Scott MacLeod's Anthropology of Information Technology & Counterculture
To a global, virtual, free, open, {future degree- & credit-granting}, multilingual University & School for the developing world and everyone, as well as loving bliss ~ scottmacleod.com
Just planted a garden in a box on my porch (will share a picture at some point) ... very different from working in the native cyclamen nursery in Beaverton, Oregon in the mid-1980s for 2 seasons (after Reed) ... sweet pepper, cucumber, tomato, Thai basil, parsley, all as plant starts, ... as well as seeds for beets (for growing vegetsables under the earth and above) and spinach, of which I'll plant more of in 2 weeks. The garden in a box is called "City Pickers" and it has a simple automatic irrigation system, and it's on casters / rollers as well. This could lead to transplanting into the abundant earth around me.
Culture tripping? As an anthropologist ... what does this mean? Somehow engaging other cultures very vividly and generatively in my mind, virtually in a way, and appreciating and engaging the richness of their ideation, their art, their languages, their ways of being and also 'riffing' in mind with this ... And it crossed my mind last night that I'm kind of culture tripping sometimes when I go Scottish Country Dancing, for example, or when I attend German language speaking hangouts online, ... or when I think about Harbin (as well). It's not a phrase or a meaning I've heard used before very often among anthropologists in academia or otherwise ... and perhaps an actual < > virtual realistic Harbin (visit a very early virtual Harbin here ~ http://tinyurl.com/p62rpcg ~ and "walk" down the road to Middletown, CA, to "amble" around the streets there, if interested) will open very new ways to explore this. :)
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Wondering re a realistic ACTUAL < > VIRTUAL earth @HarbinBook how Univ of California's 10 UCs including the new UC @ucmerced will emerge online @WorldUnivAndSch & re https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1009827785580277760 Great model for ~200 WUaS universities online in ~200 countries' official/main languages
Wondering re a realistic ACTUAL < > VIRTUAL earth @HarbinBook how Univ of California's 10 UCs including the new UC @ucmerced will emerge online @WorldUnivAndSch & re https://t.co/yJEK5aHZaw Great model for ~200 WUaS universities online in ~200 countries' official/main languages
So WUaS would seek to generate a Thai WUaS Foundation online, a Japanese one, a Swedish one, etc.
Creating startup universities isn't easy, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed about the NSF grant I'm currently applying for.
"Stewardship plan," "advocacy" and "philanthropy" (two from UC Merced chancellor Dorothy Leland's Tweet) are four words that come to mind to help bring together such WUaS Foundations, perhaps in reaching out to potential further Founders to sit around the proverbial table. Could even do some hikes to help focus such groups ... as great and virtuosic bagpiper Stuart Liddell did on the West Highland Way with some IDPB pipers in 2008 - Piping The Way - Stuart Liddell West Highland Way Bagpipe Film
Possibly would be open to playing in a Friday night open band.
Don't want to set off my cat allergies this Saturday with kitties.
Lack of monies is still a big issue for me, so I wouldn't be interested in asking open band to contribute in other ways than we're already doing (and there were 4 full sets - 32 dancers - last Monday with Bruce teaching, but this isn't always the case).
When my financial situation changes, would be interested in exploring lessons with you ... toward 2 hand SCD (and blues) and so much more ... and also Scottish small pipes for SCD (2nd chanter in D +).
Found these interesting practicing articles / book by ...
- Stephanie Burns (with specific focus on piping)
Practice Strategies That Cause Musical Improvements: Volume 1 (Overcoming Musical Hurdles)Paperback– 15 Jun 2018
- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization.
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Coincidentally, Ed,
it looks like I'm already following Peter May on Twitter from https://twitter.com/TheOpenBand. (Twitter's a generative process for me these days, and some Tweets get into my blog here - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/ - which is also a creative process (and eclectic), and re World University and School especially; there's a bagpiping 'label' - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/bagpiping - for example).
Yes, nice to see you again last night. I’ll look at your websites shortly. Thank you for sending them.
Interesting that you seem to have found Peter May already. I can recommend him—particularly his Lewis trilogy. Read them in order if you can, beginning with The Blackhouse.
Have a great weekend. I hope to see you again sometime soon, though we are off back home to Vancouver again next Tuesday.
Best wishes,
Edward
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Edward,
Re Scottish Independence, which we were talking about, I continue to wonder what sovereignty will mean for Scotland in the 2020s, and about ways in which the European Union will develop its process for defining sovereignty re, for ex., Scotland, Catalonia, Galicia, the Basque Country.
See, too:
INDEPENDENCE IN EUROPE: SECESSION,
SOVEREIGNTY, AND THE EUROPEAN UNION
CHRISTOPHER K. CONNOLLY*
Lorraine McIntosh's "Freedom Come All Ye" is beautiful. Thanks. Looking around for documentaries of Hamish Henderson as well. (While here's one - https://youtu.be/5dRlhpvXlRE - there's been one by the BBC too).
Have a great weekend, as well. (About a week ago, I just drove from Portland, Oregon, then Yakima, then near Medical Springs NE Oregon through Idaho, back into eastern Oregon, then into Nevada, and then through the Sierras to the Bay Area - the way you're heading soon, I think, and farther east than "The Dalles"; I have family who live in NE Oregon). Hope to see you soon, as well - if not this trip, then the next time you're here. Maybe see you online as well. On with Scottish small piping here (there are a few Piping pages for open teaching and learning at World University - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Bagpipe_Tutorials - and see the Select WUaS Links' section part way down) ... hoping to get into making recordings eventually.
It's nice to hear from D. Good, old friends seem in short supply in California in my life, perhaps because I've moved a lot in life too, - and people are moving all around the world these days a lot. I think of Tolkien's Inkling circle (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inklings) as an example of good old friends, centered around Oxford, and while I have many good old friends on Cuttyhunk, for ex., I see them only for a few weeks in the summer if that, and not centered around a pub, and writing community in the British Isles. (But Cuttyhunk is pretty great friendwise nevertheless). While I could grow a circle here, and perhaps one that is Stanford related, this would take focus. Dick Robb' MDs book of essays "Brookline Thursday Club Essays" mentions their social process for meeting - and this could be a starting place for this.
I think of you and Dad as having a good circle of friends, some old, in Pgh (and on Cuttyhunk), in the 70s, when I was a teen, - having dinner parties out here could be one way of creating this further. A loving partner could help generate this too with me together. ?
There's a bit of a friendly good British ethos I have in mind re old friend generation and culture too. Realistically though, and Lacan-wise, maybe (old) friends aren't realistic (G.A. MD, whom I learned much from, was cynical about this, I'd say, but had old friends). On the othervhand I might have to be a good friend to have them, and giving (things away) might be part of this - like things I grow in a garden (something that came to mind partly in visiting Ann), or beer I might make, for example.
And what's the old gem of a song: 'Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold." ... nice to have heard from D.
What are you up to friendship wise -besides going on fun musical trips with them ? :)
L,
Scott
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Dear Jorge,
Great to meet and talk with you (https://haas.stanford.edu/people/jorge-de-luna) yesterday after Dr. Achotegui's talk "Migratory Intelligence: Psychological and Psychosocial Strategies to Face Migratory Stress and the Ulysses Syndrome" - http://events.stanford.edu/events/785/78577/ - and thanks for your excellent questions, observations and knowledgeable experience at both Kaiser and Stanford Medicine with sound psychosocial strategies for migratory people and populations.
Am curious how best to talk further and to create even online OpenCourseWare, and even re clinical care in these related regards:
World University and School seeks to offer online medical degrees with online teaching hospitals with online clinical care in all ~200 countries' official and main languages (as well as Law, Ph.D., Bachelor, and I.B. high school degrees). And WUaS is like CC-4 MIT OpenCourseWare in 5 languages with Wikipedia in 301 languages. Since MIT doesn't have a medical school or a law school, WUaS is seeking to collaborate with Stanford Medicine and Stanford Law schools in these regards (and I had a 30 minute talk with Stanford Medicine's Chair Bob Harrington last autumn - https://profiles.stanford.edu/robert-harrington). And besides English, Spanish and Chinese are two of WUaS's pilot languages. Much of both WUaS classes, as well as even "psychosocial therapy" for migratory populations, and even very large numbers of people, would take place in group video conferencing and in other ways online. And World University and School seeks to become a major academic employer in each of all ~200 countries' official / main languages, and indeed in all 7,097 living languages. WUaS also has a specific focus on Africa.
Do you happen to know Linda Sanchez-Hernandez - https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-a-sanchez-hernandez-6b914221/ - who worked at the Quaker American Friends' Service Committee with 67 Sueños program, went to UC Berkeley for her undergraduate degree, is originally from a Zapotec speaking (https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Zapotec_languages) area of Mexico - and is really great (and smart). I know Linda from when I was holding WUaS hive meeting spaces at the AFSC in SF over a few years. (She's actually seeking perhaps to begin studying for a law degree).
How might we communicate further about this? Thank you.
- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization.
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Dear Joseba,
Thanks for your edifying "Migratory Intelligence: Psychological and Psychosocial Strategies to Face Migratory Stress and the Ulysses Syndrome" talk - http://events.stanford.edu/events/785/78577/ - yesterday.
How might we communicate further about teaching, for example, "migratory Intelligence," and even facilitating online clinical care online (and first in Spanish and African languages), and re the 'need' (Jorge's word after your talk) for psychosocial strategies in these regards; and even with regard to Spain World University and School - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Spain (planned in Spanish) and in our planned School of Psychiatry in the Spain Medical School at WUaS? In these regards, please see too my email to Jorge below. As a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Barcelona in Spain, would you be open to teaching a course in psychiatry online in Spanish in these regards at some point (which would also be MIT OCW and Stanford Medicine-informed)?
Nice to meet, visit and talk with you at the Reed College reunion on June 10th. And thank you for getting my book, "Naked Harbin Ethnography," Jon. Nice too to share a Press table next to you, Gay. "Naked Harbin Ethnography:
Hippies, Warm Pools, Counterculture, Clothing-Optionality and Virtual Harbin" is the first book published in the Academic Press at World University and School (which is also planned eventually with machine translation - https://twitter.com/WUaSPress?lang=en ).
Irene, with my ongoing Harbin ethnographic project on hold for the time being (partly because Harbin is closed), I'd just like to say thank you for the offer to talk about Harbin and its workshops further, potentially in something like a Google group video Hangout, but I wonder if we might please postpone this for the time being? It was fascinating to learn of the HAI / Stan Dale workshop(s) you held in an old Victorian house in Portland, Oregon, in the 70s/80s with 75 people attending, and of the possibility to explore these ethnographically further even (and perhaps dovetailing with the Reed Oral History Project / approaches you used in your "Comrades of the Quest," John -
With regard to my Naked Harbin Ethnography's book's project of creating a realistic virtual Harbin Hot Springs for actual-virtual comparison - think Google Street View with time slider / Maps / Earth together with Second Life / OpenSim but realistic and for STEM research -" walk" down in its beginning phase the Harbin road 4 miles to Middletown and "amble" around the streets of Middletown, CA here
~ http://tinyurl.com/p62rpcg ( accessible from ~ https://twitter.com/HarbinBook ~ http://bit.ly/HarbinBook ). Eventually, I think we'll be able to visit Harbin in remarkable ways virtually (and re something I'm developing and calling ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy as a new social science method).
Gay, World University and School, as we seek to begin the accreditation process with WASC senior, would eventually like to reach out to high schoolers who have studied online for their high school degrees, to offer online free CC-4 MIT OCW-centric undergraduate degrees. (Creative Commons'-4 MIT OCW licensing allows for a) sharing, b) adapting but c) non-commercially). Your daughter's teaching experience, Gay, with Stanford Online High School is fascinating here, and students, with online learning / educational experience, would benefit from WUaS's free online MIT OCW-centric degrees enormously. If it's ok with you, I'll be in touch at a later point perhaps to ask further about ways in which we might talk further, and how we might explore collaboration / further communication?
Thank you again and very nice to see and talk with you.
- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization.
What did you do your Oxford dissertation about, if I might ask? :) I'm writing with a few thoughts and questions.
Curious to communicate further about your "Fact Factories" (MIT Press) (https://hblog.org/ - just retweeted 2 recent Tweets of yours here - https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch?lang=en) and wiki World University and School - as we combine our fairly newly "front end" WUaS Miraheze MediaWiki i.e. https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence & https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Subjects (planned in ~200 countries' main languages for free for-credit accrediting university degrees) with our "back end" Wikidata structured Knowledge Base (to which WUaS donated itself for co-devleopment in 2015). WUaS seeks to build out A.I.-wise from Google's ecosystem in its 100+ languages, in addition to Wikidata/Wikipedia's in its 301 languages, in terms of A.I.
Wiki World University and School is like Wikipedia in its 301 languages with CC-4 MIT OpenCourseWare in its 5 languages. And CC WUaS seeks to offer free-to-students' CC-4 online MIT OCW-centric Bachelor, Ph.D., Law, M.D. and I.B. (high school) degrees in each of all ~200 countries' official and main languages. And WUaS seeks to be in all 7,097 living languages as wiki schools for open teaching and learning (eventually engaging avatar bots and AI as interlocutors / potentially instructors - in some 50 years perhaps :).
Please keep in mind South Africa World University and School - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/South_Africa - as well as online universities in each of all ~55 African countries' official languages. (Would you have interest eventually even in becoming president of South Africa WUaS?) And how could online MIT OCW-centric universities at wiki WUaS best grow in all African countries, Heather?
Am curious too about your thoughts about: how best to become the online Stanford / Oxbridge of the Internet in all ~200 countries' official / main languages for free-to-students' university degrees at wiki World University and School?
Just emailed this to D.T. who's on Cuttyhunk Island, which you might enjoy.. (I've known D since the late 1960s, and he came to Xmas in Pgh this past December, Ann :)
Sounds wonderful to be there - beautiful & laid back. Gazing at the Bay, gazing at harbors ... :) And glad DC is embracing you. And is your Bullseye in the water already? Might you already even have sailed to Quicks Hole (Nashawena island)?
Glad to have walked into Indian Valley on the side of the ridge where I live toward Mt. Diablo (not the Canyon valley side with PO and school). Except for crossing the fence at the very end, walked through 'Indian Valley' all the way to the road into Moraga for the first time, and saw a herd of horses including mare with foal -
https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1008521103218655232 - near a small hacienda/ranch complex. This valley is so beautiful, nearly pristine, empty, and an old ranch, now owned by East Bay MUD I think - with echoes of Buzzard's Bay. Worth exploring more around here. Just drove back from Stanford yesterday evening, through the ~8 miles of EB MUD between this watershed's southern end, and where I live - it's an open space dream.
Starting a kind of hippie garden in a box on wheels on porch here. As I was in Wal-Mart yesterday getting gardening goods, my smartphone's Google chrome browser was all of a sudden in "incognito" mode - which then clarified that no one can see my browsing, except for wireless service provider, employer and the web site's I'm visiting ... Interesting what's emerging with digital technologies; so, out of curiosity about what I could view in "incognito mode" I went to my blog's URL, which I could see, and then clicked through to the Harbin gate in Google Street View which I could see only a bit of, but it said it was part of "Google Maps." So I deduce that any realistic virtual Harbin/earth for actual-virtual ethnographic comparison, and visiting online, will not belong to Harbin, but rather be in the somewhat open domain of Google/Alphabet, which is generally more I.T. thoughtful and business-oriented re end-users than say Safari/Apple, Internet Explorer/Microsoft, etc. And I hope to create a realistic virtual universe / galaxy at the cellular and atomic levels as STEM field site for World University and School too, and for even something like instruction in tele-robotic surgery in the WUaS Medical Schools in countries' main languages; see this blog post, for example - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/06/long-billed-curlew-numenius-americanus.html. Daily blog is generative idea-wise and re World Univ & Sch too; check out the Cuttyhunk label - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/Cuttyhunk - in the aforesaid blog post. Recent trip to Reed and Pacific NW - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/06/wallowa-whitman-national-forest-saw-guy.html - was fun.
Hope to cross paths somewhere as well. Sounds great to be on Cuttyhunk in the shoulder season.
How best to structure ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy so that everyone, and especially students in all countries' languages at WUaS, can create a realistic virtual earth / Harbin, and re STEM-wiki-virtual-world-graphy especially?
(and students at great universities everywhere ... as well as Universitians in all 7097 living languages)
and easily (and at the cellular and atomic levels too)
... but which doesn't yet seem to convert, for example, Youtube videos into a realistic virtual earth in Street View ...
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And here are two recent 360 degrees views of Harvard from Harvard's President Drew Faust in Youtube ... but it's not possible to "walk through" a Harvard building with 360 degrees around you.
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Satellite images from Google Earth of stadiums ... with possible relevance for creating ongoing data about the Harbin valley, for example (and with drones too) ...
Am interested in exploring, conceptually, setting up a kind of WUaS Ikea / Walmart re this Pharmacy in India (see blog post below) in your cities and in your languages, and for an online bookstore / computer / robotics / hospital / online surgical store re WUaS:
Ajit, for example, if you had the capital and a plan, would you be able to help develop this in Vadodara, and Gandhinagar, in Gujurat, in west India, as well as in your city, B and Calcutta in West Bengal?
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These stores, again, are especially distribution centers for students studying for free CC-4 MIT OCW_centric online university degrees from their homes, in the most remote parts of India, for example.
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[Wikidata] Machine translation efforts for underserved languages
Hi Olya, Wikibabel, GerardM, and Wikidatans,
How does Wikidata's new lexicographical project work with regard to Swahili (since it is a Wikipedia / Wikidata language) and Google Translate / GNMT re your "Our approach leverages Google Translate to make English Wikipedia articles accessible to underserved communities" (re: https://medium.com/@oirzak/wikibabel-equalizing-information-access-on-a-budget-4038f750e90e)?
(WUaS seeks to facilitate machine translation in all 7097 living languages, and by growing out of Google GNMT; WUaS donated itself for co-development to Wikidata in 2015).
Cheers,
Scott
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Hi Olya, Lucie, and Wikidatans,
Very interesting projects. And thanks for publishing, Lucie - very helpful!
2.1 Encoding the Triples The encoder part of the model is a feed-forward architecture that encodes the set of input triples into a fixed dimensionality vector, which is subsequently used to initialise the decoder. Given a set of un-ordered triples FE = {f1, f2, . . . , fR : fj = (sj , pj , oj )}, where sj , pj and oj are the onehot vector representations of the respective subject, property and object of the j-th triple, we compute an embedding hfj for the j-th triple by forward propagating as follows: hfj = q(Wh[Winsj ;Winpj ;Winoj ]) , (1) hFE = WF[hf1 ; . . . ; hfR−1 ; hfR ] , (2) where hfj is the embedding vector of each triple fj , hFE is a fixed-length vector representation for all the input triples FE. q is a non-linear activation function, [. . . ; . . .] represents vector concatenation. Win,Wh,WF are trainable weight matrices. Unlike (Chisholm et al., 2017), our encoder is agnostic with respect to the order of input triples. As a result, the order of a particular triple fj in the triples set does not change its significance towards the computation of the vector representation of the whole triples set, hFE .
... whether this would address streaming triplets through GNMT?
Would this? And since Swahili, Arabic and Esperanto, are all active languages in - https://translate.google.com/ - no further coding on the GNMT side would be necessary. (I'm curious how best for WUaS to grow small languages not yet in either Wikipedia/Wikidata's 287-301 languages or in GNMT's ~100+ languages?).
How could your Wikidata / Wikibabel work interface with Google GNMT more fully with time, building on your great Wikidata coding/papers?
So, presumably, WUaS medical students learning and practicing tele-robotic surgery in the state of Gujarat, India, would be able to engage a Wikidata-Google GNMT translator in the smallest languages there.
I'm an anthropologist who also finds fascinating the internet, ideas, poetry, sociology, art, science, philosophy, history, music, love and life ~ as well as the anthropology of information technology & counterculture :) -
scottmacleod.com
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Posts
![Barn owl: Reed College reunion - June 10, 2018 and talking about Harbin HAI workshops online in group video as part of an oral history project, Heather Ford - "Re: [Air-L] "Drones to Smart Homes" and "Data Justice" PhD scholarships," What did you do your Oxford dissertation about, if I might ask? :), Curious to communicate further about your "Fact Factories" (MIT Press) re Wikipedia and ethnography, Walking in Indian Valley next to Canyon, CA, Interesting what's emerging with digital technologies; so, out of curiosity about what I could view in "incognito mode" I went to my blog's URL, which I could see, and then clicked through to the Harbin gate in Google Street View which I could see only a bit of, but it said it was part of "Google Maps." So I deduce that any realistic virtual Harbin/earth for actual-virtual ethnographic comparison, and visiting online, will not belong to Harbin, but rather be in the somewhat open domain of Google/Alphabet, which is generally more I.T. thoughtful and business-oriented re end-users than say Safari/Apple, Internet Explorer/Microsoft, etc., Got organic seeds with an interest in exploring home plant breeding / genetics' projects; see, for example, the TomTato video here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Barn_Owl_flying.jpg){kind=link}
![Indian stone-curlew: World Univ and Sch - a kind of WUaS Ikea, Medical Schools at World Univ & Sch ONLINE, "Vadodara: poor people suffer due to Lack of Medicine in Generic Medical Stores," Online SURGERY? "I ask my residents & students to draw a pic of the post-operative anatomy after #GISurgery to help them understand the resulting physiology ...," New related blog post in World University and School's blog, These stores, again, are especially distribution centers for students studying for free CC-4 MIT OCW_centric online university degrees from their homes, in the most remote parts of India, for ex., "[Wikidata] Machine translation efforts for underserved languages," See, too: "Long-billed curlew (Numenius americanus) ... ," So, presumably, WUaS medical students learning and practicing tele-robotic surgery in the state of Gujarat, India, would be able to engage a Wikidata-Google GNMT translator in the smallest languages there](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Eurasian_thick-knee.jpg){kind=link}
