To say that someone is or is not intelligent has never been merely a comment on their mental faculties. It is always also a judgment on what they are permitted to do. Intelligence, in other words, is political.
The problem has taken an interesting 21st-century twist with the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The term ‘intelligence’ itself has never been popular with English-language philosophers. Nor does it have a direct translation into German or ancient Greek, two of the other great languages in the Western philosophical tradition. But that doesn’t mean philosophers weren’t interested in it. Indeed, they were obsessed with it, or more precisely a part of it: reason or rationality. The term ‘intelligence’ managed to eclipse its more old-fashioned relative in popular and political discourse only with the rise of the relatively new-fangled discipline of psychology, which claimed intelligence for itself.
Plato conclude, in The Republic, that the ideal ruler is ‘the philosopher king’, as only a philosopher can work out the proper order of things. This idea was revolutionary at the time. Athens had already experimented with democracy, the rule of the people – but to count as one of those ‘people’ you just had to be a male citizen, not necessarily intelligent. Elsewhere, the governing classes were made up of inherited elites (aristocracy), or by those who believed they had received divine instruction (theocracy), or simply by the strongest (tyranny).
Plato’s novel idea fell on the eager ears of the intellectuals, including those of his pupil Aristotle. Aristotle was always the more practical, taxonomic kind of thinker. He took the notion of the primacy of reason and used it to establish what he believed was a natural social hierarchy.
So at the dawn of Western philosophy, we have intelligence identified with the European, educated, male human. It becomes an argument for his right to dominate women, the lower classes, uncivilised peoples and non-human animals. While Plato argued for the supremacy of reason and placed it within a rather ungainly utopia, only one generation later, Aristotle presents the rule of the thinking man as obvious and natural.
The late Australian philosopher and conservationist Val Plumwood has argued that the giants of Greek philosophy set up a series of linked dualisms that continue to inform our thought. Opposing categories such as intelligent/stupid, rational/emotional and mind/body are linked, implicitly or explicitly, to others such as male/female, civilised/primitive, and human/animal. These dualisms aren’t value-neutral, but fall within a broader dualism, as Aristotle makes clear: that of dominant/subordinate or master/slave. Together, they make relationships of domination, such as patriarchy or slavery, appear to be part of the natural order of things.
Descartes rendered nature literally mindless, and so devoid of intrinsic value – which thereby legitimated the guilt-free oppression of other species.
For Kant, only reasoning creatures had moral standing. Rational beings were to be called ‘persons’ and were ‘ends in themselves’. Beings that were not rational, on the other hand, had ‘only a relative value as means, and are therefore called things’. We could do with them what we liked.
This line of thinking was extended to become a core part of the logic of colonialism. The argument ran like this: non-white peoples were less intelligent; they were therefore unqualified to rule over themselves and their lands. It was therefore perfectly legitimate – even a duty, ‘the white man’s burden’ – to destroy their cultures and take their territory.
The same logic was applied to women, who were considered too flighty and sentimental to enjoy the privileges afforded to the ‘rational man’.
Galton believe that intellectual ability was hereditary and could be enhanced through selective breeding. He decided to find a way to scientifically identify the most able members of society and encourage them to breed – prolifically, and with each other. The less intellectually capable should be discouraged from reproducing, or indeed prevented, for the sake of the species. Thus eugenics and the intelligence test were born together.
From David Hume to Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud through to postmodernism, there are plenty of philosophical traditions that challenge the notion that we’re as intelligent as we’d like to believe, and that intelligence is the highest virtue.
From 2001: A Space Odyssey to the Terminator films, writers have fantasised about machines rising up against us. Now we can see why. If we’re used to believing that the top spots in society should go to the brainiest, then of course we should expect to be made redundant by bigger-brained robots and sent to the bottom of the heap.
Natural stupidity, rather than artificial intelligence, remains the greatest risk.
The topic of the use of electronic devices, being that laptops, and more recently smartphones, tablets 2in1 laptops (or hybrid laptops) has been a disputable issue among instructors.
Under the tutelage of TPR, I am offering to facilitate a campus-wide discussion on the use of electronic devices in the classroom. The short-range goal of such discussion is to provide a platform for SCSU instructors to share their pedagogical experience in handling the use of electronic devices in the classroom.
The long-range goal of such discussion will be to start a conversation among SCSU faculty about the didactic of educational technology; going beyond just learning technology and start building practices for successful use of technology for teaching and learning.
new report from market research firm Gartner, overall device shipments will remain flat in 2017, even as traditional PCs (including laptops) go into a decline that’s forecast to last at least through 2019. Excluding smart phones
The 188-page “Challenging Government Hacking In Criminal Cases” report, released by the American Civil Liberties Union on March 30, addresses new amendments to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which took effect last December.
Under the changes to criminal procedure rules, feds can remotely search computers in multiple jurisdictions with a single warrant. The rules are touted by law enforcement agencies as a way to streamline 100-year-old rules of criminal procedure
As social networking platforms proliferate and more interactions take place digitally, there are more opportunities for propagation of misinformation, copyright infringement, and privacy breaches.
Empathy as a critical quality for leaders was popularized in Daniel Goleman’s work about emotional intelligence. It is also a core component of Karol Wasylyshyn’s formula for achieving remarkable leadership. Elizabeth Borges, a women’s leadership program organizer and leadership consultant, recommends a particular practice, cognitive empathy.
What is library leadership? a library leader is defined as the individual who articulates a vision for the organization/task and is able to inspire support and action to achieve the vision. A manager, on the other hand, is the individual tasked with organizing and carrying out the day-to-day operational activities to achieve the vision.Work places are organized in hierarchical and in team structures. Managers are appointed to administer business units or organizations whereas leaders may emerge from all levels of the hierarchical structures. Within a volatile climate the need for strong leadership is essential.
Leaders are developed and educated within the working environment where they act and co-work with their partners and colleagues. Effective leadership complies with the mission and goals of the organization. Several assets distinguish qualitative leadership:
Mentoring. Motivation. Personal development and skills. Inspiration and collaboration. Engagement. Success and failure. Risk taking. Attributes of leaders.
Leaders require having creative minds in shaping strategies and solving problems. They are mentors for the staff, work hard and inspire them to do more with less and to start small and grow big. Staff need to be motivated to work at their optimum performance level. Leadership entails awareness of the responsibilities inherent to the roles of a leader. However, effective leadership requires the support of the upper management.
p. 36. Developments in Technology for Academic and Research Libraries
Digital strategies are not so much technologies as they are ways of using devices and software to enrich teaching, learning, research and information management, whether inside or outside the library. Effective Digital strategies can be used in both information and formal learning; what makes them interesting is that they transcended conventional ideas to create something that feels new, meaningful, and 21st century.
enabling technologies
this group of technologies is where substantive technological innovation begins to be visible.
Internet technologies.
learning technologies
social media technologies. could have been subsumed under the consumer technology category, but they have become so ever-present and so widely used in every part of society that they have been elevated to their own category. As well-established as social media is, it continues to evolve at a rapid pace, with new ideas, tools, and developments coming online constantly.
Visualization technologies. from simple infographics to complex forms of visual data analysis. What they have in common is that they tap the brain’s inherent ability to rapidly process visual information, identify patterns, and sense order in complex situations. These technologies are a growing cluster of tools and processes for mining large data sets, exploring dynamic processes, and generally making the complex simple.
p. 38 Big Data
Big data has significant implications for academic libraries in their roles as facilitators and supporters of the research process. big data use in the form of digital humanities research. Libraries are increasingly seeking to recruit for positions such as research data librarians, data curation specialists, or data visualization specialists
p. 40 Digital Scholarship Technologies
digital humanities scholars are leveraging new tools to aid in their work. ubiquity of new forms of communication including social media, text analysis software such as Umigon is helping researchers gauge public sentiment. The tool aggregates and classifies tweets as negative, positive, or neutral.
p. 42 Library Services Platforms
Diversity of format and materials, in turn, required new approaches to content collection and curation that were unavailable in the incumbent integrated library systems (ILS), which are primarily designed for print materials. LSP is different from ILS in numerous ways. Conceptually, LSPs are modeled on the idea of software as a service (SaaS),which entails delivering software applications over the internet.
p. 44 Online Identity.
incorporated the management of digital footprints into their programming and resources
simplify the idea of digital footprint as“data about the data” that people are searching or using online. As resident champions for advancing digital literacy,304 academic and research libraries are well-positioned to guide the process of understanding and crafting online identities.
Libraries are becoming integral players in helping students understand how to create and manage their online identities. website includes a social media skills portal that enables students to view their digital presence through the lens in which others see them, and then learn how they compare to their peers.
beacons are another iteration of the IoT that libraries have adopted; these small wireless devices transmit a small package of data continuously so that when devices come into proximity of the beacon’s transmission, functions are triggered based on a related application.340 Aruba Bluetooth low-energy beacons to link digital resources to physical locations, guiding patrons to these resources through their custom navigation app and augmenting the user experience with location-based information, tutorials, and videos.
students and their computer science professor have partnered with Bavaria’s State Library to develop a library app that triggers supplementary information about its art collection or other points of interest as users explore the space
The growing use of data mining software in online education has great potential to support student success by identifying and reaching out to struggling students and streamlining the path to graduation. This can be a challenge for institutions that are using a variety of technology systems that are not integrated with each other. As institutions implement learning management systems, degree planning technologies, early alert systems, and tutor scheduling that promote increased interactions among various stakeholders, there is a need for centralized aggregation of these data to provide students with holistic support that improves learning outcomes. Join us to hear from an institutional exemplar who is building solutions that integrate student data across platforms. Then work with peers to address challenges and develop solutions of your own.
This means that you’ll no longer have to deal with nerve-wracking copy-and-paste headaches since all formatting preferences from Docs will automatically be applied to the copy in WordPress.
But more importantly: You’ll also be able to edit pieces with partners and colleagues simultaneously and follow the changes they make in real-time.
The nifty integration will be available for any WordPress.com blog as well as any WordPress.org website equipped with the Jetpack plugin. All you have to do to enable it is authorize the add-on with access to your blog by signing up to your WordPress account.
WikiLeaks: Here’s how the CIA hacks your phones, TVs and PCs
The organization released thousands of documents it claims show how the US spy agency can crack open devices from Apple, Samsung, Google and Microsoft.
Apple, Google and Motorola declined to comment on WikiLeaks’ claims. Samsung didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“The CIA/Wikileaks story today is about getting malware onto phones, none of the exploits are in Signal or break Signal Protocol encryption,” said Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Signal. “This story isn’t about Signal or WhatsApp, but to the extent that it is, we see it as confirmation that what we’re doing is working.”
Telegram said on its website that the problem lies with operating systems and not encrypted messaging apps and that naming specific encrypted services is “misleading.” WhatsApp declined to comment.
how data is produced, collected and analyzed. make accessible all kind of data and info
ask good q/s and find good answers, share finding in meaningful ways. this is where digital literacy overshadows information literacy and this the fact that SCSU library does not understand; besides teaching students how to find and evaluate data, I also teach them how to communicate effectively using electronic tools.
connecting people tools and resources and making it easier for everybody. building collaborative, open and interdisciplinary
robust data computational literates. developing workshops, project and events to practice new skills. to position the library as the interdisciplinary nexus
what are data: definition. items of information, facts, traces of content and form. higher level, conception discussion about data in terms of social effects: matadata capturing information about the world, social political and economic changes. move away the mystic conceptions about data. nothing objective about data.
the emergence of IoT – digital meets physical. cyber physical systems. smart objects driven by industry. . proliferation of sensor and device – smart devices.
what does privacy looks like ? what is netneutrality when IoT? library must restructure : collaborate across institutions about collections of data in opien and participatory ways. put IoT in the hands of make and break things (she is maker space aficionado)
make and break things hackathons – use cheap devices such as Arduino and Pi.
data literacy programs with higher level conception exploration; libraries empower the campus in data collection. data science norms, store and share data to existing repositories and even catalogs. commercial services to store and connect data, but very restrictive and this is why libraries must be involved.
linked data and dark data
linked data – draw connections around online data most of the data are locked. linked data uses metadata to link related information in ways computers can understand.
libraries take advantage of link data. link data opportunity for semantics, natural language processing etc. if hidden data is relative to our communities, it is a library responsibility to provide it. community data practitioners
dark data
massive data, which cannot be analyzed by relational processing. data not yield significant findings. might be valuable for researchers: one persons trash is another persons’ treasure. preserving data and providing access to info. collaborate with researchers across disciplines and assist decide what is worth keeping and what discarding and how to study.
rich learning experience working with lined and dark data enable fresh perspective and learning how to work with data architecture. data literacy programming.
in context of data is different from open source and open projects. the social side of data science . advising researchers on navigation data, ethical compilations.
open science movement .https://cos.io/ pushing beyond licences and reframe, position ourselves as collaborators
analysis and publishing ; use tools that can be shared and include data, code and executable files.
reproducibility and contestability https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/events/series/summer-of-open-science
In the age of Big Data, there is an abundance of free or cheap data sources available to libraries about their users’ behavior across the many components that make up their web presence. Data from vendors, data from Google Analytics or other third-party tracking software, and data from user testing are all things libraries have access to at little or no cost. However, just like many students can become overloaded when they do not know how to navigate the many information sources available to them, many libraries can become overloaded by the continuous stream of data pouring in from these sources. This session will aim to help librarians understand 1) what sorts of data their library already has (or easily could have) access to about how their users use their various web tools, 2) what that data can and cannot tell them, and 3) how to use the datasets they are collecting in a holistic manner to help them make design decisions. The presentation will feature examples from the presenters’ own experience of incorporating user data in decisions related to design the Bethel University Libraries’ web presence.
silos, IT barrier, focusing on student success, retention, server space is cheap, if
promotion and tenure for faculty can include incentive to work with the librarian
lack of fear, changing the mindset.
deep collaboration both within and cross-consortia
don’t rely on vendor solutions. changing mindset
development = oppty (versus development as “work”)
private higher education is PALNI
3d virtual picture of disastrous areas. unlock the digital information to be digitally accessible to all people who might be interested.
they opened the maps of Katmandu for the local community and they were coming up with the strategies to recover. democracy in action
i can’t stop thinking that the keynote speaker efforts are mere follow up of what Naomi Klein explains in her Shock Doctrine: http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine: a government country seeks reasons to destroy another country or area and then NGOs from the same country go to remedy the disasters
A question from a librarian from the U about the use of drones. My note: why did the SCSU library have to give up its drone?
Douglas County Library model. too resource intensive to continue
Marmot Library Network
ILS integrated library system – shared with other counties, same sever for the entire consortium. they have a programmer, viewfind, open source, discovery player, he customized viewfind community to viewfind plus. instead of using the ILS public access catalogue, they are using the Vufind interface
Caiifa Enki. public library – single access collection. they purchase ebooks from the publisher and they are using also the viewfind interface. but not integrated with the library catalogs. Kansas public library went from OverDrive to Viewfind. CA State library is funding for the time being this effort.
types of content – publisher will not understand issue, which clear for librarians
PDF and epub formats
purchase content –
title by title selection – academia is tired of selections. although it is intended to buy also collections
library – owned ( and shared collections)
host content from libraries – papers in academic lib, genealogy in pub lib.
options in license models .
e resource content. not only ebooks, after it is taken care of, add other types of digital objects.
instead of replicate, replacement of the commercial aggregators,
Amigos Shelf interface is the product of the presenter
instead of having a young reader collection as SCSU has on the third floor, an academic library is outsourcing through AMigos shelf ebooks for young readers
Harper Collins is too cumbersome and the reason to avoid working with them.
security issues. some of the material sent over ftp and immediately moved to sftp
decisions – use of internal resources only, if now – amazon
programmer used for the pilot. contracted programmers. lack of the ability to see the large picture. eventually hired a full time person, instead of outsourcing. RDA compliant MARC.
ONIX, spreadsheet MARC.
Decision about who to start with : public or academic.
attempt to keep pricing down –
own agreement with the customers, separate from the agreement with the Publisher
current development: web-based online reading, shared-consortial collections and SIP2 authentication
