Saturday, October 02, 2010

Cyberspace

I find myself on a writing assignment about cyberspace and digital identity. I suppose that having had a digital identity for almost 25 years, I must be somewhat qualified to write about it; this is similar to the state of a man who, having had gallstones, is entitled to write about the experience.

What surprises me is the plethora of stuff people have written about that space since Gibson coined the term in Burning Chrome. It is an informational space, like any other; it is a social space, like any other.

And yet, in both ways, not like. It overcomes distance and other barriers, it creates illusions better. It is not like radio, television, print, or film. It is not like letter-writing or financial transactions. It can subsume all of these things and create new spaces, new properties.

But this is true of any technology. A new technology is a catalyst for human thought. It opens up new conceptual spaces, and creates new sciences of human application. It changes the possibilities of sociology, anthropology, psychology. It even makes us extend our grasp of philosophy.

And this is what cyberspace is. A technology-created space, like any other. And of course, like any other, not like any another.

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Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Integrated Programmes (Part IV): Towards a Golden Age

In 1972, the official press release for the Apollo XVII mission included this sentence: "The colors of the emblem are red, white and blue, the colors of the U.S. flag; with the addition of gold, to symbolize the golden age of space flight that will begin with this Apollo 17 lunar landing."

It was a horribly cynical statement, even by American standards. Two years earlier, it had been decided that the 17th Apollo mission would be the last. Man would stop at the moon; operations would be suspended for the forseeable future. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that the myth of the 'golden age of space flight' would evolve from the history that ended on 19 December 1972, the day the America command module splashed down in the Pacific, off Samoa.

I remember the sensations of the 21st century, as Integrated Programmes launched all over Atlantis. The Argonaut left in 2004, Gnomus arrived. We were all hoping that our 'Apollo 17 mission' would usher in a golden age of education. And in that year, after five years of planning, it all began to fall apart at the Citadel.

The programme was being driven towards accountability and a strong theoretical basis by two members of the working group (or Commissariat, as some of us joked). However, some people realised they would be sidelined because of their lack of one or both of these elements. They began a counter-revolution.

Using the structures and terminology prepared for the new programme, they began to institute a newer programme that looked exactly like the old one, but had been gutted of its main systems. In the messy coup that followed, the intelligentsia were purged from the Commissariat and the true Stalinist era began. The golden age had been erased and replaced with an age of steel.

Nobody outside the Citadel noticed. After all, the advertising material was still the same. Yet, as careful examination shows, the advertising hype no longer matched the programme as deployed. Teacher development for the IP ended in 2004, with subsequent development completely outsourced (except for one last-gasp training effort nominally led by Iron Man in late 2007).

Meanwhile, at the Gryphon Academy, big plans were afoot. The Sith Lord in residence called me up and asked for my opinions. Treading on dangerous ground, I offered some. After all, it was not as if I was doing useful work anymore at the Citadel. It was the beginning of my life as a consultant.

Back at the Citadel, the main idea had crystallized. Instead of teaching the students, the focus would be on producing results. That sounds odd, but you who read this should understand that the two need not necessary be coupled together.

There are some decoupling strategies: 1) you can make the students teach themselves, by dumping huge amounts of material on them and insinuating that any real IP student should know all of it; 2) you can focus on meeting examination rubrics as disconnected objectives rather than as a whole; 3) you can take in students likely to succeed and maintain that likelihood till the endpoint arrives. There are some others, but these are the main ones.

Up to the time I left the Citadel, I had not seen a serious official discussion of the theoretical basis of teaching, the methodology of teaching, nor the art of classroom teaching, in the Citadel. It was assumed that teachers were proficient, and if not, that the system could compensate by administrative fiat.

Accordingly, teachers were assessed largely by political utility, under the guise of 'pastoral care' (which meant how well they got along with the right people and projected the right image) and 'co-curricular activities' (which meant the ability to win gold medals and complete projects). There was no open appraisal; such a thing would have exposed certain deficiencies.

This was why the 'Apollo 17 mission' of the Citadel's IP heralded a golden age that would result in space shuttles and Skylab rather than in spaceships and starships. We ended up with an orbiting experimental station, instead of Moonbase Alpha — although at times, especially in the basement staff room, it felt like the latter.

To cut a long story short, I stayed behind in Samoa. The life was better there.

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Monday, September 06, 2010

Integrated Programmes (Part III): Shuttles, Not Spaceships

You will probably have noticed by now that my posts on the Integrated Programmes of Atlantis have titles reminiscent of 1960s American space programmes. This is true for a very good reason. I grew up in that era; I was two years old when the Apollo 11 mission delivered Eagle to the moon, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on it. "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." The memes are still alive for me.

Similarly, the launch of the Atlantean Integrated Programmes occasioned much fanfare. When the Temple of the Flaming Book consolidated under its Chinese name on the Hill of Tin, allying with the Ladies of the Southern Ocean, it was a big thing (and a very clever move by the latter, for those who were observing closely). When the Hall of the Gryphons reunited with their sisters to form the Gryphon Academy, it was a big thing (and the Jade-Green Hill is now covered with a sprawling campus in black, white and green, although the sisters remain at a distance). But the convoluted mess that evolved organically from the Citadel of Wyverns and its titular masters of methodology was quite something else.

The thing is that everything was launched as if on Boeing Saturn V rockets. We were promised spaceships, but we ended up with shuttles. From the promise of deep blue ocean navies, we ended up fishing along the littoral in tiny boats (and one fast schooner, which I will get to some time in the next few posts). What do I mean, and how did this come to be? Let me bring you behind the scenes.

On the evening of 28 October 1999, the Argonaut and I drafted the first proposal for the Wyvern Programme. It was entitled 'More, Not Less' and it was a direct riff off the 1997 'Teach Less, Learn More' slogan. In that first draft, we were thinking big, and were encouraged to do so. In our minds, we had nothing less than a grand unification theory, in which every member of the Grand Congregation would have a role to play.

By 2002, things had bogged down. (Of course, by then our names had been removed from the front of the proposal and somebody else's name was on it.) We sat around 'writing songs that voices never shared.' The Hierarchs had been mulling over our proposal for more than a year. And then the Thaumaturge summoned us for two meetings, in April and again in July.

In those meeting, he chastised the Grand Inquisitor for pusillanimous behaviour. He wondered aloud why we had so constrained our great vision. The Thaumaturge was himself a Wyvern, and you could tell that his patience was wearing thin. I watched the Grand Inquisitor sweat. He blustered a bit. I continued taking notes.

We found ourselves in a mighty city upon the Southern Ocean in March 2003. That was when I was stunned when the Grand Inquisitor told me to begin preparing a course in the humanities. It was the beginning of the end—not because the humanities are less than the sciences, but because they are greater, and he had just made me a very large target.

Some time after, we began on the project codenamed 'In His Service'. The original vision was to create a gateway course that would prepare all our students for gainful work in any humanities discipline. After planning a broad and challenging outline, the draft went to committee. I will never forget what happened next.

One by one, various teachers complained the material was too difficult to prepare, and that the students would not be able to handle it. Others complained it was too different from the ordinary courses already being taught. And then, I was accused of empire-building. The course was shredded, reduced, and a new chairperson appointed. The rockets were going to launch shuttles, not spaceships.

The other project I worked on was codenamed 'Capsule'. The Grand Inquisitor had almost named it 'iPod', but we had had to tell him about the penalties for infringement of trademark. He wanted to know who had dared to use that name. We sniggered.

Unfortunately, the other project was taken over by philosophers who fancied themselves mathematicians. Even more unfortunately, Iron Man, who was nominally in charge of the project, found himself blindsided by other people's enthusiasms. I have only one thing to say, and it is found in the writings of St Augustine: "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." Not that I have anything personal against most mathematicians, you understand.

And so, we entered into the Dark Ages, bearing bright torches that we hoped would illuminate the way. And they did, despite the huge amounts of smoke they gave off.

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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Space Machine

When you set up scheduling software to create a timetable for an organization, you have to first define all the entities and their properties. According to the timetabling guide I wrote, you begin with stuff you are sure will be there — classrooms and their capacities (and availabilities, since not all classrooms are available at all times); other facilities such as canteens (and how many classes ought to be free at any given time); timeslots (bearing in mind that people should have breaks and that school must come to an end within a reasonable time).

Then, as the CEO makes up his mind about how many classes to have, and how many students will be in each class, and whether certain departments (ahem) should be allowed to split classes so that each teacher gets a class of about 10-15 students instead of 30, you colour-code everything.

What was unusual about preparing for 2006 was that nobody knew how many classrooms would be available; in fact, nobody knew where some of those classrooms were, and whether there would be equipment, air-conditioning, or even desks and chairs when you got to the place where a classroom was supposed to be. Even more unusual was the assertion made by a member of senior staff that students only needed a 20-minute break between classes.

Well, there's nothing wrong with a 20-minute break. I used to have breaks that short. However, the new school was a massive place. I used a pedometer to find out effectively how big — and I found I was walking 5 km at least, every day. Somehow, space had been folded into a rather peculiar topology which looked big, felt small, and was even bigger than expected. Ho ho; students were always late for classes, unless they weren't and their teachers were.

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Whose World? What Cup? (Day 06a)

It was not the first time the Swiss have kept their enemies at bay and triumphed through force of arms. Most people forget that the Swiss dominated Europe in the Middle Ages, fielding the largest and most technically trained army. For about 500 years now, Swiss mercenaries have been in high demand as specialists and valuable commodities.

And last evening, they scrambled one past the Spaniards and held on for an historic 1-0 victory in South Africa. Perhaps the CH on their car plates ('Confoederatio Helvetica') will some day also stand for 'Championship Holders'. A Swiss dream, perhaps? Who knows, in this odd iteration of the World Cup.

Later, Uruguay walloped the hosts 3-0 after South Africa had goalkeeper Khune sent off (I think it was harsh; a striker tripped over his stationary boot). Yes, it was mostly about Diego Forlan, as expected. Uruguay would have looked dangerous but not lethal without him.

At least some things are getting interesting.

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Friday, December 05, 2008

Misplacement

Sometimes you lose something. If that is the case, it is gone. You might have to find it. If you find it, it is no longer lost. You can lose many things, and some things cannot be found again. These may or may not include life, love, liberty, and other things you cannot really find around Christmas (since it is the season of 'no-L' haha).

But sometimes, things are merely misplaced in space or time. You may eventually find your lost love. You may eventually regain your lost life. You may shift a little bit to the west or across the seas, and find the missing person or missing thing or whatever else you are missing.

Sometimes, though, it is you who are misplaced. It is hard to find yourself if you don't know that this is the case.

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