1,024 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2019
    1. An example of this general sort of thing was given by Bush where he points out that the file index can be called to view at the push of a button, which implicitly provides greater capability to work within more sophisticated and complex indexing systems

      Interesting to think of paywalls in the context of this instantaneous calling up of hyperlinked text. We have the links--but not the accessibility. In this way, a political system that supports profit-motive driven artificial scarcity becomes an important part of the whole system.

    2. in a way that makes them maximally available and useful to the needs of the human's mental-structure development

      Perhaps not redacted files--not maximally.

    3. His excursion may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

      Curious, like the comfort bit way above.

    4. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.

      Maybe once we get that UBI?

    5. 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.

      Wikis.

    6. numerous

      Though this is of course contingent on the physical processes of the mechanism, I wonder what constrains the upper limit of hyperlinks (gonna call them that) for this sort of machine.

    7. of a desk

      If we'd gone this way, I wonder how much time it would have taken for someone to make it into a standing desk?

    8. at random

      Not really at random, is it?

    9. and something is bound to come of it.

      Sure is.

    10. Anything that might have so general an effect upon our mental actions as is implied here, is certainly a candidate for ultimate consideration in the continuing development of our intellectual effectiveness.

      This seems responsive to much of what I've been pointing to in many of my annotations.

    11. Existing means of composing and working with symbol structures penalize disorderly processes very heavily, and it is part of the real promise in the automated H-LAM/T systems of tomorrow that the human can have the freedom and power of disorderly processes.

      ?

    12. Also, the kind of generous flexibility that would be truly helpful calls for added symbol structuring just to keep track of the trials, branches, and reasoning thereto that are involved in the development of the subject structure; our present symbol-manipulation means would very soon bog down completely among the complexities that are involved in being more than just a little bit flexible.

      Limits of working memory?

    13. and by indirect imitation.

      Professors without pedagogical training.

    14. If by some magical process the production workers could still know just what to do and when to do it even though the superstructure of contractors was removed from above them, no one would know the difference.

      This could be where stigmergy could come in.

    15. This situation is typical for any of us engaged in reasonably demanding types of professional pursuits, and yet we have never received explicit training in optimum ways of carrying out any but a very few of the roles at a very few of the levels.

      Dare I say, still true.

    16. At a still higher level of capability, the executive capabilities must have a degree of power that unaided mental capabilities cannot provide. In such a case, one might make a list of steps and check each item off as it is executed.
    17. enables
    18. insofar as their actual physical construction is concerned.

      Historically, it seems like there are complex interactions between process structuring and physical structuring. For example, the difference in methods between additive manufacturing (e.g. 3D printing) and subtractive manufacturing (e.g. a lathe). My guess is that there are different affordances in tool capabilities associated with the different processes (resulting in different physical structuring), or differences in the price of manufacturing (resulting in emergent properties as availability scales), but I'm also curious about how different processes might come up against ecological concerns. Intelligence augmentation assumes the presence of an intelligence to augment, which I don't think we can assume anymore given various kinds of existential threats.

    19. toward a certain over-all professional goal

      Goal hierarchies (subject to my same criticism of that term above, though perhaps in a different way) come into the question here. Brings up Perceptual Control Theory on the subject of the interactions between different levels of goals.

    20. Essentially everything that goes on within the H-LAM/T system and that is of direct interest here involves the manipulation of concept and symbol structures in service to the mental structure.

      Disagree. There's a huge direct interest in the motivational context that of adopting the methodology itself--and I think it's only partially tied to the mental structure. Furthermore, I think it's worth dividing mental structure into cognitive--which is represented here--and affective structures. Motivational seems to involve both. It also involves a behavioral context outside the individual with regard to need provisioning and thwarts.

    21. interna1

      Did this pass through ocular character recognition software?

    22. What the computer actually stores need be none of our concern

      Machine readable vs. human readable.

    23. if the concept is given an explicit "handle" in the form of a representative symbol.

      Acronyms.

    24. we see the near-future course of the research toward augmenting the human's intellect as depending entirely upon empirical findings (past and future) for the development of better means to serve the development and use of mental structuring in the human.

      Are we still in the near future?

    25. (a) development of a garden

      Provisioning for basic needs. See SDT and Basic Psychological Needs Theory, for example.

    26. at that time

      Constantly shifting? Is a snapshot a useful unit of analysis? Is it possible to analyze?

    27. We feel reasonably safe in assuming that learning involves some kind of meaningful organization within the brain, and that whatever is so organized or structured represents the operating model of the individual's universe to the mental mechanisms that derive his behavior.

      At this point, they don't care whether it's a black box! Stuff comes out of it, so something's happening in there!

    28. (or whatever it is that is organized within the human mind)

      Metaphors We Live By: Basic orientational metaphor--minds are containers.

    29. "symbol structuring"

      Another (less humorous, more directly relevant) link. (Second segment--on Mr. Bliss.)

    30. of the basic physical processes

      Link.

    31. hierarchical

      Seems like we could choose a better word here too. Determinant? Dependencies? Hierarchical calls up authority, which isn't really what's happening.

    32. or the use of special drugs.

      Was I on to something with Thufir Hawat? The Spice must flow...

    33. Many of the branching paths in the decomposition of a given higher-order capability will terminate in the same basic capability, since a given basic capability will often be used within many different higher-order capabilities.

      And/Or as basic thinking functions present in writing--see Habits of the Creative Mind by Richard Miller and Ann Jurecic. (Was this book always this expensive?)

    34. As you proceed down through the hierarchy, you will begin to encounter capabilities that cannot be usefully changed, and these will make up your inventory of basic capabilities.

      If this is limited by human imagination, is it tentative because imagination is augmentable?

    35. capability

      For some reason my intuition is that the word affordance is better here.

    36. and a thorough job of redesigning the system calls for making an inventory of the basic capabilities available.

      Man, I'm such a situationist. I'm hesitant about locating capabilities as intrinsic/internal to any of these systems (as opposed to emergent properties arising out of the intersection of system and context.

    37. Also, the effort in doing calculations and writing down extensive and carefully reasoned argument would dampen individual experimentation with sophisticated new concepts,

      Maybe. Or maybe it would result in a more mentalist situation, with those operations more self-contained in the explicit-human part of the system. Thufir Hawat, anybody?

    38. in an environment where the combination of artifact materials and muscle strengths were so scaled that the neatest scribing tool (equivalent to a pencil, possible had a shape and mass as manageable as a brick

      Different values for g?

    39. If we want to hurry the writing, we have to make it larger.

      Which has resource usage implications--if you have to write larger, you're going to need more paper. And I wonder what effect more frequent page turning would have on reading fluency.

      This thought process of mine seems like a nice example of how quickly these things might get complex. Definitely a chaos-theory level of combinatorial cluster** here--and quickly. It's not a slow divergence, I'm imagining.

    40. Actually, it turned out to be simpler to invert the problem and consider a change that would reduce our capability for external symbol manipulation.

      Like Nick Bostrom in The Reversal Test.

    41. The direct effect of the external-symbol-manipulation means upon language would produce an indirect effect upon the way of thinking via the Whorfian-hypothesis linkage.

      This is hard for me to wrap my brain around. I want it to climb down a few rungs on the ladder of abstraction before climbing back up.

    42. Under such evolutionary conditions, it would seem unlikely that the language we now use provides the best possible service to our minds in pursuing comprehension and solving problems.

      Agree. This is part of why I think some of the thought-technologies from Evoke (one of my employers) were so useful--they adapted language for use in a very specific way.

    43. If this is true, and if language is (as it seems to be) a part of a self organizing system, then it seems probable that the state of a language at a given time strongly affects its own evolution to a succeeding state.

      Contingency. See Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants.

    44. lower

      Down Is Bad metaphor

    45. It is upon their capabilities that the ultimate capability of the system will depend.

      Nope nope nope. It will also depend on the nature of the problem they're being trained toward (on).

      Apparently I'm feeling a little snarky? Mostly I just want to throw my hand up and say, "Your analysis is great, and Imma let you speak, but it's still way more complicated."

    46. Two-Domain System

      But are they?

    47. native

      William Gibson style? I'm not sure it doesn't. Plus, the word "native" is wiley like a coyote.

    48. This term seems directly applicable here, where we could say that synergism is our most likely candidate for representing the actual source of intelligence.

      Disagree strongly. I'd say synergism is the reason that intelligence is a black box situation--since the inputs pass through a complex (as opposed to complicated) system, they're not legible to us, but just because the inputs are rendered illegible doesn't mean the box that obscures them is itself the cause.

    49. derived ultimately from the characteristics of individual nerve cells

      Disagree with this too. Would nerve cells, grown in culture, have anything like the intelligence described here?

    50. Many of the external composing and manipulating (modifying, rearranging) processes serve such characteristically "human" activities as playing with forms and relationships to ask what develops, cut- and-try multiple-pass development of an idea, or listing items to reflect on and then rearranging and extending them as thoughts develop.

      This is a stumbling block for me. I've re-read it a couple times and I'm still confused.

    51. To redesign a structure, we must learn as much as we can of what is known about the basic materials and components as they are utilized within the structure

      Chesterton's Fence.

    52. The realization that any potential change in language, artifact, or methodology has importance only relative to its use within a process' and that a new process capability appearing anywhere within that hierarchy can make practical a new consideration of latent change possibilities in many other parts of the hierarchy -- possibilities in either language, artifacts, or methodology -- brings out the strong interrelationship of these three augmentation means.

      This seems to be a core element here.

    53. throughout the entire capability hierarchy (calling for a system approach).

      I think this harkens back to my blog post about the augmentation of collective emotional intelligence.

    54. The writing machine and its flexible copying capability would occupy you for a long time if you tried to exhaust the reverberating chain of associated possibilities for making useful innovations within your capability hierarchy.

      Sure does.

    55. and modification possibilities latent in lower levels.

      Pretty sure I was reaching for the word latent in a conversation within the last two or so weeks.

    56. If it is a complex memo

      I think you're underestimating the ease by which we arrive at a "complex" memo--my intuition is that the very act of writing something down (implicit in the form of a "Memo") changes thoughts from what they would otherwise be if they're not a "composite".

      (Aside: Does vocalizing something follow similar logic? I don't know that I'd go so far as to say predictable, but are there inevitable changes that take place for thought in the process of communicating them (vs. thoughts that go uncommunicated).)

    57. what we call the executive capability.

      Are you the originator of the term "executive functioning"?

      You're not mentioned in the relevant Wikipedia article.

    58. a free outpouring of thoughts

      See Peter Elbow. I'd call this a thought technology in its own right.

    59. For instance, trial drafts could rapidly be composed from re-arranged excerpts of old drafts, together with new words or passages which you stop to type in.

      Copy/Paste functions. See also this suggestion for adding swap.

    60. The memo-writing process may be executed by using a set of process capabilities (in intermixed or repetitive form) such as the following planning, developing subject matter, composing text, producing hard copy, and distributing.

      One implication of the every-process-is-part-of-a-sub-process is that somewhere down the line, we're likely to hit tacit/sub-conscious/implicit processes over which we don't exhibit or exert conscious control. Some of these we might be able to make explicit, and some we might not be able to.

    61. integument

      Making a distinction based on the physical boundary of the (a) human organism. This seems like an artificial distinction.

    62. within

      Container metaphor. Capabilities within tools seems to mis-locate them--it seems much more likely that a "capability" is an emergent property arising from the system that includes tool and context (and purpose).

    63. No person uses a process that is completely unique every time he tackles something new.

      Alternatively: Every process every person uses is completely unique every time.

      The difference between these positions is perceptual, not a feature of the system (except insofar as perceptions are emergent properties of those systems).

    64. in that it consists of further sub-processes

      Energy quanta--doesn't quantum mechanics suppose some basic unit fundamentally inseparable? (e.g. Planck Length)

    65. Although every sub-process is a process in its own right

      Holons.

    66. Every process of thought or action is made up of sub-processes.

      Separable sub-processes.

    67. It is the augmentation means that serve to break down a large problem in such a way that the human being can walk through it with his little steps, and it is the structure or organization of these little steps or actions that we discuss as process hierarchies.

      I'm wondering about something like climate (biosphere) derangement. What if what's called for isn't any given step, but a sea-change in collective perspective? It seems like this paper has one foot in the circle of techno-fundamentalism re: problem solving. Operationalizing things by breaking them down into smaller, solvable chunks is reductionism...

    68. In other words, the human mind neither learns nor acts by large leaps, but by steps organized or structured so that each one depends upon previous steps.

      Is this self-evident? Depends on what the definition of a "large leap" is, doesn't it? (Maybe definition isn't the right word for this--since largeness perhaps can't be defined.)

    69. The explicit new system we contemplate will involve as artifacts computers, and computer-controlled information-storage, information-handling, and information-display devices.

      Why limit this? Artifacts might also include material possessions like comfortable beds, hygiene products, etc. that enhance health/wellbeing and meet needs that sponsor the intellectual work to be done.

      Or, a web of sponsoring human relationships.

    70. for human comfort

      This seems like something strange to include.

    71. and moving the whole structure about five feet,

      Different selection tools (e.g lasso).

    72. one of its important precepts is to pursue the quickest gains first,
    73. one of its important precepts is to pursue the quickest gains first, and use the increased intellectual effectiveness thus derived to help pursue successive gains.

      Bootstrapping.

    74. If Section II begins to seem unrewardingly difficult, the reader may find it helpful to skip from Section II-B directly to Section III.
    75. that compare to those made in personal geographic mobility since horseback and sailboat days.
    76. In the first (search) phase of our program we have developed a conceptual framework that seems satisfactory for the current needs of designing a research phase.
    77. like most systems its performance can best be improved by considering the whole as a set of interacting components rather than by considering the components in isolation.
    78. We do not speak of isolated clever tricks that help in particular situations.
    79. Increased capability in this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: more-rapid comprehension, better comprehension, the possibility of gaining a useful degree of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex, speedier solutions, better solutions, and the possibility of finding solutions to problems that before seemed insoluble.
    1. by avoiding to work under tight time constraints and quantity-driven production goals.

      This is interesting.

    2. Attention to details empowers the curator to appreciate first and before others the traits and patterns of outstanding work.

      I think I'm predisposed to focus on fine distinctions of language use--particular personally accountable speech/autonomy supportive speech.

    3. order

      Coherence?

    4. by asking oneself periodically why

      Intention.

    1. management

      I'd like to put this word on extinction just as you put "skills" on extinction. Facilitation is better.

    2. the following facts about motivation: a) that extrinsic punishment and reward are DEMOTIVATING for cognitive tasks and b) that our goal must be to develop intrinsic motivation that will produce self-directed, life-long learners.

      That goal isn't much operationalized here...

    3. I think that a future English teacher with a decent command of the material above would be well-positioned to start learning the job.

      Bahahahhhahahahaaahahahahaha. Let's not set the bar too low, right?

    4. concept mapping

      Well then...

    5. and skeptical analysis of claims regarding educational data

      e.g. Gerald Bracey

    1. Can we self-organize our research, discover, summarize, and prioritize what is known through theory and practice, then propose, argue, and share a tentative resource guide for peeragogical groups?

      Takes me back (always again) to the article on Carl Rogers and Non-Directive Teaching.

      Bringing resources and wrangling a few spaces (physical ones, in this case; notably one separate from the classroom where resources could be gathered and organized, and students could drop in most any time) were primary details.

    2. In Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich predicted in 1971 that learners of the future would find each other and use information technologies to form “learning webs” and “networks” — prescient terms, considering that the ARPAnet was only two years old at the time.

      This keeps coming up.

    3. my third step was to elevate students to the status of co-learner

      Again, this metaphorical construct assumes that they aren't there to start with.

    4. we discovered that four students work better than six for a semester-long project

      I'm a bit hesitant about the universal language here. I think I'm wanting to know how some of the course's structural limitation are inputs into this outcome.

      Also, maybe humans aren't very good at this kind of collaboration yet, so maybe this is a local (temporally speaking) truth rather than a global one? It reminds me of some of the Sudbury critique about most educational research being conducted in the artificial environment of school (when it's not in the even more artificial environment of a controlled experiment).

    5. to take more responsibility

      MWLB: Responsibility, too, is an object.

    6. The more I give my teacher-power to students

      MWLB: Authority/Power is an object. (It can be possessed/given.)

    7. Yahoo Pipes

      This is dead.

    8. My immediate instinct has been to respond to those who asked for more.

      I'd be curious to hear more about this.

    9. “attention probes”

      Screen capturing.

    1. without necessarily visiting the site where you publish.

      This reminds me of a decision I made as a Peace Corps Volunteer--rather than blogging, I wrote regular emails, under the assumption that people would be more likely to read them if they showed up in an inbox than if they had to visit a blog.

    2. that reflects your exact priorities

      To the extent that we're conscious of our priorities.

    3. flood

      Metaphors We Live By

    1. Good to know this is something that can be annotated here. If someone else shows up here, I'd be curious what you think about Remi Kalir's Marginal Syllabus stuff--and whether we should follow suit here.

    1. Our institutions have not prepared us to be ongoing contributors to human knowledge, as we have been led to believe that this is the domain of “experts”.

      I certainly don't think I'm anywhere near as prepared as I would like to be--and I'm the beneficiary of an "elite" education.

    2. As a society we were in a state of shock and did not have the tools to deal with all of this time, so television filled the void.

      I think it's much more complicated than this explanation suggests.

    3. exchange

      The Ideas are Objects metaphor (and therefore Ideas Can Be Exchanged) doesn't seem to capture this. Propagation, replication, spread seems to be closer to what I think is appropriate. (Because if I 'give' you an idea, I have lost nothing--the idea has been duplicated. This is an important and salient point due to the implications it has for scarcity or lack thereof.)

    4. anytime and anywhere.

      Apparently you don't spend much time out of reseau.

    5. As years of sorting, categorizing and making explicit develop into a large amount of information we can begin to see its value.

      Accretion. I've wondered recently about creating some sort of document where I collect information on things I've explicitly cited in formal writing.

    6. There are many ways of making knowledge explicit.

      Is there a distinction to be made here between making explicit knowledge and making knowledge explicit? Certainly there are times when tacit knowledge transforms into explicit knowledge, but without awareness of what tacit knowledge we have, can we intentionally make it explicit? My sense is no, at least much of the time.

    7. Even more powerful than making our knowledge explicit is to make it public.

      Domain of One's Own

    1. Brands would be able to advertise on bundles.

      Why tf do we want this?

    2. 1. Search would INSTANTLY improve. (I need a whole blog post on why this is so).

      Does this exist? If so, did you update and re-distribute? I don't see a hyperlink here.

    3. Imagine I was talking about a real time event. The news is already 30 minutes old. We need a new system for real-time curation of what’s happening on my Twitter stream.

      What's the benefit of real-time vs. ten minutes later? What is the window, even, for real-time? If there's editorial content added, that doesn't happen instantaneously, and different subjects will require widely different investments of time for the editorial addition to not be ignorant, I can imagine.

    4. Seth Godin doesn’t have comments on his blog.

      Neither does Audrey Watters, and she's disabled Hypothes.is. Which brings up an interesting thought on individual agency within a system designed for collective augmentation.

    5. Of course, once you update you need to redistribute.

      News organizations and corrections--thinking about bad actors.

    6. Blogs are pretty bad at this. If I come back in two hours and update this post you probably won’t see the update. In fact, not only can I update this post, but everyone who leaves a comment underneath is really updating it too.

      Comment-as-update is an interesting thought.

    7. If you give me #7 without giving me #1 first your tool will suck and you won’t be used by curators.

      Sounds self-assured. This tone is a bit grating for me.

      Note: My encountering mentions of sexual harassment allegations against Scoble is coloring my reading.

    8. Real-time

      This is the answer to my above question. These previous instantiations of curation were not real-time.

    9. Real-time curators need to bundle.

      Is this list specific to web curation, or will it have analogs with curation in other media? (Bundling seems to be "built in" to something like a campus literary magazine.)

    10. Or I can forward those links to you via email. That’s curation.

      Ish? But mostly not really?

    1. lay audiences

      Worth unpacking as a term.

    2. One of the most important events in the shaping of early print culture was the successful rebellion of the Netherlands. In their small, semi-autonomous provinces, numerous printing presses sprang up that operated relatively free of censorship, and provided an outlet for authors, even within areas held by the Counter-Reformation.
    3. Studies of Renaissance and early European print culture generally remain unrelated to work on the Enlightenment tradition and eighteenth-century thought.
    4. she remained dissatisfied with the continuing split between the history of ideas and the history of book publication.
    5. business

      This is where the page note with the Josh Marshall link is most relevant.

    6. allowed

      Metaphors We Live By: Implied anthropomorphic authority.

    7. Laying inherited scientific works side by side for the first time also pointed up discrepancies and contradictions. At the same time, the new ability to convey maps, charts, and pictures in a uniform and permanent way meant that older theories in cartography, astronomy, anatomy, and botany could be checked against new observations.
    8. it was possible for manuscript readers to imagine that the past minds of antiquity had possessed a much more complete understanding of the world, which had been fragmented and degraded over time.
    9. scattered and incomplete

      If you were relying on memory to compare--after time has elapsed to travel, say, from one monastery to another--you're going to end up with a qualitatively different kind of comparison that most present day textual comparison discussions.

    10. the most important feature was not that the literature was new, but rather than readers for the first time could see multiple texts together and compare them.
    11. She also emphasizes her belief that historians have underestimated the role of the printing press
    12. cooperating in a new, more cosmopolitan environment

      No Contest resonance.

    13. The passage of time no longer inevitably brought with it a lessening of knowledge.

      Related to a different Eisenstein (Charles, this time) w/r/t decaying currencies--that money, unlike other commodities, does not rot/rust/etc.--and that knowledge may be more like money post-printing press than it was prior.

    14. reversed

      Metaphors We Live By: Attitudes have directions. I'm skeptical about this--my instinct is that it's more complex than a reversal, which means this orientational metaphor obscures some things I think are important.

    15. could now focus their efforts on revision

      Chris Friend's Computers and Writing essay chapter I read recently in Disrupting the Digital Humanities.

    16. tremendous difficulties in preserving the knowledge

      e.g. Copying errors, which means there's space for a discussion of the way writing has influenced memetics.

      (Contingency, Adaptability, Inevitability from Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants as features of a replicator--see also that original chapter from Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene)

    17. fundamentally changed the mentality of early modern readers
    1. away from the pursuit of growth for growth’s sake

      I think the phrase "growth for growth's sake" is a gross oversimplification. It's much more--it's for the sake of increased quality of life (for everybody, but for some more than others).

    2. I propose an architecture of layers of interoperability to unbundle complex, inflexible, and monolithic systems iii and increase competition, cooperation, generativity, and flexibility.

      I can't get behind a general comment on increasing competition.

    3. post-Internet

      What will this mean? I find it safe to assume that some sort of Internet will exist more or less as long as humans do, now that one has been invented. Even in the case of total collapse of the current system.

      It strikes me that this is like saying we need to learn from the "creation and management" of post-Language organizations.

    4. a market-based approach

      Although, given how markets might be different when de-coupled from infinite growth assumptions (moving toward stable-state or de-growth economies), maybe this statement needs some qualification.

    5. I have no idea how this tab came to be, but it's open in the browser window associated with Howard Rheingold's Augmented Collective Intelligence course in May 2019, so I assume it's related to that somehow.

    1. Alfred Korzybski, in his monumental tome, Science and Sanity, spends over a thousand pages reproving us for our wanton use of the “is” of identity, which reduces things to other things, proposing what he believes is a new “non-Aristotelian” mode of thought.

      Metaphor, essentially.

    2. Without blueprints, instructions, specifications, guidelines, computer programs, money, science texts, laws, contracts, schedules, and databases, could anyone build a microchip, a hydrogen bomb, or a radio telescope? Could anyone operate an airport or a concentration camp?
    3. Words, particularly nouns, force an infinity of unique objects and processes into a finite number of categories.
    4. By generalizing particulars into categories, words render invisible the differences among them. By labeling both A and B a tree, and conditioning ourselves to that label, we become blind to the differences between A and B. The label affects our perception of reality and the way we interact with it.
    5. the dehumanization begins with any categorization, even the word “human”. This is not to advocate the abolition of nouns, only to be mindful of their relative unreality.
    6. When we knew every face intimately, there was no need to generalize into “people.”
    7. Perhaps it is the increasing abstraction of ourselves from the world, to which language contributes, that explains why “fifteen years ago people could distinguish 300,000 sounds; today many children can’t go beyond 100,000 and the average is 180,000. Twenty years ago the average subject could detect 350 shades of a particular color. Today the number is 130.”
    8. It is the discrete and separate self that desires to name the things of nature, or that could even conceive of so doing. To name is to dominate, to categorize, to subjugate and, quite literally, to objectify. No wonder in Genesis, Adam’s first act in confirmation of his God-given dominion over the animals is to name them. Before the conception of self that enabled dominion, there was no naming—none of the original vocalizations were nouns.
    1. This spectre of perfectionism, I would argue, is the most dangerous side effect of punitive grading

      Disagree. Autonomy thwarts are at least as bad--and also negative impacts on caregiver/student relationships in K-12.

    2. Grading tells students that grades are what matter.

      Grading invites students to believe that grades are what matter.

      Students can decline the invitation.

    3. Yes, students all know it's wrong to cheat

      But is it wrong to cheat? I'm not so sure. Especially not without a mountain of qualification. For example, if it's wrong to cheat, it's (probably a greater) wrong to put someone in a position that pressures them to cheat. Looking at you, Atlanta, with your teacher cheating scandal.

    4. Ungrading helps form new learning habits.

      Dance of Anger connection here. If the system we're operating in changes, we can't stay the same.

    5. When you stop grading, that gives students the space they need to explore and discover what is meaningful and valuable to them.

      It seems like part of the dynamic is the matter of local maxima. In order to leave the locally optimal grading system, you must pass through some sort of valley, where a student's lack of familiarity with other systems, potentially combined with competency feedback needs attuned to grades, means that the transition from one system to another involves a temporary situation worse that both the old system and the new one.

    6. While grades pretend to be a form of feedback (but not very good feedback; more on that later), the main function of grading is coercion, and that's the opposite of freedom.

      Functional significance (coming from an SDT framework) can vary--this is part of why this is so hard of a subject to pin down, and why language like "the main function" doesn't adequately capture the wide range of student experiences of grading systems. This ties back to Causality Orientation Theory and other work involving Internal vs. External Perceived Locus of Causation.

    7. And their work does improve, sometimes dramatically. That is, for me, the most important measure of success.

      How many improvements? One improvement? Two improvements?

    1. Because the UI is offering the potential operator benefits in the partnership, it expects an upfront payment — at an amount that has not yet been determined — from the private firm to go into an endowment for the strategic plan, Harreld said.

      What the what? If somebody's extracting profit, costs for students will most certainly not be cut.

    1. By demonstrating that it’s OK to show up messy—something at which I excel—my students feel that they too can practice scholarship alongside their humanness.

      Within?

    2. By offering a suggested submission date and then allowing for submissions after that point, I am able reduce the bottlenecking of my workload.

      A due "date" could be a "window": Turn a thing in during this 3-week window, another thing in during the next 3-week window, etc.

    3. (pretty much everyone who is not white cishet neurotypical)

      Well--them too, but differently--and not as deeply.

    4. My accessible syllabus

      What does it mean to claim this label? I understand and deeply admire the intention to design a syllabus in this way, but I worry that adopting (assuming?) the label doesn't invite the same critical eye you're asking students to turn on other syllabi. I also wonder about casting the issue in black/white terms. Maybe: "My commitment to accessibility in my syllabus and larger course structures means..." This alternative phrasing seems more process oriented and affirming of accessibility as a direction, not a destination.

    5. let’s come up with a solution that works for you.

      I'd say "works for us" in the spirit of Ross Greene's Collaborative Proactive Solutions model.

    6. Selfe, Yergeau, and Brewer’s concept of transformative access (119)

      Something I'd probably benefit from reading.

    7. I take notes on my course instruction before, during, and after class. I schedule time to review these notes throughout the course of the semester in order to gain insight on how I can best serve my students. I do check-ins with my students about what is working for them throughout the semester. And most importantly, I always ask how can I support you — a phrase that was never uttered by my professors in ten-plus years of higher ed.

      <3

    8. Texting during class (or the appearance of texting) is disrespectful

      What if it's an appearance of texting but actually a checking of blood glucose levels via phone app?

    9. I found these policies antithetical to a love/hope/caring pedagogy,

      Sure are. These statements conflate perception with objective fact and adopt disempowering, psychologically controlling language likely to thwart autonomy needs.

    10. (I accept late work)

      Seems a strange thing to be proud of.

  2. Apr 2019
    1. Why won’t they make me feel important, interesting, smart?

      Invitation into a rescuing role.

    1. The most striking universal feature of all writing systems, however, is their uncanny endurance, unmatched among human creations.

      Cities?

    2. as it is in reality.

      What does this mean? Is Set Theory lurking here?

    3. For example, sheep could be accounted independently of their actual location.

      Displaced reference?

    4. At the first stage, the token system antecedent of writing, already abstracted information in several ways. First, it translated daily-life commodities into arbitrary, often geometric forms.

      Turning the particular into the generic. Charles Eisenstein has a lot to say about this in The Ascent of Humanity.

    5. while preserving its integrity

      What does this mean? Also, how does it interact with gifs and emoji?

    6. With a repertory of about 400 signs, the script could express any topic of human endeavor.

      Doubtful.

    7. These inscriptions introduced syntax, thus bringing writing yet one step closer to speech.

      (Basic orientational metaphor of proximity.)

    8. It shifted from the visual to the aural world.

      I don't agree with this characterization--writing is still very visual, I'd say, although I can understand how there was an increase in its relationship to the aural. These seem like independent sliders (I'm imagining a sound board), and increasing one doesn't necessarily change the other.

    9. This was also the case when a stylus, made of a reed with a triangular end, gave to the signs the wedge-shaped ‘cuneiform’ appearance (Fig. 4).

      Contingent on shapes from the natural world--back to Kevin Kelly's contingency from the Duffy review.

    10. The invention of numerals meant a considerable economy of signs since 33 jars of oil could be written with 7 rather then 33 markings.

      Innovation via hands tired from too much writing?

    11. Some accountants, therefore, impressed the tokens on the surface of the envelope before enclosing them inside, so that the shape and number of counters held inside could be verified at all times (Fig. 1). These markings were the first signs of writing.

      Reminds me of our knowledge of twill weaving on the silk road via impression on the surface of pottery. (h/t Michael Frachett's Long Now Foundation talk, "Open Source Civilization and the Unexpected Origins of the Silk Road."

    12. the ultimate abstraction of sound

      Is it?

    13. Writing is humankind’s principal technology for collecting, manipulating, storing, retrieving, communicating and disseminating information.

      How about, say, meiosis?

    1. Apparently I can't annotate the comments here? I wanted to reply to a line about seeing pendulum swings. That seems like an unfortunate metaphor as well, since (insert no person can step twice into the same river for it's not the same human and not the same river aphorism here). There's an accretion that seems obscured by the pendulum characterization.

    2. When we don’t engage students in what matters to them—autonomy, connection, competence—the components that actually create motivation—when we don’t involve students in the process of teaching and learning, then the problem is ours, not theirs.

      I'm a bit lost here (obviously not with the abstract SDT level). Those three words are conceptual labels for describing things students care about--rather than the things themselves. Kids might care about being able to have spaces outside adult supervision, for example (autonomy supportive from a functional significant perspective). Labeling it in this way is useful because it helps us conceptualize the thing, and I want to be cautious about saying those are the things that matter directly (not that I'm terribly committed to this line of thought). I think meeting these needs implicitly might be more effective than highlighting them explicitly, say, through instruction by "Teach[ing] them about cognition, and neuroplasticity, and resilience, and self-determination theory." It reminds me of Carol Dweck's caution on how her work has been mischaracterized and misused.

    3. when they lost it, why they lost it and what schools could do to prevent it.

      Similar metaphorical entailments here--was it lost, or did it merely shift direction. What if motivation is a river, flowing toward sea level, but able to be obstructed? What changes is direction, but the river doesn't disappear (though it may move underground).

    4. no matter how much motivation I provided,

      I'm skeptical about viewing motivation as something you can "provide" as if it were a pencil or a notebook. I think it's more valuable to view it as an emergent property of a complex system including the individual and their context (of course also including things like basic psychological need satisfaction).

    1. K-12 conversation

      Link? TG2... Joy Kirr...

    2. in part because these educators tend to talk more with each other about their teaching.

      Is this true?

    3. report their grade for the course.

      Self-grading, while perhaps an improvement, isn't ungrading.

    4. But during the first partial grading period, “I simply asked students on the exam to write about a selection of topics in the course so far and to give themselves a numeric grade on a scale of 1-100 (our official grading system).” And they “freaked out. Well, most of them.”

      Sounds like a horrible implementation...

    5. as the former broad fields more obviously lend themselves to ungrading

      Disagree. It's just less intuitive.

    6. an early evangelist of ungrading

      Is he? I'd guess there's a much longer history than we might guess.

  3. Mar 2019
    1. I started a food pantry in my academic department the semester after I started using OER.

      Constellation. Coherence. Entailment.

      Let's flush this out. Once a certain perspective has been adopted--a way of seeing--a whole constellation of independent but interrelated practices coheres. The same underlying perspective that holds grades at arm's length also, and for related reasons, is likely to bring suspicion concerning rubrics. Food pantries and child-care co-ops would be another example of that. But, like a constellation, what holds them together is the underlying story we're telling (ourselves) (about the way the world should be). This metaphor also invites the question about how we come to have shared constellations--how many people recognize Orion's Belt? How did that come to be?

    2. that you will open doors to new ideas that we, your current teachers, never could have taught you.

      Generative teaching? (à la generative grammar?)

    3. I learned how to caption my videos and create posts that were friendlier to screen readers.

      Something I should do.

    1. But hiking in nature is not the domain of literature study; mining text for meaning, however, is what literature study entails.

      How about for students who come from urban environments who may never have had experience in a forest ecosystem? The walk might not be literature study, but that experience might be foundational to the kind of thinking that study requires.

    2. grammar-for-grammar’s sake

      Why do this?