25 OCT 2017 by ideonexus
The False Promise of WWW Enlightenment
Never before have so many people been connected together in an instantly responsive network through which memes can spread faster than natural viruses. But the notion that taking the whole world online would create a utopia of netizens, all equal in cyberspace, was always a fantasy—as much a delusion as Luther’s vision of a “priesthood of all believers.” The reality is that the global network has become a transmission mechanism for all kinds of manias and panics, just as the combinati... 1 
notes
notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Modern Definition of Literacy
the increasing multiplicity and integration of significant modes of meaning-making, where the textual is also related to the visual, the audio, the spatial, the behavioral, and so on ... particularly important in the mass media, multimedia, and in an electronic hypermedia. (New London Group, 1996, p. 64)
Folksonomies: new media
Folksonomies: new media
1 notes
notes30 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Human Combinatoric Reasoning
Humans, of course, were not created in a state of Original Reason. We descended from apes, spent hundreds of millennia in small bands, and evolved our cognitive processes in the service of hunting, gathering, and socializing. Only gradually, with the appearance of literacy, cities, and long-distance travel and communication, could our ancestors cultivate the faculty of reason and apply it to a broader range of concerns, a process that is still ongoing. One would expect that as collective rati...Folksonomies: reasoning combinatorics
Folksonomies: reasoning combinatorics
1 notes
notes13 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Science Enriches a Person's Life
We need science education to produce scientists, but we need it equally to create literacy in the public. Man has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world about him, and science gives today the only world picture which we can consider as valid. It gives an understanding of the inside of the atom and of the whole universe, or the peculiar properties of the chemical substances and of the manner in which genes duplicate in biology. An educated layman can, of course, not contribute to science, ... 1 notes
notesThis is why everyone should study it, because it's the only thing that explains the world around us. Quote from Hans Albrecht Bethe in the 1961 September issue, but reference is from the December issue.
29 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
The Rationale for Doomsday Chests
After the fall of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, much of what we consider "civilization" ceased to be. Literacy, medicine, science, agriculture, engineering, astronomy, governance, all went into decline or regression for the hundreds of years which we now call "The Dark Ages".
During this period monasteries were practically the only repositories of scholarship and learning. One historian notes that monks were not only the best educated members of society, by far, but were often the only...
1 During the Dark Ages, the Human race came precipitously close to losing all knowledge permanently when the black plague almost wiped out the scholarly religious classes.
30 NOV -0001 by ideonexus
Should Spelling be Modernized?
The time taken to teach the decimalised system for currency, temperature, weights and distances is far shorter and more certain than when 240 pence equalled a pound, 32 degrees Fahrenheit equalled the temperature of ice and pounds and ounces were taught. Already there is a generation that was spared these ancient measurements.
To improve literacy in the general population, modernisation of the spelling system will bring similar benefits to what decimalisation brought.Folksonomies: phonetics
Folksonomies: phonetics
It takes just one generation to fix spelling and improve literacy for future generations. Just as it took one generation to move to the metric system or change currencies in Europe.
30 NOV -0001 by ideonexus
Spelling is the Problem
Now let me get to a lower level still in this question. And that is, all the time you hear the
question, "why can't Johnny read?" And the answer is, because of the spelling. The
Phoenicians, 2000, more, 3000, 4000 years ago, somewhere around there, were able to
figure out from their language a scheme of describing the sounds with symbols. It was
very simple. Each sound had a corresponding symbol, and each symbol, a corresponding
sound. So that when you could see what the symbols' sounds w...Folksonomies: phoenetics
Folksonomies: phoenetics
Putting letters together into words is one of the most basic skills required for literacy. If this basic skill is so hard for so many people to grasp, then, Feynman argues, there is a problem with the way words are spelled.
30 NOV -0001 by ideonexus
Benjamin Franklin's Reasons for Reforming the Alphabet
Franklin's own impulse in creating the alphabet was quite different. He was a man who looked closely and with curiosity at the world around him, seeking ways to improve it wherever he saw the opportunity. His alphabet was conceived in the same spirit as his less smoky, more fuel-efficient house-heating stove, or his more easily cleaned and repaired street lamp. The alphabet, for Franklin, was not unlike a household tool, something to repair, rewire, and update. Improving the writing system wo...Folksonomies: phonetics
Folksonomies: phonetics
Franklin was not interested in forging a national identity for America, but was more focused on cleaning up the inefficiencies in our spelling. He came from humble beginnings to greatness through his habit of voracious reading, and he wanted to share the gift of literacy with others. Simplifying spelling was a means to that end.
