Category: Psyber

From an email from David Allan, GTD, below, first a comment from me.

David’s comments below make total sense to me. I see all of this as part of psychological integrity. Relationships are important, and an email connection is not a substitute for relating, it is integral to it. Good communication means good communication online. That means embracing online literacy in the way one might embrace emotional literacy. How far does that go before it is no longer in your domain? You don’t need to be a linguist or a Shakespeare to be a good communicator, but it helps to know the difference between a thought and a feeling, to know the difference between a judgment and an observation… In the online world it means knowing when to reply to all, and keeping to one subject matter, described clearly in the Subject line. And how to manage the email inbox.

Knowledge workers are paid to bring their intelligence to bear on input, and improve things by doing that. The decision about what to do with an email and its contents, what it means in terms of the work and standards at hand, is knowledge work.

We’ve noticed that it takes an average of about 30 seconds to process each email—decide what it is, delete it, file it, respond to it quickly, or defer it to an “action” file or list. For someone with 100 emails a day (more and more common) that’s 50 minutes just to get through a day’s email load. That doesn’t count memos, phone calls, voice mails, conversations, and meetings that must also be processed.

A typical professional these days must factor in at least an hour a day and an additional hour at the end of the week (for a Weekly Review). And not as “Hey, it would be nice if I could…”—but as an absolute requirement to manage their life and work with integrity.

Jane McGonigal – On Productivity on Vimeo:

Jane McGonigal takes to our pulpit to challenge our assumptions about games as ways to “pass” or “waste” our time – and argues instead that we are never more productive than when we are immersed in a good game. What, exactly, do we produce when we play a good game? Positive emotions – like optimism, curiosity and wonder; collective intelligence; and a stronger social fabric.

Just the simple use of these words in the title make good sense.  We know this but network directed learning has not been as explicitly on my radar as self-directed learning which I had always considered my self as practicing and advocating.  But it was networked learning all along really. 

From Connectivism, George Siemens’ blog

Moving beyond self-directed learning: Network-directed learning « Connectivism:

To address the information and social complexity of open courses, learners need to be network-directed, not self-directed learners. Social networks serve to filter and amplify important concepts and increase the diversity of views on controversial topics. This transition is far broader than only what we’ve experienced in open courses – the need for netwok-centric learning and knowledge building is foundational in many careers today. For example, the discovery of the corona virus (SARS) was achieved through a global distributed research network. New technologies are increasingly assemblies of innovations that often span millennia – a process that was wonderfully covered by William Rosen in The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention . To be competent, to be creative, to be adaptable, requires that we are connected.

Most importantly network-directed learning is not a “crowd sourcing” concept. Crowd sourcing involves people creating things together. Networks involve connected specialization – namely we are intelligent on our own and we amplify that intelligence when we connect to others. Connectedness – in this light – consists of increasing, not diminishing, the value of the individual.

I was not convinced in the sixties when people said that companies were building things to break, to maximise profit.  But they did. Out fridge is had it after about 15 years, but one from 1950s I know is still working.  With computers it is a little different.  Everyone I’ve bought has replaced a working one, but was a major improvment on the last. 

Any form of crippling information that is easy to copy is simply wrong for humanity.  Information is not intellectual property. The plan is not the building, or the recipe the meal.  The ebook however is the ebook, and writers need to be paid.  The old scheme was useless though.  Writers were paid very unevenly, on a scheme based on popularity rather than merit. Science writing for example needed funding from other sources, and we found ways, imperfect as they are, to do that.

We will find other ways to create ebooks.  HarperCollins has had it. They don’t have a model that is native to the net.  Soemone will think of one, but it wont be them.  How to pay authors and editors, there are new models brewing like LuLu, and the breakthrough will come. 

Boycott HarperColins, so this artificial obsolescence does not gain a hold and launch a new dark age.

Education Petition: Tell HarperCollins: Limited Checkouts on eBooks is Wrong for Libraries | Change.org:

On March 7, 2011, the publisher HarperCollins instituted an expiration policy on eBooks that are licensed to libraries. Under this new arrangement, eBooks would “self-destruct” after being checked out 26 times. This would require libraries to re-purchase the eBook if they wanted to continue to make it available. Libraries across the country are boycotting future purchases of HarperCollins eBooks, but our voices alone will not change their policy. We need your help.

This is a great little article, and gives me hope.  We can evolve things like Facebook, and things like the Imago dialogue and NVC then we can evolve every form of our social sphere.  That’s not what the article is about but what comes up in me, as a human.

Computer says: um, er… | Computers v humans | Technology | The Guardian:

Computer says: um, er…

Since the 1950s, scientists have been striving to create computers that can think like humans. And each year they pit their efforts against a panel of real humans. Brian Christian went head to hard drive…