Harold

• Rated 5 stars

“The most comprehensive analysis on our change to a networked digital economy. This is not light reading, but is a required resource for anyone seriously considering the implications of the internet age on our economy, our governance and our society.”

Harold wrote this review Saturday, April 14 2007. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 5 stars

“A good part of this book reads like An Inconvenient Truth, but Homer-Dixon adds more detail about how we got into this mess. Much of the book is dedicated to an explanation of the five tectonic stresses that we face as a civilization - population; energy; environmental; climate and economic. About 80% of this book is depressing to any thoughtful or caring person.

However, there is a positive note - in times of crisis and destruction come opportunities for regeneration. This requires a “prospective mind” that can anticipate crises and prepare for them. For instance, Homer-Dixon encourages building resilience into our communities and economies, so that we are not dependent on tightly coupled global supply chains. Resilience implies redundance and is evident everywhere in nature.

Homer-Dixon suggests two related tools for helping us to build more resilient communities - the Internet and open source collaborative problem-solving. He sees much untapped potential in using one billion interconnected volunteers to bypass elite special interests and tackle our urgent global problems. Connecting with a worldwide community of interest while creating resilient local communities is the general recommendation from Homer-Dixon.

"Advance planning means we need to develop a wide range of scenarios and experiment with technologies, organizations, and ideas. We’ll do better at these tasks, and we’ll also do better in the confusing aftermath of breakdown, if we use a decentralized approach to solving our problems, because traditional centralized and top-down approaches are not nimble enough, and they stifle creativity."

Homer-Dixon’s argument and suggestion to address “catastrophe, creativity and the renewal of civilization” is a solid argument for many of the activities that I now find myself engaged in. These range from the creation of our community work Commons; our local organic food purchasing cooperative; and implementing open source organisational models. There is also the search for meaning, beyond that which was developed two milennia ago by the great faiths, during what is described in the book as the Axial Age, when “… people came to understand that they could use reason and reflection to see beyond their immediate reality …”. What we usually experience is more like this:

"When we get in the door of our nearest church, mosque or synagogue, we find there’s no real opportunity for discussion. Instead, we’re handed a creed of some kind. We’re told what to think about values, not how to think about them."

The first step in our renewal as a civilization is admitting that we face a global crisis and talking about what we can do.”

Harold wrote this review Monday, March 12 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 0 stars

“need to buy this book”

Harold wrote this review Tuesday, January 30 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“still reading this one”

Harold wrote this review Sunday, January 14 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“This is an excellent book for anyone interested in learning and education, but the title is a bit misleading. It’s more about the theory and practice of authentic learning experiences than specific computer games. Many of games mentioned in the book, like the debating game, are not computer-based, but could be computer enhanced. David Williamson Shaffer’s book is really about epistemic games, or “games that are fundamentally about learning to think in innovative ways”.

He begins by showing the fundamental weaknesses of our Industrial School System, itself a game:

"Not surprisingly, the epistemology of School is the epistemology of the Industrial Revolution - of creating wealth through mass production of standardized goods. School is a game about thinking like a factory worker. It is a game with an epistemology of right and wrong answers in which Students are supposed to follow instructions, whether they make sense in the moment or not. Truth is whatever the teacher says is the right answer, and actions are justified based on appeal to authority. School is a game in which what it means to know something is to be able to answer specific kinds of questions on specific kinds of tests."

Shaffer shows the need for teaching how to think and how to be creative, instead of how to memorize, and lays the argument for the use of games in learning. Most of his examples are outside of the classroom because it is obvious that these kinds of epistemic games would disrupt classes and the curriculum. The games that are discussed are called monument games, or exemplars of good practice. None of the games is available “out of the box” but the ideas and concepts are critical for anyone who wants to use games in learning, not just playing bingo and using words or figures out of context. The latter does not help learning.

The use of epistemic games is an approach that resembles cognitive apprenticeship. As our society moves from a linear print-based medium of knowledge creation to a networked and computer-assisted medium, we need new, post-industrial learning models:

"As the late Jim Kaput and I have argued, if written symbols led to a theoretic culture based on external symbolic of storage, then computers are in the process of creating a digital or virtual culture based on the externalization of symbolic processing. This is the kind of change that has happened three of four times in the course of human evolution - a change of similar magnitude to the development of the printing press and the development of writing and language itself. What it means is that being “literate” in the digital age is not about reading and writing but about solving problems using simulations. What matters in the digital age is not learning to do things a computer can do for you but learning to use the computer to do things that neither you nor it could do alone."

I highly recommend “How Computer Games Help Children Learn”.

Check out the website at http://epistemicgames.org/eg/”

Harold wrote this review Saturday, January 20 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Thought I'd buy it, as Steve Wozniak is giving a lecture here in Sackville, NB on 16 Jan 2007.

This is a personal account of how Woz learned about computers, electronics and engineering. This is partially about Apple Computers, but I would not call this a business book. Woz says he wrote the book to set the record straight on several statements that appear in the press or other published books. He also seems to have written this book as inspiration for young people who may wish to become inventors.

I found the book interesting, but not overly inspirational, but then I'm not a fan of autobiographies. I would recommend it for computer engineers, techies or high school students who may be looking at their options in life.”

Harold wrote this review Saturday, January 27 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“This is a book about social innovation in complex environments (our world). It covers the stories of many social innovators and discusses the various parts of a common path that many take. This is a path with no map and no destination. Getting to maybe, or “if only ..”, starts with the first step of realising that here and now is the best and only place to start. A chapter is dedicated to each identified step, but these are more like checkpoints than actual steps in a process.

Next is standing still, which is the requirement to reflect and listen, now that you’ve got the fire burning for some decisive action. The tension between reflection and action is a major theme of the book. Powerful strangers are those who can suddenly help you and your cause, now that you have started the journey and have opened your mind. Some time during the journey you get into the groove and “let it find you”, playing part of a cast, as in a jazz ensemble. The worst point is cold heaven, when you feel hopeless, as the authors say:

"Those who struggle to make a difference have to face two paradoxes. The first is that success is not a fixed address. The second is that failure can open the way to success."

From cold heaven may come a chance to have hope as well as a pragmatic understanding of the realities of the world, or to “catch the moment when hope and history rhyme”. This is the time to ensure that whatever has been created does not stagnate and may even call for creative destruction as the environmental landscape changes. Finally, the door opens and the end of one social innovation can lead to the beginning of another.

There are no answers in this book but I think that it may be an inspiration for many who are on the journey of social innovation and need to know that they are not alone.”

Harold wrote this review Wednesday, November 29 2006. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Even though I read several of the manuscripts, the book is much better. It's synthesized, flows and has great graphics. I am a huge proponent of the importance of informal learning for our society and Jay covers a lot of ground in his book. This is a book that you can use as an introduction to the subject or as a reference. Highly recommended.”

Harold wrote this review Thursday, November 23 2006. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Good for technical, and how to set up, information, but nothing on designing training, education or learning applications.

See http://www.jarche.com/?p=926”

Harold wrote this review Friday, November 10 2006. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 4 stars

“A great book for parents, this is an activist's guide on how to deal with too much homework and its detrimental effects. The authors present this in an easy-to-read narrative style with many anecdotes and case studies. The book also gives many tools for parents to use when confronting school boards, educators and others. There is a good bibliography but this is not a book for serious research. I would recommend this as a first read on the subject.”

Harold wrote this review Monday, November 6 2006. ( reply | permalink )