The education theorists, practitioners and technologists George Siemens and Stephen Downes united again for the course E-Learning 3.0. Stephen was in a hotel room in Toronto and George somewhere in Australia, but the wonders of YouTube made them unite (after a search for the light switches). In my earlier posts… Continue reading
Stephen Downes’ MOOC about distributed learning, E-Learning 3.0, had a pre-start last week – which I missed, but I watched the recording. It seems Stephen was a bit disappointed – only a few people turned up for the first live-video, maybe this was just because many thought the course would… Continue reading
I’m learning about the decentralized web these days. I even made a very simple site using The Beaker Browser and files in the dat-format. On that site I keep track of my adventures in decentralized land. I’m pretty excited to learn that the education expert Stephen Downes is launching a MOOC… Continue reading
So many interesting things are happening in and around the virtual world High Fidelity that I can’t keep up. The company raised $35 millionĂ‚Â in June and combines virtual worlds, virtual reality and the blockchain. Philip Rosedale, creator of both Second Life and High Fidelity, also manages to invite interesting people… Continue reading
I was at Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France. They also have a VR Arles Festival with a competition for VR productions. Winner is this year Treehugger: Wawona by the London design studio Marshmallow Laser Feast. One becomes a water particle and travels into a giant sequoia tree… Continue reading
This week I learned about information philosophy, most notably the work of Luciano Floridi. In this day and age of data and digitalization, he develops an ontology and ethics based on reality-as-information. Virtual worlds geeks will appreciate how the professor also refers to Second Life (and other virtual environments), for… Continue reading
As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m looking for 3D or VR argument maps. In the meantime I found out about Noda, which is a fledgling application for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. It’s available on Steam. On Twitter, Roy Grubb suggested his own software, Topicscape, which is a… Continue reading
Fascinating: IBM trained an algorithm in debating humans. There’s still some way to go, but the results were pretty impressive. I don’t know about IBM’s Project Debater, but there is an interesting history of philosophical research into argumentation. This inspired practices such as argument mapping. Like mind maps and concept… Continue reading
(‘Philisophy and tech’ is a series of posts in which I discuss very briefly philosophical issues I encounter reading stuff about technology) Last week Google published ethical principles guiding its AI development and research. Richard Waters of the Financial Times quotes AI-professor Stuart Russell at the University of California, Berkeley,… Continue reading
I attended a Fireside Chat in the virtual world High Fidelity with Philip Rosedale and Peter Diamandis. Dr. Diamandis is founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight. High Fidelity is not as easy to access as an app… Continue reading