1,348 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2024
    1. I like having as few opportunities as possible for would-be enshittifiers to mess around with what I'm trying to do

      Molly says: "If anyone enshittifies my newsletter, it's going to be me, dammit!"

  2. Dec 2023
    1. the celebrated figures Henry Kissinge

      I think Kissinger's figure is too controversial to leave it at "celebrated".

    2. David Hume’s (2011) formulation of the is–ought problem.
    3. Beyond simpleassociations it acquires high-level abstractions like expressive structure, ideology or beliefsystems, since these are all embodied in the corpora that make up its training sets.

      hm, I'm not sure how LLMs acquire these higher-level concepts out of the probabilistic relations just described.

  3. Nov 2023
  4. Jun 2023
  5. Mar 2023
  6. Feb 2023
    1. It means that everything AI makes would immediately enter the public domain and be available to every other creator to use, as they wish, in perpetuity and without permission.

      One issue with blanket, automatic entry of AI-generated works to the public domain is privacy: A human using AI could have good reasons not to have the outputs of their use made public.

    1. Some technological common ground could emerge,such as the widespread adoption of technical metadata standards that could flag creator’swish not to have their works used in training.

      Idea of opt out technical mechanism.

    2. a commercial entity would probably find itself at the end ofsuccessful litigation if it used such images without authorisation

      I had to read this a couple of times before I concluded that the meaning was a commercial entity would likely lose a case where it had infringed a trademark. It was unclear which commercial entity was mentioned: the trademark holder or the alleged infringer?

    3. but these should be proportional and excessive

      Possible typo: could be "proportional and not excessive"?

    4. a relative short time

      Possible typo: could be "a relatively short time".

    5. The EU adopted its own TDM exceptions in 2019 as part ofthe Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive.

      On EU TDM exceptions.

    6. text and data mining was seen as something that would benefit scientific researchin general

      On a benefit of text and data mining as fair use.

    7. It could be argued that the training of an AI model does not fulfil all of these requirements,but it is likely to be something that will be argued in court by future defendants incopyright litigation. It is clear that making a temporary copy for training is transient, butit could be said that it is not incidental. The copy is also part of a technological process,but it may not be considered a lawful use. Similarly, one could argue that the resultingmodel does have economic significance, but specific copies do not, a model such as StableDiffusion can be trained with billions of images, each individual copy used in training maynot count as having “independent economic significance”.

      Key questions around exceptions.

    8. a mice and a squirrel on their mobile phones

      Possible typo: could be "a mouse and a squirrel on their mobile phones"

  7. Dec 2022
  8. Nov 2022
    1. IMMIGRATION

      Treaty Regulating Immigration from China 1880 (also at Wikisource; at Wikipedia), known commonly as the "Angell Treaty" after its primary US negotiator James B. Angell, which amended the 1868 Burlingame-Seward Treaty (in this same document at US Library of Congress; at Wikisource; at Wikipedia).

    2. PEACE, AMITY, AND COMMERCE

      1868 Burlingame-Seward Treaty (at Wikisource; at Wikipedia).

  9. Jul 2022
    1. We believe that policymaking is also worldbuilding. We are therefore targeting our advocacy on European policymakers.

      The new open will be enacted by policymaking, first in the EU.

    2. We will contribute to this new vision of Open through sensemaking work and creating new narratives.

      The new open will be enacted by "sensemaking work" and "creating new narratives".

  10. Jun 2022
    1. TagTeam is an open-source tagging platform and feed aggregator developed for the Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP) at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society under the direction of Peter Suber.

      About TagTeam

  11. May 2022
    1. Innovation is opening up educational policies and practices.

      A tool one can use to think about different ways of opening education is Open Learning Experience Bingo, a "game" you can apply to learning experiences and identify and/or imagine different ways to open them up.

    1. I defy any of my colleagues to argue persuasively that defunding campus police is a good idea, even at idyllic Princeton.

      Has Katz not encountered persuasive arguments for why one might support systematic change in policing?

    2. evil

      Is "evil" really the right word? Profoundly immoral and wicked? Doing the work of the Devil?

    3. a small local terrorist organization

      Much has been made out of these few words. No doubt calling BJL "terrorist" is incendiary. Does Katz believe incendiary rhetoric makes his case more convincing?

    4. “Establish a core distribution requirement focused on the history and legacy of racism in the country and on the campus.” There would be wisdom in this time of disunity in suggesting (not, in my view, requiring) that students take courses in American history and constitutionalism, both of which almost inevitably consider slavery and race, but that is not the same thing. Not incidentally, if you believe anti-blackness to be foundational, it is not a stretch to imagine that you will teach the 1619 Project as dogma.

      This section demonstrates how calls to "objectivity" undermine critical thinking. Objectivity becomes its own dogma.

    5. reason other than their pigmentation

      It boggles Katz's mind that advantages for certain people have been established and are still working today for "no reason other than their pigmentation"? Does Katz believe that structural racism is no longer in operation?

    6. civil war on campus

      Like armed conflict? Very dramatic.

    7. No one is in the middle.

      Rush to judgment; unsound research. Because Katz's friends' POVs and POVs he found online are all extreme, all POVs are extreme.

    8. In 1776 there were “united States” but there was not yet the “United States”; in these past two months, by contrast, at a time when we are increasingly un-united, “black” has become “Black” while “white” remains “white.”

      A focus on "proper" writing: recognizing the historical specificity of why "united" might not yet have been capitalized in 1776, but avoiding an understanding of why today one might capitalize Black and white differently.

    9. whose first words every American child knows, or used to

      More nostalgia; Katz projects his own experience and the experience of people like him onto "every American child".

    10. just a few minutes ago

      Hyperbolic nostalgia for the loss unexamined hero worship of "founding fathers".

    1. Subsidiarity, which uses “data cooperatives, collaboratives, and trusts with privacy-preserving and -enhancing techniques for data processing, such as federated learning and secure multiparty computation.”

      Another value of the data cooperative model might be that each individual might not have time to research and administer possible new data-sharing requests/opportunities, and it would be helpful to entrust that work to a cooperative entity that already has one's trust.

    2. In general, I would say that I think there are only a few circumstances in which markets produce good incentives and distributions, and that these depend heavily on publicly accountable governance that set up their rules.

      Amen. This resonates with my concern about systems that want to govern human relations without humans at the center. It's not like I believe having humans at the center of our relations guarantees good practices and outcomes (we have ample proof it does not), but rather that NOT centering humans in human relations may cast aside what's good about humanity along with what's bad.

  12. Apr 2022
    1. One of those factors is globalization which has helped lift hundreds and millions out of poverty, most notably in China and India, but which, along with automation has also ended entire economies, accelerated global inequality, and left millions of others feeling betrayed and angry at existing political institutions.

      An awareness of other structural, economic issues that are weakening democracy: Globalization, Automation, Inequality.

    2. increased mobility and urbanization of modern life, which further shakes up societies, including existing family structures and gender roles

      Another possible structural cause of weakened democracy, though I'm not sure how urbanization leads to a decrease in communal glue.

    3. chronic political dysfunction, here in the U.S. and in Europe
    4. What social media platforms have done, though, thanks to their increasing market dominance and their emphasis on speed, is accelerate the decline of newspapers and other traditional news sources.

      So this is a different way social media has intervened in the constellation of issues here then right? So to combat this issue, we might take different steps.

    5. the veil of anonymity that platforms provide their users

      Uh oh. Is this a trial balloon for ending online anonymity?

    6. very specific choices made by the companies that have come to dominate the internet generally and social media platforms in particular

      The move to blame specific corporate social media algorithms.

    7. You don’t even have to look up. And it’s made all of us more prone to what psychologists call confirmation bias

      Placing blame with users, as if only users were selecting what they see online.

    8. it did fortify a sense of shared culture and it came to the news, at least, citizens across the political spectrum tended to operate using a shared set of facts
    9. the sheer proliferation of content and the splintering of information and audiences

      Structural effects of global digital networks: more content, splintered audiences.

    10. We’ll have to come up with new models for a more inclusive, equitable capitalism. We’ll have to reform our political institutions in ways that allow people to be heard and give them real agency. We’ll have to tell better stories about ourselves and how we can live together, despite our differences.

      Obama's three strategies: better capitalism, better politics, better stories/communications.

    11. as once marginalized groups demand a seat at the table, politicians have found a new audience for old-fashioned appeals to racial and ethnic, religious or national solidarity

      This formulation almost makes it sound like marginalized folks are to blame.

    12. the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008
    13. the rise of China
    14. At the end of the day, tools don’t control us.

      Against technodeterminism.

    15. K-Monitor

      "We Use Technology, Research & Participatory Action to Unveil Corruption." Visit website >

    16. News Literacy Project

      "The News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan national education nonprofit, provides programs and resources for educators and the public to teach, learn and share the abilities needed to be smart, active consumers of news and information and equal and engaged participants in a democracy." Visit website >

    17. MIT Center for Constructive Communication

      "Designing tools, methods, and systems to understand and address societal fragmentation." Visit website >

    18. National School of Journalism and Public Discourse

      "National School of Journalism (NSoJ) is a highly selective J-school that identifies and trains India's best journalistic talents. Our newsroom-focused curriculum, in-house digital news portal, expert faculty members and unparalleled industry connections prepare our students for successful careers in broadcast, print and convergence journalism." Visit website >

    19. the U.S. Constitution as software
    20. ways to give young people and the rest of us the chance to build up civic muscles

      Call for civics.

    21. reinvigorate quality journalism, including local journalism

      Call to improve journalism.

    22. online media literacy

      Call to improve online media literacies.

    23. An interesting study came out recently

      Preprint of study: Broockman, D., & Kalla, J. (2022, April 1). The manifold effects of partisan media on viewers’ beliefs and attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/jrw26

    24. these companies need to have some other North Star other than just making money and increasing market share

      Will regulation be able to change the North Star?

    25. Platform Accountability and Transparency Act

      PATA via Senator Coons website.

    26. European Union’s Digital Services Act
    27. tech companies need to be more transparent about how they operate
    28. regulation has to be part of the answer
    29. we need to consider reforms to Section 230 to account for those changes, including whether platforms should be required to have a higher standard of care, when it comes to advertising on their site

      Possible s230 reform in advertising.

    30. Section 230 of the United States code

      s230 first mention

    31. More importantly, these companies are still way too guarded about how exactly their standards operate, or how their engagement ranking systems influence what goes viral and what doesn’t.
    32. the need for some democratic oversight
    33. The problem is, we often don’t know what principles govern those decisions. And on an issue of enormous public interest, there has been little public debate and practically no democratic oversight.

      Call for more transparency in social media algorithms, with a little threat of regulation.

    34. the First Amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies like Facebook or Twitter

      Reminder to folks who misunderstand the reach of the First Amendment.

    35. I believe that in most instances the answer to bad speech is good speech.

      Pretty close to a "marketplace of ideas" POV.

    36. There are some bugs in the software.

      A solution that suggests some fixes to the existing structures will suffice.

    37. the transformative power and promise of the open internet

      Putting the "open" in internet.

    38. New technologies are already challenging the way we regulate currency
    39. Russians could study and manipulate patterns in the engagement ranking system on a Facebook or YouTube.

      This suggests there is enough transparency in social media algorithms to game them.

    40. the very design of these platforms seems to be tilting us in the wrong direction

      Another call to focus on social media platform design.

    41. sophisticated actors from political consultants to commercial interests, to intelligence arms of foreign powers can game platform algorithms

      Are there interventions that can be made with these actors rather than at the level of the algorithms?

    1. The issue that had roiled the grown-ups in his life seemed to have had no effect on him at all.

      I wonder if that suggests the tests matter less, or more?

    2. That pragmatic genius for which Americans used to be known and admired, which included a talent for educating our young—how did it desert us?

      Known by who for educating who? This is the most ridiculously reductionist and nostalgic lament in the entire piece.

    3. an idea of education based on real meri

      Please define this "real merit".

    4. festooned with all the authoritarian excess of the new progressivism

      Do the policies and practices that shape disadvantaged lives come festooned (eg, drug sentencing laws)? Or do they seep out with a colder, darker, less obvious rhetoric?

    5. The teaching of civics has dwindled since the 1960s—a casualty of political polarization

      So the lack of civics lamented above is not caused by the global cultural studies that happened? There could be both, right?

    6. Our goal shouldn’t be to tell children what to think. The point is to teach them how to think so they can grow up to find their own answers.

      How many generations have passed mistaking this solution as progress?

    7. identity alone should neither uphold nor invalidate an idea

      Except ideas have always been structured by identify. Perhaps universal ideas might be better seen as the identity politics of a privilege that doesn't appreciate being interrogated.

    8. the universal principles of equality, dignity, and freedom

      It's easy to reach for these "universal" principles, which have always been universal in theory only. It doesn't surprise me that folks heretofore excluded challenge universal principles that have not served their purposes.

    9. It was a quiet plea to be left alone.

      Or was it a quiet plea that people can figure things out without hard rules and signs?

    10. Q also used the boys’ bathroom, which led to problems with other boys.

      What were the problems with the other boys?

    11. A 95 percent opt-out rate was a resounding success. It rivaled election results in Turkmenistan.

      Wow. That's an incredibly long reach to make an incendiary point.

    12. An extensive survey of American political opinion published last year by a nonprofit called More in Common found that a large majority of every group, including black Americans, thought “political correctness” was a problem.

      This is where it gets really interesting. I'd have to explore what branches out from here, but the term "political correctness" is not really just one thing that everyone agrees on, and from where I'm sitting, mostly seems to arise around areas where people who historically have had less of a voice start having one that disturbs established POVs.

    13. in part out of disillusionment with the early promise of his presidency—out of expectations raised and frustrated

      hm: another statement I'd need to think about or hear more about. How would we measure if there really was significant disillusionment from hope Obama's presidency raised? Sounds sorta right, but hard to prove.

    14. security

      Wait, how does meritocracy value security?

    15. On that freezing sidewalk, I felt a shudder of revulsion at the perversions of meritocracy. And yet there I was, cursing myself for being 30th in line.

      This is a great juxtaposition of the trap the author and so many upper-middle-class people find themselves in.

    16. children into overworked, inauthentic success machines

      A worry I have for sure...

    17. stay married

      Ahhh...so THIS is why we stay married!

    18. True meritocracy came closest to realization with the rise of standardized tests in the 1950s

      Interesting, I'm ready to buy that the post-WWII period had the biggest opening to education in the USA — tho far from truly open or meritocratic and definitely unevenly distributed in many ways, including between K12 and higher ed — but I'm not sure I'd put standardized tests first in a list of reasons for the opening. I'd want to hear more about that.

    19. He had picked this moment to render his very first representational drawing, and our hopes rose.

      I like an alternate theory: their kid had been making representational drawings for a long time, but purposely obscuring it until the revelation could make the biggest impact.

    20. Liberals are always slow to realize that there can be friendly, idealistic people who have little use for liberal values.

      So idealistic with other values?

    1. For students, historical habits of mind constitute majorintellectual hurdles. Students see their professors' thoughts asfinished products, tidied up and packaged for publicpresentation in books, articles, and lectures

      This is where social annotation can be powerful, by making the habits of a reading mind visible, and open for discussion.

    1. Infrastructure is a socio-technical system rather than a technical product.

      This is great to see as so often infrastructure is considered to be only within a purely technical layer.

    2. Infrastructure is dynamic.

      Also key: A common view of infrastructure as more permanent structures like "roads and bridges", or even digital networks, shapes understanding away from infrastructure as a more dynamic socio-technical system.

    1. The general trend is that students who report improved socioemotional outcomes also show suggestions of increased activity in collaborative tools relative to their peers.

      Another positive outcome from students taking courses with collaborative assignments.

    2. In this sample, 1,868 students enrolled in at least one undergraduate class with, and at least one undergraduate class without, some form of collaborative activity (peer review, Piazza, CourseNetworking, etc.), not including discussions.

      Interesting: Discussions are excluded from collaborative activies.

    3. Similarly, social annotation tools such as Hypothesis provide opportunities for students and instructors to interactively engage in a shared resource of interest wherein problems, challenges, and insights can be discussed.

      Mention of Hypothesis social annotation as a site for teacher/learner engagement.

    4. We estimate that students performed 1.16% points (95% HDI [0.65–1.66]) better in their undergraduate courses with collaborative activities, compared with the same students’ performance in undergraduate courses without collaborative activities.

      Interesting positive student success finding for courses with collaborative assignments.

    1. Students should be directly involved in campus conversations and decision-making about social reading technologies.

      Love this! It's hard to make happen, but learners voices are so often missing from EdTech conversations and may well be the most important voices to be heard. Given how tech decisions can have huge impacts on learner success and well-being, how can we ensure that they are a bigger part of the conversation?

    2. Teaching with social reading doesn’t mean peering over students’ shoulders. Rather, teaching with social reading should help students share and connect.

      So often learning technologies emphasize metrics of engagement that easily become metrics of surveillance. Maybe instead of focusing on "time on page" they might flower out to "connections made" to other people, texts, writing, and ideas.

    3. It begins by investing in people

      I wish every technology move would begin by investing in people. Yes, technologies can help us do wonderful things, but the most effective teaching and learning is in human connection.

  13. Mar 2022
    1. the permanence and agency of their work

      This seems like essential digital literacies work that should be part of all educational levels...otherwise, we run the risk of always being mere consumers of knowledge/content services that may not support our agency.

    2. boutique file types wither into obsolescence

      This is such a crucial point...how much content and knowledge is buried in obsolete file types? In the end, HTML may be one of the most robust file types, as well as being one of those that is most easily made accessible. Even the PDF we are reading here has layers of complexity beyond HTML that may make it less available in the future.

    3. CHAPTER 9

      WVU Press has graciously enabled author Jenae Cohn to share a chapter from her book, Skim, Dive, Surface, publicly so the community can annotate it together.

      Help support small presses by buying her book directly from the Press.

    1. more in the idea of disorder than in that of order

      As in entropy?

    2. that which it to be retained in the habit and allowing the rest to be “forgotten”).

      Typo? “that which is to be”?

  14. Feb 2022
    1. Because the people that freaking wrote critical theory read a lot more books than you and thought about things harder than you and were engaged in conversations you know little about and wrote in languages you don’t read.

      In the light of day, this seems especially harsh. I bet you have read a lot of books, maybe even in multiple languages. However, the point stands when we look at it in the context of the traditions in the USA (and UK) that proper thinking must be easily intelligible, or it is suspect. Traditions on the European continent don't demand that hard things always be easy to understand.

    1. encouraging the integration of different teaching methods and forms of assessment

      And not only encouraging practices directly related to OER, but also other open educational practices that the use of OER can "open" up, such as renewable assignments, authentic assessment, ungrading, etc.

    2. the institutional and national levels

      Maybe we should consider other policy-making levels too, as there are good examples of regional/provincial/state level OER policy, such as in Oregon. What are other examples/levels?

  15. Jan 2022
    1. A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

      I read this letter with growing unease as it seems to be participating in the increasingly common rhetoric where otherwise well-meaning progressives get caught up in what I think is a "panic" manufactured by rightist propaganda. The panic about "cancel culture" and a progressive undermining of free speech seems like the evolution of the older rightist culture wars panic about "political correctness".

      A couple of other readings have helped me think about this more deeply. You can read and respond to my annotations on each at the following links:

    1. My first impressions of web3

      First impressions on #web3 (or #w3b as I like to call it), from Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike.

  16. Nov 2021
    1. OER, particularly in indigenous languages

      Made me think of the Indigenization Project at BCCampus, that works "to co-create open educational resources that support faculty and staff with the incorporation of Indigenous epistemologies into professional practice, enabling post-secondary institutions to continue to build the structures and processes by which Indigenous students experience their post-secondary education in resonance with their own lives, worldviews, and ambitions."

      Are there other examples of projects focused on OER in indigenous languages? Love to hear about them in replies to this annotation.

  17. Oct 2021
  18. Sep 2021
    1. Jennifer Hardwick

      Learn more about Jennifer Hardwick on her KPU English faculty webpage.

    2. Now is the Time to Be Brave

      A group of educators will be annotating this post together as a part of the 17 Sep 2021 AnnotatED workshop with Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani, as a part of his OLC Accelerate 2021 keynote. Join us annotating here, at the workshop live, or viewing the workshop recording afterwards.

      Dr. Jhangiani collaborates with this post's author, Jennifer Hardwick, in the Teaching & Learning Commons at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

    3. seeing spaces of opportunity

      I'm seeing a space of opportunity in the way we map and plan at the intersection of knowledge practices — like teaching and learning, research, publication, archiving — and tools. I'm thinking about ways we can use practices like Jennifer Hardwick outlines here to map and plan in new ways that emphasize human activity and connections rather than technologies.

      What spaces of opportunity are you seeing?

    4. Open Pedagogy, Universal Design for Learning, and Appreciative Inquiry

      Although I'm not teaching at the moment, I have collaborated on some Open Pedagogy activities, most fulsomely on what we've been calling "Open Learning Experience Bingo", a tool you can use to think about the "openness" of educational activities. I also gave a lightning talk about the bingo if you'd rather watch than read.

      Do other readers have examples of open, UDL, or — new to me — appreciative inquiry practices they've been experimenting with or thinking about?

    5. address historical and ongoing injustice and imagine new ways of teaching, researching, and engaging with community

      This is a pretty impressive list of initiatives above. It would be great to have people link similar initiatives from other institutions here to get a sense of how widespread this kind of activity is and help make connections across efforts.

    6. committing ourselves to difficult and uncomfortable work to make change

      One of the changes I've been trying to make is to listen more and talk less — which is hard for a blabbermouth like me. Rather than have my voice continue to take up the great space it so often does, I instead try to focus on how I can hear and amplify other voices — especially voices so often marginalized by those like mine.

      For example: Rather than weigh in on a tweet that resonates with me, I simply retweet it, hopefully spreading its message and letting it speak for itself, making its own connections.

      What "difficult and uncomfortable work" have you been taking on?

    7. Jessica Zeller’s vision of a “vital pedagogy”

      Follow this link to read Jessica Zeller's post, "Pedagogy as Protest: Reimagining the Center", with social annotation enabled.

    1. Where is our humanity?

      Indeed, where is our humanity?

      From the POV of educational technology, we seem to be bent on replacing humanity with machines as fast as possible, either "because technology scales" and so we need it to deliver more educational goodness to the growing population of potential learners, or because technology "capitalizes" and so enables some people to generate more/new revenue from education.

      Meanwhile, the one thing we have in abundance that we know improves learning outcomes is...humans. Let's use them!

  19. Aug 2021
  20. Jul 2021
    1. i'll be  living aboard the mothership from parliament

      Likely a reference to the "Mothership" spaceship of Dr. Funkenstein, an alter ego of Parliament's George Clinton.

  21. Jun 2021
    1. the Hypothesis sidebar

      See how you can highlight some words on the page and add an annotation? Use the links above to sign in to or create a Hypothesis account.

    1. Te Hiku Media gathered huge swathes of Māori language data. Corporates are now trying to get the rights to it

      Example of tension between indigenous IP and commercial use.

    1. We hope to develop a license that is an international example for indigenous people's retention of mana over data and other intellectual property in a Western construct.

      Indigenous people's license example.

    1. Engineering and the sciences have, to a greater degree, been spared this isolation and genetic drift because of crass commercial necessity.

      Or maybe rather, engineering and the sciences, have, to a greater degree, been very differently shaped due to their different connections to commercial forces.

      Critical theory invites us to step away from an idea of there being some kind of realm of pure, valid thinking/knowledge that might be corrupted/shaped by either academic structures (as Morningstar finds in critical theory), or commerce (as Morningstar finds in engineering and science), or connections to reality and instead explore how any human practice is connected to, shaped by and shaping of all those things and more.

    2. It is a cautionary lesson about the consequences of allowing a branch of academia that has been entrusted with the study of important problems to become isolated and inbred.

      Morningstar is on to something here in explaining critical theory's faults as the result of some structural, social/culture forces, but ends up misrecognizing his own insight for something that derives from intrinsic qualities of critical theory itself rather than how it participates in specific historical periods.

    3. Buried in the muck, however, are a set of important and interesting ideas: that in reading a work it is illuminating to consider the contrast between what is said and what is not said, between what is explicit and what is assumed, and that popular notions of truth and value depend to a disturbingly high degree on the reader's credulity and willingness to accept the text's own claims as to its validity.

      Morningstar steps away from his clever ridicule to finally reveal what he found valuable in his exploration of critical theory.

    4. Baudrillard

      Surprised to see Baudrillard categorized as harder? more opaque? more sophisticated? than Derrida... Someone who had read both might switch the order...

    5. he intellectual equivalent of peacock feathers

      I can't find it right now, but recently came across an example of how a different field, perhaps closer to Morningstar's, has experienced a kind of "drift", wherein a sizable portion of artificial intelligence research was characterized as being of low quality and published only due to a small "in group" colluding.

    6. Another minor point, by the way, is that we don't say that we deconstruct the text but that the text deconstructs itself. This way it looks less like we are making things up.

      One of the things critical theory does is try to understand how culture works beyond this or that individual human interaction with say, one specific text. Part of this line of thinking is that culture (a critical theorist might say "discourse") has its own patterns, histories, structures, effects, etc. This might be why Morningstar finds the idea that a text could "deconstruct itself" fantastical.

    7. being gainfully employed, I don't have to worry about graduation or tenure

      Again Morningstar shows a lack of recognition that academia (most especially in the USA) operates in a marketplace, even though he describes some of its market characteristics elsewhere.

    8. Programmers and computer scientists may find the concept of a hierarchy consisting of only two elements to be a bit odd

      So for example, if a computer program had one primary database and one replica of the primary database that copied the primary database nightly, a computer scientist wouldn't recognize that setup as a hierarchy with two elements?

    9. cheap trick

      Does Morningstar think that math too suffers from the same issues he finds in critical theory, or just Godel's incompleteness theorem (I'm assuming that's what Morningstar is alluding to)? Explore a deep discussion about whether Godel's incompleteness theorem is a cheap trick.

    10. stir up metaphysical confusion by questioning the very idea of labels and categories

      Or is questioning labels and categories a quite legitimate move given that one of the primary focuses of critical theory is to look at how labels and catetgories shape understanding?

    11. with a sufficient amount of clever handwaving and artful verbiage, you can interpret any piece of writing as a statement about anything at all

      Morningstar's big takeaway.

    12. guilty suspects

      Morningstar frames his inquiry as a crime investigation.

    13. one of the beliefs that seems to be characteristic of the postmodernist mind set is the idea that politics and cleverness are the basis for all judgments about quality or truth, regardless of the subject matter or who is making the judgment

      hmmm...this needs to be unpacked...I might start by suggesting that critical theory does indeed often explore how judgements of quality and truth are shaped by politics, power, desire, knowledge, etc, but that's not a point against such work, but rather a recognition of part of its main practice.

      Cleverness is another matter...there's quite a bit of cleverness here in Morningstar's post, so should we judge it less worthy?

    14. an isolated population with unique selective pressures resulting in evolutionary divergence from the mainland population

      I would suggest a different understanding: Much of what's happened in critical theory (especially the parts more visible to "outsiders") is deeply embedded in "mainland" contexts, including, most importantly for critical theory, being embedded in the expansion of higher education in the USA after the GI Bill and the long tradition of "pragmatic" thinking in mainstream US thought that may find its roots in Protestantism and flower in the mythic "American" "everyman".

    15. Contrast this situation with that of academia.

      Morningstar misses here how he goes on to describe exactly how academia acts as a marketplace and how academics do get paid by convincing somebody else that "what [they] are doing is worth" payment. The idea that academia is not participating in market-based dynamics seems like just the old "ivory tower" myth.

    16. in order to remain employed I have to convince somebody else that what I'm doing is worth having them pay for it

      hmmm...so projects that participate in the marketplace are inherently...what? this needs to be thought through...see below where Morningstar returns to this point and suggests the answer is something like "more tied to reality".

    17. require precise language in order to talk about it clearly

      This is a key point: Complex, unobvious topics can not always be talked about in simple, plain language anyone can understand. There are texts that needlessly obfuscate and maybe something easier to understand can be said about almost anything by way of an introduction or at least to explain "why it matters", but critical theory at its core is pretty deep work, resting on a lot of other material (eg, philosophy), and exploring areas that a lot of folks aren't deeply acquainted with. The fact that much critical theory is not easy of a newcomer to understand is not proof that it is bogus.

    18. On Deconstruction by Jonathan Culler

      I wouldn't recommend Culler's worthy book as a primer — it's more like an advanced read. One might actually do far better just reading wikipedia entries on a few critical theorists and theories, or maybe a book like Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory, which I might not agree with in places but can be an approachable starting place for someone new to critical theory.

    19. I figured that one of three cases must apply. It could be that there was truly some content there of value, once you learned the lingo. If this was the case, then I wanted to know what it was. On the other hand, perhaps there was actually content there but it was bogus (my working hypothesis), in which case I wanted to be able to respond to it credibly. On the third hand, maybe there was no content there after all, in which case I wanted to be able to write these clowns off without feeling guilty that I hadn't given them due consideration.

      These seem like the three most common uninformed opinions about critical theory, with maybe the middle being most commonly held, though perhaps in close competition with the third, but with most adherents unwilling to undertake Morningstar's due diligence and so just jump directly to writing it all off as the bogus work of clowns.

  22. May 2021
    1. an iterative process of knowledge production through reference, review, and refinement

      After reading Chapter 5, "Annotation Expresses Power" in Remi and Antero's book, Annotation, I know there is more lurking behind this idea of scholarship as a "great conversation", iterating and refining, but also inscribing, foreclosing, opening, diverting, eliding, obscuring, (dis)empowering, apologizing, justifying, (de)mystifying, and in so many other ways being so much other than a collective project toward greater enlightenment...

    1. I allow nothing for losses by death, but on the contrary shall presently take credit 4. pr. cent pr. annum for their increase over & above keepg. up their own numbers.

      Perhaps one of the most telling annotations in history: Where Jefferson annotates his own 1792 letter to Washington to herald the profit in breeding enslaved people.

      You can also see an image of the actual letter on page 4/5: Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, Notes. -06-18, 1792. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mtjbib006309/.

      Hat tip to Stuart Pace and Henry Wiencek's Smithsonian article, "The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson".

    1. The absence of deliberation in chastising bad actors, misconstrued as the outcome of cancel culture, is a fault of the elites’ inability to adequately conceive of the impact social media connectivity has for shifting the power dynamics of the public sphere in the digital age.

      Wow. Clark takes the Harper's letter signatories to task for not understanding how public spheres work now with social media in the mix. Reminded of how nostalgia for "the way things used to be" (but never really existed) runs deep in all critiques like that letter...

      See my growing list of works I read to augment my thinking about the cancel culture moral panic and that letter in Harper's.

    1. flexible grading policies

      I'm especially attracted to the #ungrading work I've been watching from folks like Mary Klann and David Buck...and I know there are so many more people working with authentic and alternative assessment practices...

    2. We as parents will always give more to our kids than they will give us,

      This is likely true: parents give to their kids in ways we ourselves probably can't remember or truly know. Lately, however — and maybe this is because my kids have reached a certain age — I feel like I've been getting more from my kids than I'm giving, both in care and intellectually.

      I wonder how I might teach differently if my expectation were always that I would be getting more from my students than they might get from me?

    3. Twitter group DMs with international friends

      For me too such international group conversations have been immensely sustaining during the pandemic, and a deep source of learning and laughter. Many of us don't even really know each other that well and have not ever met in person, but our guards are down, our empathy is up, and almost any topic elicits some thoughtful response, or at least acknowledgement.

    4. Can you think of others?

      In the USA especially, I feel like teachers would benefit from much more care from society in general and government at all levels. In the USA, we pay lip service to the sacrifice and nobility of teachers, but also under-fund and under-value teaching and education generally.

    1. The future of the university as an open knowledge institution that institutionalizes diversity and contributes to a common resource of knowledge: a manifesto.

      A manifesto calling on universities to become fully open knowledge institutions.

    1. high-stakes nature of remote testing for both test administrators and students

      Are remote tests more high stakes than in-classroom tests?

  23. Apr 2021
    1. Higher Education Digital Capability Framework An open-source capability framework for higher education. 4 dimensions, 16 domains and 70+ capabilities.

      Digital education capability map/landscape from https://www.holoniq.com.

    1. 2021 Global Learning Landscape An open source taxonomy for the future of education. Mapping the learning and talent innovation landscape.

      CC BY licensed framework for education landscapes from https://www.holoniq.com

    1. R & D for Learning, Education, & Training

      NLET focuses on K12 data, math and pathways.

    Tags

    Annotators

    URL

    1. evolve our decision-making structures to more directly imbue care, equity, and representation into our work and leadership

      A way of talking about what needs to be done in organizations to better support equity/representation.

  24. Mar 2021
    1. A more useful model is to understand all realms of the qualitative, ethnographic and quantitative experimental paradigms, and to seek balance in employing methodologies appropriate to the context and timing of research questions in the human-centered design process.

      On balancing informal qualitative and formal quantitative approaches to human-centered design.

  25. Feb 2021
    1. It is only through broad public conversations and beginning to see the consequences of some of the approaches I was taking that I have come to fully appreciate the severe limits of technocracy. In that case, as in all those above, there is a severe danger of great technical minds being wasted on an arrogant pursuit of remaking the world in their image, rather than contributing to a broader conversation.

      Laudable transparent self-reflection from the author. Would that more were so willing to change, and be public about their changing!

    2. those who don’t usually end up in jail

      This made me pause, given how many people end up in jail not because they haven't made themselves legible, but because they aren't seen as legible by the (technocratic) systems that jail people. I'd make this point differently...

    3. A primary goal of AI design should be not just alignment, but legibility, to ensure that the humans interacting with the AI know its goals and failure modes, allowing critique, reuse, constraint etc.

      Applying the thinking here to artificial intelligence...

    4. Yet the lack of technical formalizability does not imply there is nothing systematic about achieving legibility.

      On achieving legibility systematically.

    5. Designers must explicitly recognize and design for the fact that there is critical information necessary to make their designs succeed that a) lies in the minds of citizens outside the technocratic/designer class, b) will not be translated into the language of this class soon enough to avoid disastrous outcomes and c) does not fit into the thin formalism that designers allow for societal input.

      Explicit recipe to avoid dangers of technocracy.

    6. Keynesian planning and neoliberal privatization drives are superficially quite opposite tendencies. Yet deeper down they share the view that a thin formalism, based on aggregate statistics like inflation, GDP growth, output, interest rates, etc. as defined in the theory, are enough to process the wide range of social feedback necessary for sensible political and economic decision-making.

      Great example how seemingly opposed frameworks nevertheless participate in the same "technocratic" discursive formation.

    7. Brasilia stands as a monument in glass, steel and stone to the arrogance of technocracy

      Maybe for a film example, see Jacques Tati's Playtime.

    8. supported by a community of scientists and engineers that police the boundaries of what is considered valid and valued work within such a knowledge system

      Thinking here not just of active human boundary policing, but also boundaries enforced by discursive formations as Foucault might describe them, which seem well aligned with this analysis.

    9. Let us call this goal “fidelity”, as it tries to make the formal system as true to the world as possible and contrasts with “optimality”. Yet, as the same time, they must recognize that whatever they design, it will fail to capture critical elements of the world. In order to allow these failures to be corrected, it will be necessary for the designed system to be comprehensible by those outside the formal community, so they can incorporate the unformalized information through critique, reuse, recombination and broader conversation in informal language. Let us call this goal “legibility”.

      Where the author defines very useful terms of "fidelity" and "legibility".

    10. Constraints on this process based on democratic legitimacy or explicability, “common sense” restrictions on what should or shouldn’t be optimized, unstructured or verbal input into the process by those lacking formal training, etc. are all viewed as harmful noise at best and as destructive meddling by ill-informed politics at worst.

      Common issues with technocracy.

    11. Jorge Luis Borges noted that a fully accurate map would need to be as large as the region it mapped

      For more background on the Borges work where this idea appears, see "On Exactitude in Science".

  26. Jan 2021
    1. Mr. CICILLINE

      David Cicilline is a Democrat representing Rhode Island's first congressional district.

    1. Section 230 doesn’t say what many think it does

      For an alternate, critical view, read and annotate Hal Plotkin's post, "Undoing the Mistake of the Century.

    1. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was supposed to be a temporary fix. Times up.

      For an alternate view, supporting s230, read and annotate Jason Kelly's post, "Section 230 is Good, Actually.

  27. Nov 2020
    1. Lionizing individuals such as Lincoln and Finch not only erases the ways in which they have upheld racist ideas; it also minimizes (even erases) the roles played by everyday activists to push political leaders and lawyers such as Lincoln and Finch in the direction of justice.

      This has me thinking about the ways in which popular culture narratives like TV and movies participate in this lionization, especially with the preponderance of single (often white male) protagonist stories over stories about collective action.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vouoju4mETc

    1. Rascuache Technology Pedagogy: Making Do with a Confluence of Resources

      Extend the conversation from this session: Join us in an annotated conversation on readings related to Cruz Medina's session, including:

      A great example of multimodal rascuache thinking from Cyrus Dudgeon:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K9ngh8XFFU

      Need help getting started with social annotation? See a short guide to engaging in events with Hypothesis social annotation.

    1. Social Annotation and an Inclusive Praxis for Open Pedagogy in the College Classroom.

      This is a fantastic article, published in a journal that includes social annotation as core functionality.

    2. Strategies to Author Annotation as brave Writing

      Great resource for shaping "brave writing" experiences for educators and/or students.

    3. “the messiness of meaning- making”

      And when meaning making is not messy, by means of what process is it "cleaned up"? This has me thinking that "ordered" or "clean" learning is maybe always less, or at least less authentic, learning.

      "Pile of Covered Books" by Ryan Adams

    4. this article in the 2019– 20 LEARN syllabus
    5. Annotation, as critical writing, is a literal, symbolic, and social means of re- marking upon and speaking truth to power.

      This has me thinking about how social annotation performs a kind of "estrangement" that maybe breaks down boundaries between the creation/publication and the reception/reading of texts when words from the authors and readers intermix in the same experience.