Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Our Fragile World: Challenges, Opportunitiesfor Sustainable Development
John. (01)
Once again I must thank you - we all should thank you - for the wealth
of information you make available, information that appears very much to
bear on our current discussion. (02)
As you well understand, information - to be socially effective - need
not only be accurate and available, we need to learn ways of making it
digestible and interesting to a wider public. (As interest grabber, it
must compete with the stuff supplied by, say, Sports Illustrated.) (03)
Coming back to Fleabyte, I had hoped - still hope - that we could mold
it into a medium whose objective is to learn how ever better to "refine"
the information to become socially more useful/effective. (04)
I have permission to name one recent volunteer who is willing to give
the project 20 hours a week of his time: Arifur Rahman of Bangladesh.
Would it not be wonderful if we could have a circle of co-operating
volunteers from around the Globe? We need journalists, editors, subject
experts, "integrators," educators, technical production people. etc.,
etc. Many hands ought to make light work, which brings up the need for a
new kind of coordinator/managing editor - and the need for softwares
that permit the needed cooperation. Of course, we also need sources of
funding for some permanent staff, but this definitely cannot be from
advertising. Not only may advertising income interfere with objectivity,
it is my opinion that the overabundance of commercial messages takes too
big a bit out of public attention that better be focussed on more
important matters. (05)
Back to John's post again, the subject of ethics and technology. for
example, could easily use a volunteer for just this. He/she would lot of
studying, etc., yet the output of that might only be an occasional
couple of paragraphs in keeping with the need to render digestible, and
thereby effective, matter of the highest relevance. And to permit
correction, keeping things up-to-date, and pitching content to potential
usefulness. Think along the lines of Doug Engelbart's knowledge workers
manning frontier outposts. (06)
Henry (07)
On Tue, 2003-03-25 at 02:39, John J. Deneen wrote:
> Henry,
>
> Regarding:
>
> >Personally I feel that digital augmentation by itself is not enough.
> >There need also be attention paid to values education and the stiffening
> >of spine in times of calamity. This is a lesson I learned from
> >reflecting on the years Holland lived under Nazi occupation. I did
> >express myself about that in this forum. Also, two years ago, I tried to
> >get support from a college where I used to teach to organize a getting
> >together of educators to have an initial look at this issue. I was then
> >motivated during Engelbart's Colloquium in 2000 when two of his guest
> >speakers addressed the coming end to the supply of oil on a 40-year
> >horizon. Running out of non-renewable resources promises some mean
> >struggles for what is left of an ever scarcer supply.
> >
> The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Center of Information
> Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) on behalf of UC
> Berkeley are sponsoring an Ethics and the Impact of Technology on
> Society Workshop
> <http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/html/research/ethics/index.htm> (by
> invitation only) on 4/5/03.
>
> The final report containing the workshop proceeding will be posted here
> <http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/html/research/ethics/report.htm>.
>
> In the meantime, I found many interesting pointers from the list of
> recommended links
> <http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/html/research/ethics/link.htm>, including a
> paper about "Strategies of Knowledge Integration
> <http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/newdirections/resources/documents/knowledge_integration.pdf>"
> that reinforces your assertion made above by concluding: "Ultimately,
> knowledge integration should be understood as a social process".
>
> Another, interesting pointer "World's oil & gas wells running empty:
> Severe social impacts expected <http://www.runningonempty.org/>"
> reinforces Ed Kinderman's presentation - State of the world's energy
> supply
> <http://www.bootstrap.org/colloquium/session_01/session_01_kinderman.jsp>
> and Hew Crane's presentation: Second set of considerations about the
> state of the world's energy supply
> <http://www.bootstrap.org/colloquium/session_02/session_02_crane.jsp>
> during Engelbart's Colloquium in 2000.
>
> - John
> "The milk of disruptive innovation doesn't flow from cash-cows". - David
> S. Isenberg <http://www.isen.com/>
>
>
>
> (08)