New Scientist. “When you want to send data in your PDA to a printer, for example, you have to input or to select a correct network address.”

Small sticker

A code displayed on a small sticker attached to each device is identified by the laptop’s camera. Software running on the laptop then automatically locates the device on the network. “Gaze-Link is one of the challenges to make connecting more ‘intuitive’,” Yuji says.

Simeon Keates, a computer usability researcher at Cambridge University, UK, says the system could have real benefits if there are a multitude of different devices connected to a network.

“As the home gets more connected, user overload is going to become more of an issue,” he says. “It would certainly be helpful for someone who was nervous of the technology.”

But Keates adds that this benefit will depend largely on the accuracy and reliability of the system. It must also be able to distinguish between different devices stacked next to each other, he says.

Will Knight
Via SmartMobs.

Good idea in principle. Love to see how it works in practice.

Design Council

Published
by
Paul
on 31 July 2003
in Creativity, Design and Innovation
. 0 Comments

f r e e g o r i f e r o | weblog

Design PDF-athon.

Just discovered that the Design Council in the UK has great overviews on key design disciplines in the About Design section of its website, with more areas to be covered in the near future.

Great discovery by Fabio. While I am a long way from being a designer, I’m fascinated by the processes of creativity and innovation. There are some really interesting points here which I’m going to read at leisure

Today’s Quote with Comments

Published
by
Paul
on 30 July 2003
in Self Improvement
. 0 Comments

The structure of the language one habitually uses influences the way he perceives his environment …

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky

Spotted this on the Vygotsky site. It reminded me of passages from ‘Awaken the Giant within’ by Anthony Robins, where he encourages you to change your life by modifying your language for describing things.

For example using excited instead of nervous, or I’m a tad fed up rather than I’ve had enough.

My thanks to Graham for helping me to remember that there are alternatives to my current environment. Alter or take another path…

I know its there, but how do you know, I know?

Published
by
Paul
on 30 July 2003
in Education
. 0 Comments

BBC NEWS | Health | Brain scans ‘reveal baby thoughts’

Brain scans ‘reveal baby thoughts’

Babies were fitted with nets of sensors
A burst of brain activity recorded by scientists could offer clues to a baby’s level of understanding of the world around it.
The researchers involved, from Birkbeck College, and University College London, believe their finding could begin to settle a controversial argument on baby brain development.
When an object is shown to six-month-old babies, then hidden, they often behave as if it is no longer present.
It appears to be “out of sight, out of mind”, as far as their level of understanding is concerned.
But scientists still suspect the baby, to some extent, does understand the object is still around, just hidden, even if it shows no physical signs of awareness.

I remember doing a lot of this kind of stuff while studying for my PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education or a teacher training course). I think it was Piaget (et al) who went on about this. I was never quite sure as to the relevance for when I was teaching 18 year olds - A level Politics. Probably because his thinking is aimed more at how younger children develop and while I understand the need for children (and adults) to own a solution - reinventing a theory every time doesn’t ring true for me.

I was always more interested or convinced by Vygotsky -

Zone of proximal development is the difference between the child’s capacity to solve problems on his own, and his capacity to solve them with assistance. In other words, the actual developmental level refers to all the functions and activities that a child can perform on his own, independently without the help of anyone else. On the other hand, the zone of proximal development includes all the functions and activities that a child or a learner can perform only with the assistance of someone else. The person in this scaffolding process, providing non-intrusive intervention, could be an adult (parent, teacher, caretaker, language instructor) or another peer who has already mastered that particular function.

The important point is that:

… the idea that human learning presupposes a specific social nature and is part of a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them (Vygotsky, 1978).

We learn through a social context. We learn by going from what we already know to an area just beyond. We are supported by others, socially, to move into this space and develop our knowledge there.

If that is how Humans learn, and I believe it is, what implications does that have for machine learning. Should the kind of ideas that are espoused in Shelly’s post about RDF and the semantic web be viewed through this kind of thinking. Intuitively I think there is more here to explore.

Context, Semantics and identity

Published
by
Paul
on 30 July 2003
in Identity
. 1 Comment

Practical RDF: Semantic Web for Poets: FOAF, Flocking, and the Semantics of Starlings

Elegant rant (?) by Shelley (whom I don’t know - read the article) about W3C, the Semantic web and FOAF.

The complexity of human relationships and how we may describe them in the context of the semantic web are examined. Perhaps more importantly the outline of how a virtual community (i.e. bloggers) are seeking to redefine tools to meet a need while the great and the good (W3C) argue about how it should be done. A clash between wanting to get on and exploit practical applications versus a theoretical purity (I exaggerate slightly to make the point).

Essentially semantics are about context. Therefore it is the context which provides meaning. Data on things, on people and presumably ideas can easily be held somewhere on the web e.g. INFP but until you then understand that its my Myers-Briggs classification, and can link to information about MB you won’t understand what it refers to. Unless you can read something which outlines data about me, it doesn’t mean anything and until you can give all of that some context i.e. the machine searching this out is doing so for an employment opportunity, do you (or does one?) get somewhere.

Even then do you know me? Knowing I have blue eyes or work for a UK cable company, does that help?

I don’t know. Perhaps you have learnt that I trail off arguments…

Just the Essentials

Published
by
Paul
on 30 July 2003
in Knowledge Management
. 0 Comments

elearningpost

Design Framework - Just the Essentials
Gary Klein, naturalistic decision making expert and author of Intuition at Work and Sources of Power, suggests a three-step process to analyze cognitive tasks. The steps are,

Knowledge Elicitation. Here the intent is to gather first-hand information (observation, interviews, etc.), and not second-hand information (training manuals, PPT slides, etc.).

Analysis. This phase is still a hunt for clarity (inspecting, selecting, simplifying, abstracting, and transforming information, developing explanations, and extracting meaning).

Knowledge Representation. This is interesting. It is the transformation of the findings from step-2 into a more usable representation (process of displaying data and depicting relationships, explanations, and the meaning).

These steps seem to offer a simple design framework, especially for knowledge oriented work. Not because the steps follow the ubiquitous Rule of Three, but because they include just the essentials and thus are easier to communicate to team members and to clients.

Perhaps this oversimplifies but, and its a big but, simple rules lead to complex behaviours (at least complexity theory suggest this e.g. flocking birds). I think this works for me… I’m still cogitating…

MetaData Mark 2

Published
by
Paul
on 30 July 2003
in Meta Data
. 1 Comment

From Seb’s Open Research

Pointing at “Meta Data Mark 2″. Great introduction to this stuff for the ‘Idiot Guide’ audience i.e. me. Go read.

Quote for today!

Published
by
Paul
on 29 July 2003
in Management Theory
. 0 Comments

Having a look at the Tom Peter’s Site and reading one of his powerpoint presentations I ran into an old quote that he uses frequently:

If you are not pissing people off, you are not making a difference!

Tomorrow I intend to ‘piss’ some people off, with the intention of making a difference.

(Especially for my boss, who is on holiday in Arizona)