Web/Tech
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The tech futures in 2000AD
So, confession time – I seem to be regressing to childhood in lockdown. As a kid I used to get the sci-fi comic 2000AD every week. I had numbers 1 to about 450, but when I went to uni my mum gave them away to the boy scouts, saying “you didn’t want them did you?” When I tell you Issue 2 (the first to feature Judge Dredd) sells for about £600 on Ebay you can appreciate this is still kinda raw. I’ve bought a few of the collections and graphic novels over the past couple of years. Then I got issue 1 as a birthday present and this prompted me…
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Twitter is your IT support
<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/duncan/7172953614/> This post isn’t intended as a criticism of anyone, rather an observation on a trend I’ve noticed from several others also. I’m running my block of the Masters course H817 as a MOOC. It’ll start this March, and one of the things I wanted is a DS106 style blog aggregator. That is, I want the contributors to register their blog, and for posts they tag appropriately to repost automatically in the course blog. Now, the sensible way to do this seems to be to install WordPress and use the FeedWordPress plug-in. For reasons I won’t go in to, I haven’t been able to get this done at the Open…
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Be the Sat Nav
Our metaphors for human behaviour are often informed by technology, and the metaphors we adopt play an important role in how we see the world. Lakoff and Johnson argue that “If… our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.” But can you consciously choose metaphors to shape your own behaviour? This is part of the argument of talking therapies, that you change your interaction with the world by the way you frame it conceptually. All of which is trying to provide some academic justification for a small idea in a small post… I was pondering…
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The cost of good bad ideas
There's a horror film, which I've never seen, called The Human Centipede (if you've never heard of it, I apologise for bringing it to your attention). Now, I like a horror film, but I really don't want to see this one. But here's the thing: the mere existence of the idea that the film contains has given me disturbed nights. In some respects the director deserves credit for this – he has conceived of an idea and then put it into a film, which you don't even need to see to give you nightmares. That's the power of a bad idea. I was thinking about this the other day in…
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Jobs weather
Like many, I was saddened at the death of Steve Jobs yesterday, and inevitably it led to some reflection on the impact of a person's life. In 1999 I wrote part of a course (T171, You, your computer and the Net), based around the story of the early computer industry. We used Cringeley's Accidental Empires as a set text. Ultimately this came down to a story of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Incidentally, this compelling narrative was a very good way to teach about dry subjects such as microprocessor operation, analogue to digital conversion, etc. At the time Jobs had just gone back to Apple, and it was by no…
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Categorisation angst, the monoamorous and Google+
Yes, we're all playing with Google+, and I suspect blogging reactions to it, but this is not one of those posts (quick verdict: it's immediately better than Buzz/Wave, and Circles combined with Hangout could be very useful for research teams, institutions). No, what this post is about is the categorisation dilemmas that tools such as Google+ generate, and our relationship with technology. In terms of categorisation my first dilemma was whether work colleagues count as 'friends'. I chatted to George Siemens about this and he concluded he didn't have friends, just colleagues (or colleagues who are also friends). I'm in a similar position, or at least my online self is.…
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Eportfolios – J’accuse
This is a bit kicking a man when he's down as most people have turned away from eportfolio software now, but it still persists. It's also old hat – Jim was telling us this ain't your eportfolio mama, three years ago. But maybe now is a good time to reflect. I would like to one day do a series of posts about collective fantasies that grip educational technology, and why they don't turn out the way we envisage (learning objects anyone?). This post was set in motion by an email from a colleague asking whether I thought blogs were better means of achieving portfolios than specific eportfolio systems. I answered yes,…
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VCR as formative technology
Having done a couple of DS106 radio shows with Jim Groom (which suffered rather from, erm, technical difficulties), the notion of the early video cassette recorder as a formative technology has emerged for me. Here are some ways in which I think it was relevant: It changed the film industry – home video was seen as a threat by the film studios back in the early 80s, with the fear that it would mean people would stop going to the cinema. This didn't happen, and gradually they realised that it was another very lucrative form of income. Many decent films got a second life on video, and an awful lot…
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Bavathursdays, messiness is part of the plan
<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanislands/3716274762/ by Viqi French> Last night I joined Jim Groom for a live session on DS106 Radio. The idea was to chat about 80s b-movies, an interest we have in common and see where it went. It's fair to say it went all over the shop, but was really fun from our end anyway (I'm not sure how much fun it was for the listener). But on the basis that it's through playing and doing fun stuff that you actually learn, we're going to have a go again. Next time we'll try and get others involved and have a focus around a particular theme or film I think. I created some…
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The year of the backlash
<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/frippy/1419020309/ by Frippy> This is hardly a marvel of prophecy, but bear with me… The signs are that this year will be one marked by something of a backlash against social media/ web 2.0/ any internet stuff. I don't mean from the traditional media, who've always been suspicious, but from people who know what they're talking about and have been advocates. In other words, increasingly 'us lot' will be declaring that this stuff is peripheral, uncool, over- rated, etc. I think this will often been focused on a particular technology, and Twitter will be the main candidate this year. I've already seen several people I know abandon it. But increasingly it…
