PhD

I4D People Logos III

Here is the next iteration of logos. (Click in the image to enlarge).

Please have your say in your comments.

I4D People logos reloaded

Here is the improved version of the logos. Please leave your comments and suggestions. In this phase  there has been a pruning from the first set of logos, suggestions about the typography have been included (the infamous ‘I’) and different types of typography are suggested. Please, have your say in the comments. (Click in the image to enlarge)

I4D People logos

HI All!

Here are the logos proposed for I4D People by my friend Raúl, a fantastic graphic designer with a lot of differents projects, like Fuss!. If you have any suggestions of which logo do you like, what you dislike, what might be improved or whatever you think it is appropriate. Please do not hesitate to post your comments. The more the comments, the clearer the idea.

Free (II)

I really like this article “Better than Free” by Kevin Kelly. I firstly read something of him in another interesting essay published in Edge about the future of Science. This time he talks about:

“The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.”

To formulate the problem:

“When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied”

He proposes eight different qualities that “can not be copied” called by himself “generatives”: immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage and findability.

All in all it has quite interesting thoughts about the future of business in this hyperabundant world. Thougts that canbe applied to I4D People:

“how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business
model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that
can’t be replicated with a click of the mouse.”

Free Trends

I had a look this morning to Kottke.org. There is a post about The 2007 Digital Economy Handbook about the  last trends in … well, trends. That made me remember about trendwatching which publishes a briefing [in pdf] about the last trends (again). And what seems to be is the last trend / buzz?

the ongoing rise of free, valuable stuff that’s available to consumers online and offline.      

A recent example, the last book by Chris Anderson, Free, which was given for free (for the first 10,000. US only. Damn).It has sense. In an age of “hyperabundance”, attention (time) is the scarce resource. In education, a first hint was MIT opencourseware. However I think that you need a lot of “muscle” to have a chance to give things for free and don’t shrink. Or, in other words, what is the chance of “small” university or educational institutions, like University of Joensuu in the free age?

Faith Shift

Another interesting article from the NYTimes about the number of US people who have changed their faith:

it appears that 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations 

Other interesting info in the article:

• The Roman Catholic Church “has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes.”
• Unaffiliated are the country’s fourth largest “religious group.”
• If you want to understand America, you have to understand religion in America
• “The trend is toward more personal religion, and evangelicals offer that,”
• “It sets up the potential for big arguments but also for the possibility of all sorts of creative synthesis. Diversity cuts both ways.”

What Europeans think of each other

This a funny and somewhat insightful article written by an American who has spent some time in Europe. I sort of agree in many things of what he says …. and I have to be prepared when I move to England, though

On Suicide

Martin Seligman, in his book called “Authentic Happiness” (2002) stressed out the importance of depression and suicide even to call suicide as an epidemic. His claims were based in the relationship of depression and suicide and if we were able to shortcircuit depression, we would be able to low suicide rates as well. This is quite logical, I think. He also said that this situation was prone to get worse as the rate of young people depressed in the US was growing. His thoughts came to my mind after reading this recent article in the New York Times: mildlife suicide is increasing:

A new five-year analysis of the nation’s death rates recently released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the suicide rate among 45-to-54-year-olds increased nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2004, the latest year studied, far outpacing changes in nearly every other age group. (All figures are adjusted for population.)        

Maybe Martin Seligman was right? I tried to find some data [pdf] about it (the last official data published this year is of 2005):

 Well, after looking to this data I’m not sure. Maybe the last ten years are a small window frame to draw conclusions anyway. As you can see, the total suicide rate seems to diminish . (Btw, suicide rate =( number of suicides by group / population of the group) * 100,000) . In every group seems to be reduced as well except…, yep, the middle age: 45 - 54 and 55 - 64. It seems to me that depression policies and treatments are working slowly but surely except in the before mentioned group. Plus, the new policies should focus heavily on them in order to avoid future disasters in 20 years time. As you can see  the rate in the group of 75-84 increases significantly.

However, why there is this increasing in the middle age?  What are the differences compared with other cohorts? The article suggests some and all of them sound probable to me:

• The national support system focused on -19 or 65+ groups
• The skyrocketing use of prescription drugs
• The growing pressures of modern life

Now, your turn. What do you think?

Not Only The Americans

Reading the most read articles of a newspaper is a source of interesting news. Last weekend I found the following article in the New York Times: Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge? Here it is discussed the book “The Age of American Unreason” by Susan Jacoby. I’m always surprised of the self-punishment ability of US press about themselves (which would feed the sense of superiority of some Europeans: “you see, even THEY admit it”).However, I would like to remark that the issues covered in the article are not exclusive of the US. (In my home country, Spain, there is a sort of joke of the new generation of youngsters raised from the last educational reform which has lowered significantly its quality (although I’m not sure as a cause or as a consequence). Well, like the Poltergeist girl said , “They are heeereeee!”. For instance:

“Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.” 

Sad, but true. Or (bold is mine):

“when political problems seem intractable or somehow frozen, there is a turn toward cultural issues.” 

I would change “political” for any kind of problem you may think. Further, in the case of Spain where there has been a lot of immigration in the last decade, this argument is becoming quite popular (but it did not appeared out of the blue). Anyway, I would like to know your opinion about your home country or what you have seen / listened while you were living abroad. As I said before, it’s sort of a global issue

I scroll this conflict or when HCI goes horribly wrong

(vía MetaFilter)

Where are we?

It’s sort of useful. Eigenfactor visualizes the relationship of different scientific fields analyzing the topics of journal papers.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

In case you do not know it yet, next year brings a big change in my life. My partner, after not being renewed in Joensuu as a german lecturer, has been accepted in Cambridge as a german lecturer. She starts this January and I’ll go there in May or June, after my current contract ends. So I face a new period in my life. Ch-ch-ch-changes.

The Last PhD meeting in Kitee

Among other things, this is what we did in Kitee …

PS: Thanks Clint!

Blue Eyes

And many more maps at Eupedia

(through Microsiervos)

PhD Day, October 11th

11 - 11.15: Opening. Some words by Erkki.

11.15-11.45: P. Clint Rogers: BrainHoney Demo:

BrainHoney, created by Agilix, is a free global virtual platform that utilizes the native rich media environment of the net generation and the “learn by teaching” instructional model to engage student curiosity and motivation. The goal of BrainHoney is to harness the power of social networking to create an open learning community in which participants worldwide can instruct and learn from one another, and in a sense, so every member can say, “I am the teacher.” As a researcher, I have been involved from early on in the creation of the BrainHoney concept until its recent launch, and I would like to demo it and get people’s feedback and suggestions.

11.45 - 12.15: Roman Bednarik: What did your mum ask about your research?

12.15 - 12.45: Javier López & Ilkka Jormanainen: North - South Gateway, ideas and suggestions
12.45 - ¿?: Open discussion about how to improve IMPDET and our research group. Take a look about Jussi’s suggestions (in your mailbox) and IMPDET wiki evaluation

Update: Former PhD Days this season: August, September I, September II