McFilter: October 2016 Archives

October 31, 2016

Interesting Things on the Internet: October 31st 2016

A Devil’s Dictionary of Educational Technology. "Asynchronous, adj. The delightful state of being able to engage with someone online without their seeing you, while allowing you to make a sandwich."
The Rise and Fall of YPlan Is The Most Boring Tech Story Ever. Less reporting of money raised as "news" please.
DJ Prime Cuts Hip Hop Don't Stop- The Greatest [Disc One]. Excellent mix of all of the early 80s hip-hop (or at least that's how it feels :-)
Science fiction about AI never seems to talk about the interesting stuff, tax and geography and work. "A local job, and it’s associated tax, is potentially displaced by an algorithm charged by the hour run somewhere distant, written by person working somewhere else with the profits and costs, rolled up into intellectual property licensing, moved to be taxed in the most expedient territory. We can’t stop it. We shouldn’t stop it. But it won’t be comfortable if we don’t plan for it."
welcome.js. A lovely hidden way to delight and encourage anyone poking around behind the scenes of James' website.
The Weaponisation of the Working Class. Why is it that the working-class is "listened to" when they talk about immigration, but not when they talk about the dismantling of the NHS, the lack of jobs, university fees...?
Remarks at the SASE Panel On The Moral Economy of Tech. "We should not listen to people who promise to make Mars safe for human habitation, until we have seen them make Oakland safe for human habitation. We should be skeptical of promises to revolutionize transportation from people who can't fix BART, or have never taken BART."

Posted by Adrian at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 24, 2016

Interesting Things on the Internet: October 24th 2016

Aberfan: The mistake that cost a village its children. Harrowing, powerful long-form article from the BBC about the Aberfan mining disaster. A difficult read at times.
Team. Yes. There is more to gain from working out how to take advantage of the tech we've got than in pushing ever more technology onto the world.
The future of work as a building block of change. "The political landscape has still not got its act together – and I am too impatient to wait for it to change"
Reading and writing for our peers. I much prefer reading amateur writers writing about the field in which they're experts, rather than expert writers writing about fields in which they're amateurs.

Posted by Adrian at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2016

Interesting Things on the Internet: October 17th 2016

The hazards of a world where mediocrity rules. Maybe not quite to the degree outlined in that article, but you can see a lot of those tendencies in the "innovation" and "regeneration" industries in this country. Sadly.
Technology is a wooden leg. Leila on great form pointing out that all this technology stuff is just a set of tools to use to do something more interesting.
Augmenting journalism. Jon Udell, arguing for an alternate approach to Basic Income to use tech to enhance—not replace—our abilities. I think we can, and should, do both.
GB1900.org. The OS maps for the whole UK from around 1900. Really interesting to see how the country has evolved in the past century, plus you get to help researchers create a gazetteer of all the text on the map.
Draw your city. Another mapping research project, this time looking at how far people think different cities extend. Some interesting contrasts between the different parts of the UK.
Betting on snowballs. I like this idea from Doc Searls, roll snowballs rather than push rocks uphill!

Posted by Adrian at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack