OLDaily

The Semantic Condition
Stephen Downes, YouTube, 2017/10/24

I created a nice new version of my 'Groups vs Networks' diagram and created a video wherein I create the diagram step by step and explain what I mean at each step, and therefore, by the diagram as a whole. After the fact I realize that there is a major element missing from the diagram (both individual and new): the idea that the core value in groups is mass while the idea that the core value in networks is structure or organization. The diagram is located here. 

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Who Gets To Be An Expert In Education?
John Warner, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/10/24

First, read this account of the (non-)relation between expertise, think tank support and citations in the media of "education experts". As noted by John Warner in this article, "It is cited by Audrey Watters and Sara Goldrick-Rab of Kevin Carey’s The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere, 'In this political economy, the experts on education are rarely experts in education, and that is just the way an increasing number of powerful people seem to like it.'" In the two years since the book was published, the criticisms have been borne out: "the MOOC revolution that was supposed to transform into the 'University of Everywhere' has fizzled into targeted corporate training and other very specific applications." Of course, history is not yet over, and Carey's predictions may yet come true, but the deeper question lingers: what made him an "education expert" in the first place?

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Info-Environmentalism: An Introduction
Michael Caulfield, EDUCAUSE Review, 2017/10/24

Michael Caulfield points to a number of examples where Google search results lead to false and misleading information. We can blame the sites or Google, but "the truth is that higher education is at least partially to blame for this state of affairs," he writes. "But in walking away from this demand, we cede the field to corporations, hacks, and charlatans. How can we complain about our "post-fact moment" if we are unwilling to supply the public with facts in the places where the public is looking, be that Facebook, Wikipedia, or Google?" The idea of "info-environmentalism" is to contribute to improving the information environment by overwhelming the pollution with facts and data.

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Assemblyline
Communications Security Establishment Canada, 2017/10/24

This is a lovely piece of open source software just released by Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) (and that's a sentence I never thought I would ever be writing in this newsletter). It's basically a set of connected Python applications that runs files through a series of virus and malware checks. It uses its own functions and also imports functions from services such as Kapersky and Symantic. It even opens up Java jar files and looks for problematic code. It's probably a bit much for an individual to install and run (though they could) but will be especially useful for corporations, institutions and service providers. Assemblyline is available on BitBucket and is licensed under the MIT license. Coverage on CBC.

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