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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
Factors that led to the creation of the Web
A neurobiologist would argue that all manifestations of human inventiveness stem from our ability to think in metaphors and therefore to be able to see beyond our current reality. The authors and thinkers who have imagined and tried to create a library of everything, an index of everything, a microfiche or computer of evrything are many: H G Wells and Douglas Adam, Vanevar Bush, Thomas Bodley …. Regarding the issue of the origins or history of the Web’s inception it is a complex and massive human story, indeed, like the roots of a growing tree as a mirror to what is going on above the ground, it has the potential to fill many volumes and to occupy many minds. Perspective is everything – education, culture, personal experience, personality and academic discipline – each would offer a different perspective. Pressing on with a biological metaphor perhaps like the origins of life on earth we can nonetheless start from a specific moment – the equivalent of those first cells that began to split and evolve?
Web Sciences Visualizing Web usage
Fig. 1 My Google search History – last 24 hours.
Responding to an activity in the Future Learn open, MOOC from Web Sciences and the University of Southampton.
I use an iPhone, iPad, iMac and mini Mac. Nuts I know, but rotate or mix between them all across 24 hours depending where I am.
Due to current family hiatus something is always on so that whether it is a text message, Facebook message or email I can respond. Births, marriages and death are real and current reasons to feel that the private tendrils of connectivity are vital and vibrant, indeed with immediate family ages 6 to 87 all but a couple probably have a smart device in their pocket or at their fingertips as I type. Locations: all four corners of the UK, Cape Town, California and New Zealand. Sharing this and other FutureLearn programmes with some of them (10 nephews and nieces, three siblings, in-laws, step-parents and cousins).
What kind of sites do you visit most?
In the last 24 hours I have found, researched, priced and purchased a car. Vital as for family reasons we are going to be spending a good deal of time split between more than one household – not far in global terms or even for many living say in North America, but 137 miles with the M25 in between is a distance that can either take 2 ½ hours to cover of 4 or 5 hours.
Two days ago I posted a ‘Tutor Marked Assignment’ to the Open University module I am doing, aptly called The networked practitioner.
With that deadline met I have space to do other things. This includes, and it is not recognised here, is a regular two to three hours reading and note taking for a Masters degree in History. This traditional distance course is all books, reading and a monthly face-to-face day of lectures, seminars and tutorial – not having any, or much, online existence it is in e-learning and in 21st century terms ‘dead in the digital ocean of Web 2.0 learning’.
I have blogged since 1999 and in WordPress since 2007. The blog is many things: an e-portfolio, a niche social network, a platform for my current and sometimes considered thinking on a range of topics which currently include, in a blog each: e-learning, and the First World War – with previous content on creative writing, parenting, swim coaching – even books of condolences when a colleague has passed away, and ditto for my own parents.
What kinds of service do they provide you?
This snapshot shows how I use Which? online to make a purchase decision, then use online banking to manage funds, and to check and purchase, in this case, car insurance. I blog niche topics, no longer a journal as such though I kept a diary for a couple of decades. If I took that up again it would be forever ink on paper to avoid the risk of content being stored and thus made available to anyone forever. I live online, learning online but also active in social network, more professionally in LinkedIn groups, less so in Google hangouts and strictly for immediate family and friends on Facebook.
Recently, having been an e-learning evangelist and purist I am happily returning to reading books and taking notes – though my preference is to have the eBook for all the tricks and habits I have developed highlighting, grabbing, bookmarking, sharing and noting stuff as I read. I will photo printed pages to mash-up and annotate rather than mark the printed page.
What interests of yours and what areas of your life is the Web involved in, or not involved in?
Over a decade ago a small band of us debated privacy and presence online and opted for considerable exposure – in those innocent days testing the water of spilling the contents of our brains to each other, to strangers, felt revolutionary and ahead of the curve. Though this ‘behaviour’ has changed I continue to blog continuously, and to join in multiple forums as my approach to learning, like language learning, is to immerse yourself in it. Given a background in TV and video production my ‘moving image’ pressence has been limited to excerpts from professional work. I feel I will be embracing DIY production once more iminently – a tough adjustment as I came through the production ranks nearly three decades ago learning the practicalities of video shooting and editing and coming to rely on others to do this rather than as I did in the earliest part of my career doing it all myself. We live in a DIY ‘user generated’ culture were authenticity means you shot and edited the content yourself. All that I need to refresh or learn can be found online, much of it for free.
Academically I am venturing towards academia as an observer of how others behave because of what the Web affords, though my inclination as a ‘doer’ and participant might simply see my blogging turning into a broadcast – I have a drama-reconstruction project related to the First World War ‘in development’.
Web Sciences – faster, rich, responsive, shared …
Life happened at the opening of the MOOC on Web Sciences from the University of Southampton (SOTON) – the imminent arrival of a great-grand child is announced while two in their late 80s make their departures, one with little warning, the other with a reluctant move to hospital.
Born in 1928 or to be born in 2014 …
Keen as I am on ancestry I try to reflect on what has and is changing.
How great in truth is or will be the impact on how we live, love and die? Of course the frenetic, massive Web impacts on the neuronal activity in individual brains feeding us with knowledge, news, information and misinformation like never before, but how much does it change the intimacy of a family, of childhood and education, of working and falling in love, of starting a family of your own (or not) and beyond?
The Web, like a strange digital mist now surrounds us – but in the Darwinian sense does it change anything at all?
Words of a distraught young woman from the Philippines coming out of the recent typhoon smack you in your digital face when she starts with ‘no Internet, not smart phone, no food, no water, no roof on our heads, no medicine … ‘ We will surely reflect on that fact that for all the opportunities the Web it is exclusive and fickle.
Yet it is the speed and ease by which this information is disseminated that changes things. I remember the Japanese Typhoon that I watched on multiple TV channels calling to my son who was watching the same online directly from people’s smart phones.
The new arrival mentioned above was posted on Facebook, the ‘departure’ was a call to a mobile phone. Both will feature online to welcome to the world or to reflect on a long life and commiserate.
Related articles
- The University of Southampton’s Web Science Institute (amandabobel.wordpress.com)
- UK unis prepare to launch ‘moocs’ this autumn (ool.co.uk)
- MOOC. Study Anywhere Anytime and for Free (johnijagbemi.wordpress.com)
- Amazing announcement!! Mooc makes Oxford online dictionary (opentopictest.wordpress.com)
- In Times Higher Education, on MOOCs (bryanalexander.org)
How do you cater for every kind of user under the sun?
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From the expert to the novice, from the professors of computer science and information technology who are undoubtedly here, or the newcomer to the Web, let alone to learning online and all that entails. I have little doubt that this MOOC on Web Science will show the extraordinary diversity of people and ways we engage and understand, or misunderstand, and have to ask questions, or look for answers elsewhere, that will undoubtedly get shared and commented upon here.
I’m impressed with the platform – for someone who has been blogging since 1999 and did his first open and distance learning module in 2001 this has the look and feel of all the best things I’ve come across. How to cater for everyone? How to avoid being a broadcast aimed at everyone and reaching no one? Does the Soton team have one or more ‘personas’ in mind? Or do we acknowledge that how our individual brains process and engage with the information creates the opportunity to engage?
Time to write
Fig.1 H809 EMA Mindmap (for fellow H809 / MA ODErs I’ve added a PDF version in the TMA Forum) Created using Simpleminds.
- H809 – Practice-based research in e-learning
- MA ODE – Masters in Open and Distance Education
- TMA – Tutor Marked Assignment
- PDF – PDF
Yonks ago I realised for me the best time to study was v.early in the morning. 4.00 am to breakfast isn’t unusual, 5.00 am is more typical. All it costs is an early night. This is easy too – no television. Its move from the shed to the dump is imminent.
A week ahead of schedule I find I have an EMA to complete – this’ll give me a three hour, exam like run of it. Even the dog knows not to bother me.
For those on the same path the mindmap of my H809 EMA is above.
Ask if you’re interested in a legible PDF version.
This gorse bush off density has patterns within it that I can decipher. The net result ought to come out somewhere around the 4,000 word mark too. This approach could not be more different to my earliest TMAs and EMAs three years ago – they were too often the product of what I call ‘jazz writing’ (this kind of thing), just tapping away to see where it takes you. This process used to start on scrolls of backing wallpaper taped to my bedroom wall. Now it goes onto a whiteboard first.
As always this blog is an e-portfolio: most notes, moments in student forums and references are in here.
I recommend using a blog platform in this way. You can default to ‘private’, or share with the OU community … or ‘anyone in the world’. One simple addition to this would be a ‘share with your module cohort’.
By now I have clicked through some 165 posts taggeed H809 and can refer to H809ema for those picked out for it.
One split occured – I very much wanted to explore the use of augmented reality in museum visits, but found instead a combination of necessity and logic taking me back to the H809 TMA 01 and a substantial reversioning of it. Quite coincidentally this proposed research on adherence to preventer drugs amongst moderate to severe asthmatics had me taking a very close interest on a rare visit to a hospital outpatient’s. Nasal endoscopy must look like a circus trick to the casual observer as the consultant carefully ‘lances’ my skull through the nose with a slender and flexible rod on which there is a tiny camera and light. ‘Yes, I can see the damage from surgery’ he declares (this was 33 years ago), ‘but no signs of cancer’.
There’s a relief.
An unexplained nose bleed lasting the best part of 10 weeks was put down to my good-boy adherence to a steroid nasal spray that had damaged the soft tissue. And the medical profession wonder why drug adherence can be so low? 20% to 60% 33 years on and courtesy of the OU Library I found a wholly convincing diagnosis – allergic rhinitis. The ‘paper’ runs to over 80 pages excluding references and has some 20 contributors (Bousquet, 2008). I’ll so miss access to the online library as most papers appear to cost around the £9 to download. This desire to remain attached by a digital umbilical chord to such a resource is one reason I wish to pursue yet more postgraduate studying and potentially even an academic career. I get extraordinary satisfaction browsing ‘stuff’ to feed my curiosity.
When I stop diddling around here I’ll pick off this mindmap in a strick clockwise direction from around 1 O’Clock.
Simpleminds is great as a free App. It’s taken me a couple of years to get round to paying £6 for a version that can be exported into a word file though I rather enjoy the slower, more considered ‘cut and paste’ which adds another opportunity to reflect, expand or ditch an idea.
REFERENCE
Bousquet, J, Khaltaev, N, Cruz, A, Denburg, J, Fokkens, W, Togias, A, Zuberbier, T, Baena-Cagnani, C, Canonica, G, Van Weel, C, Agache, I, Aït-Khaled, N, Bachert, C, Blaiss, M, Bonini, S, Boulet, L, Bousquet, P, Camargos, P, Carlsen, K, & Chen, Y (2008) ‘Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) 2008 Update (in collaboration with the World Health Organization, GA2LEN’, Allergy, 63, pp. 8-160, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 June 2013.
Way was, way is, way will be – Webs 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0
- Top down Web 1.0.
- Democratized Web 2.0
- Semantic Web 3.0
Doodle on the back of a hand out from WebSciences @University of Southampton DTC
14 years and this is what I’ve got to show for it
Automatically captured autobiographical metadata
W3c semantic web stack (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Automatically captured autobiographical metadata : Mischa Tuffield (2006)
Faculty of Engineering, science and mathematics. School of Electronics and Computer Science. Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group.
Supervisors: Nigel Shadbolt, David Millard.
Those who know me well will understand why this subject fascinates me – a diarist since I was 13, blogging since 1999 and recently completed a Master’s Degree in Open and Distance Education with the Open University. Over a decade ago I registered domain names like ‘The Contents of My Mind’ and ‘TCMB’ but didn’t know how to take my enthusiasm and turn it into a research project or product.
Know I do … or nearly do.
There’s a reason to this day why I blog as ‘My Mind Bursts’.
Current reading is on the combined themes of memory support, lifelogging, augmented learning and virtual companions – there’s considerable overlap into supporting those with diminishing senses or memory with illness or old age, as well as enhancing the learning and information retrieval and manipulation process.
An infrastructure for capturing and exploitation of personal metadata to drive research into context aware systems.
- Capture of personal experiences
- Context aware systems
- Multimedia annotation systems
- Narrative generation
- Semantic Web enabling technologies
- A contextual log of a user’s digital life.
- To facilitate auto–biographical narrative generation.
Towards a methodology for the capture and storage of personal metadata and is proposed as a framework for multimedia asset management.
PROBLEM
Information overload, or infosmog (Shadbolt and O’Hara, 2003)
A liberation of personal information.
- Ease of publishing. (House and Davis, 2005)
- Towards a web–accessibke Knowledge Base (KB)
- Photocopain.
- Adhereance to as many W3C recommendations as possible.
- Semantic Web (Berners–Lee et al, 2001)
Scientific American article to assemble and integrate personal information into web accessible resources (Shadbolt et al., 2006)
Exposing information in a structured snd standard form … using Resource Description Framework (RDF) Manola and Miller, 2004)
Universal Resource Identifier (URI)
Friend of a Friend (FOAF)
Memories for Life (M4L)
Semantic Squirrels Group (SSSIG)
Image classification, content–based indexing and retrieval,
Content and context based services
- Marc Davis (2004a)
- Spatial
- Temporal
- Social
Design methods to generate narratives from bespoken knowledge bases
- Alani et al., 2003
- Geurts et al., 2003
- Mulholland et al., 2004
so automatically, not hand– crafted metadata.
The Semantic Logger (Tuffield et al., 2006a)
Photo annotation
Recommender system (Tuffield et al., 2006a) and (Loizou and Dasmahaptra, 2006)
Posting of data to the knowledge database.
By virtue of knowledge integration alone, added value emerges. (Tuffield, 2006. p. 20)
Community of practice identification (Alani et al., 2003a)
Simile Project at MIT
(As a diarist since I was 13 I came to seek a way to say enough to recall the day. I needed the trigger, not the detail. The boring stuff might not work as such a trigger).
Clustering algorithms
FURTHER LINKS TO EXPLORE
The Semantic Logger Downloads Page
Work undertaken my Marc Davis at Berkeley provides insight into how context can be combined with content to aid the identification of faces inside photographs (Davis et al., 2006).
FURTHER RESEARCH
I am proposing the design of a human centric personal image search and browsing task, similar to that undertaken by Mor Naaman (Naaman et al., 2004). This is presented as a manner of evaluating the utility of the various asset management. The results of this experiment is intended as a contribution to the identification of useful automatically captured metadata to aid memory recall.
REFERENCES
T. Berners-Lee, J. Hendler, and O. Lassila. The Semantic Web. Scientific American, 284(5), May 2001.
Marc Davis, Michael Smith, Fred Stentiford, Adetokunbo Bambidele, John Canny, Nathan Good, Simon King, and Rajkumar Janakiraman. Using context and similarity for face and location identification. In Proceedings of the IS&T/SPIE 18th Annual Symposium on Electronic Imaging Science and Technology Internet Imaging VII. IS&T/SPIE Press, 2006.
J. Gemmel, G. Bell, R. Lueder, S. Drucker, and C. Wong. MyLifeBits: fulfilling the memex vision. In MULTIMEDIA ’02: Proceedings of the 10th ACM international conference in Multimedia, pages 235–238, 2002.
J. Gemmell, A. Aris, and R. Lueder. Telling stories with MyLifeBits. ICME 2005, 8: 6–9, July 2005.
Carsten Rother, Sanjiv Kumar, Vladimir Kolmogorov, and Andrew Blake. Digital tapestry. In CVPR ’05: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR’05) – Volume 1, pages 589–596, Washington, DC, USA, 2005. IEEE Computer Society. ISBN 0-7695-2372-2.
L. Sauermann, A. Bernandi, and A. Dengel. Overview and outlook on the semantic desktop. In Proc. of Semantic Desktop Workshop at the ISWC, 2005.
N. Shadbolt and K. O’Hara. AKTuality: An overview of the aims, ambitions and assumptions of the advanced knowledge technologies interdisciplinary research collaboration. AKT Selected Papers 03, pages 1–11, 2003.
Nigel R. Shadbolt, Wendy Hall, and Tim Berners-Lee. The Semantic Web: Revisted. IEE-Intelligent System, 21(3):96–101, May 2006.
Related articles
- Big Data & Semantic Web: An Ideal Marriage (semanticweb.com)
- Artificial Intelligence and the Semantic Web (enterpriseresilienceblog.typepad.com)
- The Semantic Link – December, 2012 (semanticweb.com)
- Semantic Web Gets Closer To The Internet of Things (semanticweb.com)
- Mobile SEO Preparation for a Semantic Web (raventools.com)
- Two Funny Things at the 2012 International Semantic Web Conference (groups.csail.mit.edu)
- Information Resource Description: Creating and Managing Metadata by Philip Hider (NEW BOOK) (bluesyemre.com)
Mind Bursts 
