Nassim N. Taleb, Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering, NYU-Poly, for his contribution [to the online symposium see also my summary of Hillis' post for context] has argued that greater information produces greater confidence, and in this post adds that since the Internet does not merely increase our access to information but also our interdependence (see the previous post). Interdependence increases fads (he uses both Harry Potter and the globalisation of runs on banks as examples). "Such world", he writes, "is more "complex", more moody, much less predictable."His conclusion is practical and personal, in an attempt to regain wisdom like that shown by the ancients and people from the pre-Internet past, he is enjoying an Internet fast:
I am not entirely deprived of the Internet; this is just a severe diet, with strict rationing. True, technologies are the greatest things in the world, but they have way too monstrous side effects — and ones rarely seen ahead of time. And since spending time in the silence of my library, with little informational pollution, I can feel harmony with my genes; I feel I am growing again.
Labels: culture, digital, internet
¶ 9:03 PM
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It is knowledge and experience which bring confidence, but a wealth of mere information can be self-contradictory. But I may have missed the connection in your post between that point and what followed.
Anyway, these posts are fascinating, Tim. Please do keep them coming!
By 
Bill, at
January 17, 2010 7:03 AM
I think (to check what Taleb thought do read the original posts) that "knowledge" here might be better in scare quotes. increased information produces the illusion of greater knowledge, which in fact degrades knowledge.
But it is the combination of information and (degrees of perceived) certainty with the tendency for more immediate communication to increase interdependence and so fads, that interests and scares me!
I do think the Internet mediated world of 2010 "is more 'complex', more moody, much less predictable" than the paper and broadcast mediated world of 1960.
By Tim, at
January 17, 2010 1:14 PM
Hillis suggests print enabled "the enlightenment" the Internet enables the "entanglement". In the enlightenment we became independent, in the entanglement we are becoming interdependent:
In an Internet-connected world, it is almost impossible to keep track of how systems actually function. Your telephone conversation may be delivered over analog lines one day and by the Internet the next. Your airplane route may be chosen by a computer or a human being, or (most likely) some combination of both. Don't bother asking, because any answer you get is likely to be wrong.He illustrates this discussing Internet Time Protocol the system that allows software to know what time/date it is now, so saving humans from needing to enter the time and date on bootup. The system depends on multiple networked devices, and few if any programmers understand it, we all use it. We are interconnecting not only when we are aware of it, but also and particularly when we are not.Soon, no human will know the answer. More and more decisions are made by the emergent interaction of multiple communicating systems, and these component systems themselves are constantly adapting, changing the way they work. This is the real impact of the Internet: by allowing adaptive complex systems to interoperate, the Internet has changed the way we make decisions. More and more, it is not individual humans who decide, but an entangled, adaptive network of humans and machines.
One item only from Hans Ulrich Obrist's (Curator, Serpentine Gallery, London) partial and multiple alphabet of an answer:
D is for DoubtYes! Now, can we encourage students to begin to understand this?
A certain unreliability of technical and material information on the Internet brings us to the notion of doubt. I feel that doubt has become more pervasive. The artist Carsten Höller has invented the Laboratory of Doubt, which is opposed to mere representation. As he has told me, 'Doubt and perplexity ... are unsightly states of mind we'd rather keep under lock and key because we associate them with uneasiness, with a failure of values'. Höller's credo is not to do; not to intervene. To exist is to do and not to do is a way of doing. 'Doubt is alive; it paralyzes certainty.' (Carsten Höller)
The ever stimulating Clay Shirky, Social & Technology Network Topology Researcher, provoked me most with this Contrarian gem:
It is our misfortune to live through the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race, a misfortune because surplus always breaks more things than scarcity. Scarcity means valuable things become more valuable, a conceptually easy change to integrate. Surplus, on the other hand, means previously valuable things stop being valuable, which freaks people out.This is the lesson Big Music is beginning to learn, the moving image industry has begun to face, that is freaking the publishers, but will change higher education beyond belief (one day, soon?). [See my Back to the Future: Virtual Theologising as Recapitulation especially the first section "Return of the Rabbi" 115-121.]
And, I am only about half-way through the articles :) What a cornucopia of stimulating thinking!
Labels: culture, digital, education, internet, publication
¶ 4:57 PM
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Timing is so critical. I suspect it's a good thing that Google waited as long as it did to make this a line in the sand. The Chineese people are more likely to notice, now.This is a really interesting comment, and even more striking are the thoughts it provokes. For Bill is likely spot on. If enough people in China have become Google-dependent, especially families of people with influence, then this new hard line of Google's could be effective.
If it is, it could also be the point from which future historians date the beginning of the state of Google, Google's definitive entry into politics and diplomacy. Already de facto if not de jure Google controls a huge proportion of the global access to information. It also wields significant economic power, if it adds to that an active use of its "hearts and minds" power Google has the potential to significantly impact global politics and diplomacy. For many years people have worried about the monetary "clout" of large corporations (though these worries may be due more to miscalculations than reality), perhaps though the information barons pose the real threat to democracy, as well as or after the threat they pose to tyranny.
Labels: communication, culture, internet, politics
¶ 2:47 PM
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What a handsome fellow! ;-)
Seriously, I hadn't thought about all that, Tim. Wowzers.
By Bill, at
January 16, 2010 4:24 AM
At last thanks to "someone" attempting to unearth information (in part from their Gmail accounts) about Chinese political activists Google has got a conscience and is changing its policy. As a result the Google blog says:
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.A moderately large step for a corporation, a giant leap for humanity!
Labels: culture, internet, politics
¶ 4:21 PM
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Tim,
I just hope that Google keep its word. Someone has to deal with China and its abuse of human rights.
Claude Mariottini
By Dr. Claude Mariottini, at
January 14, 2010 5:16 PM
Timing is so critical. I suspect it's a good thing that Google waited as long as it did to make this a line in the sand. The Chineese people are more likely to notice, now.
By Bill, at
January 15, 2010 4:22 AM
This fits my reaction, unlike other trendy tools I have found potentially interesting and explored (for a recent example take Google's Wave) or tried to explore but given up on (like Second Life), I have never been able to imagine the point of Twitter!
I would be interested to know though whether my readers and their readers have a similarly large number of Twitagnostics, or whether "we" have more Twitter-gnostics ;)
So please vote in the poll here, and/or link to it (http://poll.pollcode.com/BRD) so your readers (at least if they are in the biblical studies and related disciplines whether as professionals or amateurs ;) can vote.
You will see from the questions that this is not entirely serious and scientific, but either by polling or by comments I really would be interested to hear what you all think :)
Labels: biblical.studies.online, communication, digital, internet
¶ 2:11 PM
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Tim, Twitter for me has become part ofthe way I make myself accountable, as well as communicate and relate with the different people I'm in relationship with (thought church, wider community, family and friends).
Twitter is part of the whole social networking scene and I have found ti really helpful as a Minister (in my pastoral role).
It takes me about half an hour aa day, I know what (some of) my congregation are doing, and some of the issues in their lives, I can contact them quickly and easily. It make me far more accessible, and I get to support people who might otherwise slip under the radar.
An added bonus, is that through it I've met some people who are int he area, who I wouldn't have any contact with normally.
All I can do not is warn anyone considering using BookInHotels.com that they are a bunch of fraudsters! They have had the use of my money for months, multiply that by hundreds of other suckers and they are onto a really good deal.
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see post
http://jwest.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/this-is-just-appalling/
By Jim, at
November 11, 2009 8:56 AM
Tim,
I am sorry for what happened to you. It is disgusting that some people take advantage of other people and defraud them the way they did to you.
I hope you will be able to find another place to stay in New Orleans.
Claude Mariottini
By Dr. Claude Mariottini, at
November 11, 2009 9:10 AM
Did they refund your money?
By 
, at
November 11, 2009 10:41 AM
I can help you. I have a room at the Marriott and can't attend the conference. Tell me how to contact you or mail me in Facebook.
By Sharon, at
November 14, 2009 1:20 PM
I have reservations at the Marriott can't attend. I haven't canceled yet. Maybe I can help you. Contact me in Facebook at the link below or tell me how to get in touch with you.
Best to you.
By Sharon, at
November 14, 2009 1:24 PM
Thanks, just a bit too late though as I found a place through a different agency, this time one that I googled first ;)
By Tim, at
November 14, 2009 1:31 PM
This makes scholars nervous of citing digital media. This is bad for scholarship, but good for nostalgia buffs who want to be scholars. They can go on advocating paper for preference.
Enter WebCite...
WebCite®, a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium, is an on-demand archiving system for webreferences (cited webpages and websites, or other kinds of Internet-accessible digital objects), which can be used by authors, editors, and publishers of scholarly papers and books, to ensure that cited webmaterial will remain available to readers in the future. If cited webreferences in journal articles, books etc. are not archived, future readers may encounter a "404 File Not Found" error when clicking on a cited URL. Try it! Archive a URL here. It's free and takes only 30 seconds.This needs to be better known, so please pass it on... HT to Suzanne McCarthy
NB: in case you think I should have referenced the Biblioblog Top 50 above I've done it here (so please don't complain ;)
Labels: biblical.studies.online, culture, digital, internet
¶ 9:07 AM
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Dead links are definitely an issue, but the real problem is archiving. Whether it is through digital repositories, the Internet Archive, or something else, we need to think strategically about the shifting of data into long-term storage.
From that point, linking can be replaced by (quickly advancing) search and tagging technology. The title and author of a piece should be sufficient to find it in an archive even without a persistent link.
By Bryan, at
September 16, 2009 10:23 AM
Bryan, I agree, though this service does archive as well as supply an equivalent of a PURL. They also look to be backed reasonably solidly. For copyright enabled (public domain or Creative Commons for example) works the Internet Archive is also a great service. I put my audio there http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=tim%20bulkeley
When I remember ;)
By Tim, at
September 16, 2009 10:40 AM
Interesting post, Tim. Yes, the NT Gateway was once located at Birmingham; I've just checked and I moved it to NTGateway.com in 2000. I must explore the Webcite thing.
By Mark Goodacre, at
September 16, 2009 2:59 PM
I can no longer remember at what stage I finally removed the Amos material from the Auckland Uni site but since I had both sites running in parallel for a time I think it may have been later still, the Wayback Machine would suggest 2003 or so, though bible.gen.nz had been the primary for some time by then. Ah memories of the old days, eh!
By Tim, at
September 16, 2009 3:09 PM
When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.Yes, famous newspapers published a fake (and rather "purple") quote in their obituaries for Michael Jarre, while Wikipedia (the public encyclopedia) tested the quote, found it wanting and removed it.
His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.
Motto trust Wikipedia over a professional journalist any day, diletantism rocks ;)
Maybe...
Labels: encyclopedia, internet, wikipedia
¶ 7:26 AM
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Even if I can't spell ;)
By Tim, at
May 13, 2009 7:28 AM
tim, tim, tim. no one has to tell me. i read your every post.
as to wiki- well even a blind ape can put a stick in a hole from time to time.
By Jim, at
May 13, 2009 8:16 AM
Yes, I realise that you see everything that goes on beneath the sun ;) what ammuses me is that this particular blind ape seems to hit the hole regularly, and even more often than the highly costly commercial rivals - perhaps the blind ape is simply less greedy and so less stupid?
By Tim, at
May 13, 2009 8:22 AM
Some authors achieve this status because their thinking is so clear, and their communication so straight and clear that one must either agree or disagree with them - they polarise. [Some of us are so good at seeing every facet of an issue that following our thought is like walking through untracked forest, a series of tiny decisions,rather than one momentous one...] Lewis earned his "brand" that way, and so has Carson.
He addresses a Christian approach to technology, and begins (predictaby) with Rom 12:2 and (also predictably?) 2 Cor 10:5. He states that "the most dangerous movements in any age are those that are so widely assumed that it is very hard to see them" supporting his case with reference to history, though any cross-cultural worker will be as aware that today's assumptions by Western Christians look very different in most of the world.
After an interesting, though to readers of this blog unsurprising, rehearsal of some features of current digital techno-culture he concludes:
We need to hear competing voices of information from the world around us, use our time in the digital world wisely, and learn to shut that world down when it becomes more important to get up in the morning and answer emails than it does to get up and read the Bible and pray. We may also learn much from church history, where we observe fellow believers in other times and cultures learning the shape of faithfulness. We begin to detect how easily the "world" may squeeze us into its mold. We soon learn that adequate response is more than mere mental resolve, mere disciplined observance of the principle "garbage in, garbage out" (after all, we are what we think), though it is not less than that. The gospel is the power of God issuing in salvation. Empowered by the Holy Spirit and living in the shadow of the cross and resurrection, we find ourselves wanting to be conformed to the Lord Jesus, wanting to be as holy and as wise as pardoned sinners can be this side of the consummation.Do read the whole editorial (HTML or PDF), and since Themelios does not have a comment feature (how I wish the church, and especially Evangelical Christians, would recognise that openness and discussion are healthy and not persist in old authoritarian modes of discourse) you are welcome to post any short responses
Labels: internet, technology, theology, thinking
¶ 12:54 PM
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After making this video available to the world and her uncle (if she lets her uncle share her Internet connection, as most of the world [outside Western culture] does [and even inside Western culture close family are usually allowed the odd share]), Danny then ponders the future: "as I am trying to ultimately get them published, I’m not sure how many more to share freely online
".
Labels: culture, digital, funding, internet
¶ 8:47 AM
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I agree whole heartedly with your post, but is that more than day dreaming? I think in the realm of theology and biblical studies some hard questions need to be asked about the availability of scholarship. Why do academics who are payed salaries by institutions need to make money out of selling stuff? if they are being paid a living wage they should be glad to share the fruit of their labours for the glory of God.
As for Danny, setting a verb table to frere jaques is hardly something he could copywrite. It's a nice thing to share, but no one would pay money for that, it doesn't require any particular skill or specialist equipment to do. Danny should stop worrying about cashing in and feel the joy of giving.
By Jonathan Robinson, at
December 18, 2008 3:13 PM
Well thanks for the encouraging words Jonathan. As a matter of fact they are copyrighted and if it did not require any particular skill it would probably been done already. These songs and videos took a whole lot of time and effort. And I think that mixers and professional recording equipment and software are "specialist" equipment.
Time will tell I guess if people will pay money, but my students have been encouraging/harassing me through this semester to try and publish these. And I have several colleagues who have also encouraged me and are ready to endorse it, and I am talking to a publisher right now.
Perhaps it is different where you work or live, but the problem is that academics in biblical studies, especially those that choose to work in a confessional institution, choose pretty low salaries and are sometimes struggling to live on their wage. I'm not quite rolling in the money working at a seminary, in fact I'm in a lot of debt.
Trust me, I am not worrying about cashing in on this. I made them for my Greek students to help them. And if I don't have them picked up by a publisher I won't lose any sleep. I have already felt the joy of giving these and the enormous time I put into teaching, which I take very seriously as I believe it is my spiritual gift. I don't think any of this negates trying to have this better distributed by a publisher and hopefully earning a little something.
If I wanted to earn money, I could have done a lot of other things.
By Danny Zacharias, at
December 19, 2008 2:54 PM
May i apologise unreservedly to Danny and to Tim for what appears to have been an unwarranted personal attack on Danny. I should have walked away for minute before posting and i would have said things differently. I did not mean to impune Danny's motives (I have never met him) nor the effectiveness of his learning aids (nothing works better than a catchy tune). Nuff said.
By Jonathan Robinson, at
December 19, 2008 4:10 PM
thanks. (I understand saying things too off the cuff, I've done it too)
I must be a suspicious person, according to Lifehacker only 4% of Internet users got all ten answers correct in the phishing quiz here.I thought they were mainly easy to spot. I had most difficulty with the ones that were genuine ;) all my instincts screamed things like: "You don't have an account with them! Spam it!"
What do you think?
Have I got a nasty suspicious mind, or were these scams fairly easy to spot?
Labels: internet
¶ 10:34 AM
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Yes, we are the house behind the trees, down the drive, beside all the mailboxes, you can't miss us!Well, that was not a lot of help... so here's the bach:
Again, we are the house behind the vegetation, but this time you can see a bit of us, and a great shot of the neighbour's car ;)However, I've saved the best till last, here is Carey:
I'm not sure what Google's millions have bought us, but frankly I'll return to those beautiful and useful satellite shots. Street View is not getting a slot on my Bookmarks Toolbar :(
¶ 2:34 PM
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I've been uploading photos to Panoramio, it makes a change from marking ;) Besides Panoramio is a great tool, you can geocode your photos, so that they are associated with the place you took them, and some get selected for display on Google Earth. This means that increasingly now I can find Creative Commons licenced photos of places, just by "going" there in Google, and clicking on the little square boxes that indicate a view... The photos I've uploaded have mainly been 
- Archaeological sites in Israel
- Like the olive press at Hazor (above top)
- or our South Island trip
- like this moody glacial valley
- or these pebbles at Birdlings Flat (below)
My collection is at http://www.panoramio.com/user/1721793 next I'll have to organise them better with tags... ;)
Labels: geography, internet, photo
¶ 5:21 PM
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I've also been working with Panoramio. I've been trying to use it on our Mozambique site and haven't found an easy way to embed the maps.
There is this info: http://www.panoramio.com/blog/embedding-panoramio/
But I'm still not getting it to work. I guess we'll go without maps for now...
By David Ker, at
November 25, 2008 9:34 AM
No, it does not seem easy to get it working, but it would be cool... maybe we should go over to his blog and ask for help...
By Tim, at
November 25, 2008 12:43 PM
Mark Brown is promising a blockbuster paper The Digital Revolution and the Church though as yet there's little to suggest what aspects of the huge topic he'll try to tackle... but maybe the issue of whether churchy media are becoming "disjointed fragments" will feature. Meanwhile, from where I type and read, units of communication seem to have been shrinking by the decade. All thanks to digital media. In the seventies TV turned politics into soundbites, in the nineties webpages turned monographs into scan and click mind food, now in the naughties YouTube, TXT and "social networking sites" are turning conversations into an exchange of soundbites and essays into five minute videos.
A significant conversation partner for Mark, and for those like David who are beginning to think of the mobile phone as the major channel, popped into my feed box this morning. With the unlikely name of Catskill Cottage Seed the eponymous CCSeed has a post on Storytelling in Social Media which is full of smart remarks and fine suggestions - interpret both "storytelling" and "social media" widely (and you should!) - and we are all able to learn something, or better still recognise something we already knew, but too often forget!
For me one paragraph stood out, on Hooks:
You never know when or where someone will come across your stream, where or when they will break into the narrative. In a novel, once your (sic.) hooked, other things can develop; character, plot, metaphor; that elusive moment of truth. Even when providing these aspects in social media space, each content packet needs a hook that allows someone stumbling upon it immediate access. Nothing, from a tweet to a e-book, should be floated without a hook.Much of the rest I'll want to reflect on and mull over, but for now I must not forget:
Scale the content down to the snippet, but not the quality of the content.But, you my gentle readers, what are your tips and insights into connumication in this brave new world? Do drop us a mention of your favourite recognitions or insights...
Labels: culture, digital, internet
¶ 9:12 AM
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con-numication - a lovely typo - making together with the Spirit?
By Bob MacDonald, at
November 17, 2008 10:03 AM
Oops :)
By Tim, at
November 17, 2008 11:33 AM
Enjoy very much the experience of finding others running with what works...the pragmatic sense of truth. Thanks for making me run to the dictionary with eponymous as well.
By Richard Reeve, at
November 18, 2008 4:07 PM
It is almost disappointing to discover that like most bloggers you have an ordinary name, though it does still alliterate nicely ;)
I wonder if being pragmatic about communication also makes one pragmatic about truth? But then perhaps the answer to Pilate's question is that truth is what truth does - the medium is the message, indeed ;) ?
By Tim, at
November 18, 2008 4:31 PM
He's invited the arty to produce art to create "an illustrated manuscript for the 21st century." He is also inviting us to read a cyber psalm for an audio version - and if I can persuade him potentially multi-media version(s). I'm also trying to persuade him to put the text into the public domain, so we could run the audio project on Librivox ;) He plans to put the whole thing online and also sell print copies...
If you are thinking of recording an audio psalm for Psalterium Cyberium please do spare some thought to the equipment you'll use, it can make a huge difference. To illustrate here are two versions of Cyber Psalm 11 recorded on:
- a headset mic using the sound card built in to my laptop
- an decent quality mic using an external sound card
Labels: audio, culture, digital, internet, librivox
¶ 10:43 AM
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Wow. The second is my favorite. What were the specs on the mp3?
BTW #11 is one of my favorites. And hearing you read it gave me goose bumps and made me smile.
By David Ker, at
October 10, 2008 12:47 PM
All the MP3s are at 64kbs, which is quite enough to give good quality for mono voice. Though Librivox uses 128kbs, and Archive.org offers a choice.
Both the mic and sound card make quite a difference, so getting a good setup is quite important. Unless we added a backing track ;)
By Tim, at
October 10, 2008 1:05 PM
I have a Zoom H2 with fabulous recording quality. But I still haven't figured out the setting that makes me sound like a Kiwi...
Since we're hoping for lots of participation I'd suggest people trying their default computer recorder. What was that thingy you set up here where people could leave audio comments? Could we mash that with the texts of the Cyber-Psalms so that someone could just hit record and read off the screen. Those things tend to not work on WordPress very well but I might be persuaded to do that segment of the project on Blogger (ugh).
By David Ker, at
October 10, 2008 2:04 PM
Hmm, could do, though the sound quality was not good. BTW to show how bad it can get here's my laptop's built in mic!
By Tim, at
October 10, 2008 2:22 PM
I tried phone through Gabcast:
http://lingamish.com/2008/10/09/recording-a-cyber-psalm-toll-free-by-phone-in-six-countries/
What it lacks in sound quality it makes up for in ease of use (no software/hardware just punch in two codes.)
By David Ker, at
October 10, 2008 3:36 PM
At that quality we could always make them AMR files (1/10 size of your MP3).
I still like the idea of making it a Public Domain Librivox project, for the audience...
By Tim, at
October 10, 2008 4:00 PM
- by email and/or Flickr messages with photographers whose work I have taken and used in slides for a sermon I preached which was videoed for a CareyMedia DVD. These are people I don't know, may never communicate with again, though they have enriched my life and work, so it is nice to thank them as well as prudent to ensure we have their permission (Does a CC no-commercial use license allow a non-profit sale of a work - my sermon - that includes the licensed image - in a slide?)
- on MSN (using Pidgin so that I could also potentially chat with one of you on Yahoo without yet another app open) with my son in the Isle of Man about his application for a job in Kenya encouraging microenterprise
- on Facebook with Jim West, about the mysterious disappearance sometimes of the identifications Oxford or Cambridge from the officers of SOTS online - I thought it was something to do with proteraenvy by those associated with "the other place", but apparently it is merely Facebook being "helpful"
- among the comments on my blog with Bob McD, about Hebrews' use of the Hebrew Bible
This sort of experience - and yours I suspect was similar but different - is a bit like sitting in the Carey staff room, with three conversations at once ranging from the mundane to the sublime and back again. But in the staffroom the conversations intertwine, and participants from one or the other move and realign. On the Internet they remain separate, only meeting in me, this is the centripetal tendency in Internet communication. Since "I" (and you, of course, dear reader, are also "I") am the centre the conversation is fragmented.
Ah, well, play time is over, it is 8:30 and time to start work...
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Deep stuff. Something about Twitter and Facebook allows a certain amount of eavesdropping which might be close to the staff room effect you mention. I confess that the babble sometimes even overwhelms me.
I've been reading early PG Wodehouse comedies recently, A Man of Means by P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill was finished back in May,and since then Three Men and a Maid by Wodehouse alone. I have been praying for one of the proof listeners, so when Gustav threatened their area that became a cause for concern.
Here's what they wrote after the storm was past:
You are so correct about the separation being a very difficult part of this evacuation process. At work, I find that we have a great deal to pray about with our customers searching for family members and pets, who have been separated from each other. At one point, our interstate 59 coming from New Orleans was so backed up that a trip which normally takes 4-6 hours, took one customer 14 hours, with gas stations along the way out of gas, several people including this customer found themselves walking the evacuation route for the last 20 or more miles. Nothing on the news about this though, so all I know is to keep praying for all those who are far from home.So, more to pray about, but some thanfulness and joy mixed with the "pleases", isn't the Internet wonderful. How else could an Old Testament teacher in New Zealand be able to brush against the lives of people far away at a time of crisis? BTW Smith the Bulldog is indeed quite a show-stealing act ;)
Something which might cheer you: I took mp3 copies of your Wodehouse project with me to work, during the rain squals (they usuallky lasted about 20 mins) I played tracks from them for the travelers standing around. Many loved the book and asked about it, one woman in particular stayed while I cooked a pizza for her family and listened to 2 tracks. It turned out she had heard of LibriVox and planned to download Three Men and a Maid when she gets back into her New Orleans area home. I can't seem to say this very well, but I'm trying to say that for at least 2 carrivans of people, your reading gave resspite, comfort and the first real laughter I'd heard all day as our friend Smith the bulldog stole the show that fateful night that auntie returned.
Labels: audio, internet, librivox
¶ 5:48 AM
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A while back Geoff Pound (of Theologians Without Borders) put some effort into collecting ideas and stories about Creativity in Theological Education quite a bit of this material appeared in "one off" posts on the TWB blog, but he also collected together a summary post. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the "finished" feel of the posts they have not generated the discussion they might have if these things had been said in instutional staff rooms ;)Readers of Sansblogue are likely to be stroppy, strong minded individuals, and many are likely to have strong opinions about theological education. So, if you have not done so already please go and explore these posts on TWB and disagree, express your strong opinions, generate discussion - the honour of the blogsphere is at stake, surely this electronic medium is no worse than a college staff room at discussing ideas?!
Labels: biblical.studies.online, internet, theology
¶ 8:17 AM
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Labels: encyclopedia, humour, internet
¶ 10:02 AM
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just to clarify two things- i didn't post it- i pointed to it. and second, you've got the wrong jim there. i don't play now, nor have i ever played, soccer.
but i do love the 'kindly yet simple soul' line. i might use it for the blog title!
By Jim, at
August 21, 2008 12:36 PM
You posted a suppoosed screen dump, that's bad enough for me any day!
In the light of your touching trust in expensive and out of date print encyclopedias I thought "kindly yet simple" expressed it rather well ;)
By Tim, at
August 21, 2008 12:48 PM
PS, maybe you had the wrong Socrates... perhaps the one you looked up was somebody's cat?
By Tim, at
August 21, 2008 12:49 PM
TWELVE persons listed on the "disambiguation"page and NOT ONE of them identified as "Dr. Jim West"? In that case, I wouldn't have gone to either the Canadian or the Australian "former football player" -- I would have opted immediately for "a fictional character on the television series The Wild Wild West and the motion picture Wild Wild West." After all, "our" Jim West could not possibly be a flesh-and-blood Hooman Bean, could he?
By , at
August 21, 2008 10:41 PM
;-)
By Jim, at
August 22, 2008 12:06 AM
Sounds plausible to me, Dr Jim West as a fictional character. I'm sure the average sceptically minded scholar would find little real solid evidence for his existence, much more likely he was just made up after the events... after all no real human could write as many blog posts in one day as he does,seven days a week (even God took Saturday off) clear evidence that the West corpus is the work of a community.
By Tim, at
August 22, 2008 7:21 AM
I have a puzzling problem with my favourite browser. For the last couple of days Firefox has begun to behave strangely when scrolling (especially when scrolling through the new posts on Bloglines. Instead of the down arrow key moving the screen a line or two, and the Page Down moving it down roughly a screenful, what happens is that it jumps to the end of a blog. This is infuriating, I am reading the blog before yours, looking forward to your latest wisdom or humour, I press either Page Down of Arrow Down and behold I am at the end of the last post of yours that is still live, all ready for the next blog :(
It is driving me nuts, if it continues I may have to move to that browser that Microsoft make :( So, if you know a fix please let me know :)
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maybe your computer has a stuck ctrl key - the behaviour you describe seems to be that for thr ctrl-pagedown key. hit the ctrl key a few times to see if it unsticks
By Bob MacDonald, at
August 20, 2008 4:25 PM
Thanks, it's not the CTRL key, as (in other programs that use it) that is behaving normally, however, it does seem to be a problem unique to Firefox, and it is the page down/up and arrow down/up keys that are affected, left/right and ctrl left/right (as in the box to type this work normally. It is not just bloglines as CNN and the BBC are also weird.
By Tim, at
August 20, 2008 5:29 PM
Could you give some more details:
Which version?
Did you lately install plugins? (With Greasmonkey enabled I had in the past the same problem)
Is it on every page?
By J. P. van de Giessen, at
August 20, 2008 8:12 PM
Fifrfox is version 3, it keeps itself up to date(I am not sure which version as I have it set up with as little chrome as possible at the top and the Help menu is not available the File Version (undder properties) says it is 1.9.0.3105 the problem only affects some sites: Bloglines, CNN, BBC, Facebook but not others my blog, Google... it seems therefore to be linked to rendering complex layouts, but beyond that I can see nothing much in common between them.
I have not installed new addins recently, but have a number that update from time to time (I can't remember which updated recently): Ad Block plus 0.7.5.5; is.gd Creator 0.2.1; ScribeFire 2.3.1; Stylish 0.5.7; WebDeveloper 1.1.6; Zotero 1.0.7
By Tim, at
August 21, 2008 5:52 AM
I made some tests, but couldn't recreate the problem. I use 1.9.0.1.
A known problem is that some AJAX libraries has some "fuzzy" coding and I know Bloglines is using AJAX. so maybe this could be a problem. You can post a ticket on the Mozilla site about this problem.
By J. P. van de Giessen, at
August 21, 2008 6:09 AM
I'm having the same problem. And I hate it! I have winXP+SP2. FF 3.01. Extensions: AddBlock Plus, ColorfulTabs, FireGestures, IE Tab, Mr Tech Toolkit, Slogger and Tab Mix Plus.
By stanberka, at
September 16, 2008 3:49 AM
To make matters worse it went away and then came back again!
Stanberka, we have the same OS and FF versions, but apart from Adblock different addons, so unless it is Adblock it is suriouser and curiouser... I'll try disabling Adblock.
By Tim, at
September 16, 2008 5:17 AM
press F7. Apparently that toggles carrot browsing, whatever that is.
By testpattern, at
September 18, 2008 6:42 AM
Thank you! O, great and wise Testpattern performing the magic gesture indeed turns away the rabid carrots and protects my browsing experience from frustration :)
By Tim, at
September 18, 2008 7:10 AM
Yes! F7's "caret browsing" was the problem. My Firefox symptom was runaway scrolling: when I stopped, the scroll bar would keep going.
I'm sure this got turned on when my grandchildren were banging on my keyboard.
Thanks!
By , at
November 15, 2008 6:50 PM
Voila... my 6 month old also banged some keys on my laptop and had the same issue... F7 saved my life and sanily :)
By , at
May 25, 2009 4:34 PM
This solved my problem! Thanks!
By duran, at
July 4, 2009 12:44 PM
I'm another one espousing the greatness of the F7 key. Thank you so much!
By Tessa Hart, at
July 28, 2009 5:19 AM
Thank you! I was going crazy too for a day or so and am so happy to have it fixed!
By Jason, at
October 3, 2009 5:10 AM
Very Very Odd. I am so happy to have found this post. The scrolling issue was driving me absolutely crazy for the past few days. Kids must have been pressing buttons.
By FredFlintstone, at
October 14, 2009 4:43 PM
Yes, drives one bananas till learning about F7...
By Tim, at
October 14, 2009 4:53 PM
Thank you for the f7 key; i had the same problem for several weeks.
This f7 feature is a nightmare.
By Anis, at
November 18, 2009 11:01 AM
Thanks from me, too.
By Tim, at
November 30, 2009 4:09 AM
Info about F7 fixed it for me too. Cheers
By , at
February 7, 2010 12:25 AM
it did to me too! thx!!
By , at
February 10, 2010 12:59 AM
F7 Worked for me too! Can't trust a 15month old...
By , at
February 10, 2010 1:17 PM
thanks :)
By , at
February 14, 2010 6:55 AM
Thank you :) Gads this was so annoying!
By taryn1245, at
March 3, 2010 5:51 AM
Thanks for the solution. Hit F7.
Tags: Firefox, scroll bar, arrow keys, jumps, F7, caret, bad web design, OMFG
By , at
March 5, 2010 5:20 PM
This is great fun, and is driving a burst of creativity and colaboration. This easy availability of great free services is in large part responsible for the hype over Web 2.0 (which somehow refuses to fade quietly into the background like other twee slogans - but is rather perhaps being mainstreamed ;)
Yet there are feet of clay to all this. In the 1990s many of us started our first websites on "free" hosts like Geocities, but soon moved on to paying hosts. In that case it was advertising that caused many of us to move. Other were driven by restrictive policies or lack of space. Something similar could happen to the current crop of great "free" services.
As GOS the "Unofficial news and tips about Google" blog recently noted in a post about Google Page Creator closing:
This year, Google discontinued a lot of services: Browser Sync, Hello, Send to SMS and Send to Phone extension.So, how safe are free services? The provider can drop or change them at any time. Don't rely on them! Use a free online file conversion tool, if you need to convert a few files in a hurry, but not if you convert files regularly. Use a free video sharing tool, to share video freely (Blip.tv seems the best at hosting, but YouTube draws more of an audience) but if reliability matters to you, do make sure you have a backup plan!
Free is fun, but it is also vulnerable. Google is great - as a search engine (though even there one shudders to recognise the power they wield) but not to be trusted with your website!
Labels: internet, video, web 2.0
¶ 6:09 AM
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I'm sorry, I can't agree with you. First, paid services fail with alarming frequency. Second, Google Pages is being phased out in favor of a more powerful system, Google Sites. Better than browser sync are a number of private services including Foxmarks. Hello is of course superseded by Gtalk. Send to SMS (and its related service, Send to Phone extension) was discontinued at the request of phone providers, but Google provides more powerful services, including better support for mobile phone access and GrandCentral.
So, if you said "you can't count on free services because they are often improved and replaced by better services" I would agree with you.
However, I would keep backups even with paid services.
By Iyov, at
August 20, 2008 4:14 PM
This time I thought I'll use the power of Google. I searched for various terms "website backup and restore", "reviews website backup and restore", "magazine reviews website backup and restore" and the like. I found and installed trial or free versions of dozens (well actually nearer to half a dozen) programs. None worked well. Some backed up fine, but could not restore. Some did both, but only to the same FTP site, so no use if I have to change hosts. Some seemed to have difficulties with my system and kept hanging up...
So, does anyone have a suggestion of a Windows program that makes backing up and restoring a website:
- simple: don't tell me about Chegwin and the rest of them, twenty years ago I wrote mean batch files, but I have no desire now at 60 to start that learning curve againworks to do incremental backups
- will restore to another FTP site
- costs less than US$60
One batch file was really mean, we snuck it into a colleague's autoexec.bat without him noticing, on bootup on April 1st it ran another file, his screen fell to bits, characters dropping and gradualy the screen went blank, for one minute nothing worked, then a new screen appeared, like the WordPerfect 5.1 startup, except it said: "a pirate copy of WordPerfect has been detected on this computer, contact the WordPerfect corporation, do not touch any key, do not switch the computer off" since the poor guy was in the middle of Africa this was difficult ;) when eventually heart in mouth he pulled the plug at the wall (nothing else not even CTRL-ALT-Delete did anything we'd piped the console to NUL) his DOS prompt now read "C: Never mind Richard WE love you!" [return]
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I use Offline Explorer for downloading web sites.
For restoring or copying web sites I have ftp access to, I just use SecureFX.
By Iyov, at
August 7, 2008 6:36 PM
There are several tools.
1) For downloading a complete website: www.httrack.com for if yuo don't have any ftp connection ;)
2) Freeware filezilla-project.org
3) Commercial www.cuteftp.com, www.ipswitchft.com (WS_FTP)
By J. P. van de Giessen, at
August 7, 2008 9:16 PM
To keep backups of my site I use Site-Vault. It downloads a copy and I can restore it easily when I need it. I didn't tried to restore it in another location but I think it works. When I bought it I paid $99 but now I see that they have lowered their price to $59 and also upgraded to 3rd version.
By , at
August 8, 2008 12:06 AM
Hi, Tim,
Check my suggestions here:
http://bibleandtech.blogspot.com/2008/01/backup-your-blog.html
By mgvh, at
August 8, 2008 6:28 AM
Thanks all of you for these suggestions, what I want is to be able to do incremental backups PodBible is over 4GB now, and getting bigger every day, so I do NOT want to have to download the whole thing every time I do a backup!
I want to restore to a different FTP site so that if our cheap host goes down we can shift the DNS and carry on.
So none of my FTP clients are suitable for either part of this task.
So these two abilities are crucial. I will look at SecureFX some more if the tool I am currently trialing Handy Backup does not do the job.
HTTrack does not seem to have a restore facility at all so would only be good for moving the site all in one go, which at 5GB (soon) and rising I do not want to have to do in an emergency ;)
Site Vault is a bit expensive, but well worth looking at also.
By Tim, at
August 8, 2008 6:34 AM
It is within the scope of SecureFX -- actually, it is just what I do as well.
Let me know if you need advice on configuration (if you decide to download the trial.)
By Iyov, at
August 8, 2008 4:57 PM
Thanks, again, I am currently trying Good Synch, which at present seems to be doing what I want without downloading to my laptop first. If that proves not satisfactory, I will look at SecureFX next... If it is difficult to work out I'll ask for help :) Thanks!
By Tim, at
August 8, 2008 5:09 PM
Does your web host offer some options? My web hosting control panel allows me to back up my email, databases and files to zip files on the server (which stay there for 3 days). I can also download them, of upload them for restoring.
By Stephen G, at
August 13, 2008 5:15 PM
Thanks, Stephen, that would be a good idea for a one off backup of a smaller site. What I need is daily incremental backups and the site is over 4GB and climbing, so I don't really trust one massive ZIP file download either.
By Tim, at
August 14, 2008 10:33 AM
Basically the idea is to enable/encourage people to:
- listen to the Bible
- share things that they have thought, prayed or done as a result of listening
- encourage each other to respond to the biblical chapters they hear
If you are a FaceBook guru I'd be very glad of suggestions on how to make this "work" better. If you are a keen Bible listener, then do add some stories to the page!
Labels: audio, bible, internet
¶ 4:22 PM
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The video dramatises new ways we could interact with the future Web these ideas are "based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios."
It also illustrates how strong the "Apple is cool" meme is right now ;) But do I really want one of those annoying "wheel" things, or is this one time when reinventing the wheel is a bad idea? Reactions on the LifeHacker blog (HT) to the 3d cluster arrangement were very mixed, so I suspect that this is something us kinesthetic/visual learners may love, but some other people will hate. I wonder if in ten years time we'll be able to get more choice in how the interface works?
I will agree with one LH commenter, it would drive me NUTS if the computer kept rearranging the icons without asking me, as the speaker seemed to suggest - that would me MS desktop at its worst behaved ;)
Labels: internet
¶ 4:15 PM
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On Monday, 4th, at just after 9am NZ time I published my little post about flat-earthers Interesting questions Peter Kirk points out that at 11:03 GMT the BBC posted this: Do they really think the earth is flat?With a nice (faked?) picture.Though not the one I am displaying thanks to Thomas Hawk - the BBC one had "copyright" wirtten all over it (metaphorically speaking)!
Labels: internet
¶ 11:10 AM
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Now, you may have noticed in my post "Spot the Differences" below that if I add Russia, India and China to my list the score still stays at 14% of the world, but if I add Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Dellaware, Massachusetts and Rhode Island I jump to a whopping 16%. This means that 9 smallish states of the USA count for much more than three of the largest, and most diverse countries. Take note people, for "where I've been" size does not matter, people do not count, nor is it a function of cultural diversity (not that I doubt the cultural diversity of Rhode Island, nor its rich cultural difference from Massachusetts, not having visited either I can hardly comment - though I do suspect that the cultural and geographical diversity of India and China might be considered greater by some people).
The Internet though now a worldwide phenomenon is also an American space. You might argue that this Amerigocentrism is the natural since the USA invented the Internet, you are probably right, but I'd argue back that it is now time we freed the 'net from this colonial past. Renaming the cool tool "Where I've been in America" could be a small start ;)
Labels: internet
¶ 10:37 AM
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Aw quit your belly-aching.
And for the record, I created the Internet.
Sign me up for the Pod Bible group. You guys are cool.
By David Ker, at
August 1, 2008 5:34 PM
The Morph Concept by Nokia shows what role nanotechnology can play in facilitating the use of communication devices in everyday life. These gadgets are flexible, they can discern harmful substances in the environment, and they can even be worn as fashion accessories, as this video makes plain.The post contained a link to a You Tube video, which is "no longer available" the post on Britannica has also been pulled over the weekend.
I wonder what is going on? Any suggestions, or better still firm information would be appreciated!
Labels: internet
¶ 8:21 AM
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Mind you they need to. At present the front page of Googlepedia features clogged toilets and how to backpack. Ah, the joys of a fully "authoritative" and commercial encyclopedia, so much better than Wikipedia - NOT! Yesterday to illustrate the genre of the Torah I needed a photo of conglomerate, I found this on Wikipedia. I wonder if the googleplex will ever match that?
For now - until the authorities get busier - don't bother looking for biblical material on Google, "Isaiah", and the like are blank, though there is an article on "David". Jim won't like it though ;) But for the rest of us it even has a photo!Labels: biblical.studies.online, internet, teaching
¶ 10:45 AM
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New Study Released By The Center For The Digital Future and AARP Shows Internet Users 50+ Are Rapidly Closing the Digital Divide with Booming Online ActivityThink about it people, round these parts "the Internet" became popular from the early nineties. The early nineties is now ten to fifteen years ago. People who are now just 50+ were then just 35-40+ is anyone really surprised that they actually use the Internet? I'm now 60+ and I've been publishing content and using "social networking" sites and email groups (a surviving pre-Web 2.0 social networking technology) since the early to mid nineties... Back then I did not feel particularly old to be involved, the surprise would be if few people in the 50-70 age bracket were making significant Internet use.
News Release
June 19, 2008
Mary's response was politer than mine, but she seems equally unimpressed by this totally unsurprising research.
This was a "dog bites man" headline. About as much of a surprise as being told that Winston Peters was economical with the truth!
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I think that it would be interesting to look at *how* these people were using the net. I think that it is unsurprising that people in their 50s and early 60s are using the net, but I suspect that they're using it quite differently to the way that younger people use it, and then differently to the way that people who are older than that use it. I think there are quite a few people in their later 60s and older who have internet access, but they have very different usage patterns. I know quite a few who use email and are reasonably proficient at using Google, but very few blog, or have Facebook (unless they use it to play Scrabble on line with their grandchildren).
Can I also add, Tim, that you are probably not typical of people your age. I have a number of colleagues who are in their early 60s, are university academics who are highly respected in their fields and quite proficient at email and Google, but panic if you suggest that they might use PowerPoint or offer on-line units unless they have a more computer adept colleague helping them. The latter is a little difficult at my university where more than 75% of our students study by distance. :-)
By Judy Redman, at
July 21, 2008 10:57 PM
Judy, I agree with much of what you have written.
I expect that patterns of average web use at different ages will differ - but then patterns of phone use differ at different ages and no one headlines people 50+ are actually using PHONES as if it was news ;)
I have colleagues who are decades younger than me who are technophobes but when our principal Brian Smith retired about ten years ago he began to learn to use a computer (!) and swiftly became one of the most stillful online teachers I have seen. The difference is not so much age as other factors of personality and experience.
So, while it is true that "old dogs" learn new tricks more slowly (and old starts quite young for these purposes) and so those who were "old" in the 90s will probably have lower and less adventurous Internet usage than those who were young then that was a decade ago. Are we saying that people in their 40s in 1990 were then "old"! I think there are three generations here:
- born digital (an exageration as I'd include my daughter Sarah who first touched a computer at age 4) who are now about 0-25
- learned as adults who are now between 25 and 75 (plus a few over 75 who were early adopters late in life ;)
- unlikely digiterati those over 75 or who are technophobic.
These age ranges are (of course) only a caricature, those whose jobs require use afre more likely to use, technophiles are more likely and so are the well-off. So a poor, technophobic person who works in a situation that does not require Internet use will be much less likely to use significantly whatever their age.
By Tim, at
July 22, 2008 7:01 AM
A task for you
So, I thought I'd make a start and ask you all to join in. I'll post my fragmentary list, with some reasons, either in comments here or on your blog (in which case please place a comment with a link to the post here, so that I can gather the posts into a full listing in a future post. Nominate places giving a short description of your reasons.
First some ground rules:
- though we must end up with a list of ten we can discuss more places before we narrow the list
- the list is fosused on enriching understanding of the Bible
- places should be either of great historical or geographical significance
- we will need a balance of places of significance for the Jewish/ChristianHebrew Bible, and also the Christian New Testament, as well as those that illustrate the geography of the land
- the surrounding geography will form part of the virtual visit, so below I suggest Megiddo in part because of its location.
My first suggestion- Megiddo: (a) geographically significant to explain the Plain of Jezreel (b) significance of trade routes (c) site of battles including (?) the one talked about in Revelation in the NT (d) Iron Age administrative centre (e) importance of water supply (f) gate complex and (g) Bronze Age cultic site.
Labels: 1sam, 2sam, bible, internet, teaching
¶ 8:56 AM
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Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”Reading online is different from reading print, think Jakob Nielsen's studies back in the 90s which showed that online readers scan. Then bring it up to date and apply it to "academic" readers as well as the metaphorical "ordinary user":
As part of the five-year research program, the scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it.Factor in the fact that today we live online much more than we did then, and the result is obvious: "the Internet" is changing the way we think. Reducing our capacity to process lengthy complex writing. In short, making us stupid!
But, is different worse? The authors of the study mentioned above wrote:
It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.Carr's argument presupposes that "reading in the traditional sense" is both traditional and good. Yet for the purposes of the "readers" assessed by the study, academics researching prior literature on a topic, reading has perhaps never been the long drawn out sequential process Carr inagines. I have been trying to teach students "How to avoid reading books" for decades. Why? Because scanning not reading works, for researching prior literature scanning beats reading! As MarkG commented "
Reading differently is not necessarily reading worse.
Carr also argues that the structures and processes of the Internet shape and control how we think, claiming:
The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.In other words: reading differently is worse because we lose the capacity for sustained attention. This is like Socrates argument in Plato's Phaedrus that the new technology of alphabetic writing (to which ironically we owe our "memory" of Socrates) "will produce forgetfulness in those who have learned it. They will not need to exercise their memories, being able to rely on what is written."
So Carr is in fine company. Like Socrates he is correct, memory has been eroded by writing and the capacity for sequential sustained reading is being eroded by the Internet. Also, like Socrates, he is wrong, the human capacity for living is not eroded so easily and the new mental states are not (most of us believe - since few today voluntarily give up writing and advocate burning libraries to the ground) worse ;)
Google need not make you stoopid, but it is making us think differently, and that needs serious practice and study.
Labels: culture, internet, writing
¶ 8:17 AM
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On the site Deena provides (in her introduction to "links") a classification of different sorts of link:
This is much fuller and richer than the simple binary choice we plan to give to authors of the HBC_ volumes. We just offer the choice of "explanation" or "justification" and links to HBD_ articles or Bible references. But then our goals are much more focused... Her "descriptive" sounds like our "explanation" but I don't find in her list anything that corresponds to our "justification" yet intuitively I suspect that we are not the only ones wanting to link to material that gives in more details the reasons that justify a particular ideas expressed.
- Denotative: The link goes to a node that provides either the site or text itself (such as a link to Google) or a definition or clarification of the linked word or phrase. This is a common type of link in encyclopedias, newspapers, etc.
- Connotative: The link between the origin text and destination text implies something that is not explicitly stated--the originating node gives a new context to the destination node that can suggest some other meanings are lurking under the surface.
- Similar or repetitive: The link goes to a similar node or a continuation of the same theme as the originating text.
- Opposition or contradiction: The link goes to a node that contradicts or opposes the originating text.
- Descriptive: The link goes to a further description or explanation of the linked word or originating text.
- Advertisements: The link goes to a site that sells that particular item. While this is a common type of link in commercial websites (as many sites receive their funding from these links by counting hits and click throughs), this has been used in electronic literature. The link from Deena Larsen's Disappearing Rain: "How many credit cards are in it?" goes to a credit card site. (These outside links are thus commented on within the story and subvert these commercial endeavors into playing a role in tracking down Anna, a missing character from the novel).
- Political: The piece hopes to provoke a reaction in the reader and provides a link to follow up on that reaction. For example, Jennifer Ley's War Games shows the horrors of land mines and connects to Adopt a Minefield.
What do you think:
- Is her list complete, are there other types she does not discuss?
- Does she cover our "justification" type of link?
- Would it help our navigation of the web (and other hypertexts) if there was a more standard and understood "rhetoric" of linking?
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It's probably not a complete list--and I still need to post examples of the other types.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by a justification link--is this where one would put a logical proof? We could have legitimate justifications:
"Not all swans are white" link to evidence such as a picture of a black swan.
Or false justifications:
"Elephants are giraffes" link to:
If elephants are mammals
and giraffes are mammals
then elephants are giraffes...
hmmm... I'll have to do some re-reading and see if I can find some examples of this in elit.
By Deena Larsen, at
July 3, 2008 3:02 PM
Hi, Deena, that was quick!
Maybe the difference in approach is
(a) Because we have different genres in mind. I think your focus in fiction, while mine is narrowly on writing and presenting commentary. Where the reasons for a particular decision or approach may be of interest to some readers but not others, while different readers may need something explained. Hence my choice to distinguish these two classes of link and display then differently.
(b) Your list (I think) is intended to get people started and open up their thoughts - as it did mine. While mine is intended to produce a minimal list that will be useful in a particular project.
However, my questions at the end are more broadly focused, would it be helpful if our hypertext presentation languages distinguished some set of different "sorts" of link? Which sorts are useful to mark for users? Could we ever obtain a useful list that could become shared and conventional. As in print links of the sort "index" and "table of contents" have become conventional...
By Tim, at
July 3, 2008 4:21 PM
PS the "jsutification" link type much as I have envisaged it could occur in fiction, if the author wanted to do something like the "director's commentary" many DVDs provide, i.e. provide readers with comments on why they chose for a character to act in such and such a way... etc. But I admit they might be rare in hypertext fiction ;-)
By Tim, at
July 3, 2008 4:26 PM
PPS Thanks for a really interesting site, I must remember to use it if I ever again teach a course that includes theory of hypertext. Sadly the last time I was due to it was cancelled as too few students enrolled :(
By Tim, at
July 3, 2008 4:28 PM
Labels: children, internet, video
¶ 8:26 PM
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As I understand it, the post Britannica’s New Site: More Participation, Collaboration from Experts and Readers basically announces that the Wikipedia model has so much going for it that Britannica has to adopt elements from its greatest rival's method of working. By that I mean that the announcement clearly hopes that something of the incredible energy and diversity of the Wikipedia community involvement will be able to be harnessed into a more controlled and even attributed and peer reviewed environment. It is a grand dream. It looks well thought out.
Among many ideas, this one stood out for me:
Britannica will help them with research and publishing tools and by allowing them to easily use text and non-text material from Encyclopaedia Britannica in their work. We will publish the final products on our site for the benefit of all readers, with all due attribution and credit to the people who created them. The authors will have the option of collaborating with others on their work, but each author will retainIs this Britannica "getting" the commercial potential of Web 2.0, and like Google and YouTube planning to profit from it, or is it more?
control of his or her own work.
You can preview the new site, which is still in beta testing, at http://www.britannica.com/bps/home. A portion of the people who visit Britannica Online today are being routed to this site and are using it now; soon it will replace our current site at www.britannica.com entirely, and the new features we have described above will be introduced in the weeks and months ahead.I can't wait to see how this attempt to marry the best of the new with the best of the old works out, in the years and decades, rather than weeks and months ahead! One thing is for sure, at last the "old" is gone, buried and dead... I still wonder what the new will look like, and wonder at what it has already given us.
In the post that preceded the announcement and anticipated it a contributor, Jorge Cauz, three important principles:
- "ownership" - by which he means attribution and responsibility - about which none need fear or quibble
- "the voices and powers of experts" which is a much less attractive phrase than the Britannica's official "community of scholars" I hope the official version wins out, I would hate to be at the mercy of the power of experts, since the "experts" of the past become in the present fools
- "objectivity" which he claims is merely "difficult to attain", my view is that it is an impossible though perhaps desirable dream!
We believe that to provide lively and intelligent coverage of complex subjects requires experts and knowledgeable editors who can make astute judgments that cut through the on a topic.This reads to me dangerously like the tyranny of "experts" that every successful totalitarian regime in the 20th century ensured.Give me the "cacophony of competing and often
confusing viewpoints" over the bland, expert unitary point of view - but then I believe truth is more important than "standing" ;-)
Labels: digital, internet, open.access.scholarship, scholarship, web2.0
¶ 3:17 PM
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What if... we really used Moodle to the full
Some years ago at Carey we began to "move our distance teaching to the next level". Part of the plan was to install, and make good use of, an open source (means free) online "Course Management System" called Moodle.
Moodle allows:
- a central store of documentation for a course, which can be updated as soon as something changes
- students to be reminded of assignments that are due soon and other important dates
- one central place to email a whole class
- a place to store and deliver marked assignments
- a place to provide course related material like pictures, videos, links, PDF files of readings that did not get into the course anthology...
- teachers to set simple "quizzes" (with questions in various formats like multiple choice, short answer etc.) that can either count towards the course marks or simply provide feedback to students or check that they have done required reading
- cheap - no software costs, and even a professionally hosted option is not expensive
- easy - it takes very little time and instruction for even our less techie colleagues to work the basics, and usually not too long for someone to show you how achieve the less obvious goals
- scalable - anything from one course with one teacher to the whole British Open University (which with over 150,000 students is a but bigger than the average theological seminary ;-)
- fairly easy to manage, and there are plenty of people around with experience who can help.
Some courses at Carey really quickly began to make real use of the system. Brian Smith (our retired principal who had not used a computer before retirement) clocked up the most student contributions to a discussion simply by asking really thought -provoking leading questions. I used the tests to reward students with up to 10% simply by doing the "required reading" and as a result turned what I think before was 80% of the class in real life do about 20% of the reading, to 80% of the class do at least 80% of the reading.
But there are gaps. Some teachers hardly use Moodle - though not difficult it is one more thing to learn in a life that is too busy. Few of us actually get organised to post pictures and links relevant to our courses... So, implementation and take up of the possibilities are a bit hit and miss...
What if...
- We had a "Moodle consultant" (alias a technically minded senior student) who could spend an hour or two each week helping us to use Moodle more or better - guess how much more most teachers would achieve!
- We had a policy that all teachers and students in every class promised to take a serious look at the discussion forums for that class at least twice each week (maybe one or two hours of work to timetable in each week, but think of the greater communication with distance students and how much more time effective than individual emails replying one-on-one to questions)
- One of the Moodle consultant's jobs was to check what pictures and other resources we used in teaching the class onsite, and helped us make them available to distance students.
- A scattering of our courses set as an assignment to present readings online and then interact with other students presentations - I have seen such an assignment put a student in South-East Asia in contact with one in the South Island of NZ and "watched" the experience open the student's eyes to a wider world producing real formative change.
Labels: distance, internet, teaching, technology
¶ 1:59 PM
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Tim
This article is coming along well and I hope others add their penny's worth.
When I taught some online courses at Whitley College, one of the assignment tasks was to contribute to online discussion on the lecture--about 250 words each week with encouragement to interact with each other.
We did have classes each week but also distance students were part of the course.
Some people really got into the online discussion with enthusiasm. Others hung back. It was important to give sufficient marks for this to be deemed to be worthwhile and important.
One guy said that as an introvert he liked the opportunity to reflect on his contribution before posting it to the class discussion, whereas in the real class he often hung back.
As a lecturer, the first time I ran this I discovered there were more students and more work in posting lectures and resources online. I did not give the time to stirring the online discussion and interacting and I think online discussion requires this support from the teacher.
The next time around and subsequent times I did not employ a 'Moodle Consultant' or the like but simply a tutor, part of whose job was to stir the online discussion and to chase up the online tasks. I found this to be a great help and he did act as a consultant, especially for students who were emailing assignments for the very first time.
By Geoff Pound, at
June 4, 2008 6:10 AM
Geoff, yes, the time delay (and probably the quasi-anonymity) of online asynchronous "discussion forums" is great for us introverts, but teachers still have to watch for the non-participants and encourage them.
Your "tutor" sounds like a more upmarket version of my (grandly named ;-) Moodle Consultant. Perhaps different teachers would benefit more from each:
the low tech great teacher (like Brian Smith) could use a Moodle Consultant - assisting with some of the technical stuff, like reformating pictures to suitable size and uploading them;
the more techie could use a tutor to assist with the actual teaching (e.g. I am not good at "stirring the pot" as a peace maker I tend to try to calm it too much ;-) a "stirrer" like you describe would be great.)
By Tim, at
June 4, 2008 6:23 AM
The chapters are podcast using PHP to read the directories and create both the RSS feeds and the corresponding web pages. So... what I need is someone who can help me create a blog using the same (sort of?) mechanism.
If you know someone who might (a) be interested in helping and (b) might have the necessary skills please let me know!
Labels: audio, bible, digital, internet
¶ 5:58 PM
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This collection of sources supplements a bibliography published by Baker under the auspices of the Institute for Biblical Research: D. Brent Sandy and Daniel M. O’Hare, Prophecy and Apocalyptic: An Annotated Bibliography (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007).
In the process of compiling sources, hundreds were entered into our data base (many of which were annotated), but in the end they could not be included in the final selection for the printed edition of the bibliography. Hence, those sources are here made available.
Which is great, a sort of bonus for those who have the print book. Well done! However, they also write:
One advantage of thisWhich is not so great... because what it means is that I can easily search the supplementary material, but the material in the print book must be inconveniently searched by hand. In other words the bibliography would have been better published online or at least electronically in the first place! BUT some criterion other than the advantage to the user caused it to be published in print, and now in order that the print book may sell the online more convenient and usable version cannot contain the full dataset.
digital version of the bibliography is that you may search for specific
words pertinent to your research.
The scholarly prejudice against e-publication strikes again!
Labels: digital, internet, open.access.scholarship, open.biblical.studies
¶ 5:54 PM
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Thus:
print journalism is going through a wrenching transformation, and its future is in doubt. Over the past two decades, newspaper readership in the United States has plummeted. After peaking in 1984, at 63 million copies, the daily circulation of American papers fell steadily at a rate of about 1 percent a year until 2004 when it hit 55 million. Since then, the pace of the decline has accelerated. Circulation fell by more than 2 percent in 2005 and by about 3 percent in 2006.A print newspaper is a "bundle" of services but:
When a newspaper moves online, the bundle falls apart. Readers don’t flip through a mix of stories, advertisements, and other bits of content. They go directly to a particular story that interests them, often ignoring everything else.This, it is sometimes argued, is promoting an "unbundling" of traditional newspaper services, with some becoming free on the Internet, and other more specialised services being paid for, yet users do not want to pay online, and:
few newspapers, other than specialized ones like the Wall Street Journal, are able to charge anything for their content online, the success of a story as a product is judged by the advertising revenues it generates. Advertisers no longer have to pay to appear in a bundle.Neither the first article, nor Clay Shirky's followup, which argues that What Newspapers and Journalism Need Now: Experimentation, Not Nostalgia, really offers a clear prediction of the future of investigative journalism, though Clay seems to see blogging filling this role [?] ;).
Sean asks some sensible questions:
If you take as a given that academic publishing must change to meet the new realities of the Internet economy (i do), which parts will become essentially free goods, and which parts will continue to require a high level of professional competence. Even more importantly, assuming some of these services can’t be easily replaced, what are the new economic models that will provide the required compensation for them?My answers really haven't changed much over recent years. I still see the "content" of tertiary education (textbooks and lectures typically in the current system) becoming free, or at least dirt cheap. See "Gatekeepers, Open Courseware and the future of the University". That others have joined MIT since 2004 just reinforces this view. Nichthus will ask: How will such content be financed? Basically I suspect long term through either advertising or cheap prices and high volume (a sort of iTunes University ;-)
So, what will teachers, like me, offer to justify our excessive salaries: guidance, tuition, the things we have traditionally provided, since time immemorial. See: Tim Bulkeley "Back
to the Future: virtual theologising as recapitulation" Colloquium,
2005, 37,2, 115-130.
Labels: digital, education, internet
¶ 10:22 AM
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Sebastian Mary begins a post "on writing less" with the famous Pascal quote:
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parceque je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." Pascal, Lettres provinciales, 16, Dec.14,1656.It is a cliche among preachers too that 'less is more', to speak shorter takes more preparation but is usually more effective. There is a virtue in brevity.
It is, however, a virtue that belles lettres and scholarship have largely ignored or deliberately flouted. Among scholars (particularly in the German and [hence?] American traditions) it has become the norm to act as if to write incomprehensibly is a sign of profundity. It has also often been assumed that length is equivalent to quality - as if one bought ideas by weight, like potatoes!
In the scan and click mental world which most of us inhabit online prolixity is hardly productive. Numerous studies have shown that in an online hypertext environment writing less - if one can do it while still saying the same things - is more effective. SM attributes this, in part at least, to readers unwillingness to scroll "below the fold". Yet that web folklore idea (which SM cites unthinkingly) has been shown to be untrue. If they are interested readers will scroll.
The problem is that if the writing is verbose, readers are not interested. They click elsewhere. To retain readers' interest in this environment one must write differently and firstly one must write more briefly and simply. This is not the same as saying one must "write down" to the audience. The audience of Sansblogue (at least judging by the audience I know through comments and links) is highly educated and articulate. To write down would be to loose readers. What is required is to write, discussing complex and interesting ideas, simply and briefly. That's harder. One does not always - or even ever - hit the target, but such a goal is necessary in academic writing online.
The second "problem" with academic writing online is that coherent sustained argument is not easily conducted in this medium. (As I have argued in my "Form, Medium and Function: The Rhetorics and Poetics of Text and Hypertext in Humanities Publishing", International Journal of the Book 1, 2003, 317-327.) Ian Bogost, more recently and more clearly expresses much the same points in his "Reading Online Sucks: Reflections on scholarly writing on the web". In the paper I argued that coherent sustained argument (such as the monograph form) probably "works" better in print than in a hypertext environment.
I would like to qualify that somewhat, in the light of experience. In the Amos commentary I had some points that I wanted to argue that would more usually be presented in a monograph style publication. Sure enough most readers have failed to spot these arguments. They have mined the commentary for the information they needed, and moved on. But one academic reviewer spotted and commented on these arguments. The difference was (I think) not that he was an academic reviewer, but that he is preparing to write a commentary on Amos himself. For him my theories about the book's construction and about the place of the Day of the Lord in its composition were not extra, unneeded details, but rather the reason he was reading this work!
Here the differently that one must write is not to dispose of large ideas or sweeping arguments, but rather that one must write so that readers who are not interested in these particular big ideas need not be troubled by them, while readers for whom the ideas are significant can follow the thread that allows you to sustain the argument. Again the hypertext environment requires writing differently. Sadly most writing online (except that which sells) is shovelware. Even when written for the web, the author has not troubled to adapt to the new medium.
Writing differently, according to rules that are as yet only half-baked is difficult and requires experimentation. It is great to see that at last some of the "traditional" print publishers have begun sponsoring such play. The Penguin Books We Tell Stories site is a prime example.
See also: my Writing for screen: Time to rethink? from August 2007.
PS: Judy has now posted the response she mentions below "Writing for the web vs writing for print".
Labels: commentary, hypertext, internet, scholarship
¶ 5:58 PM
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Tim,
You say two thinking bloggers have written bout this, but I can only find a link to one. Am I missing something or is it not there?
Judy
By Judy Redman, at
April 13, 2008 6:47 PM
Sebastian Mary was one, near the top, then Ian Bogost nearer the bottom (after the link to my article) was the second relatively recent one.
By Tim, at
April 13, 2008 9:37 PM
his "Reading Online Sucks: Reflections on scholarly writing on the web".
By Tim, at
April 13, 2008 9:38 PM
This post has been removed by the author.
By Judy Redman, at
April 14, 2008 12:20 PM
Obviously I was skimming too fast!! I started writing a response here, but it got totally out of hand, so I've posted it on my own blog instead.
- what are new graphical and information design paradigms for orienting
readers and enabling them to navigate within a multi-layered,
multi-modal work? - how do you distinguish between the reading space and the work space? how porous is the boundary between them?
- what do readers expect of authors in the context of a "networked" book?
- what new authorial skill sets need to be cultivated?
- what range of mechanisms for reader participation and author/reader
interaction should we explore? (i.e. blog-style commenting, social
filtering, rating mechanisms, annotation tools, social
bookmarking/curating, personalized collection-building, tagging, etc.) - how do readers become "trusted" within an open community? what are
the social protocols required for a successful community-based project:
terms of participation, quality control/vetting procedures, delegation
of roles etc. - what does "community" mean in the context of a specific scholarly work?
- how will scholars and students cite the contents of dynamic, evolving
works that are not "stable" like printed pages? how does the project
get archived? how do you deal with versioning? - if asynchronous online conversation becomes a powerful new mode of
developing scholarship, how do we visualize these conversations and
make them navigable, readable, and enjoyable?
Their projects include a repurposing of music commentary CDs:
- Video Demo for the Rite of Spring (circa 1990)
- Introduction to the CD Companion to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (circa 1989)
- Video Demo for Who Built America? (circa 1993)
Labels: commentary, internet, scholarship
¶ 12:13 PM
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