Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you. Here’s…
Category: education
Flow = Attention deconcentration?
It comes up around nearly every turn. It’s one of the wobbles of life that leads us into such ideas repeatedly: Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process…
Remembering the contributions of Phil Dodds
Mark Oehlert, an acquaintance of mine via Twitter, turned me onto his friend Phil Dodds, who turns out was not only in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but contributed a great deal to our culture in his short life, including, but not limited to, SCORM: From Wikipedia: He was the chief architect…
Above and Beyond Alaska hosts Andy Summers
Our pals, Sean and Becky Janes, gave Andy Summers and his son the tour of Southeast recently via their outfit Above and Beyond Alaska. That’s Sean on the right in the picture below. Highly recommended if you’re thinking about making it out to the Last Frontier – but of course, we’re biased: = c
Tapped
In late 2008, Switchblade’s Adam Condal edited “Tapped,” a 90-minute documentary that in July of 2009 premiered at the Long Island and Maine International Film Festivals. The film illustrates the impact of the global water crisis on America and what we can do as individuals to enact change sooner rather than later. “Tapped” examines the…
Using Nature as a Hitman
The World War 1 Tyrolean Avalanches 1916-1918 Avalanches were used as highly effective weapons during World War 1. This disastrous weapon started when lot’s of snow fell in the Alp’s during the December of 1916. People could tell that the avalanche risk was high. A big avalanche killed 250 soldiers while tumbling down on the…
Cranies (sic)
I received one of the most beautiful SMS’s ever today. Is that how we say SMS in the plural? Doesn’t really matter. Case in point: “I received one of the most beautiful SMS’s ever today.” It was from my father, who’s never cared much about his spelling, only about the message: Cheers, Pop. Happy Birthday,…
Yet another small lifeform outsmarting us every minute
From the BBC: We think we have big, sophisticated cities. We are proud of our ability to organize and accomplish common goals. Meanwhile, a single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered. Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony,…
Ordinary Affects
Ordinary Affects is an exercise, not a fact. I like this very much. Ordinary Affects is a singular argument for attention to the affective dimensions of everyday life and the potential that animates the ordinary. Known for her focus on the poetics and politics of language and landscape, the anthropologist Kathleen Stewart ponders how ordinary…
Harvey Milk : Human Rights Champion
From Wikipedia: Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not Milk’s early interests; he did not feel the need…
Walks the walk: Jim Rossignol
Jim Rossignol is an interesting fellow, particularly in the context that he writes in a unique way about gaming and its influence on culture. Not to mention, the trajectory and contrast of his own story against what he writes makes him an authentic source IMO. I am anticipating the arrival of his book, This Gaming…
Sirikata : BSD-licensed platform for virtual worlds
Sirikata is an BSD licensed open source platform for virtual worlds. The aim is to provide a set of libraries and protocols which can be used to deploy a virtual world, as well as fully featured sample implementations of services for hosting and deploying these worlds. The team is aiming for an alpha release in…
Time-lapse
Seems I spend a lot of time shooting, watching and seeking out good examples of time-lapse photography. It moves me. It puts me in a mindset somewhat more aware of the passing of time. I like the way it makes me feel small. That perspective is something I crave. Naturally, I like learning more about…
Pay them and they will come
For just a moment there, I thought I’d misread the thing. The article stated something about teachers making $125,000 a year and I had to stop what I was doing because some pals and I have agreed with this approach for years. Same as in most any other field, it’s often the pay scale that…
Hero : James Burke
James Burke has the storytelling powers of the immortal. Here we can listen and see him discuss the thinking behind his work. Groovy, indeed. = c
Danny Wilcox Frazier
I give thanks to the gods for Danny Wilcox Frazier. Responsible for chronicling the Midwestern way of life in multiple mediums, he is true to the cause of his homeland and to the powers that live here, unknown to those on the coasts who dare not venture out of their safely *cool* havens for parts…
Overlooked : Slackers in Nature
Earlier this morning, Tim O’Reilly tweeted about this research published in the NYT and I am so completely fascinated and thus fixated on it today: Dr. Dornhaus is breaking new ground in her studies of whether the efficiency of ant society, based on a division of labor among ant specialists, is important to their success….
Raise your hand if…
…you need to want more. One thing a recession is good for is reminding us how much we need. Raise your hand if you’ve been doing a lot of talking about the economy and the lack of growth and the rise of unemployment and the worry and the poor attitudes and the general malaise about…
Still Relevant After All These Years
We showed silent films that have been around for almost a century to 7-year-olds and they were rolling on the floor. Chaplin and Keaton are as relevant as ever. Once they caught their breath, they made simple storyboards, title pages and backdrops for their own silent movies, acting out the scenes with toys. Each crew…
Everything Old is New Again
We showed silent films to 7-year-olds and I was quite surprised at how funny these kids found Chaplin and Keaton to be – even after 100 years they are as relevant to entertainment as ever. Our little folks were rolling on the floor. After watching the likes of these, they endeavored to make their own…
Món Sant Benet
I was fortunate to be invited to participate in [and document] a field trip to one of the more reverent locales around Barcelona, Món Sant Benet. Here’s the site’s official story: = c