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I have been thinking about Focus recently. I have also thinking about how digital social networks are affecting our behavior and responsiveness to one another. And I have a hunch that our intention to make good use of time may have affected how much we are willing to stay on a subject. 

So much to think about here, but needed to throw  this link in here along with the following quote: “We have not yet become good enough at the kind of pedagogues that make the most of technology; that adding 21st century technologies to 20th century teaching practices will just dilute the effectiveness of teaching.” This is not news, especially not in Tanzania. But thinking broadly about the situation, here is what will be on my mind for the rest of the day: Why is technological innovation in education surpassing the needs of those who teach and learn today? If technology is made up of tools that support needs, what needs is ed tech supporting? What will it take for pedagogy to adapt practice + content to current tools? Or is this a reverse-logic problem?

Here I will refer to "traditional" content as content that is translated via TV, newspapers and radio; it is centrally produced and once published cannot be changed. I will refer to "digital" content as content that is translated via the Internet; it can be produced by any number of people and can be changed even after publication. The primary difference between traditional and digital content is that the reader cannot know how many times the digital content has been edited over, or by who. In order to build an audience that trusts digital content, digital content creators (including curators, editors, etc) need to be open in their approach to their content. This requires transparency with both, contributors as well as readers. It also requires a consistent editorial policy, such that content is edited in the same ways, following the same rules, across all articles. These are developing thoughts.

Read this article on FT Magazine today. Interesting how artists can benefit from the streaming industry after all, just when it looked like artists were going to go broke due to free streaming and downloading online. Can this be applied to learning? For instance, can teachers benefit from putting out custom curriculum that they write from their bedrooms? Better yet, can students benefit from asking the right questions on the web? The answers to these may lie in who we think are the "artists" in this situation: The teachers, or the students, or someone else?

"Students may find their own ways of assessing quality by applying the approach they might take when shopping online for shoes or mobile phones to selecting a university course." Full article here . User-centric design or just fast-food school?

Many clients I build websites for seem to think a website is like a press release; that once it's first iteration is complete, no further work is needed. But digital communication is becoming more adaptive to every-minute interactions, similar to how we change our voices' volume level, tone and pitch depending on where we are talking. In other words, digital forms of communication need to be adaptive, which changes the one-version-works-forever way of thinking. Particularly, more effort needs to go into watching peoples' responses to your deployment and having conversations with them. Out of this, new tweaks need to be made as you progress over time, creating space for new conversations at every turn. 

Today I observed a discussed on Facebook prompted by one of my friends on whether or not books should be delivered to Tanzanians' doorsteps. On one hand, my friend and his supporters (myself included) contended that not all books can be delivered to one's doorstep given scarcity, and following this logic, the people who will come to view a book at a store in person are most deserving of the purchase. On the other hand, people argued that we live in an age where home delivery is a premium service, and only those service providers who will deliver will survive. The rest, those who demand a customer to come to them, will lose out in the long run. OK, so let's assume that every product and service was brought home to you. In this state of affairs, you need to be prepared to make wise choices, otherwise one of two things will happen, assuming that our need for stuff is never satiated: Either you will run out of money and into debt, or you will have too much shit lying aro...

If technology is a tool to get things done more efficiently, then there are two prerequisites to any implementation of technology: First, there needs to be a thing to be done. Second, this doing could happen in more efficient ways. With these these two prerequisites, the implementation of technology seems to be appropriate. Without them, the implementation is likely to face trouble, if not failure. However, if technology is not a tool to get things done, then we need to think further about prerequisites. In what cases do technological artefacts and the habits they involve manifest a unique culture? Who is involved with this culture and what are their motives? What is "the start" of this culture and what is "the end"? References: Revision Rinsed Revision Rinsed II Revision Rinsed III Revision Rinsed IV

Processes were never defined without people. Many processes are made completely by humans (procurement processes, roadworks, negotiations, etc). Natural processes that do not seem to originate from human actions, such as tidal waves or earthquakes, are attributed to bigger powers that humans disassociate from themselves. But even in the case of these natural processes, the language in which you understand the process is was a human creation and, subsequently, the form of that thought is as well. When do processes take over people's lives? Are these processes really "taking over" people's lives or only their decision-making power? To what end will processes be more important than people?

I just came by this NYTimes article which is a somber reflection on the progress of MOOCs. One example (from a few): "Much of the hope - and hype - surrounding MOOCs has focused on the promise of courses for students in poor countries with little access to higher education. But a separate survey from the University of Pennsylvania released last month found that about 80 percent of those taking the university’s MOOCs had already earned a degree of some kind."  The first opinion on the article posted here agrees with this reflection. For me, the power of MOOCs lies in the ability to (1) disseminate content in a smartly moderated way, and (2) to collect feedback directly from any number of students. Perhaps I am blurring the lines too much between MOOCs and VLEs, but the ways in which a "stranger"-student would be able to contribute to the content that will be taught next time around seems powerful to me. Why, then, do we busy ourselves in worrying about h...

In the first post of these series, I basically asked how people will choose what they read in the future. In the second post , I asked what will information will be available when they go looking. Now I would like to ask: What will be an 18-year-old's motivation to read about a random status update from his or her's counterpart on the opposite side of the world? There is a ton of information out there these days. You can hardly avoid it when you log into your social media accounts, even after all the filtering and careful choosing of "friends". You might have logged on in search of something specific, but you tend to get distracted by the waterfall of everything else. So, if this grows, what will motivate one to check on the waterfall at all? Will there be mechanisms to further customize one's content to their own tastes? Will we develop an interest in peer-to-peer learning that is complimentary to formal, productive, more industrial learning? My gut te...

A couple of posts ago, I asked: How will we assess information in the future? Today I am thinking of another question: What kind of content will people pick up 10 generations later? The question assumes that we will not be able to archive every post, every status, every piece of content that is put on the Internet in a clear manner. It would be very interesting to discuss our options should we find that this is in fact possible (step back: how would different companies harmonize their privacy policies?). And the question also has at least 2 implications: What will be important to people in 10 generations' time? And what systems will be used to govern what content is relevant?

The most successful technologies throughout humanity have been ground in processes that actually assist people. Technologies that were introduced as new processes seldom lasted for long. It's no wonder that proceeding technologies are built on those very same processes. Today I came across this article from The Economist , which contemplates whether the telegram is dead. It concludes by saying the telegram is not dead. Rather, new mediums have risen that emulate the telegram but in cheaper and faster ways than the telegram: "The 19th-century technology of the telegram lives on, in spirit at least, in our 21st-century devices." In this respect, old technologies are worthy of attention for people who look forward to new technologies. Humans tend to go with default options, and the most default of options in everyday life are options that are ground in historical behavior and innovation.

At work, my colleagues and I have recently been trying to figure out how to use mobile money transfers for the purpose of sending productive messages to citizens. Two ideas came to mind when thinking of MMTs: 1. Provide customers with a statement of account when they demand it. The statement, similar to a bank statement, would clearly show all transactions, including money out and money in. 2. Provide customers with the ability to create a savings account, where money left in a certain "box" would recieve interest if left alone over a given period of time. Through both these services - providing statements and allowing for savings - many more innovative message techniques could be devised.

The UJK library held its first "Round Table of Critical Thought" discussion yesterday and Omar and I discussed many things relating to language in the media. One interesting question that came up was "What will the future of commenting look like?" This is particularly important to the digital social media and blogging spaces, since we can imagine a future where everyone has a voice online. But does everyone saying something at one go (say, in response to a particularly popular blogpost) help to decipher the overall sentiment? If they are all displayed in a chronological string, not really. But if they are grouped together somehow - given keyword categorization or user voting as two examples - it would probably make the message much more friendly to understand. (Thanks OA!)

Contemporary e-mail systems - and many other systems that piggyback off them - were originally designed to model postal mail. There may be cool lessons to learn, therefore, from observing how post offices function. Side note: Patrick Clifton - or Postman Pat - always had his cat, Jess, with him. While Jess could never speak to Postman Pat in his human language, Postman Pat could understand Jess' motions and reactions. This helped them work as a team; more importantly, a team that Postman Pat's customers/clients would probably not understand. If e-mail service providers play the part of Postman Pat today, who plays the part of Jess? Thanks Brink of Bedlam for the nostalgic image!

Here is an epic  panoramic view of Mars, with love from Curiosity. Thanks Engadget !

If you're like me and appreciate minimalist HTML-only views on slow connections, you might have struggled to view your Gmail this way (ie: clicking relentlessly on the bottom-right link after logging in). To my relief, I just found that if you use this link after you've signed in, it should point right to the HTML template. No more frantic double, triple, seemingly-infinite clicking. 

A friend of mine pointed out something tonight that has loosely been on my mind lately: We look at, hear and feel life through a lot of screens and even more interfaces today, and increasingly we seem to rely on these very screens and interfaces to give us the whole picture. Doesn't this run the risk of shortening the experience of life itself? Is this even a risk at all? (Thanks, Ender.)

"We will have to re-write the music in the act of playing it." - Lewis Mumford on technological change and social imaginaries , 1934