I think there is something to be said about the human experience here: how are we different in the digital space than we are in face-to-face interactions? As Monica mentioned, attaching a face to a troll online kind of solidifies the actual human experience of bullying and other negative comments. In the digital sphere, users are protected by a screen; even if they are on social media with a profile picture and a bio, other users don't experience their physical body. There is something very potent about the human experience, arguably so potent that it cannot be replicated in a digital space. It begs the question of how embodied a digital space really is: is it more of an individual or personal embodiment? As Rushkoff writes, there may not be any kind of software or program that can truly represent the human experience. We may feel strongly about our online personas, but regardless of how accurately (or inaccurately) reflect our actual beings, other internet "bodies" can never experience us as feeling human beings.

He explains that we try to demonize other countries (Communist China) that oppose our national beliefs and views, specifically our democratic political system, meanwhile we are the actual ones that are creating world-wide destruction and is, in turn, evil to its world and even its own people. He says that the hate we try to frame on other countries is actually present in our own through racism. Selma, Alabama was the starting location for a march that ended in Montgomery for voting rights for black citizens as well as the context of “Bloody Sunday”. Bloody Sunday occurred when police officers shot down several peaceful protestors for refusing to turn around and to continue their protest. When he moves on to talk about how we spent four days in space, he is explaining how during this time as well, the Cold War was a prevalent issue for the government, because of our power-fetishized ideology. During this time, much media coverage was on our advancements in scientific technology to arrive in space, in competition to Communist Russia’s and China’s. We tried to use this scientific progress as a way to change the subject and direct the listening-citizen’s attention away from the real issues at hand. Even if we travel to space and get distracted for a few days, we still have to come back to reality and to our country that kills if their political and social ideals are opposed.

Harpers 1873 the telegraph, pp. 359-360

Discusses the future importance of the telegraph in terms of its impact on knowledge: will free language from philology and allow us to make improvements on that. Mentions the beginnings of the typewriter.

"The immense extension of the general telegraphic system, and its common use for business and social correspondence and the dissemination of public intelligence, are far more important to the community than any of these incidental applications of the system. The telegraph system is extending much more rapidly than the railroad system, and is probably exerting even a greater influence upon the mental development of the people than the railroad is exerting in respect to the material and physical prosperity of the country. It has penetrated almost every mind with a new sense of the vastnessof distance and the value of time. It is commonly said that it has annihilated time and space--and this is true in a sense; but in a deeper sense it has magnified both, for it has been the means of expanding vastly the inadequate conceptions which we form of space and distance, and of giving a significance to the idea of time which it never before had to the human mind. It lifts every man who reads its messages above his own little circle, gives him in a vivid flash, as it were, a view of vast distances, and tends by an irresistible influence to make him a citizen of his country and a fellow of the race as well as a member of his local community.

In other respects its influence, though less obvious, will probably prove equally profound. So long as the mysterious force employed in the telegraph was only known in the mariner’s compass, or by scientific investigations, or in a few special processes of art, the knowledge of the electric or magnetic force had, so to speak, a very limited soil to grow in. By means of the telegraph many thousands of persons in this country are constantly employed in dealing with it practically--generating it, insulating it, manipulating it. The invention of Morse has engaged some one in every considerable town and village in studying its properties, watching its operation, and using it profitably. Nothing could be better calculated to attract general attention to this newfound power, and to disseminate that knowl edge of it from which new applications may be expected to result.

The tendency of scientific pursuits to promote the love of truth and the habit of accuracy is strikingly illustrated in the zeal and fidelity with which the minute and long-continued investigations have been pursued that have led to the development of this new realm of knowledge and this new element in human affairs.

But perhaps the most extended and important influence which the telegraph is destined to exert upon the human mind is that which it will ultimately work out through its influence upon language.

Language is the instrument of thought. It is not merely a means of expression. A word is a tool for thinking, before the thinker uses it as a signal for communicating his thought. There is no good reason why it should not be free to be improved, as other implements are. Language has hitherto been regarded merely in a historical point of view, and even now philology is little more than a record of the differences in language which have separated mankind, and of the steps of development in it which each branch of the human family has pursued. And as a whole it may be said that the science of language in the hands of philologists is used to perpetuate the differences and irregularities of speech which prevail. The telegraph is silently introducing a new element, which, we may confidently predict, will one day present this subject in a different aspect. The invention of Morse has given beyond recall the pre-eminence to the Italian alphabet, and has secured the ultimate adoption through-out the world of that system or some improvement upon it. The community of intelligence, and the necessary convertibility of expression between difl‘erent languages, which the press through the influence of the telegraph is establishing, have commenced a process of assimilation, the results of which are already striking to those who carefully examine the subject. An important event transpiring in any part of the civilized world is concisely expressed in a dispatch which is immediately reproduced in five or ten or more different languages. A comparison of such dispatches with each other will show that in them the peculiar; and local idioms of each language are to a large extent discarded. The process sifts out, as it were, the characteristic peculiarities of each language, and it may be confidently said that nowhere in literature will be found a more remarkable parallelism of structure, and even of word forms, combined with equal purity and strength in each language, than in the telegraphic columns of the leading dailies of the capitals of Europe and America. A traveler in Europe, commencing the study of the language of the country where he may be, finds no reading which he can so easily master as the telegraphic news column. The telegraph is cosmopolitan, and is rapidly giving prominence to those modes of speech in which different languages resemble each other. When we add to this the fact that every step of advance made by science and the arts increases that which different languages have in common by reason of the tendency of men in these pursuits the world over to adopt a common nomenclature, and to think alike or in similar mental processes, we see the elements already at work which will ultimately relegate philology to its proper and useful place among the departments of history, and will free language from those restrictions which now forbid making any intentional improvements in it. With the general use of the telegraphic system other things begin to readjust themselves to its conditions. Short-hand writing is more cultivated now than ever before. The best reporter must understand both systems, and be able to take his notes of a conversation while it passes, and then by stepping into an office transmit it at, once without writing out. There is now in practical use in the city of New York a little instrument the size of a sewing-machine, having a keyboard like the printing telegraph, by which any one can write in print as legibly as this page, and almost as rapidly as a reporter in short-hand. When we consider the immense number of people that every day by writing a telegram and counting the words are taking a most efficient lesson in concise composition, we see in another way the influence of this invention on the strength of language. If the companies should ever adopt the system of computing all their charges by the number of letters instead of words, as indeed they do now for all cipher or unintelligible messages, the world would very quickly be considering the economic advantages of phonetic or other improved orthography.

These processes are in operation all the world over, and in reference to the use of one and the same alphabet. By the principle which Darwin describes as natural selection short words are gaining the advantage of long words, direct forms of expression are gaining the advantage over indirect, words of precise meaning the advantage of the ambiguous, and local idioms are every where at a disadvantage. The doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest thus tends to the constant improvement and points to the ultimate unification of language.

The idea of a common language of the world, therefore, however far in the future it may be, is no longer a dream of the poet nor a scheme of a conqueror. And it is significant of the spirit of the times that this idea, once so chimerical, should at the time we are writing find expression in the inaugural of our Chief Magistrate, in his declaration of the belief “ that our Great Maker is preparing the world in His own good time to become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and navies will be no longer required.”

So what are you going to do about meta-analyses, NEJM?

Will you require that all authors of all original papers be authors of the meta-analysis? The protocol advocated here seems to demand as much.

Do anchovy and egg sandwiches smell as bad as we may think they do? Also, is the author serious?

"The fox said," Do not shoot me, for I will give you good counsel; I know what your business is, and that you want to find the golden bird. You will reach a village in the evening; and when you get there, you will see two inns opposite to each other, one of which is very pleasant and beautiful to look at: go not in there, but rest for the night in the other, though it may appear to you to be very poor and mean.' But the son thought to himself, 'What can such a beast as this know about the matter?'"

The wisdom portrayed by the fox is important because in our life, wisdom like that comes to us from the strangest of places and when we do not listen to that wisdom we suffer. Sometimes, we do not think that we are suffering because of the pleasure we feel but later on when the consequences are presented, then we understand our suffering. The fox is a symbol of the wisdom that we experience in our lives that we should not take for granted because we never know when that wisdom would save our life.

A Declaration and Remonstrance Of the distressed and bleeding Frontier Inhabitants Of the Providence of Pennsylvania, Presented by them to the Honourable the GOVERNOR and ASSEMBLY of the Province, Shewing the CAUSES Of their late Discontent and Uneasiness and the GRIEVANCES Under which they have labored, and which they humbly pray to Have redress’d Printed in the Year M,DCC,LXIV.

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A Delaration &c.

INasmuch as the killing those Indians at Conestogo Mannor and Lancaster, has been, and may be the Subject of much Conversation; and by invidious Representations of it, which some, we doubt not, will industriously spread, many, unacquainted with the true State of Affairs, may be led to pass a severer Censure on the Authors of those Facts, and any other reasons of those like Nature, which may hereafter happen, than we are persuaded they would if matters were duly understood and deliberated: We think it therefore proper thus openly to declare ourselves, and render some brief Hints of the Reasons of our Conduct; which we must, and frankly do confess nothing but Necessity itself could induce us to, or justify us in; as it bears an Appearance of flying in the Face of Authority, and is attended with much Labour, Fatigue and Expence.

OURSELVES then, to a Man, we profess loyal Subjects to the best of Kings, our rightful Sovereign GEORGE the THIRD, firmly attached to his Royal Person, Interest and Government: And of Consequence equally opposite to the Enemies of his Throne and Dignity,

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whether openly avowed or more dangerously concealed under a Mask of falsly pretended Friendship, and chearfully willing to offer our Substance and Lives in his Cause.

THESE Indians known to be firmly connected in Friendship with our openly avowed imbittered Enemies; and some of whom have, by several Oaths, been proved to be Murderers; and, who, by their better Acquaintance with the Situation and State of our Frontiers, were more capable of doing us Mischief, we saw with Indignation cherished and caressed as dearest Friends—But this alas! is but a Part, a small Part of that excessive Regard manifested to Indians beyond his Majesty’s loyal Subjects, whereof we complain: And which together with various other Grievances have not only enflamed with Resentment the Breasts of a Number, and urged them to the disagreable Evidence of it, they have been constrained to give, but have heavily displeased, by far, the greatest part of the good Inhabitants of this Province.

SHOULD we here reflect to former Treaties, the exorbitant Presents, and great Servility therein paid to Indians, have long been oppressive Grievances we have groaned under. And when at the last Indian Treaty held at Lancaster, not only was the Blood of our many murdered Brethren tamely covered but our poor unhappy captivated Friends abandoned to Slavery among the Savages, by concluding a Friendship

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with the Indians and allowing them a plenteous Trade of all kinds of Commodities without those being restored, altho’ a spirited Requisition was made of them; how general Dissatisfaction those Measures gave, the Murmers of all good People (loud as they dare to utter them) to this Day declare: And had here, infatuated Steps of Conduct and a manifest Partialtity [sic] in favour of Indians made a final Pause, happy had it been; we perhaps had grieved in silence for our abandoned, enslaved Brethren among the Heathens. But matters of a later Date are still more flagrant Reasons of Complaint. When last Summer his Majesty’s Forces under the Command of Col. BOUQUET marched through this Province and a Demand was made by his Excellency Gen. AMHERST of Assistance to escort Provisions &c. to relieve that important Post, Fort Pitt, yet not one Man was granted, altho’ never any Thing appeared more reasonable or necessary, as the Interest of the Province lay so much at stake and the Standing of the Frontier Settlements in any manner, evidently depended, under God, on the almost despaired of Success of his Majesty’s little Army, whose Valour the whole Frontiers with Gratitude acknowledge as the happy Means of having saved from ruin great part of the Province. But when a Number of Indians falsly pretended Friends, and having among them some proved on Oath to have been guilty of Murder, since this War

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begun, when they together with others known to be his Majesty’s Enemies and who had been in the Battle against Col. BOUQUET, reduced to Distress by the Destruction of their Corn at the Great Island, and up the East Branch of Susquehanna, pretend themselves Friends, and desire a Subsistance they are openly caressed, and the Publick, that could not be indulged the Liberty of contributing to his Majesty’s Assistance, obliged, as Tributaries to Savages, to support those Villains, those Enemies to our King and our Country. Nor only so, but the Hands that were closely shut, nor would grant his Majesty’s General one single Farthing against a Savage Foe, have been liberally opened, and the publick Money lavishly prostituted to hire, at an exorbitant Rate, a mercenary Guard, to protect his Majesty’s worst of Enemies, those falsly pretended Indian Friends, while at the same Time hundreds of poor distressed Families of his Majesty’s Subjects, obliged to abandon their Possessions, and flee for their Lives at least, except a small Relief, at first, in the most distressing Circumstances, were left to tarve neglected, save what the friendly Hand of private Donations has contributed to their Support; wherein they, who are most profuse towards Savages, have carefully avoided having any Part. When last Summer the Troops raised for Defence of the Province, were limited to certain Bounds, nor suffered to attempt

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annoying our Enemies in their Habitations, and a Number of brave Voluntiers, equipped at their own Expence, marched in September up the Susquehanna, met and defeated their Enemy with the loss of some of their Number, and having others dangerously wounded, not the least Thanks or Acknowledgment was made them from the Legislature for the confessed Service they had done, nor any the least notice or Care taken of their wounded. Whereas, when a Seneca Indian, who, by the Information of many, as well as by his own Confession, had been through the last War an inveterate Enemy had got a Cut in his Head last Summer, in a Quarrel he had with his own Cousin, and it was reported in Philadelphia that his Wound was dangerous; a Doctor was immediately employed and sent to Fort Augusta to take care of him and cure him if possible. To these may be added, that though it was impossible to obtain thro’ the Summer or even yet any Premium for Indian Scalps or Encouragement to excite Volunteers to go forth against them, yet when a few of them known to be the fast Friends of our Enemies, and some of them Murderers themselves; when these have been struck by a distressed, bereft, injured Frontier, a liberal Reward is offered for apprehending the Perpetrators of that horrible Crime of killing his Majesty’s cloaked Enemies: And their Conduct painted in the most atrocious Colours, while the

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horrid Ravages, cruel Murders and most shocking Barbarities committed by Indians on His Majesty’s Subjects are covered over and excused under the charitable Term of this being their Method of making War.

BUT to recount the many repeated Grievances Whereof we might justly complain, and Instances of a most violent Attachment to Indians, were tedious beyond the Patience of a Job to endure. Nor can better be expected nor need we be surprized at Indian Insolence and Villainy when it is considered, and which can be proved from the publick Records in a certain County, That some time before Conrad Weiser died, some Indians belonging to the Great Island or Wyaloosing assured him that [Israel Pemberton] (an ancient Leader of that Faction, which for so long a Time have found Means to enslave the Province to Indians) together with others of the Friends, had given them a Rod to scourge the white People that were settled on the purchased Lands; for the ONAS had cheated them out of a great deal of Land, or had not given near sufficient price for what he had bought. And that the Traders ought also to be scourged; for that they defrauded the Indians by selling Goods to them at too dear a Rate, and that this Relation is matter of fact, can easily be proved in the County of Berks. Such is our unhappy Situation, under the Villany, Infatuation and Influence of a certain Faction that have got the

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political Reigns in their Hand and tamely tyrannize over the other good Subjects of the Province! And can it be thought strange, that a Scene of such Treatment as this, and the now adding in this critical Juncture to all our former Distresses, that disagreeable Burden of supporting, in the very Heart of the Province, at so great an Expence, between One and Two Hundred Savages, to the great Disquietude of the Majority of the good Inhabitants of this Province, should awaken the Resentment of a People grossly abused, unrighteously burdened, and made Dupes and Slaves to Indians? And must not all well disposed People entertain a charitable Sentiment of those, who at their own great Expence and Trouble, have attempted, or shall attempt rescuing a laboring Land from a Weight so oppressive, unreasonable and unjust? It is this we Design, it is this we are resolved to prosecute, tho’ it is with great Reluctance we are obliged to adopt a Measure, not so agreeable as could be desired, and to which Extremity alone compels.

GOD Save the KING,

February, 1764.

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To the Honourable JOHN PENN, Esquire, Governor of the Province of Pennsylvania, and of the Counties of New-Castle, Kent and Sussex, on Delaware; and to the Representatives of the Free-Men of said Province, in Assembly met.

WE Matthew Smith, and James Gibson, in behalf of ourselves, and his Majesty’s faithful and loyal Subjects, the Inhabitants of the Frontier Counties of Lancaster, York, Cumberland, Berks, and Northampton, humbly beg Leave to remonstrate, and to lay before you, the following Grievances, which we submit to your Wisdom for Redress.

1st. WE apprehend, that as Free-Men and English Subjects, we have an indisputable Title to the same Privileges and Immunities with his Majesty’s other subjects, who reside in the interior Counties of Philadelphia, Chester and Bucks, and therefore ought not be excluded from an equal Share with them in the very important Privilege of Legislation. Nevertheless, contrary to the Proprietors Charter, and the acknowledged principles of Common Justice and Equity, our five Counties are restrained from electing more than ten Representatives, viz, Four for Lancaster, Two for York, Two for

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Cumberland, One for Berks, and one for Northhampton; while the Three Counties (and City) of Philadelphia, Cluster, and Bucks, elect Twenty-six; this we humbly conceive is oppressive, unequal and unjust, the Cause of many of our Grievances, and an infringement of our natural Privileges of Freedom and Equality, wherefore we humbly pray, that we may be no longer deprived of an equal Number with the Three aforesaid Counties, to represent us in Assembly.

2dly. WE understand that a Bill is now before the House of Assembly, wherein it is Provided, that such Persons as shall be charged with killing any Indians in Lancaster County, shall not be tried in the County where the Fact was committed, but in the Counties of Philadelphia, Chester, or Bucks. This is manifestly to deprive British Subjects of their known Privileges, to cast an eternal Reproach upon whole Counties, as if they were unfit to serve their Country in the Quality of Jury-Men, and to contradict the well known Laws of the British Nation, in a point whereon Life, Liberty, and Security essentially depend: Namely, that of being tried by their Equals in the Neighbourhood where their own, their Accusers, and the Witnesses Character and Credit, with the Circumstances of the Fact are best known, and instead thereof, putting their Lives in the Hands of Strangers, who may as justly be suspected of Partiality to, as the Frontier Counties can be of Prejudices against Indians; and

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this too in favour of Indians only, against his Majesty’s faithful and loyal Subjects. Besides it is well known that the Design of it is to comprehend a Fact committed before such a Law was thought of. And if such Practices were tolleratcd, no man could be secure in his most invaluable Interests. We are also informed to our great Surprize, that this Bill has actually received the Assent of a Majority of the House, which we are persuaded could not have been the Case, had our Frontier Counties been equally represented in Assembly: However, we hope, that the Legislator of this Province will never enact a Law of so dangerous a tendency, or take away from his Majesty’s good Subjects, a Privilege so long esteemed sacred by English Men.

3dly. DURING the late and present Indian Wars, the Frontiers of this Province have been repeatedly attacked and ravaged by Skulking parties of the Indians, who have with the most savage Cruelty, murdered Men, Women and Children, without distinction; and have reduced near a Thousand Families to the most extream Distress. It grieves us to the very Heart, to see such of our Frontier Inhabitants as have escaped from savage Fury, with the loss of their Parents, their Children, their Husbands, Wives, or Relatives, left destitute by the Public, and exposed to the most cruel Poverty and Wretchedness; while upwards of One Hundred and Twenty of the Savages, who are with great Reason suspected

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of being guilty of these horrid Barbarities, under the Mask of Friendship, have procured themselves to be taken under the Protection of the Government, with a view to elude the Fury of the brave Relatives of the Murdered; and are now maintained at the public Expence: Some of these Indians now in the Barracks of Philadelphia, are confessedly a part of the Wyalusing Indians, which Tribe is now at War with us; and the others are the Moravian Indians, who living amongst us under the Cloak of Friendship, carried on a Correspondence with our known Enemies on the Great-Island. We cannot but observe with Sorrow and Indignation, that some Persons in this Province are at pains to extenuate the barbarous Cruelties practised by these savages on our Murdered Brethren and Relatives, which are shocking to human Nature, and must pierce every Heart but those of the hardened Perpetrators or their Abettors. Nor is it less Distressing to hear others pleading, that altho’ the Wyalusing Tribe is at War with us, yet that part of it which is under the Protection of the Government may be friendly to the English, and Innocent. In what Nation under the Sun was it ever the Custom, that when a neighbouring Nation took up Arms, not an individual of the Nation should be touched, but only the Persons that offered Hostilities? Who ever proclaimed War with a part of a Nation, and not with the Whole? Had these Indians disapproved of the

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Perfidy of their Tribe, and been willing to cultivate and preserve Friendship with us, why did they not give Notice of the War before it happened, as it is known to be the Result of long Deliberations, and a preconcerted Combination amongst them? Why did they not leave their Tribe immediately, and come amongst us before there was ground to suspect them, or War was actually waged with the Tribe? No, they stayed amonst them, were privy to their Murders and Ravages, untill we had destroyed their Provisions, and when they could no longer subsist at Home, they came, not as Deserters, but as Friends, to be maintained thro’ the Winter, that they may be able to scalp and butcher us in the Spring.

AND as to the Moravian Indians, there are strong grounds, at least to suspect their Friendship, as it is known that they carried on a Correspondence with out Enemies, on the Great Island. We killed three Indians going from Bethelem to the Great-Island, with Blankets, Ammunition and Provisions; which is an undeniable Proof, that, the Moravian Indians were in confederacy with our open Enemies. And we cannot but be filled with Indignation, to hear this Action of ours, painted in the most odious and detestable Colours, as if we had inhumanly murdered our Guides, who preserved us from perishing in the Woods; when we only killed three of our known Enemies. who attempted

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to shoot us when we surprized them. And besides all this, we understand that one of these very Indians is proved by the Oath of Stenton’s Widow to be the very Person that murdered her Husband. How then comes it to pass, that he alone of all the Moravian Indians should join with the Enemy to murder that Family? Or can it be supposed that any Enemy Indians contrary to their known Custom of making War, should penetrate into the Heart of a settled Country, to burn, plunder and murder the Inhabitants, and not molest any Houses on their Return, or ever be seen or heard of? Or how can we account for it that no Ravages have been committed in Northampton County since the Removal of the Moravian Indians, when the Great Cove has been struck since? These things put it beyond doubt with us, that the Indians now at Philadelphia, are His Majesty’s perfidious Enemies, and therefore to protect and maintain them at the public Expence, while our suffering Brethren on the Frontiers are almost destitute of the Necessaries of Life and are neglected by the Public, is sufficient to make us mad with Rage, and tempt us to do what nothing but the most violent Necessity can vindicate. We humbly and earnestly pray therefore that these Enemies of his Majesty may be removed as soon as possible out of the Province.

4thly. WE humbly conceive that it is contrary to the Maxims of good Policy and extreamly

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dangerous to our Frontiers, to suffer any Indians of what Tribe soever, to live within the inhabited Parts of this Province, while we are engaged in an Indian War; as Experience has taught us that they are all Perfidious, and their Claim to Freedom and Independency puts it in their Power to act as Spies, to entertain and give Intelligence to our Enemies, and to furnish them with Provisions and warlike Stores. To this fatal Intercourse between our pretended Friends and open Enemies we must ascribe the greatest Part of the Ravages and Murders that have been committed in the Course of this and the last Indian War. We therefore pray that this Grievance be taken under consideration and remedied.

5th. WE cannot help lamenting that no Provision has been hitherto made, that such of our Frontier Inhabitants as have been wounded in defence of the Province, their Lives and Liberties, may be taken care of and cured of their Wounds at public Expence. We therefore pray that this Grievance may be redressed.

6thly. IN the late Indian War this Province, with other of his Majesty’s Colonies gave rewards for Indian Scalps, to encourage the seeking them in their own Country, as the most likely Means of destroying or reducing them to reason. But no such Encouragement has been given in this War, which has damped the Spirits of many brave Men, who are willing to venture their Lives in Parties against the Enemy. We

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therefore pray that public Rewards may be proposed for Indian Scalps, which may be adequate to the Dangers attending Enterprises of this Nature.

7th. WE daily lament that Numbers of our nearest and dearest Relatives are still in Captivity amongst the savage Heathen, to be trained up in all their ignorance and Barbarity, or be tortured to death with all the Contrivances of Indian cruelty, for attempting to make their Escape from Bondage. We see they pay no regard to the many solemn Promises which they made to restore our Friends, who are in Bondage amonst them; we therefore earnestly pray that no Trade may hereafter by permitted to be carried on with them, untill our Brethren and Relatives are brought home to us.

8thly. WE complain that a certain Society of People in this Province in the late Indian War and at several Treaties held by the Kings Representatives, openly loaded the Indians with Presents and that [Israel Pemberton] a Leader of the said Society, in defiance of all Government not only a betted our Indian Enemies, but kept up a private Intelligence with them, and publickly received from them a Belt of Wampum, as if he had been our Governor or authorized by the King to treat with his Enemies. By this Means the Indians have been taught to dispise us as a weak and disunited People and from this fatal Source have arose many of our Calamities

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under which we groan. We humbly pray therefore this Grievance may be redressed and that no private Subject be hereafter permitted to treat with or carry on a Correspondence with our Enemies.

9thly. WE cannot but observe with sorrow that Fort Augusta which has been very expensive to this Province, has afforded us but little assistance, during this or the last War. The Men that were stationed at that Place neither helped our distressed Inhabitants to save their Crops, nor did they attack our Enemies in their Towns, or patrole on our Frontiers. We humbly request, that proper Measures may be taken to make that Garrison more serviceable to us in our Distress, if it can be done.

N.B. WE are far from intending any Reflection against the Commanding Officer stationed at Augusta, as we presume his Conduct was always directed by those from whom he received his Orders.

SIGNED on Behalf of ourselves, and by Appointment of a Great Number of the Frontier Inhabitants.

MATTHEW SMITH. JAMES GIBSON.

February 13th, 1764.

FINIS.

We can never be truly aware of when things will go bad for us, so Franklin urges us to stay out of the hands of debtors and creditors, and to free ourselves from their dependence to keep us as free citizens.

I think Franklin is stating here that we simply cannot hope to better our lives simply because we want them to be better. We have to endure the "pains" of hard work in order to appreciate the "gains" of success. I believe he meant this to be true of all classes of people. We still see this occurring today.

I think that Franklin's use of sayings and expressions makes his writing unique in the sense that it provides embedded advice alongside an informational piece. I feel that it adds a more personal tone to the piece, and makes it feel like a conversation overhead when someone is giving a friend advice.

This statement is neither applicable to most of america at the time nor to most of its citizens except a white male. This statement makes me think that this article was targeted to specifically white middle to upper class men, who historically would most likely be the only literate ones, as shared in the 18th Century headnote. Additionally, I think this is a very one sides statement that carries no sympathy for the marginalized and oppressed around them, which is hard to imagine today, but was the norm in the 18 century.

Here it is: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/

This is an interesting bit because I'm getting the vibe that Watters is undermining the importance of digital citizenship being taught in schools. I understand and agree that giving young people their own independent web domain is a great case for individuality, but I'd sooner have a high schooler learn about the repercussions of cyber bullying than running a website. I find this ironic because she seems to think this isn't as important but later mentions that students who were given domains still talked frequently about proper digital citizenship. I may not be understanding her properly, but I'm not exactly following this train of thought.

So, yeah, he's talking about hyperlinks and annotations as two separate aspects of the memex.

What's missing here is the power of peer to peer sharing of such scaffolding. It doesn't need to be only "master to disciple."

Boom!

Really does sound like the networked PC.

Is this the point at which the kind of annotation imagined by Bush becomes social? Where one person's trail of associations becomes useful to another?

Here's some audio of the voder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hyI_dM5cGo

The funny thing is that if you look around you can find many examples of exactly the things envisioned here. I think we just need to market them more i.e. the scholarly landscape. The future is already here it's just unevenly distributed.

Think of this as a "story". How we make use of stories is of growing interest to researchers and may play a significant role in skilled performance. As we explain what makes a story useful, is tagging - remembering that a story is an example of something.

This is word for word from chapter 2 of A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story. Watson was shocked that Holmes claimed ignorance of the solar system.

"But the Solar System!" I protested.

"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

Research objects seem to be a very forward looking concept. However, my feeling is that it does not have a real "home" to develop it further, to expose it to the scholarly community, academic institutions, funders, etc. There is a W3C Community Group that is fairly silent. I think that Force11 may have to do some concerted effort to do something like that. ( I say "something" because RO-s may evolve significantly, changing its nature, and we have to embrace that if it happens.)

historical context?

Also, maybe you can restate this so you're not attacking a straw man. I think a stronger transition might be something like: Bornstein's methodology is especially effective for re-reading a poet like Georgia Douglas Johnson. When her poems are isolated and read solely for their linguistic codes, they may seem conventional and even unoriginal. But when read in the context of their bibliographic codes, the poems generate more complex meanings, drawing attention to the intersectional demands of race, class, and gender that she had to negotiate. As an African American female writer...

I believe that the point I make in here is not easy to find but the most of us will face in our lives. The author can get used to her mother's tongue and eventually accept her, but some other people are still shamed of their own tradition and identity, not because they are betrayer of their own family and identity, but because they think that people should look forward and to pursue whatever they want. Usually, if we follow tradition and accept the thing that our parents imposed on us, we have to sacrifice part of our freedom.

I think personalized learning's success will come down to how it is implemented. I agree that we do not want our children to only learn about the things they are interested in, however leveraging their interests as an entry point to engage in other topics would be a sensible tactic to try and keep engagement levels high.

Habeas Corpus Suspension

First, you may be wondering what habeas corpus is. Habeas corpus is defined as a legal action detainees can take to argue against unlawful/illegal imprisonment (“Habeas”). Contrary to popular belief, habeas corpus doesn't actually prevent an arrested individual from being charged with resisting arrest, regardless of the legality of the arrest. That said, Marcus' arrest and consequent detainment is conducted with shaky justification at best, justified by his proximity to the attack; however, due to these charges he is classified as an enemy combatant, a group of individuals whose legal rights are constantly a source of debate. Technically, the Patriot Act authorizes the suspension of habeas corpus for potential affiliates of terrorist organizations or other enemies of the United States. However, following the Supreme Court case Rasul vs. Bush, it was concluded that US courts have the jurisdiction to consider legal appeals on behalf of foreigners detained by the US military, specifically those at Guantanamo Bay (“Rasul”). This ruling established the precedent that one’s ability to claim habeas corpus was not reliant on citizenship, and gifted to those arrested the ability “to challenge their treatment and detention” (Elsea). Following that ruling, there were several advances made to improve habeas review for these detainees; however, under the Obama Administration, the standard has come to mirror those initially held under the Bush administration (Elsea).

“Honest people don’t have anything to hide.”This statement by Severe Haircut pairs really well with this political cartoon, in my opinion:

Source: http://www.cagle.com/tag/habeas-corpus/

Said cartoon is commentary on the Indefinite Detention Bill, amongst whose provisions include those that make it increasingly difficult to transfer detainees out of military custody. However, what also proves controversial about the bill is the fact that it authorizes the US government to detain anyone, including US citizens, who are believed to be in collusion with terrorist organizations (“Explaining”). With the Patriot Act, this was not a concern for the majority of people in the US, as we believed the only ones at risk were those who weren’t citizens; we are protected by the Constitution, or so we thought. Ultimately, the fact that Obama signed this bill means that all of us now face the potential of being in Marcus’ situation. All it takes is for us to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I’m really curious about what other people think about this issue or if you have any other information about the repercussions (if any) of the bill’s signing.

Sources:

• Elsea, Jennifer K., and Michael John Garcia. "Enemy Combatant Detainnes." Congressional Research Service (2010): 1-54. Fas.org. Federation of American Scientists, 3 Feb. 2010. Web.

• "Explaining to a 5-Year Old Why the Indefinite Detention Bill DOES Apply to U.S. Citizens on U.S. Soil." Infowars. Infowars, 12 Dec. 2011. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. http://www.infowars.com/explaining-to-a-5-year-old-why-the-indefinite-detention-bill-does-apply-to-u-s-citizens-on-u-s-soil/.

• "Habeas Corpus." TheFreeDictionary.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/habeas+corpus.

• "Rasul v. Bush." Oyez. Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech, n.d. Nov 28, 2015. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/03-334

Let's add the following to just before the headline, as Imad suggested:

Two years after Ukraine's Euromaidan protests began, we examine a country in turmoil and a people divided.

And then I think we can change the summary to:

They share a long, rich and sometimes bloody history, but today, the relationship between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians may be the greatest casualty of the Ukrainian crisis. We hear their stories.

     I think the author made a really good point as to why an online test should be administered over an in-class final exam. I have to agree that issuing an online exam can limit the test anxiety that one may have when taking the test and it may improve the overall performance done by students to have the final in an environment that it more comfortable for them.  According to American Test Anxieties Association “About 16—20 % of students have test anxiety, making this the most prevalent scholastic impairment in our school today” (American Test Anxieties Association). Therefore to add to the anxiety one may become even more anxious, for instance, if they start to see and hear that there other classmates get up and leave. This may bring on the anxiety or give then the idea that they need to hurry and finish, though which may affect  the overall  performance of that individual.

Also to add, this the whole semester we were gratefully given online Quizzes and I feel as though consistency should be a key factor to administering all assessments including the final. From experience while working at a day care where consistency is given at all times, the children act relatively calm since they know what to consider throughout the day. Although the minute something changes, like the environment or the task, they get all stressed and their performance and abilities are affected. In result, with this being said, consistency is also key to the wellness of performance on the test for all of students.<br> In addition, I as well commute to VCU every day. So having the privilege of take and have the test administered online can be more convenient for me. The stress of arriving late or having car trouble would no longer be a factor. I think we all have experienced this situation of having to be somewhere on time and bad luck happening. Also another great aspect is that our dear professor wouldn’t have to come in during the December weather and she can spend the extra time with her family, do more holiday shopping and the professor can get her coffee from Starbucks. Another thing is if we have an in-class exam, which means the professor will be just sitting in the front chair for hours doing nothing and being bored. I’m also a pretty slow test taker so I will, respectfully; guarantee I would be there the whole LONG exam period time. So if the exam is in-class bring a book perhaps, or coupons to cut out. Lastly, in class, professor shared that she doesn’t do well with authority. Therefore if it happened that the professor is running late the day of the in-class final, she may be at risk due to rushing, which may lead to a higher risk factor of getting another ticket. I personally, sincerely wouldn’t want that to occur which is why if the exam was online, this issue wouldn’t happen. Instead the professor would be home relaxing!

Source American Test Anxieties Association. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2015, from http://www.amtaa.org/

To Awaken we must shift awareness from being within what is observed to being what is observed, all that is.

Our intuition, the feeling that we are more than we think, is what gives us the guts to expand, to step into what appears to be unknown.

Thesis: The explicit and targeted labels that we place on others will manifest in the victim of this insensitive and benighted act, causing these offenses to directly control the way in which they interact with others as well as many other pertinent avenues of their lives.

Thoughts are very powerful. This can be a great advantage, but if we choose to let our thoughts become negative, they will destroy us. #rvc1

This is a very atheistic argument for such an early time. It gives us insight into Greek society - the Greeks didn't think anywhere near as highly of gods as our society does now. This is a valid argument, and it also provides insight into human nature. In this case, Glaucon is denying the existence of god in order to promote his argument. Often, people will reject hypotheses because they want increased freedom of action.

Are economically poor information poor? Does the digital divide affect the homeless and access to information?

To begin, digital divide refers to the gap between those who have access to information (“information haves”) and those who do not (information have nots). Digital divide causes great concerns regarding individual’s and family’s access to information. Much focus from the Government has been placed on providing internet to public school and libraries to limit the digital divide and provide access to digital information for all. According to the author, the literature on digital divide focuses on who has and who doesn’t have access to the Internet, as well as what libraries can do to lessen the divide. However, further research, such as addressing lack of Internet access at home, is needed to focus on digital divide specifically.<br> By gathering information through interviews and participant observation from six family shelters in Indianapolis, five in Seattle, and one family shelter in Greensboro the research focuses on how valuable and useful of an information seeking tool the Internet would be in everyday lives of homeless families This qualitative approach was “undertaken to gather data to answer research questions concerning everyday life information needs,” and “information poverty (p.242).” Twenty-five in depth interviews of homeless parents living in shelters were also conducted to answer the posed research questions. Majority of residents interviewed did not find internet as a major source of information. In fact, most reported that the most useful way to communicate was face to face and then get the information in writing. Overall the information gathered was from social service agencies and clergy, or friends and family. Even though majority of respondents lacked basic computer skills they did not think they were information poor. Most information about resources was shared informally between shelter residents, especially if person sharing did not need that resource for themselves. According to the article, because resources are limited and non-profits fear being overrun with those in need, they keep a lot of their information off the web. Even social service agents found some resource information from other staff members as opposed to online. The study explains six propositions introduced by Chatman’s (1996) research on information insiders and outsiders. Information insiders are those who have been homeless before and understand how to navigate the system, information outsiders are those who are first time homeless. Based on the research, six propositions were suggested as to why people fail to gather information. Proposition 1: Lack of resources rather than lack of information was the issue. Proposition 2: information poverty is partially associated with class distinction and outsiders withhold privileged access to information. Proposition 3: Self-protective behavior affects the information shared. Not everyone wants to share their personal info with resource staff or with other residents. Proposition 4: Secrecy and deception as part of self-protecting can affect information sharing especially with those providing resources. Deception was common when trying to gain access to resources for which informant may not be eligible.

Proposition 5: At times, individuals are more likely to share personal information such as substance abuse or domestic with resource providers because the need for resource assistance outweighed the concern over possible negative consequences (p.246).

Proposition 6: New knowledge will be selectively introduced into the information world of poor people. Shelter residents were more likely to say they are suffering from information overload than lack of information. The study explains that these findings are limited and not generalizable but can be transferable. Further research is needed to determine if shelters provide information access and if they do not, why not. The homeless lack sufficient economic resources such as stable housing but they do not feel that they lack information or access to information. In fact, most feel that they receive more information than necessary and are “tired of people thinking just because we’re poor we ain’t got nothing (p.247).” It will be interesting to see how digital divide and information access changes as new generations, such as children of parents interviewed emerge into more Internet dependent society. For now, the lack of access to digital information does not seem to negatively affect the everyday life of homeless parents. Surprisingly this paper was written in 2013 so a lot more emphasis on Internet would’ve been expected. As the information states, Government has already attempted to address the digital divide by providing Internet access as publicly as possible. The other issue is that some information is withheld from the web due to large need that agencies cannot fulfill. Social Construction Theory indicates that homeless are considered deserving part of the population so these services are provided to them, especially families seeking basic needs such as housing, employment and health resources. There are Government agencies in place that address these needs but not nearly at capacities at which the need exists. Clearly we see the complexity of Social Construction Theory; since homeless are low on power scale, and borderline between deserving and undeserving it’ difficult to provide for them but also as difficult not to provide for them.

Datta, Dayadhvam, and Damyata come from a Hindu fable of thunder. The three are meant to evoke the sound of thunder, and mean Giving, Compassion, and Control.

In the poem, Dayadhvam (Compassion) says that "We think of the key, each in his prison/Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison." What is this "key" that Elliot talks about? It might be sort of an unattainable goal, a pipe-dream that alienates a person in trying to achieve it. By searching for a "key" to unlock something in one's life, one is admitting to feeling trapped, as in in a prison.

Coriolanus was a Roman general who was exiled from Rome after proving an unpopular leader and later rallied an army to enact vengeance upon his former city.

A possible relationship between Coriolanus and the "Key" may have to do with him being largely motivated by personal pride and the belief that he was a more suitable leader for Rome, rather than leave the decision to a popular vote. His ego left him "trapped" in his own prison, and his conquest for revenge was an attempt to find the key.

What is the connection then between exile, pride, and Dayadhvam (Compassion)? Coriolanus in his pursuit of power obviously lacked “compassion,” and this led to his exile, his downfall. A similar instance of self-centered alienation appears in the Part I of the poem: “The Burial of the Dead,” where the speaker says “A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many/….And each man fixed his eyes before his feet./Flowed up the hill and down King William Street.” King William Street is a main financial district in London. These men “fix[ing] their eyes before [their] feet” could reflect those people fixated only on their careers and becoming disconnected from each other. The speaker calls out one of these men named Stetson, making an allusion to the Battle of Mylae which was fought between Rome and Carthage, also referring back to the Roman Coriolanus. The speaker asks Stetson: “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,/Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?” One could think that the speaker is asking if the Roman’s victory at Mylae was “worth it” after all, if the “corpse” that Stetson “planted” will ever “bloom” or grow into anything substantial. Given that corpses don’t do anything except rot in the ground, Stetson and the rest of the crowd can be seen as men pursuing empty goals and becoming exiled from their humanity in the process. The need for Dayadhvam becomes more apparent as they are each “confim[ing] [their] own prison[s]”

These lines again convey the fragmented, ruined aspect of them poem. Eliot uses a fragmented, incoherent form—as well as portraying a fragmented reality—in order to symbolize the crumbling of society. The line, “these fragments I have shored against my ruins” is used at the very end of the poem as a sort of verbal sigh—as if to say, “I will carry on through the rubble and ruins”. Within the poem, Eliot speaks of redemption and rising above the desolation and destruction society will experience, but in the end he tells us that life is inherently fragmented, and suggests that we must accept this.

The line, “Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe,” is in reference to “The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronymo is Mad Again,” an Elizabethan tragedy by Thomas Kyd (written between 1582 and 1592). In this play, Hieronymo is driven near madness after the murder of his son, and he decides to take revenge by killing the murderers. This is made possible when the murderers ask him to supply a play for the court, and he takes this as an opportunity to kill them. He says, “why then ile fit you,” which means that he will accommodate their wishes. Though, he also means to kill his son’s murderers.

The reference to this play may suggest that the speaker in The Waste Land sees himself in the role of Hieronymo, driven to madness over the loss of a senseless death. In Eliot’s case, perhaps it is the loss of humanity that drives him near madness. And perhaps these losses themselves are solitary fragmented moments in the characters’ lives—awful things happen, and we cannot make sense of them, which has a profoundly uncomfortable affect on us. Like Eliot’s use of multiple fragmented languages in The Waste Land (often leaving the reader questioning why he chooses to do so), Hieronymo conducts his play in various languages, leaving the actors puzzled. Eliot may believe that fragments are essential for understanding the essence of the whole—we cannot necessarily connect the fragments of life together in a coherent pattern, but we can experience them all in a random sequence. Even the three lines in this annotation don’t clearly connect to one another—they are fragments, references to various notions and various pieces of literature.

“Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.” means, “give, sympathize, control.” This line in “What The Thunder Said,” is taken from a Hindu fable in the Brihadaranyaka Upianshad, called The Fable of the Meaning of Thunder/The Voice of Thunder. According to the story, thunder makes “Da” sounds, and these three words in Sanskrit are supposed to represent this sound of thunder. One theory proposes that Eliot suggests that the thunder will give us the rainwater we need to help replenish our dead wasteland of a world. “Give, Sympathize, Control,” may be Eliot’s final messages/commands/lessons to his readers. He has shown us through many fragments the ailments of man and suggests a change needs to be made.

Perhaps, Eliot ends this dismal poem with a chance of hope, telling us that no matter how much death and destruction the world faces there is always a chance at redemption. Or, perhaps these fragmented last lines—that possibly have no connection to each other—cannot be taken as a true “ending” to the poem. If we think of the entire poem as many fragments, can there be an "ending" an all? Perhaps it is just another fragment, another instance of intertextuality. Hieronymo definitely takes control, but does he show sympathy? Are we left with his “madness,” a feeling of despair, and the meaninglessness of life, yet a possible redemption? Do we even need to make a connection between these last three lines, or is that the point of the fragmentation—we cannot connect everything, but we can gather many separate meanings. We may simply take away a general tone or just an overall reading experience. These three lines don’t seem connected to each other, but they do share a similar fragmented “vibe,” it seems.

Eliot’s many instances of intertextuality, fragments, stories that don’t connect, relate to the overall idea of a land laid to waste, an apocalyptic, destroyed world where only bits and pieces remain. The fragments might also relate to a sort of dialogism—though the instances of intertextuality aren’t directly connected, Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism says, in a very basic form, that every text is affected by the texts that came before it, and also every text in the future affects all texts from the past. Perhaps this jumbled, fragmented mess of a poem, in part, plays with the idea that although things do not seem connected everything matters. We can never read the same text the same way twice, and our reading of The Waste Land will affect how we view the texts that it references. So despite the disconnected fragments, there is a way that the various fragmented pieces affect one another.

Song: Maithreem Bhajat (Song meaning: Wiki)

The three D's (Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata), in Sanskrit, mean giving, compassion, and self-control. The title of this section is "What the Thunder Said." The thunder is telling the reader something, perhaps it is this: follow the guidelines of the three D's and redemption will come. These commanded virtues, juxtaposed with the rain that will surely come once the thunder has said what it came to say, seem to offer reprieve from the harshness of the previous sections of the poem. Either it's the calm before the storm or Eliot is giving the reader a chance at peace. In fact, shanti, in Indian, means bliss or peace, so perhaps it is bliss that will come. Either way, ending the poem in this way, using non-English, non-European language is very interesting. Eliot is giving voice to the other, yet it is still un-translated. Is there a reason why Eliot chose to not translate or elaborate these phrases from Hinduism? Indra is the Hindu thunder deity, he is an amalgam of Eastern and Western traditions, as he is modeled from Western gods, like Thor. In the same breath, Eliot is giving us what the thunder is saying, but deeper context still. After all, the sound of thunder only precedes the wash of rains.

So, to end the poem, Eliot gives three more Hindi prayers: Peace, Peace, Peace. And like that, whether soldiers from The Great War or survivors in its wake, beauty may come and bliss may be found. I think at this point, perhaps Eliot has renounced Christian faith or is open to others. This is shown throughout the poem, but in particular, lines 386-7, "Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel/There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home." There is nothing in it for him, only graves to remind him of tragedy. Eliot may not only be giving voice to the other, but also becoming the other. We see right from the beginning, with the Greek, Latin, other languages throughout the poem, that Eliot is not translating these words, but he is heralding his own otherness by bringing these words to light. He's made them important. By ending the poem this way, I think Eliot is asserting these prayers seriously, with strictness and belief. Bliss transcends awareness.

In just the opening five words to Part III, “The Fire Sermon,” the speaker shatters at once our natural inclination to romanticize waterways as self-sustaining and enduring ecosystems.

(The River Thames has a rich history of being depicted this way in literature. For example, in the lines that end this portion Eliot recites the line “Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song” from “Prothalamion,” by Edmund Spenser; another example that comes to mind is Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, in which Marlow finds great peace and serenity while on the same river.)

With bitter and mournful nostalgia, such portrayals of the river are juxtaposed, as we are given a dose of sad reality when reminded of the river’s impermanence: for in “tent” we think of portable and temporary shelter or canopy. With “broken,” we gain an understanding that the once brimming with life ecosystem in and around the river is now at death’s door, that life is not unfolding as it should and as it once did. Life itself, not just the “last finger of leaf,” is wilting. In this way, the river will soon be just another causality of “The Wasteland.”

What follows in “the last fingers of leaf / Clutch and sink into the wet bank” further suggests that these are the last vestiges of green, lush, leafy life. With the sense that the canopy is fading fast overhead, we then zoom out to see an even more barren and lifeless landscape then first imagined: “The wind / Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.” This paints a picture of a cold and desolate place with little to no sign of life: there is no-one to hear the wind, not even the nymphs. Young, beautiful, and full of life, the departure of these divine spirits suggests that the magic of past literary eras has been forced out as well. However, perhaps this truth is intimated as apropos for a world post WWI -- the ornate literary conventions of the past will no longer suffice for a world in tatters. Such literary traditions will fail to get at the bitter truths. In another context in another poem, “departed” may entail a leave of absence. But not here — the nymphs are dead, rotting away in “The Wasteland.”

I think this kind of speaks to the multi-sited idea of horizontal forms of learning. It's not that you move from A to B and then you're done, it's not so "planned." You may move from A to G to B back to A and then to J and on and on.

Being is all of Life, Conscious Being is the subjective experience of Being.

It is not easy to stay in Conscious Being because it is not a head trip. It requires trust of what you theoretically know.

With trust you will be able to let go of control - to allow. A shift happens when you are able to do this and you will be seeing from the Center of your Being.

This seems to be a crucial piece of multi-sited work. I think this could apply to the case of the non-drinking alcoholics, because there is so much to this identity and the community of practice that occurs as activity systems outside of their "safe space" in AA meetings. Although maybe not as visible as the activity in AA meetings, daily activities, interactions, motivations are all linked to and inform the identity practice of being a non-drinking alcoholic

This passage really spoke to me because it frames how learning works in a really powerful way.

Too often, we think of learning as transmission - I need to pass on my worldview/values to the next generation, otherwise my culture may not survive - but what the authors here (and all of the readings this semester) seem to be getting at is a more complex view of how people learn through participation and experience. An educator can't tell someone what to learn, they need to learn it for themselves. It's the educator's job to guide the learning, but ultimately real learning only happens when the learner sees the relevance for him/herself and their own life.

Showing that there are other ways that we experience learning in the world, besides the framework of vertical acquisition, is really inspiring and motivating for me.

Human life can be lost due to misinterpretation. Today’s police officers are responding to calls based on little amounts of information which may cause them to respond more quickly before accessing the situation and options available.

Here we can see that police officers can determine to use deadly force when they see fit with no clear regulation. I think many individuals believe that an individual can be stopped without being terminated and warnings should be given. If this is how they are trained and trained to kill then they need to be trained to save that individuals life as well in case of misinterpretation.

rvc#190

I like this point and connection you made on how the reason why relationships rule our lives is because our biological purpose and function is to reproduce. But not only do we reproduce, we do several other things that make relationships messy, as you said. Not only does the scene with the Grandparents mean multiple things are bound to occur but this moves the book forward and keeps us guessing on what is going to happen next. Asking the question, does love outweigh the outfall of relations we have with people and I think it all depends on the person you ask and how important those relationships are to that specific person.

I think this concept of a text "resisting" the reader or "yielding" to the reader is quite interesting. I wonder if we think that reading a book with what is characterized here as non-trivial effort (eyes moving across page, turning page) is inherent to the medium or trained behavior. In other words, do we find reading a codex to be trivial effort and traversing a hypertext fiction non-trivial effort because one really is easier to do than the other, or because we have been trained throughout our lifetimes on how to approach print codex?

I am leaning towards the latter; I think of young children and babies who can figure out how to use iPhones before they can learn to read. I also think that as the "norm" shifts, and more and more kids grow up experience narrative and storytelling thru video games and hypertext fictions, our notions of what constitutes non-trivial and trivial will change. The singular focus and dedication needed to read a codex may likely become a struggle for a generation that grows up experiencing digital media, rather than print media, as the norm.

blah blah blah?

UGH! I ain't gonna read his dang reasons.

What are they talking about? Explain please.

The first claim is certainly not very controversial -- the idea that the poses, gestures, and physicality of visitors shapes the "social" component of meaning making. I think what is far more interesting is the assertion that it affects the "psychological processes on the intramental plane" -- that is, these poses affect how we construct meaning individually.

Reminds me of when Jasmine spoke to one of my classes last semester, and there was some discussion about teaching kids math when they are sitting still in a classroom. I could be remembering this wrong, but she made the point that no matter what, your body was always doing something, even if that something was sitting. She emphasized that we couldn't simply discount what the body of a learner was doing. Seems that Steier is making that precise point.

I think that the digital media is becoming over powering and controlling. Newspapers as we know it may complete become to an end in the future.

I think more often than not, we misinterpret situations based on how one person behaves or acts and completely disregard the circumstances leading up to it. I realized this when we were trying to sort out the entanglement of all the events and people in the first six chapters of Dawn. When you isolate an event, it may look one way, but when you dissect it and think about what caused that to happen, and what happened as a result of the main event, it is clear that a single snapshot is not enough to explain anything.

I think that you really made such an interesting point in this post. You found a way to comment on the human, and pointed something out that I have never really thought of. I did realize that The Will doesn’t seem entirely bad, but I have never thought about how we tend to place people in large separate boxes. But it makes me think of another potential example of this. People tend to categorize each other as Republican or Democrat, and if the person is in opposition to your own viewpoint, you automatically put them in a separate box clumped with their party. However, there are people who may be a member of a certain party and not necessarily agree with all of that party’s viewpoints.

Overall I think this is a good thing. However there can be negative consequences. Many times we are amused and entertained by memes for their humor, artwork, etc but not always the message behind them. When using memes for political or social movements we need to make sure that the message behind the meme is something we agree with and not just the overall appeal of the meme.

Overall I think this is a good thing. However there can be negative consequences. Many times we are amused and entertained by memes for their humor, artwork, etc but not always the message behind them. When using memes for political or social movements we need to make sure that the message behind the meme is something we agree with and not just the overall appeal of the meme.

Hospitable databases may, in fact, precondition narratives. Pretend with me for a moment. When we think about narratives, there is no single narrative that exists as "empirical" proof of the existence of God. However, when we think about database, the sheer number of "God" narratives that exist are a type of empirical "proof" of God's existence.

Well the definition of e-lit is quite determined in this sentence. - However in order to get used to this saavy app (hypothesis platform) I'm going to descrive with my own words what I got from this definition-

Apparently e-lit has to do with the literary aspects and connections made between several interactions of liteature and technology (for what I get, standard books may also apply here) where sometimes it may ne regaldless of human intervention.

Also, I think this has to do with the "computing" devices, within mechanisms and systems that may be also the way we as humans construct reallity and other things though language and literature. This reminds me of some Foucault's theory about how a single word may be considered as a discoursive device in a complex mechanism interacting with several systems in a society o so...

What's really interesting is that the human intervention may not be required after all to consider the creation and acknowledgment of a literary work.

I really like this idea, it's very hopeful I think!

Root of the problem...

I know this is a largely highlighted portion of the opinion but I think it is all leading to the same point and would like someone to clarify for me what it says. Do these two passages say that it is not right for the State of Maryland to tax the federal government (a federal bank) because it is just one state in the Union and that doing so gives too much power over the government that it holds allegiance too in regards to representation of the entire Union/people? Or do these passages suggest that the power to tax the federal government enables the ability to weaken or destroy the federal government and is therefore an abuse of power the states should not have?

I think we may have to coin a new term to disambiguate literature such as books and stories in digital form from lit that depends on digital creation and propagation, i.e., cannot be created or propagated wihtout electronic devices.

Movement during meditation is okay...

We may still be in that transition, but it sounds like it’s felt more as a set of opportunities than as a crisis. At least by some actors. Can’t help but think about digital writing, as a longterm transition. Most authors now write digitally, one might assume, but few are fully cognizant of what this shift implies.

Algernon comes in using Jack's pseudonym and takes him off guard and its funny seeing the tables turned on him

Internet Commons

European Parliament conference on “Internet as a Commons: Public Space in the Digital Age”, organised in cooperation with Commons Network and Heinrich Böll Foundation. Discussing how to re-decentralize and reclaim the Internet for all.

[ Prologue ]

The Internet as a whole has become an important part of our global public sphere. Internet provides access to a wealth of information and knowledge, and the possibility to participate, create and communicate. This public space made up of internet infrastructures is increasingly threatened from two sides; by the centralization and commercialization through the dominant positions held by giant telecom and Internet companies, as well as by an increasing trend in state regulation and censorship of the net. This poses important questions about how we choose to organize and regulate our digital societies, and how Internet governance models can be developed and implemented to ensure fair and democratic participation.

When it comes to the future of the Internet, a key discussion is one of infrastructures; who owns, runs and controls them. The question of regulation, and who oversees the regulators, is made complicated by the transnational nature of the net.

As much as people expect a broadly and equitably accessible Internet open to diversity, we are, slowly but surely, moving away from it. Monopolization of Internet infrastructures and services by companies such as Facebook and Google has gone hand in hand with privacy intrusions, surveillance and the unbounded use of personal data for commercial gain. As we all interact in these centralized commercial platforms that monetize our actions we see an effective enclosure and manipulation of our public spaces. Decentralization and democratization of the Internet infrastructure and activities is essential to keep a free, open and democratic Internet for all to enjoy equitably. But can the “small is beautiful”-idea be compatible with the building of state-of-the-art successful infrastructure in the future?

The debates around net neutrality, infrastructure neutrality and Internet monopolies reflect the important choices that are to be made. It is essential the EU formulates a comprehensive vision on the internet that addresses the protection of civil liberties such as free speech and privacy, but also the growing commercialization of our digital public spaces and the commodification of personal data with the effect of the market encroaching on all aspects of our daily lives. Only then can it make relevant interventions regarding the Internet and its governance.

Let´s discuss how to re-decentralize and reclaim the Internet for all.

[ Introduction ]

Opening remarks from Benkler & Bloemen:

2:16 Yochai Benkler (Harvard Professor)

The two major challenges of 21st Century Capitalism are the result of the impact of increasing well-being and welfare throughout the globe. The impact on the natural environment and the social environment.

And while the last forty years has seen a steady struggle to increase understanding of the threat to the natural environment. We've actually seen over the last forty years a retreat in the understanding of the impact on the social environment.

Throughout the industrialised world in particular, we've seen increased inequality and a series of ideas around Neoliberalism, initially finding root in the United States and the United Kingdom, then expanding to liberalisation in Europe and ultimately translating into the Washington consensus as a core development policy.

These were anchored in a set of ideas, we largely think of as Neoliberalism, that argued that uncertainty and complexity makes centralised economic planning impossible, and so prices and decentralised decisions in markets by individuals will produce good information.

They modelled universal rationality as self-interested, self-maximising human behaviour. They understood collective behaviour as always failing, always corrupting into illegitimate power. And that then meant that deregulation and freeing of markets from social and legal controls were the way to increase both welfare and liberty.

What we've seen in the last twenty-five years is that the idea of the Commons is beginning to offer a framework, to respond to these deeply corrosive ideas, and begin to allow us to create frameworks that teach us how we can increase human welfare, improve the human condition, but without undermining the social relations in the way that has been so corrosive for the last forty years.

Three schools of the Commons: The work that came out Elinor Ostrom's work and the Ostrom School, the Global Commons work coming out of the environmental movement, and what's most relevant to us here in today's meeting, is the Internet Commons.

The thing that became clear with the Internet Commons, is that even at the heart of the most advanced economies, at the cutting edge of technology and in the areas of greatest economic growth and innovation, commons are at the very heart.

From the very Internet engineering task force that created the internet protocols, through the World Wide Web, to core infrastructure like spectrum commons like WiFi or software, all the way to this great knowledge facility of Wikipedia.

We've seen commons work, we've seen how they work, we've seen their limitations, we've been able to learn how to make them operate and we continue to learn about them. But from the mentally, they offer existence proof that there is another way.

The past quarter century of commons, both on and offline, has taught us that people can affectively act collectively to govern their own utilisation of resources. They've taught us with many details that people respond to diverse motivations and that economic utility is valuable, but it's only part of a range of social emotional and rational ethical commitments.

Property and markets vs State planning and ownership, don't exhaust the capabilities, we live with a much more diverse set of ways of organising economic production, and in particular voluntaristic actions in commons, can support growth, can support innovation, can be more efficient, while at the same time being sustainable and socially more integrated.

At a higher level of abstraction we have come to understand that production and resource management are socially embedded activities, social embededness is not something from which we need to free markets, it instead something we need to achieve.

Freedom is self-governance, individual and collective, not free choice in the market, and property based market as we saw in copyright and patents, as we saw in a variety of our other areas, can actually undermine freedom in both of these senses.

So what are we to do?

Our experience of Internet Commons tells us, that three major shifts needs to happen before the 21st century capitalism challenge can be answered in a socially sustainable way.

We need to increase our use of peer cooperativism. Taking the experience we've garnered over the last fifteen years with commons based peer production and translating into a way that expanded to ever larger propositions of provisioning, so that it can provide a practical anchor and a normative anchor to material production in the market.

We also cannot give up on socially embedded market production, there is no one right path to market production, there is genuine room for ethical choice, not only on the environmental side, not only on the rights side in terms of human rights, but also on the side of economic equality and social sustainability.

And finally, we need to turn our political understanding to one that has peer pragmatism, that understands the limitations of the traditional State, while it also understands the limitations of the Market. That builds on our experience in self-governing communities like Wikipedia, with the overlapping and nested relationship, with the distinct continued ethical commitment of Citizens to their practices. With continuous challenging, but also with distribution of power to much more local bases, to form a new political theory- based in our commons based practices, of our relations as Citizens and the State.

So however important a particular part of the Internet Commons may be from a practical level, at the level of ideas, our experience in Internet Commons over the last quarter of the century, is beginning to teach us how to shape Capitalism for the 21st Century, so that is not only sustainable from the natural environment perspective, but that it is also embedded and supportive of it's social environment.

9:25 Sophie Bloemen (Commons Network)

The Commons is a perspective that looks at stewardship, equitable access and sustainability, and it looks at the collective good beyond individual rights exclusively. So instead of conceiving of Society as a collection of atomised individuals, principally living as consumers, Commons points to the reality of people's lives being deeply embedded in social relationships- communities, histories, traditions.

So this perspective is very helpful when conceiving of the Internet as a public space, as a common good, and how we might want to organise this public space. What kind of infrastructure is provided and who controls the infrastructure. This is what it insists on, on the protection of the Internet as a public space, accessible to everyone. So just like a bridge or street, it's an infrastructure, and it must be controlled and managed in the interests of Citizens.

The central issue of the debate on net neutrality, has also been will it be continue to be managed as a mixed use of commons, or will discriminatory tiers of service transform the internet to a predominately commercial system, for production and distribution.

So the key questions are: Who controls the infrastructure? What are the terms and conditions under which the public gets access? and this has far reaching implications for our society.

The domination of the Internet by several large actors raises important policy questions, about how to manage it. The thwarting of net neutrality rules in Europe just suggests just how vulnerable the open internet really is and it's therefore necessary for policy makers to have a real vision that acknowledges the gravity of these issues.

It was reading professor Benkler's book 'Wealth of Networks' years ago, that give me enlightened research, key insights, why we are and how we are living in a time of deep economic change, change of the modes of production, due to digital technologies, and what the role of social peer production can be, might be.

But also, that it's not a given in which direction we will go. It's not pre-determined, we have to give it a certain shape.

What he also alluded to now is that, our institutional frameworks to a certain extent, reflect outdated conceptions of human agency. The idea of the rational individual who is just out there to increase his material gain through rational calculation. We create and we share because of curiosity, because of social connectedness, because of psychological well-being, there is an element of cooperation and human reciprocity there as well.

So this human capability has really been shown or has really been brought out by the Internet, by digital technology, but it's also taking place, these forms of cooperation and collective action, are also taking shape offline; lots of commoning initiatives, community gardening, co-housing, ethical financing.

So to go back to these institutional frameworks, how can we as professor Benkler said, he named these three things, how can we increase the use of peer cooperativism, and how can we make sure there's a shift towards socially embedded market productions where there's self-governance as well, which is community based. The third point he made is to enhance the political understanding of these commons based practices that are beyond the Market and beyond the State, and I guess that's partly what we're doing here, enhancing this political understanding.

So how do we need to tweak the institutional frameworks, what do we have to take away, what do we have to add? and that's also why in the analysis in our paper 'A Commons Perspective on European Knowledge Policy' we discuss this and we talk about copyright legislation and net neutrality and european positions at the world intellectual property organisation, which are all relevant to this.

What kind of sharing economy do we want, do we want a democratised one where we empower everyone to be a producer, or are most of us still consumers in this economy. Are we producers just in the sense that we share our data, and all our actions online and offline are commodified, we pay with our privacy to be part of it.

So in order to get a good grip on where we should go, how to go ahead, we should take a step back. Take a step back and see what kind of society we would like.

And a key question is: How can we create a structural environment that enables society to fully reap the benefits of knowledge sharing and collaborative production, in a way that's also socially sustainable?

And what could the role of EU be? At this moment, the European parliament is considering a new copyright framework, there's a digital single market strategy, there's the data regulations, lots of things going on. So the next panels will set out some big ideas, and will also give some very practical examples of people engaging with building these peer to peer networks or other initiatives, that will make more concrete what we are talking about.

I don't know how to feel about the internet knowing everything I search for and every website I go on. At first when it started happening I thought it was pretty cool, but then as time went on and more and more websites had advertisements from my recent online shopping spree, I started to get a little creeped out. How does Google even know where we're located? It's kind of scary to to think that everything you do can be traced, even if you're logged out.

The way we use street names now is more so for cognitive mapping rather than using the name to remember the value it holds or what it represents. I think this is very true, that we rarely think of a street name and wonder why it is so, it is usually just a part of an intinerary. e.g. subway stops

Steps to heroism

from Becker's point of view there may be no curriculum - or we could think of it as a "learning curriculum," in the way Lave & Wenger describe

During this whole poem, Barbauld is referencing many different divinities from many different cultures as well as many different references to the solar system. In this particular part of the poem, Barbauld is talking about an embryo system and unkindled suns. She is referencing to stars that have not been born yet within the solar system. When thinking about that, she can then think about how there may be an embryo God within herself that has not been born yet. She has a divine, unborn spirit inside of her that she hasn't found yet. However, once she enters these types of thoughts, she forces herself to take a step back. She has realized that her meditation has possibly gone too far. God is divine, and we maybe shouldn't be thinking about such divine figures within ourselves.

I really like that you choose to point this out. So often older generations or some clickbait article wants to point out how we don't talk with each other as much and that we're turning away from meeting in person and just talking. People will always be stuck in their way of doing things and when something comes and changes the paradigm, they're up in arms. When the printing press was created, were people in an uproar that we'd rather stick our head in a book than talk to someone else? I think that we have to look at what the internet, specifically, allows us to do. It allows the dissemination of knowledge at an unrivaled rate throughout history, it allows collaboration on a unmatched scale, and it allows us to be in a million different places around the world without physically being there. Like you said, our electronics are extensions of us, they do not define us (yet), and they certainly aren't who we are. Great post and great job showing both sides of the argument.

In this paragraph Jackson is saying that although they are taking away the Indian's land, because they bought the land the Indians and America can stay on good terms. its also saying that the Indians can stay in the states if they want but they are not part of the government and that America sees no reason to make them apart of the government. In the second paragraph Jackson is telling the Americans to let the Indians know that this is for their own good. In truth this passage shows that Jackson is a liar and even though he saying that its for the Indians own good and that they can stay if they want he is really just kicking them out and gaining the help of the Americans to make the Indians lives harder until they leave.

I think your intro is great. It is very original and captivating. However, intros are best kept a little bit shorter. You could consider combining these sentences, which are saying similar things, in order to shorten your intro.

I like Andrew's use of quotes around public, because it isn't truly the public who is making these decisions. It is specialized interest groups and policy makers driven by either ideology and/or special interest groups (see Walker, Wisconsin). In this light, I think we need to ask what needs does it serve for those who are in decision making positions. Given that many of them make their decisions for financial gain, I would argue that these definitions of literacy probably serve their financial gain – Pearson loved the unrolling of the new CCLS it wiped clean and re-opened for profiteering an entire textbook market (print and online) that had previously been saturated. I think they would be strong advocates for this change in the definition of minimum literacy.

At the same, and possibly contradictory, time, given the polarization, fragmentation and siloing of discourse because of online communication modes, we legitimately need new definitions of literacy. Definitions that address the unique needs of these new modes, as well as the universal needs of human communication and societal needs for functional cohesion. I think that the CCLS push towards argument tries to address some of these needs. In new modes of communication where the loudest, most media savvy voices gain followings and power, critical judgment of argument and evidentiary reasoning are desperately needed.

How do we reconcile these ideas? Why does the public seem to support these definitions of literacy? See Myers last chapter about parental resistance to literacy practices. (298-9)

"There appear to be social class differences..."

What do we make of the fact that we have now entered a social class discrepancy greater than any other time in the history of the U.S.?

A similar push towards a more regressive model happened at the turn of the 20th century when "Cubberly won out," and Haley, the "first national organizer of the newly established American Federation of Teachers, warned that creating schools structured like factories could shift expertise in teaching away from teachers, where it was anchored during recitation literacy, to the new administrators and the nonteaching bureaucrats of Cubberly's model of schooling" (85). This has amazing parallels to what we have seen over the last 15 years. The question I have is why did Cubberly win out?

I think that David Bartholomae's argument may have relevance in some of our current experiences – the publishing industry benefits from the analytic/decoding model's notions of "objectivity." It is much easier for the publishing industry to produce texts and assessments that cleave to the appearance of 'objectivity' without having to deal with social-political questions. It is easier to sell books and tests when you aren't dealing with topics and questions of "the riots in African American communities in the 1960s" (92) or in 2015.

We also see Hirsch's ideas about composition at play in this. Testing companies prefer definitions of literacy that allow for easily assessable writing. "Our results to date suggest that an assessor can accurately score relative readability after a few days of practice" (94). If students are taught to write in ways that rely on implied meaning, silences, and spaces of ambiguity, College Board is going to have a hell of a time scoring their essays. They, and other testing companies (I'm looking at you Pearson), aren't going to let these complications get in the way of their profits without a fight (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-18/not-for-profit-college-board-getting-rich-as-fees-hit-students). My apologies to my friends at College Board and Pearson.

, or the complexities of meaning and interpretation that are part of the critical/transformational model. Anything that strongly benefits the publishing industry is going to automatically become educationally beneficial in the eyes of the people making educational policy decisions.

Vannevar's humanitarian optimism carried forward through Licklider, Engelbart, and others for a generation beyond him - why has it faded from attention in today's computing world?

See Wikipedia article on the speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We're still trying to standardize information and concepts so we can do this comprehensively. It is conceptually simple but difficult in practice, at least with current technologies.

Particularly in the modern age of sensors. Sorry "girls".

Google glass?

Did not imagine digital but other predictions are not bad.

This is something we have to keep in mind when developing technology, particularly in academia. It's not just the technology, but whether it can be put into production in a cost effective and useful manner. And just because the time is not right now, doesn't mean that as capacities change, it can't be done eventually.

It kind of blows me mind that the end of WWII is the context for these early dreams of the Internet. Is it the hope experienced in patriotic collaboration toward technological innovation? That's what Bush seems to acknowledge explicitly. It's a techno-militaristic union that haunts us to this day (#prism). But I wonder too if it's the precarious of knowledge, or perhaps the destructiveness of knowledge, that also inspires Bush...

It's the blazing of these "associative trails" that for me is the great potential of hypothes.is. But the cairns need to be better discoverable. If it weren't for Twitter I would never have returned to this document today. Hypothesis needs to have its own amplification systems. #letmefollowthispage

But assuming we can tell what is inconsequential and what is significant without the passage of time is a little arrogant.

And in 2015, they are now another generation older. Or is it two? But now we are in a position to do something about it. FORCE11 Manifesto

But now we really are bogged down by specialization. Honest. But somehow we progress anyway.

But perhaps the current "war" on disease does require them to leave the old paths.

Who will perform those computations? Those in power presumably?

Who would, or who should? Who gets to decide how we reshape humanity? The masters of war?

So it's not just limited to the individual, but you can see other people's trails. It is social. This seems like a key insight as well.

Not a bad user story, all things considered.

Isn't the association a type of index though, really?

The use of logic here is also interesting. Is knowledge actually grounded in logic? Didn't Wittgenstein free us of this delusion?

It's very strange how humans, or "girls" are essentially made part of the machine here.

This distinction seems particularly significant.

Dude, stop it already!

Ouch. C'mon Vannevar!

Some people do this now, but they seem to be a minority.

So true.

Is it even possible to think what this factor is for today's digital storage technologies?

It would be, and is!

Valuable ideas often appear before they are viable. But they must be discoverable when the environment changes in ways that make the idea more tractable.

This makes me wonder if that's where we still are. Connecting documents/information with people when they need it is still a huge challenge. Although being able to go to Google to ask a question on your phone is a huge advantage for those who have questions that are amenable and the device to ask it.

The now familiar information overload.

the atomic bomb, among others.

This line seems to suggest there is a helplessness in information. Like watching the news, what is the point of knowing there there are terrible things happening in other parts of the world, as we sit on our butts watching on our flat screen TV? Is it beneficial to be informed? The speaker suggests that nay-sayers may not think so, and that these are the same people who do not value libraries or see the value in knowledge.

"Truth statements" are what we call in rhetoric "common places." Common places are great to springboard a discussion because they give us common ground to start from while questioning the notion of common ground from the start. Think of common places as things we might be inclined to accept without explanation (e.g. "common sense," etc.)

I think that Alyssa makes a good point here. I agree that Spider seems to be the least religious person and that his name is very contradictory. I also think that the fact that Spider Jerusalem is the way he is could be to serve as a representation of our society today. Spider’s character could symbolize the kind of people we are becoming. The author maybe exaggerated Spider’s crude and vulgar tendencies to show the readers what we may become in the future if we continue to simply dress up at Jesus and pretend to be kind people but continue to sin. This idea may be a stretch but Alyssa’s analysis made me think that Spider’s character may have a bigger meaning.

If we apply this to the classroom, we could think of different content spaces as subjects, however when we think in terms of how people interact with the space, those processes may seem similar despite content area.

I do not think a single person I know who has read any amount of critical theory or even agreed with it would really think that people would ascribe universal values onto words and not understand that value systems are historically and socially inflected. They might, as do Adorno and Horkheimer, consider the holocaust to be an absolute moral evil, but if that's something that Lyotard is here supposed to free us from, I don't quite know what we gain.

I agree with the conclusion that hierarchies and letting users put things in places is good, but I want to posit a more nuanced explanation than "we are set in our ways".

I think sometimes we don't remember what exactly it is we're looking for. We may not have a word, or a name, or date. But if we put it some place in particular we can find it spatially rather than linguistically.

This is why I think labels are superior to hierarchies. When we transcend the limitations of physical space would should not throw out space, but we should throw away the constraints of 3D space with its contiguous, volumetric forms. Labels let you put things in as many places as you like. Labels can, too, be hierarchical.

The problem with the current crop of systems that eschew hierarchy is that they replace it with a text box.

One could make the argument that smart indexing is just automatic labeling, but I think there's a memory function in having created the labels oneself.

I'd like to see systems that experiment with more ways to fold space. Shortcuts are like wormholes. Maybe we should have common actions for creating bi-directional ones. On mobile devices I think we should take more advantage of zooming and z-planes.

it is important to think about why words are spelt the way they are.

This is why I think it is important for full participation, regardless of your own role in the organization, as we all bring different skill sets, areas of focus, interests, and so forth.

It is a trick of the language to think of humankind as a unitary "we." We are not one. We are diverse groups of people attempting to build different sorts of communities, on Earth and off. Pilgrims left for America and founded a nation that changed how state and religion interacted. Likewise, groups from earth may leave certain problems behind, even as they encounter others.

It's true, though! Annotation (as much as hyperlinking) is part of what shaped the metaphor of "the Web" for the Internet. As Vannevar Bush wrote in "As We May Think" in 1945:

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.

This assumes humans are not organized to maximize and seek out different affordances and tools. Maybe the assemblage that emerges is the most logical.

I refer then of course to verbocentric definitions of reading as Leander & Rowe put reading in quotes. I do think you can read any encoded text. I draw a line there between universal sign systems and what we read in nature versus texts encoded through human activity.

What is "the essence of an education"?

Accidental Data Recognitions

@KenNeumiester suggested in this tweet:

@dbarthjones intentional re-identification is different from accidental re-identification. accidents frequent. intention is hard.

— Ken Neumeister (@KenNeumeister) March 29, 2015

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that accidental data re-identifications occur frequently. His comment was surprising to me because I've never experienced an accidental or "spontaneous" data re-identification in 25 years of working on health data de-identification. Our twitter exchange about this was interesting and I learned that his take on this may differ from mine because he apparently works in a different data domain than I do, but it started me thinking.

Part of the reason for my having never encountered a single spontaneous re-identification in over two decades of opportunity for this to happen might be that I'd ended my experience providing patient care in a clinical setting before I began working in the area of data de-identification. I don't doubt that spontaneous health data re-identifications might occasionally occur for clinicians who work with de-identified data for patients that they've personally seen (or maybe even with their recognizing patients that have been treated in the units/offices where they work).

A couple of points are probably worth mentioning though about such spontaneous clinical environment data "re-identifications". First, if they occur, they would typically only impact a single person and certainly not any large numbers of persons. In any large healthcare data set this should presumably constitute a very small re-identification risk among the total number of persons at risk of re-identification. Secondly, and more importantly, I not really sure we should consider such spontaneous events as "re-identifications". I'd propose that "spontaneous data recognitions" would be a more illuminating name for such events.

Why does the distinction I'm making matter? Well, because it speaks to both the real source of potential privacy concern and the likelihood of privacy harms resulting from such an event. The de-identified data isn't the source of the critical information needed to enable possible privacy concerns here. The knowledge of a patient's details enabling a spontaneous recognition of the patient within a de-identified data set hasn't come from the data set -- it comes from external information that the data viewer already possessed independent of the data.

Sure, on occasion we might suppose that the data "recognizer" might also learn something new about the patient from the data which wasn't already known to them. But with respect to the possibility of resulting privacy harms from such events, we need to remind ourselves that the likelihood of the newly revealed information being of great sensitivity or otherwise capable of producing possible privacy harms for the patient will likely be a comparatively rare occurrence.This is because it will have most likely have been the case that the patient was recognizable primarily due to their having some atypical / rare characteristics enabling their spontaneous recognition. There might be additional info within the data that the recognizer didn't already know, but initial recognitions will be rare events, and additional revelations resulting in privacy harms will be rarer still. This is basic probabilistic reasoning (in spite of the problem that even very smart people will sometimes avoid "doing the math" if they've been poked with a scary scenario first). See http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2014/11/21/the-antidote-for-anecdata-a-little-science-can-separate-data-privacy-facts-from-folklore/

But the probabilistic reality remains that the result of a final outcome B stemming from an initial rare event A, which then can lead to yet another rare event (or even moderately frequent) event B, yields only rarer still occurrences of event B.

We can add to this probabilistic assurance that because, in general (at least for this context of spontaneous health data recognitions) having sufficiently detailed knowledge that a person has atypical characteristics (or a rare medical condition) which could enable their spontaneous recognition usually comes from having already been placed in a general position of trust with respect to the participating in the patient's care, or otherwise having already had some sort of trusted relationship with the patient.

So in the same way the we generally trust doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers to with our personal health information, the same trust - and ethics that enable such trust - should be rightly expected to be in place for sensitive information revealed through spontaneous medical care data recognition events.

The very same reasoning also generally applies even for the context of non-medically trained personnel.(statisticians, data analysts, etc.) accessing de-identified medical data. With properly de-identified data, spontaneous data recognitions are only likely to occur extremely rarely for those cases where there isn't already some sort of existing relationship with the person being recognized that enabled the detailed knowledge required to realize the recognition.

Yes, on extremely rare occasions, statisticians and data analysts, might spontaneously recognize their family members, neighbors, or workplace friends/ acquaintances or even themselves within properly de-identified health data, but the number of people for they will know sufficient details to allow this to occur will be very small in any large and properly de-identified data set. And when this does rarely occur, resultant privacy harms will likely also be rare because, in general, the knowledge of the details through which a spontaneous re-identification could occur will be have been obtained through having an existing relationship with the individual who has been recognized. Put in statistical terms, we are helped in this specific context of spontaneous recognitions by the fact that knowledge of our intimate details that are needed to enable such recognitions is typically correlated with having some sort of trust relationship with us.

I'd further argue though that we should also be supplementing these inherently probabilistic protections by consistently providing ethical training and mentorship to all personnel who access de-identified medical data. In my training as an HIV epidemiologist, I received plenty of meaningful mentorship about privacy ethics, but had admittedly little course-based training on these issues. This is an area where we can and should do more.

However, I think it's helpful to recognize that although accidental or spontaneous re-identification might occur on occasion, there's good reason to understand that they are likely to be quite rare and when they do occur, they most often will be unlikely to pose an influential source of privacy harms.

israel pushes and succeeds in attempt to be apart of the scud hunters club....dude we are sooo in they think we are cool

Holy ghost

Comment BY 'Dan Whaley' ON '2014-09-03T17:29:21' 'I think the handling of versions should be done by the underlying CMS, whether that's WP, github, gdocs, or whatever. We exist as a layer above that, but can interact with it if integrated. Not all CMSs handle versioning, and so therefore, an integrated experience may differ considerably based on the CMS or document store being used. We have notions eventually to support memento style queries for time stamped versions of a document-- and being able to go back to the version of a page at the point that an an annotation is created. I think the notion of "resolving" is potentially the right way to think about things. All annotations are always preserved (in the same way that all track changes in word are). There may be a few kinds of affordances that track changes gives you that a CMS+annotation approach do not, but this combination may allow a fair amount of functionality. Experiment and iterate.'

Starting to recover my attention and release my ire, because it's evident now that the author may not be defending advertising as not manipulative, but actually trying to articulate the mechanisms more thoughtfully.

Definitely sounds like what we're doing here.

Selection by association, rather than indexing.

With the advent of Google Docs we're finally moving away from the archaic indexing mentioned here. The filesystem metaphor was simple and dominated how everyone manages their data-- which extended into how we developed web content, as well.

The declaration that Hierarchical File Systems are Dead has led to better systems of tagging and search, but we're still far from where we need to be since there is still a heavy focus on the document as a whole instead of also the content within the document.

The linearity of printed books is even more treacherously entrenched in our minds than the classification systems used by libraries to store those books.

One day maybe we'll liberate every piece of content from every layer of its concentric cages: artificial systems of indexing, books, web pages, paragraphs, even sentences and words themselves. Only then will we be able to re-dress those thoughts automatically into those familiar and comforting forms that keep our thoughts caged.

The essential feature of the memex is its ability of association; tying two items together.

The first reference to Wikipedia?! :)

I love this early UX imagining of the linking/annotation process by Vannevar. What's notable here of course is that he suggested that creating links between things was a function that something visitors (trailblazers) could do. In a sense, to him the notion of a hypertext link, and a clickable annotation w/ two targets were mutually interchangeable ideas. Today, these are distinct. The idea that a visitor can do this, is only possible within the emerging idea of Open Annotation as we understand it now. It's why those of us exploring it are so excited about its potential.

Annotations are at the Web’s core.

The key here is the notion of a format as a container. Lots of content is moving towards that notion-- that a "file" is really an opaque (to the OS filesystem) directory or container of some sort and some other program understands the format of the "file" as a container to know how to open it to access the files inside.

I think the context and the environment are essential for understanding both the rationality of the decision maker as well as the structure and functioning of the system itself. We may run into the same boundary drawing problem here, because some might say that the decision makers within a system have their own rationality, while others might say that the system itself has a rationality built into it, and that this rationality emerged in part from the environment in which the system developed.

Who is Vannevar Bush? See [Wikipedia article on V. Bush(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush)

Sophist critics don't seem to believe that the mind can be trained...so rhetoricians are scam artists

Anger (emotion) in relation to image/success in philosophy. People only feels anger if what has been said about them is something they are unsure of (insecure). Anger thus may be a cue for someone's insecurities or uncertainties.

But if men tend toward the truth and speakers can convince men to the contrary, isn't rhetoric more hurtful that useful?

Socrates himself seems to be a master of persuasion via making the opinions of his opponents sound an awful lot like his own.