Kurzweil's Vision for the Furture of Education

Some days ago i wrote a post about the eminent scientist, entrepreneur, and futurologist Ray Kurzweil and his vision of Singularity. Now the book has arrived and i am fascinated, still quite curious and a bit amused about his radical optimism. Enjoy these words about what the next generation of virtual worlds after Second Life will have to offer:

"Because of current bandwidth limitations and the lack of effective three-dimensional displays, the virtual environment provided today through routine Web access does not yet fully compete with 'being there', but that will change. In the early part of the second decade of this century visual-auditory virtual-reality environments will be full immersion, very high resolution, and very convincing. Most colleges will follow MIT's lead, and students will increasingly attend classes virtually. Virtual environments will provide high-quality virtual laboritories where experiments can be conducted in chemistry, nuclear physics, or any other scientific field. Students will be able to interact with a virtual Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison, or even to become a virtual Thomas Jefferson. Classes will be available for all grade levels in many languages. The devises needed to enter these high-quality, high-resolution virtual classrooms will be ubiquitous and affordable even in third world countries. Students at any age, from toddlers to adults, will be able to access the best education in the world at any time and from any place" (Kurzweil, R., 2005, The singularity is near, p. 337)

Labor fuer Entrepreneurship Video Interview

Im Mai war ich fuer ein paar Tage in Berlin, eine tatsache die Prof. Faltin nutzte um mich ueber die entwicklung meiner doktorarbeit zu befragen:

Das alte video lass ich mal im selben post:

00:03: Begrüßung und Vorstellung von Max Senges

• Wissensentrepreneurship
• Konzept der virtuellen Universität Barcelona

• 04:13: Vorstellung des Buches: The Global Virtual University
• 06:20: Wie man Internet für den Bereich e-learning richtig nutzen kann
• 09:50: Diskussion über die Vorteile beim Lernen an einer virtuellen Universität unter Ausnutzung des Internets in Bezug auf

• Zusammenarbeit
• Betreuung
• Anzahl der Professoren
• Technik
• preiswerte Massenbildung (Beispiel von amerik. Universitäten MIT, Harvard)

• 17:37: Entwicklung der virtuellen Universität Barcelona
• 18:58: Second Life
• 24:25: Virtuelle Universität als "Second Life" für ein neues Lernkonzept unter den Aspekten

• Entrepreneurial Learner
• self-directed learning
• traditionelles Schulsystem

• 33:25: Virtuelles Lernen zur Überwindung traditioneller Lernstrukturen
• 35:50: Open-Source Software für virtuelle Welten/Programmierung virtueller Welten
• 39:33: Ende

RC helicopters

just a short one, but the gadgetmania has gotten me again. I remember about a year ago i was amazed by some 30 $ remote controled aircrafts - which then turned out to be so cheaply build that my nephew and i didn't even get it to start ;-(

So this time i plan to go the DIY way and order the serious version Walkera Dragonfly. If anybody feels like recommending other helis or do-it-yourself gadgets of that type please drop me a line. There is still time as i will not order, build and equip this flying incarnation of my childhood dreams with a mini camera etc. because as you know i will be traveling for the next few months.

Team up for a better world!

On saturday i was invited to a really interesting dinner organized by Toni Mascaro (from www.emascaro.com) and meant to get some interesting people to together and see what explosive mix comes out.

Two social entrepreneurship project particularly struck me as interesting:

Teaming.info is an idea that is communicated over a website on which one can also download documents meant to help YOU implement it in your environment. The idea is very simple but its aggregated power might move mountains. The idea is to get people within an organisation to each donate one Euro and then collectively decide on what project the donation is spent. (One little extra value is created by having your organisation/company donate the money which gives you a good negotiation position to ask them to add at least what they save in tax reduction for the donaten) - but what am i trying to explain what it is - the idea is very well communicated at www.teaming.info


The other one is called Citta and i had the luck of sitting next to Eduardo Borés, who is Cittas Spanish director, and who could had to endure my curiousity all night long. Citta is a very small NGO that has built and is maintaining a hospital in one of the poorest regions in India (as well as some other public service institutions in India and Mexico). Citta is particularly interesting because it has virtually no administrative overhead and because it is run by people who have a very down to earth attitude to making change happen rather than talk about it. Respect!

They have done it again

google just doesn't stop. Every couple of months they come up with a new service that simply expands the opportunities of what can be done online. In this case i am a bit slow to find out Google Street View has already been launched in May, but that doesn't make it less impresive when you use it for the first time.

In short, they have taken fish-eye video footage of a couple of US cities and you can now switch beterrn satelite picture, normal streetmap view and a video-based virtual walk in the streets.

Check out this video explaining what is happening and then try yourself

PS: I actually learned about street view reading about a weird cyber-subculture of people who find 'funny' details that were recorded when google took the footage like "a guy taking a pee" or "sunbathing girls in park"(www.streetviewfun.com)

Kleos - human qualities, transparency and trust

[The following is an idea that i am going pregant with for some years now - today i signed up for IBM's innovation & collabroation platform ThinkPlace and to test it out i posted an outline of the following idea:]

Summary
The idea is to introduce a reputation system inside an organisation.
You all know ebay's reputation system. Well i think it would be very interestig to develop a similar system where you rate your colleagues' way of collaboration.

I guess it would be usefull to provide several categories, like diplomacy, or swiftness.

What are the objectives?
I believe this continuous way of assessing community participants is less prone to 'election cycles'. (People are always nice before the elections/assessment.)

The objective is to develop a culture of trust and transparency. I believe it is a barrier for mobbing and unfriendlyness when there is a constant reputation system.

How is it implemented?
The idea con easily be implemented in an intranet/website scenario. All you need are some web-forms and a database. A wiki with one page to portray yourself and one page with a "reputation page writen for you".

(The difficult aspect is to make it credible by having it emerge/evolve naturally and with credible champion. If the boss just has his secretary write his profile it wont fly.)

What are the benefits?
Trust and a more human work place. The kleos system allows to consider and value empathy and humaneness rather than monetary quantifiable measures when looking at a colleague/employee.

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Here is a longer introduction to the idea:

Barcelona: 3.10.2006

Kleos: Your virtual reputation

In the following paragraphs I present an idea that has occurred to me more than a year ago but that, given the intimidating complexity of the practical implementation, has so far left me paralyzed as to present and develop it in written form.

Rather paradoxically, it is an idea that can be proposed in a rather simple statement: Over many centuries (valuable) physical objects have been exchanged for other physical objects or (physical) services. Money as a proxy has emerged as a powerful facilitator of trade. Today almost everything can be (monetarily) priced. However there are many aspects of our life-world (respect, credibility, etc.) that defy quantification. The proposition (of this first sketch) is to interpret and use the virtual space created by the internet as a qualitative representation of the individual’s honorability and qualities. For the holistic and open phenomenon of online identity created and maintained for this purpose I suggest the greek term kleos.

Kleos was a key personal attribute in Greek society (and thus a quite prominent theme in Homer’s Odyssey). It describes the fame or reputation a warrior has build up in battle[1]. It is what the people say and believe about somebody in contrast to Time (read temea) which is the personal code of honor one is practicing for oneself. As such someone’s kleos indicates what society thinks, values or condemns about a person; which might be expanded to be a proxy for that person’s personal traits like credibility, persistence, drive, etc., all important indicators when engaging in collaborative or other inter-personal relations.

The ‘external’ and inter-subjective representation of the kleos becomes especially relevant in the context of non-presential (informational) relationships as they are more and more common in the ephemeral project based work teams of the network society.

Allow me to elaborate on the practicalities of the kleos concept. Probably the closest implementation of what I mean by kleos are the ‘user ratings/profiles’ offered e.g. by ebay. The ability to estimate the trustworthiness of a contract partner by evaluating his/her transaction history and the experiences of others allows for a sufficient understanding of that persons code of conduct to assess the risk involved in dealing with the other. However the kleos concept is not limited to these foremost and directly economic aspects. For example the assessment of someone’s foreign language capacities, his/her social attitudes, or analytic or decision making skills can be a powerful indicator increasing with the amount and quality of recommendations.

Furthermore kleos fosters the development and transparency of communities (or social networks) as proposed in my thoughts about a re-framing of nepotism (see Revisting Nepotism). Because people indicate and describe their relation to each other in a transparent, descriptive and performative fashion, social (emotional/intimate) bonds are valued but reasonably constrained.

Last but not least let me raise some of the challenges regarding kleos. The most obvious point is fraud. However considering that even though it might be rather easy to obtain a rather voluminous account of positive recommendations, it is the critical voices that will be recognized and perceived most problematic. Surely one can always revolve and start with a clean slate, but it will cost him/her considerable effort to re-build a solid (manifold supported) kleos. Thus even though one might be able to build up a (fraudulent) positive kleos rather quickly, it will be de-valued as quickly. (There are many other possible free-riding scenarios, however I believe efficient prevention methods can be devised. E.g. the case of swindler gangs who conspire to testify false kleos can be prevented by setting the system up to give more weight assessments from established long-term users)

I can very well understand that the proposed system and the degree to which the individual’s life becomes public information might intimidate some of you[2]. But after all it is your behavior and being that shapes your (online) identity[3]. You are who you are and it seems to me more attractive to be able to see what my friends and colleagues think about me.

In conclusion, kleos will represent your reputation and the relationships you have allowing the world to see who you are. In my understanding this is the virtual equivalent to the physical presence and features you have. One might use makeup or wear a fancy suit but if you want it or not your facial expressions, posture etc. will always show your ‘personality’. As for ‘fashion styles’ there are personality styles (just look at myspace and you know what I mean). I believe that kleos on a personal level fosters consistency and a positive value set and on a interpersonal level it fosters transparency which fosters honest discourse and justice

I am looking forward to comments and hopefully constructive critique.

Side-note on the difference between personal websites an kleos

On the internet more and more people are constructing identities, and one could hence argue that they are sharing their personal qualities etc. In psychology this kind of personality presentation is called impression management and even though it has value because it shows you what a person wants you to see and think about him/her, but this “self-branding” and self-expression does not have the credibility than external descriptions which is supposed to be written from a neutral point of view[4].

Literature

I began to explore whether similar approaches have been developed and proposed. Please send me any references you might know. I found the following interesting papers:

Six degrees of reputation: The use and abuse of online review and recommendation systems by Shay David and Trevor Pinch
First Monday, volume 11, number 3 (March 2006),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_3/david/index.html

Manifesto for the Reputation Society by Hassan Masum and Yi–Cheng Zhang
First Monday, volume 9, number 7 (July 2004),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_7/masum/index.html

The following is a selection of texts that are related (most of them are from the articles above):

Albert–László Barabási, 2002. Linked: The new science of networks. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus.

Gary E. Bolton, Elena Katok, and Axel Ockenfels, 2003. "How effective are electronic reputation mechanisms? An experimental investigation," University of Cologne Working Paper Series in Economics, number 3 (September), at http://ideas.repec.org/p/kls/series/0003.html, accessed 2 July 2004.

Eric Bonabeau, Marco Dorigo, and Guy Theraulaz, 1999. Swarm intelligence: From natural to artificial systems. New York: Oxford University Press.

David Brin, 1999. The transparent society: Will technology force us to choose between privacy and freedom? Reading, Mass.: Perseus.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1991. Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperPerennial.

Chrysanthos Dellarocas and Paul Resnick, 2003. "Online reputation mechanisms: A roadmap for future research," Report from the MIT/NSF Interdisciplinary Symposium on Reputation Mechanisms, 26–27 April 2003; at http://ccs.mit.edu/dell/symposium.html, accessed on 1 March 2004.

Thomas Homer–Dixon, 2002. The ingenuity gap: Facing the economic, environmental, and other challenges of an increasingly complex and unpredictable world. New York: Vintage.

Robert Kaye, 2004. "Next–generation file sharing with social networks," accessed at http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2004/03/05/file_share.html, on 1 May 2004.

Gregory MacLeod, 1997. From Mondragon to America: Experiments in community economic development. Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada: University College of Cape Breton Press.

Paolo Massa and Bobby Bhattacharjee, 2004. "Using trust in recommender systems: An experimental analysis," iTrust2004 International Conference, at http://moloko.itc.it/paoloblog/papers/itrust2004/trust2004.html, accessed 2 July 2004.

Howard Rheingold, 2003. Smart mobs: The next social revolution. New York: Basic Books; book discussion site at http://www.smartmobs.com, accessed 1 March 2004.

W.E. Bijker, T.P. Hughes, and T. Pinch (editors), 1987. The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

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[1] Unfortunately true Kleos can only be earned after death, but we will neglect this point as it does not dovetail with the proposition made here.

[2] I can only argue that it’s benefits are great and you will adapt to it the same way you adapted to mobile phones.

[3] In Germany we have a long discussion about the ‘glass citizen’ (the increasing amount of information stored and registered about individuals) in my point of view it is much less a question that data about you is stored but who and what kind of data is stored for what purpose.

[4] Obviously also people contributing to your kleos have a subjective experience about you but at least the impressions are external and with raising quantity their inter-subjectivity raises.

Why don't they hold the G8 summits on islands?

I was following the G8 summit and the protests against it over the last days and I have to say that it really made me shiver to when these idiots went on their violent rampage. There are a thousand good reasons to protest against the summit, there are also hunderets of good reasons to hold such a summit, but no matter how badly you want things to change with violence - especially against cops who are only executing their duty - you are in fact the most counter-productive force possible.

[side note: there is actually speculation whether the rioters in Genua were masked provocateurs with the mission to discredit the globalisation critiques]

There is one aspect of the G8 that i do not understand: Why are the summits on such accessible locations? Wouldn't it be much cheaper, less prone to recieve bad media coverage and above all more secure to have these summits on a small island, like Helgoland, or aboard a ship, like the Roosevelt and Churchill at their famous secret WWII Atlantic Charter negotiations?

The bright side of the future

[Note: This post was also published in Spanish @ Creamos el Futuro]

Listening to futurologist, inventor and researcher Ray Kurzweil is highly stimulating in the sense that one recharges the battery labeled "the future might turn out really fantastic after all".

Kurzweil holds around 12 doctor titles and seems to have been participating in or leading virtually all important applied AI and human computer interface projects in the last 30 years. I learned about his work following up on the references of futurologist Tom Lombardo, who in his paper "The Pursuit of Wisdom and the Future of Education" puts forward the very support worthy argument for 'deep learning' and aiming to have students understand the 'big picture' rather than narrow vocational techniques.

But let's return to Kurzweil: In 2005 he has published the book The Singularity Is Near, in which he examines "the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations.
That merging is the essence of the Singularity, an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity. " [1]

I just ordered it so i can't review it yet, but what i learned about his take on reality and future creation in the video "The Singularity: A Hard or Soft Takeoff?" taken at the Stanford Singularity Conference, had this very positive forward looking effect I mentioned above.

What's more is that Kurzweil seems to have a distinct entrepreneurial mindset with a stress on knowledge entrepreneurship: One of his latest inventions - a portable camera with integrated text-to-voice making texts and webpages accessible to the blind - illustrate his entrepreneurial motivation: He has is focusing his work around the realization of knowledge/research opportunities, whereby he aims at developing technology meant to give impaired folks more equal opportunities, and he is professionally commercializing the output through a dedicated private enterprise Kurzweil Educational Systems

That's the spirit and the future we want to create!