Category Archives: Linking Thinking

Linking to what others are thinking about learning as a way to explore how we learn online.

E
A DNA Driven World →

Geneti­cist Craig Ven­ter: …the future of life depends not only in our abil­ity to under­stand and use DNA, but also, per­haps in cre­at­ing new syn­thetic life forms, that is, life which is forged not by Dar­win­ian evo­lu­tion but cre­ated by human intel­li­gence. Whether or not designer microbes that replace coal and oil are part of the solu­tion, such dis­rup­tive ideas and tech­nolo­gies that let us adapt to and mit­i­gate cli­mate change are. We need a sci­en­tif­i­cally lit­er­ate soci­ety will­ing to embrace change. But here’s the prob­lem: Sci­ence is a topic which can cause peo­ple to turn off their brains. I con­tend that sci­ence has failed to excite more peo­ple for at least two rea­sons: it is fre­quently taught poorly, often as rote mem­o­riza­tion of com­plex facts and data, and it is anti­thet­i­cal to our visceral-driven way we live and inter­act with our world. Our planet is fac­ing almost insur­mount­able prob­lems, prob­lems that gov­ern­ments on their own clearly can’t fix.

♦ ♦ ♦

E
Why don’t we love science fiction? →

Why do so many of us see sci­ence fic­tion as hope­lessly ado­les­cent? The truth is that we are at last liv­ing in an SF sce­nario, Brain Ald­iss has said, imply­ing that makes SF redun­dant. Isn’t this – at the heart of our anx­i­eties – just where this genre excels?

♦ ♦ ♦

V
Is Photography Dead? →

A film pho­to­graph was at its core a record of some­thing that hap­pened in front of a cam­era; a dig­i­tal photo, on the other hand, may con­tain only a trace of real­ity. Pho­tog­ra­phers can make pho­tos as well as take them, and every land­scape is now the most beau­ti­ful scenery in the whole his­tory of the uni­verse. The next great photographers—if there are to be any—will have to find a way to reclaim photography’s spe­cial link to real­ity. And they’ll have to do it in a brand-new way.

♦ ♦ ♦

N
The New Psychology of Leadership →

Recent lead­er­ship lit­er­a­ture notes that an effec­tive leader is highly depen­dent on fol­low­ers, and fol­low­ers need to see their leader as one of them. For lead­er­ship to func­tion well, lead­ers and fol­low­ers must be bound by a shared iden­tity and by the quest to to use that iden­tify as a blue­print for action. If you con­trol the def­i­n­i­tion of iden­tify, you can change the world.

♦ ♦ ♦

N
Google and Its Enemies →

In the phys­i­cal world of books, authors and ideas mat­ter the most. But Google’s project to dig­i­tize 32 mil­lion books has dif­fer­ent val­ues. In the Google world­view, con­tent is indi­vid­u­ally val­ue­less. No one page is more impor­tant than the next; the value lies in the page view. And a page view is a page view, regard­less of whether the page in ques­tion has a pic­ture of a cat, a sin­gle link to another site, or the full text of Freako­nom­ics. When all you’re sell­ing is ad space, the value shifts from the con­tent to the viewer. And ulti­mately the con­tent is val­ued at nothing.

♦ ♦ ♦

V
The Philosophy of Wine-Tasting →

What does it mean to be an “expert” in the area of fine wine? The wine world wants its experts; yet those that ascend to such heights demure, apol­o­giz­ing for the hier­ar­chy of author­ity on the grounds that, well, no one can really say that one wine is supe­rior to another. Barry C. Smith’s review of Ques­tions of Taste places wine-centred ques­tions into a larger frame­work of ques­tions about taste and per­cep­tion, sub­jec­tiv­ity and objec­tiv­ity, and the role of knowl­edge and judg­ment in per­cep­tual appraisal. In wine, as in other domains of prac­tice, exper­tise depends on craft as well as knowl­edge; it is socially sorted and exter­nally val­i­dated. Salut.

♦ ♦ ♦

E
The IQ Conundrum →

Is intel­li­gence a sin­gle, gen­eral fac­tor, or is it more plural and frag­mented? Are we actu­ally get­ting smarter, or are we just get­ting bet­ter at tak­ing tests? This month’s Cato Unbound offers up a cog­ni­tive feast of views­points. James Flynn, who opts for the plural, frag­mented view of IQ, argues that the envirnoment makes a lot of dif­fer­ence in terms of effect on our level of cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing. Once we grasp that “the brain is much more like our mus­cles than we had thought, ” we can do more to improve cog­ni­tive per­for­mance by doing more to exer­cise the brain. “If only we who teach could make more of our “sub­jects” fall in love with ideas. Then we would have truly effec­tive interventions.”

♦ ♦ ♦

E
The Secret to Raising Smart Kids →

What is the secret to rais­ing smart kids? Don’t them that they are. Carol S. Dwek reviews 30 years of research that shows empha­siz­ing effort, not intel­li­gence or tal­ent, is the key to devel­op­ing high achiev­ers in school and in life. This sees the world pop­u­lated by two types of learn­ers: those who view intel­li­gence as a fixed trait, and those who think intel­li­gence is mal­leable and can be devel­oped through edu­ca­tion and hard work. If you fall into the lat­ter group, then set­backs stem from a lack of effort, not abil­ity, and can be reme­died by more effort.

♦ ♦ ♦

N
Free Rice →

Build your vocab­u­lary and help end world hunger. At the heart is a sim­ple vocab­u­lary game and spon­sors who adver­tise on the site; rice is dis­trib­uted by the United Nations World Food Pro­gram. Nearly 4 bil­lion grain of rice have been donated since Octo­ber 7, 2007. Just brilliant.

♦ ♦ ♦

N
Cristina Nehring on What’s Wrong With the American Essay →

As a lit­er­ary form, the essay is like a plas­tic cow – a trans­par­ent cow – with organs and bones that do not seem to fit together but in the end lead to a sat­is­fy­ing whole, well, cow. Not really says Cristina Nehring on Whats Wrong With the Amer­i­can Essay: “If we must com­pare the essay to a beast, let us com­pare it rather to a wild­cat. Let us give it back its tooth and nail, its fangs and claws; let us allow it to take risks, to pre­tend it has nine lives. Let us enfran­chise it to dis­turb us. It is not Orleans incar­cer­ated cow we need today, but Rilkes pan­ther break­ing the bars of his cage.”

♦ ♦ ♦