Saturday, June 4
How unique and trackable is your web browser?
When you visit a website, you are allowing that site to access a lot of information about your computer. Combined, this information can create a kind of fingerprint — a signature that could be used to identify you and your computer. But how effective would this kind of online tracking be? EFF is running an experiment to find out. Visit http://panopticlick.eff.org to learn how unique your browser is and if you can be tracked.
Friday, June 3
Wednesday, June 1
Tuesday, May 31
Donated plasma
Donated plasma for the first time today and it was pretty cool. It took forever to get all of the first time stuff out of the way which was a hassle so we will see if things are any faster next time I go.
Sunday, May 29
Wikipedia is forcing us to confront the paradox inherent in the idea of learners as "doers, not recipients." If learners are indeed doers and not recipients, from whom are they learning? From one another, it appears; same as it ever was.
"Alchemists kept their practices shrouded in secrecy. The shift from alchemy to chemistry wasn't in the practitioners, nor in the instruments they used. The difference was that chemists had become willing to expose their methods and conclusions to the withering scrutiny of their peers," he said. "The chemists said, 'We don't want to believe what isn't true,' and then: 'It's not true until someone else checks your work.' This doubting impulse led to things like peer review, the duplication of experiments, the foundation of modern science."
By empowering readers and observers with transparent access to the means by which conclusions are reached, rather than assembling them in an audience to hear the Authorities deliver the catechism from on high, we are all of us becoming scientists in this way, entering into a democracy of the intellect that is already bearing spectacular fruit, not just at Wikipedia but through any number of collaborative projects, from the Gutenberg Project to Tor to Linux.
"Learning" no longer means sitting passively in a lecture hall or on in front of a television or in a library and waiting to receive the "authoritative" version of what the experts think is up as if it were a Communion wafer. For nearly 20 years we have had the Internet, now grown into a medium of almost infinite paths, where "learning" means that you can Twitter directly to people in Egypt to ask them what they really think about ElBaradei (and get answers), ask an author or critic to address a point you feel he may have missed (ditto), or share your own insights in countless forums where they will be read and admired (and/or savaged.) Knowledge is growing more broadly and immediately participatory and collaborative by the moment.
