So there's this thing called 'thinking'

This weekend has been a series of BBQ's, yardwork, and yea little progress on my dissertation save for a hard look at RDF and its complexities with time. We're discussing in my committee how to manage users' personal data in my weird, backward twist on the idea of Personal Information Management. It's the idea of "human optimization" as opposed to something that learns from your behavior after loads of training data- or something leading to Artificial Intelligence in short.

Basically, I'm going to help users arrange their data, maybe throw some graphics their way, and let them think. Yes, the AI would be way cool, except I don't know much about it, and Year #5 of a PhD program doesn't feel like a good time to start a new line of research- I'll just do that after I graduate. Gladly. I promose.

So what I'm proposing to do is to help people think better about what they do, and how transportation fits into the mix. Or basically, the Augmentation project from 1968. Only, the vector graphics are way cool- they just had daisy wheel printers back then.

Oh, and I learned how to play horseshoes. And how bad I am at volleyball now.

Wiki for Kiddies

Today I taught a roomful of 3rd graders (including my daughter) about wikis. She has a wiki of her own, which I've been helping her with, a little, though she's been working on it by herself for the most part.

I think they sort of got it- the example I gave was organizing their book summaries. They had just been talking about how to organize information about Flat Stanley, and its author, Jeff Brown. He's written several books, though they have different illustrators. So, by making pages for the author, the illustrator, and each book, with links between them, it becomes easier to organize the information. Plus, their teacher was interested in the idea of making separate pages for each character. Each student could then divide up the task of making summaries about each character, and where they appeared. Locations could have their own pages, and links to the characters and the stories where they were featured.

All in a good day's fun.

I think constructivist learning has a decent track record, and it will be interesting to see how this unfolds in the last few weeks of class. I think their teacher was a whole lot more excited than the kids (with the possible exception of my daughter), so this might have some lasting benefits in their school. Paying school taxes is one thing- but pitching in to help the schools with our talents and skills, even a little, is important, too.

Finally done grading...

... now back to research. I'm not teaching this summer, so it means there's no excuse for not finishing my dissertation proposal by August. Or is there?

On Friday, I'm going to my daughter's class to teach 20 8-year-olds about wikis. I'm trying to remember how I got into this.

I desperately need a vacation.

There's the obvious...

I'm just rushing to get the last of the grading done to end the semester once and for all. This time of year, it seems impossible to catch up- except that it gets done, because there's an absolute deadline. And suddenly, I'm days away from my second commencement as I watch over a thousand students receive their diplomas, realizing that the next 30 years are going to fly by.

Being a prof seems to involve dwelling on the basics in excruciating detail, over and over again. Before I make that sound like a bad thing, it's a good way to ask the obvious. I've put on almost ten pounds this term- probably the result of 1 am junk food binges while grading papers, all of which will go away in the next few weeks. Health journals cite the restorative powers of sleep in moderating your appetite, citing brain chemistry, metabolism, etc.

I on the other hand, have concluded that when you're asleep, you can't stuff half a box of Freihoffer's chocolate chip cookies into your pie hole like you can when you're awake, in front of the computer, drowsy, trying to jump start your system in ways that caffeine no longer seems to. Whatever happens to metabolism, night snacks don't help matters much.

Then there's personal life- like always being busy and yet not accomplishing enough, like my dissertation. The obvious thing is that something has to give. And if it's not work, nor school, nor family, then what? Before it was sleep. Now it'll have to be something else- and it'll be obvious that there are other commitments that are really optional that won't be missed for long...

Maybe we're the robots...

Odd thought in the car yesterday, as my GPS was prompting me to some unmarked address on Western Ave- what if we're really the robots of the future. I mean, what if we're not making machines that can think for themselves, plan, and perform various tasks on their own, but rather making devices that tell us what to do more efficiently. I mean, isn't that what technology has been for the past few decades?