The dumbest generation

A new book that may be a good read is Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30) – another recommendation by Kevin at Question Technology (his recommendations are always worth looking into).

dumbestgeneration.jpg

From the book’s website:

According to recent reports from government agencies, foundations, survey firms, and scholarly institutions, most young people in the United States neither read literature (or fully know how), work reliably (just ask employers), visit cultural institutions (of any sort), nor vote (most can’t even understand a simple ballot). They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount foundations of American history, or name any of their local political representatives. What do they happen to excel at is – each other. They spend unbelievable amounts of time electronically passing stories, pictures, tunes, and texts back and forth, savoring the thrill of peer attention and dwelling in a world of puerile banter and coarse images.

The book argues that this is not the typical elder generation complaining about, or not getting, the younger generation but it is a serious problem.

To those of us outside the US its no point in laughing at the Yanks – the evidence shows the same trends even in Europe and based upon my (non-scientific, anecdotal evidence) students – I cannot say that I am impressed.

On the other hand, for as long as I can remember, I have been hearing how the great thinkers have all gone. As a young PhD I was taught that the pace of life and the realities of academia no longer allow for the great works – we have to force research to create publications. Reading is almost frowned upon and when was the last time you could sit in your office and just think?

Still I see plenty of evidence of thought, and great thought at that. No, it is not in the same pattern as the old thought. It is more communicative – it must be to catch the reader who is not allowed to read and think. To enable this depth may, sometimes, be sacrificed.

If we look to the past it seems populated with genius – but this may be because we tend to forget the idiots, unless they were spectacularly idiotic. But if we look around us we seen the idiots but cannot see the geniuses, this may be that they are working instead of appearing on talent shows for the untalented.

ps trust me, I am 41 today 🙂

Singer in Stockholm

The philosopher Peter Singer will be giving a lecture in Stockholm on the 29 May on the “Ethical Aspects of the Difference between Secular and Religious Approaches”, read more about his lecture here. Unfortunately it is Stockholm but I will see if I can go up to Stockholm to listen to him.

The lecture will be followed by an existential discussion between Ann Heberlein (blogged about her recent book)
Georg Klein & Peter Singer.

Place: Lärarhögskolan, Stockholms Universitet (Aulan, Konradsberg) at 7 pm (more details here)

Open Content Licensing in Swedish

Right now I am putting the finishing touches to a booklet on Open Content Licensing in Swedish and I am struggling to make it interesting as well as informative – not an easy combination when it comes to copyright licenses. Another difficulty is working with the topic in Swedish since it is not a language I am used to working with.

Anyway I would really appreciate any Swedish readers who would like to take a look at the text and send me comments.  So feel free to read it: licensbok_iis_15.pdf

Trusting Technology

Claire over at Mummys Bracelet has written about the drawbacks in the blind trust in technology and used a row of fun/scary examples about people who have followed the advice of their satellite navigation systems into dead ends, rivers and other traps. Ignoring their better judgment and the evidence of their own eyes.

This is the kind of stuff I have written about before but it reminded me that I had a book chapter called “Trust & Technology” in Swedish which has never been online so I decided that it was time to but the preprint where it belongs – unfortunately it’s in Swedish but I was very happy with the way in which the chapter turned out.

The basic point of the article is that we should not trust technology more than necessary and, more importantly, we should not allow experts exclude us from discussing the pros and cons of technology.

Eva joins the blogosphere

A colleague, photographer and fellow flickr abuser has just joined the blogosphere and I am looking forward to seeing the blog grow. If it is anything like her photography it should be well worth following. Check out her work at Homespun and why not drop by her Flickr site.

 

 

Overcrowding library reading rooms

The TimesOnline has this story about the overcrowding at the famed British Library Reading Room. The main problem is that there are too few places for all those who want to be there. Unfortunately the complaints about lazy students wanting to “hang out” and therefore occupying places for “better” people misses the importance of the story. For example parts like this:

Although there are 1,480 seats in the library, the author Christopher Hawtree was last week forced to perch on a windowsill … Lady Antonia said: “I had to queue for 20 minutes to get in, in freezing weather. Then I queued to leave my coat for 20 minutes [at the compulsory check-in]. Then half an hour to get my books and another 15 minutes to get my coat. I’m told it’s due to students having access now. Why can’t they go to their university libraries?”

Make most people feel like shouting: get a life, you can afford it!

But the reality of the problem is that access to reading rooms (at any library) should be kept within limits so that those there can actually get work done. Overcrowding affects service and makes access pointless.

So why overcrowd the reading rooms? Is it because of a genuine egalitarian urge? Maybe, but I suspect the truth is in the final sentence of the article:

…that the library’s directors received performance bonuses depending on the number of visits.

Too little, too late

Question Technology writes that Encyclopedia Britannica begun making their material available free online.

Not only can bloggers access encyclopedia articles for free, their readers can access any article they link to.  For example, you should be able to read this entry on history of technology (you’ll see ugly ads, though; it’s ad-free when you sign in).

Whatever your position in the Britannica vs Wikipedia debate this last move can only be seen as a reaction to the wealth of information available online.

My main gripe however, is that Britannica still wants you to sign up (it’s free) and then log in (it’s automatic) these steps are massive barriers which will only serve to promote the openness of wikipedia.

Scholarly Communication (NCSC 2008)

On my way down to Lund to attend the Fourth Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication. for me the highlights of the first day will be

Open Scholarship: Synergies between Open Access and Open Education
Melissa Hagemann, OSI

Access, Usage and Citation Metrics: What Function for Digital Libraries and Repositories in Research Evaluation?
Chris Armbruster, Research Network 1989 and Max Planck Digital Library

Judging Merit – The Value of Publications
Ingegerd Rabow, Lunds Universitet

And naturally the opportunity to speak to lots of people with the same interests.

On BitTorrent Media Distribution

David Erman from the Blekinge Institute of Technology has written an interesting thesis entitled “On BitTorrent Media Distribution”. Well worth download it here.
Abstract:

Large-scale, real-time multimedia distribution over the Internet has been the subject of research for a substantial amount of time. A large number of mechanisms, policies, methods, and schemes have been proposed for media coding, scheduling, and distribution. Internet Protocol (IP) multicast was expected to be the primary transport mechanism for this, though it was never deployed to the expected extent. Recent developments in overlay networks have reactualised the research on multicast, with the consequence that many of the previous mechanisms and schemes are being re-evaluated.

This thesis provides a brief overview of several important techniques for media broadcasting and stream merging, as well as a discussion of traditional IP multicast and overlay multicast. Additionally, we propose a number of modifications and extensions to the BitTorrent (BT) distribution and replication system to make it suitable for use in providing a streaming video delivery service, and implement parts of these in a simulator. Also, we report on a simulation study of the implemented extensions to the BT system, as well as a detailed validation study of the BT simulator itself. Furthermore, we present a comprehensive set of BT models for several important traffic characteristics, at both session and message levels.

Parallel Production Sucks

Despite being totally aware of the consequences I am now stuck (again) with the job of writing several things in parallel. In the next two weeks I need to finish my open access report for Lund, two book chapters and a licensing booklet. The actual content is not the problem – what is the problem is despite all efforts to the contrary deadlines have a tendency to expand and contract to finally collect themselves in nasty little clusters that force the whole writing process into an attempt to beat text from the dead mind of the writer.

So how does this happen and can it be avoided? To answer the last question first: Of course it can be avoided. The simple trick is to only do one thing at a time. The cost of this approach will be to radically diminish my writing output. So this does not feel like an option.

The first question (why?) is more complex. It can be attributed to bad planning but this is only part of the truth. For many years I would explain my deadline stress with the words bad planning but I have come to realize that this is not the whole truth. No matter how good my planning is life has a way of throwing small surprises (not all pleasant) dates change, new tasks are assigned and often unrealistic work loads lead to delays.

The results of these insights should maybe be to attempt to change – but how can you change the unforeseen? How much planning must be included for that which you cannot know? And in the end isn’t it all a waste of time? After all:

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans – John Lennon