Archive for the ‘ Education ’ Category

We Have to do Things Wrong, Because Everyone Else is Doing Things Wrong

This is a familiar refrain we have heard over and over – so many times we never hear it anymore. It now seems natural to us – just the way things are. It is the way things are, all right – because we have made them that way.

I will illustrate with the story of my brother who once was an idealistic young lawyer. Then he became successful and became severely depressed. Something he could not understand, and still cannot understand. But I, as an outside observer, could easily understand because he was telling me the answer himself.

He had become a partner in a law firm and his firm was telling its clients what they wanted to hear. Their reasoning was simple – that was the only way they could get business, because all the other law firms were doing the same thing. At the same time they were losing all their young lawyers – and could never figure out why, and didn’t care too much, because they were busy making money with him.

A sister was a school teacher and her school had the same problem. The teachers could not teach properly because the school administrators were not interested in teaching – and every other school was the same.

Same with software development. Software companies were producing poor software because this was the way all the software companies were.

Valiant efforts are being made to combat this in every field. Good lawyers, good schoolteachers, and good software developers do have some leeway in choosing where they work.

But at the same time – as I know from bitter experience, and lots of other people do too – the playing field is heavily slanted against us in a lot of subtle, but powerful ways.

We are scared, and we have good reason to be scared.

2012
08/07
CATEGORY
Business
Education
Software
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The Internet is Destroying Advertising

Technology Review – The Facebook Fallacy

This should be a cause for great rejoicing, since advertising has done its best to stupefy us and pick our pockets –  in other words, to destroy us. Except that we are forced to realize that this is what we really want.

We want all those worthless freebies (such as Television programs) that we got for nothing.

But let me back up to the beginning. I subscribe to Technology Review – why I got this I do not remember, probably because it was too cheap to refuse. And the August issue, which I just got, is full of articles about Facebook.

Technology Review, published by MIT, is quite a contrast to Scientific American, which I also get. For one thing, it is brutally honest. Consider the summary for this article:

For all its valuation, the social network is just another ad-supported site. Without an earth-changing idea, it will collapse and take down the Web.

“Take down the Web?” Not likely, but “Take down the advertising industry,” is all too likely. It takes some careful reading (and thinking) to figure out why. Basically, Internet advertising is too efficient. Got that? Too efficient.

And this results in the ultimate catastrophe for the Advertising industry – low advertising prices. For them, the end of the world.

And also the end of the world for all the idiotic businesses who thought the Internet was an automatic road to riches. As the article says – we been there before, with the dot-com boom and bust. Now another one is on the horizon – the social site boom and bust.

It doesn’t have to be this way – we don’t always have to be this stupid. But an honest observer has to take things at face value, and call a spade a spade.

Actually, a substitute for advertising already exists – on the Web. Reviews for nearly everything are out there – only a Google search away. For software, I subscribe to slashdot, which is full of some really cutting comments. Sites are available for nearly any other field – such as education, or for socially-responsible businesses. Or you can download history books from Audible. Or you can take some free courses on places like Coursera.

Or you can read Technology Review – including this review What Happened to A123?

You don’t have to be stupid if you don’t want to be.

2012
07/20
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
Education
Internet
Philosophy
Psychology
Sociology
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Wonderful Appearance, Terrible Behavior

The two in our world tend to go together. People want to be dazzled and cannot tell they are just being fooled.

People have been lying to each other forever, but our built-in lie detectors have enabled us to cope with much of this. We can usually tell just by looking at a person’s face whether he is lying to us or not.

With print this became much harder. The printed word can, and often does, lie. And fact-checking (doing even more reading) became necessary. Although people often did not bother – especially in the case of religious writing.

With the Mass Media (Cinema, Radio and Television) this became impossible because we could be overwhelmed by all kinds of special-effects, such as dramatic music in the background, and clever (but misleading) plots. Our smartest minds concentrated on doing this – because the biggest money and the most power financed them.

The most important effect of this was not noticed – people could be controlled so easily, they lost the ability to control themselves. And only wanted to be entertained.

Can we combat this? Yes, by improving our latest technology, the computer/software/internet thing – as I am doing with my online Human-Computer Interface course – which I highly reccomend. By controlling our Internet, we can start to control ourselves.

Will anyone do this? You know the answer to that.

In case you do want to know more, check this out Designing for the Scent of Information

2012
07/12
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
Education
Internet
Psychology
Sociology
Software
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How Movie Recommendation Systems Work

Scientific American

Unfortunately, Scientific American online does not give you access to all of the article – only to the clever explanation. Which, after you think carefully about it, leaves some questions unanswered.

Never mind, I am going to take the online Caltech course Learning from Data. As it says:

A real Caltech course, not a watered-down version

I have the advantage of being a failure in California high-tech. But I learned enough, despite my scar-tissue, to be interested in it.

Unfortunately, the registration process is flawed. Can you imagine – a university site that has a defective Human-Computer Interface (another course I am taking)? And no way for users to help them fix this!

I can also recommend Scientific American itself. It has improved from what it used to be, and makes a worthwhile addition to your paper inbox.

2012
07/07
CATEGORY
Education
Technology
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Texas GOP Educational Platform Opposes Teaching Critical Thinking Skills

Slashdot

Just yesterday I posted Texas Wants to Destroy the World. But they may be satisfied with destroying the minds of children instead.

2012
07/01
CATEGORY
Education
Political comment
1 comment

Mental Models

Stanford University – Human-Computer Interaction online course – select Week 2, lecture 4.2: Mental Models

I got this idea from my Stanford Human-Computer Interface class – which is excellent.

But if you are like most – you have no interest in anything technical – and your mind becomes paralyzed by the very mention of it. For you guys, I can only suggest the Delete button.

For those who can spare 16 minutes, give it a look. He talks about ballot design, which should interest everyone.

After listening to this lecture, I have yet another book to buy: Human Errors – for $43.52. After viewing the first pages on Amazon, I can see it is excellent!

2012
06/15
CATEGORY
Education
Internet
Psychology
Software
Technology
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Needfinding

Stanford University Human Computer Interface course (week 2)

This is a concept I got from my online HCI course from Stanford. As I said earlier this morning, the intellectual material available now, for those who want it, is astonishing. The 80-20 rule probably applies here: 20 percent of the people do all of the thinking and learning.

The purpose of any new product should be to meet the needs of its users. And this is the point of view that Scott Klemmer, the instructor, is interested in. There are many clever ways of doing this.

He does not go into how products meet the needs of the organizations who produce them (how Apple’s products are focused on helping Apple, for example). Or how needs can be manufactured. Or how smart products make users stupid.

Technology always has its downside. Writing, for example, destroyed people’s memory – illiterate people had phenomenal memories.

2012
06/01
CATEGORY
Education
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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Human Computer Interaction

Stanford Free Online Course (select lecture 1.1)

This is the first lecture in the course. It’s only four minutes long, but like a rocket liftoff, it gets things started in a hurry.

I have been waiting for fifty years for online courses – and I am not going to miss this one.

Unfortunately, as I keep saying over and over, most are not interested – and more importantly, are not capable of being interested.

Software now runs our world, and we should know how it works.

2012
05/28
CATEGORY
Education
Technology
1 comment

Melinda Gates: Let’s put birth control back on the agenda

TED

I have been curious to see what Bill’s wife looked like. Her looks are not so awesome, but her talk (which must have been scripted by professionals) is. This is one smart gal.

She goes into her Catholic childhood and upbringing. And states the problem women all over the world face when planning for children: they want to provide every good thing for their children. The logic is overwhelming: smaller families make better people.

I saw this problem myself when I lived with a local family in Sri Lanka one winter. The father was an older professional who spoke English and was in favor of limiting their family size – after all Sri Lanka was a economic disaster area, and was not likely to get any better. The wife, however was a cute young thing who wanted to keep having children indefinitely. So they kept having children, and the situation in Sri Lanka kept getting worse.

This is a familiar pattern: the rich get richer and the poor have children. The problem in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, is even worse. The women there are lucky to even survive physically.

The Gates, and many like them, have tried to change the world – but, for the most part they have failed. All that has to be done, as she says, is change the way the world thinks.

But the world does not want to think.

2012
05/20
CATEGORY
Education
Morality
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The Cost of Going to College

Harper’s Magazine - From Ph.D. to Escort: How Debt Can Change Students

This a summary of the article Easy Chair: the Price of Admission in the June issue. They have changed their formatting to HTML to make referring to it easier. I am supposed to be able to read the whole thing online, since I subscribe to the magazine – but as is often the case (as I keep saying over and over), their software doesn’t work. The Internet was supposed to solve all our problems, but has only created more of them.

I tried to order the book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, from Amazon, but it won’t be out until January of next year. The audible version is available, and I will probably end up with that.

But I don’t mind stating my own analysis of the situation – which I have stated before: America is no longer interested in people – and that includes its students – of all ages.

As Thomas Frank’s excellent article makes all too clear.

2012
05/18
CATEGORY
Economy
Education
Morality
1 comment
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