Richard Davis (bezbozhnik)'s Public Profile in the Diigo Community

e-Repository Services Manager at University of London (new job title, just trying it out for size) developing systems for digital libraries and archives in HE. Researcher in digital preservation, including web archiving and learning object repositories. Post-grad student on MSc E-learning at Edinb...

I am interested in My favorite music are Serge Gainsbourg,Serge Prokofiev,Ludwig Van Beethoven,Camper Van Beethoven,Ye-ye,Be-bop,Super Furry Animals,Luna,Teenage Fanclub,Time Boom & The Ten Dread Commandments Of Jah. Movies: Alexander Nevsky,; The Day The Earth Stood Still,Lavender Hill Mob,Masque Of The Red Death,Life Of Brian,Hairspray,Pulp Fiction,Ирония судьбы,Being John Malkovich. TV: Noggin The Nog,Dragon's Den,Spaced,Banzai,I Claudius,Father Ted,The Apprentice,fly-on-the-wall documentaries about airports and stuff.. Books: Third Policeman,Name Of The Rose,Pale Fire,Moby Dick,Generation X,Brautigan,Voinovich,Vonnegut,Fear And Loathing,Anything by me. My Heros are Serge Gainsbourg,Humphrey Lyttelton,John Cusack.

Member since Sep 25, 2008, follows 4 people, 0 public groups, 855 public bookmarks (870 total).

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Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

Public Service - Small and inconsistent use of VLEs on 2009-01-15
eFoundations: Brief thoughts on the CETIS Conference 2008 on 2008-12-05
- I found there to be something of a discord between Andrew Feenberg's promotion of the value of face-to-face lecturer/student contact in the form of the traditional lecture (as opposed to textual renditions of the same, e.g. a streamed video) somewhat at odds with his own delivery style - which was basically to read out a written paper, a style that I find quite difficult to properly engage with. I also felt he underplayed the kind of collaborative learning that can take place, facilitated by social networks and/or virtual worlds, around streamed media.
Get Tooled Up:'Staying Connected: Technologies Supporting Remote Workers', Ariadne Issue 57 on 2008-11-17
- - Richard Davis on 2008-11-17
    
    Doubtful.
Of cartoons, eggs, war and more… : Digitisation on 2008-11-11
Welcome to MOSEP - More Self-Esteem with my E-Portfolio on 2008-11-06
distribcog/dror-harnad on 2008-11-01
- Can there be distributed cognition beyond the
  bounds of the
  body and the brain? In particular, can external cognitive technology
  serve as a
  functional part of our cognitive states, rather than just serving as
  input to
  and output from them?
- Let us make the retrieval interval longer
  then, just
  to make the problem more vivid: You are trying to remember the name of
  a poet.
  You know he wrote 'Tell me not in mournful numbers, life is but an
  endless
  dream' and his name is on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't
  retrieve
  it. You go to sleep, and next morning 'Henry Wadsworth Longfellow'
  immediately
  pops up. You were not even awake during the brain state that retrieved
  it. So
  what difference does it make if you recall it through an unconscious
  retrieval
  state in your brain, or by Googling it (again relying on a state in
  some remote
  computer and database of which you are not conscious)? Are they not
  both based
  on an unconscious, nonmental state, in the first case narrow and
  neural, inside
  your brain, in the second case wide and computational, distributed
  between your
  brain and a computer hundreds or thousands of miles away?
- 11 more annotations...
- - And what about a modern child, who has never bothered to
    memorize the multiplication tables, as you did, because a computer is
    always at
    hand? The only way he ever retrieves 7 x 9 is to key it in, and read
    off the
    product. He blindly consults his computer when you blindly consult your
    memory:
    What's the difference? Never mind computers: the poet's name could be
    read out
    of a static book that indexes poems' first lines. Or you could just ask
    somebody
    who knows to tell you who wrote those lines. What difference does it
    make if
    the database in which the datum is stored, outside your awareness, is
    in your
    brain, or on the shelf of a library, or in someone else's brain?
  - The beginning of cognitive technology was surely language, which
    allowed
    cognizers to 'offload' a lot of brainwork onto other brains that could
    do it
    for you, and deliver you the results, and vice-versa (Cangelosi &
    Harnad
    2001; Dascal 2004). Are our own neural states, plus Google states, plus
    book
    states, plus the neural states in the heads of other cognizers all
    parts of
    distributed cognitive states – and if so, whose
    cognitive states?
  - Let us start by considering a
    kindred
    kind of technology, perhaps not quite cognitive, only sensorimotor,
    with the corresponding states being sensorimotor
    states rather than fully cognitive ones: Sensorimotor technology
    probably began
    in our species' prehistory with tools and weapons, which extended our
    performance capacities dramatically. Let us consider a relatively
    recent tool:
    
    If you look at a star through a telescope, is that
    a
    distributed sensorimotor state, consisting of your brain and retina
    plus the
    telescope (and perhaps also the star), in which your visual capacity is
    augmented by the telescope's power of refraction? Or is it just input to your narrow, skin-and-in sensorimotor
    state – input augmented by the telescope?
    
    If you are driving a car, is that an extended
    sensorimotor
    state, in which your body is moving at speeds in excess of what it can
    manage
    alone, narrowly? The wider, distributed sensorimotor state might
    include the car
    and its locomotor capacity. Or is it just output
    from your narrow, skin-and-in sensorimotor state (in this case a slow
    movement
    of your foot on the pedal) – output augmented by the horse-power of our
    external vehicle?
    
    Another example would be operating a crane, and
    the extended
    power to reach and manipulate objects that are too far, big and heavy
    to be
    manipulated in your narrower sensorimotor state. Is this a widely
    augmented I,
    or just I/O to narrow old me?
  - The effects of cognitive technology can be similar to
    those of
    sensorimotor technology. Language evolved neurologically for speech and
    its interactive
    tempo. We can accelerate recorded speech technologically beyond the
    rate we can
    speak it, yet still understand it. Beyond a certain speed, speech
    becomes
    gibberish – yet we can read and understand written language at far
    faster
    speeds (probably because hearing is a more serial medium of processing
    and vision
    is more parallel).
  - s language itself a form of distributed
    cognition? How
    does the knowledge in other people's heads, conveyed to us auditorily,
    differ
    from the knowledge in books, conveyed to us visually? Both allow us to
    access
    information without needing to gather it the hard way, through our own
    direct,
    time-consuming, risky and uncertain sensorimotor experience. Writing
    and
    speaking also allow us to offload our knowledge and memory outside our
    own
    narrow bodies, rather than having to store it all internally.
    Individual cognizers
    write books, but Wikipedia, for example, seems to be growing
    spontaneously
    according to an independent, collective agenda of its own, more like
    the joint
    activity of a colony of ants.
  - Computers, distributed digital databases and
    automated
    algorithms have augmented both the speed and the computing power of our
    brains,
    and that newfound speed and power is capable of inducing changes in our
    mental
    self-image not unlike the ones that sensorimotor technology can induce
    in our
    body image: If being deprived of one's spectacles or one's automobile
    feels rather
    like the loss of eyes or limbs, being deprived of one's computer or
    cell-phone
    feels like the loss of one's intrinsic cognitive and communicative
    capacity.
  - Human discourse is certainly interactive
    cognition, indeed collaborative
    cognition, and the speed and distance at which we could speak, and
    understand our interlocutors, set biological limits on the rate and
    scope of that
    collaborative cognition, hundreds of thousands of years ago. The speed
    of
    verbal thought probably co-evolved with language and is probably of the
    same
    order of magnitude as the speed of oral speech. Although reading speed
    is much
    faster than listening speed, writing (and typing) speed is not as fast
    as speaking
    (and the turn-around time of letter delivery is certainly slower than
    conversational speed). So in real-time interactions,
    at the speed of thought, we still prefer to talk rather than write.
  - It is only recently that cognitive technology (in
    this case,
    email and texting) has accelerated the potential speed of written
    interactions in
    almost real-time to something closer to the speed of thought. Web-based
    threaded discussion lists, and especially their quote/commentary
    capability,
    not only accelerate this interaction still further – allowing
    individual
    cognizers to interact with the text
    itself in real time.
  - If the human brain was biologically optimized for
    interactive
    cognition at speaking speed, and writing technology slowed down that
    interactive
    cycle (in exchange for the other benefits of the transmission and
    archiving of
    a written record) for thousands of years, then digital online
    technology has now
    once again accelerated the interaction to the speed of thought,
    increasing its
    power and productivity by orders of magnitude, and distributing it
    globally and
    instantaneously. It is this newfound interactivity (not passive radio,
    television or film) that is at last truly turning Gaia into McLuhan's
    (1962) 'global
    village.'
  - So where does this leave the question of distributed cognition? It is
    still
    cognizers who cognize -- the tool-users, not the tools.[9]
    Yet there is no doubt that cognitive technology has radically widened
    the scope
    of human cognizing[10].
  - Is cognitive technology limited to increasing
    the
    cognitive performance capacity of its users? No. We have argued that
    cognitive tools
    are not themselves cognizers, nor do they have -- or serve as
    distributed
    substrates of -- mental states. But their effects go well beyond making
    human
    cognition more efficient and productive. Just as noncognitive
    technology (cars,
    planes, machinery) transformed our somatic lives, so the offloading of
    brain
    function onto cognitive technology is now transforming our cerebral
    lives.
Richard's ULCC Portfolio - Mahara on 2008-10-30
MyPortfolio Tertiary :: Learning for life on 2008-10-30
FreeFolios » FreeFolio on 2008-10-30
Peña-López on 2008-10-30
- contribute to create an online identity that, in turn, will help to create a network whose currency is knowledge
- The approach we present is closely related to the concept of
  
  e-portfolio,
  but from the researcher's or practitioner's point of view rather than the learner's.
  As e-portfolios are usually associated with students and teaching, we here propose the term personal research portal (PRP) to avoid confusion.
- 3 more annotations...
- - The goals of the PRP should be: i) to gain more access to international knowledge output from other knowledge workers; ii) to give more international access to research generated by a knowledge worker; iii) higher promotion of institutional knowledge output; iv) improved citation and research impact; v) improved access to subsidiary data; and vi) a strongly facilitated peer review
  - Richard Davis on 2008-10-30
    
    RSS feeds, then
  - increase one's visibility