Comments for Theoreti.ca

Comment on Sperberg-McQueen: Making a Synthesizer Sound like an Oboe by cmsmcq

cmsmcq — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:43:52 +0000

You write “I can’t help asking if text really does have structure or if it is in the eye of the reader.” How do we tell the difference between those two possibilities?

Comment on New Realities in Higher Education by Geoffrey

Geoffrey — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:15:39 +0000

My sense is that in North America people are being discouraged from getting PhDs as the perception is that there are no jobs.

Comment on New Realities in Higher Education by lvs004

lvs004 — Wed, 13 May 2009 03:47:41 +0000

Well in India the recession is having the positive effect of pushing bright youngsters towards a career in teaching. Univs are getting more faculty applicants and potential phd applicants than ever before.

Comment on IBM Watson: Question Answering for Jeopardy by lvs004

lvs004 — Wed, 13 May 2009 03:44:41 +0000

The test for intelligence proposed by Turing comprises an open domain question answering system that can fool a human into thinking that the system is human. Now Turing thought we would have such systems by 2000. If you look at Watson or Wolfram Alpha, you will see we are still far from that goal. But I think we will get there and these are the first steps.

you may find my blog of interest:
http://indradhanush-laal.blogspot.com

Comment on Hacking as a Way of Knowing – Digital History by mightywombat

mightywombat — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:23:04 +0000

Thanks for this interesting post! I have wondered, aside from my impending EE degree, what the attraction is to electronic devices and whatnot I see sitting on the side of the road. It also explains why I’ve got a pile of “trash” printers waiting to be disassembled and made into who-knows-what… Robots, CNC machines, or a full parts bin, it all appeals to me as something that ought not be thrown away. Hopefully I can help it live up to its potential! I’ll be reading!

Comment on Hacking as a Way of Knowing – Digital History by matt.ratto

matt.ratto — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:26:27 +0000

Hi Geoffrey – thanks for the link to the critical making lab site. I really like your last point here, about new technologies opening up space for personal fabrication. I think things like the arduino and other open hardware tech and their related communities make it possible for people from a variety of perspectives, skill sets, and backgrounds to engage with technologies in novel ways and to take a more active role in forming our material environment. In my lab, for instance, we’re using the arduino (and hopefully, soon things like the reprap,) to explore the relationship between society and information technology and to do so in a way that links up material production with critical reflection. Hope to talk to you more about this soon!

Comment on MK12: Quantum of Solace Interface by Peter Organisciak

Peter Organisciak — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:23:34 +0000

I’m reminded of Microsoft’s imaginary vision of interfaces in 2019 (http://flowingdata.com/2009/03/02/microsofts-vision-for-2019-is-data-visualization/). Really cool.

Comment on PressThink: Rosen’s Flying Seminar In The Future of News by Peter Organisciak

Peter Organisciak — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:01:40 +0000

Though public radio in the States is often part-private in its funding, I would say it is of a very high quality. The content is as respected as fully publicly-funded radio (NPR has the second and third most listened to programs in the country) and I would be careful in suggesting that no one in the country understands the potential of publicly-funded broadcasting.

Comment on Ruecker’s One Minute Movies by Peter Organisciak

Peter Organisciak — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:56:08 +0000

I find this medium to be an wonderfully succinct and understandable way of conveying instruction online. I found Stan’s videos really useful in trying to explain the Mandala Browser recently. Along the same lines, when I was recently learning Ruby on Rails I started with a book and a video series, and the books seemed useless next to the screencasts.

Comment on A Collaborative Research Commons by Geoffrey

Geoffrey — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:24:34 +0000

You are right that the business of how we deal with cuts is distracting. Perhaps I should just stick to discussing research models for everyone and avoid polemics about funding.

Interestingly crowdsourcing could be said to depend on good cyberinfrastructure (either through universities or from dot.coms) – thus it could be said that the issue is where funding should go. Special funding for projects or general funding for universal infrastructure. The library costs, but none of us apply for funding to get the books we need – it is universal.