I have been a pop science in many forms (since the early 60’s) and cosmology has always been one area I have been fascinated with. Since the advent and seeming explosion of string theory/M theory and all matters relating to emergent aspects of quantum effects in the multiverse, it seems that most of what can find to read is not so much science as philosophical conjecture. Luckily for me, and I hope you, this is still an area which is fascinating to consider.

There’s more to Nothing than We Knew
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/space/cosmologists-try-to-explain-a-universe-springing-from-nothing.html?_r=4&ref=science

Water! 140 Trillion Times Earth’s Oceans–Surrounds a Voracious Black Hole at the Edge of the Universe
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/water-140-trillion-times-earths-oceans-surround-a-voracious-black-hole-at-the-edge-of-the-universe-t.html

"Dark Stars" of the Early Universe –Were They Powered by Antimatter?
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/-dark-stars-of-the-early-universe-where-they-powered-by-antimattter.html

Black Hole "Information Leaks" Hint Gravity May Not be a Fundamental Force of Nature
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/black-hole-physics-hints-that-gravity-may-not-be-a-fundamental-force-of-nature-todays-most-popular.html

The Quantum Universe: Why All That Can Happen Does happen
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/13/the-quantum-universe-brian-cox

The Big Bang for Beginners
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/02/the_big_bang_for_beginners.php

 

In the world of education, I have found three links, which call out the emperor as naked. The first is related to the second in that it is the education PhDs who lead and conduct the college classes leading to certification as a teacher. The volley over the bow, suggesting that the education industry shouldn’t be conducted solely by entrenched academics is one many education college students might consider as they make their way through getting their education degree.

The second article shows some perspectives from graduates of these curricula regarding what they thought of the value of these classes (negligible, mostly),and finally I found someone out there who is willing to throw stones at what might be one of the most sacrosanct sacred cows in the education/web 2.0/cyber revolution movement, namely TED.

I am withholding any sort of judgment regarding these articles, but I am quite curious as to what you, the readers might think about them…

Should Education Reform be led by PhDs?
http://unschoolingrules.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/can-we-still-afford-phdbloat.html

There is an article in InsideHigherEd today called To Limit Debt, Promote Savings. The article suggests that, to reduce the crippling impact of debt on graduates, families should save even more money to pay for ever-more expensive college programs. This kind of thinking and advocacy, I thought, had to be the result of Ph.D.’s. Sure enough, both authors were part of that club.
Throughout history, there have been very powerful guilds. Masons and Swiss Watch Makers are two examples. They tightly perpetuate, refine, and market a skill set that meets a need, balancing internal quality controls and consistency of members while dealing swiftly with competitive organizations and alternative approaches.
One of the largest and most powerful guilds today is the Academic PhDs. People who get their PhDs, rather than proving and honing a creative intellectualism, instead practice a highly specific skill set, including what input they value, what methodology they use, and what output they produce.

Are Teacher Preparation Programs Dangerously Irrelevant?
http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2012/02/are-teacher-preparation-programs-dangerously-irrelevant-guest-post.html

In my first year of teaching a veteran leaned over during a particularly dry workshop and said blandly, "If you spend a whole day in these things and walk away with even one idea, it was worth the day… Today is not our day." Cynical? Yes, but true. After 15 years as a teacher and principal, this veteran’s words came back to me twice a year during professional development (PD) workshops. For good PD the wisdom was decidedly more uplifting.

Yet, there has to be a better way. Doesn’t there?

Were you trained to teach in a teacher education program? What training most equipped you to teach like you do?

The results were striking. Stop for a moment and consider the following numbers from 39 of our award winning teachers.

• 10% credit their primary training to a traditional four year certification program.
• 21% credit their primary training to a hobby, game, or interest.
• 33% credit their primary training to another job/profession.
• 36% credit their primary training to another field of study.

• Only 31% completed a traditional four year certification program.
• 46% were employed in other fields or left the teaching profession for a time.
• 67% were trained in other fields of practice before getting a certificate in a 1-2 year program.

• Only 10%, or 4 of 39, affirmed that their official ‘teacher training’ was relevant to their current practice. The rest were inspired elsewhere.

Against TED
http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/against-ted

Started as a one-off conference nearly 30 years ago, the TED (“Technology, Entertainment, and Design”) phenomenon has grown to two large annual events and many smaller regional TEDx events, focusing mostly but not exclusively on technology. TED has posted more than 1,100 videos of the talks online. By my count, 89 of them have achieved more than one million views. Indeed, TED has gained an almost cultish following, where the topics addressed become the water-cooler topics for knowledge workers and the creative class. Remember how the Steve Jobs talk about how to live was topic of conversation the day after he died.

What began as something spontaneous and unique has today become a parody of itself. What was exceptional and emergent in the realm of ideas has been bottled, packaged, and sold back to us over and over again. The whole TED vibe has come to resemble a sales pitch.

It’s tempting to dismiss the “Web 3.0!” “Wave of the future!” atmosphere around TED as simply a humorous, contrived grasp at trying too hard to sound like the next big thing. But it’s not so easy to laugh it away when we remember that the words chosen, the manner of discourse, and even the design of the events all have political implications. TED’s popularity means that it plays an important role in how we understand the link between technology and society, and the corporate, evangelical, noninclusive, and ultimately out-of-touch vision it promotes needs to be replaced.

 

It seems that the iPad has been out long enough for developers to create some ‘real’ music creation apps. The first I have here is Ion Audio’s Guitarlink Air, this is yet another guitar interface for computers in general which connects the guitar, via WiFi to: your PC, Mac, iOS device, or what have you.

As a guitar player, I can really see some big convenience factor with a connection like this!

Next for today is Auria, the first REAL DAW for the iPad. This (approximately) $50.00 app will allow an iPad 2 user to playback all 48 tracks (24 tracks for the iPad 1…). It also has a variety VST plugins and (potential) virtual instruments. With a DAW like this, you could actually record at 24 bits and create music in an almost professional manner.

Go (almost) cable-free with Ion Audio’s Guitarlink Air

http://www.gizmag.com/ion-audio-guitarlink-air/21379

We’ve previously featured a number of devices that give players a low latency interface to the world of device-based digital tone manipulation, but each one poses something of a risk for those who like to rock out. To reduce the chances of a connected tablet or laptop flying across the room as you twirl the guitar around your body Malmsteen-style, Ion Audio has developed a wireless system called Guitarlink Air that severs the physical link between device and instrument common to products like Apogee’s JAM or the AcousticLink from Alesis.

There’s still at least one short cable to contend with when using Ion’s new instrument interface. The Guitarlink Air system’s compact and lightweight transmitter can be clipped onto a guitar strap and the cable running from it plugged into the electric guitar’s 6.3 mm output jack, in much the same way as the wireless systems that allow players so much freedom on stage. Powered by standard AAA batteries, the unit sends the output using Ion’s exclusive 2.4 GHz low-latency wireless signal to a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop, smartphone or tablet running the user’s favorite digital tone apps such as AmpliTube and Garageband.

Ion has thoughtfully included free Guitar Rig LE software, and the transmitter features a mini-USB port and output jacks – which means that you can connect the device direct to an amplifier if you so wish, or plug in some headphones for some quiet practice.

The Guitarlink Air is set for a June release for around US$60.

GUITARLINK AIR
http://www.ionaudio.com/products/details/guitarlinkair

Auria
http://auriaapp.com/Products/auria

With the ability to play 48 mono or stereo 24bit/44.1 kHz tracks simultaneously, record up to 24 of those tracks simultaneously (through any supported USB multichannel audio interface), and edit and mix with familiar tools and full parameter automation, it’s clear Auria sets a new standard for iPad multitracking.

What’s more, Auria’s 64-bit Double Precision architecture ensures ample headroom for plug-in processing and mix summing, transforming your iPad into a recording, and mixing system with sound quality that rivals most DAWs.

The depth is in the details. Like customizable pan laws. Like meters that are selectable between VU and RMS. Like full delay compensation for all tracks, including aux sends and subgroups. Complete with a vintage-inspired channel strip on every channel, a dedicated master channel strip, VST plug-ins engineered by renowned makers such as PSPaudioware, Overloud, Fab Filter and Drumagog, and support for Dropbox, Soundcloud, AAF, and MP3, Auria truly raises the bar for recording and mixing on the iPad.

 

As a simple barometer of how the personal computer industry has changed, I can recall, only five years ago that the tech online press covered the latest offerings from Dell and HP slavishly. Now I rarely see anything about desktop computers and other than the latest ‘ultrabooks’ coming out, the vast majority of technical and general coverage of the computers we might use is based upon whatever Apple has out today.

This is a fascinating situation…We are the people who have lived through a huge cultural paradigm shift (the adoption of the computer into almost every aspect of our society). Now we see some continued shifting as the technology has liberated the mundane desktop computer (sitting in everyone’s den or family room) towards laptops, and even more tellingly, towards smartphones and tablets (read: iPads).

What we have here is somewhat like the advent of the printing press (the big change) followed by the invention of the paperback book (in comparison a change in habits, and some changes in behavior…). We might be seeing the end of the home desktop PC as the source of personal computing power.

I saw in the news today that Microsoft is laying of personal and consolidating a number of business divisions. For most of the late 90’s through the late 00’s, Microsoft had been the fall guy for cheap jokes about corporate monolithic views and size. Now when Apple and Google (so far) have surpassed this older giant, it causes me to wonder about all the nature of the technology business.

As a quick take on the present, it is an obvious fact that the majority of people on the earth who use online access…do it through cell phones. Tablet adoption in the USA is growing at an ever faster clip, while the traditional PC industry is seeing its first declines in sales (ever).

This certainly looks like some huge changes are taking place…

Apple Dominates PC Market by destroying it
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/02/01/apple-dominates-pc-market-by-destroying-it/

Laptop Sales Overtake Traditional Desktop PC Sales over Holiday

http://www.switched.com/2009/01/09/laptops-overtake-traditional-desktop-pcs/

Tablets to Overtake Desktop Sales By 2015, Laptops Will Still Reign
http://www.inquisitr.com/76157/tablets-to-overtake-desktop-sales-by-2015-laptops-will-still-reign/

The end of the desktop PC?

www.riehler.com/the-end-of-the-desktop-pc/

The end of the desktop PC (seriously)

http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/20/technology/desktop_PC_death/index.htm

World Internet Users and Population Stats

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

 

I like to look over Physics news, and to be honest, there are few articles covering elementary particles these days. It’s all about string theory, M theory, thoughts about before the big bang, gravitons, superluminal particles, and assorted other flavors of the week. I have a couple interesting links covering what could better be called science speculation (and rather unlikely speculation too!) which are fascinating ideas to mull over.

One in ten million neutrons could disappear into another universe and matter swapping between universes could be initiated with a laser induced system.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/01/one-in-ten-million-neutrons-could.html?m=0

What if every electron in the universe was all the same exact particle?
http://io9.com/5876966/what-if-every-electron-in-the-universe-was-all-the-same-exact-particle

Since this is a Physics post, I had to throw in a few other articles worth looking over…

What Happened Before the Big Bang? The New Philosophy of Cosmology
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/what-happened-before-the-big-bang-the-new-philosophy-of-cosmology/251608

Unknown "Structures" Not Tugging on the Universe After All?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120120-dark-flow-universe-multiverse-supernovas-space-science/?source=link_tw20120120news-unknownstructures

The Quest to Solve the Hardest Math Problem in History (and the Minds that were Lost Along the Way)
http://www.neatorama.com/2011/11/25/the-quest-to-solve-the-hardest-math-problem-in-history-and-the-minds-that-were-lost-along-the-way

 

Last week I threw my hat into the ring of pundits who presume to be able to foretell the future (hah!). Here are links to a few news articles (the BBC, and the Independent, which present predictions for the next 100 years. I thought my post was treading on some pretty thin ice, but 100 years? I think that you could posit almost anything and have about the same probability results…

Nonetheless, this is a great article to think about …what would you add?

Twenty top predictions for life 100 years from now

http://t.co/QYzsUAVN

7. We will all be wired to computers to make our brains work faster

IP: Likelihood 10/10. We can expect this as soon as 2050 for many people. By 2075, most people in the developed world will use machine augmentation of some sort for their brains and, by the end of the century, pretty much everyone will. If someone else does this, you will have to compete.

18. Sovereign nation states will cease to exist and there will be one world government

PT: Great try! However, I think that the trend is in the direction of more sovereign nations rather than fewer. In the coming years, corporations or wealthy private citizens will attempt to use earth-moving technologies to build their own semi-sovereign entities in international waters.

IP: Likelihood 2/10.

What will life be like 100 years from now?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/what-will-life-be-like-100-years-from-now-423462.html

 

I have just finished an externally imposed hiatus from this blog. Somehow, my WordPress installation was corrupted while upgrading to the latest version. The net result is that I have been forced to screw around with the Htaccess file, the database, reinstalling WordPress, and looking through as much code as I could find on my site… The good news and the obvious news is that I have succeeded in getting this blog back up (self evident alert!).

Now that I am getting things back in order, I can see that some of the changes I have been creating in this blog in the last month have worked well enough so that I will start to cut down the amount of online curation I have been presenting over the last several months. I find that having a Twitter feed is a much more efficient way to present this sort of ‘found information’. As a result, check out the Twitter widget I have on the on the blog (and if you really are bored, consider following my Twitter account!).

I like the idea of online curation, and have been mulling over what this may turn into over some time. I also have been considering that this simple presentation of found information. Ideas related to intellectual property on the internet are pretty diverse already, and the growth of this sort of ‘journalism’ may well change the way we all deal with IP.

I find this interesting, but not to the point where I want to continue with my own personal curation site…I have done enough, and the ‘near death’ experience this blog had a few days ago forced me to consider what I want to do with this blog. And curation was not anywhere near the top of the list.

I have some ideas about creating my own content related to things not on the internet. I have some projects that may be of value for others involved in home electronics experimenting, music production, and writing code. I will be slowly weaning this blog from so much of the ‘interesting link’ sorts of posts, and start to present some of my own projects for you to consider.

A couple years ago, on one of my first few posts on this log, I had a post labeled ‘the 95 theses’, the actual content of the post is not too important (at least to this post), but I feel like I may have just written a few more entries into this list…

 

I use the term ‘four year old questions’ to signify questions which are so obvious, yet elusive to answer, that most adults shy away from them. We have all considered these questions…before we had this sort of whimsical curiosity drummed out of us. As a thought experiment, try to see how many of them you can come up with!

1. Why are there 24 hours in a day?

a. Why is a day divided into 24 hours?
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=594

2. Why are snowflakes hexagonal?

a. Why do snowflakes always form in hexagons?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081029081512AAqXWCs

3. Why does Ice float?

a. Why does ice float in liquid water?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090824220139AAPWDCs

4. Why is the sky blue?

a. Why is the sky blue?
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/atmospheric/sky.htm

Questions Kids Ask!
http://www.faqkids.com

 

This is the time of year for big lists of what the future may bring us. I’ve read, not hundreds, but at least tens of these sorts of articles during the last month. So I decided to make my own list of things and ideas, which may very well be in our short to medium term futures. I haven’t numbered this list, in that some of these things may be in our view very soon, and other items may take a decade (or more) to come to our horizon.

First off, I will mention some of the latest buzz words I’ve seen in print:

· Big data:

This relates to the use of huge datasets for retail and scientific uses, as well as the implied nature of networking that this new term needs. Think of this as the internet on steroids.

· Curation

This is the modern term for redacted and digested information for you to peruse (think of a futuristic readers digest…). The ways in which this new form of media develop will likely have a negative impact upon the status quo of media (declining newspaper, magazine, and network TV as arbiters of our social reality).

And its antecedents, relating to discursive versus textual intellectual life

See: the Gutenberg Parenthesis

· The internet of things

One way to look at this would be to consider the iPhone 4s’s Siri app…except installed in your refrigerator…

· Social networking and what I can really mean (destroying distance into merely personal distance). This also may equate to the sense of disconnect which so many of us feel (replacing real interaction with virtual interaction can be merely a short term ‘fix’?).

· The consequences of networking (ala the internet) are still percolating through our culture and we haven’t seen the end of this (by far). This may be the underlying current to everything on this list, big data, the internet of things, social networking, etc.

· Soon it is possible that the personal home computer may be seen as a transitional technology, since there is already motion towards embedding ever more computing power and technology into the appliances and things we use (including cars, home control, and security).

With most people moving into mobile computing space for interaction the traditional keyboard/mouse paradigm may disappear sooner than you might imagine

· We will see ever more digital convergence of personal technology. Separate eReaders, cell phones, MP3 players, smart phones, NetBooks, iPads, and any other tablets will continue to merge capabilities.

We now have ‘smart’ phones, smart ‘TV’s’, and will soon have ‘smart’ cars, household appliances, and many more forms of complex technology in our lives.

· How soon before we will start to presume that everybody has complete online access (via personal technology) which will effectively become ‘extra-somatic’ memory and give us increased abilities?

With regard to some of the posts I have written about school technology (uses and misuses), what does this do for teaching and learning when traditional ‘learning of facts’ is now profoundly redundant?

 

I have been on the search for internet memes and buzz words lately, and the term ‘big data’ has to be near the top of the heap…right now. I have a few links that might help you understand what this is and what it may mean for you in the near future:

To Know, but Not Understand: David Weinberger on Science and Big Data
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/to-know-but-not-understand-david-weinberger-on-science-and-big-data/250820

In 1963, Bernard K. Forscher of the Mayo Clinic complained in a now famous letter printed in the prestigious journal Science that scientists were generating too many facts. Titled Chaos in the Brickyard, the letter warned that the new generation of scientists was too busy churning out bricks — facts — without regard to how they go together. Brickmaking, Forscher feared, had become an end in itself. “And so it happened that the land became flooded with bricks. … It became difficult to find the proper bricks for a task because one had to hunt among so many. … It became difficult to complete a useful edifice because, as soon as the foundations were discernible, they were buried under an avalanche of random bricks.”

If science looked like a chaotic brickyard in 1963, Dr. Forscher would have sat down and wailed if he were shown the Global Biodiversity Information Facility at GBIF.org. Over the past few years, GBIF has collected thousands of collections of fact-bricks about the distribution of life over our planet, from the bacteria collection of the Polish National Institute of Public Health to the Weddell Seal Census of the Vestfold Hills of Antarctica. GBIF.org is designed to be just the sort of brickyard Dr. Forscher deplored — information presented without hypothesis, theory, or edifice — except far larger because the good doctor could not have foreseen the networking of brickyards.

Indeed, networked fact-based brickyards are a growth industry. For example, at ProteomeCommons.org you’ll find information about the proteins specific to various organisms. An independent project by a grad student, Proteome Commons makes available almost 13 million data files, for 12.6 terabytes of information, the data come from scientists from around the world, and are made available to everyone, free. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey — under the modest tag line mapping the Universe — has been gathering and releasing maps of the skies gathered from 25 institutions around the world. Its initial survey, completed in 2008 after eight years of work, published information about 230 million celestial objects, including 930,000 galaxies; each galaxy contains millions of stars, so this brickyard may grow to a size where we have trouble naming the number. The best known of the new data brickyards, the Human Genome Project, in 2001 completed mapping the entire genetic blueprint of the human species; it has been surpassed in terms of quantity by the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, which as of May 2009 had gathered 250 billion pieces of genetic data.

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

http://www.amazon.com/Too-Big-Know-Rethinking-ebook/dp/B005XQ97MS/ref=tmm_kin_title_0/185-6522218-2859968?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Like your data big? How about 5 trillion records?
http://gigaom.com/cloud/like-your-data-big-how-about-5-trillion-records

According to 1010data’s annual assessment, data volumes just keep climbing. The total volume of data it houses grew by 33 percent, while the number of records grew by 45 percent. The records are spread across thousands of tables, the largest of which tops out at around 500 billion rows. And although these numbers might seem small in comparison with the astronomical data growth predicted by reports such as IDC’s Digital Universe Index, it’s important to remember 1010data deals only with business data, not with the entirety of data produced in any digital form.

Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity
http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Technology_and_Innovation/Big_data_The_next_frontier_for_innovation

The amount of data in our world has been exploding, and analyzing large data sets—so-called big data—will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus, according to research by MGI and McKinsey’s Business Technology Office. Leaders in every sector will have to grapple with the implications of big data, not just a few data-oriented managers. The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things will fuel exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future.

MGI studied big data in five domains—healthcare in the United States, the public sector in Europe, retail in the United States, and manufacturing and personal-location data globally. Big data can generate value in each. For example, a retailer using big data to the full could increase its operating margin by more than 60 percent. Harnessing big data in the public sector has enormous potential, too. If US healthcare were to use big data creatively and effectively to drive efficiency and quality, the sector could create more than $300 billion in value every year. Two-thirds of that would be in the form of reducing US healthcare expenditure by about 8 percent. In the developed economies of Europe, government administrators could save more than €100 billion ($149 billion) in operational efficiency improvements alone by using big data, not including using big data to reduce fraud and errors and boost the collection of tax revenues. And users of services enabled by personal-location data could capture $600 billion in consumer surplus.

Bringing big data to the enterprise
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/

What is “Big Data?”
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/virtualization/what-is-big-data/1708

In simplest terms, the phrase refers to the tools, processes and procedures allowing an organization to create, manipulate, and manage very large data sets and storage facilities. Does this mean terabytes, petabytes, or even larger collections of data? The answer offered by these suppliers is “yes.” They would go on to say, “you need our product to manage and make best use of that mass of data.” Just thinking about the problems created by the maintenance of huge, dynamic sets of data gives me a headache.

Following Digital Breadcrumbs to ‘Big Data’ Gold
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/142521910/the-digital-breadcrumbs-that-lead-to-big-data

Some big thoughts on big data and cloud for 2012
http://gigaom.com/cloud/some-big-thoughts-on-big-data-and-cloud-for-2012

The Age of Exabytes: Tools & Approaches for Managing Big Data
http://www.readwriteweb.com/reports/big-data

We are experiencing a big data explosion, a result not only of increasing Internet usage by people around the world, but also the connection of billions of devices to the Internet. Eight years ago, for example, there were only around 5 Exabytes of data online. Just two years ago, that amount of data passed over the Internet over the course of a single month. And recent estimates put monthly Internet data flow at around 21 Exabytes of data.

This explosion of data – in both its size and form – causes a multitude of challenges for both people and machines. No longer is data something accessed by a small number of people. No longer is the data that’s created simply transactional information; and no longer is the data predictable – either as it’s written, or when, or by whom or what it’s going to be read by. Furthermore, much of this data is unstructured, meaning that it does not clearly fall into a schema or database. How can this data move across networks? How can it be processed? The size of the data along with its complexity, demand new tools for storage, processing, networking, analysis, and visualization