José Sócrates confirma demissão do coordenador do Plano Tecnológico 
17.11.2005 - 19h23   Lusa, PUBLICO.PT 

O primeiro-ministro, José Sócrates, confirmou hoje a demissão de José Tavares da coordenação do Plano Tecnológico, mas escusou-se a adiantar as razões que levaram à sua saída.

"O ministro da Economia comunicou-me que o coordenador do plano tecnológico apresentou hoje a demissão. Agora, o ministro vai nomear novo coordenador", declarou o primeiro-ministro.

Esta manhã, o Diário Económico noticiou que José Tavares, responsável da Unidade de Coordenação do Plano Tecnológico, apresentou a demissão por discordar com a forma como o processo tem sido conduzido pelo Governo. Segundo o diário, o coordenador, nomeado em Junho pelo ministro da Economia, mostrou-se descontente com a indefinição do Executivo quanto às medidas a incluir no plano, que deveria ter sido formalmente apresentado no final de Outubro.

Sem adiantar as razões que ditaram a demissão do coordenador, José Sócrates sublinhou que o "importante é que o plano tecnológico está em marcha há muito meses. Não esperámos por um documento" para avançar, afirmou o primeiro-ministro, lembrando a introdução do ensino de inglês no 1º ciclo, o programa de novas oportunidades ou os incentivos fiscais às empresas que apostem na inovação.

Ainda de acordo com o Diário Económico, José Tavares estaria também desagradado com a gestão do processo por parte do ministro da Ciência e Ensino Superior, Mariano Gago, que coordena algumas das principais medidas que fazem parte do plano, como é o caso da expansão da banda larga e a qualificação profissional.

Numa primeira reacção, o ministro da Presidência desmentiu qualquer conflito de competências no seio do Governo, garantindo que o Plano Tecnológico, que continuará sedeado no Ministério da Economia e Inovação.

Oposição lembra uma das principais bandeiras do Governo

O argumento não calou as críticas da oposição, que esta tarde exigiram no Parlamento explicações do ministro da Economia, Manuel Pinho, lembrando que o plano tecnológico foi uma das principais bandeiras do Governo.

Para Luís Marques Guedes, líder parlamentar do PSD, a demissão de José Tavares constitui "um rombo grande no relançamento da economia", que considera estar "completamente ausente" da política governativa.

Usando os mesmos argumentos, o CDS-PP apresentou um requerimento para ouvir, na Comissão de Economia e Finanças, José Tavares, bem como os dois ministros envolvidos no processo.

Já para o deputado comunista António Filipe "o plano tecnológico começa mal, porque nem sequer começa", sustentando que a política económica do Governo não faz menções a esse plano.

Por seu lado, o Bloco de Esquerda, Francisco Louçã, acusou o Governo de se "atrapalhar a si próprio" neste domínio e desafiou o primeiro-ministro a assumir a coordenação desta pasta.

A direcção do grupo parlamentar do PS escusou-se a fazer qualquer comentário sobre este assunto.

Students Ace State Tests, but Earn D's From U.S.

After Tennessee tested its eighth-grade students in math this year, state officials at a jubilant news conference called the results a "cause for celebration." Eighty-seven percent of students performed at or above the proficiency level.

But when the federal government made public the findings of its own tests last month, the results were startlingly different: only 21 percent of Tennessee's eighth graders were considered proficient in math.

Such discrepancies have intensified the national debate over testing and accountability, with some educators saying that numerous states have created easy exams to avoid the sanctions that President Bush's centerpiece education law, No Child Left Behind, imposes on consistently low-scoring schools.

A comparison of state test results against the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal test mandated by the No Child Left Behind law, shows that wide discrepancies between the state and federal findings were commonplace.

In Mississippi, 89 percent of fourth graders performed at or above proficiency on state reading tests, while only 18 percent of fourth graders demonstrated proficiency on the federal test. Oklahoma, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Alaska, Texas and more than a dozen other states all showed students doing far better on their own reading and math tests than on the federal one.

The chasm is significant because of the compromises behind the No Child Left Behind law. The law requires states to participate in the National Assessment - known to educators as NAEP (pronounced nape) - the most important federal measure of student proficiency.

But in a bow to states' rights, states are allowed to use their own tests in meeting the law's central mandate - that schools increase the percentage of students demonstrating proficiency each year. The law requires 100 percent of the nation's students to reach proficiency - as each state defines it - by 2014.

States set the stringency of their own tests as well as the number of questions students must answer correctly to be labeled proficient. And because states that fail to raise scores over time face serious sanctions, there is little incentive to make the exams difficult, some educators say.

"Under No Child Left Behind, the states get to set the proficiency bar wherever they like, and unfortunately most are setting it quite low," said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which generally supports the federal law.

"They're telling the public in their states that huge numbers of students are proficient, but the NAEP results show that's not the case," Mr. Petrilli said.

Other educators and experts give different reasons for the discrepancy between state and federal test results. A Standard & Poor's report this fall listed many reasons for such differences, among them that the National Assessment is a no-stakes test, while low scores on state tests lead to sanctions against schools.

The report noted that the National Assessment is given to a sampling of students, whereas schools administer state tests to nearly all students. The tests serve different purposes, with the federal one giving policy makers a snapshot of student performance across the nation, while state tests provide data about individual performance. Because of these differences, some state officials say it is unfair to compare the test results.

But the report by Standard & Poor's, which has a division that analyzes educational data, also noted some states' tests are just easier.

G. Gage Kingsbury, director of research at the Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit group that administers tests in 1,500 districts nationwide, said states that set their proficiency standards before No Child Left Behind became law had tended to set them high.

"The idea back then was that we needed to be competitive with nations like Hong Kong and Singapore," he said. "But our research shows that since N.C.L.B. took effect, states have set lower standards."

Not all have a low bar. In South Carolina, Missouri, Wyoming and Maine, state results tracked closely with the federal exam.

South Carolina is a state that set world-class standards, Mr. Kingsbury said. The math tests there are so difficult that only 23 percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficiency level this year, compared with 30 percent on the federal math test. South Carolina officials now fear that such rigor is coming back to haunt them.

"We set very high standards for our tests, and unfortunately it's put us at a great disadvantage," said Inez M. Tenenbaum, the state superintendent of education. "We thought other states would be high-minded too, but we were mistaken."

South Carolina's tough exams make it harder for schools there to show the annual testing gains demanded by the federal law.

This year less than half of the state's 1,109 schools met the federal law's benchmark for the percentage of students showing proficiency, a challenge that will get tougher each year. As a result, legislators are pushing to lower the state's proficiency standard, Ms. Tenenbaum said, an idea she opposes.

Because of the discrepancies, several prominent educators are now calling for a system of national testing that counts, like those at the heart of educational systems in England, France and Japan.

"We need national standards and national tests," said Diane Ravitch, a professor at New York University who is a former member of the National Assessment's board. "I conclude that states are just looking to make everybody feel good."

Ms. Tenenbaum too says the differences among states have convinced her of the need for a national test. "I think we should all just take the NAEP," she said. "Get it out of the states' hands."

But Representative John A. Boehner, chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Work Force, defended states' rights to define proficiency as they see fit and said that over time comparisons with the federal test would force them to draw up better tests.

"The bright lights of accountability are going to shine on the states who are kidding themselves," said Mr. Boehner, Republican of Ohio.

The battle lines have long been sharp in the testing debate. Most corporate leaders favor national testing, said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, a group that represents corporate executives.

Opponents include liberal groups that dislike all standardized testing; the testing industry itself, which has found lucrative profits in writing new exams for all 50 states; and political conservatives who fiercely resist any intrusion on states' rights to control curricula and tests.

Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, says that the comparison of state and federal tests provides useful information. "It allows us to shine a light," she said. "This is a truth-in-advertising type deal."

But Ms. Spellings has declined to criticize states whose tests appear to overstate the percentage of their students who are proficient. The law leaves it to states to calibrate their accountability systems, including how difficult they make their exams, she said. "We're not going to sit up in Washington and look at all those moving parts," Ms. Spellings said.

The National Assessment uses three performance levels to classify student results: advanced, which denotes superior performance; proficient, which indicates that students have "demonstrated competency" and basic, which indicates students have attained only "partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills." Many students also score below basic, which the National Assessment's governing board does not classify as an achievement level.

On Oct. 19, the day the federal results were released, Ms. Spellings urged reporters to compare the percentage of students performing at the proficiency level on state tests with the percentage of students performing at the basic level on the federal test.

Many state officials said they also preferred that comparison, which greatly softens the discrepancies. In Tennessee, for instance, the 66-point gap between the federal and state results in eighth-grade math shrinks to just 26 points if the state results are compared with the federal measure of basic skills.

"NAEP's basic is comparable to our proficient," said Kim Karesh, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Education. "Now whether Tennessee's test is stringent enough is something that we're reviewing constantly. Nobody here would say we have a perfect test."

Officials in many other states whose scores differed sharply from those of the National Assessment cried foul over the very idea of comparing the results.

"The comparison to NAEP is not fair," said Mitch Edwards, a spokesman for the Department of Education in Alabama, where 83 percent of fourth-grade students scored at or above proficient on the state's reading test while only 22 percent demonstrated proficiency on the federal reading test. "Making comparisons to the NAEP becomes very difficult without giving the impression that some states are not measuring up to others or to the nation."

In Georgia, 83 percent of eighth graders scored at or above proficient on state reading tests, compared with just 24 percent on the federal test. "Kids know the federal test doesn't really count," said Dana Tofig, a spokesman for the State Department of Education. "So it's not a fair comparison; it's not apples to apples."

Kids Gone Wild

Chip Wass

Overhaul of Linux License Could Have Broad Impact

The rules governing the use of most free software programs will be revised for the first time in 15 years, in an open process that begins today.

Free software, once regarded as a tiny counterculture in computing, has become a mainstream technology in recent years, led by the rising popularity of programs like the GNU Linux operating system.

Industry analysts estimate that the value of hardware and software that use the Linux operating system is $40 billion. And Linux has become a competitive alternative to Microsoft's Windows, especially in corporate data centers.

So the overhaul of the General Public License, which covers Linux and many other free software programs, is an issue of far greater significance today than before.

"The big boys, corporations and governments, have far more reason to be interested and concerned this time," said Eben Moglen, general counsel to the Free Software Foundation, which holds the license, commonly known as the G.P.L.

The process will also be closely watched for how the new G.P.L. will take account of software patents, which have exploded among proprietary software developers since 1991, the last time the license was revised.

A document that describes the principles and timeline for updating the G.P.L., as well as the process for public comment and resolving issues, was to be posted today at www.gplv3.fsf.org. A first draft will be presented at a conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, scheduled for Jan. 16 and 17.

A second draft is expected by summer. If a third draft is required, it should be completed by the fall of 2006. The process, Mr. Moglen said, could involve comments from thousands of corporations and individuals, but the Free Software Foundation will make the final judgments.

The revision process promises to be intriguing because of the man behind the G.P.L., Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation.

The G.P.L., according to Mr. Stallman, is an effort to use copyright law to protect what he calls the "four basic freedoms of software" - the unrestricted right to use, study, copy and modify software. The license also requires that any modifications be redistributed with the same unrestricted rights.

Mr. Stallman is renowned as both a brilliant computer programmer and a person of emphatic views on matters of software. At the Artificial Intelligence Lab at M.I.T. in the 1980's, Mr. Stallman began writing a free version of the proprietary Unix operating system, which he called GNU, and he distributed his work free.

Mr. Stallman, working as a lone craftsman, wrote a huge amount of code for the operating system and software tools for building it. But he had not gotten around to designing the "kernel" of the free operating system - the core of the program, controlling a computer's most basic functions.

In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a university student in Finland, wrote a kernel and wrapped much of the GNU code around it. The completed operating system attracted a following of programmers, working collaboratively to debug and improve the program. The operating system became known as Linux, and the networked style of work was called open source.

In Mr. Stallman's view, proprietary software is an unwarranted restriction on the freedom of information. The revision of the G.P.L., he said, is "part of something bigger - part of the long-term effort to liberate cyberspace." Software patents, he said, are "utterly insane."

For Microsoft's part, Steven A. Ballmer, its chief executive, has called the G.P.L. a "cancer."

Yet in his way, Mr. Stallman is also quite pragmatic. Proprietary software applications can run on Linux without restrictions, which is important for the survival of Linux as a viable alternative to commercial operating systems.

Mr. Stallman also acknowledged that patent rights are a sticky issue for free software, because any attempt in the G.P.L. to counteract the spread of patented software could backfire by making it difficult for free and proprietary software to run on the same computer.

"Patents are a serious issue we have to address, but we have limited leverage," he said. "Sometimes, if you push too hard, you end up pushing yourself back instead of hurting your adversary."

Uma comissão de avaliação de manuais
Richard Feynman

Nessa altura eu estava a dar uma série de aulas de Iniciação de Física e, depois de uma delas, Tom Harvey, que me ajudava a preparar as demonstrações, disse: "Devia ver o que se passa com a Matemática nos livros escolares! A minha filha chega a casa com uma data de disparates!"

Não prestei muita atenção ao que ele disse.

Mas no dia seguinte recebi um telefonema de um advogado bastante famoso de Pasadena, o Sr. Norris, que nessa altura pertencia à Junta Estadual de Educação. Pediu-me que fizesse parte da Comissão Curricular Estadual, que devia escolher os novos manuais para o estado da Califórnia. Sabem, o estado tem uma lei segundo a qual todos os manuais usados por todos os miúdos em todas as escolas oficiais têm de ser escolhidos pela Junta Estadual de Educação, pelo que formam uma comissão para ver os livros e aconselhar que livros eles devem escolher.

[...] Por esta altura, eu devia ter um sentimento de culpa por não cooperar com o Governo, dado que aceitei fazer parte da Comissão.

Comecei imediatamente a receber cartas e telefonemas dos editores. Diziam coisas como: "Ficámos muito satisfeitos ao saber que o senhor pertence à comissão porque queríamos realmente um homem de ciência..." e "É maravilhoso ter um cientista na comissão, porque os nossos livros têm uma orientação científica...". Mas também diziam coisas como: "Gostaríamos de lhe explicar a intenção do nosso livro..." e "Teremos muito gosto em o ajudar no que pudermos a avaliar os nossos livros...". Aquilo afigurava-se-me um disparate. Sou um cientista objectivo e parecia-me que, como a única coisa que os miúdos iam receber na escola eram os livros (e os professores recebiam o manual do professor, que eu também receberia), qualquer explicação extra seria uma distorção. Por isso não quis falar com nenhum dos editores e respondi sempre: "Não precisam de explicar; estou certo de que os livros falarão por si".

[...] A Sr.ª Whitehouse começou por me falar nas coisas que iam debater na próxima reunião (já tinham tido uma reunião; eu fora nomeado mais tarde). "Vão falar sobre os números de contar". Eu não sabia o que aquilo era, mas afinal era o que eu costumo chamar números inteiros. Tinham nomes diferentes para tudo, pelo que tive imensos problemas logo de início.

Ela contou-me como os membros da Comissão avaliavam os novos livros escolares. Arranjavam um número relativamente grande de exemplares de cada livro e davam-nos a vários professores e administradores do seu distrito. Depois recebiam relatórios do que essas pessoas pensavam sobre os livros. Como não conheço uma data de professores ou administradores, e como achava que, lendo os livros sozinho, podia formar uma opinião sobre o que me pareciam, resolvi ler os livros todos sozinho.

[...] Então fui à primeira reunião. Os outros membros tinham atribuído uma espécie de pontuação a alguns livros e perguntaram-me quais eram as minhas pontuações. Muitas vezes a minha pontuação era diferente da deles e eles perguntavam: "Por que deu uma pontuação tão baixa a esse livro?"

Eu dizia que o problema daquele livro era isto e aquilo na página tal tinha os meus apontamentos.

Descobriram que eu era uma espécie de mina de ouro: dizia-lhes, em detalhe, o que havia de bom e de mau em todos os livros; tinha uma razão para cada pontuação.

Perguntava-lhes por que tinham dado uma pontuação tão alta a determinado livro e eles diziam: "Diga-nos o que pensou do livro tal". Eu nunca descobria porque é que eles tinham pontuado uma coisa de determinada maneira. Em vez disso, estavam sempre a perguntar-me o que eu pensava.

Chegámos a um certo livro que fazia parte de um conjunto de três livros suplementares publicados pela mesma editora e perguntaram-me o que pensava dele.

Eu disse: "O depósito de livros não me mandou esse livro, mas os outros dois eram bons".

Alguém tentou repetir a pergunta: "O que pensa do livro?"

"Já disse que não me mandaram esse, pelo que não tenho opinião sobre ele".

O homem do depósito de livros estava lá e disse: "Desculpem; posso explicar isso. Não lho mandei porque esse livro ainda não estava completo. Há uma regra segundo a qual as entradas têm de ser todas até uma certa altura e o editor atrasou-se uns dias. Por isso nos foi enviado apenas com as capas e o interior em branco. Da companhia mandaram-me uma nota pedindo desculpa e dizendo esperar que pudessem considerar o conjunto dos três livros, apesar de o terceiro vir atrasado".

Verificou-se que o livro em branco tinha pontuação de alguns dos outros membros! Não acreditavam que estivesse em branco porque tinham uma pontuação. Na realidade, a pontuação para o livro que faltava era um pouco mais alta do que para os outros dois. O facto de não haver nada no livro não tinha nada a ver com a pontuação.

Creio que a razão de tudo isto é o sistema funcionar deste modo: quando enchemos as pessoas de livros, elas ficam ocupadas, ficam descuidadas e pensam: "Bem, há muita gente a ler estes livros, pelo que não faz diferença". E põem um número qualquer algumas, pelo menos; não todas, mas algumas.

[...] Esta questão de tentar descobrir se um livro é bom ou mau lendo-o cuidadosamente ou recebendo os relatórios de uma quantidade de pessoas que o lêem descuidadamente é como este famoso problema antigo: ninguém podia ver o imperador da China e a pergunta era: qual o comprimento do nariz do imperador da China? Para o descobrir, percorremos todo o país, perguntando às pessoas que comprimento julgam ter o nariz do imperador da China e calculamos a média. E o cálculo seria muito "preciso" porque considerámos muitas pessoas. Mas esta não é a maneira de descobrir seja o que for.

Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar

Carl Mydans/Time Life Pictures -- Getty Images

FALSE WITNESS How true are "facts" online?

ACCORDING to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, John Seigenthaler Sr. is 78 years old and the former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. But is that information, or anything else in Mr. Seigenthaler's biography, true?

The question arises because Mr. Seigenthaler recently read about himself on Wikipedia and was shocked to learn that he "was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John and his brother Bobby."

"Nothing was ever proven," the biography added.

Mr. Seigenthaler discovered that the false information had been on the site for several months and that an unknown number of people had read it, and possibly posted it on or linked it to other sites.

If any assassination was going on, Mr. Seigenthaler (who is 78 and did edit The Tennessean) wrote last week in an op-ed article in USA Today, it was of his character.

The case triggered extensive debate on the Internet over the value and reliability of Wikipedia, and more broadly, over the nature of online information.

Wikipedia is a kind of collective brain, a repository of knowledge, maintained on servers in various countries and built by anyone in the world with a computer and an Internet connection who wants to share knowledge about a subject. Literally hundreds of thousands of people have written Wikipedia entries.

Mistakes are expected to be caught and corrected by later contributors and users.

The whole nonprofit enterprise began in January 2001, the brainchild of Jimmy Wales, 39, a former futures and options trader who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla. He said he had hoped to advance the promise of the Internet as a place for sharing information.

It has, by most measures, been a spectacular success. Wikipedia is now the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world. As of Friday, it was receiving 2.5 billion page views a month, and offering at least 1,000 articles in 82 languages. The number of articles, already close to two million, is growing by 7 percent a month. And Mr. Wales said that traffic doubles every four months.

Still, the question of Wikipedia, as of so much of what you find online, is: Can you trust it?

And beyond reliability, there is the question of accountability. Mr. Seigenthaler, after discovering that he had been defamed, found that his "biographer" was anonymous. He learned that the writer was a customer of BellSouth Internet, but that federal privacy laws shield the identity of Internet customers, even if they disseminate defamatory material. And the laws protect online corporations from libel suits.

He could have filed a lawsuit against BellSouth, he wrote, but only a subpoena would compel BellSouth to reveal the name.

In the end, Mr. Seigenthaler decided against going to court, instead alerting the public, through his article, "that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool."

Mr. Wales said in an interview that he was troubled by the Seigenthaler episode, and noted that Wikipedia was essentially in the same boat. "We have constant problems where we have people who are trying to repeatedly abuse our sites," he said.

Still, he said, he was trying to make Wikipedia less vulnerable to tampering. He said he was starting a review mechanism by which readers and experts could rate the value of various articles. The reviews, which he said he expected to start in January, would show the site's strengths and weaknesses and perhaps reveal patterns to help them address the problems.

In addition, he said, Wikipedia may start blocking unregistered users from creating new pages, though they would still be able to edit them.

The real problem, he said, was the volume of new material coming in; it is so overwhelming that screeners cannot keep up with it.

All of this struck close to home for librarians and researchers. On an electronic mailing list for them, J. Stephen Bolhafner, a news researcher at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote, "The best defense of the Wikipedia, frankly, is to point out how much bad information is available from supposedly reliable sources."

(Page 2 of 2)

Jessica Baumgart, a news researcher at Harvard University, wrote that there were librarians voluntarily working behind the scenes to check information on Wikipedia. "But, honestly," she added, "in some ways, we're just as fallible as everyone else in some areas because our own knowledge is limited and we can't possibly fact-check everything."

In an interview, she said that her rule of thumb was to double-check everything and to consider Wikipedia as only one source.

"Instead of figuring out how to 'fix' Wikipedia - something that cannot be done to our satisfaction," wrote Derek Willis, a research database manager at The Washington Post, who was speaking for himself and not The Post, "we should focus our energies on educating the Wikipedia users among our colleagues."

Some cyberexperts said Wikipedia already had a good system of checks and balances. Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford and an expert in the laws of cyberspace, said that contrary to popular belief, true defamation was easily pursued through the courts because almost everything on the Internet was traceable and subpoenas were not that hard to obtain. (For real anonymity, he advised, use a pay phone.)

"People will be defamed," he said. "But that's the way free speech is. Think about the gossip world. It spreads. There's no way to correct it, period. Wikipedia is not immune from that kind of maliciousness, but it is, relative to other features of life, more easily corrected."

Indeed, Esther Dyson, editor of Release 1.0 and a longtime Internet analyst, said Wikipedia may, in that sense, be better than real life.

"The Internet has done a lot more for truth by making things easier to discuss," she said. "Transparency and sunlight are better than a single point of view that can't be questioned."

For Mr. Seigenthaler, whose biography on Wikipedia has since been corrected, the lesson is simple: "We live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research, but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects."

Oct. 17, 2005

http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/10/17/blackboard

Blackboard vs....

Last weeks news that Blackboard was buying WebCT, its top competitor for course management systems, caught many academics by surprise. Now that they have had a little time to think about it, campus technology administrators and faculty members who use the systems (and alternatives) offer a variety of views on what the merger means.

Some analyze the combination from the perspective that some big company (or a few companies) will dominate the course management industry. Clearly now that company is Blackboard, which in its expanded form will be doing business with thousands of colleges. To the companys fans, the combination of forces will lead to improvements and allow for more innovation. Others fear the loss of competition will take away the pressure that has led Blackboard to improve its customer support in recent years (and encourage it to jack up prices).

And many are skeptical of Blackboards pledges to continue to offer and support WebCT products. Thats not because they necessarily distrust Blackboard, but because of a pattern in which such promises are frequently made by technology companies, post-merger, and abandoned a few months later. Many chief information officials, from different types of institutions, when asked privately about Blackboards promises to keep both companys services, said, Yeah, right or If you believe that one, I have a bridge to sell you, or variations on that theme. None had specific information that questioned Blackboards claims, but all felt that they had been burned in the past, and werent going to believe anything just now.

Still other campus computing officials said that all the attention being given to the purchase of WebCT by Blackboard obscured the more significant trend in course management: the rise of open source competition. While open source advocates acknowledge that Blackboard is very much atop the market, they cite a number of leading colleges and universities that are going the open source route. And they think the merger may encourage others to follow suit.

The Blackboard Behemoth

Scott E. Siddall, assistant provost and director of instructional technology at Denison University, said that when he first heard about BlackCT, (as many are calling the growing Blackboard, even though it is keeping its name), I thought that things are not going to get any better. Since then, hes been trying to decide if that judgment was too harsh.

Denison is a Blackboard customer, and Siddall said that the concept of its products is good, and is popular with most faculty members. And Siddall said that he hoped the merger would allow for economies of scale and improvements on which Blackboard might now be able to focus. Siddall, who is a leader of the chief information officer group at Educause, said that the improvement he most wants to see is in customer support.

Right now, at this moment, I have a kid taking a test in Blackboard and he cant store, and we cant figure out the problem, and I know that if we call Blackboard, were not going to be able to help that student. We call and we dont get answers, Siddall said.

Tim Kaar, an instructor in Web design and multimedia at Elgin Community College, said he worried about the impact the merger would have on pricing. Kaar was on an Elgin committee that considered options for course management. He said that he liked Blackboard products, but not its prices. The college ended up going with Desire2Learn, a smaller Canadian company that is making some inroads in the American market.

Kaar said he worried about the impact of the merger on prices."The megaplayers in the software industry, when they dominate, their pricing model becomes: Lets pick the client up by their ankles and shake and see what comes out of their pockets, he said.

Other college officials are much more optimistic about the expanded Blackboard. Stephen G. Landry, chief information officer at Seton Hall University, said Blackboard did have real problems with customer service a few years ago. They were a small start-up company and they expanded their customer base much more rapidly than they were able to expand their support staff, he said. But Landry said that he considers Blackboard very responsive now and that there has been marked improvement in the last 18 months.

Landry, who recently applied to join a Blackboard advisory committee, said that he thought part of the skepticism among his colleagues was cultural and was unfair. Theres a lot of suspicion of corporations in higher education. We tend to be non-corporate in our world and to think that automatically something like this is going to be bad for everybody, he said. But corporations merge all the time, and products improve and prices drop and if they dont drop, someone else comes into the market.

Phyllis C. Self, special assistant for distance education at Virginia Commonwealth University, called herself a very satisfied customer of Blackboard. While there are problems from time to time, she said, What software product works perfectly? She said that the merger could be either positive or negative. She saw the potential for improved services and products and also the potential for worse service and higher costs.

She said it all depends on how the two companies are combined. Self cautioned against assuming that the merger would be either good or bad just because a giant is being created. Bigger is not always better, just as big does not need to be bad, she said.

In an interview Friday, Matthew Pittinsky, chairman of Blackboard, said that the combined company would indeed be better. He said that Blackboard was committed to taking the strengths of both companies for use in the future, and he cited service responsiveness as one of WebCTs strengths. (On the topic of Blackboards record in that area, he acknowledged past problems, but said that the company had made great improvements in customer support, and that he believed any lingering complaints were a legacy of a few years ago.")

Pittinsky was unequivocal in saying that WebCT customers should not fear that their services will disappear. We are absolutely committed, he said. It would make zero sense for us to do otherwise than to continue to market and support both products.

The Open Source Challenge

While many CIOs were focused on the fallout from Blackboards absorption of WebCT, other experts on technology in academe said that the real shift going on is away from corporate provided course management altogether.

While Blackboard may dwarf all the open source alternatives, two of them Moodle and Sakai have strong support, and Sakai is attracting the participation of a number of institutions that are influential in higher education generally and in technology specifically. In open source, all the course management software is available free and colleges can modify it and brand it however they want. Sakai was founded by Indiana University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of Michigan. In less than two years, it has quickly expanded to reach 80 colleges and universities, including community colleges and institutions abroad. Today, Sakai will announce the creation of a foundation to give the project a permanent infrastructure.

When the University of California at Merced, the newest UC campus, started operations this fall, it was using only Sakai to support its courses. We didnt want to create a vendors system, said Richard M. Kogut, chief information officer at Merced.

Until open source came along, he said, institutions had a buy or build decision, but open source has advantages of both in that a college can start off with a good base, avoid paying high fees, and then customize it. The danger of an informal collaboration like open source, he said, is that it wont last. But Kogut said that the strong backing Sakai has from top universities convinced him of the projects stability, and that Sakai is speedier than established companies at dealing with problems.

Kogut was formerly at Georgetown University, which uses Blackboard, generally to good reviews, he said. But things happened on Blackboards schedule and bugs got fixed when they got fixed, he said. Sakais team members at various campuses, he said, have been incredible in quickly fixing any problems, even though there is not the traditional contractual relationship of vendor and customer.

The sense of community is very important to Sakai proponents. The Foothill-De Anza Community College District, generally considered a leader among community colleges, joined Sakai early, not only to use the technology, but to contribute software it has created. Vivian Sinou, dean of learning technology at Foothill College, said that when she first heard about Sakai, she was dubious that a bunch of research universities would focus on software from a teaching perspective. But she was quickly won over, is now on the board, and is helping other community colleges get involved.

The whole emphasis is on collaboration and learning environments, she said, so the tools being developed by the research universities have value for her college, and the tools being developed by Foothills development team are being used elsewhere. Sinou noted with pride that a Sakai learning tool Foothill had developed would soon be used at the University of South Africa, which recently joined Sakai.

At the same time, prominent research universities that were not initially involved in Sakai are now taking a look. Rice University, a WebCT client, is currently doing a pilot project with Sakai with the goal of shifting to open source soon.

One of the big drivers to look at Sakai was the fact that with an open source, you can take that product in the direction that is your interest, said Carlos Solis, manager of educational technologies at Rice. You dont need to rely on a commercial vendor to integrate things that arent offered. Solis said, for example, that WebCTs software has disappointed Rice faculty members with its multimedia capabilities, and they like being able to take Sakai software and just adapt it.

Joseph Hardin, chair of the Sakai board and director of the Collaborative Technologies Laboratory at the University of Michigan, said that flexibility is a big part of Sakais growth. Anybody can take it and use it and revise it and redistribute it any way that they want to, he said. So you get software that you can do whatever you want with.

Of course to do what you want with it, you need to have people who know how to customize software and then you need a staff to support that software, and that makes things tricky at some colleges. Kaar, of Elgin Community College, has worked with Moogle and likes it, but he said that when he was on the committee looking at course management options, one reality was knowing that the college didnt have the money to hire more people. We would have had to hire additional people, and getting new hires requires an act of God.

Or as EduBlogr put it, on behalf of those who are in the classroom and might like open source: We are not the customers. We are the users. The customers are our bosses and their bosses, the VPs who sign the POs. Relatively few institutions especially small and medium-sized institutions can afford open source. Pay $75,000 a year for software licenses, or hire 1.5 FTE system administration/programmer-analysts at $60,000 to support open source. Even I can do that math.

One possible outcome as a result is that more colleges may be using open source and Blackboard at the same time. Both Hardin of Sakai and Pittinsky of Blackboard said that they wanted to work together. Pittinsky said that it was too early to tell how significant [Sakai] is going to be, but he stressed that Blackboard and open source are not mutually exclusive, and that he anticipated that some colleges would want to use Blackboard campuswide, but have Sakai applications used in certain disciplinary areas, and Pittinsky said that he applauded such an approach.

But there are also clearly tensions between open source and big corporations. Pittinsky noted that Blackboard had applied and been rejected for membership in Sakais program for corporate partners. Hardin said that Blackboard never met the eligibility requirements of having systems that support Sakai services.

Other companies may also come into play for open source institutions. David Wiley, an assistant professor of instructional technology and director of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning at Utah State University, said that he was concerned that the RFP process favors large companies like Blackboard. While smaller companies are starting to offer support for open source, colleges would need to compare an open source proposal and such a business proposal against a single plan from Blackboard.

Wiley thinks this is too bad because hes not a fan of mergers, which leave you with half the performance for twice the price.

But he also cautioned against believing that open source, Blackboard, or any software could improve teaching. A mediocre instructor can go on being mediocre in Sakai, he said. Where he sees the advantage of an open source approach is for the professor who wants to be creative with technology and for colleges that encourage faculty members to be creative in that way. In the Blackboard world, if you have an original idea, you can request that they do it, and wait and see, he said. In the Sakai world, if you have an original idea, you may well be able to hire a computer science undergraduate to do it for you right away.

Scott Jaschik

Quem nos liberta desta cruz?

Expresso, 10 de Dezembro de 2005

DEPOIS de muito se discutir a famosa questão dos crucifixos nas salas de aula (onde apenas resistia em 20 escolas, por todo o país), talvez seja altura de discutir algo verdadeiramente importante para a educação dos nossos filhos. Porque é uma cruz bem mais pesada do que qualquer crucifixo o ataque sistemático que vem sendo feito ao conhecimento científico, ao saber e aos valores.

Vejamos um exemplo esclarecedor: está numa comunicação de João Filipe de Matos, um dos dirigentes do Centro de Investigação em Educação da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa e director da sua «Revista de Educação». Este académico, responsável pela formação de professores, parte de um princípio claro, recorrendo a uma citação: «nas sociedades capitalistas, a escola justifica e produz desigualdades».

Por isso, defende que - e cito para que não restem dúvidas - «a disciplina de matemática deve ser urgentemente eliminada dos currículos do ensino básico». Matos prefere que se ensine - volto a citar - «educação matemática». Ou seja, o professor tem uma religião e quer impô-la. E o seu primeiro mandamento é que nada se deve ensinar, salvo ensinar a aprender.

O mesmo responsável dá exemplos delirantes. Se o casal Silva quer ir do Campo Grande ao Parque das Nações, com os seus dois filhos, e a viagem de autocarro custa um euro por bilhete, quanto irá pagar?

Ora a resposta normal seria quatro euros. Mas isso é matemática antiga, cheia de mitos a que Matos quer pôr um fim. Ao cabo de vários argumentos sociais, ecológicos e políticos, Matos acha que quatro é muito, porque deveria haver desconto.

EU SEI que para a maioria dos leitores o professor Matos parece fruto da minha imaginação. Mas não é. Existe e, como ele, existem inúmeros seguidores desta religião que, um pouco por todo o Ministério da Educação, alastra as suas influências. Não só em Portugal, mas à volta do mundo. Esta espécie de religião, baseada num incontrolável relativismo, assentou arraiais na política da educação e criou o seu próprio credo - o «eduquês».

Graças a ela, os nossos filhos sofrem com reformas atrás de reformas. Cada vez sabem menos e, paradoxalmente, cada vez gastam mais tempo na escola.

Graças a esta religião, de que o prof. João Filipe Matos é um dos mais distintos hierofantas, os valores, a sabedoria e o conhecimento são constantemente postos em causa, como se fosse possível educar sem regras, mas apenas com excepções. A viagem do casal Silva ao Campo Grande é esclarecedora do seu incontrolável relativismo: 4x1 nem sempre são quatro; a resposta certa depende do ponto de vista do observador. E qual é o ponto de vista do prof. Matos? Lembrem-se da citação inicial: nas sociedades capitalistas, a escola justifica e produz desigualdades. Ele quer-nos todos iguais, autómatos de um sistema comandado pelas suas ideias sobre o mundo e a vida. Do seu lugar da academia, o prof. Matos forma os professores dos nossos filhos. E todos nós acabamos a carregar a cruz que é a desgraça do seu ensino. Quem nos liberta desta cruz?

hmonteiro@mail.expresso.pt

Do crucifixo à cruzada contra as ciências da educação

(Direito de resposta)

Os meios de comunicação social desempenham um papel fundamental na nossa sociedade informando, esclarecendo, questionando, perturbando. O sarcasmo é um recurso fundamental do jornalista e do comentador, que procura ironizar, estremar e até deformar uma situação, para a tornar cómica e objecto de desprezo dos respectivos leitores. No entanto, há um ponto para além do qual o exercício do humor deixa de ser saudável e passa a ser mistificador, ofensivo e socialmente inaceitável.

É o que se passa com a prosa de Henrique Monteiro, na sua coluna no Expresso de 10.Dez.2005. Esta coluna dedica-se a caricaturar as posições de João Filipe Matos, que, de resto, falsamente apresenta como um dos dirigentes do centro de investigação em educação, entidade em que este docente não assume qualquer cargo de responsabilidade. Interpretando a seu gosto a escrita académica marcada por uma linguagem própria e por categorias necessariamente diversas das do senso comum , não é difícil ao comentador encontrar múltiplos pontos de admiração e até de escândalo nas palavras deste docente, que é livre de ter as suas opiniões e perspectivas próprias sobre os problemas educativos e sociais.

Gostaria, no entanto, de deixar claro que no Departamento de Educação da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa defende-se a importância de um ensino da Matemática de qualidade, alicerçado em programas e políticas educativas que valorizem esta disciplina como um elemento fundamental do património cultural de todos nós e numa formação de professores contemplando as vertentes científica, educacional e prática, preocupações que naturalmente estendemos a todas as disciplinas científicas. Defende-se e pratica-se igualmente um ensino e uma formação de professores marcada por valores de respeito pela verdade, pelo rigor, pela cultura, pela diferença, pela dignidade e pela atenção aos interesses e necessidades dos educandos.

Henrique Monteiro nem consegue ser original. Limita-se a repetir a lengalenga de uns tantos outros que, sem perceber grande coisa do que falam (o que sabe ele sobre o ensino da Matemática nas escolas?), se limitam a procurar nas instituições de formação de professores um bode expiatório para os problemas de que, reconhecidamente, padece a educação em Portugal. Não deixa de ser curioso vê-lo a esgrimir o fantasma da religião e seguir, ele próprio, a lógica de cruzada, procurando queimar o inimigo na praça pública com base num libelo acusatório sumário, que no fundo se resume ao estafado fantasma do eduquês.

Um Subdirector pode ter os acessos de mau humor que entender mas não deve ser confundido com o órgão de comunicação social onde escreve. Estamos, por isso, à disposição do Expresso, como temos estado de outros órgãos de comunicação social, para dar a conhecer o nosso trabalho, as nossas posições sobre a educação, as nossas preocupações e projectos. Os jornalistas e comentadores inteligentes percebem que os problemas da educação são sobretudo reflexo dos problemas da sociedade e das políticas educativas e não o resultado da aplicação das teorias dos investigadores cujo impacto na cena educativa é de resto muito desigual. Por isso mesmo, mais vale procurar contar com o contributo de quem estuda as questões da educação para compreender e enfrentar estes problemas do que prosseguir a campanha primária e inútil que só desvaloriza aqueles que nela se envolvem.

João Pedro da Ponte

Presidente do Departamento de Educação da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa

Coordenador Científico do Centro de Investigação em Educação

A qualidade da formação dos professores, como a dos médicos, engenheiros ou jornalistas, é um problema sempre em aberto e a merecer questionamento. A Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa é uma das instituições que ao longo dos anos tem prestado esse serviço a um nível que reputamos de valor mas que caberá a outros reconhecer e qualificar.

Os maus resultados que observamos no Ensino em Portugal são inquestionáveis e alguma responsabilidade pode ser atribuída às instituições de formação de professores, como a muitos outros factores que recentemente temos visto discutidos publicamente. Não é abonatório de um jornal de referência a invocação primária de um Grande Satã como a causa única de um qualquer problema.

Mais grave do que a ligeireza do artigo parece ser a inconsciência por parte do autor da peça sobre o que é a Universidade. As palavras referenciadas são retiradas de um texto de cariz universitário onde, por definição de Universidade, o autor pôde exprimir livremente a sua teoria, por bizarra ou incompreensível que possa parecer.

O método do jornalista é o da crucificação das ideias na praça pública. O passo seguinte é queimar a publicação e se a fogueira for suficiente podemos incluir o autor. Esta percepção sobre a Universidade, tão tradicionalmente Inquisitorial e tão vivamente expressa pelo Subdirector do Expresso é uma das razões do persistente atraso cultural e intelectual de Portugal (mas não será decerto a única). O Expresso presta assim um serviço inestimável à atávica burrice nacional mas ainda assim mostra o cuidado que se deve ter quando se escreve sobre cruzes.

Nota : ao autor e leitores interessados posso recomendar a edição de 27 de Abril de 2000 do jornal New York Times, onde na primeira página se pode ler o artigo The New, Flexible Math meets Parental Rebellion. Facilmente se compreende que o problema não é local, não é novo, não é simples, e que se pode tratar jornalisticamente a um nível muito mais elevado.

Nuno M. Guimarães

Presidente do Conselho Científico e Directivo

Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa

Foi identificado o autor da biografia falsa na Wikipédia, uma enciclopédia on-line que, até este incidente, aceitava contribuições de qualquer cibernauta anónimo, mas que agora já só aceita entradas de colaboradores registados. O falsificador, Brian Chase, norte-americano do estado do Tennessee, apresentou desculpas formais, disse que tudo fez parte de uma brincadeira destinada a um colega seu e que não lhe passou pela cabeça que alguém levasse a sério a dita enciclopédia on-line.

A vítima da biografia falseada, Jonh Seigenthaler, de 78 anos, que nos anos 60 foi assessor do procurador-geral dos EUA, Robert Kennedy, descobriu que, durante 132 dias, constavam factos falsos na entrada com o seu nome da Wikipédia. Nomeadamente, que estaria envolvido nos assassinatos de Jonh e Robert Kennedy e que teria vivido na União Soviética de 1971 a 1984. A denúncia rebentou com uma notícia assinada pelo próprio a 29 de Novembro no diário USA Today, jornal em que trabalhou como colunista e responsável da página de opinião.

O falsificador, Brian Chase, de 38 anos e gerente de uma pequena empresa de estafetas em Nashville, no estado do Tennessee, escreveu uma carta a Seigenthaler desculpando-se pelo incidente. Explicou que tudo fez parte de uma brincadeira destinada a um colega, com quem costumava discutir sobre os Seigenthaler, família homónima autóctone de Nashville.

"Não pensei duas vezes quando falseei a entrada, porque pensei que ninguém a tomaria a sério por mais que dois segundos", declara Chase na sua carta, que termina com o aviso da sua demissão da empresa.

Seigenthaler aceitou o pedido de desculpas e apelou ao chefe de Chase para que este não aceite o seu pedido de demissão. "Ainda bem que este aspecto do problema ficou resolvido", declarou Seigenthaler ao USA Today. No entanto, este revela alguma preocupação que "qualquer a biografia na Wikipédia seja afectada por este tipo de coisas - imagine o que poderá acontecer com Hilary Clinton... Tenho receio que o resultado disto seja termos o governo a regulamentar a Internet".

Em resposta ao incidente, a Wikipédia fez alterações de fundo à sua política de funcionamento, pelo que agora só colaboradores registados poderão acrescentar entradas. Deste modo, os responsáveis da Wikipédia prevêem que o numero de artigos diminuirá de milhares para aproximadamente 1500, mas que esse facto aumentará significativamente a qualidade do que é escrito.

A Wikipédia é um dos principais projectos da nova fase de desenvolvimento da Internet, chamada Web 2.0, que visa mudar o formato da World Wide Web estabelecida nos anos 90. Neste novo formato, a Internet possui maior liberdade de partilha e utilização dos seus conteúdos. Isto traduz-se numa comunicação mais aberta entre os diversos utilizadores, típica dos formatos que hoje se conhecem dos weblogs (plataformas de fácil publicação de conteúdos utilizáveis por qualquer pessoa) e dos wikis (páginas que podem ser editadas por qualquer utilizador).

Brian Chase tem agora entrada biográfica na Wikipédia como o "intrujão da Wikipédia".

Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438900a

Special Report Internet encyclopaedias go head to head

Jim Giles

One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a much-used resource. But it is also controversial: if anyone can edit entries, how do users know if Wikipedia is as accurate as established sources such as Encyclopaedia Britannica?

AP PHOTO/M. PROBST

Several recent cases have highlighted the potential problems. One article was revealed as falsely suggesting that a former assistant to US Senator Robert Kennedy may have been involved in his assassination. And podcasting pioneer Adam Curry has been accused of editing the entry on podcasting to remove references to competitors' work. Curry says he merely thought he was making the entry more accurate.

However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

Considering how Wikipedia articles are written, that result might seem surprising. A solar physicist could, for example, work on the entry on the Sun, but would have the same status as a contributor without an academic background. Disputes about content are usually resolved by discussion among users.

But Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and president of the encyclopaedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation of St Petersburg, Florida, says the finding shows the potential of Wikipedia. "I'm pleased," he says. "Our goal is to get to Britannica quality, or better."

Wikipedia is growing fast. The encyclopaedia has added 3.7 million articles in 200 languages since it was founded in 2001. The English version has more than 45,000 registered users, and added about 1,500 new articles every day of October 2005. Wikipedia has become the 37th most visited website, according to Alexa, a web ranking service.

But critics have raised concerns about the site's increasing influence, questioning whether multiple, unpaid editors can match paid professionals for accuracy. Writing in the online magazine TCS last year, former Britannica editor Robert McHenry declared one Wikipedia entry on US founding father Alexander Hamilton as "what might be expected of a high-school student". Opening up the editing process to all, regardless of expertise, means that reliability can never be ensured, he concluded.

Yet Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.

Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.

D. I. FRANKE/WIKIMEDIA FDN

Kurt Jansson (left), president of Wikimedia Deutschland, displays a list of 10,000 Wikipedia authors; Wikipedia's entry on global warming has been a source of contention for its contributors.

Editors at Britannica would not discuss the findings, but say their own studies of Wikipedia have uncovered numerous flaws. "We have nothing against Wikipedia," says Tom Panelas, director of corporate communications at the company's headquarters in Chicago. "But it is not the case that errors creep in on an occasional basis or that a couple of articles are poorly written. There are lots of articles in that condition. They need a good editor."

Several Nature reviewers agreed with Panelas' point on readability, commenting that the Wikipedia article they reviewed was poorly structured and confusing. This criticism is common among information scientists, who also point to other problems with article quality, such as undue prominence given to controversial scientific theories. But Michael Twidale, an information scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that Wikipedia's strongest suit is the speed at which it can updated, a factor not considered by Nature's reviewers.

"People will find it shocking to see how many errors there are in Britannica," Twidale adds. "Print encyclopaedias are often set up as the gold standards of information quality against which the failings of faster or cheaper resources can be compared. These findings remind us that we have an 18-carat standard, not a 24-carat one."

The most error-strewn article, that on Dmitry Mendeleev, co-creator of the periodic table, illustrates this. Michael Gordin, a science historian at Princeton University who wrote a 2004 book on Mendeleev, identified 19 errors in Wikipedia and 8 in Britannica. These range from minor mistakes, such as describing Mendeleev as the 14th child in his family when he was the 13th, to more significant inaccuracies. Wikipedia, for example, incorrectly describes how Mendeleev's work relates to that of British chemist John Dalton. "Who wrote this stuff?" asked another reviewer. "Do they bother to check with experts?"

But to improve Wikipedia, Wales is not so much interested in checking articles with experts as getting them to write the articles in the first place.

As well as comparing the two encyclopaedias, Nature surveyed more than 1,000 Nature authors and found that although more than 70% had heard of Wikipedia and 17% of those consulted it on a weekly basis, less than 10% help to update it. The steady trickle of scientists who have contributed to articles describe the experience as rewarding, if occasionally frustrating (see 'Challenges of being a Wikipedian').

Greater involvement by scientists would lead to a "multiplier effect", says Wales. Most entries are edited by enthusiasts, and the addition of a researcher can boost article quality hugely. "Experts can help write specifics in a nuanced way," he says.

Wales also plans to introduce a 'stable' version of each entry. Once an article reaches a specific quality threshold it will be tagged as stable. Further edits will be made to a separate 'live' version that would replace the stable version when deemed to be a significant improvement. One method for determining that threshold, where users rate article quality, will be trialled early next year.

Additional research by Declan Butler, Jenny Hogan, Michael Hopkin, Mark Peplow and Tom Simonite.

An Unlikely Trendsetter Made Earphones a Way of Life

SÃO PAULO, Brazil

Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

I pressed the button, and suddenly we were floating. It was an incredible feeling.
- ANDREAS PAVEL

IN the late 1960's, Andreas Pavel and his friends gathered regularly at his house here to listen to records, from Bach to Janis Joplin, and talk politics and philosophy. In their flights of fancy, they wondered why it should not be possible to take their music with them wherever they went.

Inspired by those discussions, Mr. Pavel invented the device known today as the Walkman. But it took more than 25 years of battling the Sony Corporation and others in courts and patent offices around the world before he finally won the right to say it: Andreas Pavel invented the portable personal stereo player.

"I filed my first patent a complete innocent, thinking it would be a simple matter, 12 months or so, to establish my ownership and begin production," he said at the house where he first conceived of the device. "I never imagined that it would end up consuming so much time and taking me away from my real interests in life."

In person, Mr. Pavel seems an unlikely protagonist in such an epic struggle. He is an intellectual with a gentle, enthusiastic, earnest demeanor, more interested in ideas and the arts than in commerce, cosmopolitan by nature and upbringing.

Born in Germany, Mr. Pavel came to Brazil at age 6, when his father was recruited to work for the Matarazzo industrial group, at the time the most important one here. His mother, Ninca Bordano, an artist, had a house built for the family with a studio for her and an open-air salon with high-end audio equipment, meant for literary and musical gatherings.

Except for a period in the mid-1960's when he studied philosophy at a German university, Mr. Pavel, now 59, spent his childhood and early adulthood here in South America's largest city, "to my great advantage," he said. It was a time of creative and intellectual ferment, culminating in the Tropicalist movement, and he was delighted to be part of it.

When TV Cultura, a Brazilian station, was licensed to go on the air, Mr. Pavel was hired to be its director of educational programming. After he was forced to leave because of what he says was political pressure, he edited a "Great Thinkers" book series for Brazil's leading publishing house in another effort to "counterbalance the censorship and lack of information" then prevailing.

In the end, what drove Mr. Pavel back to Europe was his discontent with the military dictatorship then in power in Brazil. By that time, though, he had already invented the device he initially called the stereobelt, which he saw more as a means to "add a soundtrack to real life" than an item to be mass marketed.

"Oh, it was purely aesthetic," he said when asked his motivation in creating a portable personal stereo player. "It took years to discover that I had made a discovery and that I could file a patent."

MR. PAVEL still remembers when and where he was the first time he tested his invention and which piece of music he chose for his experiment.

It was February 1972, he was in Switzerland with his girlfriend, and the cassette they heard playing on their headphones was "Push Push," a collaboration between the jazz flutist Herbie Mann and the blues-rock guitarist Duane Allman.

"I was in the woods in St. Moritz, in the mountains," he recalled. "The snow was falling down. I pressed the button, and suddenly we were floating. It was an incredible feeling, to realize that I now had the means to multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation."

Over the next few years, he took his invention to one audio company after another - Grundig, Philips, Yamaha and ITT among them - to see if there was interest in manufacturing his device. But everywhere he went, he said, he met with rejection or ridicule.

"They all said they didn't think people would be so crazy as to run around with headphones, that this is just a gadget, a useless gadget of a crazy nut," he said.

In New York, where he moved in 1974, and then in Milan, where he relocated in 1976, "people would look at me sometimes on a bus, and you could see they were asking themselves, why is this crazy man running around with headphones?"

Ignoring the doors slammed in his face, Mr. Pavel filed a patent in March 1977 in Milan. Over the next year and a half, he took the same step in the United States, Germany, England and Japan.

So in 1989 he began new proceedings, this time in British courts, that dragged on and on, eating up his limited financial resources.

At one point, Mr. Pavel said, he owed his lawyer hundreds of thousands of dollars and was being followed by private detectives and countersued by Sony. "They had frozen all my assets, I couldn't use checks or credit cards," and the outlook for him was grim.

In 1996, the case was dismissed, leaving Mr. Pavel with more than $3 million in court costs to pay.

But he persisted, warning Sony that he would file new suits in every country where he had patented his invention, and in 2003, after another round of negotiations, the company agreed to settle out of court.

Mr. Pavel declined to say how much Sony was obliged to pay him, citing a confidentiality clause. But European press accounts said Mr. Pavel had received a cash settlement for damages in the low eight figures and was now also receiving royalties on some Walkman sales.

THESE days, Mr. Pavel divides his time between Italy and Brazil, and once again considers himself primarily a philosopher. But he is also using some of his money to develop an invention he calls a dreamkit, which he describes as a "hand-held, personal, multimedia, sense-extension device," and to indulge his unflagging interest in music.

Recently, he has been promoting the career of Altamiro Carrilho, a flutist whom he regards as the greatest living Brazilian musician. He is also financing a project that he describes as the complete discography of every record ever released in Brazil.

Some of his friends have suggested he might have a case against the manufacturers of MP3 players, reasoning that those devices are a direct descendant of the Walkman. Mr. Pavel said that while he saw a kinship, he was not eager to take on another long legal battle.

"I have known other inventors in similar predicaments and most of them become that story, which is the most tragic, sad and melancholic thing that can happen," he said. "Somebody becomes a lawsuit, he loses all interest in other things and deals only with the lawsuit. Nobody ever said I was obsessed. I kept my other interests alive, in philosophy and music and literature."

"I didn't have time to pursue them, but now I have reconquered my time," he continued. "So, no, I'm not interested anymore in patents or legal fights or anything like that. I don't want to be reduced to the label of being the inventor of the Walkman."

This is the e-interview that every educator will want to read! Clifford Stoll is the author of High-Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian. He is also an MSNBC commentator, a Berkeley astronomer, an Internet pioneer, and a "full time, stay-at-home dad." Stoll shares with Education World readers his controversial thoughts about computers in the classroom.

Education World: The premise of your book High-Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian is that computers don't belong in schools--

Clifford Stoll: Part of the premise.

EW: A good part of your book focuses on the idea that computers don't belong in classrooms. Education World is a Web site that, among other things, helps teachers integrate computers into their curriculum. I'm interested in why you think we shouldn't be doing that.

Stoll: Your teachers believe in using computers in the classroom?

EW: Many of them. Others are required to use computers in their classrooms, and they want to do it in the best way possible.

Stoll: What about the old-line teachers who don't want to use computers, who are being pushed aside and marginalized because of the techno-hucksters' view of what should go on in classrooms?

EW: Teachers are charged with preparing students for the future. Don't students need to learn how to use computers?

Stoll: In my visits to schools, I don't find children who are ill at ease behind a computer screen. I do find lots of kids who cannot read analytically, who do not read books, who cannot write legibly, who cannot assemble a 250-word essay. But I do not see many kids who can't use a computer. Do you think children don't have enough exposure to electronic messages? Children have too much exposure to electronic messages. Is the problem that they don't watch enough TV? That they don't get enough media? The problem is that they get too much media already! ... If I ask a student to tell me about Huckleberry Finn, I want that student to read the book. If he simply goes to the computer and finds information about Huckleberry Finn, what has he learned? Computers provide kids with information. They don't help them learn.

EW: But don't kids always look for the easy way out? Before computers, we used Cliffs Notes. Don't good teachers make sure that students--

Stoll: Where did you get your Ph.D.? I got mine honestly. I didn't use Cliffs Notes.

EW: In your book, you talk about a student "watching a monarch chrysalis in a field of milkweed." What about the students who might never see a field of milkweed? Can't technology expose children to things they would not ordinarily experience?

Stoll: You mean the "city kids who haven't seen a cow" argument? Do you really think those children exist who don't know what a cow looks like? Do you think kids look at a frog on a Budweiser billboard and don't know what it is? Computers cannot provide experiences. Think about the things you've "experienced" on a computer. Then think about the things you've experienced in real life. How do they compare? ... How much does a field trip cost? $100? $200? How much does a computer lab cost? Thousands of dollars? How many field trips can you take for that amount of money?

EW: What about those kids in inner city schools who, even if they go on those field trips, will need computer skills to compete in the job market?

Stoll: I live very near an inner city school, and I can tell you that the main problem in inner city schools is horrible discipline. In what way is that helped by a large computer budget? Often, computers in inner city schools are wrecked or stolen very quickly anyway. Even if the computers can be secured, the schools cannot. If the computers aren't wrecked by the kids, they're stolen by the neighbors. If the computers themselves aren't stolen, the cables are. In a nearby city high school, only about 5 of 35 computers in the computer lab are working. Educational technologists like to sit in their offices and dream of computers in idealized city schools, but that's not what really happens.

EW: In most classrooms, teachers need to work with individual students or with small groups of students. During those times, isn't it more valuable for other students to be working at the computer than to be doing traditional seat work?

Stoll: Working on the computer is seat work. The children aren't moving. They aren't doing anything active. They're sitting in their seats.

EW: They're doing more than simply filling in information on a work sheet.

Stoll: There is no reason for any student to use a work sheet in his or her entire school career.

EW: Don't computers have any value, in any classroom?

Stoll: It would be bad enough if computers simply didn't add to a child's education. The problem is that the use of computers subtracts from the student-to-teacher contact hours. It directs attention away from the student-teacher relationship and directs it toward the student-computer relationship. It teaches students to focus on getting information rather than on exploring and creating. Which is more interactive-- a student and a teacher or a student and a computer? ... Suppose we wanted to create a nation without social skills? Can you think of a better way to do that than to tell students, "Don't interact with the teacher. Interact with a computer?" Suppose we wanted to create a nation that can't read? Can you think of a better way to do that than to say to students, "Don't get your information from a book. Look it up on the Web?" If we wanted to discourage students from exploration, what better way than to search for answers on a computer?

"Suppose we wanted to create a nation that can't read? Can you think of a better way to do that than to say to students, 'Don't get your information from a book. Look it up on the Web?'"

EW: So you believe that computer use actually detracts from the educational process?

Stoll: There's a cost to bringing computers into a school. And I'm not talking about just the initial costs-- which can be substantial-- or the upkeep-- which can be many times the initial cost. The real cost is what you are not going to be teaching. ... I've talked to a former kindergarten teacher who stopped teaching because the school replaced sandboxes with computers. You can't have sand or dirt or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a classroom with computers. I've talked to a second-grade teacher who can't have real magnets in her classroom because they erase the software that goes with the seven computers in her room. So instead she has a software program about magnets, and kids learn about magnets on the computer. Which will help kids learn about magnets better-- real magnets or a computer program that simulates magnets? ... I go into a lot of schools and usually the first thing the principal does is bring me into the computer lab. The first question I always ask is, "What did this room use to be?" Often the answer I get is, "Oh, this was the music room, but we don't teach music anymore," or "This was the art room, but we don't teach much art anymore," or "This used to be the library, but now it's the media center. We keep the books in the closet. If a student wants one, we can probably find it."

EW: Problems existed in schools long before computers. Why blame them all on computers?

Stoll: The central issue is What problem is solved by bringing computers into the classroom? Do they provide a higher quality of education? Let me tell you what I see as the main problems in public schools, and you tell me how those problems can be solved by computers.

• Overcrowding: Can that be solved by computers? At the very best, computers have no effect on the problem-- except to make the room more crowded.
• Hyperkinetic kids: Can they be helped by computers? No! They're only getting more media, more stimulation, more of what caused the problem in the first place.
• Poor attention toward the teacher: Can directing students' attention toward a computer increase students' attention to the teacher?
• Poor attitude toward scholastics: Is it "scholastics" to download information from a computer?

EW: Don't computers have a place in the classroom, then, if merely as a source of information?

Stoll: Is a lack of information a problem in schools? I've never once had a teacher say to me "I don't have enough information." Teachers say they don't have enough time. The problem in classrooms is not a lack of information. It's too much information.

EW: Where do you think the money that's being spent on technology should be spent?

Stoll: The money should be spent on reducing class size, on providing teachers with more prep time, on improving school grounds so that students have the ability to study nature in nature, on providing lessons in the humanities and in other technologies, such as plumbing, woodworking, auto mechanics, home economics. ... Why are there so many pilot projects specific to computers, while so many other things go unfunded? I say this in my book, but I'll say it again. Imagine you have two millionaires and each one is donating $1 million to a local school. The first millionaire says, "You have to spend the money on technology." The second millionaire says, "You can spend the money on whatever you need." Which donation will benefit the kids more?

EW: Can't the computer be looked at as just one more tool for teachers?

Stoll: Saying the computer is just a tool makes it seem too neutral. It ignores how this tool changes our educational system. I have no doubt that though we're teaching our children how to use computers, we're also teaching them that when you have a problem, the first thing you should do is turn to a computer to solve it.

High-Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian, written by Clifford Stoll, is published by Doubleday, 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.

Linda Starr
Education World®
Copyright © 2005 Education World

Os mitos

Público, 20 de Dezembro de 2005

Jesus não nasceu a 25 de Dezembro, não foi dado à luz numa gruta, não havia burro ou vaca a assistir, os magos não eram reis nem eram três, não houve pastores a adorá-lo, não fugiu para o Egipto. As histórias de Natal estão cheias de pormenores que têm apenas uma intencionalidade teológica. Apenas? Não fossem essas histórias e onde estaria a dimensão do maravilhoso no Natal?

Por António Marujo

No cristianismo, o ponto de partida está na encarnação do Verbo. Aqui, não é apenas o homem a procurar Deus, mas é Deus que vem em pessoa falar de si ao homem e mostrar-lhe o caminho por onde é possível atingi-lo.

(João Paulo II, Carta apostólica Tertio Millenio Adveniente, sobre o início do terceiro milénio)

Nenhuma das histórias é verdade? A vinda dos magos do oriente, a acção da estrela, a conversa dos magos com Herodes, que pôs em alvoroço a cidade de Jerusalém, a adoração dos magos, o prazo de dois anos entre a vinda dos magos e a matança dos inocentes, a ida de Jesus, Maria e José para o exílio no Egipto, onde permanecem dois anos, é uma narrativa midráchica, artificial.

O padre Joaquim Carreira das Neves, biblista, sintetizava deste modo, a 6 de Outubro deste ano, na sua última lição pública, o modo como a exegese bíblica contemporânea olha para as narrativas da infância de Jesus contidas nos evangelhos. Midráchica designa uma narrativa maravilhosa para referir um facto de fé.

Nessa intervenção, que será em breve publicada na revista Didaskalia, da Universidade Católica, Carreira das Neves acrescentava: É anti-racional que Herodes tenha mandado matar as crianças de Belém e arredores, precisamente dois anos depois do aparecimento dos magos. A ser verdade, e não obstante os crimes do rei, Flávio Josefo [historiador do século I, autor de Antiguidades  Judaicas] não deixaria de apresentar este crime como o maior de todos os crimes.

Não há que enganar: as narrativas da infância de Jesus apenas contidas nos Evangelhos de Mateus e Lucas, e mesmo assim com elementos contraditórios
entre ambas servem propósitos bem determinados: pretendem ser uma teologia ou catequese em que cada evangelista escolhe a melhor pedagogia e linguagem para o anúncio do mesmo salvador a destinatários diferentes, escreve frei Lopes Morgado (Entrai, Pastores, Entrai, catálogo da exposição de presépios de Dezembro de 2002, em Évora). Ou, na expressão de Carreira das Neves (Jesus Cristo História e Mistério, ed. Franciscana), esses relatos que datam dos anos 75 a 85 pretendem informar não sobre a história do nascimento e da infância de Jesus, mas sobre a modalidade do ser dessa criança. Porque surgiram então tais relatos? Muitos dos mitos ligados ao Natal devem-se às histórias dos evangelhos apócrifos (reunidos na Biblioteca de Nag Hammadi, que acaba de ser editada em Portugal pela Esquilo). Esses textos, dos séculos III e IV, que ajudam a entender o gnosticismo cristão daquela época, retratam um Jesus que faz milagres desde bebé, que se zanga facilmente ou, pelo contrário, é capaz de ajudar intensa e miraculosamente
fazendo brotar água, por exemplo.

Uma espécie de um ser humano que se quer mais divino que o divino. Os dois evangelistas da infância Mateus e Lucas traduzem a mentalidade cristã do final do primeiro século, como explica ainda Charles Perrot (Narrativas da
Infância de Jesus, ed. Difusora Bíblica). Mas o seu maravilhoso, escreve France Queré (Os Evangelhos Apócrifos, ed. Estampa), tem a intenção de mostrar que o nascimento de Jesus dá um corpo sensível à devoção, começa-se a amar a Deus como a uma pessoa. O cristianismo insere-se na história, porque Deus se
tornou humano. E Jesus, o Deus que se torna homem, é o libertador para os tempos novos, um novo Moisés.

The computer and I

http://www.helpusgettobett.com/?p=25#more-25

Archived Entry

• Post Date :
• Friday, Sep 9th, 2005 at 12:26 am
• Category :
• Using Moodle

Hi,
Im Jim Robertson, from Provo, Utah, USA. Not exactly in the UK, sorry about that. Allow me to introduce myelf in this blog. Then I will make some comments about Moodle in another.

General Introduction: grew up in California (LA then bay area), oldest of 6 children. Family moved to Phoenix, Arizona (parents still there), went to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah still here. Married, wife Judy from very small town (300) in Nevada. Have 9 children, 7 married, youngest started college this week. No empty nest proxmity to BYU (10 minutes) and large extended family guarantees someone always living in basement while attending BYU (right now is niece & husband & 3 children). Enjoy hiking, biking, swimming, cooking, reading (especially aloud to anyone wholl listen), discussing ideas, listening to music (but more on that elsewhere). I dont really like gardening, but I live on 1 acre and I like grape juice, peaches, apples, apricots, various berries and other fresh produce, so I maintain a large garden. Used to be one of 3 properties between 2 large orchards, had chickens, neighbors had sheep & goats (even pigs once). All but us & one neighbor sold & developed during last 2 years into posh neighborhood, wonder what they think about the two remaining eye sores in the middle. We sometimes feel a little like the couple in the old Good Neighbors sitcom.

CAI-relevant Introduction: First introduced to personal computing in 1961 when G.E. tried experiment with remote terminals in 100 local employees homes, used Basic and 8-bit punch tape. Didnt think it took at the time, but have never been far from it since. While a grad student at BYU (c. 1980) I became involved in volunteer work at our gradeschool, teaching computer skills to children in an early-moring program. We used PET computers (5K!) and BASIC, which proved to be a great tool for building problem solving skills and encouraging creativity. It didnt really strike me then that teaching 3rd-6th graders how to make the computer do something by programming it was rather innovative, but some of them have since told me it was something of a turning point.

I had also met some professors involved in early CAI projects and instructional design. Some of them helped start Wicat, a company for developing computer-assisted teaching. Wicat produced what was probably the first comprehensive K-12 computer-based curriculum, delivered from a mini mainframe to 30 workstations. I started working for Wicat and soon found that while I had been hired to develop a set of ability tests (Ph.D. in experimental psychology), I had a knack for programming and was increasingly involved in software design and coding. A reorganization sent me from the Education Division to the relatively small Training Division, where I did front-end analysis and design on CBT for aircraft pilot training. Not exactly the revolution in education, but still a great place for involvement with computer aided instruction. I became interested in making training program development more consistent and automating it as much as possible, so I again found myself increasingly doing programming tasks.

A common limitation in CBT was that practice segments were pretty much lock-step, whereas most tasks being trained could be accomplished through many differenct sequences. In the early 90s we began developing avionics simulations for the new glass cockpit airframes that were coming into service. These were delivered on desktop PCs and were intended to become part of an expert system training program (guided practice). Unfortunately, we could sell simulations better than educational concepts, and by 2000 we had been purchased by Faros (a French company) and had moved entirely to the simulation business, producing full-cockpit Flight Training Devices.

Airplanes are fun, no getting around it. But my interest in simulation had been as part of training software, not as a separate self-contained component. I spoke with some of my educational contacts about moving my career back towards education, but nothing came of it. Meanwhile, the troubled airline business caused further cutbacks; finally in March of this year Faros terminated Wicat operation, and I found myself looking for work.

On to Moodle: My next door neighbors own a small school, a medical-dental technical college. The husband runs the business aspects, the wife is the educational director. They suggested I might have a look at what they called some IT problems at their school, which might serve as employment while I looked for employment, or even become a long-term position. After two days of reviewing their computer and records systems, I concluded that what was needed was more than a patch, but a thorough-going systematic approach. I had heard of Blackboard and WebCT, but hadnt heard much good about them and their cost was prohibitive (the school has 20 full-time employees). Still, those represented a systematic approach. During the next few days an associate of the school introduced me to Moodle. By the end of the week I was sure I had found the solution.

One thing has led to another. We are a long way from the overall implementation envisioned, but have made a lot of progress. I dont know where this will lead (anyone got an opening for someone who is equal parts educator, programmer, psychologist, simulations designerand loves Moodle?), but for now I feel that Moodle represents the coming-of-age of computer-assisted teaching. I will describe this more fully in the following blog on Moodle.

Data, Music, Video: Raising a Curtain on Future Gadgetry

The flat-panel televisions will be getting bigger, the MP3 players and cellphones will be getting smaller. And almost everything will be getting cheaper.

A new control pad from Elan operates any number of items in the home, from the TV to the drapes.

But the biggest trend expected at the International Consumer Electronics Show, which begins this week in Las Vegas, is that these machines will be communicating with one another. The theme of this year's show might best be described as Convergence: This Time We Mean It.

For more than a decade, manufacturers of consumer electronics like televisions and audio gear have talked about blending their products with personal computers, so that consumers can enjoy a seamless stream of data, video and music anywhere. It has not happened, because the two industries do not have compatible technology standards and the requisite high-speed Internet connections have not been widespread enough.

This year all that changes, say executives who will be introducing new products at the show. They say that consumers will finally be able to sling images and sound wirelessly around a room or an entire house. The major electronics makers will be showing TV's with computer capabilities and phones that will play video and music, as well as the next generation of digital recording and storage devices.

While technological convergence may now be possible, some fear the industries have not yet made connecting all those devices simple enough for the average user.

"There is still a lot of confusion around the connected home," said Van L. Baker, a market analyst with Gartner, a technology research and consulting firm. "Reducing it will be the challenge to keeping the momentum going."

Getting consumers past the confusion of how to link, say, a PC to a TV will be the next big hurdle.

The show comes after a very good year for consumer electronics. Plasma and liquid-crystal display televisions, MP3 players and digital cameras with five or more megapixels of resolution have been big sellers.

"We don't see any reason that this will slow down anytime soon," Mr. Baker said. "The transition of entertainment from analog to digital, of time-shifting and place-shifting, is just getting under way."

Attendees of the electronics show, the biggest trade show in the country, will be scrambling to get a first glimpse at some of the products that will fuel the growth of the industry, which represents $126 billion in annual sales. The annual exhibition is off limits to the general public, but it is expected to attract 130,000 executives, dealers, journalists and investors.

More than 2,500 exhibitors, a record, spread across 1.6 million square feet, another record, will try to grab their attention. This year, 6 percent of the exhibitors will be from China, illustrating that nation's significance as a major player in the industry. Among foreign attendees, China will rank third, behind Canada and Taiwan.

The show is more than just a display of new technological toys. It is also a forum for industry executives to forge alliances and present new business strategies.

Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, will give his vision of the future in a speech Wednesday evening. Sir Howard Stringer, the chairman and chief executive of Sony, will take his turn Thursday morning. On Friday morning Terry Semel, the chairman and chief executive of Yahoo, will speak, followed later that day by Larry Page, a co-founder of Google.

Intel plans a major announcement about its new Viiv (rhymes with drive) multimedia platform, which will power PC's built to deliver digital entertainment. Intel hopes that Viiv will transform the home computer in the same way that its Centrino platform transformed the laptop into a mobile communications device. Paul S. Otellini, the chief executive of Intel, will give a speech Thursday evening outlining Intel's road map.

Manufacturers are expecting another record year in 2006, but with continuing declines in prices. Across a broad swath of categories like cameras and audio and DVD players, consumers will pay less and get more features. Even in the flat-panel TV industry, prices dropped as much as 40 percent in 2005. This trend will translate into slower revenue growth in 2006.

As for new areas of growth, analysts are predicting big sales of game consoles in 2006 as Sony introduces its PlayStation 3 and Nintendo brings out its Revolution console. Both devices, like the new Microsoft Xbox 360, can be used as the central node for a wirelessly networked home.

Electronics companies will also be introducing new home media servers and TV's that can receive digital content wirelessly from a PC or via an HDMI cable (for high-definition multimedia interface). Another hot topic at the show will be IPTV, or Internet protocol television, which sends programming over the Internet through a broadband connection.

Then there are the companies, like Elan Home Systems, that want to get right in the middle and sell devices to control all the networked appliances. Elan will be at the show introducing a control pad for everything in your house, from electronic devices to the drapes.

While major players in the electronics industry continue to squabble over the format of the next generation of DVD's - Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD - both factions will be showing products that consumers can buy this year. The new players will be expensive, some costing more than $1,000. Still, the industry expects to sell about a half-million of the new players in 2006, mostly as components in PC's rather than as stand-alone devices.

In the audio sector, companies are seeking ways to take advantage of the popularity and dominance of the Apple iPod. Several manufacturers are planning to announce products that will work with the iPod to move music to devices around the house.

Another big trend, said Steve Tirado, chief executive of Silicon Image, a semiconductor maker, is bigger storage devices. "People want a place to consolidate their digital media."

Ross Rubin, the director for industry analysis at NPD, a market research firm, said that apart from home networking systems, some new technologies would make their way to consumer markets this year.

Canon and Toshiba will both present televisions with surface-conduction electron-emitter displays. The technology produces crisper pictures than can be offered by existing flat-panel televisions, the manufacturers say. The sets will go on sale later this year.

Other Asian TV manufacturers will also demonstrate sets built with new organic light-emitting diodes that use less energy and could one day be cheaper to produce than liquid-crystal display panels.

Another notable product development to be seen at the show is the miniaturization of cathode-ray tube technology to fit into flat-panel televisions, allowing what could be the best-quality picture yet. "They will be very high end, very expensive," said Mr. Rubin. But like that of so many products at the show, the price will eventually go down.

Coming Soon to TV Land: The Internet, Actually

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6 - What would a world with television coming through the Internet be like?

Skip to next paragraph

More and More Bang for More and More Bucks (January 7, 2006)

New York Times technology reviewer David Pogue is at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, posting blog entries and daily video updates.

Instead of tuning into programs preset and determined by the broadcast network or cable or satellite TV provider, viewers would be able to search the Internet and choose from hundreds of thousands of programs sent to them from high-speed connections.

At the International Consumer Electronics Show here this week, a future dominated by Internet Protocol TV, or IPTV, seemed possible, maybe even inevitable.

Giants like Yahoo and Google turned their attentions to offering new Internet programming. Hardware companies like Intel introduced chips and platforms that can push videos sent via an Internet connection to living room screens. And Microsoft looked for alliances that would allow its software to dominate living rooms as well as the home office.

"At one level it's clear that the dam has broken," said Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel. "There's an inevitable move to use the Internet as a distribution medium, and that's not going to stop."

The rapid emergence of the consumer electronics and computer companies as Internet video providers is certain to challenge the control of the cable, telephone and satellite companies, which seek to dominate the distribution of digital content to the home. Competition has intensified as more consumers have upgraded to digital televisions.

Indeed, the easy availability of on-demand content over the Internet is certain to accelerate consumer expectations that they will have more control over digital video content, both to watch programs when they want as well as to move video programs to different types of displays in different rooms of the home.

"Appointment-based television is dead," said William Randolph Hearst III, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm. "The cable industry is really in danger of becoming commoditized."

Mr. Hearst sits on the board of Akimbo, a provider of an Internet service that permits users to download video content via the Internet to a set-top box digital video player. This week, Akimbo announced its first mainstream content deal to enable its customers to download Hollywood movies for later viewing on their televisions.

In the battle for the living room, cable, satellite, and increasingly, phone companies are trying to defend their turf by offering more choice through an array of content in video-on-demand programs.

But fending off the Internet's openness will be a struggle, one that the online companies themselves lost years ago.

At the onset of the dot-com era, large online service companies like AOL, Compuserve and MSN tried to lock customers into electronic walled gardens of digital information.

But it quickly became apparent that no single company could compete with the vast variety of information and entertainment sources provided on the Web.

The same phenomenon may well overtake traditional TV providers. Potentially, IPTV could replace the 100- or 500-channel world of the cable and satellite companies with millions of hybrid combinations that increasingly blend video, text from the Web, and even video-game-style interactivity.

Though still new, IPTV is already commercially available in limited areas both in the United States and internationally. To date, the new digital Internet content is hard to find and of uneven quality. Moreover, the consumer electronics industry is still struggling to complete copy protection agreements with Hollywood and other content providers.

But the advantage of IPTV is that it can potentially be deployed at lower cost than current cable television systems and can offer consumers features like the ability to record several programs simultaneously without having to add costly additional tuners. (And IPTV can potentially record many streams if bandwidth is available.)

A prototype of one feature of the Microsoft IPTV service, known in the industry as a matrix channel, allows several baseball games to be viewed simultaneously along with textual information like player statistics.

Internet search is also likely to play a defining role in shaping IPTV, according to executives attending the consumer electronics show.

Both Yahoo and Google announced plans to distribute video at the show, and Yahoo showed a new application intended to be used with a high-definition television to ease the search for video content, stream digital video and permit users to keep their personal information and files in sync whether they are viewing a PC, TV or mobile phone.

Proponents stress that the open- video Internet is still in its infancy and the battle may not be completely joined until a new generation of faster Internet connections reach the home. This is because to stream digital video requires about 1.5 megabits of bandwidth to send conventional NTSC video and from 6 to 8 megabits to send high-definition video.

There are powerful companies that are now anxious to reach homes without being subjected to special content arrangements with D.S.L., cable and satellite providers.

They are companies like Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others, with all of them beginning to make available an ever-widening array of video content that looks more like a world of five million channels rather than 50 or even 500.

On Thursday, Intel introduced its new ViiV computer design that is intended to bring the abilities of the personal computer to the living room. ViiV is a set of computer hardware and software technologies that will go inside computers and set-top boxes.

Several hundred consumer electronics and computer companies announced plans to build ViiV-based systems, and Mr. Otellini said that more than 100 companies, including AOL, ESPN, MTV, NBC and Turner Broadcasting, would offer digital content for ViiV-based systems.

In his presentation at the consumer show Wednesday, Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, said that its home television Media Center version of Windows would be available for the new ViiV computers.

The logjam that has prevented such digital content delivery deals has been broken, Mr. Gates said, because the consumer electronics industry has now begun to reach so-called managed-content copyright protection agreements with Hollywood.

Moreover, many industry executives expect Steven P. Jobs to extend iTunes video service of Apple Computer from his company's portable iPods into the living room, possibly as early as next week at the company's annual MacWorld Exhibition in San Francisco.

Microsoft is also cooperating with two of the largest telephone service providers. After spending more than a decade courting the cable industry, with a plan that was originally called Cablesoft, Microsoft shifted allies and is now introducing its technology with telephone service providers.

Last fall, both AT&T, formerly SBC, and Verizon began limited introductions of Microsoft's version of IPTV.

Still, critics charge that the telephone companies are intentionally crippling the Internet capabilities of their services to appear much like traditional closed cable offerings.

"They're trying to construct their own separate world to keep their walled garden," said Robert Frankston, a personal computer industry pioneer and former Microsoft researcher.

The growing tension has begun to show in the objections of existing D.S.L. and cable providers that are threatening to create surcharges for Internet content providers as well as the prospect of the deployment of a two-tiered Internet in which favored customers would in effect have special high-performance lanes reserved for their use.

"They believe that if you control the user interface you make more money than if you are a dumb pipe," said Rob Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks, the Internet music and video service provider.

Microsoft executives defend the way in which the telephone companies are deploying the company's IPTV technology, saying that if consumers are exposed to the chaos and uneven quality of the open Internet, it is likely to undermine the development of the new services.

"You need to begin with something that is easy to use and not overwhelming," said Christine A. Heckart, marketing general manager for Microsoft's TV division. "If we do this well you will have an experience much like TV today, only better."

She acknowledges that today's Internet generation may be far more receptive to a more interactive experience than traditional TV and eager not to be fenced in by their television service providers.

Microsoft has an early lead in offering IPTV technology both to the industry and to consumers, but at the electronics show this year Intel showed significant independence and introduced its own software features including digital video recording abilities with its ViiV platform.

Both companies, however, are trying to change the nature of television by making it possible for small start-ups to compete with giant networks by making available content that has never before been able to reach a global audience.

One such company is International Television Networks Inc. of Laguna Niguel, Calif. It recently struck an agreement with the National Lacrosse League to broadcast all of the league's games as well as customized player descriptions.

The company has adopted a strategy of making video content available for specialized markets, which was previously not possible using traditional television broadcasting technology.

"I can do everything a cable company can do," said David Koenig, the company's founder and chief technology officer, "but I will have 100,000 channels."

New York Times technology reviewer David Pogue is at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, posting blog entries and daily video updates.

Ensino artístico é fundamental

2006/03/06 | 13:04

E não deve ser secundarizado face à Matemática e outras ciências, diz António Damásio

O neurocientista António Damásio considerou hoje que o ensino artístico é fundamental para o desenvolvimento de bons cidadãos e que o seu papel não deve ser secundarizado nas escolas face à Matemática e outras ciências exactas, noticia a agência Lusa.

O investigador radicado nos Estados Unidos, falava na Conferência Mundial de Educação Artística, que hoje se iniciou no Centro Cultural de Belém, em Lisboa, onde durante quatro dias cerca de 700 participantes de 150 países vão estar reunidos para debater a educação artística a convite da UNESCO.

«O teatro, a literatura, a poesia e outras artes criam emoções inesquecíveis e a sua aprendizagem é muito importante na criatividade, no desenvolvimento de capacidades ligadas à inovação», argumentou o investigador durante a primeira conferência deste encontro.

Director do Instituto do Cérebro e da Criartividade da Universidade da Califórnia, António Damásio é professor de psicologia, neurociência e neurologia.

Na sua intervenção, intitulada «Cérebro, Arte e Educação», o cientista alertou que, no mundo actual da globalização e grande velocidade de informação, as aptidões cognitivas das novas gerações desenvolvem-se muito mais rapidamente do que as suas capacidades emocionais e estas últimas são essenciais para a formação de cidadãos.

«Sabemos hoje que as crianças afectadas nos seus sistemas emocionais não vão conseguir aprender as convenções sociais em adultos», disse, acrescentando que a sociedade não deve subalternizar o plano cognitivo ao plano emocional.

António Damásio considerou «preocupante» o desfasamento entre o desenvolvimento do lado cognitivo, normalmente mais valorizado porque é associado à razão, e o lado emocional entre as crianças e jovens nas sociedades actuais e as suas consequências futuras.

PÚBLICO - EDIÇÃO IMPRESSA - SOCIEDADE

Director: José Manuel Fernandes

Directores-adjuntos: Nuno Pacheco e Manuel Carvalho POL nº 5823 | Terça, 7 de Março de 2006

"É muito mais fácil ensinar matemática e ciência do que artes"

Conferência da UNESCO reúne centenas de cientistas, professores e artistas. Separação dos processos cognitivo e emocional é "completamente injustificada"

Nas últimas décadas o ensino tem privilegiado o desenvolvimento das áreas cognitivas, esquecendo que "um currículo escolar que integra as artes e as humanidades é imprescindível à formação de bons cidadãos", disse ontem o cientista português António Damásio, durante a Conferência Mundial de Educação Artística, que a UNESCO promove em Lisboa até quinta-feira.

Para este investigador na área das neurociências, que interveio na sessão de abertura depois do director-geral da UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura, e do Presidente da República, Jorge Sampaio, é necessário que a educação evolua de acordo com o princípio de que separar o processo cognitivo do emocional é "um erro".

"A divisão é completamente injustificada", defende Damásio. "A ciência e a matemática são muito importantes, mas a arte e as humanidades são imprescindíveis à imaginação e ao pensamento intuitivo que estão por trás do que é novo. As capacidades cognitivas não bastam."

Para o cientista, que diz compreender que os governos invistam na matemática e nas ciências por considerarem que isso os torna competitivos, "não devemos abdicar da educação artística só porque o tempo e os recursos são limitados".

Educar, acrescenta, envolve a mente e o cérebro.

Conceitos que estão habitualmente associados às artes - estética, belo, prazer - são na realidade "transversais". Não é por acaso, garante Damásio, que Einstein falava na beleza de uma demonstração matemática ou no facto de as equações serem "feias".

Apesar de serem muito diferentes um do outro - "o nosso processo emocional não se desenvolve com a mesma rapidez do cognitivo" -, são ambos fundamentais. "As emoções qualificam as ideias e as acções, sem elas não reflectiríamos", explica, acrescentando que a investigação actual defende que o desenvolvimento moral e ético se baseia em emoções. A poesia, a dança, o teatro ou as artes visuais podem ser usados para formar e treinar o espírito reflexivo, "o único que vale a pena ter".

A importância da imaginação

António Damásio não tem dúvidas em afirmar que "é muito mais fácil ensinar matemática e ciência do que artes", posição com que Ken Robinson, especialista britânico em educação artística e criatividade, concorda. "As artes exigem tempo e um tipo de empenho diferente", diz. "Muitas vezes os professores não estão lá para ensinar os alunos, mas para ensinar matérias. A preparação para as artes não é tão boa como a retórica sobre as artes." Robinson, que hoje vive nos Estados Unidos e é consultor do J. Paul Getty Center de Los Angeles, defendeu em Lisboa que a imaginação é tão importante para os alunos do século XXI como os números e as letras, apesar de as artes estarem quase sempre no fim da lista de prioridades do ensino escolar público.

"Temos tendência a separar as artes da ciência, quando na realidade são complementares. Os grandes cientistas são incrivelmente criativos e intuitivos. O processo científico valida, demonstra. É a imaginação que cria." Para Robinson, as artes devem ser vistas como motor de transformação do sistema de ensino: "Gastamos muito tempo e energia a tentar fazer com que o actual sistema de ensino assimile as artes, quando devíamos era pensar em formas de criar, através delas, um sistema novo." Lucinda Canelas

Windows Is So Slow, but Why? />

Law professor bans laptops in class, over student protest

 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-03-21-professor-laptop-ban_x.htm

Posted 3/21/2006 7:44 PM

On March 6, Professor June Entman warned her first-year law students by e-mail to bring pens and paper to take notes in class.

"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing," Entman said Monday. "The computers interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students."

The move didn't sit well with the students, who have begun collecting signatures against the move and tried to file a complaint with the American Bar Association. The complaint, based on an ABA rule for technology at law schools, was dismissed.

"Our major concern is the snowball effect," said law school student Jennifer Bellott. "If you open the door for one professor, you open the door for every other professor to do the same thing."

"If we continue without laptops, I'm out of here. I'm gone; I won't be able to keep up," said student Cory Winsett, who said his hand-written notes are incomplete and less organized.

Law School Dean James Smoot said the decision was up to the professor, but the conflict has caused faculty to consider technology issues as the school prepares to move to a more advanced downtown facility in coming years.

Remarks in Hudson, NY

http://www.kunstler.com/

January 8, 2005
James Howard Kunstler

My last three books were concerned with the physical arrangement of life in our nation, in particular suburban sprawl, the most destructive development pattern the world has ever seen, and perhaps the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known.
The world - and of course the US - now faces an epochal predicament: the global oil production peak and the arc of depletion that follows. We are unprepared for this crisis of industrial civilization. We are sleepwalking into the future.

The global peak oil production event will change everything about how we live. It will challenge all of our assumptions. It will compel us to do things differently - whether we like it or not.

Nobody knows for sure when the absolute peak year of global oil production will occur. You can only tell for sure in the "rear-view mirror," seeing the data after the fact. The US oil production peak in 1970 was not really recognized until the numbers came in over the next couple of years. By 1973 it was pretty clear that US oil production was in decline - the numbers were there for anyone to see, because the US oil industry was fairly transparent. They had to report their production to regulatory agencies. And low and behold American production was going down - despite the fact that we were selling more cars and more suburban houses. Of course we had been making up for falling production by increasing our oil imports.

1973 was the yea r of the Yom Kippur War. With encouragement from the old Soviet Union, Syria and Egypt ganged up on Israel and after a rough start, Israel kicked their asses. The Islamic world was very ticked off - especially at the assistance that the US had given Israel in airlifted military equipment. So a lot of pressure was brought to bear on the leaders of the Arab oil states to punish the US and we got the famous OPEC embargo of 1973.

But it was more than that. The OPEC embargo was effective precisely because it was now recognized by everybody that the US had passed its all time oil production peak. We no longer had surplus capacity. We weren't the swing producer anymore, OPEC was. We were pumping flat-out just to stay in place, and depending on imports to make up for the rest.

That was a tectonic shift in world economics.

That's exactly when OPEC seized pricing control of the oil markets. We had a very rough decade. 20 percent interest rates. "Stagflation." High unemployment. Stock market in the toilet.

We had a second oil crisis in 1979 when the shah of Iran was overthrown. The 1970s closed on a note of desperation. Everything we did in America was tied to oil and foreigners were jerking our economy around, and it led the worst recession since the 1930s.

But we got over it and a lot of Americans drew the false conclusion that the these oil crises were a shuck and jive on the part of business and Arab oil sheiks.

How did we get over it? The oil crises of the 70s prompted a frantic era of drilling, and the last great oil discoveries came on line in the 1980s - chiefly the North Sea fields of England and Norway, and the Alaska fields of the North Slope and Prudhoe Bay. They literally saved the west's ass for 20 years. In fact, so much oil flowed out of them that the markets were glutted, and by the era of Bill Clinton, oil prices were headed down to as low as $10 a barrel.

It was all an illusion. The North Sea and Alaska are now well into depletion - they were drilled with the newest technology and - guess what - we depleted them more efficiently! England is now becoming a new oil importer again after a 20 year fiesta. The implications are very grim.

Now, some of the most knowledgeable geologists in the world believe we have reached the global oil production peak. Unlike the US oil industry, the foreign producers do not give out their production data so transparently. We may never actually see any reliable figures. The global production peak may only show up in the strange behavior of the markets.

The global peak is liable to manifest as a "bumpy plateau." Prices will wobble. Markets will wobble - as the oil markets have been doing the past year. International friction will increase, especially around the places where the oil is - and two-thirds of the world's remaining oil is in the states around the Persian Gulf where, every week, a half dozen US soldiers and many more Iraqis are getting blown up, beheaded, or shot.

The "bumpy plateau" is where all kind of market signals and political signals are telling you that "something is happening, Mr. Jones, but you don't know what it is." We'll only know in the rear-view mirror.

As of the past 12 months, Saudi Arabia seems to have lost the ability to function as 'swing producer.' The swing producer is the one with a lot of excess supply, who can just open the valves and let more oil out on the world markets, which inevitably drives the price down. Saudi Arabia has kept saying they would produce a million more barrels a day, but there's no evidence that they really have.

Well, the good news is that Saudi Arabia and OPEC can no longer set the price of oil. The bad news is that nobody can. When there is no production surplus in the world, that's a pretty good sign that the world is at peak.

Princeton Geologist Kenneth Deffeyes says that peak production will occur in 2005. We're there. Others, like Colin Campbell, former chief geologist for Shell Oil, put it more conservatively as between now and 2007. But by any measure of rational planning or policy-making, these differences are insignificant.

The meaning of the oil peak and its enormous implications are generally misunderstood even by those who have heard about it - and this includes the mainstream corporate media and the Americans who make plans or policy.

The world does not have to run out of oil or natural gas for severe instabilities, network breakdowns, and systems failures to occur. All that is necessary is for world production capacity to reach its absolute limit - a point at which no increased production is possible and the long arc of depletion commences, with oil production then falling by a few percentages steadily every year thereafter. That's the global oil peak: the end of absolute increased production and beginning of absolute declining production.

And, of course, as global oil production begins to steadily decline, year after year, the world population is only going to keep growing - at least for a while - and demand for oil will remain very robust. The demand line of the graph will pass the production line, and in doing so will set in motion all kinds of problems in the systems we rely on for daily life.

One huge implication of the oil peak is that industrial societies will never again enjoy the 2 to 7 percent annual economic growth that has been considered healthy for over 100 years. This amounts to the industrialized nations of the world finding themselves in a permanent depression.

Long before the oil actually depletes we will endure world-shaking political disturbances and economic disruptions. We will see globalism-in-reverse. Globalism was never an 'ism,' by the way. It was not a belief system. It was a manifestation of the 20-year-final-blowout of cheap oil. Like all economic distortions, it produced economic perversions. It allowed gigantic, predatory organisms like WalMart to spawn and reproduce at the expense of more cellular fine-grained economic communities.

The end of globalism will be hastened by international competition over the world's richest oil-producing regions.

We are already seeing the first military adventures over oil as the US attempts to pacify the Middle East in order to assure future supplies. This is by no means a project we can feel confident about. The Iraq war has only been the overture to more desperate contests ahead. Bear in mind that the most rapidly industrializing nation in the world, China, is geographically closer to Caspian Region and the Middle East than we are. The Chinese can walk into these regions, and someday they just might.

In any case, and apart from the likelihood of military mischief, as the world passes the petroleum peak the global oil markets will destabilize and the industrial nations will have enormous problems with both price and supply. The effect on currencies and international finance will, of course, be equally severe.

Some of you may be aware that the US faces an imminent crisis with natural gas, at least as threatening as the problems we face over oil. By natural gas I mean methane, the stuff we run our furnaces and kitchen stoves on.
Over the past two decades - in response to the OPEC embargoes of the 70s and the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island emergencies of the 80s -- we have so excessively shifted our electric power generation to dependence on natural gas that no amount of drilling can keep up with current demand. The situation is very ominous now.
The United States, indeed North America, including Canada and Mexico, is technically way past peak production in natural gas and there is a special problem with gas that you don't have with oil: you tend to get your gas from the continent you are on. It comes out of the ground and is distributed around the continent in a pipeline network.
If you have to get your natural gas from another continent, it has to be compressed at low temperature, transported in special ships with pressurized tanks, and delivered to special terminals where it is re-gasified. All this is tremendously more expensive than what we do now. Moreover, there are very few natural gas port terminals in the US and nobody wants them built anywhere near them because they are dangerous. They can blow up.
We have been making up for our shortfall in gas in recent years by buying a lot of gas from Canada. The NAFTA treaty compels them to sell us their gas, and they are technically in depletion too. They're not happy about this.
About half the houses in America are heated with natural gas. Nobody know what we are going to do when the depletion arc gets steeper.
Oh, another problem with gas. The wells run dry just like this (snap!). Unlike oil wells, which go from gusher to steady stream to declining stream, gas wells either put out gas or they stop. And there's no warning when they are close to running out. Because, the gas is coming out of the ground under its own pressure. As the gas wells of North America continue to deplete, we will have little warning

Right here I am compelled to inform you that the prospects for alternative fuels are poor. We suffer from a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome in this country. We believe that if you wish for something, it will come true. Right now a lot of people - including people who ought to know better - are wishing for some miracle technology to save our collective ass.

There is not going to be a hydrogen economy. The hydrogen economy is a fantasy. It is not going to happen. We may be able to run a very few things on hydrogen - but we are not going to replace the entire US automobile fleet with hydrogen fuel cell cars.

" Getting hydrogen
" Transport

Nor will we replace the current car fleet with electric cars or natural gas cars. We're just going to use cars a lot less. Fewer trips. Cars will be a diminished presence in our lives.
Not to mention the political problem that kicks in when car ownership and driving becomes incrementally a more elite activity. The mass motoring society worked because it was so profoundly democratic. Practically anybody in America could participate, from the lowliest shlub mopping the floor at Pizza Hut to Bill Gates. What happens when it is no longer so democratic? And what is the tipping point at which it becomes a matter of political resentment: 12 percent? 23 percent? 38 percent?

Wind power and solar electric will not produce significant amounts of power within the context of the way we live now.

Ethanol and bio-deisel are a joke. They require more energy to produce than they give back. You know how you get ethanol: you produce massive amounts of corn using huge oil and gas 'inputs' of fertilizer and pesticide and then you use a lot more energy to turn the corn into ethanol. It's a joke.

No combination of alternative fuel systems currently known will allow us to run what we are running, the way we're running it, or even a substantial fraction of it.

The future is therefore telling us very loudly that we will have to change the way we live in this country. The implications are clear: we will have to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do.

The downscaling of America is a tremendous and inescapable project. It is the master ecological project of our time. We will have to do it whether we like it or not. We are not prepared.

Downscaling America doesn't mean we become a lesser people. It means that the scale at which we conduct the work of American daily life will have to be adjusted to fit the requirements of a post-globalist, post-cheap-oil age.

We are going to have to live a lot more locally and a lot more intensively on that local level. Industrial agriculture, as represented by the Archer Daniels Midland / soda pop and cheez doodle model of doing things, will not survive the end of the cheap oil economy.
The implication of this is enormous. Successful human ecologies in the near future will have to be supported by intensively farmed agricultural hinterlands. Places that can't do this will fail. Say goodbye to Phoenix and Las Vegas.

I'm not optimistic about most of our big cities. They are going to have to contract severely. They achieved their current scale during the most exuberant years of the cheap oil fiesta, and they will have enormous problems remaining viable afterward.
Any mega-structure, whether it is a skyscraper or a landscraper - buildings that depend on huge amounts of natural gas and electricity - may not be usable a decade or two in the future.

What goes for the scale of places will be equally true for the scale of social organization. All large-scale enterprises, including many types of corporations and governments will function very poorly in the post-cheap oil world. Do not make assumptions based on things like national chain retail continuing to exist as it has.

Wal Mart is finished. [More below]

Many of my friends and colleagues live in fear of the federal government turning into Big Brother tyranny. I'm skeptical Once the permanent global energy crisis really gets underway, the federal government will be lucky if it can answer the phones. Same thing for Microsoft or even the Hannaford supermarket chain.

All indications are that American life will have to be reconstituted along the lines of traditional towns, villages, and cities much reduced in their current scale. These will be the most successful places once we are gripped by the profound challenge of a permanent reduced energy supply.

The land development industry as we have known it is going to vanish in the years ahead. The production home-builders, as they like to call themselves. The strip mall developers. The fried food shack developers. Say goodbye to all that.

We are entering a period of economic hardship and declining incomes. The increment of new development will be very small, probably the individual building lot.
The suburbs as are going to tank spectacularly. We are going to see an unprecedented loss of equity value and, of course, basic usefulness. We are going to see an amazing distress sale of properties, with few buyers. We're going to see a fight over the table scraps of the 20th century. We'll be lucky if the immense failure of suburbia doesn't result in an extreme political orgy of grievance and scapegoating.

The action in the years ahead will be in renovating existing towns and villages, and connecting them with regions of productive agriculture. Where the big cities are concerned, there is simply no historical precedent for the downscaling they will require. The possibilities for social and political distress ought to be obvious, though. The process is liable to be painful and disorderly.

The post cheap oil future will be much more about staying where you are than about being mobile. And, unless we rebuild a US passenger railroad network,a lot of people will not be going anywhere. Today, we have a passenger railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of.

Don't make too many plans to design parking structures. The post cheap oil world is not going to be about parking, either.

But it will be about the design and assembly and reconstituting of places that are worth caring about and worth being in. When you have to stay where you are and live locally, you will pay a lot more attention to the quality of your surroundings, especially if you are not moving through the landscape at 50 miles-per-hour.

Some regions of the country will do better than others. The sunbelt will suffer in exact proportion to the degree that it prospered artificially during the cheap oil blowout of the late 20th century. I predict that the Southwest will become substantially depopulated, since they will be short of water as well as gasoline and natural gas. I'm not optimistic about the Southeast either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class boil over and combine with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism.

All regions of the nation will be affected by the vicissitudes of this Long Emergency, but I think New England and the Upper Midwest have somewhat better prospects. I regard them as less likely to fall into lawlessness, anarchy, or despotism, and more likely to salvage the bits and pieces of our best social traditions and keep them in operation at some level.

There is a fair chance that the nation will disaggregate into autonomous regions before the 21st century is over, as a practical matter if not officially. Life will be very local.

These challenges are immense. We will have to rebuild local networks of economic and social relations that we allowed to be systematically dismantled over the past fifty years. In the process, our communities may be able to reconstitute themselves.

The economy of the mid 21st century may center on agriculture. Not information. Not the digital manipulation of pictures, not services like selling cheeseburgers and entertaining tourists. Farming. Food production. The transition to this will be traumatic, given the destructive land-use practices of our time, and the staggering loss of knowledge. We will be lucky if we can feed ourselves.

The age of the 3000-mile-caesar salad will soon be over. Food production based on massive petroleum inputs, on intensive irrigation, on gigantic factory farms in just a few parts of the nation, and dependent on cheap trucking will not continue. We will have to produce at least some of our food closer to home. We will have to do it with fewer fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides on smaller-scaled farms. Farming will have to be much more labor-intensive than it is now. We will see the return of an entire vanished social class - the homegrown American farm laboring class.

N

We are going to have to reorganize everyday commerce in this nation from the ground up. The whole system of continental-scale big box discount and chain store shopping is headed for extinction, and sooner than you might think. It will go down fast and hard. Americans will be astonished when it happens.

Operations like WalMart have enjoyed economies of scale that were attained because of very special and anomalous historical circumstances: a half century of relative peace between great powers. And cheap oil - absolutely reliable supplies of it, since the OPEC disruptions of the 1970s.

WalMart and its imitators will not survive the oil market disruptions to come. Not even for a little while. WalMart will not survive when its merchandise supply chains to Asia are interrupted by military contests over oil or internal conflict in the nations that have been supplying us with ultra-cheap manufactured goods. WalMart's "warehouse on wheels" will not be able to operate in a non-cheap oil economy

It will only take mild-to-moderate disruptions in the supply and price of gas to put WalMart and all operations like it out of business. And it will happen. As that occurs, America will have to make other arrangements for the distribution and sale of ordinary products.

It will have to be reorganized at the regional and the local scale. It will have to be based on moving merchandise shorter distances at multiple increments and probably by multiple modes of transport. It is almost certain to result in higher costs for the things we buy, and fewer choices of things. We are not going to rebuild the cheap oil manufacturing facilities of the 20th century.

We will have to recreate the lost infrastructures of local and regional commerce, and it will have to be multi-layered. These were the people that WalMart systematically put out of business over the last thirty years. The wholesalers, the jobbers, the small-retailers. They were economic participants in their communities; they made decisions that had to take the needs of their communities into account. they were employers who employed their neighbors. They were a substantial part of the middle-class of every community in America and all of them together played civic roles in our communities as the caretakers of institutions - the people who sat on the library boards, and the hospital boards, and bought the balls and bats and uniforms for the little league teams.
We got rid of them in order to save nine bucks on a hair dryer. We threw away uncountable millions of dollars worth of civic amenity in order to shop at the Big Box discount stores. That was some bargain.
This will all change. The future is telling us to prepare to do business locally again. It will not be a hyper-turbo-consumer economy. That will be over with. But we will still make things, and buy and sell things.

A lot of the knowledge needed to do local retail has been lost, because in the past the ownership of local retail businesses was often done by families. The knowledge and skills for doing it was transmitted from one generation to the next. It will not be so easy to get that back. But we have to do it.

Education is another system that will probably have to change. Our centralized schools are too big and too dependent on fleets of buses. Children will have to live closer to the schools they attend. School will have to be reorganized on a neighborhood basis, at a much smaller scale, in smaller buildings -- and they will not look like medium security prisons.

The psychology of previous investment is a huge obstacle to the reform of education. We poured fifty years of our national wealth into gigantic sprawling centralized schools - but that investment itself does not guarantee that these schools will be able to function in a future that works very differently.
In the years ahead college will no longer be just another "consumer product." Fewer people will go to them. They will probably revert to their former status as elite institutions, whether we like it or not. Many of them will close altogether.

Change is coming whether we like it or not; whether we are prepared for it or not. If we don't begin right away to make better choices then we will face political, social, and economic disorders that will shake this nation to its foundation.

I hope you will go back to your offices and classrooms and workplaces with these ideas in mind and think about what your roles will be in this challenging future. Good luck. Prepare for a different America, perhaps a better America. And prepare to be good neighbors.

End