Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

 

Information Systems

Information Interfaces and Presentation

Collaborative Computing

The development of text area editing tools provides a nice mechanism for creating and manipulating content in collaborative activities, including making pages like this Blog.  I am very interested in finding tools that allow Wikis, blogs, and comments/annotations to be entered easily in a collaborative setting.  This kind of tool seems potentially useful.

interactivetools.com : htmlArea.  This is a BSD-license-style WYSIWYG editor for text areas in Web applications.  It is all done in HTML (and I assume JavaScript, but will have to look to tell). This is something I need to look into down the road.
posted by Dennis at 11/14/2003 09:22:35 AM

 

Computing Milieux

Trustworthy Computing

Social Basic of Knowledge and Trust

I looked into this because Donald MacKenzie ("Mechanizing Proof") is associated by some with the Strong Programme.  This program looks at the sociology of scientific knowledge.  Here are where I found out more about it.

The Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge.  This lecture on SSK (Strong .. Sociology of Knowledge) provides somewhat technical but reasonably-accessible treatment of the basic notions.  This is apparently by Paul Faulkner at the University of Sheffield, for Philosophy 342 on Social Knowledge (taught in Autumn 2003, apparently, but these are older notes).
posted by Dennis at 11/13/2003 03:00:13 PM

 
Knowledge and Social Imagery -- David Bloor.  Here's a blurb on the reprint of Bloor's book that is now available and also affordable.
posted by Dennis at 11/13/2003 02:44:24 PM

 
Bloor: The Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge.  The Strong Programme was mentioned in passing in regard to the association of Donald MacKenzie to this effort.  The goal is to subject scientific knowledge to a sociological treatment.  I don't know that this matters so much for Mechanizing Proof, since the topic is cleary about societal relationship to computers and the notion of trust.  I don't know that it matters in this case.
posted by Dennis at 11/13/2003 02:41:08 PM

 

Computers and Society

Cyberspace and Reality

William Mitchell's ME++ raises questions about who we are and where we live in social networks and interactions when it is all computer-mediated and situated in cyberspace rather than physical locations.

Guardian Unlimited | Online | I link, therefore I am.  An ACM TechNews link to an interesting article about William Mitchell, with more links on finding useful information on the perspective that Mitchell is presenting.
posted by Dennis at 11/10/2003 02:22:02 PM

 

Computing Methodologies

Artificial Intelligence

Knowledge Acquisition and Distributed AI

It is not clear to me how knowledge is embodied in the Semantic Web, especially with its notion that precise meaning can be captured in a mechanically-usable way.  The Clay Shirky article suggests the whole notion of deductive reasoning over a precise terminology is essentially both misguided and hopeless.

Shirky: The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview.  I was referred to this by BAnd. It is a great article, and it goes well with Bill Kent's classic on Data and Reality too.
posted by Dennis at 11/10/2003 12:28:10 PM

 

Computing Milieux

Computers and Education

Distance Learning and IT Education

School of Technology.  Here's another university program organized around distance learning.
posted by Dennis at 11/10/2003 08:37:16 AM