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Spinning Amazing/True Stories at 2023 RPM
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2023/10/30

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It takes a bit to get to this point, but this is one of those key moments, I think. Alan Levine writes, "The idea of a free open unenclosed commons, the idea that shaped me, needs recalibration. Maybe just my own." Why? "Colleagues used to take time to add to the web fabric," he writes, but now "is mostly social media posts laden with Like clicks that float downstream or at best, only in docs. It is now fractionated as the social media disaspora is growing more diasporated. It's the commercialization of everything, which makes the simple act of reading online an effort of signing ip and dismissing boxes of ads and solicitations covering content. It's that two letter acronym which might subsume everything, including our supply of water and energy."

Here's what I think. The old internet was based on creating content by hand, because that was the only way we could do it, and so was populated only by a small number of enthusiasts. But it got easier and easier to create internet content, and more and more people did that. The enthusiasts are still there, but but for each one of them there are ten on Twitter, a hundred on Facebook, and it's easy and tempting to follow the crowds. But if all someone does is post - and repost - on Twitter, where's the creativity in that? If you don't do that - if you don't follow the people just doing the easy thing - the internet is still a beautiful place. Don't be distracted by the people taking the easy path - that way lies disillusion.

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Understanding the Anatomy of a System
Mark Ratcliff, Except, 2023/10/30

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This article describes "the SNO (system-network-object) hierarchy from the Symbiosis in Development (SiD) framework." It's an interesting and extensive discussion that I don't entirely agree with but feel is worth sharing. "A system, put simply, is composed of individual parts and interactions that produce some result or outcome," writes Mark Ratcliff. "The human body is a prime example of a dynamic and resilient system we can all relate to." Well - yeah - but a human body doesn't "produce some result or outcome," not in the sense Ratcliff intends; we aren't production engines like factories or economies. I like the three level diagram, but only if we understand that systems are objects. A network of many interconnected entities can be thought of as one thing (a culture, a nation, a flock, for example) and this one thing can have properties that emerge from the interaction of the objects forming that network. But I don't think these emergent properties include "results or outcomes" - they aren't teleological. That's my major disagreement with systems theorists, I believe.

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Some thoughts on 'team philosophy'
Ingrid Robeyns, Crooked Timber, 2023/10/30

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The topic refers to philosophy created by teams. As most readers will know, by background is in philosophy. As a result, my approach to the subject is more or less philosophical, rather than (say) based in social or medical sciences. There are many differences between the different approaches, but this article focuses on the fact that most philosophers work alone. As, for the most part, do I. "Ideas tend to be seen as from someone and hence the locus of knowledge generation is primarily the individual." Now of course a lot of people will talk about things like (say) socially constructed knowledge - but that's very different (in my view) from knowledge created by a team or collaboration. That's not to say it can't be done - and the knowledge produced in the science and in medicine are prime examples. But not all knowledge follows that model. Understanding this is one of the core findings of philosophy.

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End of a Journalism Experiment
Dan Gillmor, News Co/Lab, 2023/10/30

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Oh how often I've read something like this: "Today, we acknowledge a fundamental, yet foreseeable, mistake: giving undue trust to the owners of centralized online platforms." It's Dan Gillmor writing this line, however, which is somewhat surprising given his depth of knowledge about online media. In this case the tool developed at the ASU Cronkite News Co/Lab, called Correx, relied on APIs at Twitter and Reddit. In recent months, both APIs have been largely disabled. An open platform like Mastodon would work better. "We've looked at Mastodon closely, and Correx could indeed fit well into that ecosystem. The irony, however, is that Mastodon – uniquely among social networks – already does corrections the right way."

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I've Been To Over 20 Homeschool Conferences. The Things I've Witnessed At Them Shocked Me.
Heather Stark, Huffpost, 2023/10/30

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This is a HuffPost article, so I can't vouch for everything it says, but it does give voice to the fears of those opposed to home schooling and to private schooling in general. "For the past three years, we've traveled to more than 20 homeschool conferences," writes Heather Stark. She creates "curriculum kits that use the stories of notable women in history to teach girls about their worth and potential." Which sounds fine, even useful, but "there is a faction that prickles at our presence." The article as a whole documents these encounters. Via Reddit, which also links us to John Oliver on the subject and takes us into some of the deeper recesses of the movement.

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Dawn of the Zombie Journal: New Poster Celebrates History of OA Community Activism
Katherine Ruth Parker-Hay, Open Library of Humanities, 2023/10/30

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A 'zombie journal' in this context is a commercial (and usually closed access) journal that has been abandoned by its editors (and, presumably, most authors and readers) because of some dispute involving access or editorial control, and yet continues to be run by the publisher. A good example (and the inspiration for the term) was the remaining shell of a journal "following the mass resignation of editors at the Elsevier journal Lingua." The current article introduces us to a poster encouraging those who remain to abandon the zombie journal. It's also a bit of a plug for The Open Library of Humanities (OLH). But read it for the history and to clip and save the poster.

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Breaking new ground with ALTc Radio
Dominic Pates, #ALTC Blog, 2023/10/30

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I've certainly seen live audio (and video) broadcasts from conferences before before, so this article doesn't exactly describe the very first time it has been done, but it's still pretty new, and I have nothing but nice things to say about people who provide this service. This longish article describes the background to the ALTc radio show, along with information on how it was set up (I love the DJ booth) and describes what they would do next time. "To some extent, it felt like being at the breaking of a new medium," writes Dominic Pates.

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Research Rabbit
Research Rabbit, 2023/10/30

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This reference popped up in a Mastodon discussion so I took a quick look. The idea is that you enter a paper you like (or, in my case, connect with Zotero and add a collection (but not too big)). The app then shows you related information - other papers, connected authors, even news feeds. You can get a lot of data in a hurry based on one paper. Another item mentioned in the same discussion was elicit.com - this allows you to update and analyze a PDF. Potentially useful, but it assumes a strict format, assuming all papers are like medical research studies. These are the latest contributions to research apps (to my mind, a bit of a cross between personal learning environments and bookmarking tools). There's a lot out there; I don't think we're there yet.

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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