Learning to get back up

Learning to get back up is the most important thing we can learn. How can we teach it?

Knowing what you know

As important as knowing something is knowing what you know, such that you can compare what you know to what there is to know, and identify areas to focus on.

Setting out what there is to know (i.e. a complete syllabus) is relatively easy, and should be standardised per subject area to enable individuals to map what they know to the what there is to know in a standardised (and hence comparable) fashion.

Syllabuses are typically hierarchical datasets, with subtopics sitting within topics, and subsubtopics sitting in subtopics, etc. However, cross-linking between topics, particularly for dependencies (i.e. prerequisities) is essential.

Original vs independent vs unresearched thought

We can't guarantee our thought is original as we don't know the complete history of all thought of all people.

We can't guarantee our thought is independent, as we might have forgotten something we've read (heard, experienced, etc) and then think the thought is our own (a phenomenon called cryptomnesia).

All we can guarantee is that our thought in unresearched i.e. that what we have written is not directly copied from or paraphrased from other material.

Minibike

The optimum solution to a human-powered mobility solution that is faster than walking but takes up less space than a folding bike has not yet been solved to my satisfaction (no doubt skaters and bladers would disagree), so here's my ten cents worth.

The key is to harness a natural walking gait in a similar fashion to a cross-trainer and translate this power to wheelled motion. Two inline wheels (like a bicycle on a smaller scale) sit at the bottom of a stem that goes between the legs. The wheels are powered by forwards and backwards foot/leg motion on moving arms, which is translated to rotary motion in the wheels via a gear and chain mechanism that is hidden within the stem of the device. The body of the device also acts as a steering column, allowing a pair of handle bars to control direction.

Futurism predictions website

There is great sport on the perennial activity of watching futurists' predictions not come true (after all, where is my jet pack?). But from time to time, futurists' predictions might actually be useful, and amateurs might actually have some good suggestions. The only problem is that this data is scattered across numerous media.

What we need is a website to collate predictions for the future (both those that have already expired, and those that may still be valid). Such a site would all the crowdsource contributers to submit the published predictions of famous predictors (with data such as: date; predictor; source; prediction; prediction date), and also their own predictions.

Predictions could be tagged, categorisation, searched, voted for and discussed. For predictions on the same subject, vote-weighted averages might give a useful insight (then again they may not!).

And of course they great sport of assessment after the fact (with inevitable whinging - actually, forget the jet pack, I want a space elevator...).

Distinguishing the internet and the world wide web

I read an article recently (I forget where otherwise I would hyperlink) emphasising the importance for users of the internet and the world wide web to understand the differences between them. Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, the focus of the article, and many other similar articles explaining the differences, was on treating the world wide web as something that runs on the internet and is a subset of it.

What this article failed to mention is that the world wide web has something that the internet doesn't: content. The internet is a network of networks, but nonetheless a network. It provides connectivity. It does not have content but allows access to it. By contrast, the fundamental feature of the web is (hyperlinked) content.

An attempt at some one line definitions:

The Internet: a network of networks allowing access to a great array of content, most significantly the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web: a collection of hyperlinked content, hosted in servers spread across the world, accesssed via the Internet

Traffic light remote

Wouldn't it be good to have an smartphone-based (for pedestrians and cyclists) or in-car-computer-based (for drivers) app that communicated your impending arrival at a junction to a traffic light, giving you a reduced wait time? This would be particularly advantageous for button-controlled rather than timed pedestrian crossings.

The user would select the relevant traffic light from a location-dependent (via GPS) list.

Such a system would present a great opportunity for municipal authorities to recoup some of their costs of maintaining the roads, with the cost of each message to a traffic light costing a small amount (perhaps from a prepaid account). The fee would need to be sufficient to cover the comms put into each of the traffic lights, and to contribute toward the cost of maintaining roads.

Another potential feature would be automated messaging to particular sets of lights (the ones that annoy you the most!) based on geographic location (via GPS) and speed (via GPS).