Just Differently Intelligent...

History of Technology at Sheridan

I went out to the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning today. It's out in Oakville, west of Toronto. Commuting. Ugh. Got to the train station at 8:35 for a 9:43 train. But there was a 15 minute line up for train tickets. Missed it. However, after getting a ticket,and having an hour to wait, I went up to the great hall at Union Station. Kenny had sent me an IM last time he was there tosay that there was wireless access. And there is. And it is free. Or seems to be. The network is Bell based, so it maybe recognizing my sympatico account and letting me on. There was a Bell guy there watching me, he'd been installing an internet Kiosk thingy, and he asked me how I was connecting, and was a bit shocked that I could get on, but he too thought it might be because of my sympatico account.

Trains. I like trains. For all too many reasons. They are the great good form of transportation. Though, of course, in Canada, we are punished for taking the trains. Poor and irregular service. And when you do get to a station, it is in the middle of nowhere, and you really need a car to get anywhere from it. Or a bus in this case. I did catch the Oakville transit bus to Sheridan, and got there 15 minutes before I needed to. Sheridan looks very nice, though it seems to be modelled after a shopping centre rather than a university... that is you can't get near the campus unlesss you're willing to wade through a couple of thousand cars. Well modelled after York University. Obviously I have transportation issues on the brain. Don't mind me. I'm a broken record player when it comes to tranportation issues. Sheridan is definately a bright and shiny up and coming Institute. I thought it was more of a college, but obviously not. It's got 'institute of technology' written all over it.

I finally got to meet Dan Zen. I fit in with what appeared to be the manditory departmental dress code: black. I don'tthink that either of us were sure of what to expect from the other, or from the experience, but we both seemed to be willing to 'wing it'. Plugged in my laptop, only to find that I couldn't synch up with one of their two large screens, so we went back to using their system. They did have a bright and shiny touchscreen that allowed me to point and click right on the screen, but I didn't get to make too much use of that. Just a cool building, interesting educators, and an attentive group of students I would rather have spent the afternoon talking with than lecturing to...

Then my mind went blank. And I don't really remember what happened. I call this lecturing. I guess I don't really have room for meta-awareness when I'm trying to get all my synapses firing in syncrhonous orbit. But after an hour, everyone wanted to continue, so I spent another 30 minutes covering what seemed to be the right constellation...

About me:
- computer hostile
- programmer suspicious
- designer demanding
- conceptualizer and creator online learning environments
- http://jasonnolan.net
- Scholar in Res @ KMDI
- Senior Fellow McLuhan Program in culture and tech

New Media?
- Consider the book _New Media: 1740-1915_
Early web... an online community
- What is the net suposed to be?

Why Was the WWW created?
- Network for american military
- able to withstand nuclear attacks

Where to find the old net?

- Ed Krol
- Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet
- http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc1118.html
- The Whole Internet 1992
- OReilly
- Old Web
Browsers
- http://www.dejavu.org/
- Usenet archives et al.
- http://www.archive.org/ wayback machine

How did we communicate on the Internet before the WWW
- ASCII RULED
- talk/IRC - synchronous
- Usenet (uudecode) images
- gopher, FTP - static documents
- telnet
- MUD/MOO polysynchronous
- early chat spaces were MOO-based 'talkers'
- Lost Library of MOO
- Jason's MOO http://projectachieve.net
- development trajectory from MOO > Microsoft
- Pavel Curtis founds LambdaMOO at XeroxParc
- http://lambda.moo.mud.org
- Pavel starts Placeware
- Placeware bought out by Microsoft (summer 2003)
- Microsoft markets Placeware as LiveMeeting

Why are blogs the realization of the net?
- everyone can create
- Internet is still text

Cultural assumptions of the internet
- internet is for everyone
- the tools you are given limit what you can say.
- Hegemony of ASCII paper (http://jasonnolan.net/papers)
dead technologies
- ideas for the future
- medieval illuminated manuscripts > web pages
- public documents
- images and text
- marginalia and comments

Know where the future's coming from
- moos > placeware
- moos > video conferencing
- moos > Multi User online gaming
- moos > COLLIDE - hacking as community

The future of community
- Userdesigned design (UDD)
- flash > UDD
- VRML > UDD
- users > prosumers
- controlling the user to enabling the prosumer
- designers will be designing tools
- designers will design infrastructures
- designers will provide the language for design
- designers will not design passive toys

Hint: the triads of technology
- how can you have an opinion without experience?
- how can you have experience without diverse experience?
- the compleat user has experience on at least 3 platforms
- Unix, Windows, Macintosh
- Photoshop, Fireworks, GraphicConverter
- Dreamweaver, InDesign, raw html coding
- MSword, Wordperfect, AppleWorks
- IRC, ICQ, AIM
- enCoreMOO, MOOcanada, LambdaMOO

The Role of the Delete Key in Blog and Business fears

[Two articles on blogging... I'm wireless at union station, heading out to Sheridan to give a talkon tech. Missed my train.... oops. next one's here.]

The Role of the Delete Key in Blog

Is a blog still a blog if someone else edits it? A recent policy change at The Sacramento Bee has raised questions about whether taking an editor's pen to a Web log before it is published detracts from very nature of Web logs, or "blogs,'' as the online diaries are called.

Why blogs could be bad for business In today's corporate culture, where knowledge is power, the information-sharing capabilities of weblogs may not be entirely welcome, writes Neil McIntosh