Well, after a small amount of patience, and the occasional whiny tweet, I’ve finally managed to get my invite to Google Wave. It looks intriguing, but I think it may take some time before I can wrap my head around it entirely. From the various waves I’ve been reading, the consensus is that it’s a weird amalgamation of Google Docs, Wikis, Twitter and a message board that no one quite knows what to do with. In addition to being a technological mutt, it’s also rather slow loading and prone to crashing (this in spite of my Fios connection and a fairly recent computer).
The best resource I’ve found so far is Gina Trapani’s Complete Guide to Google Wave, which I’ve slowly been making my way through.
I should probably do more with this blog than just link to stuff, but I’ve just redesigned my portfolio site, so I think I’ve hit my upper limit for producing web content in a week.
This is a really great read from Wired: one of their writers, Evan Ratliff, essentially became a fugitive for nearly a month, attempting to avoid being caught by an online community being lured by a $5,000 prize. You can probably take two things from the story:
1) It’s pretty damned hard to disappear if someone really wants to find you
2) Being on the run is pretty damn lonely if all you have for friends are Twitter spambots
I used to listen to podcasts of speakers at educational conferences on a fairly regular basis. This was, of course, until I came to the realization that I would fall asleep at regular intervals in the course of listening to them (I probably would have been okay with this, were it not for the fact that I was listening to them at work).
There wasn’t anything about them that was particularly awful, but I definitely noticed a tendency for them to turn into hour-and-a-half ramblings that involved dropping as many buzzwords as humanly possible.
So it was a pleasant surprise to hear this talk by Jim Groom, Brian Lamb, and Tom Woodward from the recent NMC symposium. In the format of a late-night call-in show (a la Art Bell), they host a chat with a man from the “future” to discuss where education is headed. In a word, that future is: insurance.
Just like health care, insurance becomes a necessity for obtaining an education, given both its skyrocketing cost and its importance of education in determining one’s success. Additionally, you’re protected if you can’t finish your studies, or your degree turns out to be useless in landing you a job.
During the discussion, future man also manages to rip to shreds the arguments of every wacko caller who drops all those buzzwords that we know and love.
Open education? Sounds wonderful, but higher education generates such an incredible amount of money, that it doesn’t make sense for institutions to open things up and provide instruction for free. In fact, they profit primarily from their exclusivity, the source of their prestige.
Innovation in teaching? Beaten down by standardized testing (as well as the divestiture of funding after the Zombie Apocalypse of 2012).
Technology? Google owns everything.
It’s an unsettling vision, and one I hope never comes to pass. And as silly and entertaining as it is, the sad thing is that it’s certainly plausible.
I recently saw American Splendor, a movie about the life of the underground comic book writer Harvey Pekar. It’s a fantastic movie, and currently sits near the top of my favorite movie list. I’ve never read any of his comics (I was a fan of the typical superhero comics back in the day), but after seeing this I’ll probably be picking some up. A particularly powerful monologue is delivered near the end of the movie, and if not for the cruel mistress that is American copyright law, I would probably post a video clip. Unfortunately plain text will have to do:
My name is Harvey Pekar – that’s an unusual name – Harvey Pekar. 1960 was the year I got my first apartment and my first phone book. Now imagine my surprise when I looked up my name and saw that in addition to me, another Harvey Pekar was listed. Now I was listed as “Harvey L. Pekar”, my middle name is Lawrence, and he was listed as “Harvey Pekar” therefore his was a – was a pure listing. Then in the ’70s, I noticed that a third Harvey Pekar was listed in the phone book, now this filled me with curiousity. How can there be three people with such an unusual name in the world, let alone in one city? Then one day, a person I work with, expressed her sympathy with me, concerning what she thought, was the death of my father, and she pointed out an obituary notice in the newspaper for a man named Harvey Pekar. And one of his sons was named Harvey. And these were the other Harvey Pekar’s. And six months later, Harvey Pekar Jr. died. And although I’ve met neither man, I was filled with sadness, ‘what were they like?’, I thought, it seemed that our lives had been linked in some indefineable way. But the story does not end there, for two years later, another ‘Harvey Pekar’ appeared in the phone book. Who are these people? Where do they come from? What do they do? What’s in a name? Who is “Harvey Pekar”?
I work with phone books all day long, and I rarely give much thought to the significance within its listings (familiarity and contempt and all that). But this made me think about how we create such intricate and complex systems that organize our world, making connections that we might otherwise not notice.
So thanks to the magic of Google, I bring to you this random collection of things which share my name, but nothing else (in the course of searching for these things, I’ve found Chinda to be a very common first name, so I’ve limited it to surnames and business/place names):
Chinda Barbeque: a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant in Glendale, CA.
Chinda International: a toy company in LA. We found one of their stuffed animals at a local florist a few months ago.
Chinda Institute International: a martial arts dojo in what looks to be Pittsburgh. I’m pretty sure that guy isn’t related to me.
Monalisa Chinda: again, I’m pretty sure there’s no relation. Apparently she’s a fairly well-known Nigerian actress who has been in more than 80(!) movies. Her recent divorce has apparently stirred much emotion among her fans.
Yuk Chinda: I guess she is some Cambodian Television journalist? There’s a ridiculous amount of her videos on Youtube, and somehow they are all 5 star rated.
View Larger Map Fine Chinda and Gifts: somehow I feel this is a typo. Unfortunately (for both me and this business), it’s a typo that occurs all the freaking time.
