OLDaily

The internet is modular
Gordon Brander, Subconscious, 2022/04/18

This article makes two major points. The first is, as suggested by the title, that "one of the key architectural principles of the internet is modularity," that is, "system architects decompose the system in a way that minimizes dependencies among components." So you can update incrementally, replacing individual components with improved components that do the same job. The second point, though, is that "the modular boundaries of the web were drawn for networked documents, with content split into 'pages', and browser engines designed to lay out and scroll text." And these modular boundaries are just the wrong sort of boundaries for apps. Enter Mighty, a browser streamed entirely from the web (not everyone is a fan). This could be the ultimate in the black box internet, or it could be a new paradigm. Either way, when the beta becomes available, I'll be on it.

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Challenges and opportunities: Videoconferencing, innovation and development
Dave Gatrell, Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning, 2022/04/18

Taking the form of autoethnography as interpreted using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), this article documents the introduction of synchronous online teaching (aka videoconferencing) at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) as along with everyone else they suspended face-to-face classes during the pandemic. The author reports being able to develop "a 'collaborative partnership' which would not have been possible for me before Covid." He also concludes that while CHAT is not predicting, it "is useful in forcing 'a consideration of the range of factors which impact the use of technology'."

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The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation
Blair Fix, Economics from the Top Down, 2022/04/18

As John Cleese puts it: "If you're very very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you're very very stupid?" That's the Dunning-Kruger effect - the idea that unskilled people tend to overestimate their own skills. But what if it's not real? That's what Blair Fix argues, convincingly. Take two random values, x and y. Plot them against each other and you get a random graph. But define a new variable, say, z=x-y and then plot x and z, and you get a correlation. Why? Because you're essentially comparing x and x, and that's what you're doing when you plot an actual test result and the difference between a predicted and actual test result, which is what Dunning and Kruger did. Why is this relevant? We ran a test last year to evaluate data literacy in a population. We found people's predictions were reliable indicators of their test scores. We were looking for similarity, not difference. Autocorrelation? Via Metafilter.

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The fall of the Tower of Babel
Joanne Jacobs, Linking and Thinking on Education, 2022/04/18

"The Tower of Babel has fallen, writes social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in The Atlantic. We Americans no longer speak the same language or recognize the same truth." I think this is an interesting observation, not so much because nobody has noticed this before (it's not hard to see if you look) but because of the implications. Now Joanne Jacobs is inclined gto blame this on social media or overbearing parents or generational change. But I personally just think it's a think that happens once things get to a certain point. As Haidt writes, "Babel is not a story about tribalism; it's a story about the fragmentation of everything. It's about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community." This just happens. The question is, what do you do about it? Me, I embrace diversity as a virtue, and to preserve the peace, I embrace equity and inclusion. Jacobs? "E pluribus was supposed to lead to unum — not Babel," she says, opting, I think, for conflict instead.

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I’m Dumping Alexa, but I’m Letting Her Stay as a Roommate
John Hendrickson, ReviewGeek, 2022/04/18

It was four or five years ago that smart speakers seemed poised to take over homes everywhere. I can see the attraction: simply speak instead of typing. The reality hasn't been as smooth. My car frequently interprets talk radio as a command. And we had a lot of fun at my parent's house trying to get Alexa to respond to... anything! This article is a bit of a reflection on the current state of smart speakers. They're not going away, but the parameters are getting clearer. We want them to respond intelligently to the voices around them, to listen but not to spy on us, and (unlike Alexa) to refrain from advertising something every chance it gets. I don't have a smart speaker at home - but this article did make me think maybe voice controlled window blinds might be a good idea.

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