Weinberger on Orders of Organization

More insight from Weinberger. A while back one of my former Diamond colleagues, Lynne Whitehorn-Umphres made the observation that over the last twenty years, the rato of metadata to data has gone from 1 in 100 to 100 to 1. I didn’t really appreciate where she was going with that point, but Weinberger helps me understand.

Database design was a problem of getting the answer right the first time and ahead of use. It was driven by the cost and complexity of storage and of development. That strategy worked adequately for transaction systems, but fails for management information and knowledge work needs. What Weinberger makes clear is that the solution is twofold. One is to use metadata profligately. But the other, and more interesting, part is to not try to get the right answer once and for all or in advance. Rather, it is to postpone the answer until some particular user has a particular question they need to answer.

I used to think that the request for “flexible” information systems reflected laziness on the part of users. I was young and na ve. Weinberger points out what that request is actually seeking, why, and how to go about addressing it.

The Three Orders of Organization.

David Weinberger on the different orders of classification: “If you recall, we were all supposed to be lifeless at the bottom of an ocean of information by now. Why have we survived the information tsunami so confidently predicted in the late ’80s and early ’90s? Those predictions assumed that the principles of organization wouldn’t evolve. But they have. Rapidly and profoundly.”

He goes to explain by his three orders of organization:

  1. First Order: You arrange physical objects: You shelve books, you file papers, you put away your silverware.
  2. Second Order: You arrange separate, smaller objects that contain metadata about the first order objects: You create a card catalog. You make entries in a ledger. You index a book. You now have a second organizational scheme (e.g., the books are shelved by subject but the cards are arranged alphabetically), and it’s physically easier to navigate.
  3. Third Order: You create electronic metadata so you can organize it in ways that simply weren’t feasible before.

He gives emphasis on this third order, which is like a faceted classification scheme, as it gives more power to the users: “Keepers of the first two orders carefully build organizational schemes and taxonomies. Practitioners of the third carefully create metadata so that users can create their own schemes and taxonomies.”

[elearningpost]

Firefox problem with FeedDemon? Here's the fix

I’ve been experimenting with making both of these tools part of my default environment. This is for when I need it.

Firefox problem with FeedDemon? Here’s the fix..

If like me you’re using Firefox as your default browser, you may have run into a problem recently when using it with FeedDemon. Several FeedDemon users (and users of other tools that rely on Firefox) have reported that every time they try to use Firefox as an external browser, they get a message that Windows cannot find the URL.

Luckily, a FeedDemon customer posted the solution in the FeedDemon support forum:

  1. Open Explorer
  2. Select Tools and then Folder Options
  3. Select the File Types tab
  4. Select Extension: (NONE), File Type: HyperText Transfer Protocol
  5. Click Advanced toward the bottom of the window
  6. In the Edit File Type window, select open and click Edit
  7. Clear the DDE message box (which should contain “%1”)
  8. Click OK, Click OK
  9. Repeat for File Type: HyperText Transfer Protocol with Privacy

By Nick Bradbury. [Nick Bradbury]

A Taste Of Computer Security

I’ve only just begun to read through this, but it certainly appears to live up to its billing.

A Taste Of Computer Security. andrew_ps writes “Amit Singh has published on his KernelThread.com a paper (mini book really) on computer security. A Taste of Computer Security is a VERY comprehensive paper in what it covers, but is remarkably easy to read. This is not some list of “sploits” though! Topics covered include popular notions about security, types of mal-ware, viruses & worms, memory attacks/defences, intrusion, sandboxing, review of Solaris 10 security and plenty of others. Most notably it includes probably one of the most fair and intelligent analysis of the Unix-Vs-Windows security issue that I have ever seen.” [Slashdot:]

Setting the bar high enough

I find this graph alone worth thinking about. It’s a potent reminder that a learner’s efficiency is maximized with a Socratic strategy — one learner, one teacher. Well done, apprenticeship is an ideal model. Most classroom settings are large compromises from that ideal — sometimes intentionally.

While, as Jay points out, cost can be a constraint in achieving the ideal, more often than not, the real constraint is failure of imagination. We expect so little of most classroom environments, that it doesn’t occur to us how much more is possible. Compromise is also easier when the the perspective is to minimize training costs. The goal really ought to be maximizing performance on the job. More than that, the goal ought to be to push bring typical performance up to the level of the best performers in the organization; preferably with a strategy that is a bit more robust than mere exhortation.

Are you setting the bar high enough?. “Make no little plans. They fail to stir the blood of men,” said architect Daniel Burnham. Indeed, life’s too short for mediocrity. When I hear someone say they wish their online learning were as effective as their instructor-led workshops, I wonder why they’re shooting so low. They should be aiming to make their technology-enabled learning much better than the passive classroom experience. Let’s face it, the classroom is often a mediocre learning environment.

Workflow Institute‘s Sam Adkins gave a presentation this morning [note that this presentation link downloads a 4MB java applet to do the playback] on Advanced Learning Technology Today. He showed this graph to demonstrate what’s possible.


Twenty years ago, Benjamin Bloom found that individually-tutored students performed as well as the top 2% of classroom students. Equalling this record in automated fashion has become eLearning’s Holy Grail. The Department of Defense has achieved it, but cost is rarely a constraint there. The Advanced Computer Tutoring Project at Carnegie Mellon University claims even higher performance gains among Pittsburgh high-school students studying math. Did the students like it? One swore at a teacher so she’d get kicked out of school for a couple of days — during which she learned geometry with her unrestricted time online. [Internet Time Blog]

In praise of idlenss

What a lovely way to start off a quiet Saturday.

Lest you remain unconvinced of the innovation value of idleness, recall that both the web browser and napster were created by college students who were surely cutting classes at the time.

Protracted defense of laziness. This weekend’s Guardian has a long, fun excerpt from Tom Hodgkinson’s forthcoming “How To Be Idle.”

As Sherlock Holmes knew. Lolling around in his smoking jacket, puffing his pipe, Holmes would sit and ponder for hours on a tricky case. In one superb story, the opium-drenched The Man With The Twisted Lip, Holmes solves yet another case with ease. An incredulous Mr Plod character muses: “I wish I knew how you reach your results,” to which Holmes replies: “I reached this one by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag.”

Rene Descartes, in the 17th century, was similarly addicted to inactivity. Indeed, it was absolutely at the centre of his philosophy. When young and studying with the Jesuits, he was unable to get up in the morning. They would throw buckets of cold water over him and he would turn over and go back to sleep.

Link [Boing Boing]

Greg Iles's The Footprints of God – 50 Book Challenge

The Footprints of God : A Novel
Iles, Greg
Rick Klau recommended this book to me at a blogger get together in Chicago back in March. Finally had a chance to read it last week during a little vacation time. Rick gets to recommend books to me anytime he wants from now on.

I hadn’t read any of Iles’s books before. Now, I’ll be looking for them. It’s your basic techno-thriller. The hero David Tennant is an M.D. serving as the resident ethicist on a secret project to build an intelligent supercomputer. There’s a bit of speculation on what might happen at the intersection of brain-imaging technologies and quantum computing, but it’s really only enough to propel the plot. That’s why I put this in the category of a techno-thriller rather than science fiction. It’s much the way that Michael Crichton’s fiction works. He’s not a science fiction writer in my book either. But you don’t really care much about that as the plot hurtles along. A much better than average summer read.

Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open – 50 Book Challenge

Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
Johnson, Steven
Not quite as provocative as Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, this is still well worth your time if you have any interest in how your mind works. Johnson uses himself as guinea pig to explore what science and medicine have been learning about how the low level hardware of your brain works and how that might hook in to what passes for thought and consciousness.

Charles Stross's Iron Sunrise – 50 Book Challenge

Iron Sunrise
Stross, Charles
A loose sequel to Singularity Sky in that it continues the adventures of that book’s protagonists, Iron Sunrise is a much more coherent and compelling story. Stross is setting up a nice post-singularity universe where the potent technologies and capabilities of his heros are nicely offset by equally potent capabilities among the bad guys.

Nobody’s a villain in their own story and Stross tells a great tale about how human conflict will continue to play out in a future filled with plausibly advanced technology and plausibly flawed human beings. Stross in definitely now on my list of must read authors.