“All men are caught in a network of inescapable mutuality.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tag: quotes
Optimistic Thought of the Day
“If everything you try works, you aren’t trying hard enough.” – Gordon Moore
Quotes
It’s going to be a slow day here at EdTechPost, so….
“Say not, when I have leisure I will study; you may not have leisure.” – The Mishnah
“The ink of a scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.” – Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)
Attractors?
“Studying self-organization is equivalent to investigating the attractors of the system, their form and dynamics.” – http://www.calresco.org/sos/sosfaq.htm
If the ‘blogosphere’ is a self-organizing system, what are its attractors, their forms and dynamics? – SWL
Wendell Berry’s Life is a Miracle
I inherited a lot of books two years ago when my Dad passed away, and I’ve slowly been making my way through them. One that’s been staring at me for a while, and for who knows what reason I had resisted picking up so far, was Wendell Berry’s Life is a Miracle.
Well a recent summer cold gave me an excuse to lie and bed and read for a few hours, a rare luxury, and not having anything else to read at the time I dug into this. And boy am I glad I did. I don’t think I have ever found a more clearly written statement of the issues our society faces in relationship to technology and the commodification of the earth. Berry is no luddite, he is just urging us to resist the easy lure of reductionism and mechanistic thought. As he puts it:
What I am against – and without a minute’s hesitation or apology – is our slovenly willingness to allow machines and the idea of the machine to prescribe the terms and conditions of the lives of creatures, which we have allowed increasingly for the last two centuries, and are still allowing, at an incalculable cost to other creatures and to ourselves.
This book is extremely pertinent for educators and technologists alike. He levies a big charge at the higher education industry, one that you may not like to hear but which needs to be engaged. Highly recommended. – SWL
Tim Bray on Metadata
Recent article by Tim Bray on some issues with collecting and using metadata. One seemingly obvious piece of advice that is constantly overlooked –
“If You Collect Metadata By Hand The most important lesson Ive learned, is: Dont try to collect too much”
– via [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: O’Reilly Network Weblogs]