November 2005

Test of Flock’s blog editor

teaching, technology / /

I’m trying out a new web browser – Flock – which is basically Firefox with social software tools baked in, such as blogging, Flickr, del.icio.us, & so on. Basically, all the stuff I use anyway. So far, Flock looks pretty interesting, although I’m not yet sure at all that I would use it for my daily browsing. That said, I now tend to have both Firefox & Opera open at all times on my machine, so I may just add Flock as an option as well.

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CNN’s innovations & insights

business, commonplace book, technology / /

From Joel Kurtzman, Interview with Gary Hamel, Strategy & Business (4th Qtr 1997):

One of the most interesting cases of all is CNN, which “saw at least three things that had already changed in our world that others had not yet put together”: technology changes produced small satellite uplinks that made it possible to report from virtually anywhere; lifestyle changes meant we don’t all get home in time for the six o’clock network news; and regulatory changes allowed cable operators to undermine the monopoly of regional broadcasters.

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Serial killer apps

commonplace book, technology / /

From “Andreessen singles out consumers as key to Web future“, in InfoWorld (26 May 1999):

[Mark Andreessen] then switched gears and talked about the “serial killer apps” on the Internet. A serial killer app, as opposed to a killer app, just keeps getting more useful and more killer as people keep coming online, according to Andreessen.

Andreessen listed the five serial killer apps as: e-mail, the Web, instant messaging, online calendaring, and auctions. …

Andreessen said serial killer apps are the reasons people get online, but once online they are not limited to these five arenas.

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4 basic functions of knowledge management

education / /

From Carl Frappaolo’s “Four basic functions” in Computerworld (23 February 1998)

The four basic functions of knowledge management are externalization, internalization, intermediation and cognition …

Externalization is capturing knowledge in an external repository and organizing it according to a classification framework or taxonomy. At the low end are technologies that simply provide a means to capture knowledge and store it online …

The next level of externalization holds more powerful and promising search tools and document management systems that classify the stored knowledge and identify similarities among separate information sources. …

Ultimately, the role of externalization is to make your captured knowledge available to knowledge seekers through internalization or intermediation. …

Whereas externalization seeks to discover the existence of similar bodies of knowledge, internalization tries to discover bodies of knowledge relevant to a particular user’s need. With internalization, you extract knowledge from the external repository and filter it to identify what is relevant to the knowledge seeker. Internalization helps a researcher communicate a problem or point of interest and map that against the bodies of knowledge already captured through externalization. …

Whereas internalization focuses on the transfer of explicit knowledge, intermediation brokers tacit knowledge. It matches a knowledge seeker with the best source of knowledge. By tracking the experience and interests of individuals, intermediation can link people who need to explore certain subjects with people who appear to harbor knowledge in that area. … Intermediation is automated through technologies such as groupware, intranets, workflow and document management systems….

Cognition is the application of knowledge that’s been exchanged through the preceding three functions and is the ultimate goal of knowledge management.

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4 kinds of eductional institutions

commonplace book, education / /

From EDUCAUSE Review, February 2000:

There are 3,700 institutions and 15 million students in the United States today facing the challenge of integrating the past with the present, questioning how to mold the traditional model of higher education into a form that will not become obsolete in a world awash in an information explosion driven by electronic technology. There now exist four different types of educational institutions instead of the single, virtually unaltered model followed for the past 250 years of formal education in America. The first type comprises the traditional notion of a college. The second includes “corporate universities,” on-site training programs developed by individual companies to improve the skills and knowledge of employees. The third category contains mega-universities that recognize no national boundaries, combine the high-tech with the historical, and bridge the gap between the educational experience and the job market. The fourth types are virtual educators that operate nearly entirely online and offer the opportunity for practically anybody to become a teacher or a student.

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The value of learned experience

commonplace book / /

From Robert E. Kelley’s Consulting: The Complete Guide to a Profitable Career:

… a loud knocking pipe created turmoil at a large nuclear plant. No one could figure out what was making the noise or how to stop it. Finally one of the engineers suggested contacting Charlie, the retired maintenance man. Charlie listened to the knocking pipe. He then followed the pipe’s course throughout the plan. After fifteen tense minutes, Charlie located a pipe connection. He asked for a large monkey wrench. Instead of using the rench to turn the pipe, he hit the pipe connection four times with the wrench. At that point, the knocking stopped. Quite relieved, the management thanked Charlie profusely. In addition, they told hime to send a bill for his services. When they received the bill, however, they were quite upset. It merely said, “For services rendered–$1,000.” They complained that the fee was exorbinant for fifteen minutes’ work. Charlie offered to send an itemized bill if they wanted one. They did. It read:

    For 15 minutes' work      $  25.00
    For knowing where to hit  $ 975.00
    TOTAL                     $1000.00

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Get rid of high schools

commonplace book, education / /

From Stephen L. Talbott’s “Is High School Dispensable?”, in 19 August 1999 issue of NetFuture (#93):

Sensible words can show up in strange places — in this case, People Magazine. Bard College President Leon Botstein is interviewed in the July 12, 1999 issue, and he says bluntly that we should get rid of high schools. After tenth grade, students should move on to higher education, job training, or some form of national service.

This makes eminent sense if the only alternative is high school as we now have it — a ghetto walled off from the larger society and from the world of adult work, and, all too often, with no meaningful family life for the student to fall back on. Isolate kids from the grounding potentials of a stable community embedded in a real landscape and pursuing real work, and they will create their own society with its own, very likely warped values.

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Learning drops quickly over time

commonplace book, education / /

From “Building Better Bosses” in Workforce Magazine, May 2000:

Research shows that 30 minutes after adults hear new information, they will remember only about 8% of it. A day or two later, recall drops to 2%. But if people learn a little bit of information and practice it right away, retention balloons to 90% immediately and deflates to as much as 50% to 60% over time.

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TV changes a society … in its image

commonplace book / /

From “Bhutan and Fiji: The Elusive Influences of Television” in NetFuture #93, quoting The New York Times of 20 May 1999:

Meanwhile, a widely reported study by researchers at the Harvard Medical School documents some changes in Fiji associated with the 1995 introduction of television. These changes have to do with young women’s eating habits and ideals of beauty.

It is traditional in Fiji to compliment someone by saying “you’ve gained weight”. As a New York Times story puts it:

“‘Skinny legs’ is a major insult. And ‘going thin’, the Fijian term for losing a noticeable amount of weight, is considered a worrisome condition.”

But in just the three years from 1995 to 1998, according to the Harvard study, the number of secondary school girls reporting that they had induced vomiting to control weight rose from three percent to twenty-nine percent. In a country where dieting was hardly known and calories were a foreign concept, it now appears that more teenage girls go on diets than in America. “Young girls”, writes the Times reporter, Erica Goode, “dream of looking not like their mothers and aunts, but like the wasp- waisted stars of `Melrose Place’ and `Beverly Hills 90210′”.

“One girl said that her friends ‘change their mood, their hairstyles, so that they can be like those characters’. ‘So in order to be like them, I have to work on myself, exercising, and my eating habits should change.'”

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A museum I definitely want to visit

commonplace book, cool stuff / /

From Best Undiscovered Museum of Americana:

It’s hard to imagine how anything so big could be such a well-kept secret, but there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who haven’t heard of the Shelburne Museum , and those who rave about it. I’m one of the latter.

Situated on 45 acres outside Burlington, Vermont, the Shelburne has been called the “Smithsonian of New England.” It was founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb, heiress to sugar and railroad fortunes. An avid collector of Americana, Webb built the Shelburne and left an active foundation in place to keep it running and growing. It now encompasses 37 exhibits and buildings, some of them nearly incomprehensible in scope. They built a railroad, for instance, to bring the steamship Ticonderoga to the site. A curved building a quarter of a mile long covers a Lilliputian circus parade, each figure, animal, and cart hand-carved — by one person. The figures are only inches tall, and no two are alike.

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15 fundamental desires and values

commonplace book / /

From ABC News:

Curiosity: desire to learn

Food: desire to eat

Honor: (morality) desire to behave in accordance with a code of conduct

Rejection: fear of social rejection

Sex: desire for sexual behavior and fantasies

Physical exercise: desire for physical activity

Order: desired amount of organization in daily life

Independence: desire to make own decisions

Vengeance: desire to retaliate when offended

Social contact: desire to be in the company of others

Family: desire to spend time with own family

Social prestige: desire for prestige and positive attention

Aversive sensations: aversion to pain and anxiety

Citizenship: desire for public service and social justice

Power: desire to influence people

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Failure vs. Losing

commonplace book / /

From Red Herring:

The key distinction is between failing and losing. Failing means getting blocked on an intended course, backing out, and restarting. Losing means persisting in your failing ways, refusing to change your current course, and instead putting significant effort into justifying the course. Worse yet, it means getting defensive whenever you are challenged about your vision. In high-tech ventures, you can expect to fail many, many times. That’s part of the deal. You get up, brush yourself off, and get back in the game. But lose just once, and you may never have another chance. That too is part of the deal.

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