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What happens when connected as ‘like-minds’ six or seven such individuals ‘collaborate’ to perform some atrocity?
Fig.1. Dr. No.
Society online is a society on speed and at speed – it might reflect society but in the Alice in Wonderland World Wide Web everything is faster, connectable and so warped in a way that transcends human scales of time, distance and decency. One sick, warped, isolated individual seeking out the pollution of the web to feed their fantasy and make it real, like Anders Behring Breivik in Norway in 2011 was, if you profile the population, 1 in 10 million.
What happens when connected as ‘like-minds’ six or seven such individuals ‘collaborate’ to perform some atrocity?
What indeed does the web afford ‘networked’ terrorist idealists such as AL Qaeda? Attending a seminar on cyber crime at the Oxford Internet Institute last year it was revealing and shocking to learn of the ‘game of catch-up’ played between the criminals hacking bank accounts and the banks trying to keep them secure. The head of internet security from Barclays painted a picture that would make the scriptwriters of a James Bond movie go googled-eyed in amazement. Then, far from society creating the Web, the web world infects us ‘on the other side’ with paranoia and so CHANGES behaviour, gets AHEAD of society.
It has happened to me more than once – in the early days of blogging back in 2002 I was ‘flamed’ viciously (malicious hate in comments and a breach into my blog that had this person editing my content and filling it with bile). I had this stopped and attempts were made to trace the character but for a period I was convinced that any vehicle pulling up along our street outside our house was ‘him’ … and then this summer I put webcams around the house when we went away from a few weeks and only after the first week did I relax when I noticed that a brick hadn’t come through the window and we hadn’t been burgled or the house burned down.
(I write this while reflecting on the words of Professor Susan Halford in the Week 3 introductory video on cyber crime that forms part of the University of Southampton‘s Future Learn offering ‘Web Science‘).
‘The Web is part of society and is shaped by society. And until the web is a crime-free zone, the Web won’t be a crime-free zone’. (Halford, S 2013. Page 1 of the transcript. University of Southampton)
REFERENCE
Webber, C. and Yip, M. (2012), ‘Drifting on and off-line: Humanising the cyber criminal’, in S. Winlow and R. Atkinson (Eds.), New Directions in Deviancy: Proceedings from the York Deviancy Conference, London: Routledge, pp. 191-205
I keep getting this crazy panic that I can’t know enough soon enough to ‘make a difference’
Fig. 1. Testing ahead of an MBA Webinar
I keep getting this crazy panic that I can’t know enough soon enough to ‘make a difference’ – the learning bug has set off a tempest in my brain
Just as well that neuroscience is next on my list of conquests … or should that be psychology?
Or courtesy of e-learning and blended learning an MA in both simultaneously part-time over two years.
The mind boggles, but this is what the Internet permits like never before – degrees like A’ levels, even like GCSEs, why ever give up a subject you loved – like History … and … Music and … and Fine Art … and Sports Science … then who employs you? A tutor of multiple subjects to the super-rich? Oh, and an MBA.
If only I could be 28 forever.
The University of Oxford offers a combined MA from the Said Business School and Oxford Internet Institute – that’s two MAs taken simultaneously over two years. They’ve already had postgraduates through.
I’m thinking this way having recently wrapped my second degree, the MA in Open and Distance Education with The OU. Though on another ‘traditional’ e-learning module with The OU currently – Practice-based research in e-learning (H809), it is the second MOOC of the year that has my head spinning. We were introduced to various depositories of Open Educational Resources. The MIT offering was the clincher as I came across first undergraduate and then graduate content on Neuroscience.
This, currently, makes more sense to me than psychology.
To see and understand what happens when thoughts are formed or our senses perceive the world. Its like going behind the desk of a Magician to see how they do it (I did that at a friend’s birthday party age 6 or 7 … I can feel the carpet beneath my toes, see the little table and the drop down slat with the bag attached to it … ) I’ve created ‘tricks’ in camera and in post production when making videos. It isn’t hard to trick the brain. We want to see what isn’t there. This is possible because of how our brains connect – the chaos couldn’t be designed. Gun polish takes me back to another boyhood moment. Another the very first time we had marshmallows roasted in the fireplace.
Related articles
- H809 7.4 Mapping Pedagogy and Tools for Effective Learning Design (mymindbursts.com)
- ‘If you’re not lost and confused in a MOOC you are probably doing something wrong’ (mymindbursts.com)
- Why am I doing this? (MOOC Activity 1) (jmkn817.wordpress.com)
- Education as a service: Moocs, ODL and production of knowledge. (frankounl.wordpress.com)
Teenagers and technology
This from a paper from Rebecca Eynon a Professor of Education and the Oxford Internet Institute (Eynon, 2009:277)
Her book ‘Teenagers and Technology’ is a valuable read too.
So what do you think? Do we expect too much, too quickly from technology? Look at the horseless carriage, it still can’t drive you home – well, not in England anyway. Over a hundred years ago you could stumble into you tub trap after a few too many pints of ale and your dobbin would take you home. I suppose the equivalent today would be to have a private secretary to do all this typing stuff for you?
Pizzas burning, must dash.
REFERENCE
Eynon, R (2009) Mapping the digital divide in Britain: implications for learning and education. Rebecca Eynon
Lost in the clouds in an OLDS MOOC 2013
Fig. 1. Detail from Clouds (1812) Constable.
I’ve shared my frustrations with Cloudworks from the start of the OLDS MOOC 2013 … and had some experience a year ago so entered the cloud with a sense of dread.
I stuck at it and found some odd ways in.
What mattered was the contact with people I got to know – as they gave up it became inevitable that I would do so too, not least because I had more pressing matters. H809 a postgraduate module, partially produced by the same team as it comes from the Open University stable, but a very different beast.
More like getting on a bus with four to five stops a week.
A weekend for an assignment every five weeks and a longer sojourn to produce a short dissertation at the end. Four tutors groups each with less than sixteen people in each.
I liken my Cloudworks experience to Fresher’s Fair … every day of the week.
Every time I came in I wondered around getting interested in what other people were doing, sometimes landing their by mistake. So a Fresher’s Fair with some 12 entry doors on several floors with the people behind each stall mostly changing too. Your brain gets tired of the overload, the lack of landscape and in this sense ‘Cloudscape’ is the right term, for the wrong reasons.
I took some pictures of a Constable painting ‘Study of Clouds’ in the Ashmolean Museum when I was in Oxford on Friday.
What was I doing in Oxford. Hankering after ‘the real thing’ – a chance to meet and talk with some people in the flesh, this at an talk on Virtual Worlds in Japanese at the Centre of Social and Cultural Anthropology hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute.
After a while, all this online stuff has you eager to meet likeminds in person.
Which I guess why conferences will flourish, not die out, and then from pure e-learning vs. traditional learning the blended form might become the long term, preferred pattern. The best of all worlds, with landscapes, water courses, digital oceans and shifting clouds.
Related articles
- Olds Mooc Narratives (mymindbursts.com)
- Van Dyck painting ‘found online’ (bbc.co.uk)
- Pre-Raphaelite Conference in Oxford, September 2013 (preraphaelitesociety.wordpress.com)
- Silver haul donated to Ashmolean (bbc.co.uk)
Making swim coaching a tad easier with SwimTag
Fig. 1. A plethora of session plans – what a year of elite swimming training looks like
Swimtag today, skitag tomorrow
Serendipity had me click on Swimtag and I’m hooked – as a swimmer and coach, but for the purposes of this note as a prospective PhD student looking for a research project for the next three years.
Fig. 2 . Swimtag
My interest is in e-learning, sport and virtual assistants / augmented learning.
Armed with a set of swimtags I’d like to research their use with a range of swimmers: masters, elite athletes, learn to swim and swimmers with disabilities. We have all of these in our 1000+ member swimming club Mid Sussex Marlins SC. Early days – I have only just completed a Masters in Open & Distance Education and am tentatively speaking to potential supervisors at the Open University, Oxford Internet Institute and Web Sciences at Southampton University with a view to submitting a doctoral research project in the next couple of months.
My vision is how swimtag becomes as commonplace as swim goggles, then translates into other sports and other fields, including business, but also as a potential prosthesis for people suffering from dementia or memory loss so potentially tied into other data capture devices.
I am seriously looking at funded PhD research for the next 3/4 years.
I am interested in e-learning, so Learning & Development particularly for v. large organisations. There is a groundswell of interest in devices/software that enhance or support memory and learning. There is a fertile crossover between health – providing support say to those who would benefit from cognitive support, what we call ‘lifelogging’ – so gathering pertinent data about the world around you, then using this in an artificially edited form (using Artificial Intelligence algorithms) to supplement memory loss or to enhance learning potential as a virtual companion. Those recovering from a stroke or with dementia included.
It may sound like science fiction but people have been working on these ideas for a decade or more.
I appreciate that simply tagging vulnerable people who may wander off and not know how to find their way home is one way to support but I’m thinking about quality of life and facilitating memory and communication too.
Related articles
- Pause (mymindbursts.com)
- Deaf Olympic Swimming Hopeful Marcus Titus Makes History (healthyhearing.com)
- Try not to push (andreabadgley.com)
Working in the clouds
Fig. 1. Study of Clouds, John Constable. Inscribed 31 Sept.r 10-11 O’Clock.
Constable did little else but paint the weather from July through to October 1822, which is why curators can accurately say that the artist did this painting on the 1st October.
I’ve shared my frustrations with Cloudworks from the start of the OLDS MOOC 2013 … and had some experience a year ago on H807 Innovations in E-learning … so entered the cloud with a sense of dread.
I stuck at it and found some odd ways in.
What mattered was the contact with people I got to know – as they gave up it became inevitable that I would do so too, not least because I had more pressing matters. H809 a postgraduate module, partially produced by the same team as it comes from the Open University stable, but a very different beast.
More like getting on a bus with four to five stops a week.
A weekend for an assignment every five weeks and a longer sojourn to produce a short dissertation at the end. Four tutors groups each with less than sixteen people in each.
I liken my Cloudworks experience to Freshers’ Fair … every day of the week.
Every time I came in I wondered around getting interested in what other people were doing, sometimes landing their by mistake. So a Fresher’s Fair with some 12 entry doors on several floors with the people behind each stall mostly changing too. Your brain gets tired of the overload, the lack of landscape and in this sense ‘Cloudscape’ is the right term, for the wrong reasons. A ‘Freshers’ Fair’ is when students invite the entire new intake at a university to come and see what societies are on offer – imagine the equivalent of several village halls, with stalls manned by students, offering everything from ballroom dancing to neuroscience, Pooh Sticks Society to the Conservative Association, Bikers to Chess.
I took some pictures of this Constable painting ‘Study of Clouds’ in the Ashmolean Museum when I was in Oxford on Friday.
What was I doing in Oxford. Hankering after ‘the real thing’ – a chance to meet and talk with some people in the flesh, this at a talk on Virtual Worlds in Japanese at the Centre of Social and Cultural Anthropology hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute.
After a while, all this online stuff has you eager to meet like-minds in person.
William H. Dutton : JISC
I’m curious where their offices are. I’m sure it’s my old room in the rear quad.
Mind Bursts 