Casting the Net Podcast

Casting the Net Podcast

Kevin Kelly about the web 2.0 and neural networking

www.w3.org/1999/xhtml

In the following,I'm referring to and partly quoting from a passage in an article from the Wired, by Kevin Kelly.

In the 1990s, the big players were often talking about media convergence. They peddled the image of multiple kinds of signals entering our lives through one box - a box they hoped to control. By 2015 this image will be turned inside out. In reality, each device is a differently shaped window that peers into the global computer. Nothing converges. The Machine is an unbounded thing that will take a billion windows to glimpse even part of. It is what you'll see on the other side of any screen.

And who will write the software that makes this contraption useful and productive? We will. In fact, we're already doing it, each of us, every day. When we post and then tag pictures on the community photo album Flickr, we are teaching the Machine to give names to images. The thickening links between caption and picture form a neural net that can learn. Think of the 100 billion times humans click on a Web page as a way of teaching the Machine what we think is important. Each time we forge a link between words, we teach it an idea. Wikipedia encourages its citizen authors to link each fact in an article to a reference citation. Over time, a Wikipedia article becomes totally underlined in blue as ideas are cross-referenced. That massive cross-referencing is how brains think and remember. It is how neural nets answer questions. It is how our global skin of neurons will adapt autonomously and acquire a higher level of knowledge.

The good old Kevin Kelly has a very thought provoking article in the Wired

he human brain has no department full of programming cells that configure the mind. Rather, brain cells program themselves simply by being used. Likewise, our questions program the Machine to answer questions. We think we are merely wasting time when we surf mindlessly or blog an item, but each time we click a link we strengthen a node somewhere in the Web OS, thereby programming the Machine by using it.

What will most surprise us is how dependent we will be on what the Machine knows - about us and about what we want to know. We already find it easier to Google something a second or third time rather than remember it ourselves. The more we teach this megacomputer, the more it will assume responsibility for our knowing. It will become our memory. Then it will become our identity. In 2015 many people, when divorced from the Machine, won't feel like themselves - as if they'd had a lobotomy.

Legend has it that Ted Nelson invented Xanadu as a remedy for his poor memory and attention deficit disorder. In this light, the Web as memory bank should be no surprise. Still, the birth of a machine that subsumes all other machines so that in effect there is only one Machine, which penetrates our lives to such a degree that it becomes essential to our identity - this will be full of surprises. Especially since it is only the beginning.

There is only one time in the history of each planet when its inhabitants first wire up its innumerable parts to make one large Machine. Later that Machine may run faster, but there is only one time when it is born." Says Kelly.

You and I are alive at this moment.

Technorati Tags: convergence, web20, CoP2.0.Kelly

Blogging from inside firefox 1.5

I found a new powerful feature today - I can now blog directly when using my Firefox browser, just by clicking F8. All I had to do was installing a Firefox plugin called Performancing. This opens a simple wysiwyg text editor. I can use this for blogging at www.blogger.com, and some other blog tools.

Wondering if elgg would make this happen too - there's been quite some request for this recently by the elgg community.

PS I'm now also looking at the Performancing blog community where it seem to be meaningful to want to create commercial outcome from blogs. will report back later from this.

Sunset

Sunset
Originally uploaded by netopNyrop.

This is from a sunset, travelling by train one week before winter solstice.

I' now trying to contribute this postcard to the Webheads Happy new year wiki, so I needed to track the correct URL - and found out I could do this by blogging it from my Flickr!

Nordic Voice conference update

The Nordic Voice online conference runs for two more days.

Tomorrow Fridayat 14:00 GMT will be my turn to let a hundred tongues speaking. I've invted a few virtual guests, Language teachers from Webheads in Action,We're going to share some stories about working with collaborative blogs and inviting guest teachersto create authentic learning situations. Sergei Grid from the University of Minsk in Belarus will join me, perhaps also Dafne Gonzalez, PhD, from Venezuela and Teresa d'Eca, Lisbon, Portugal, Rita Zeinstejer from Argentina, Wendy Seale-Bakes from North Vancouver - we will have to improvise, as there has been as well personal as technical constraints.

at 16:00 GMT we are expecting Arne Theo Schenk from Germany. He is going to share with us an intercultural project where students from six European countires were brought together to workwith the idea of a borrowed identity, taking different roles and playing in front of a camera, then producing a DVD with multimedia material for discussion and reflection.

I'm looking forward to this session as I will be participant in a project meeting later this month where Anne Fox and Theo will also be present.

We had to cancel last minute a session with Katarina Lundin Akesson from the university of Lund, as she has lost her voice. One of our most qualified Nordic Voices... hopefully whe will be able to share her research on Nordic youth and their understanding of neighbour languages, with our community of practice on a later occasion.

I wanted to show some Flickr badge, but...

apparently the Java flash code was not accepted by blogger.