Send Link mailing list submissions to
[email protected]
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
[email protected]
You can reach the person managing the list at
[email protected]
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Link digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. The future of software? (Stephen Loosley)
2. Re: ?rich digital learning activities? (Tom Worthington)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2024 21:35:56 +0930
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] The future of software?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
The future of software? Imagine a bot, stamping on a human face ? forever
Automation is driving the next wave of commoditization, threatening to replace
skilled workers
By Liam Proven Mon 16 Sep 2024
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/16/the_future_of_software_part_one/
Part 1 As we have said before, the software industry has a decades-long history
of cost-cutting, commoditization, and a successful sales model of "pile 'em
high, sell 'em cheap." This has worrying consequences if your skill set is the
next one to be commoditized. But there may be ways out of this narrowing
commercial bottleneck.
The stages of commoditization
Commoditization leads to consolidation ? fewer choices and less differentiation
in design. All that's left is branding and pricing. That can be simplified to
"cheap and interchangeable" versus "fancy and premium-branded." A couple of
months ago, we described how commoditization had simplified both the hardware
and software markets.
In hardware, a huge variety of general-purpose computing kit has been
simplified down to essentially just two alternatives.
One is a profusion of x86 PCs, still largely interchangeable because of
hardware compatibility standards.
The other is a smaller array of pocket and battery-powered devices, which
mostly use RISC processors in the Arm family ? themselves a descendant of Acorn
hardware. Acorn Computers always prioritized the less price-sensitive
educational market over the home and games markets. This proved to be a winning
tactic in the medium term. Acorn was still going over a decade after Sinclair
Research was sold to Amstrad, and after Commodore and Atari battled one another
to mutual destruction.
In software, there are roughly three mainstream choices. Whereas in the 16-bit
era there were dozens of OSes, now we have Windows and a few flavors of Unix
(and Windows is increasingly Unix-like). There's one main paid-for commercial
OS left: Microsoft's Windows NT.
There is one successful family of partly proprietary Unixes: Apple's macOS, iOS
and iPadOS (alongside the company's non-general-purpose ones, such as watchOS
and tvOS, based on the same code).
And, of course, there is the large, sprawling, chaotic community of really
quite similar FOSS Unix-like OSes: Linux in a thousand forms, from Android and
ChromeOS to legions of server and desktop distros... and the BSD family, which
remains significant partly because of licensing issues, which seem trivial to
folks from the proprietary world but are very important in FOSS ? and cultural
issues, which in FOSS can be even more influential.
There is loads more diversity in the worlds of embedded hardware, RTOSes, and
hobby OSes, but they have little presence in general-purpose computing. Much of
this is industrial stuff, and the customers often don't get to choose. (Even
those strongholds are under threat from real-time Linux, now that kit able to
usefully run it can be cheap enough to be disposable.)
A key point to take away from this is that niche markets can be safer. It's
better to be a big fish in a small pond than in the ocean. .. (continued)
https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/16/the_future_of_software_part_one/
--
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2024 09:05:04 +1000
From: Tom Worthington <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [LINK] ?rich digital learning activities?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
On 14/9/24 20:01, Stephen Loosley wrote:
> ?The death of campus life?: first major Australian university dumps
> face-to-face lectures, leaving staff ?furious? ...
> By Caitlin Cassidy 13 Sep 2024
> https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/sep/13/adelaide-university-dumps-face-to-face-lectures
I attended a seminar at University Adelaide recently. The staff did not
appear to be "furious". Instead I listened to students actively
undertaking interesting projects, solving real world problems. In this
case involving generating electricity while making wine. ;-)
https://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2024/08/vitivolatics-vineyards-with.html
> Ahead of the merged university opening at the beginning of 2026, staff at the
> University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia were informed
> last week that traditional lectures would no longer form a part of courses.
I gave my last lecture in 2008:
https://blog.tomw.net.au/2008/08/my-last-lecture.html
Since then I have researched and trained in how to have students doing
things, rather than just sitting and listening. None of this is new.
Traditionally students were offered lectures, but most did not attend.
Instead they learned alone, in self managed groups and occasionally in
activities officially organized, such as tutorials and labs.
But you can't just declare an approach to education, you have to train
staff to do it and equip them with tools. Australian universities have
been quietly doing this over the last few years. I hope to help teach
academic how to do this.
--
Tom Worthington http://www.tomw.net.au
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 665 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL:
<https://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/attachments/20240918/d7acbe09/attachment-0001.sig>
------------------------------
Subject: Digest Footer
_______________________________________________
Link mailing list
[email protected]
https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
------------------------------
End of Link Digest, Vol 382, Issue 10
*************************************
