Down my throat no more. Jim McGee: John Seely Brown on Stolen Knowledge. [….] Why is it such a hard step to give up on the notion of control? Or, put another way, why do organizations and schools insist on forcing certain content down people's throats? You might want to take a look at Roger […]

The Critical Questions. I did this week's reading for my IR&R 2 course. And according to my prof's last 2 sets of comments, I am not allowed/supposed to write reflection papers which are based on my usual critical questions/misgivings with the readings. So… [Flailing in the Surf]

U.S. funds study of tech monocultures [InfoWar Monitor] The National Science Foundation has granted $750,000 to two universities to study how diversifying information systems and software could help fend off future cyberattacks, the agency said Tuesday. The study, proposed by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of New Mexico almost a year ago, will seek […]

GOP Steal Compter Files – No Film at 11. John Moltz brings to our attention a story from Calpundit. A Republican Senate staffer accesed files on a Democratic staffers computer and then leaked them to the press. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said yesterday that a… [Eat Your Vegetables]

Patent Poet. Ray Kurzweil has been awarded a patent for his AI-based ” target=”_blank”>cybernetic poetry software. (via NYTimes) Kurzweil, a successful developer of AI-based technologies and author of several books including The Age of Spiritual Machines, has an elaborate website promoting AI… [grandtextauto.org]

From users to programmers. A few months ago Steven Garrity's blog was host to an interesting conversation on the gap between user and programmer. I hope the computer environments of the future will enable ordinary people to just “get things done” without encountering steep learning curves, even when that involves choregraphing the work of several […]

Pooping on O'Reilley. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog appears on Fresh Air with Terry Gross and does a superb take-off on Bill O'Reilley's recent meltdown on the same show. [Interesting Times]

Social software collectibles. Ross Mayfield offers a Social Software Reader. Thanks for putting this together, Ross! Assembling these kinds of lists is a low-cost way of adding value (and providing extra exposure) to older pieces of writing. I should do that too at some point. Here are a few of my favorite picks in Ross's […]

Today I am. 1. Re-reading Eric Laurier and Chris Philo 's X-morphising: review essay of Bruno Latour‰¥ús “Aramis, or the Love of Technology”. Excellent stuff. 2. Reading Susan Newman's Here, There, and Nowhere At All: Distribution, negotiation, and virtuality in postmodern ethnography and engineering – found via Lucy Suchman's brilliant Sociality of Information Technologies course […]

Let's wrap it up. Star presenter wears hijab and apparently gets “a flood of calls”. But, in an odd turn for the BBC, the piece doesn't say what those calls think. Are they all praising the traditional – and controversial – head-dress, or are they up in arms. The story skirts the issue. Islam 101 […]