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David McGavock

The dreams of readers | ROUGH TYPE - 1 views

  • Psychologists and neurobiologists have begun studying what goes on in our minds as we read literature, and what they’re discovering lends scientific weight to Emerson’s observation.
  • “aesthetic emotions” that we feel when we view art from a distance, as a spectator:
  • We create our own version of the piece of fiction, our own dream, our own enactment.” Making sense of what transpires in a book’s imagined reality appears to depend on “making a version of the action ourselves, inwardly.”
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  • The scholars used brain scans to examine the cellular activity that occurs inside people’s heads as they read stories. They found that “readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative.”
  • When, for example, a character in a story puts a pencil down on a desk, the neurons that control muscle movements fire in a reader’s brain. When a character goes through a door to enter a room, electrical charges begin to flow through the areas in a reader’s brain that are involved in spatial representation and navigation.
  • More than mere replication is going on.
  • we really do enter, so far as our brains are concerned, a new world — one conjured not just out of the author’s words but out of our own memories and desires — and it is our cognitive immersion in that world that gives reading its emotional force.
  • ” A work of literature, particularly narrative literature, takes hold of the brain in curious and powerful ways.
  • there are the “narrative emotions” we experience when, through the sympathetic actions of our nervous system, we become part of a story, when the distance between the attendee and the attended evaporates
  • A 2009 experiment conducted by Oatley and three colleagues suggests that the emotions stirred by literature can even alter, in subtle but real ways, people’s personalities.
  • Norman Holland, a scholar at the McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida, has been studying literature’s psychological effects for many years, and he offers a provocative answer to that question.
  • when we open a book, our expectations and attitudes change. Because we understand that “we cannot or will not change the work of art by our actions,” we are relieved of our desire to exert an influence over objects and people and hence can “disengage our [cognitive] systems for initiating actions.”
    • David McGavock
       
      Theory of mind 
  • The central subject of literature is society, and when we lose ourselves in a book we often receive an education in the subtleties and vagaries of human relations.
  • reading tends to make us at least a little more empathetic, a little more alert to the inner lives of others.
  • can strengthen a person’s “theory of mind,” which is what psychologists call the ability to understand what other people are thinking and feeling.
  • That frees us to become absorbed in the imaginary world of the literary work.
  • Jeff Jarvis, a media consultant who teaches journalism at the City University of New York, gave voice to this way of thinking in a post on his blog. Claiming that printed pages “create, at best, a one-way relationship with a reader,” he concluded that, in the internet era, “the book is an outdated means of communicating information.” He declared that “print is where words go to die.”
  • Society is growing ever more skeptical of the value of solitude. The status quo treats with suspicion  even the briefest of withdrawals into inactivity and apparent purposelessness. We see it in the redefinition of receptive states of mind as passive states of mind.
  • the arts of production and consumption, of getting stuff done, to which most of us devote most of our waking hours.
  • In a 2003 lecture, Andrew Louth, a theology professor at the University of Durham in England, drew a distinction between “the free arts” and “the servile arts.” The servile arts, he said, are those “to which a man is bound if he has in mind a limited task.”
  • free arts, among which Louth included reading as well as meditation, contemplation, and prayer, are those characterized, in one way or another, by “the search for knowledge for its own sake.”
  • We open ourselves to aesthetic and spiritual possibilities.
  • It may be that readers have to enter a state of languid pleasure, a dream, before they can experience the full spermatic vitality of a book. Far from being a sign of passivity, the reader’s outward repose signals the most profound kind of inner activity, the kind that goes unregistered by society’s sensors.
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    "The free arts, among which Louth included reading as well as meditation, contemplation, and prayer, are those characterized, in one way or another, by "the search for knowledge for its own sake." "
David McGavock

Jennifer Lynn Aaker | Creating Infectious Action - 1 views

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    "in one class she conducted a crowdsourced experiment which literally changed the way Jennifer views and thinks about social media. In her class one of her students gave her a set of slides that told a very compelling story. She shares that story and explains how it led her to come up with a new theory for creating infectious action."
David McGavock

A New Culture of Learning | Social Media Classroom - 3 views

  • A New Culture of Learning
  • what strikes me is the second part of the title Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.
  • I love seeing a child's imagination being captivated
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  • I am challenged by many who see social-media as the next project rather than a shift in the paradigm of existence.
  • I believe that dissatisfaction with the factory model of school, along with the growing number, ubiquity, and accessiblity, of tools (for connection, collaboration and creation) will tip the balance toward new models and cultures of learning.
  • I love to see teachers and student figuring out how to use technology together; asking questions, trying stuff, "messing around" as Brown would say.
  • The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid
  • Can I just say that it is amazingly prescient and still relevant even a decade later? I'm interested in comparing it to his more recent book in discussion here.
  • Howard reponds with an idea on assignments (and the power of assignments). I found the questions (or in other courses the assignements) to really good at directing my brain. 1.Read the question 2. go to sleep 3. stare at the ceiling for hours 4. brush teeth 5. eurekaThese methods are also used in action learning and action research
  • I'm reading the book "the myth of management" (which is not related to learning), and I found out that finding "faults" is actually a dirty consultant trick, as it expands the window through which you can sell your solution. I hacked that idea and replaced solution with learning.
  •  The role of the instructor in balancing freedom and structure -- setting enough structure so that the unlimited freedom doesn't become vertiginous and overwhelming -- resonates with my experiences with Rheingold U. so far. Assignments seem to help, but they can't be too onerous.
  •  Very nice article comparing Thomas/JSB ideas to John Dewey's:
  •  http://charlestkerchner.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/DeweyThomas.pdf
  • Ernst - I am particularly interested in Action Research of the "plan, act, observe,reflect" variety where we never really arrive at conclusions but start again in a new cycle of teaching and learning.
  • that idea of teaching people to fail is very important - I notice that this is acceptable very often in business especially in the contexts of 'start-ups' but unacceptable in most schools. Here in Europe, the work of the Finnish educationalist Pasi Sahlberg gets a lot of attention - one of his motifs is learning to be wrong.
  • Knowing who to listen to in the 'noise' of all the information overload is important - I'm looking forward to our continuing review of how we all re-imagine that new culture of learning.
  • Can You, and if yes, How,  Change a system from within? This is one of the key issues of our time. Learning, PLN, Community support structures, activism, Social media, cooperation.. are all part of that... so it is realIy at the heart of our SMC Alumni topics. 
  • I would suggest, we should be dialoguing in depth about the question, and how to formulate it, before jumping to solutions...
  • The work of social and developmental psychologist, Carol Dweck can inform our discussion about failure,
  • Her book, Mindset, posits that some students have growth mindsets and some have fixed mindsets.
  • Ernst, I adore your description of problem-solving (especially the enumerated part). Downtime is essential for processing information and I agree, even subtle shifts within group dynamics can cause huge internal vistas to open up.
  • The idea of structuring for failure in itself is a whole new take on creative thinking.
  • Schools reward success.  That's our measurement system, our "leaderboard".  Some winners at school go on to run schools. Schools punish failure deeply, systematically.  Remember dunce caps? So taking failure as a good thing is, at the very least, weird and defamiliarizing!
  • Chapter Two of Thomas and Seely-Brown's book  is so short - just five pages - They conclude with the idea ....the point is to embrace what we don't know, come up with better questions about it, and continue asking those questions in order to learn more and more, both incrementally and exponentially. I wonder do the authors want us to reflect repeatedly on the contents of the chapter given its brevity.
  • is it certain type of people who fail, who are subsequently allowed to start again?
  • book's first chapter
  • Two key elements: network ("a massive information network that provides almost unlimited access and resources", sounds like mobile + Web) and environments ("bounded and structural") (19).
  • what do you make of the examples they present?  What do they suggest about the theory they exemplify?
  • ohn Seely Brown is particularly interested in the idea of tinkering. He suggests one of the best 'tinkering' models is the architectural studio -- the place where students work together trying to solve each others' problems, and a mentor or master can also take part in open criticism. Find out why this is a model for us all.  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bydesign/stories/2011/3147776.htm
  • The first chapter is a pretty rosy, and might I say westernized, view of the power of Internet access + play in learning.* It manages to enlighten and engage using a few choice narratives (I imagine we will get to the power of those at some point in the book, too) and sets us up for the rationale to come.
  • * I'm looking for some reaction with regards to that comment
  • based on WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic) concepts. (An aside, here's a truly wonderful post unpacking of the idea of WEIRD in social science research.)
  • I can only talk for myself but there are contradictions between what I think is best to do with the students I teach and what I actually do. This "living contradiction" is something I consider in my own studies - I noticed a Tweet last night from Howard: Online and blended learning is NOT about automating delivery of knowledge, but about encouraging peer learning, inquiry, discourse.
  • The sentence I liked most from Chapter One reads "One of the metaphors we adopt to describe this process is cultivation. A farmer for example takes the nearly unlimited resources of sunlight, wind, water, earth, and biology and consolidates them into the bounded and structured environment of garden or farm. We see a new culture of learning as a similar kind of process - but cultivating minds instead of plants"
  • Everyone - you may have seen the piece below - if not please take 12 minutes to view it - it fits nicely with our current discussion
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    This is the first capture of the conversation from the thread "A New Culture of Learning". We'll see how this goes
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    I read the book almost cover to cover. It led me to think more about pushing what I've been doing closer to pure p2p. One of the co-learners in the latest Mindamp told me about "paragogy." That one is worth bookmarking.
David McGavock

Mission for week two: Evolution of cooperation questions (ACTION REQUESTED) | Social Me... - 0 views

  • Pavel's
  • a lot of smart people across the region also begin to identify themselves with one of the sides, inevitably getting involved in arguments they don't want to be part of, raising hostility towards each other. 
  • ake control over our pre-wired responses.
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  • awareness (such as meditation)
  • help people learn how to identify and de-identify with various groups, by allowing them to experience the variety of social contexts.
  • Roland's
  • not only be critical thinking but systems thinking
  • help people become more self-dependent.
  • experiences are organized for children from the early age
  • raise the level of critical thinking
  • Education is liberating.
  • The notion of indirect reciprocity could be important here: doing things for those groups without expecting to get a return, but setting an example
  • reject the notion of tribes or of people being permanently and essentially bad and extremist, and to be welcoming and kind
  • Bodil's
  • I can work with other communities which are open, tolerant and welcoming.
  • Better distribution of resources.
  • reputation and trust
  • know how to build trust and create cooperation, we should know something about breaking bad patterns
  • knowledge about social dilemmas
  • “growth mindset”
  • David's
  • separating fiction from fact,
  • interaction in order to reveal the "true" characteristics of inform
  • physical security, enough to eat, a place to sleep, freedom from threat.
  • John's
  • little can be done at the level of the individual, other than being aware that our appreciation of ideas, and our tendency to engage in counterproductive behavior may be due to forces other than the ideas themselves.
  • becoming aware of our own weaknesses with regard to absorbing new information
  • it is possible to gather individuals into a super organism that is less vulnerable to being victimized by false or misleading information,
  • we need access to information and skill in critical thinking
  • Hermano's
  • My political answer is internationalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalism_(politics).
  • High level of material, political, physical, psychological etc personal independance
  • My cultural answer is to displace the ubiquitous narrative of competition by this narrative of cooperative
  • traces of trustworthiness online,
  • tactical tool is the internet.
  • empowers the common man to act at multiple levels, assuming responsibility for all the nested groups to which he would belong.
  • Inger's
  •  Fighting discrimination
  • stereotypes
  • negative stereotypes
  • experience the feeling of discrimination in order to fight it.
  • Discrimination starts with stereotypes that turn into prejudice, and the individual becomes a member of a group that is dehmanised and stripped of human qualities.
  • Elena's
  • Meditation skills
  • life satisfaction
  • transferring an ultimate level of governance and common legislation to structures above nation states
  • Practices of integration of spirit-mind-body
  • value of own life and personal voe not to destroy self
  • Calisa's
  • only possible escape route is to get a glimpse of life on the outside, to see that there are different ways to live one's life, to understand that there are choices.
  • only through the glimpse can the child even begin to contemplate the notion of breaking the "pre-wiring"
  • glimpse does not guarantee escape
  •  shine your light brightly:
  • If there are children in your life, invest in them
  • Sahil's
  • Stay informed about the big, complex world-shaping issues
  • Use technology to express yourself beyond your home and workplace
  • same forces producing the 'dark' forms of social cooperation mentioned above - compliance, conformance, solidarity - are perhaps the same forces behind 'good' cooperation.
  • continually trying to re-imagine our 'imagined communities'
  • the more connected we are, the more we'll be forced to recognize others' interests as our own.
  • might include: cultural traits and norms based on morality (i.e. religion), integration of market economies, promoting greater free-flow of people/ideas, promoting denser urban centers, open access to information, monogamy??, anti-nepotism norms, cooperative higher institutions (with ability to manage laws/reputations/punishment).
  • Luis'
  •  We are “pre-wired” to cooperate within our tribe
  • impact of group identity
  • “manifold and profound”
  • make group identity salient
  • redefining the boundaries of the group to include more people is the best opportunity for change
  • Once you include everyone in the group, you find ways to encourage interactions among both sub-groups,
  • narcos manage to stay loyal and cooperate within their cartel when competing against other cartels with equally loyal members.
  • discourage cooperation inside the cartel groups
  • Assurance game, because one narco will only fight if the other fights, and will defect if the other defects
  • The key issue in the Assurance Game is whether we can trust each other.
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    Answers from all co-learners
David McGavock

UC Davis: Center for Mind and Brain : Exploring the Mind Speaker Series - Dr. Paul Ekma... - 0 views

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    "Exploring the Mind Speaker Series - Dr. Paul Ekman, UC San Francisco Compassion and Deceit: Paul Ekman is a world-renowned behavioral neuroscientist and the inventor of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). His work is the basis for the FOX television series "Lie to Me," starring Tim Roth. In this lecture, Ekman talks with Center for Mind and Brain researcher Clifford Saron in a wide-ranging discussion focusing on Ekman's research into compassion and deceit. For more information on Ekman, visit http://www.paulekman.com/ What Exploring the Mind When January 29, 2010 The video of this talk is now available online: YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWyWArOGO0E iTunesU: http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/ucdavis-public.3393831201.03393831214
Charles van der Haegen

MIT TechTV - Pecha Kucha RFK-LA - 0 views

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    "RFK-Legacy in Action, LAUSD, RFK Community Schools, New Media Literacies and other USC departments join at The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Dean's Forum to explore a series of "blue sky" propositions about how we might spark new forms of teaching and learning in conjunction with the philosophy the RFK Community Schools were envisioned to epitomize."
Charles van der Haegen

Skeptic » About Us » A Brief Introduction - 1 views

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    "A Brief Introduction All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have. -Albert Einstein The Skeptics Society is a scientific and educational organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, professors and teachers, and anyone curious about controversial ideas, extraordinary claims, revolutionary ideas, and the promotion of science. Our mission is to serve as an educational tool for those seeking clarification and viewpoints on those controversial ideas and claims. Under the direction of Dr. Michael Shermer, the Society engages in discussions with leading experts and investigates fringe science and paranormal claims. It is our hope that our efforts go a long way in promoting critical thinking and lifelong inquisitiveness in all individuals. I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them. -Baruch Spinoza Some people believe that skepticism is the rejection of new ideas, or worse, they confuse "skeptic" with "cynic" and think that skeptics are a bunch of grumpy curmudgeons unwilling to accept any claim that challenges the status quo. This is wrong. Skepticism is a provisional approach to claims. It is the application of reason to any and all ideas - no sacred cows allowed. In other words, skepticism is a method, not a position. Ideally, skeptics do not go into an investigation closed to the possibility that a phenomenon might be real or that a claim might be true. When we say we are "skeptical," we mean that we must see compelling evidence before we believe. Skepticism has a long historical tradition dating back to ancient Greece, when Socrates observed: "All I know is that I know nothing." But this pure position is sterile and unproductive and held by virtually no one. If you were skeptical about everything, you would have to be skeptical of your own skepticism. Like the dec
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    a nice source of curated uncomfortable knowledge
Charles van der Haegen

Bruce Cahan Helping Consumers Buy Products that Reflect their Values; How Google's Mobi... - 1 views

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    "ABSTRACT Internet searching and advertising increasingly plays a role in consumer decisions and purchases, yet pertinent information for making value-judgments is currently awkward to ferret out and certainly not universally accessible or useful. There is rarely a feedback loop aligning vendor or manufacturer's environmental, social or governance policies with a shopper's values, so shoppers, over time, rarely cause industries to change their behavior. There needs to be a way for shoppers to aim their purchasing power at achieving social values of highest regional priority. There needs to be a way to accumulate and redeem "social values rewards". What's missing is timely and impactful analysis of a candidate purchases' impact on the Shopper's family, region and planet (expressed according to their values), so that the purchaser can more easily make informed purchasing decisions. With some modifications to Google ads and Google product search, Google could solidify the feedback loop and help consumers, by their actions, build a greener and better world. Speaker: Bruce Cahan Bruce B. Cahan, President Urban Logic, Inc. (a nonprofit organization) Email: bcahan@urbanlogic.org Bruce Cahan is an Ashoka Fellow, a social entrepreneur, a non-residential fellow of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, a lawyer, and a banker."
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    Interesting-looking talk, but long. Is there a text version?
Charles van der Haegen

UCLI collective UC & Public Higher Education: A Teach In on Vimeo - 0 views

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    Very interesting video collection to understand the policy problems on the commons of education in California... I hear there very practical living testimonies which illustrate the dilemma of the commons, the opposint solidarities in Socio-Cultural viability Theory, the vested interest idssues, the democracy principles who are used as myths and metaphores that are influencing people's thinking... It is life policy making and activism in action
David McGavock

Q&A: David Eagleman, Director, Initiative on Neuroscience and the Law | SmartPlanet - 1 views

  • David Eagleman is about as close to a rock star that a neuroscientist can be.
  • Eagleman was excited to talk to SmartPlanet about his work at both the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law, a national, interdisciplinary organization he founded that’s looking at how to remake the U.S. legal system; and the Laboratory for Perception and Action, at Baylor College of Medicine. The former initiative tackles topics such as how brain imaging and analyses of “Big Data” on crime patterns can help communities better understand and prevent violent behavior in new ways. The latter looks broadly at how individual brains are not at all alike — and how the differences might be significant for how we construct and manage our societies.
  • His work is particularly relevant in policy-related discussions in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Connecticut.
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  • “To the newsreaders who feel that mental illness is best viewed as an excuse, let me suggest instead that we might more effectually recognize it as a national priority for social policy,” he wrote on his blog shortly after the shootings.  “If we care to prevent the next mass shooting, we should concentrate our efforts on getting meaningful diagnoses and resources to the next Adam Lanza.”
  • Because we are able now to measure things we have never been able to measure before, this allows us potentially to customize sentencing and rehabilitation. The goal is to have the whole system be more just and have more utility.
  • Our system is built on the assumption that if you’re over 18 and over the IQ of 70, you’re a practical reasoner, free to choose how you act. But modern neuroscience suggests that those are not good assumptions.
  • I have to emphasize, though, that this is not about exculpation. I have to be very clear that this is really about customized sentencing and rehab that works.
  • It’s helpful to be able to talk about science in basic ways that anyone can understand. What I tell my students in my lab is that they need to be able explain their research to an 8th grader.
  • I’m an amateur history buff, and if I want to read about the Roman Empire, I don’t want to read an academic debate, but instead a narrative by a trusted guide who’s done their homework, who will offer the filter of how they understand the Roman Empire, to shepherd me through its history in only 200 pages.
  • Rather than “playful,” I’d say that my approach is simply the opposite of boring. It’s about looking for and then trying to answer questions that are poweful enough to get you out of bed at 5AM.
  • My intuition on this idea: being a good scientist or creative writer is about maintaining the wide-eyed wonder of a child and asking questions all the time. That’s what really makes discovery happen in any field.
  • Science is changing really rapidly. One way is that lots of scientists are moving into Big Data
  • Right now we’re involved with serious crunching to pull out statistical info on recidivism and crime. Our first challenge is visualizing it. So in this sense, creativity and art also relevant. Data visualization is really valuable stuff; you can discover a trend when you see, wow, I didn’t realize that bump would be there. To be able to tie together data in beautiful ways allows us to see and discover patterns.
  • I don’t have any fear about losing the mystery of creativity. If I explain every single chemical piece in the process of why you enjoy the taste of a soy latte, it wouldn’t diminish your enjoyment of a soy latte. It might even enhance it
  • Neuroscientists work on how to understand how brains construct reality in general, but we are in the position of fish trying to understand water. What I mean by that is that we only know one way of seeing the world very well, like a fish only knows water.  Learning about how synesthesia works allows us to get out of our fishbowl,
  • You don’t need to know anything about the brain to understand what shape or style will be appealing. We may come scrambling up behind advertisers and product designers and validate them. If Apple wanted to hire me, sure, I’d say yes immediately and do the best job I could! But honestly, they already know how to do it. They’re the design experts. We neuroscientists would in come with our fancy machines and theories and explain why what they do is already true.
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     "To the newsreaders who feel that mental illness is best viewed as an excuse, let me suggest instead that we might more effectually recognize it as a national priority for social policy," he wrote on his blog shortly after the shootings.  "If we care to prevent the next mass shooting, we should concentrate our efforts on getting meaningful diagnoses and resources to the next Adam Lanza."
David McGavock

Astonishing - Sagarika Bhatta - 0 views

    • David McGavock
       
      As Sagarika Bhatta said in the hangout, this is a response to the effects of climate change rather than a response to decrease CO2 emissions. The traditional practices have an important role to play in the protection of agriculture in Nepal. The traditional practices are a protective factor for sustainability.
  • share urgency
  • expose and publicize
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  • critical mass who understands the urgency
  • exploration, discussion, documentation and promotion of the knowledge
    • David McGavock
       
      Find out what practices have sustained agriculture in the 3 climates within Nepal. Document it and disseminate it to the people and outside public.
  • Global movement
  • esearch and promotion of Knowledge that helps to combat climate change
  • helps in adaptation to climate change
  • indigenous Knowledge
  • plight of citizen
    • David McGavock
       
      This is another story: how do impacts and inappropriate technologies impact the local people.
  • documentation through research
  • community-based adaptation (CBA) to climate change
    • David McGavock
       
      CBA - community based adaptation to climate chage
  • possibilities of rain water harvesting and other means of water storage
  • watershed degradation, urbanization, growing population are the major factor for water crisis here
  • making it part of national development policy
  • Nepal is vulnerable to rising global temperatures and has already been dealing with the impact of erratic rainfall, frequent droughts and floods, which have been affecting food security
    • David McGavock
       
      Problem Statement for Nepal.
  • experiment with a bottom-up approach using Local Adaptation Plans of Action, or LAPAs, in 10 districts across the country in 2010
    • David McGavock
       
      what has been tried.
  • ultimately question the status of food security
    • David McGavock
       
      The bottom line problem is that these impacts - problems above will threaten the security of the people of Nepal - food/shelter/quality of life..
  • promote the Indigenous Traditional knowledge (ITK) as Community Based Adaptation techniques that has been practiced by different indigenous community in Nepal in agriculture
    • David McGavock
       
      This is the goal. Promote traditional knowledge in support of the people of Nepal - their agriculture, livelihood and social welfare.
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    This is a good summary of the goals of the work of Sagarika Bhatta in support of Nepali agriculture. It describe the idea of community based adaptation (CBA) to climate change and the Indigenous traditional knowledge (ITK).
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Antonio Lopez

Metal, code, flesh: Why we need a 'Rights of the Internet' declaration - Opinion - Al J... - 1 views

  • bitroots politics
  • For the first time ever, the internet had taken on Hollywood extremists and won. And not just in a close fight: the power demonstrated by internet activists was wildly greater than the power Hollywood lobbyists could muster. They had awoken a giant. They had no clue about just how angry that giant could be
  • A perfect storm of counterintuitive grey ethical areas, the internet is metal, code and flesh looking for harmony. This harmony will only come as the full potential of the assemblage is realised, as (and if) it overcomes the enclosures that contain it: capitalist mandates of profit and accumulation, modern human fear and pettiness, and the artificial territorial boundaries imposed by the concept of the Westphalian nation-state.
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  • The corporate legislation project to gradually asphyxiate life in the web follows a twofold strategy: first, to gain terrain inch by inch by crafting ridiculously crippling legislation only to "tone it down" - making legislators look cooperative and magnanimous - while still advancing petty agendas
  • As Shirky notes, what is constantly in play is always how deep the "next turn of the screw" will go.
  • Code and hardware change us as much as we change them. Because we can’t uninvent the internet, we need to make sure it is the healthiest possible web.
  • Healthier code and healthier computers are critical for a society shaped by code and computers. As the recently deceased German philosopher Friedrich Kittler put it: "Codes - by name and by matter - are what determine us today, and what we must articulate if only to avoid disappearing under them completely."
  • Codes now reside in brains and bodies as much as in processors and hard drives. These particular individuals are there in representation of those who could not attend, but also in representation of the thick wilderness of codes and machines that bind them together.
  • an assemblage
  • Humans, encompassing their biological selves and their cultures and institutions. Hardware, including computers, mobile devices, mass storage facilities, transmission equipment, transoceanic cables, and so on. Code, including a vast wilderness of ever evolving protocols and software.
  • The hard thing is this: get ready, because more is coming. SOPA is simply a reversion of COICA [Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act], which was proposed last year, which did not pass. And all of this goes back to the failure of the DMCA [Digital Millenium Copyright Act] to disallow sharing as a technical means. And the DMCA goes back to the Audio Home Recording Act, which horrified those industries. (…) PIPA and SOPA are not oddities, they're not anomalies, they're not events. They're the next turn of this particular screw, which has been going on 20 years now. And if we defeat these, as I hope we do, more is coming
  • that life itself is, in ultimate analysis, a series of information streams that bind diverse entities through feedback: "Any organism is held together in this action by the possession of means for the acquisition, use, retention, and transmission of information."
  • The ultimate political challenge that defenders of the internet must face today is to secure lasting health for this hybrid life-form made of metal, code and flesh.
  • It is still relatively uncontroversial to attack a network protocol because everything about it seems morally trivial: Isn't it all artificial in the end? Seen as just a result of human cultural, economic and political forces, machinic life seems enslavable.
  • Ethics in this realm, it must be stressed, are not about what good the machine can do for us, and not even about how we can use the machine to do good - for we are in fact part of the machine, part of the life-form. It means making the whole assemblage healthier for all its parts by fostering "the means for the acquisition, use, retention, and transmission of information", within and among its three actors.
  • For example, by noting that the list of corporations co-writing and lobbying SOPA, PIPA and ACTA include not only entertainment but also pharmaceutical corporations, it is evident how human health is tied to the network's health in very real ways.
  • "the internet is the new frontier, a territory to conquer
  • With the decline of state colonialism, capitalist governments and corporations now dream of the internet as the tool for corporate growth through ontological colonialism, free to expand within the mind and the planet, exploiting everyone alike.
  • The internet is not territory to be conquered, but life to be preserved and allowed to evolve freely.
  • Thinking of the web in terms of machinic life is important in practice for three powerful reasons: First, it guides us through the building of political models that encompass the human and the non-human, a politics for radical yet peaceful diversity needed now more than ever. Second, it unveils the ethical dimensions beneath seemingly neutral issues, allowing stronger defence for issues such as sharing and peer-to-peer practices that depend on healthy protocols and healthy hardware. Third, it is an approach that operates at any scale, allowing us to have nuanced and yet consistent positions regardless of whether we are debating the microscopic labyrinths of a computer chip (metal), the intangible nature of the BitTorrent or Bitcoin protocols (code), or the global impact of WikiLeaks (flesh).
  •  
    This is a very provocative essay, worth lots of discussion.
David McGavock

The Evolution of Cooperation* - 1 views

  • To find a good strategy to use in such situations, I invited experts in game theory to submit programs for a computer Prisoner’s Dilemma tournament – much like a computer chess tournament.
  • the winner was the simplest of all candidates sub- mitted. This was a strategy of simple reciprocity which cooperates on the first move and then does whatever the other player did on the previous move. Using an American colloquial phrase, this strategy was named Tit for Tat.
  • face of an uncalled-for defection by the other, forgiveness after responding to a provocation, and clarity of behavior so that the other player can recognize and adapt to your pattern of action.
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    • David McGavock
       
      These conditions are core.
  • data from these tournaments reveals four properties which tend to make a strategy successful: avoidance of unnecessary con- flict by cooperating as long as the other player does, provocability in the
  • What made this mutual restraint possible was the static nature of trench warfare, where the same small units faced each other for extended periods of time. The soldiers of these opposing small units actually violated orders from their own high commands in order to achieve tacit cooperation with each other
  • the individuals involved do not have to be rational: The evolutionary process allows successful strategies to thrive, even if the players do not know why or how. Nor do they have to exchange messages or commit- ments: They do not need words, because their deeds speak for them. Likewise, there is no need to assume trust between the players: The use of reciprocity can be enough to make defection unproductive. Altruism is not needed: Successful strategies can elicit cooperation even from an egoist. Finally, no central authority is needed: Cooperation based on reciprocity can be self-policing
  • An indefinite number of interactions, therefore, is a condition under which cooperation can emerge
    • David McGavock
       
      This condition is especially important in the case of egoists. Relationship over time.
  • So there must be some clustering of individuals who use strategies with two properties: The strategy cooperates on the first move, and discriminates between those who respond to the cooperation and those who do not
    • David McGavock
       
      The check for reciprocation is a bit of evidence that the other side knows the value of the move of cooperation; that they won't be abandoned.
  • Whether the players trust each other or not is less important in the long run than whether the conditions are ripe for them to build a stable pattern of cooperation with each other
  • It turns out that if one waits to respond to uncalled-for defections, there is a risk of sending the wrong signal. The longer defections are allowed to go unchallenged, the more likely it is that the other player will draw the conclusion that defection can pay.
    • David McGavock
       
      Immediate feedback appears to be important in many domains.
  • The foundation of cooperation is not really trust, but the durability of the relationship.
  • Waiting for probes to accumulate only risks the need for a response so large as to evoke yet more trouble.
    • David McGavock
       
      I have found that testing limits is a factor in working with children and adults. We are alert to the boundaries.
  • For this reason, the only arms control agreements which can be stable are those whose violations can be detected soon enough. The critical requirement is that violations can be detected before they can accumulate
  • Therefore, the advice to players of the Prisoner’s Dilemma might serve as good advice to national leaders as well: Don’t be envious, don’t be the first to defect, reciprocate both cooperation and defection, and don’t be too clever.
  • We are used to thinking about competitions in which there is only one winner, competitions such as football or chess. But the world is rarely like that. In a vast range of situations, mutual cooperation can be better for both sides than mutual defection. The key to doing well lies not in overcoming others, but in eliciting their cooperation
    • David McGavock
       
      Herein lies another key... that we have a cooperative (win-win) attitude and understanding of the "game". We see our survival as tied with not exclusive of the fate of the "other".
  •  
    We are used to thinkingabout competitions in which there is only one winner, competitions such asfootball or chess. But the world is rarely like that. In a vast range ofsituations, mutual cooperation can be better for both sides than mutualdefection. The key to doing well lies not in overcoming others, but ineliciting their cooperation
David McGavock

Create more than you consume  - Medium - 1 views

  • When I was in University, I worked at a psychology research center under the direction of one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 most influential people, Dr. Richie Davidson.
  • One of the studies reviewed by our lab was on meditation and how being in the moment decreases the noise in your brain, leading to improved scores on working memory and intelligence tests.
  • When you tie an emotion to an experience, a hormone is released that greases the wheels at certain chemical locations in the brain where nerves rewire to form new memory circuits:
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  • When you consume in a passive way, by skimming and moving to the next thing, you’re at a learning disadvantage.
  • The Learning Pyramid states that people retain:90% of what they learn when they teach someone else/use immediately.75% of what they learn when they practice what they learned.50% of what they learn when engaged in a group discussion.30% of what they learn when they see a demonstration.20% of what they learn from audio-visual.10% of what they learn when they’ve learned from reading.5% of what they learn when they’ve learned from lecture.
  • Self-taught individuals, also called autodidacts, are masters of retaining information largely because of their ability to reflect and put into action most of what they consume.
  • Instead of just trying to get to the end of your Twitter feed or articles that you saved for later, read each article as if you would need to tell a friend about it after.
  • 1-page summary immediately after every chapter he reads.
  • Nothing will help you absorb more of what you consume than trying to do. It’s through the mistakes made where the real learning happens.
  •  
    Great article on creation, consumption, learning, memory
David McGavock

Are Babies Born Good? | Science | Smithsonian - 0 views

  • The study of babies and young toddlers is a perplexing business. Even the most perceptive observers can be tempted to see what isn’t there.
  • “When our infant was only four months old I thought that he tried to imitate sounds; but I may have deceived myself,” Charles Darwin wrote in “A Biographical Sketch of an Infant,” his classic study of his own son.
  • Even well-behaved babies are notoriously tough to read: Their most meditative expressions are often the sign of an impending bowel movement.
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  • “People who’ve spent their whole careers studying perception are now turning toward social life, because that’s where the bio-behavioral rubber meets the evolutionary road,” Konner says. “Natural selection has operated as much or more on social behavior as on more basic things like perception. In our evolution, survival and reproduction depended more and more on social competence as you went from basic mammals to primates to human ancestors to humans.”
  • The lab’s initial study along these lines, published in 2007 in the journal Nature, startled the scientific world by showing that in a series of simple morality plays, 6- and 10-month-olds overwhelmingly preferred “good guys” to “bad guys.” “This capacity may serve as the foundation for moral thought and action,” the authors wrote. It “may form an essential basis for...more abstract concepts of right and wrong.”
  • spate of related studies hinting that, far from being born a “perfect idiot,” as Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued, or a selfish brute, as Thomas Hobbes feared, a child arrives in the world provisioned with rich, broadly pro-social tendencies and seems predisposed to care about other people.
  • No seasoned parent can believe that nurture doesn’t make a difference, or that nature trumps all. The question is where the balance lies.
    • David McGavock
       
      Key thought - where is the balance?
  • Wynn and her husband, the psychologist Paul Bloom, collaborated on much of Hamlin’s research, and Wynn remembers being a bit more optimistic: “Do babies have attitudes, render judgments? I just found that to be a very intuitively gripping question,” she says.
  • Infant morality studies are so new that the field’s grand dame is 29-year-old J. Kiley Hamlin, who was a graduate student at the Yale lab in the mid-2000s.
  • she stumbled on animated presentations that one of her predecessors had made, in which a “climber” (say, a red circle with goggle eyes) attempted to mount a hill, and a “helper” (a triangle in some trials) assisted him, or a “hinderer” (a square) knocked him down.
  • When I visited, Tasimi was recreating versions of Hamlin’s puppet shows as background work for a new project.
  • The child shot her a woebegone look before dutifully hauling himself out of the ball pit, picking up the pen and returning it to the researcher.
  • When babies at the Yale lab turn 2, their parents are tactfully invited to return to the university after the child’s third birthday.
  • The next lab I visited was at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it has made this age group something of a specialty, through work on toddler altruism (a phrase that, admittedly, rings rather hollow in parental ears).
  • One advantage of testing slightly older babies and children is that they are able to perform relatively complicated tasks. In the Laboratory for Developmental  Studies, the toddlers don’t watch puppets help: They themselves are asked to help.
  • Warneken was initially interested in how little children read the intentions of others, and the question of whether toddlers would assist others in reaching their goals. He wanted to sound out these behaviors in novel helping experiments—“accidentally” dropping a hat, for instance, and seeing if the kids would return it.
  • prominent psychologists had previously argued that children are selfish until they are socialized; they acquire altruistic behaviors only as childhood progresses and they are rewarded for following civilization’s rules, or punished for breaking them.
  • One day he and a toddler were bouncing a ball together. Truly by accident, the ball rolled away—“the moment of serendipity,” as Warneken now calls it. His first impulse was to retrieve the toy and carry on, but he stopped himself.
  • The little boy watched him struggle, then after a moment heaved himself up, waddled over to the toy and—defying the scientific community’s uncharitable expectations—stretched out his own chubby little arm to hand the ball to his gigantic playmate.
  • In the following months, Warneken designed experiments for 18-month-olds, in which a hapless adult (often played by him) attempted to perform a variety of tasks, to no avail, as the toddlers looked on. The toddlers gallantly rescued Warneken’s dropped teaspoons and clothespins, stacked his books and pried open stubborn cabinet doors so he could reach inside.
  • videotaped experiment of a toddler wallowing in a wading pool full of plastic balls.
  • But the elements that underpin morality—altruism, sympathy for others, the understanding of other people’s goals—are in place much earlier than we thought, and clearly in place before children turn 2.”
  • Because they were manifested in 18-month-olds, Warneken believed that the helping behaviors might be innate, not taught or imitated. To test his assumption, he turned to one of our two nearest primate relatives, the chimpanzee.
  • The first chimps Warneken studied, nursery-raised in a German zoo
  • as the caretaker dropped the first object: As if on cue, the chimp bounded over and breezily handed it back.
  • Warneken wondered if perhaps human-reared chimps had been conditioned to be helpful to their food providers
  • They would consistently help when the person was reaching for the object,” even in the absence of any payoff.
  • The final step was to see if chimps would assist each other. So Warneken rigged apparatuses where one caged chimp could help a neighbor reach an inaccessible banana or piece of watermelon. There was no hope of getting a bite for themselves, yet the empowered chimps fed their fellow apes regardless.
  • But under what circumstances are toddlers altruistic?
  • Some recent chimp studies suggest that chimps won’t help others unless they witness the dismay of the creature in need. Are human children likewise “reactive” helpers, or can they come to another’s assistance without social cues?
  • “You can see the birth of this proactive helping behavior from around 1.5 to 2.5 years of age,” Warneken explains. “The children don’t need solicitation for helping. They do it voluntarily.” Proactive helping may be a uniquely human skill.
  • Criticisms of the “nice baby” research are varied, and the work with the youngest kids is perhaps the most controversial.
  • such method­o­­­logical worries are never far from baby researchers’ minds.
  • Other critics, meanwhile, fault the developmental philosophy behind the experiments.
  • these researchers argue, but actually they start from scratch with only senses and reflexes, and, largely through interaction with their mothers, learn about the social world in an astonishingly short period of time.
  • And still other scientists think the baby studies underestimate the power of regional culture.
  • Ideas of the public good and appropriate punishment, for instance, are not fixed across societies: Among the Matsigenka people of the Peruvian Amazon, where Henrich works, helping rarely occurs outside of the immediate household, if only because members of the tribe tend to live with relatives.
  • Plenty of bleak observations complicate the discovery of children’s nobler impulses. Kids are intensely tribal: 3-month-olds like people of their own race more than others, experiments have shown, and 1-year-olds prefer native speakers to those of another tongue.
  • Babies, in addition, are big fans of punishment. Hamlin likes to show a video of a young vigilante who doesn’t just choose between the good and bad puppets; he whacks the bad guy over the head.
  • Perhaps babies are not really trying to help in a particular moment, per se, as much as they are expressing their obliging nature to the powerful adults who control their worlds—behaving less like Mother Teresa, in a sense, than a Renaissance courtier. Maybe parents really would invest more in a helpful child, who as an adult might contribute to the family’s welfare, than they would in a selfish loafer—or so the evolutionary logic goes.
  • A different interpretation, Warneken says, is that in a simpler world maybe toddlers really could help, pitching in to the productivity of a hunter-gatherer group in proportion to their relatively meager calorie intake.
  • For many researchers, these complexities and contradictions make baby studies all the more worthwhile.
  • “I’m trying to think of a lesser-of-two evils study,” he says. “Yes, we have our categories of good and bad, but those categories involve many different things—stealing $20 versus raping versus killing. Clearly I can’t use those sorts of cases with, you know, 13-month-olds. But you can come up with morality plays along a continuum to see...whether they form preferences about whether they like the guy who wasn’t as bad as the other bad guy.”
  •  
    "The study of babies and young toddlers is a perplexing business. Even the most perceptive observers can be tempted to see what isn't there."
Charles van der Haegen

Michael+Thompson+Lisbon+Report+Democratic+Governance+Technological+Change+and+Globalisa... - 0 views

  •  
    A fundamental article on how new social theory brings new perspectives on how to find and omplement solutions to the intractable problems of our time. These ideas originally developped by Maruy Dougleas, have been refined and developped into a full theory, called Theory of Socio-Cultural Viability, anso sometil$mes called "Cultural Theory". The lead researcher in this field is Michael Thompson, author of this Workshop Report
Alex Grech

Social Media's Slow Slog Into the Ivory Towers of Academia - Josh Sternberg - Technolog... - 0 views

  • If you took a soldier from a thousand years ago and put them on a battlefield, they'd be dead,"
  • "If you took a doctor from a thousand years ago and put them in a modern surgical theater, they would have no idea what to do. Take a professor from a thousand years ago and put them in a modern classroom, they would know where to stand and what to do."
  • So they went back to school to learn how to create Facebook campaigns, how to incorporate SEO best-practices, how to blog, and how to create social media strategies.
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  • But as social interactions and technologies mature, there has been a swing in the pendulum. Professors are now approaching the teaching of social media from a pedagogical perspective, as much as a practical one.
  • the theories behind social media: why do things go viral, the social theories of how people act and how they communicate to a network, or one person at a time, and why do certain tools work they way they do for us
  • Instead of understanding social media as products, students are encouraged to treat status updates as part of a larger information ecosystem.
  • With social media being a pervasive, if not invasive, aspect of our lives, it makes perfect sense for the Ivory Tower to embrace social media from a theoretical perspective to help students understand the technology and its effect on their daily lives, as well as the epistemological question of "how do we know what we know?"
  • The medium is relatively new enough that there's no canon shaping social media, just conceptual frameworks for looking at the effects of social media on students' lives and communities and on society as a whole. The task of academics is to give students a vocabulary to understand these perspectives, tools to make sense of the theoretical discussions and think critically about social media.
  • "I don't think you have the credibility of doing research, of writing about, unless you get to really know that culture. And the best way of knowing the culture is to actually be immersed in it."
  • "no positive incentives for innovating in pedagogy."
  • Rheingold puts it,
  • Underpinning a disdain for social media in higher education is the assumption that incoming students already have an inherent aptitude for new technologies
  • Terms like "digital native" (those born during or after the introduction of digital technology -- computer, Internet, etc. -- and have an assumed greater understanding of how technology works because they've been using digital technology their entire lives) and "digital immigrant" (those born before this introduction and have had to adapt and adopt the technology at a later point in life) have been bandied around by experts and marketers as ways of classifying and differentiating between generations, and, more importantly, the expectations of those who fall into either category.
  • it has stopped educators from teaching what they need to teach. It has scared educators into thinking students know more than us. God forbid we learn something from our students. And, so, we assumed these kids already know, and we don't teach them. And we expect them to know things and we grade them; we evaluate them; we hire them based on what we think, we assume, they know. And they don't. How would you know this stuff if no one ever bothered to point it out to you that this is something you should be learning, because everyone assumes you already know?"
  • the lack of critical literacy.
  • ce students of the Digital Age have not had to acclimate to this sweeping change from analog to digi
  • al and are assumed to possess some innate technological knowledge based solely on the year they were born, they don't necessarily have to acclimate to the sheer velocity of recent innovations.
  • "We have on our hands the last generation of educators who do remember life before these tools, and so therefore, we have an opportunity to teach some critical literacy that these students may not get otherwise; this generation may not get otherwise
  • Rheingold puts the onus on the students to learn not just from him, but from each other. Instructors can serve as a facilitator, but the student has to want to be there, process that information, and use that information in a productive way.
  • "The issues around social media -- community, identity, presentation of self, social capital, public sphere, collective action; a lot of important topics from other disciplines -- aren't really being raised in academia," said Rheingold. "They ought to be because these topics, not only academically, in terms of the shifts in media and literacy that they're triggering in the world, are where the students live and work."
David McGavock

Knight Foundation | Reporter Analysis - 0 views

  • The way we engage in public dialogue, coordinate, solve problems—all of it is shifting. New networks are emerging everywhere. It’s exciting—and frightening. What is this new network-centric world? What does it mean for community change?
  • How might our grantmaking respond effectively to a world in which loose networks of individuals, not just formal organizations, are becoming powerful creators of knowledge and action? What default practices should we discard and what new behaviors should we embrace?
  • We asked our partner, Monitor Institute, to take a critical look at the role of networks in community life. Our lens was apolitical.
  •  
    we were interested in the potential of networks-to create stronger bonds or to split us apart. This essay highlights groups that are creatively connecting citizens who are making a difference today, and explores how technology might impact public participation and leadership in the future. The pages are rich with useful examples and lessons about how networks are unlocking assets in communities to support open government, care for the elderly, help disaster victims and advance women's rights. Throughout, the report considers the role philanthropy can play in harnessing the best network-centric practices, the ones that might unleash individual interactivity to achieve social impact at a scale and speed never before possible.
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