Group items tagged

"Kazemi is part of a small but vibrant group of programmers who, in addition to making clever Web toys, have dedicated themselves to shining a spotlight on the algorithms and data streams that are nowadays humming all around us, and using them to mount a sharp social critique of how people use the Internet-and how the Internet uses them back. By imitating humans in ways both poignant and disorienting, Kazemi's bots focus our attention on the power and the limits of automated technology, as well as reminding us of our own tendency to speak and act in ways that are essentially robotic. While they're more conceptual art than activism, the bots Kazemi is creating are acts of provocation-ones that ask whether, as computers get better at thinking like us and shaping our behavior, they can also be rewired to spring us free. "

"If your students worship grades, they won't complete assignments without knowing how many points it's worth. If they worship stickers and candy, they won't work without the promise of those prizes. If you say a prayer to the "real world" every time you sit down to plan your math lessons, you and your students will never have enough real world, never feel you have enough connection to jobs and solar panels and trains leaving Chicago and things made of stuff. If you instead say a prayer to the atomic sensation of being puzzled and the catharsis that comes from being unpuzzled, you will never get enough of being puzzled and unpuzzled."

Annotating the web

"So give me an A-, because my dreams overshot my constraints, and my vision for the final project didn’t come in on time. But I came to class prepared for every discussion, and led it in fact. I read every assigned reading, and listened to the commentary of my classmates. I did the blogs that were required, and I wrote every paper on time and with gusto. I stopped wasting my time and I stopped wasting the classes time, of which I am also proud. And I opened myself to the possibility that I am wrong sometimes, which unbelievably only took me 22 years. I want an A, and I believe I just explained why I deserve as much. But I realize only after having done the work required to become an A thinker how little an A really means to me, and how much better I feel knowing that."