Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Ecology of Florida: Brainwave headsets for MEMORY-to-3D interactive virtual worlds ?, Yes, yes, yes ... Steeleye Span's music and we Scottish Country Dancing friends from the 1970s are of one music in many ways, Easy for a scholar or professor to put on something like Google Glass for explorations in libraries and museums, as well as ancient buildings and landscapes, so that we could see what you're seeing, and also so that this could stream as data into an interactive, group build-able, realistic virtual earth to help build it ... and I'm optimistic for this configuration of information technologies - e.g. conceptually, Google Glass into Google Hangouts with G Streetivew / Maps / Earth with time slider - coming to fruition, See London through your eyes on this trip with you (and facilitate you dovetailing this with your place-based scholarly research into the court of King John, as well as even new kinds of "letters home" - and co-building a realistic virtual earth with TIME SLIDER with your historian's mind in particular :), What would this be like through Tolkien's Middle Earth of our own co-creation?, Grateful Dead and Steeleye Span shows from the '70s, Furthur, into a realistic virtual earth from our own room at home with 4 hypothetical "MIT MediaLab light bulbs" - both projectors and video cameras - in the 4 ceiling corners of this room? ... for dancing etc of course, and even with avatar bots of our friends who were also there in the '70s, Here's "Robots building a 3D bridge" - and how I'm engaging this for ACTUAL-VIRTUAL Harbin Project -


Just recently sent this email to Henry Cutter, editor at the WSJ, in NYC re the radicalness of both World University and School, as well as my "Naked Harbin Ethnography" book + ...

Spear thistle: RADICAL World University and School, and "Naked Harbin Ethnography," Both interesting INTELLECTUALLY, WSJ Editor Friend - Book Review?

https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/10/spear-thistle-radical-world-university.html
...

A doll party tea! :) ... in a realistic virtual earth which we can all make?

Warm regards,
Scott

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What a charming thing to say. I miss the spontaneous singing amongst friends that used to happen while driving hither and thither in our youth.

Susan

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Hi Susan, and All,

Yes, yes, yes ... Steeleye Span's music and we Scottish Country Dancing friends from the 1970s are of one music in many ways.

Was glad here just now to spend all day on Saturday with Pin Mazumdar and his new wife of 5 years, Mary (they live in Baltimore). Pin mentioned knowing you, Rob, David, and Hugh (although not from Shady Side Academy ... not sure sure how ... perhaps because besides from Pittsburgh, you and his sister Maitreyi both went to Yale ... and Marti is now a Harvard Medical School professor! ... and Pin went to Harvard College) ... but he didn't seem to remember you, Susan! ... Hmmm ... don't think Pin ever came Scottish Country Dancing ... did he dance English during high school? I don't recall too that he danced at any of the Pittsburgh Folk Festivals ...

How will some of such history emerge in a realistic virtual earth of Pittsburgh for we high schoolers and Scottish Country Dancing in the 1970s ? Brainwave headsets for memory-to-3D interactive virtual worlds ? 'Twould / could be fun to explore singing again in such virtual cars together in a realistic virtual earth with time slider - and from our homes?

How are you doing in London, Hugh (http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/10/bar-tailed-godwit-laissez-faire-harbin.html)? How's your research going?

Warm regards,
Scott

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Bar-tailed Godwit: laissez-faire Harbin Hot Springs into a Lazy Fair online in virtual Harbin (kind of a hippy thang)? Explore "virtualizing" (to make "as if," I'll call this) history? I mean by this make history come alive - in your mind, for writing your books & papers, for your students, or even as you might have done in your teens with playing the board game Dungeons & Dragons (pre-digital D&D?), for example - by gamify-ing imaginary readings of versions of history, with a technical side - the structure of the game - and also with an historical re-enactment component?

(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/10/bar-tailed-godwit-laissez-faire-harbin.html)

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I remember Pin as well, no doubt from general social events among our circle of friends.


I'm having a fantastic time in London, going to castles, museums, operas, talks on medieval history, sessions of drinking beer in pubs after talks on medieval history, etc. And I'm still actually getting work done!


Hugh


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Hi Hugh and All,

Thanks much for your news and email. Pin hasn't changed that much over the years, in many many ways - and it was so great to see them.

I don't think it's easy yet for a scholar or professor to put on something like Google Glass for explorations in libraries and museums, as well as ancient buildings and landscapes, so that we could see what you're seeing, and also so that this could stream into an interactive, group build-able, realistic virtual earth to help build it ... but I'm optimistic for this configuration of information technologies - e.g. conceptually Google Glass into Google Hangouts with G Streetivew /
Maps / Earth with time slider - coming to fruition.

Otherwise it could be fun to see London through your eyes on this trip with you (and facilitate you dovetailing this with your place-based e-research into the court of King John, as well as even new kinds of "letters home" - and co-building a realistic virtual earth with TIME SLIDER with your historian's mind in particular :) ... or perhaps for me or some of us to show you all where we're traveling on future journeys ... even as kinds of tour guides (and also to generate traveling/touring data for a realistic virtual earth). What would this be like through Tolkien's Middle Earth of our co-creation (apart from the films) in the sphere of the fantastic / the science fiction ?

Might you find your way to any kind of dance in and around London while you're researching?

So glad you're having a fantastic (and productive!) time in London.

Cheers,
Scott

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Hi Rob, (Sandy) and All,

Speaking of music and dancing that moved us from the second half of the 1970s and growing an interactive realistic virtual earth, - which Grateful Dead shows on Youtube, in Archive.org, and similar, are you like to have gone to / been at from say 1975-1979 - and beginning, say, with this one - Grateful Dead - Full Concert - 04/27/77 - Capitol Theatre (OFFICIAL) in Passaic NJ ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U90Fnv_FpM4 - and exploring out into cyberspace in video enjoyably from there ... and then, furthur, into a realistic virtual earth from our own room at home with 4 hypothetical "MIT MediaLab light bulbs" - both projectors and video cameras - in the 4 ceiling corners of this room? ... for dancing etc of course, and even with avatar bots of our friends who were also there in the '70s. (Wish we had such a realistic virtual earth going already where exploring building this could add to the enjoyment - the communitas in a sense - of having actually been there). Sandy, did you go to any Dead shows in these years? :)

Steeleye Span were playing in London, Hugh, in these years - an interesting historical focus in these regards perhaps ...  and they were also playing Stanford in the 1970s. Have blogged a bit about this
(and the Grateful Dead at Stanford in the '70s) here -

Wild boar: Carols & music, "singing the Boar's Head Carol?", folk rock music, Steeleye Span and the Grateful Dead, How to inform World University and School degrees with the freedom, space and jamming of the Grateful Dead (accrediting on MIT OCW in 7 languages) - say in 36 courses over 4 years for a free CC OCW undergraduate degree {and also from a meditative, serene and centered place, too}?, Stanford comes closest to this vision in my experience and today too, Jerry House there, More about the Grateful Dead and Stanford, Deadheads and ecstasy ~ X CHEMISTRY? ~Garcia & Weir on Letterman 4-13-1982, NY, NY … @HarbinBook ~GD at Harbin in '70s, Steeleye Span played Stanford in the 1970s at least twice - reviews from the Stanford Daily!

https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/02/wild-boar-carols-music-singing-boars.html - with articles I found in the online "Stanford Daily" but haven't actually found the shows in video yet. Interesting history! and anthropology ... which would could all co-create, as well. :)

Cheers,
Scott

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Calling much of the above ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy - a new digital social science methodology ... and re social theory too ...
https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy ...


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You might enjoy this George Vaillant MD video, M -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKDsU96EVuk

... He's an Octogenerian .. .


And a Harvard Medical School Professor ... and there's a lot of wisdom in this esp. from 14-19 mins.

I wonder if D could have conversed with him about this talk even - since a Trinity church is mentioned, for example; D and L are one wonderful example of Boston friendliness in my experience too. :)

(... https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cambridge,+MA/@42.376181,-71.115757,3a,75y,119h,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipOY4BleEhVFXJ55FOe_Lbx_dR_DNwMTmCtWvAyq!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOY4BleEhVFXJ55FOe_Lbx_dR_DNwMTmCtWvAyq%3Dw203-h114-k-no!7i5312!8i2988!4m5!3m4!1s0x89e370a5cb30cc5f:0xc53a8e6489686c87!8m2!3d42.3736158!4d-71.1097335 ...)

Thinking my way into the friendliness of Boston, as ethos, in my experience (having been born there), and appreciating this a lot. In what ways could this ethos (i.e. friendly Boston) emerge or grow in other ways - virtually ("as if" - and in one's mind, as it were) - either here in the SF Bay Area, or online in a virtual Boston ? What do you think, M?

It might be possible to generate this myself here in bodymind ... but I'm not sure exactly how. :)

How was your day? It's raining now ... and the world is wet ... it's kind of the first wet early winter rain here ... Heading to music-making soon. I'll probably listen to this George Vaillant video
again, esp. from 14-19 mins.

L,
Scott

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Hi T, 

Nice to share this course with you further today. 

Here's "Robots building a 3D bridge" - https://twitter.com/ValaAfshar/status/930467758663458816 - and how I'm engaging this for ACTUAL-VIRTUAL Harbin Project - https://twitter.com/HarbinBook/status/930511447552954368 - which will also become a STEM and ethnographic field site, as well as classroom. 

By the way, a "program" is a series of coded software instructions to control the operation of a computer (or other machine), where a computer is an input-output device - for this course (http://worlduniversityandschool.org/InfoTechNetworkSocGlobalUniv.html). So an airplane and a car are not yet computers in this sense re programming. (And per this information technology revolution course, airplanes and cars also have microelectronics, telecommunications, and genes in them). But when avatar bots (like in SL/OpenSim) as programs with agency - kinds of free will - start to inhabit and control our smartphones, and begin also to inhabit virtual airplanes and virtual flying cars (think "the Jetsons") - and actually too - we'll have new definitions of airplanes and cars as computers.

(Orwell's book "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was written in 1949, not the 1930s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four).

Here's a 3D machinima piece by Bernhard Drax on persistence of place in a virtual world per Tom Boellstorff (CoAiSL< >@HarbinBook) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8GYs_9PjFs … "Our Digital Selves" [Drax 2018] -https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/921873401827835904 . 

More about an Universal Basic Income & Finland ... re WUaS plans to facilitate a cryptocurrency in all ~200 countries' official languages with an UBI for all 7.5 billion people

How is your weekly communication going with Larry and re your MIT OCW "Energy Decisions, Markets, and Policies" https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-031j-energy-decisions-markets-and-policies-spring-2012/ course? (I enjoyed hearing Dick Schmalensee's talk at Stanford but won't share my notes with you at this point). Enjoyed hearing about your team work with this climate simulation. 

For next week, please get Second Life up and working if you can. And please catch up on the past projects from this course as well - via email perhaps instead of posting to social media. 

Also, for a final course project, I'd like to ask you to write a five page research paper (perhaps in Google Docs), and begin to think through what you'd like to inquire about in this paper for next week - which we'll then talk about and focus further, drawing on the innovative thinking and ideas of this course re the information technology revolution. So, for next week, could you please write a tentative opening paragraph, with a research question, a thesis (e.g. "I want to argue that ... " "I want to suggest that ..." ) and 3 main points that you might like to "argue" further  in the paper. Thank you!

Cheers, Scott

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Hi Tanya,

Good course yesterday. Here are some further related resources and clarifications.

Here's the great day-long MIT Media Lab "Forbidden Research" conference in video from last year - https://www.media.mit.edu/events/forbidden/overview . The research by MIT's Kevin Esvelt in genetics and CRISPR, - http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/messing-with-nature-genetics/ - and possibly that by Harvard Prof George Church, and Stanford Prof Megan Palmer, could be of particular interest to you.

Here, too, is my recent correspondence with MIT Prof. Dick Schmalensee - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/11/pinus-palustris-near-term-policy.html - and where I mention you taking his course at World University and School.

Some further definitions re - Society, Information Technology, and the Global University ... http://worlduniversityandschool.org/InfoTechNetworkSocGlobalUniv.html -
... While society can mean - "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community" - for Castells it further refers to "social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked, digital information and communications technologies," with intellectual origins for Castells going back to "social theorists such as Georg Simmel who analyzed the effect of modernization and industrial capitalism on complex patterns of affiliation, organization, production and experience" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_society).

And information for Castells is related "to data and knowledge" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information - and "where its creation, distribution, use, integration and manipulation is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_society).

Cheers, Scott

http://worlduniversityandschool.org/InfoTechNetworkSocGlobalUniv.html
http://worlduniversityandschool.org/






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