While listening to the Notre Dame vs Michigan football game, it occurred to me...how does an independent person do good quality academic research? How do you get funding and how can you get collaborators who will help you debate your concepts. I guess 75 to 100 years ago, individual's with a keen interest in an area could really (with some effort) do research and publish that research.
Surfing the massive volume that is NSF.gov, also confirms my thinking that it is pretty much impossible for a private, unaffiliated person to get funding for research. Meaning that it is pretty likely that the nature of research is driven by what institutions want to achieve (given in its their staff)...
I think that would make a great paper...the Evolution of Research from Individual to Institutional, I wonder if I would be able to get it published though?
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Testing your reQall
A few colleagues and I were working on a paper on user-centered design and I found that one of the gurus of UCD or HCI for that matter, Donald Norman, was involved with this new startup called reQall.com. It appears that reQall (that is how they spell the name, not my bad typing) allows a person to record their todos and reminders through their iPhone and it will keep you on track with reminders via different communication channels. Kind of the "virtual nag", somehow that appeals to me although I am sure it has the propensity to become incredibly annoying. So, I signed up and I will download the iPhone app (probably will cost me some of my precious iTunes Christmas money, but its all in the name of science).
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Efficiency in evolution?
As a fan of the subtle, yet incredibly powerful workings of the evolutionary process, I was interest to read the latest on the dog v. cat evolution in terms of who is the better hunter and how they evolved to be. Cats are apparently better hunters but less efficient at it is the upshot, humans even better a running after prey (okay, who does this? unless of course you are talking about some long lost tribe in the Amazon or Saturday night at the singles bar...) Nonetheless, you can find the interesting info on this at MSNBC of all places.
I think its pretty ironic that humans are most efficient for running after prey but most likely to sit in front of the big screen TV with a bag of Doritos in their hand. Puts a whole new meaning on the seven deadly wastes (or should that be waster?)
I am considering that this research indicates that evolution and therefore problem solving techniques such as the evolutionary process, support the notion of "useful inefficiency" as the winning condition. Perhaps stealth and its effectiveness easily makes up for the inefficiency of the cats hunting biomechanics. Pretty much another example of systems engineering where if you look at the behavior of one of the components of the system, you could draw an incorrect conclusion unless you look at the total system in operation.
I think its pretty ironic that humans are most efficient for running after prey but most likely to sit in front of the big screen TV with a bag of Doritos in their hand. Puts a whole new meaning on the seven deadly wastes (or should that be waster?)
I am considering that this research indicates that evolution and therefore problem solving techniques such as the evolutionary process, support the notion of "useful inefficiency" as the winning condition. Perhaps stealth and its effectiveness easily makes up for the inefficiency of the cats hunting biomechanics. Pretty much another example of systems engineering where if you look at the behavior of one of the components of the system, you could draw an incorrect conclusion unless you look at the total system in operation.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Factoid Tracing? Huh?
The cogitation or noodle for the day is something I like to call Factoid Tracing. This is the most interesting phenom of the wide open web where you can traverse topics creating your own threads of factoids (small bite-sized facts) of related information based on your own context (what I know, what seems appealing, etc). Much like a directed random walk, if that is not an oxymoron, in a subject area trying to create a picture of understanding or at least one of connectedness in topics.
My experiment is using Google notebook for this purpose. So the experiment looks like this:
1. Pick a book
2. Find a concept, word, etc that you don't understand but have some interest in
3. Google the concept
4. Walk, cross walk or hyperlink around capturing the most relevant snippet of information on the page or ideally the most complex topic you don't know
5. Post that in your Google notebook, it couldn't be easy
6. See what you come up with and see if it makes any sense to someone who has no interest in the topic
For example, here is my public notebook on a weird topic from my complexity studies
http://www.google.com/notebook/public/15710041006556846397/BDQ9jIgoQ7OWC5bQj?hl=en
Guess the topic or comment on the validity of this Factoid Tracing ;-)
My experiment is using Google notebook for this purpose. So the experiment looks like this:
1. Pick a book
2. Find a concept, word, etc that you don't understand but have some interest in
3. Google the concept
4. Walk, cross walk or hyperlink around capturing the most relevant snippet of information on the page or ideally the most complex topic you don't know
5. Post that in your Google notebook, it couldn't be easy
6. See what you come up with and see if it makes any sense to someone who has no interest in the topic
For example, here is my public notebook on a weird topic from my complexity studies
http://www.google.com/notebook/public/15710041006556846397/BDQ9jIgoQ7OWC5bQj?hl=en
Guess the topic or comment on the validity of this Factoid Tracing ;-)
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