Cultural Evolution

We must keep in mind the evolving culture that is simultaneously the cause of and beneficiary of communications technologies. It's the reason why we're doing what we're doing.

https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/teilhard-de-chardins-planetary

Personal Learning Networks

What should edtech developers be trying to focus on? Connecting people with common interests. They will naturally specialize based on their own interests rather than forcing them first to conform to a set of standards dictated from a top down approach. So rather than first expecting everyone to think the same way and then later on ask them to pick a specialization, let them ask the questions they are naturally curious about and allow general knowledge filter in more organically. As globalization continues, it becomes ever more important that we have a population filled with individuals, capable of cultivating their own perspectives and approaches to the problems that stimulate their imaginations.

Extended Mind

What is computer science, anyway? What it means to create a program is to create a logical structure, a flow chart for decisions. In the end it is a way of replicating and automating our own thought processes. However it can be much more powerful in terms of the brute force and memory manipulations. It involves all manner of processing designed to extend the capacity of human reason. Instruments can be used to gather information, and then we can process it and disseminate it where it is needed. Fundamentally, though, whatever interest we as human beings have for information is judged by our own necessity. In the state of the world now, we already have too much information available to us. What we need at this point has more to do with making all of that information already available into something practically meaningful to us. But any technology is just a technology; it has to serve a purpose. So on the one hand, we need a single coherent worldview. On the other hand we need some kind of plan to cultivate a life worth living. Other than that, we need networks of people to share our past experiences and dreams for the future. I think the answer then, is in the network itself. 

Signal to Noise

Once upon a time, information was scarce. Now we need filters to eliminate extraneous garbage. It's still about communications, but its about recognizing what we're trying to take in versus what we're trying to put out. We need to sift through it all, and express our intentions clearly. Maybe we can use computers to a lot of this sorting on our behalf. Maybe we can even get the computer to do some thinking for us. What are we trying to learn? What are we trying to teach? 

Open Source Software

A 2001 documentary covering the history of open source software movement. 

"Revolution OS (GNU, Linux, FOSS)"

Distractions

It's easy to get distracted from the task at hand. And there are indeed some matters which are more important than programming computers, so it's not really appropriate to call all of them 'distractions', but given that I don't have a better word for it, I'll just stick with it. If we understand that our lives should be organized by priorities, and these priorities are roughly what Abraham Maslow covered as he developed a hierarchy of needs. I believe doing computer science has much to do with actualizing our potential as human beings, but it is fairly high on the pyramid. Those things which are more fundamental have to be addressed first, so I think we should do that, getting them out of the way, so that when we do sit down to do some coding, we won't have anything else weighing on our minds and interfering with the creative process.

Reservations

I was very interested in computers in my youth, but then life happened. I got distracted by other things. By the time I got back to it everything had changed. And I think that's a danger with the field, there's no way to know everything about it because everything is constantly changing, even within a small domain of it. The whole thing can be very intimidating. And that's me who had an early exposure to it. I can't imagine what the prospect would look like if I would never have had those early experiences. And I did take an intro class not so long ago to act as a refresher course for me. Even still, the more you learn, the more you learn that there is to learn. I think to come at computer science, one has to become comfortable with being a perpetual novice, relatively speaking.