liftoff!

blog of future forces affecting education

creature of habit

today was my first day working from home full time.

i had the best of intentions when i woke up to start a good routine, but then i made the mistake of turning on the computer before i went for a run, and it all went to hell from there. i spent all day in my bathrobe, ate cereal and leftover chinese, smoked 4 cigarettes out my window, and now i'm wrapping up my day with a half pint of ice cream.

i got a lot done work-wise, but i don't think this is a very healthy way to spend my day.

back into the fray

after three years of being a kid in an intellectual candy store, today marks my last real day as a full-time employee of stanford university. tomorrow i fly to cincinnati for a week of meetings and ramping up for my new job with the knowledgeworks foundation. kwf looks at innovations in education and advocates for reform, mostly in ohio (no, i'm not moving to ohio; i'm working from home in sf and traveling about 30%). they're bringing me in to do a variety of tasks, including:

• liaising with strategic technology partners (such as the institute for the future, with whom i've worked before)
• evangelizing for the foundation's mission and projects
  
• building community around projects

the main project i'll be working on is the map of future forces affecting education, developed by the institute for the future and kwf jointly.

i'll still be involved with ongoing projects and events at stanford as time permits, including writing for the d.school magazine, ambidextrous, helping with a new course on the future of education, and participating in the summer institute at wallenberg hall.

live at Mozilla 24

up first... lawrence lessig, always entertaining and creative in his use of presentation software, spoke about the past, present, and future of the internet from a holistic perspective, but primarily focused on the political and regulatory angles.

next... zack greant, from the mozilla foundation, spoke about the use of technology, from the earliest days of man forward, in the development of literacy and society and culture. he referenced the sumerian code of hammurabi, the torah, copyright law, and the control of information.

after lunch, david humphrey of seneca college talked about how to get started with open source programming.

chief evangelist for mozilla, mike shaver, took over the podium for the next hour to give his vision of the future of the internet.

a quick ten-minute break was followed by mozilla's jonathan nightingale, who presented some of the latest security risks and mozilla's newest security model, which includes a character named larry, an "extended verification" certificate program, and new malware detection.

two speakers were broadcast from tokyo next, describing the work that mdc japan is doing.

the final five speakers before the dinner were the shortest and quickest - four girls and a boy, ages 7 to 13 years old presented their visions of the future. they included learning agents in the form of animals and robots, a library filled with animals, a supernetworked smarthome with a robot maid especially designed for paralyzed people, and a spherical car utilizing centrifugal propulsion and sea water and magnets... the science was a bit fuzzy but i was ready to buy one after the persuasive presentation. after the american students presented locally, students in thailand and other locations took their turn (not broadcast due to child protection laws).

finally, the closing panel consisted of vint cerf, grandfather of the internet and google vp, from his home in washington, dc; jun murai, professor at keio university, in tokyo; mitchell baker, chair of the mozilla foundation, from stanford; and a panel of children in tokyo, stanford, and thailand. half of the session was conducted in japanese and half was in english, with translation provided throughout. the presentations were a "kids summit" of those recorded earlier by the children in each location. common ideas were:

• robots as servants and teachers and ubiquitous companions
• virtual worlds for socialization, learning, and simulation (especially the outdoors)
• smart houses, cars, and bicycles that talk to occupants and use green fuels
  
• teleportation, matter transmission, and matter creation

one student in thailand, aged 15, talked about her vision of the school of the future. it rather reminded me of a college campus - it was a self-contained ecology.

after the student presentations, the three panelists were invited to comment. professor murai said that he might be out of a job because the kids had scooped all of his ideas, and vint cerf concurred that all of their ideas were entirely possible and maybe even probable. they identified the themes of mobility and ubiquity, personal computing, and environmental sustainability. mitchell baker was excited by teleportation :)

the future is hot

it's nice to see that foresight research is making gains... or losses, in this case...

architecture 2030 includes maps of many coastal cities as they might appear after a sea level rise.

liveblogging

the Mozilla24 event starts in less than 2 hours. i'll be here at Wallenberg Hall at Stanford blogging about anything interesting.

rising out of the dust

another summer, another trip to the desert for the burning man festival. it was a strange year - the man burned twice and the dust storms were far more prevalent than in the last three years. and i spent more time working as a ranger than playing with my fellow camp lala mates. on the other hand, working and having a radio for the whole event made me feel more connected to the city and the community.

sign of the apocalypse #4462

camouflage bibles

death by serenade

on wednesday of last week, i ran an alternate reality game (ARG) for the Summer Institute at Wallenberg Hall's workshop on Using Videogames in Education. i based it loosely on Cruel2BKind and tailored it to my needs; i broke the 17 participants into teams, sent them out in the main quad, and then texted them with a secret weapon (serenade, compliment, wild laughter, poem) and an immunity. to add to the confusion, i brought in 6 more guests and briefed them separately. this made the whole experience much more fun because it meant that anyone in the quad might be part of the game.

after that, it was up to them to go out and attack and absorb other teams. i played puppet master by sending a few changes in weapon and immunity about halfway into it, and i gave two teams the option to choose a new weapon. several strategies were used; a few teams boldly attacked, some snuck around, and the ultimate winners laid low until they spotted the massive army of 17 attackers that was the result of all previous battles. i got some satisfaction from seeing the team that cheated (by sneaking into the control room when i wasn't looking and spying on the status board) go down in flames.

everyone had a good time and the ensuing discussion centered around how to use elements of ARG for learning. i definitely plan to do this again next year, if not sooner!

hold your breath

transfer of power

man overboard

we need to solve our problems abroad before we tackle our problems at home.

conservatives ahoy

sign of the apocalypse #3325

civet coffee

aassholes

when i find a service or a vendor or a product that i like, i vote with my dollar.

american airlines sent me a lovely email today changing the agreement we have with each other for their customer loyalty program, aadvantage. now earned miles will expire if i do not accrue or spend any miles during an 18-month period. i don't fly often, but until now, i've usually chosen american airline when possible.

someone should explain to the good people at american airlines that customer retention is much cheaper than customer acquisition.

silly twits

twitter is dumb. for the same reason that myspace is stupid and amateur blogging to the entire universe is overrated (whoops, i do that last one). we are conditioning ourselves to put our lives on public display, while at the same time lowering our standards for privacy. on the surface, these effects merely put personal and professional reputations at risk, but prolonged behavior of this kind also puts civil liberties at risk. in a world in which at&t jumps when the nsa snaps its fingers, deliberately posting your every move constitutes tacit approval.

luckily, technology pushes boundaries and creates culture, but culture has a funny way of regulating technology. there are already signs that millenials are wising up to the perils of putting their lives on display, and social networking services are responding by implementing more ways to create circles of trust and levels of privacy. conveniently, they are also one of the best avenues for spreading information, such as the importance of privacy.

thanks to sharona for this article which scratches the surface more eloquently than i can.

ripcat

supposedly, the lolcat meme is finally dying. i propose a new meme, inspired by this photo that always makes me laugh (i would credit its creator, but i found it on the interweb somewhere).

i call it "ripcat".

hero for our time

From an interview with Trent Reznor:

Where does that extra $10 on your album go?

That money's not going into my pocket, I can promise you that. It's just these guys who have f---ed themselves out of a job essentially, that now take it out on ripping off the public. I've got a battle where I'm trying to put out quality material that matters and I've got fans that feel it's their right to steal it and I've got a company that's so bureaucratic and clumsy and ignorant and behind the times they don't know what to do, so they rip the people off.

Given all that, do you have any idea how to approach the release of your next album?

I've have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a T-shirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that it's done in the studio, not this "Let's wait three months" bulls---.

spoiled

xkcd makes me laugh

elevator action

frequent earthquakes -> lack of tall buildings -> few elevators -> bay area natives that stand directly in front of the elevator doors when waiting to board.

for those of you out there that fall into this subset of cluetards, this behavior is both rude and counter-productive.

epistemic identity

two events during the last two days have reinforced my sense of belonging while reminding me that there's so much more to learn.

on saturday, i spent the day watching hopeful young motorcycle riders go from stalling and tipping over to moving around a track at a pretty good clip - but nowhere near ready for real roads. more interesting to me was that by the end of the day, they felt more comfortable calling themselves motorcyclists (as evidenced by their discussion of the next day's dress code - the guy who wore his nice kenneth cole boots wasn't going to repeat that mistake, and all of the ladies planned to bring ponytail-clips).

today, i'm sitting in the mediaX conference at stanford watching presenations on technology and people and collaboration. and i am once again reminded taht i already know so much more about these topics than the average citizen - but only on a practical, applied level.

mental models

lately my epistemic identity has been shaken by the realization that i know and have synthesized a great deal of information into a fairly decent mental model of my universe, but i have a great deal of trouble discussing the individual building blocks. or, for that matter, explaining my model. or capitalizing on it.

i think that's why i started this blog.

they've got me surrounded

cluetards are everywhere. they are the people that move through the world oblivious to their surroundings. they are the people driving and talking on cell phones that miraculously miss bicylists but cause ten other cars to make evasive maneuvers. they are the idealists that completely ignore any aspects of human nature or politics. they are the intolerant fanatics that rage against moral turpitude without examining any of their own faults. they are the non-voters.

they are the cluetards.

the most stunning example that comes to mind is an idiot who approached me last year at burningman. he was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and holding a tiny paper cup of water in 95-degree sun. and he said "i parked last night and then went for a walk. now i can't find my car. it's blue. and dusty. can you help?"

food quest

i'm planning a food quest. this is an idea i picked up from my step-father, who likes to get together with other couples in his building to seek out the "best of" a certain kind of food within a geographic area. for instance, last year he and my mom and two other couples hopped all over manhattan trying philly cheesesteaks, and then drove to philly for a homegrown version.

when i arrived at stanford, my classmate janet and i spent 7 sundays trying to find decent bagels. we finally found House of Bagels right on University Avenue in Palo Alto... with its other location in San Francisco. very convenient.

mob rule

Tonight at 11, news by neighbors

sure, that'll work...

print is only mostly dead

this week in his Digital Journalism class, Howard Rheingold brought Dan Gillmor in to discuss his book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People.

when Friedrich Nietzsche penned God is Dead, he was mourning the passing of the age of religion. now, bloggers and amateur journalists are jumping on the Print is Dead bandwagon. like Nietzsche, they are both premature and perhaps ultimately wrong. but if professional journalists and journalism schools don't embrace and incorporate the new participatory model, we may have to declare that Journalism is Dead.

i waste time

i can find so many different ways to put off what i'm supposed to be doing.

defective by design

overdesigning can be worse than not designing.

i have joined the dark side

blogs are long overdue for a watershed moment.