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OLDaily
By Stephen Downes March 11, 2003 Putting It All Together With Robert Kahn Robert Kahn is one of the original architects of the internet, along with Vinton Cerf. This wide ranging interview traces the history of the original ARPANet and NSFNet as they became the internet we know today. Some interesting tidbits near the end of the article about his original plans for The Digital Library Project, digital objects and identifiers for digital objects. By Unknown, Ubiquity, March 11, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Authority Control: Definition and International Experiences When I see the words "authority" and "control" in the title of a work, I want to run for the hills. Authority and control are the last thing we want to bring to the web; their perceived advantages would break the network beyond repair. Still, I followed this link International Conference on Authority Control, held last month in Florence, and was rewarded with a stunning array of papers and presentations. If, like me, you are new to the concept of authority control, then start with this overview by Barbara Tillett, an authoritative work that takes you effortlessly from the movement's foundations in the late 70s through to current implementations. As Tillett explains, authority control is the set of "decisions on how the single, authorized form of name for each entity should be represented in their catalog." Sounds simple, but as you follow this article you will begin to appreciate the nuances of the project. For some fun, have a look at Lucia Sardo's Multiple Names to see what happens to librarians when names don't refer to people on a nice, neat, one-to-one basis. There's a wealth in this conference archive; the papers are collectively of exceptional quality and there is a trove of valuable lessons to be learned by those of us involved in metadata and the semantic web. By Various Authors, February 10, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Untapped Networks The subject of this interview, Columbia University sociologist Duncan Watts, offers some insights worth sharing about the nature of software and networks. The Mircosoft approach to software design, he argues, is flawed because it's centralized and homogeneous. Even a small flaw - like the Code Red virus - takes down the whole system. Decentralized networks, by contrast, are not vulnerable because they offer multiple ways to do the same thing, multiple pathways, like the internet. "People have a local view of the world. I have my friends, and everyone else is 'out there' somewhere—I don’t know about them or care about them and certainly can’t affect them. The science of networks is the antithesis of that world view. You affect things out there and they affect you." By Unknown, Technology Review, March 7, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Copyright Vs. Community in the Age of the Computer Networks Address by Richard Stallman to the South by Southwest conference late last week. Some good points. Like this: "Cooks use recipes and have the same freedoms in using recipes. If you tell a cook that they can't change a recipe, they would probably be outraged." Still, the article is terse and vacant of the life you would expect from a Stallman talk. Ah, the perils of summarization. By Richard Stallman, as transcribed by Heath, Heath Row's Media Diet, March 7, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Trends in Visual Arts Education My view is that if you don't understand art, then you are much less likely to be able to think visually. In a text-based world this may seem like no great handicap, but the ability to communicate your ideas through pictures and diagrams is at least as important as being able to express yourself in text. But I digress. This article describes current trends in visual arts education and is a wide-ranging survey of developments in teaching art and art criticism, including the impact of information and communications technology on the field. It's mostly for purists, but even barbarians such as myself can find links of interest such as Bev. Branton's Visual Literacy Literature Review. By Graeme Daniel and Kevin Cox, Web Tools for Learning, March 11, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Clique of Instant Messagers Expands Into the Workplace I have been using instant messaging for years. Mostly I use it to keep in touch with home while I'm on the road, but I also have conversations with collaborators from around the world. Perhaps instant messaging is about to sweep though the workplace, as this article suggests (I have tried to get it to sweep through my workplace, but with no success). There's no real rush. Instant messaging is like a hallway conversation, quick, disposable, informal, and users treat it as such, but when the lawyers get at it instant messages will be treated as though they are notarized documents. By Amy Harmon, New York Times, March 11, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Clique of Instant Messagers Expands Into the Workplace I have been using instant messaging for years. Mostly I use it to keep in touch with home while I'm on the road, but I also have conversations with collaborators from around the world. Perhaps instant messaging is about to sweep though the workplace, as this article suggests (I have tried to get it to sweep through my workplace, but with no success). There's no real rush. Instant messaging is like a hallway conversation, quick, disposable, informal, and users treat it as such, but when the lawyers get at it instant messages will be treated as though they are notarized documents. By Amy Harmon, New York Times, March 11, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Open Access to World-Class Knowledge Overview article describing MIT's Open Courseware project, including some feedback on the initial release. The article is unrelentingly positive, which is fine because there's a lot to like about the OCW project. People who have followed the project won't find a lot that is new in this article, though the quotes from various players are fresh. By Anne H. Margulies, Syllabus, March, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] Roogle I'm not sure I should even call it Roogle any more - the site's original title (short for "RSS Google", I guess) lasted about a day. As the name implied, this site searches RSS feeds for specific items. Search by keyword or phrase. By Various Authors, The FuzzyGroup, March 8, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect]
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