The Unemployed Philosophers Guild

Talk about great presents! For my birthday I got “The Great Philosophers Finger Puppets” from the Unemployed Philosophers Guild.

The Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild began in 1992 when two students of philosophy found their inner creativity in the midst of a dwindling academic job market. As it turned out, fulfilling gift giving needs proved to be almost as satisfying as probing eternal questions. Though we still contemplate justice and truth, it is our wish to fulfill the gift giving needs of the funny & sophisticated everywhere! (About us)

It’s good to know that philosophy and gift giving go together. Coming soon – my Philosopher-Finger-Puppet Theatre!

Florida: “America’s Looking Creativity Crisis”

Richard Florida, who has made popular the phrase, the Creative Class, recently published an article, “America’s Looking Creativity Crisis” in the Harvard Business Review of October, 2004.
In a report prepared for the Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation (who comes up with these awful titles), he and others, argue that,

Creativity has replaced raw materials or natural harbours as the crucial wellspring of economic growth. To be successful in this emerging creative age, regions must develop, attract and retain talented and creative people who generate innovations, develop technologyintensive industries and power economic growth. Such talented people are not spread equally
across nations or places, but tend to concentrate within particular city-regions. The most successful city-regions are the ones that have a social environment that is open to creativity and diversity of all sorts. The ability to attract creative people in arts and culture fields and to be open to diverse groups of people of different ethnic, racial and lifestyle groups provides distinct advantages to regions in generating innovations, growing and attracting hightechnology
industries, and spurring economic growth. (Competing On Creativity: Placing Ontario’s Cities in North American Context, Meric S. Gertler, Richard Florida, Gary Gates, and Tara Vinodrai. November 2002. Report prepared for the Ontario Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation and the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity.)

It is depressing where Hamilton is in many of the indexes in the report – usually below the Canadian average, except in the “Diversity and Mosaic Index.”
Continue reading Florida: “America’s Looking Creativity Crisis”

Comparison Engine and Clustering Engine

Antonio Gulli has two interesting tools up on the web. The first is a Rank Comparison Engine, which will query a bunch of search engines, get their list of hits and build a table of points (pills) showing which hits are unique to which index and which shared. The results are interactive, allowing you to mouse-over points to see the short description.
The second is SnakeT Clustering Engine (SNippet Aggregation for Knowledge ExTraction.) It searches various indexes and builds a list of high frequency words that cluster with the query word. You can then navigate by the cooccuring words. Neat use of text analysis for concept exploration.
My one complaint is the design – he needs a graphic designer to make these sing.

iTunes in Canada, finally

As the Winnepeg Sun reports, Canuck iTunes music to a fan’s ears (Dec. 3, 2004). When I first learned about iTunes I bought an iPod – it seemed the perfect match and an easy way to learn about and buy music. Then, like many Canadians with an iPod I waited … and waited … Finally we have iTunes in Canada. How will my music consumption habits change? I’ve learned that with my iPod I tend to just listen to the same things over and over – will iTunes change that?

Serious Games Initiative

Serious Games is an initiative “to help usher in a new series of policy education, exploration and management tools utilizing state of the art computer game designs, technologies, and development skills.” (Serious Games: About from “Our Goals”). the project is directed by David Rejeski of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. They talk about the “emergence of a serious games industry”. I feel about serious games what I feel about the hype around games in education – it isn’t really a game anymore when you “play” it in a utilitarian context. What makes playing a game is the entering into a non-utilitarian context where invented rules apply. Of course, any game, in the sense of a technology or instatiation (like Monopoly) can be “played” for reasons other than fun, and that is the beautiful irony of the phrase “serious games.” It is a contradiction that provokes sense.
In the philosophy of play we have the problem of professional poker playing. Is a card-shark still playing the game of poker if he/she does it for the serious purpose of making money? Some would say that the shark is not playing poker, but working at poker. Are games of chance played for money now serious? How does the money change the play? Tough issues.

Make Love Not Spam

Lycos Europe has apparently launched a project to encourage users to launch a distributed denial of service attack on known spammers. They offer a screensaver that will attack spammers. For the story see, Netcraft: Spam Sites Crippled by Lycos Screensaver DDoS. I can’t get through to MakeLoveNotSpam.org to check this (and get my copy of the screensaver), but this sounds like a great idea (and a great title.)
According to this story, Lycos Europe denies attack on zombie army | CNET News.com the Lycos site could have been hacked in return.
Continue reading Make Love Not Spam

Stanford: Innovations in Learning

ideo, a design company, has a neat site up on their ideas for the Stanford Center for Interactive Learning. The site shows different types of learning spaces they are designing for Stanford. I like how they imagine pods and walls. The site design is also clean and easy to explore.
Stanford has their own site on Wallenberg Hall (where the Center is) that gives lots of details on the rooms. See Wallenberg Hall – especially the section on “exploring WH”.
These links are courtesy of Audrey Carr.