Question:
What can you do with information?
Thoughs:
Create change. I like to be able to eat this fresh as described in this Time article and I'm willing to pay a premium (well at least a little more.)
Article 35: Time, Nov 14, 2005 v166 i20 p61
What's Cooking On Campus: Locally grown food is the latest student cause. Can this movement save family farmers? (Society/Food) Margot Roosevelt.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Time, Inc."
Question:
How will you be touched?
Thoughts:
This is sick. Conceptually it seems simple and therefore most people are missing how powerful this interface will be.
Source:
Multi-Touch Interaction Research
Question:
What's next is how?
Source:
Semantic Blogging: Spreading the Semantic Web Meme: "The semantic web promises to make the web more useful by endowing metadata with machine processable semantics."
Remark:
Well, that sums things up well.
Question:
This Magazine: The Rebel Sell: "If we all hate consumerism, how come we can’t stop shopping?"
Remarks:
This is great. I mean, if you don't get it, don't worry about it. In life, there really are only questions -well, maybe some answers.
FGCU Library Services
"Mission: the mission of the library's Information Literacy Program is to develop learner expertise in searching for, analyzing, evaluating, and managing the information needed for use in academic, personal, and professional life."
There are two clear tiers. The first looks at meeting the immediate and important FGCU general education programs. The second tier aims to develop deeper, more unique sets of skills for the student/scholar/learner, but most importantly seeks to develop the "researcher." As I see it, you are a researcher first"80%.this value you being a researcher," and then a professional "%20.this value=the name of your field."
Simply, you are a researcher first, then a nurse, coder, social psychologist, sys admin, grants writer, veterinarian, management consultant, or a comptroller second. Without the deft ability to use the ever-increasing ammalgamated sources of information and their search tools to solve increasingly time-constrained problems, you're going to be in serious trouble. Information literacy isn't talking about mastering MS Office. As we discuss this below, perhaps we're really talking about: Information Fluency at FGCU.
To wit:
your job isn't going to ask less of you; your life won't ask less of you; and the world's problems which are your problems, aren't going to ask less of you -only more.
Further more:
"Executive Summary | Being Fluent with Information Technology: "Generally, 'computer literacy' has acquired a 'skills' connotation, implying competency with a few of today's computer applications, such as word processing and e-mail. Literacy is too modest a goal in the presence of rapid change, because it lacks the necessary 'staying power.' As the technology changes by leaps and bounds, existing skills become antiquated and there is no migration path to new skills. A better solution is for the individual to plan to adapt to changes in the technology. This involves learning sufficient foundational material to enable one to acquire new skills independently after one's formal education is complete."
This is a brilliant statement:
Articles: "There is also another, very human problem to overcome: that most people don't understand computers or software, but have memorized only the keystrokes and mouseclick patterns they need to get through the day, so the second they are given a new program they need to memorize a whole new set. This is not an OS-to-OS migration problem per se, but one that can crop up any time a new piece of software is introduced in a workplace environment. But then, because Dave and Mike aren't constantly running around fixing PCs, they have time to train people and answer users' questions, a luxury they would not have if they were fighting Windows problems all day long."
Brian Kenney. Library Journal. New York: Aug 2005.Vol.130, Iss. 13; pg. 34, 4 pgs
The economic edge:
"As great a building as this is for Seattle's readers and researchers, learners and dreamers, its impact is even bigger. For libraries to be able to stake their claim in today's civic enterprise, it helps if they can flex their economic muscle.
A year after its opening, the library's foundation and Seattle's Office of Economic Development sponsored a study to assess the new buildings effect on the local economy. In its first year of operation, the study reports, the library was visited by over 2.3 million individuals, 30 percent from out of town-and more coming. Seattle's library is becoming a destination point for a global community."
Question:
What is humanism?
Quote: HUUmanists Essays: "'Like most persons of this persuasion, I regard myself as a Religious Humanist not because of having been converted to a creed; a faith; not because of my having signed a membership card in a crusading fraternity of believers. The term Religious Humanism is more descriptive of a state of mind, of an attitude with respect to philosophy, religion, ethics, than it is a label for another 'ism.''
• Lester Mondale (from Religious Humanism: A Testimonial)"
Userscripts.org - Universal Repository
Question:
Again, you're not using Firefox? And, I read somewhere someone saying we're really all just little user scripts -hilarious!
mozdev.org - mycroft: index: "The Mycroft project provides a collection of search plugins (6235 at the last count) for browsers using Apple's Sherlock standard including [Firefox Icon] Mozilla Firefox and [Mozilla Icon] Mozilla Suite. The name Mycroft refers to Mycroft Holmes, the brother of Sherlock Holmes in the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle - Mycroft plugins are based on the Sherlock standard."
Question:
How do you develop yourself: through odd idiosyncratic behaviors or through habits larger than yourself?
Book:
"New Book of Unusual Quotations"
ISBN:
0060015853
Quote from the preface:
"Everybody has a hobby. Mine has been for many years, the extremely mild and innocuous one of collecting books ..."
The author's preface continues on discussing paradox, serendipity, and in some ways, being caught in that most powerful, gripping virus: learning. I mean "mild and innocuous" -that's just sick-cool.
Question:
What's this about? Remove church and put in whatever word helps you realize the value of connecting to people in a deep and authentic way. How do you do that?
1. Read the quote.
2. Act on the quote.
3. Repeat until it clicks.
Unitarian Universalist Church of Fort Myers: "You've got to settle on a church and throw your life into it, and build it up. Who would want to go to a picnic all the time and eat out of other's people's baskets? It's our obligation as members of one church to give ourselves to it. The church is the only hope of peace and goodwill to people that exists among us. It is the last hope of the earth, and yours is a high and holy opportunity to support it with undeviating loyalty.'
Poet Carl Sandburg
(who rang bell for Universalist church in Galesburg, Illinois)"
If you don't like the word church, re-invent it -I don't particularly care for it; if you don't know that lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for, then wake up.
Question:
What do users want? Neils Bohr says the opposite of a profound truth may very well be another profound truth. Ain't that true?
Quote:
Main Articles: 'What Users Want: An Academic 'Hybrid' Library Perspective', Ariadne Issue 46: "We must be prepared also to be surprised by such deeper insights, even if they run counter to what we think we already know. Not many years ago, for example, the writer was involved as an external consultant, in two very different academic libraries, with reviews which revealed a number of mutually exclusive expressions of users' wants within both institutions. In both cases, the library authorities and managers were looking for empirical evidence to justify the expansion of networked electronic information. Yet both reviews - using the same in-depth consultations with representative user groups - uncovered some diametrically opposing 'messages'. 'Longer opening hours, please' versus 'Just get it all out on the Web'; 'More multiple loan copies urgently required' versus 'We need more research monographs on the shelves'; 'More print subscriptions, please' versus 'Cancel all the hard copy titles'; 'More librarians to consult' versus 'Spend less on staff and more on stuff' - these were among the contextual 'surprises', some of which the library authorities did not really want to hear. But they all point up one thing: the 'twilight world' of the academic hybrid library requires us to be much more locally sensitive to users' needs - in all their complexity - than we might have thought."
Question:
How can you see around corners?
When you focus on an idea to the exclusion of anything else, you could skew what could be a fantastic idea/benefit into a panacea. When electronic ink becomes as cost effective as paper and as ubiquitous then you may have paperless office. But, you'll still need some forms of paper.
"Office Space: The Next Generation"
"The paperless office is just one of many ways corporate executives, small business owners, architects and furniture designers, futurists and others believe offices will look like in the future."
and ...
"86 percent of Fortune 1000 executives said they will expect in 10 to 15 years for employees to stay more or less connected with the office while on vacation."
and ...
I doubt the first quote for a lot of reasons. The second is eminently believable.
But: here's what a company called Oticon has been doing for years,
Quote:"
At first glance, Oticon seems less than revolutionary. Its 150-person headquarters has an oddly deserted feel. There are plenty of workstations, but no one is sitting at them. In fact, hardly anyone is sitting anywhere. Listen closely, though, and the sounds of subversion begin to register: the quiet chirping of the company's "internal" mobile telephones; footsteps tapping up and down a three-story circular staircase; the rumble of wheels on hardwood, a signal that employees are moving their "offices" -- standard-issue caddies with room for 30 hanging folders, a few binders, perhaps a family photo -- and forming new self-managed teams.
"There's a paradox here," Kolind says. "We're developing products twice as fast as anybody else. But when you look around, you see a very relaxed atmosphere. We're not fast on the surface; we're fast underneath. ... So Kolind abolished the formal organization. Projects, not functions or departments, became the defining unit of work. Today at Oticon, teams form, disband, and form again as the work requires. Project leaders (basically, anyone with a compelling idea) compete to attract the resources and people to deliver results. Project owners (members of the company's 10-person management team) provide advice and support, but make few actual decisions. The company has a hundred or so projects at any one time, and most people work on several projects at once. It is, essentially, a free market in work."
Question:
Where is the garden of eden?
"THE TEN PRINCIPLES OF THE EDEN ALTERNATIVE"
Joseph Cerquone. Balance. Alexandria: Nov/Dec 2001.Vol.5, Iss. 6; pg. 4, 3 pgs
THE TEN PRINCIPLES OF THE EDEN ALTERNATIVE TM
1. The Three Plagues of loneliness, helplessness, and boredom account for the bulk of suffering in a human community.
2. Life in a truly human community revolves around close and continuing contact with children, plants and animals. These ancient relationships provide young and old alike with a pathway to a life worth living.
3. Loving companionship is the antidote to loneliness. In a human community, we must provide easy access to human and animal companionship.
4. To give care to another makes us stronger. To receive care gracefully is a pleasure and an art. A healthy human community promotes both of these virtues in its daily life, seeking always to balance one with the other.
5. Trust in each other allows us the pleasure of answering the needs of the moment. When we fill our lives with variety and spontaneity, we honor the world and our place in it.
6. Meaning is the food and water than nourishes the human spirit. It strengthens us. The counterfeits of meaning tempt us with hollow promises. in the end, they always leave us empty and alone.
7. Medical treatment should be the servant of genuine human caring, never its master.
8. In a human community, the wisdom of the elders grows in direct proportion to the honor and respect according to them.
9. Human ;growth must never be separated from human life.
10. Wise leadership is the lifeblood of any struggle against the three plagues. For it, there can be no substitute.
[Author Affiliation]
Joseph Cerquone is Editor of Balance.
Question:
Can university have a purpose?
Summary:
Document View: "Istvan Rev is director of the Open Society Archives, which he founded in 1995. The archives are housed at Central European University in Budapest. He is also a professor of history and political science at the university, which was founded by George Soros in 1991. The professor's research, including his latest book, Retroactive Justice: Prehistory of Post-Communism (Stanford University Press), is cited often in the burgeoning research on the collapse and afterlife of communism in Central and Eastern Europe."
The Chronicle of Higher Education. Washington: Nov 4, 2005. Vol. 52, Iss. 11; pg. A.14
This is fascinating.
Georges Braque: "Georges Braque
(1882-1963)"
"The only thing that matters in art is the part that can't be explained."
John W. Gardner Quotes: " The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
John W. Gardner"
John W. Gardner Quotes: " The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else."
John W. Gardner
John W. Gardner Quotes: " The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.
John W. Gardner"
John W. Gardner Quotes: "Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants." John W. Gardner
John W. Gardner Quotes: "One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
John W. Gardner"
This is because we teach kids that failure and success are "mutually exclusive." Read that again slowly.