Reading

The cultural significance of Free Software

Finding new books is always exiting and I am looking forward to reading Two Bits: The cultural significance of Free Software by Christopher M. Kelty

Free Software is a set of practices devoted to the collaborative creation of software source code that is made openly and freely available through an unconventional use of copyright law. Kelty shows how these specific practices have reoriented the relations of power around the creation, dissemination, and authorization of all kinds of knowledge after the arrival of the Internet. Two Bits also makes an important contribution to discussions of public spheres and social imaginaries by demonstrating how Free Software is a “recursive public” public organized around the ability to build, modify, and maintain the very infrastructure that gives it life in the first place.

My only concern so far was that in the beginning of the book I found the sentence: This is a book about Free Software, also known as Open Source Software, and is meant for anyone who wants to understand the cultural significance of Free Software.

It is always disconcerting when people mix up free and open source software – to many the difference may not be important but when someone writes a book about the subject they should know that these are not synonymous terms. Despite this after browsing through the book – it looks very promising.

The book is available under a Creative Commons license (by-nc-sa) and can be downloaded from the book website.

Posted on by mklang

I am spreading

So I was looking at Slideshare which is basically a site where lots of people upload and download powerpoints. Besides avoiding other work the reason for me being there was to see whether this would be a good tool to use. Or maybe it’s enough already with the whole 2.0 thingy.

Anyway while looking at all the slick (some are very slick) presentations I saw something I recognized. The first slide in a presentation on How to Describe and Improve your Business Model (not my area at all!!) was one of my photo’s from my Flickr account.

The ppt maker (Alex Osterwalder) has even followed the CC instructions when he used my original image of a silver spire in Dublin (original photo here) and attributed me in the notes section of the slide. Very nicely done. I was surprised to run across myself like that, after the initial surprise I must say I really like it. Wow, Creative Commons works 🙂

Posted on by mklang

Books as decoration

For some books are more than just reading material they provide collectively a visual and tactile experience. Some would even go so far as to compare it to a fetish – Candida Höfer’s gorgeous book Libraries (some images here) is hot stuff! Others are more creative with their design of shelves – check out thirty creative bookshelves here.

Via Boing Boing another focus for books emerges – no longer is content king but over at Book Decor you can now buy old leather bound books by the meter. This is not really new but what I like is there different styles and their descriptions. In particular these two:

Hand Picked – This books are carefully Hand Picked for their beauty and craftsmanship. They are highly detailed with gilt (gold) with beautiful images such as flowers, animals, people, cherubs and intricate patterns, Embossed on wonderful leather, the workmanship is exquisite and rarely seen in today’s mass produced books. Our Hand Picked books are truly a small work of art. They will grace any home with there beauty for years too come. Available only in limited numbers and most likely will never be recreated. Truly a book anyone would be proud to have in there home.

Less Than Perfect – The Less Then Perfect books do not quite meet our usual standards. These books have bits and pieces of the spine missing, maybe a small tear. Sometime they may be in a color that is less desirable, however none of these books are falling apart. When put together they look beautiful and it is only on closer inspection that it is noticeable that these books have been lovingly used over many years, and as such have developed that worn patina look that some find very desirable.

Now its OK to love the books without caring to read them. How strange that the artifact has become greater than the content.

Posted on by mklang

How to take notes

Study Hacks is a cool blog aimed at students which has lots of study tips which are useful for everyone.  Today they have a great list of tips for taking notes. This is must read stuff…

A Study Hacks Crash Course on Smart Note-Taking

Why Most Students Don’t Understand the Real Goal of Note-Taking
A classic article from the early days of Study Hacks. It lays out my core philosophy on how to take notes well. You can use its “Three Laws of Reduced Study Time Note-Taking” as a general framework for the construction of your own customized note solution.

Part 2 in 60 Seconds or Less (or, The Q/E/C Note-Taking Method)
Another classic article. It summarizes the main philosophy driving Part 2 — Quizzes & Exams — of my book How to Become a Straight-A Student. What makes it relevant to this post is that it describes the famed Question/Evidence/Conclusion note-taking system that I first introduced in my book and now reference all the time here on Study Hacks.

Accelerate Q/E/C Note-Taking
A technical article that describes how to use Word short-cuts to accelerate Question/Evidence/Conclusion note-taking on your laptop.

Rapid Note-Taking With the Morse Code Method
A steamlined note-taking variant for long reading assignments that need to be completed in a short amount of time.

The Art of Pseudo-Skimming
An even more streamlined note-taking approach for articles that only need to be reviewed, not mastered, before class.

How to Read Hard Readings
This post introduces “strategic pre-processing” as a technique for conquering outrageously dense and complicated reading assignments.

How to Take Notes on Power Point Slides
Technical tips for taking efficient notes on lectures that are driven by Power Point slides. Take a look at the readers’ comments, which introduce some interesting twists on my advice.

Posted on by mklang

Digital Culture book

The book Structures of Participation in Digital Culture is now available for download for free. Here is a part of the blurb:

Structures of Participation in Digital Culture, …explores digital technologies that are engines of cultural innovation, from the virtualization of group networks and social identities to the digital convergence of textural and audio-visual media. User-centered content production, from Wikipedia to YouTube to Open Source, has become the emblem of this transformation, but the changes run deeper and wider than these novel organizational forms…

The contents include some familiar and some unfamiliar names and a lot of chapters that seem worth reading, take a look at this:

  • The Past and the Internet (Geoffrey Bowker),
  • History, Memory, Place, and Technology: Plato’s Phaedrus Online (Gregory Crane),
  • Other Networks: Media Urbanism and the Culture of the Copy in South Asia (Ravi Sundaram),
  • Pirate Infrastructures (Brian Larkin),
  • Technologies of the Childhood Imagination: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Media Mixes, and Everyday Cultural Production (Mizuko Ito),
  • Pushing the Borders: Player Participation and Game Culture (T. L. Taylor),
  • None of This Is Real: Identity and Participation in Friendster (danah boyd),
  • Notes on Contagious Media (Jonah Peretti),
  • Picturing the Public (Warren Sack),
  • Toward Participatory Expertise (Shay David),
  • Game Engines as Open Networks (Robert F. Nideffer),
  • The Diablo Program (Doug Thomas),
  • Disciplining Markets in the Digital Age (Joe Karaganis),
  • Price Discrimination and the Shape of the Digital Commodity (Tarleton Gillespie),
  • The Ecology of Control: Filters, Digital Rights Management, and Trusted Computing (Joe Karaganis).

Download the Entire Book

Posted on by mklang

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 🙂

Posted on by mklang

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.

Posted on by mklang

How to listen

It’s good to be back! My absence from this blog has been due to a move. My broadband has not been connected and despite the fact that their are plenty of wifi networks none are open – what is the world coming to? Don’t people agree with this?

Anyway this is not what I was going to write about. While catching up on my reading I came across a list of 11 things that will enhance the lecture experience, the list included some very good tips. Number 8 is my favourite:

Listen. Yes, I know you’re supposed to listen, but engage with your own mind as the lecture moves along. Ask yourself questions, try and evaluate points through what you already know, get involved in the meat of the topic even though you’re just listening to another person speak.

This is really a good reminder even when listening outside the lecture hall. In my case this is especially true if I am on the phone since my mind tends to wander…

Check out the entire list at The University Blog.

Photo: Paulgi (CC BY-NC-ND)

Posted on by mklang

Honor the heretic

The Vatican is planning to erect a statue for Galileo 400 years after they put him on trial for heresy but this is not the first attempt by the church to look into the Galileo affair, as early as 1979 attempts were made to rethink the trial of Galileo. Still better late than never?

The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

This does feel a bit like an apology of too little, too late.

A statue to the heretic might be a good idea but I would prefer a statue that would remind the church of the power and responsibility is has for preventing the truth from spreading. And a statue to the need to remind everyone that the truth needs to be discussed and challenged if we are going to progress. While the Galileo affair was four centuries ago the church attitude towards birth control and abortion are ongoing in a world struggling to deal with overpopulation, poverty and aids. Do you think that they will erect a statue of this in about four hundred years?

(via Slashdot)

Posted on by mklang