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Stephen's Web ~ Link
OLDaily - Text Edition by Stephen Downes Oct 24, 2016
Internet of Broken Things
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As is always the case, technology as planned works very
differently from technology when mixed with humans. Witness
the Internet of Things (IoT), the nascent linking of
phones, printers, cameras, and a host of other dumb smart
devices. They have now become the prime vector internet
attacks. As Michael Caulfield says, " I worry that
it’s not just an internet of things, but a
proprietary mess of interdependent services built on the
shifting sands of unstable business models. Unless we
develop standards and protocols that reduce that
proprietary interdependency we’re eventually going to
have a lot bigger problem on our hands than Twitter
outages." True. But what are the odds that the corporate
community will get this right?
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Geishas, headdresses out as Canadian universities stave off
offensive Halloween costumes
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In Canada we have a tradition of dressing in costume on or
around Halloween (October 31). Traditionally these costumes
were of scary things (such as skeletons, ghosts or
monsters) but it has since branched out to include most
anything (I once went out as the Empire State Building). We
are now beginning to see the limits of 'most anything', and
in one noted case, Brock University's student union has
prohibited "any form of headdress, costumes that mock
suicide or rape, those depicting transgender activist
Caitlyn Jenner, or outfits featuring a culture’s
traditional attire" at its pubs and events." So of course
some people are crying "censorship", as though mocking
someone's culture or personal life is somehow a form of
free speech. I think the student union's message is clear
and reasonable: if you're going to be racist or offensive,
don't do it here.
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Has AI (Finally) Reached a Tipping Point?
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Irving Wladawsky-Berger offers a useful overview of
contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) from a
non-technical perspective referencing Stanford
University's One Hundred Year
LinkStudy on Artificial
Intelligence (AI100, 52 page PDF
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including the list of 'hot' areas of current study (quoted,
p.9):
Large-scale machine learning - algorithms to work with
extremely large data sets.
Deep learning - has facilitated object recognition in
images, video labeling, and activity recognition
Reinforcement learning - experience-driven sequential
decision-making
Robotics - train a robot to interact with the world around
it
Computer vision - form of machine perception; automatic
image and video captioning.
Natural Language Processing - systems that are able to
interact with people through dialog; machine translation
Collaborative systems - autonomous systems that can work
collaboratively with other systems and with humans
Crowdsourcing and human computation - make automated calls
to human expertise
Algorithmic game theory and computational social choice
draw - handle potentially misaligned incentives
Internet of Things (IoT) - devices interconnected to
collect and share their abundant sensory information
Neuromorphic - mimic biological neural networks
The report notes, "Contrary to the more fantastic
predictions for AI in the popular press, the Study Panel
found no cause for concern that AI is an imminent threat to
humankind. No machines with self-sustaining long-term
goals and intent have been developed, nor are they likely
to be developed in the near future."
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Quality Standards for Competency-Based Educational Programs
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You have until December 1 to provide comments
Linkto the
Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN
Link on this draft set of guidelines
for quality in competency-based education. The ideas is
that "Competency-based education uses an intentional and
transparent approach to curricular design that provides a
learner with a clear pathway to completion based on an
academic model that builds a unified body of knowledge
leveraging frameworks, disciplines, standards, workforce
needs, and national norms... Each competency is explicitly
stated and unambiguously provides descriptions of what a
learner must master before program completion... The
assessment strategy provides multiple modalities of
assessment intentionally aligned to learning outcomes and
uses a range of assessment types to measure learning and
the transfer of learning into novel contexts."
The eight elements, with expanded principles and related
standards, include (quoted from the press release
Link:
Coherent, competency-driven program and curriculum design
Clear, measurable, meaningful and complete competencies
Credential-level assessment strategy with robust
implementation
Intentionally designed and engaged student experience
Collaborative engagement with external partners
Transparency of student learning
Evidence-driven continuous improvement processes
Demonstrated institutional commitment to capacity for CBE
innovation
I couldn't find the actual quality standards anywhere on
the C-BEN website (you have to sign up for the survey to
view them), but can access this copy (11 page PDF
Link.pdf)
at Inside Higher Ed.
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H5P Examples and Downloads
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This site came up in one of the online discussions I
follow. From the website: "H5P makes it easy to create
interactive content by providing a range of content types
for various needs. Preview and explore these content types
below. You can create interactive content by adding the H5P
plugin to your WordPress
https://h5p.org/documentation/setup/wordpress"
target="_blank, Moodle https://h5p.org/moodle"
target="_blank or Drupal
https://h5p.org/documentation/setup/drupal" target="_blank
site, or you can create content directly on H5P.org
Linkand embed it on your
website."
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Attending to the Digital
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Interesting article from Audrey Watters, as is so often the
case, and I like the focus on the origins of the meaning of
the word 'attention' and the oft-cited concern that the
digital is creating an attention deficit. "You can see that
the noun is accompanied by all sorts of verbs. We pay
attention. We give attention. Attract attention. Draw
attention. Call attention. Fix attention. At which
noun-verb combination are we failing?" Fair enough. And the
idea of the 'attention economy', with its values firmly
planted in the capitalist ethos, is surely typical of
western culture. But I was surprised to see her overlook
the sense of 'attend' meaning 'to wait'. That's what the
french verb attendre actually means. To wait, and to wait
on, to attend. This sense changes the meaning of such
phrases as "the tongues of dying men enforce attention like
deep harmony." In the words of Arcade Fire: We used to wait
LinkNot any more.
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The problem for people isn’t advertising, and the problem
for advertising isn’t blocking. The problem for both is
tracking.
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Some good points here following Google's quiet change
of policy
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to allow personally identifiable web tracking. "Google
could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a
user by name, based on everything they write in email,
every website they visit and the searches they
conduct," says
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Julia Angwin. "Tracking is no less an invasion of privacy
in apps and browsers than it is in homes, cars, purses,
pants and wallets," says Doc Searls. "Our apps and browsers
are personal and private. So are the devices on which we
use them...Tracking people without their clear and
conscious permission is wrong... Claiming that advertising
funds the “free” Internet is wrong." True. But
tracking isn't the only problem with advertising. I tried
looking at the new map of the Galaxy today and even with
ad-blockers turned on couldn't see it behind the barrage of
popups and auto-play videos running on news sites.
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Copyright 2016 Stephen Downes
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