Online texts from National Academies Press

Free Science, Engineering and Medical Books Online. I am not lying. The National Academies Press which was created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, all operating under a charter granted by the Congress of the United States, has more than 2,500 free, searchable, high quality books online. Some random examples: The Genomic Revolution: Unveiling the Unity of Life Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time Who Goes There?: Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response [kuro5hin.org]

A useful resource to have handy BUT see this post from Terry Frazier on limitations of this.

Congratuations to Sebastien Paquet

Good news.

Last friday, the d partement d’informatique et de recherche op rationnelle of Universit de Montr al, as represented by a jury composed of profs. Guy Lapalme (president), Esma A meur (advisor), Gilles Brassard (co-advisor), Marc Kaltenbach (jury member), and Tommaso Toffoli (external examiner, from Boston University) granted me a Ph.D. in Computer Science.

The room was chock full with students, professors, friends, and family members (the department director even had to sit on the floor!). I had to give a 45-minute talk summarizing my research contributions and to field questions from the jury and the audience.

I believe it went reasonably well. Several of my friends and family members were pleasantly surprised to find that they actually understood all of my presentation and the question/answer session that followed. I was really happy to see their faces in the room. Thanks to everyone for your support!!

I am extremely grateful to my advisors, who believed in me and had courage enough to let me go way off the beaten path while supporting and advising me every step of the way. THANK YOU!

Oh, and YULbloggers Karl Dubost and Ed Bilodeau showed up and very competently blogged the event. Both wrote that the experience of being there had made them enthusiastic about doing research. That’s cool!

[Seb’s Open Research]

Congratulations to S bastien for “piling it higher and deeper”. Although it is a bit unusual, particularly for a new Ph.D., to be comprehensible to such mere mortals as friends and family :), this bodes well for Seb’s future work.

Rube Goldberg Honda Commercial

Rube Goldburgh + Honda ==> an amazing commercial.


My mom was a “gifted and talented” teacher in an elementary and middle school.  Each year her kids had to design and build a Rube Goldburgh devices to compete in the Olympics of the Mind. 

I'm sure they'd appreciate this an amazing commercial. (Flash 6 required)

[Micah's Weblog]

 

Brilliant commercial. Of course, most of the systems we live with day to day have the complexity without the payoff.

The real risks of knowledge sharing

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas!. I just love this quote from Howard Aiken:

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.

So true! [Gurteen Knowledge-Log]

I have a new hypothesis about why it’s difficult to get people to contribute to knowledge management systems in organizations.

Conventional wisdow says it’s because people are worried that someone will steal their ideas. I think that’s a rationalization. I think the real fear is the fear of being ignored. The fear that the knowledge I share is so obvious or trivial that no one will care. What’s the old maxim from Mark Twain? “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” (some input from my readers about the correct attribution of this quote. See my comments here for some more)

The issue may still be fear, but it’s a fear that we need to address in a very different way.

Moonset from the International Space Station

Moonset, viewed from the Space Station. This NASA website offers a streaming quicktime movie of our moon setting on the horizon, as viewed from the International Space Station. The moon turns into a squashy, pink pancake as it sets, and this science primer explains why. Link to article, Link to movie, Discuss
[Boing Boing Blog]

Something fun to end the day. Appropriate in part because my youngest boy and I are about to start work on a model of the ISS.

Marc Rettig on Interaction Design

Rettig: Interaction Design. A History of Interaction Design, by Marc Rettig. A tour de force that takes you from hand tools to social… [Internet Time Blog]

An excellent review of design. Just to name drop a tiny bit, I've worked with Marc a number of times. I learned a great deal from him about how people and technology interact. We met inj 1996 when Marc was head of design for a start up called Digital Knowledge Assets. DKA was developing software for helping experts share knowledge and that was something we wanted to have at Diamond. In retrospect, I see the work done at DKA as one of the precursors of what evolved into weblogs. Enough namedropping, go read what Marc has to say.

Adding comments to my weblog

I’ve decided to add comments to my blog.

Initially, my purposes in blogging didn’t require comments. My weblog was my backup brain. Later when I started to use it to supplement my teaching, my primary audience was my students and they could either comment in class, use blackboard (which I hate), and use their own blogs (a largely unsuccessful experiment).

As I’ve begun to develop a bit of a small audience, the issue of comments now needs to be revisited. I have reservations about Radio’s default comment system because there is no way to exercise any control over postings. Not that I want to censor so much as I worry about comments getting spammed and inappropriate off-topic comments. I think I now have things almost set up to get what I want. I’ve implemented comments with a “Manila” site that I do have control over should I receive comments that I believe are inappropriate. It also will let me subscribe and track any comments that do get posted.

Over the years, I’ve generally been disappointed by threaded discussion as a tool. I see what ought to be possible, but getting knowledge workers in organizations to develop the skills and norms to realize that potential seems to be awfully hard to do. I haven’t had enough hands on experience with wikis yet to have a strong opinion about where they fit it. Blogs do seem to have some characteristics that contribute to more robust thinking. I’m still trying to parse why I think that and where comments fit into that mix. I guess it’s time to get some primary data.

Springsteen on the Dixie Chicks.

Springsteen on the Dixie Chicks

Here’s a courageous statement from Bruce Springsteen on the plight of the Dixie Chucks, who are suffering boycotts of their work by the pro-war jingoists (including faux-patriotic corporate interests) throughout the land:

The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they’re terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American. The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about – namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home. I don’t know what happens next, but I do want to add my voice to those who think that the Dixie Chicks are getting a raw deal, and an un-American one to boot. I send them my support.

Bruce Springsteen

[from JD Lassica’s New Media Musings ]

Good to see that some people get the basic premise of free speech. If you don’t like or agree with what they say, say something else in rebuttal. But don’t engage in forms of attempted censorship. The whole point of free speech is to permit ideas that the majority don’t agree with to be heard. Guess it’s time to buy some Dixie Chicks CDs. Too bad most of the money won’t get to them, but that’s another story.

Weblogs in organizations and finding voice

An interesting little piece in Business 2.0 about corporate use of weblogs

Business 2.0 – Web Article – Management by Blog?

Most of the companies I've observed using blogs are trying it on their customers before unleashing it internally on their staffs. The external need, apparently, is more pressing. Many businesses already have other systems in place for managing internal information, ranging from simple brown-bag lunches to overkill knowledge-management regimens.

I disagree that the external need is more pressing. I suspect that the truth is that the external weblog strategy presents less risk in the eyes of the implementer. Or to put it differently, internal weblog experiments feel risky.

Even if they're about knowledge management and not cats, good weblogs are personal.  They are an outlet for personal voice. Organizations aren't sure how to deal with personal voice and most of us have learned a healthy caution about expressing it inside our organizations.  I've come to believe that organizations that wish to survive will have to learn how to let organizational voice emerge from blending the unique voices of its members. A necessary step in getting to that harmony will be to help individuals find their own voices first.

Weblogs provide a tool to find, exercise, and develop your voice in a potentially manageable way. You can start by adding grace notes to what others are saying and gradually build to more extensive contributions. The chronological structure of short posts encourages and gently forces continuing practice. And plugging into a piece of the weblogging community gives you a support group who provide examples of their own voice, material to try harmonizing with, and encouragement and support to newcomers.

Helping weblogs to succeed inside organizations has little to do with technology features.  It depends instead on nurturing a grassroots process of tentative practice evolving into confident process. Think Harold Hill in The Music Man not General George Patton in Patton