On 9/6/06, Arthur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have nothing in particular against Microsoft. I do believe that > technology has been a factor among factors disruptive of some sensible > levels of sensitivity to issues connected to the corporate sponsorship > of academic and educational endeavors. Not here in particular, but > certainly in general, I think it has indeed had a tremendous impact in > influencing the debate about the role of technology in education. There > is little academy left, in its more idealized sense - from what I can > tell, at least in the US. Things *really are* different, really have > evolved into something else again. My own sense is that necessary > equilibriums have been disturbed, and instead of Kirby's triumphalism > about the role of technology and the Silicon Forest - I feels something > closer akin to dread. There is evolution, and there are evolutionary > dead-ends. > > Another friendship secured, I'm sure. > > Art
Interesting as always Art. >From my perspective, USA school kids are already in enforced servitude to Texas Instruments, a private commercial enterprise and maker of TI calculators. Whereas I recognized their keypads for distilling a lot of key symbols to a small turf, their success has prevented our advance to a new level, where open source is plentiful and gnu math topics wonderful. So in getting behind .NET and Monkey, you might see me trying to puppet big industry into fighting with itself -- and you'd be right in seeing that. It's companies against companies. We call that competition and model it in sports (mostly for the competent) or in war (mostly for the incompetent). We put each other "out of business" but also in a position to "learn from our mistakes" i.e. just because that enterprise came to an end, doesn't mean you can't try again another day. So you see, there are certain aspects of being a capitalist tool that I enjoy. What I don't like is the uneven playing field set up between artificial persons in the guise of real ones, and real ones -- an issue not new to you. One approach is to focus on "undoing mistakes in the law" (a kind of debugging). Another approach, mine, is to work with tribal semi-sovereignties on defining new small, medium and large enterprise models that simply operate outside "white man" jurisdiction -- in the sense of *not* inheriting centuries of dreary boilerplate (i.e. "crufty legalese" as we call it in geekese, a different coding language). The Pacific Northwest is a good state for this experiment (lots of wealthy casinos). So, does this mean Indian Gaming is getting involved in the public and private education business, pushing back against the likes of TI and MSFT, other stock ticker entities? Yes. Spirit Mountain (Grand Ronde) has been instrumental in keeping OMSI going (our favorite science museum). It also means we'll be trying out topics Pentagon Math on the rez, well before we look at reaching the burbs. The grand strategy plan is pretty open source, spelled out in some detail (a lot by Fuller, over decades). My longer term readers will find nothing new here -- they already know a lot more. Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
