A place to write, half an hour, every day, just for me.
I was introduced to a thing called the 'internet' in a pub in Edmonton after a softball game in 1988 or so. We philosophy students had gathered there after losing another game and some of the others (Ishy and Jeff, to be specific) to me about a 'MUD' they had been playing on. I took to it like a duck to water. I had already been messing around with online services, having set up a Maximus bulletin…
Decentralized Identifiers (DID) is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specification for, well, distributed identities. The idea is to have an identity that belongs to you and does not belong to any particular service or website. "In contrast to typical, federated identifiers, DIDs have been designed so that they may be decoupled from centralized registries, identity providers, and certificate…
This is the edited version of my contribution to Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the Age of AI: Experts Call for Radical Change Across Institutions, Social Structures - Imagining the Digital Future Center by Lee Rainie and Janna Anderson. ‘If there is ongoing need for leaders, educators, professionals, this will be a sign that the AI revolution has ultimately failed and will signal…
I've stolen the format for this from Wouter Groeneveld , proving I guess that copy-paste is one of my favourite tools. Backup system : For my laptop and desktop I use Backblaze , because it runs quietly and efficiently in the background, doesn't cost too much, and works. Yes I've restored stuff from it; it has indeed saved me. For my websites I use a self-authored tool to download everything to my…
I'd like to offer a rejoinder to Junhong Xiao and David CL Lim's paper Is AI the solution to the problems that make higher education “ill” in the first place? Towards a technology-agnostic, future-proof approach. Near the end of the paper is a section titled "Key takeaways for policymakers and institutional leaders". This post addresses those takeaways specifically. 1. AI is not a cure for…
Inspired by Brain Baking's article like this , "Inspired by Tom’s One Album for Every Year of Life compilation, Robert created his own list." So many great albums skipped, because the rule was one per year. Also, a few down years. Every one of these has a story. Albums 1959 The Buddy Holly Story Buddy Holly 1960 Bill Haley And His Comets Bill Haley & His Comets 1961 Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits…
This article was written by ChatGPT 5.2 based on some prompts provided by myself. See the conversation here . I always write my articles without AI assistance, but I didn't feel like it today, and I wanted to get the argument out there, so I did this while watching the hockey game. I know it's not a fully automated D2L Brightspace coach, but hey, I do what I can do. I created this in response to a…
Responding to Alan Levine: On “Building” Community I Got Bubkis I totally get what you're feeling. I've been online since the 1980s 'building community' the whole time. What do I have for my efforts? A response rate to my posts that averages around 'zero'. I had one successful community once - the 2200 people who joined that first MOOC. Never really replicated that success. My most recent MOOCs…
AI generated image, 100% human-authored text Artificial Intelligence has entered the world of education like an explosion, leaving us reeling in its wake. Everyone has questions: how could AI reshape education? What risks does it create? These questions are natural, coming as they do from our common experiences. But what if they’re the wrong questions to ask? What if we should be questioning what…
(From my social media a month ago, but I lost it when I went to reference it, so I'm posting it here so I don't lost it again). I have written an RSS reader that runs locally on your Windows / Mac / Linux desktop, coded with help from ChatGPT 5.2 (it took a *lot* of guidance to get what I wanted). It's PRE-ALPHA (please read the readme) The idea is twofold: - to make using RSS really easy for…
As you may have deduced from the title, I am retiring from my position at NRC. On the day of my retirement I'll be 67 and more than ready for this change. When is the big day? April 8, 2026. It's the closest payday to my 67th birthday . So, gold-plated government pension, huh? Hardly. I'll be just under 25 years service, so despite my age I don't qualify for a full pension. And even a full pension…
So, I was trying to make an infographic of my 1,000 page manuscript on ethics and AI, and I entered this into Google Gemini. It wasn't the Nano Banana tool I was using, so instead I got this summary: Nano Section Description & Key Concepts (Sources) Visual Element & Notes B: Broad Context The course begins by establishing the wide context of challenges facing society: complexity, chaos, rapid…
On LinkedIn today the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat published a short slide deck entitled 'Navigating Social Media as a Public Servant'. It appears to be available only on LinkedIn so I've provided a version you can download here so all can access the document. Disclaimer : This blog post is the result of my personal research and opinion. Please consult the original sources cited and seek…
What is there's no democratic road to socialism? Now I want to be clear here about what I mean by this: - by 'socialism' I mean a society defined by social values, as opposed to the all-encompassing definition of society by capital. In my previous post , I suggested: mechanisms such as defining some things as being 'not for sale'; alternative 'currencies' such as reputation, trust, friendship and…
What would it take to go from reforms within the capitalist system to a democratic socialist society? That's a much tougher question than it may seem at first glance. The 'capitalist system' is based essentially on the idea that we can earn income through ownership, and not through labour alone. With no effective limits on ownership, and physical limits on labour, it will always be the case that…
LinkedIn can be a pain to work with. I have long wanted to publish OLDaily, my daily newsletter, on it but the API doesn't support this. This week I came up with a new plan: use browser automation software running on my desktop at home to download my newsletter XML, format it, and submit it as a new LinkedIn newsletter issue on my LinkedIn account. I turned to ChatGPT for help and after a couple…
When I read Simon Wardley's post on LinkedIn from a couple of days ago, I was immediately struct by its resemblance to criticisms of another medium: the news (you can read Wardley's post here on LinkedIn if the subscription wall lets you, but no matter, I'll be quoting most of it anyways). Here's the premise. Wardley reports that he's "going through another AI horror story" and reminds us that…
Intelligence is knowing when to quit I used to participate in debate competitions in high school. They were the traditional parliamentary style debates where the effort was to convince an audience (or panel of judges) of your proposition. Imagine my surprise when I saw a U.S.-style debating competition where participants were speaking so quickly you could barely understand what they were saying,…
Sign posted in the common kitchen at the campground in Selfoss, Iceland, where this article was written I understand. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a technology unlike any we've seen before. It looks like it can do amazing things, and because of that, it also looks like it could get people into a lot of trouble. And we want to do the right thing. So yes, I understand, we want some ethical…
I have commented in my newsletter that what people have been describing as 'ethical AI principles' actually represents a specific political agenda, and not an ethical agenda at all. In this post, I'll outline some ethical principles and work my way through them to make my point. Here's how Google's search AI describes some major principles of ethical AI; they are drawn from a wide variety of…
Edited transcript of recording by Google Audio Recorder. Slides and audio available here . There will be audio and video of the presentation available for you later. Oh, this is the audio being recorded. What's neat about that is it's automatically generating a transcript. So, that's our first use of artificial intelligence. So today, I'm speaking on the topic of connectivism and artificial…
I'll quote Alan Levine in full: For a refreshing break from the sameness of GenAI imagery, immerse yourself into the still vital act of photography in 50 winning images from All About Photo Awards 2025 . The images are powerful in subject message, represent photographers from around the world, and represent a deep dip into the power of photography as the storytelling of people, places, culture.…
(This post is really short, but it was banned by the moderators on Reddit, so it's here) I've been researching freeze-dried food companies for my upcoming bike-packing trip. Because of recent events, I want to be sure to select only brands that are Canadian. Here are some top freeze-dried food companies for Canadians. Happy Yak Based in Quebec, Happy Yak offers a diverse range of freeze-dried…
Section Two: Context In this section we look at the concept of context as it applies to both human and computer cognition. After laying out some perspectives of context and its role in decision-making, we identify and describe three major interpretations of context: as a schema, as a frame, and as a model. Perspectives on Context Context is “a complex description of shared knowledge about…
Section One: Modern Decision-Making Introduction Today's decision-making process takes place in an increasingly dynamic and complex environment. Today’s decision-making domains include not only the traditional physical environments but also digital age domains such as cyber and information. The speed at which the environment changes has increased and decision-makers require new ways to adapt to…