Rob’s Comments (group member since Mar 02, 2013)

Rob’s comments from the EDCMOOC group.

Thanks for suggesting the questions.

I saw parallels between precrime and changes in the law in the UK and elsewhere over the last couple of decades: control orders for terrorist suspects, indefinite detention for people considered to have "dangerous and severe personality disorders".

Also was musing about the similarities between the processing of the precogs' reports uttering and the mass surveillance revealed by Snowden et al, which is only of any value if sifted through data-analytical models (how many 'majority reports' there?). There seemed to be little skepticism on the part of the officers in the story about the output of there models... an over-reliance on technology.

I'd like to work these thoughts into Q4, if that's OK with everyone.

This is a "Young Adult" novel so although it is well written, there is a healthy dose of over-explanation (as you might expect). I might be showing my age here, but it did irk me that Marcus (or Doctorow) felt he could trust the reader to get the oblique "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" reference but needed to explain a quote from "2001: A Space Odyssey" to death.

While Little Brother was concerned with the "war on terror", Patriot Act and Guantanamo, the background to this novel is the Occupy Movement, Wikileaks and the age of austerity. It seemed to be setting out to inspire, more than to teach, so not so much on the details of TOR or cryptography. Because of the focus on movements against the system, I felt that Homeland was less bleak than its predecessor (unlike Kathy Ceceri at wired.com).

A compelling read, which I finished in a few days. The edition I read contained an essay at the end by Aaron Swartz, which I found poignant. Highly recommended.

Should the machine be taken literally, or mainly be seen as a metaphor for many ways of alienating us from direct experience?

"Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation."

"Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly the garment had seemed heavenly at first, shot with colours of culture, sewn with the threads of self-denial. And heavenly it had been so long as man could shed it at will and live by the essence that is his soul, and the essence, equally divine, that is his body."

Thanks for that, Robert.

Jen Ross has also written a review of feedback from the course.

The illegal "Hurd boxes" are a reference to the Hurd kernel, part of the attempt by the GNU project to create a free operating system. This operating system today largely runs on the Linux kernel.

There have been a number of attempts by governments and corporations to enforce something like the "Secure Hardware Environment", and control what users can do with their computers. Cory Doctorow's 2011 talk on The comping war on general computation is a useful exploration of these issues.

Are you with Ellen or her grandfather? Are we "brisker and more alive" because of our society based on competition? Would literature in an egalitarian, peaceful society lack a "spirit of adventure"? And would that be a bad thing? Or can you imagine living in a society in which it is the "world we live in which interests us; the world of which we are a part, and which we can never love too much"?

Hammond expresses the view that "children thrust into schools when they had reached an age conventionally supposed to be the due age... means ignoring the fact of growth, bodily and mental[.] No one could come out of such a mill uninjured" and contrasts to it a view of what we would call lifelong learning: "[W]e are no longer hurried, and the information lies ready to each one’s hand when his own inclinations impel him to seek it. In this as in other matters we have become wealthy: we can afford to give ourselves time to grow.”

Is this a realistic view of education? Would a more relaxed approach to literacies result in a healthier learning culture, or more widespread illiteracy.

Throughout News from Nowhere, it has to be said that the depiction of (at least) 19th Century technology is very negative. Underground trains are described as "that vapour bath of hurried and discontented humanity" and there are many comments about the ugliness of iron bridges and modern building.

In this vision of the future, the predominant building materials appear to be wood and stone. Land transport is by horse and cart - trains, and even bicyles, are absent. Printing presses are mentioned in a number of places, but the state-of-the-art of of Victorian Information Technology, the Electric Telegraph, is not. Morris praises Mediaeval aesthetics, and the predominant building materials his society appear to be wood and stone.

On the other hands, there are hints of high technology - Hammond tells Guest "all work which would be irksome to do by hand is done by immensely improved machinery", and later they encounter a "force-barge" on the river and Dick hints at the existence of force-vehicles on land.

So, are Morris' views a reaction against "modern" technology, or something more progressive? What (do you think) his view of the web would have been?

Anne wrote: "... Shall we select some quotes or focus on any discussion? "

Something we need to decide. Do we want someone each month to act as discussion leader, or just leave it open? On the MOOC, the course team did put up some discussion points, but then the debate branched out.

There are a couple of discussion points I had in mind, but I was going to wait until I've re-read the book to put those up on the forum.

pingish wrote: "sounds good to me!
3. which platforms do we use on Apr 1?
~ Twitter?
~ Google Hangout?
~ ?"

I suppose I was mainly thinking of using the group forum here for discussion (it allows you to have a "folder" per book or topic). But a live chat of some sort sounds good as well - my preference would be Twitter (possibly keeping the #edcmchat/#edcmooc tags going, or getting one of our own), but I'm open to being persuaded.

I've added a few books to the group's "to-read" bookshelf - these are just suggestions, so feel free to add your own. At the moment, you have to click on the link to view them - they won't appear as "upcoming reads" on the group's main page until we set a start date for them:

http://www.goodreads.com/group/booksh...

I've also created a "what shall we read next?" poll, with a few of these items on it. You can add your own "write-in" suggestion, if there's anything you're particularly keen to read and discuss.

http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/79...

I would like to propose "News from Nowhere" as the first book. The course material was a little light on Utopian visions, and this is one of the classics.

It should be easy to get hold of in print, and also can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg (among other places).

Hope this is OK with people - suggest an alternative if not.

I think so, and a chunky journal article might be the "book of the month" occasionally. I think we should generally stick to open-access material, though, as some people might not be members of an academic library.

I've added a couple of books to the group's shelf to get us started - Little Brother and News from Nowhere. They have the advantage of both being in print, and (legally) available for free download as eBooks, so I thought they'd be good ones to get started with. Feel free to add others.

I think it would be be useful to have some ground-rules. General discussion is good, but we'll be likely to get more out of it if we have, say, one book a month that we make an effort to read so we can then all discuss it.

What think you?