Future Salon

John Taylor Gatto: School is a liar’s world. Let us be done with it.

Got an email yesterday with the following question regarding our Open Source Learning Future Salon:

Mark, thanks for putting on a great lecture series. I got a lot out of Jamais Cascio's seminar. The description of Gatto's presentation sounds like a diatribe against our current education system, which we all agree could be improved. Does he has any positive suggestions? The talk as described sounds like a bummer.

I asked John about any positive suggestions to our education problem and here is his responds: An article he wrote a couple of years ago. Once you read it, you may understand why I am so looking forward to our Open Source Learning Future Salon on the 21st of August. RSVP: http://snurl.com/32ggk

Compulsion-schooling tries to shoehorn every style, culture, and personality into one ugly boot that fits nobody.

Admit there is no one right to grow up successfully.
One-system schooling has-had a century and a half to prove itself. It is a ghastly failure, Children need the widest possible range of roads in order to find the right one to accommodate themselves. The premise upon which mass compulsion schooling is based is dead wrong. It tries to shoehorn every style, culture, and personality into one ugly boot that fits nobody. 1fax credits, vouchers, and other more sophisticated means the necessary to encourage a diverse mix of different school logics of growing up. Only sharp competition can reform the present mess; this needs to be an overriding goal of public policy. Neither national nor state government oversight is necessary to make a voucher/tax credit plan work:
a modicum of local control, a disclosure law with teeth, and a policy of client satisfaction or else is all the citizen protection heeded. It works for supermarkets and doctors. It will work for schools, too, without national testing.

Open Source Learning Future Salon with John Taylor Gatto

Thursday 21st of August '08 6pm: Open Source Learning Future Salon with John Taylor Gatto at SAP in Palo Alto Please RSVP: http://snurl.com/32ggk

John Taylor Gatto's ended his teaching career after 30 years, while being New York City Teacher of the Year for the third time and New York State Teacher of the year for the second time with on op-ed in the Wall Street Journal writing, that he was no longer willing to hurt children.

Since then he has written several books. Examples:    

• Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling
• The Underground History of American Education    

When I talked to him on the phone, he was just putting the finishing touches on his latest book out on the first of October: Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling    

Doc Searls as well as Jerry Michalski pointed him out to me years ago. Here is what Jerry wrote in 2003 about John's Harper's Bazar article:

Gatto's in Harper's

Doc first turned me on to John Taylor Gatto's ideas years ago by steering me
toward an essay Gatto had published in The Sun. I think it was his
Six-Lesson Schoolteacher (upgraded to seven, then eight: forgetfulness,
bewilderment and confusion, assigned classism, indifference, emotional
dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem and the "glass
house effect," a total lack of privacy). I've been a fan ever since, and a
questioner not only of compulsory education, which Gatto convincingly
eviscerates, but also of our society's other compulsions.

When I told Jerry that our next Future Salon would be with John Taylor Gatto, he said: You know that he is my hero, when is it? I'll be there. Doc's reaction was: This is great. Let me know when, if I am in Santa Barbara, I will come up for it.

You too should 'come up for it' if you are around: Open Source Learning Future Salon with John Taylor Gatto Thursday August 21st at SAP in Palo Alto. 

Crowd and Open Sourced Mobile Devices Future Salon

Update: Added the bios of the two speakers to the post.

O.K. everyone let's all stop the drooling over the iPhone. There are in my opinion more interesting developments happening in the mobile handheld space.

Two of them we will look at on Monday the 23rd of June at our usual hang out SAP Labs.

First there is Ismael Ghalimi who gave away at his Office 2.0 conference one year an iPod Nano, last year an iPhone and had the crazy idea, that the participants of the conference could develop with him the device for this year's Office 2.0. He calls it the Redux Model 1. In his own words:

The more interesting option would be to build our own device. By that I mean designing, certifying, and manufacturing our very own piece of hardware, all in the one year that separates us for the next Office 2.0 Conference. Today’s engineering processes make such a challenge technically feasible, but for someone who has never done it before, and has no engineering budget for it, this is virtually impossible, so by all means, please assume that we will fail and have to revert to option 1. But if you dare to dream with us for a moment, feel free to read what follows.[more]

Last time I talked with him he was looking for a CEO for the venture, but not certain whether it will be available for Office 2.0. Still the approach of getting input from his network and publically develop a new device is such a novel approach, that I invited him to speak about his experiences.

Another interesting development I found at Buglabs.
Doc Searls is convinced, that the IT industry is going to develop similar to the construction industry. Check out this article: 

This change in perception is tied to the relative (im)maturity of the computer indus-
try; when it finishes growing up, it will look much like the construction industry.

Now the folks at Buglabs have created a mobile base station that they call the bug and they have many modules that you can connect to it like Lego blocks.  The cool thing is, that software as well as hardware is Open Source, that means there is only a limit in imagination and funds to possible extensions of the bug.

Jeremy Toeman from Buglabs will present their approach and current status. He also promised to bring some bugs and extensions.  It is going to be very interesting.

Cure Aging Event in LA

Aging 2008 is the opening session for the technically focused Understanding Aging conference, running June 28-29 at UCLA.

Their press release opens up with: "Have you ever dreamed climbing Mount Everest on your 125th birthday?"

From the far this sounds cool, but I just think, why would you want to? What a waist of passion to direct it towards climbing the highest rock on earth. I once heard that the natives didn't even have a name for Mount Everest, because compared to all the other mountains around him, he was just unspectacular, not worth a name.

If you really ant to live forever, you wouldn't put yourself in such a risky situation. I recommend reading Into thin Air by Jon Krakauer. It describes in vivid details the risks involved. Wanting to live forever has its limiting factors.

Honestly the woman on the event picture just looks a bit creepy and I start to wonder whether the most pressing question on this earth isn't aging, but why almost everyone is following the cult of wanting to be young, wanting to look younger ... More on that in a later post.

Truth is, I really like Aubrey de Grey. The Future Salon debate between him and William Hurlbut was one of our best Salons ever.

We were afterwards standing outside and he said, that it is O.K. with him, if he dies before the problem of aging is solved. He, and I am transcribing now from memory, will be happy that he has done what he could to solve the problem and to push solutions forward.

Therefore I am a bit bummed, that I am not in LA at that time to  join him and top scientists and advocates at this event. I would have loved to get an update.

Picture from the Future Current

 

What we can learn from Maasai Warriors

This was one of the most interesting Future Salons we ever had with Sabore Oiye and Salaton Ole’ Ntutu.

I have never met warriors that were that soft spoken, grounded and happy.

They told us briefly about their upbringing and there were already some lessons in there: When they are very young like 6-7 years old, they are already put in charge of some sheep or goats. Here in the west, you would claim child labor, but within the Maasai culture it is part of how you learn to be a responsible member of the tribe. Once you get older you are put in charge of larger animals.

 

Blogger Ksjhalla met Salaton Ole Ntutu on BART

How do I know this? Well he twittered about it:

ksjhalla @finnern met Salaton Ole Ntutu on BART today! excellent insights 08:58 PM May 13, 2008 from web in reply to finnern

Here he posts some more:
@chep2m Imagine this. Ran into 2 Maasais on BART - in SF to promote Narok, Kenya School. Spking at SAP on 05/22  http://tinyurl.com/6fnqw2 07:49 PM May 13, 2008 from TwitterFox in reply to chep2m

 

It is a bit superficial as it focuses a lot on his outfit. But what comes across clearly is, that he has a lot to share from all of his experiences, and we can learn a lot from him. Looking forward to it.

Details:This Thursday 22nd of May 6-7pm networking 7-9pm talk at SAP Labs in Palo Alto [map] Please RVSP: http://snurl.com/284i3  [Even more details in my last post]

May Future Salon with Kenyan Maasai Warrior and Chief

In a time of accelerating change it is of great importance to decide which of our traditions we will keep and which ones we throw overboard as not fitting into our new environment. It is also really important to understand others in our global community, to account for cultural differences, and find ways to ease people into this changing environment.

We are really fortunate to host Kenyan Maasai tribal warrior and chief Salaton Ole’ Ntutu to shed some light on these questions.

Thursday 22nd of May 6-7pm networking 7-9pm talk. Please RVSP: http://snurl.com/284i3 

Neuroengeneering Future Salon this Wednesday 30th

Let's assume someone develops the pill, that makes you twice as intelligent. Small side effect is, it shaves off 10 years of your life. Will you take it?

What if everyone you know is on it? You come to work and your boss is calling you into the office and says: "I am concerned about your output. If I compare your to the performances of your colleagues, they just get so much more done."

It is the stadium effect, if everyone is standing up, you are forced to stand up too, just to  level the paling field. You will be forced to pop the pill too.

You may think, that this is a dark future scenario, but check the Revving the brain article about Ritalin use to enhance your concentration.

I fear that we are like the sorcerer's apprentice the spirits we called will take over and soon we will ask ourselves how to get rid of them.

I once talked about this with John Smart and he said that our brain over the years has been finely tuned via biology, there is not a lot of room for improvement left.

It is for sure a very interesting field and I am really happy to have Dr. Pete Estep presenting the latest research regarding Neuroengineering at our Future Salon this Wednesday the 30th of April.

If you can't join in person we will webcast the event and tape it too. Point your Quicktime viewer to the following address: rtsp://207.105.30.90/salon.sdp

Neuroengineering Future Salon

Wednesday April 30th at SAP Palo Alto
Hosted with Silicon Valley H+ Meet Up

Please RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/6oxlzr

Dr. Pete Estep will discuss the InnerSpace Foundation (IF), a new nonprofit being developed to promote and support neuroengineering approaches for the enhancement of memory and learning – biomedical goals that have the potential to improve not only the lives of those suffering from a specific malady, but everyone's life.

Estep earned his Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard Medical School, performing research in the lab of genomics pioneer Dr. George Church. He is an inventor of several technologies, including universal DNA protein-binding microarrays (PBMs). He serves as an advisor to the Personal Genome Project, an open source project at Harvard Medical School.

Future Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation followed by discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross or Cafeteria depending on number of RSVPs. SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304. Free and open to the public. Spread the word and please RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/6oxlzr

This should be a fresh, engaging discussion. I hope to see you there. -Tyler

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The InnerSpace Foundation and The IF Prize: Why and How We Should Transcend Our Evolved Limitations

Biological evolution is a somewhat haphazard and non-optimizing process that has produced many undesirable artifacts. Among a large number and wide variety of such artifacts, two stand out as the underlying causes of the most pervasive and extreme human suffering: mental and lifespan limitations. Mental inabilities are universal, and they must ultimately serve to explain our ongoing failures to end human warfare, crime, poverty, and famine, and to completely cure diseases, disabilities, aging and death; therefore, these inabilities are fundamentally even more harmful to humanity than the categories of biomedical dysfunction we currently labor to cure. The overall goal of the InnerSpace Foundation (IF) is to accelerate the development of biomedical technologies for transcending these limitations. IF Chairman Dr. Pete Estep will outline specific steps the foundation is taking toward dramatic enhancement of memory, learning and cognition, and will describe how these near-term goals should ultimately help us to eliminate or transcend other unwanted artifacts of Darwinian evolution.

Yuri's Night Tonight

One of the coolest events ever is/are happening tonight: Yuri's Night commemorating the 50th anniversary of maned flight in space.

In some earlier time zones of the world parties are happening already. The Bay Area has an amazing line-up of speakers for their Yuri's Night: Jaron Lanier for example who once ramped up the McLuhan Ramp at the Future Salon (video of the event at the Internet Archive).

He will talk about one of the most out there ideas I came accross in a long while: Let's rearrange the stars to let people know that there is intelligent life out here in this dot of the universe. He closes his article with: Crazier things have happened. I am scratching my head thinking about what that could have been?

It is happening at Moffett Field a blimp hangar in Mountain View, that intrigued me for ages when driving by on 101. Today I will be able to see it from the insight. So cool.

Hope to see you there, oh and it starts already at 2pm this afternoon.