It’s true: you can now write in the fourth person! I read it in Weekly World News, back issues of which Google Books has now kindly made available as page images.
Their tagline is “America’s Only Reliable Newspaper,” which I am actually beginning to believe, now that their sister-publication the National Enquirer is in the running for a Pulitzer, and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp owns most of the rest of the American media. As a former tabloid employee myself, I can attest to the fact that the truth is out there (though not necessarily in here).
This could be addictive, especially to those who’d rather Twitter than blog: can One Sentence really say it all? (It’s a book project in progress, however, so be careful what your sentence might give away….)
There’s a very engaging little book called Wittgenstein’s Poker (no, it’s not about the language game involved in “Texas Hold’em”: it’s the kind of poker you’d use on a fire) that tries to collect all available evidence from witnesses about a celebrated discussion (that apparently quickly generated into an argument and then into the possible brandishing of said poker) between philosophers Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein in Cambridge in 1946. Most of the people who were there in the room were famous or would someday become so, and most of them are now dead.
What brings this to mind is last week’s Sci Foo camp at which 200 invited “big brains,” ranging from Freeman Dyson to Paul Ginsparg to James “The Amazing” Randi (and including, oddly, Martha Stewart) came to a so-called “unconference” at the Googleplex in Mountain View to discuss the future of everything.
And the eyewitness evidence of what happened there is trickling in from people like:
astrophysicist Alberto Conti:
evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen
philosopher Joseph Floridi
Open Library wunderkind Aaron Swartz
Oh, and of course, it’s already up on Flickr.
No evidence yet as to whether anyone threatened anyone else with a poker during a session . . . or even played poker during the breaks.
I didn’t have a name for this concept until I came across Teemu Arina’s strikingly suggestive phrase “parasitic learning,” which Arina defines as the “learner using someone as a teacher through virtual means without the knowledge or consensus of the host.”
This is the first metaphor related to learning/teaching I’ve encountered that seems to have implications significant enough to compete with Reddy’s celebrated “conduit model” of almost thirty years ago. It certainly gives a new perspective on the frontiers of distance education, hmm?
From the current issue of National Geographic, quoting one of my favorite theorists (Tom Malone at MIT, who’s now launched at least three successful theories, one of which I had the pleasure of tracking in my own dissertation):
“‘It’s now possible for huge numbers of people to think together in ways we never imagined a few decades ago,” says Thomas Malone of MIT’s new Center for Collective Intelligence. “No single person knows everything that’s needed to deal with problems we face as a society, such as health care or climate change, but collectively we know far more than we’ve been able to tap so far.’ Read more…
Like this, from Thomas Custer of Niche New Media, which represents some serious information entrepreneurship (from Columbia, Missouri, no less!)
If only Jilltxt would set this ACM conference presentation to music â€â€ÂÂ
or if Poesygalore would animate her Shelf Check cartoons â€â€ÂÂ
I think they might be big hits on YouTube.
On the other hand, I’m not sure whether adding vocals or animation to jny2cornell’s tag cloud visualization of Gonzales’s 4/19/07 Senate testimony would increase its impact.
(Hmm, perhaps I should have taken more communication theory courses at Newhouse when I had the chance….)
