Exploring Pathways of Vision, Sight and Insight

This blog started off as a personal trek to explore new paradigms. It has succeeded in doing that for myself and hopefully some few others along the way. These paradigm pathways have a tendency to cross over one another and create opportunities for serendipity. Even though the rule in blogging is too focus on one idea in short narratives, my habit is to ignore that advice and attempt to link different ideas. Two important sources for new ideas are TED and MIT for seeking pragmatic solutions and personal wisdom in redefining one's self as its says in the header.

Recently, I came across four videos from both sources that had a common set of themes, brain, cognition, vision, but also led to other pathways of compassion and social change. All involved understanding, but used different applications of that word.

In this episode of TEDTalks (video) on Tom Wujec on 3 ways the brain creates meaning - Tom Wujec (2009) -

Information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings, connections. In this short talk from TEDU, he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better understand big ideas?

Cognitive psychologists now tell us that the brain doesn't actually see the world as it is, but instead, creates a series of mental models through a collection of "Ah-ha moments," or moments of discovery, through various processes.

So making images meaningful has three components. The first again, is making ideas clear by visualizing them. Secondly, making them interactive. And then thirdly, making them persistent. And I believe that these three principles can be applied to solving some of the very tough problems that we face in the world today. Thanks so much.

The next two videos from MITWorld, though longer in length, are well worth watching.

The first continues with the exploration of cognition and vision through - Computers with Commonsense: Artificial Intelligence at the MIT Round Table

Patrick Henry Winston ponders what makes humans different from our primate cousins. His field of artificial intelligence extends that question to thinking about how humans differ from computers, with a goal to "develop a computational theory of intelligence."

"We think with our eyes…vision is the locus of every profound kind of problem solving."

Patrick Henry Winston

The next MITWorld video takes us back to the human and to the humane -

Opening the Mind’s Eye-Learning to See

"Whenever we're asked how the brain does X or Y, the impulse is to work with this beloved creature, the human infant, to see how it acquires different capabilities... But there are challenges: Babies are not interested in being experimental subjects. They'd rather sleep than give us good data."

Pawan Sinha

The reason the Pawan Sinha video goes beyond interesting to inspiring is because

Sinha found these subjects in his native India, which has the world’s highest number of blind children -- more than one million. They are victims of Vitamin A deficiency, congenital cataracts, and absent or atrocious medical care. But salient to Sinha’s research, many of these blind children could be treated. He glimpsed a humanitarian and scientific opportunity, and Project Prakash (Sanskrit for light) was born .

It’s rare to find research that simultaneously advances basic science and brings immediate good into people’s lives, but Pawan Sinha’s Project Prakash does precisely that. An investigator of human visual processing, Sinha is interested in how these brain mechanisms develop, and in treating India's vast population of blind children.

The final video is another short one from TED and deals again with vision, but vision both from the idea of seeing and the idea of envisioning a new world. Both aspects of our understanding are necessary to bring about this new world, the understanding of our world and nature and the understanding we must show to each other.

Atomic physicist Joshua Silver invented liquid-filled optical lenses to produce low-cost, adjustable glasses, giving sight to millions without access to an optometrist. At TEDGlobal 2009, he demos his affordable eyeglasses and reveals his global plan to distribute them to a billion people in need by 2020.

Reconnecting to Why To Connect

I have decided to reconnect to why I started this in the first place. It was to learn and share. The learning was whatever interested me with more specific focus on issues being dealt with through the Millennium Development Goals. The sharing was with whomever was interested. It is not going to change the Web 2.0 world, but I was quite happy when Youth for International Human Rights is clicked 61 times, or 36 clicks for the MIT video Technologies Changing Communities, Communities Innovating Technology or 34 clicks for my own post Designing Your Future and Your Success as a Team Effort.

Another aspect of blogging that was enjoyable was seeing people across the globe connect with what I was sharing. People find me through Google. One popular search is "millenium development goals obama", and I take satisfaction that Milestones for a New Millennium comes up on the first page. Another from the UK was "web 2.0 on social impact" at which I was at last look at the number one spot. Now this does not mean I am now taking the Web 2.0 world by storm. Much of this is the fact I focus on areas without much competition, which is unfortunate because they are very worthwhile causes, and luck in choosing the right words.

The other measure is how long people will spend interacting with one of my posts. Most visitors don't even register, though hopefully they read some of it. I figure two minutes on web time, equal to about 20 minutes off-web time indicates some engagement. Somebody spent a couple of minutes at my Making Hope Last Longer Than Hunger that I did for BloggersUnite and then clicked to their site. Which is part of the whole idea, getting others to find interesting, informative and inspiring sites. Somebody from NYU.EDU found my blog Milestones for a New Millennium through Google "Business and human rights: Towards operationalizing the 'protect, respect and remedy' framework", though admittedly not on the first page, and through it connected with the Business and Human Resource Centre. That took them 14 seconds. Somebody in Oklahoma City visited my Milestones for a New Millennium blog. and found TED talks Rethinking Poverty on the site. The trouble has been that I have been getting far fewer of these connections lately and could only come up with a couple of examples to share. That is going to change.

Entrepreneurship Opportunities through Science

I have been digging through my older and almost forgotten pending draft posts and found some that I still think worthwhile posting. Sometime ago, November 2, 2008, JANET RAE-DUPREE wrote in the Unboxed feature of the New York BUSINESS section Times warning us that It's No Time to Forget About Innovation. The main point of the article and the book is that we need to do some long term thinking. This blog allows me to do some meta-thinking about many of the issues discussed in my Milestones for a New Millennium, as well as those being dealt with in my real life/day job such as economic, entrepreneurship, social-entrepreneurship and innovation.

The sour economy is bad news for corporate innovation and technology, and it could spell trouble for years to come.

“We’re focusing on the short term and we’re not planting the seeds for the future,” says Judy Estrin, former chief technology officer at Cisco Systems and author of “Closing the Innovation Gap.” She suggests instilling five core values to entrench innovation in the corporate mind-set:

1. questioning,
2. risk-taking,
3. openness,
4. patience and
5. trust.

All five must be used together — risk-taking without questioning leads to recklessness, she says, while patience without trust sets up an every-man-for-himself mentality.

That still leaves open the question of how do we take the innovative idea on the napkin to commercialization in the market place? These video from MIT World » : Innovation to Commercialization: Using Government Funding to Kick Start Your Start-Up provide some possible pathways.

ABOUT THE PANEL DISCUSSION: Hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum, moderator Bruce Gellerman elicits some key dos and don’ts from a National Science Foundation small business program officer, and from tech CEOs who have benefited from the government’s programs.

The MIT Enterprise Forum, Inc. builds connections to technology entrepreneurs and to the communities in which they reside. The Enterprise Forum produces a series of educational programs about entrepreneurship through a network of 24 worldwide chapters. Anyone interested in or involved with technology entrepreneurship is welcome to participate and join together to form the Enterprise Forum community.

The primary objective of the NSF SBIR/STTR Program is to increase the incentive and opportunity for small firms to undertake cutting-edge, high risk, high quality scientific, engineering, or science/engineering education research that would have a high potential economic payoff if the research is successful.

• diigo tags MIT, entrepreneurship, National Science Foundation, technology, global, science, SBIR

Technology, Design and especially Entertainment from TED

The following came from TED for the Week of March 13, 2009. This is another example or re-blogging what somebody else has done. The reason is that I find it all interesting, and at some level interrelated. I am adding a few more links to what the TEDBlog originally provided. This blog is primarily an exploration in what Tim Berners-Lee created and what has grown from it. What he says about numbers will have a profound impact on the world as demonstrated by some of the links to my Milestones for a New Millennium blog.

This blog has also discovered an interest in design and in the MIT Media Lab. Don Norman's three emotional design cues are Visceral, Behavioral and Reflective. Instead of Don Norman's site, when I Googled "design and emotion", with and without the "and" I got Design & Emotion Society. When I did "emotion and design", the Don Norman site was third and design & emotion - Marco van Hout site was first, regardless of the "and". So things can and do change and the exploring is fun. You will understand what this is all about when you watch the video. Below are the selected videos from the TED site.

20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, music and video: Unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together. Watch this talk >>

This demo from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT Media Lab, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry, was the buzz of TED -- and now the web. It's a device that enables a profound, data-rich interaction with our environment. Imagine Minority Report and then some. Watch this talk >>

PLUS: The TED Blog talks to Pranav Mistry (and he answers questions from the TED.com forum!)

Design critic Don Norman turns his incisive eye toward beauty, fun, pleasure and emotion, as he looks at well-designed products that makes people happy, from fast cars to the Philippe Starck juicer. He names the three emotional cues that a product must strike to become a success. Watch this talk >>

Some Related links:

Human Development - The Measurement of Human Endeavors

Understanding a dollar a day could be an invaluable resource for the Millennium Development Goals

Taking the Measure of Chronic Poverty

Simply the Best: Maeda’s the Man at RISD

Making A Come Back - Does This Mean Design Is Not Dead?

Lesson From Philippe Starck "Design Is Dead" Lesson From Hugh MacLeod "The Future Isn't"

Designing What We Live In, Where We Live At , How We Live

Designing For New Paradigms

Leading Global Growth And Protecting What Matters Most - Irreconcilable Goals?

Now I have my own biases, which hopefully I can examine more thoroughly through this weblog. One of which is positively slanted toward technology and MIT. What I admire is that MIT combines the technological insights and scientific discoveries of their labs with the management and leadership of the Sloan School of Management. What is more is that they don't stay sequestered in an academic environment but venture out to help better the world and invite in those who have walked the walk. The question though is what walk exactly?

Recently MIT World had Ellen Kullman speaking on: Leading Global Growth by Protecting What Really Matters Most. The question I am asking myself is whether the same corporate entity can do both?

- Annotated diigo tags: MIT, business, sustainability, economics, management

ABOUT THE LECTURE:
After 205 years, DuPont has transformed itself substantially while remaining true to its character, suggests Ellen Kullman. “We're a company with a passion for science,” says Kullman. DuPont, which got its start making black powder for explosives, pursued chemicals for its first 100 years, but is now taking its science into energy, biotechnology and nanotechnology, with products and services in agriculture, nutrition, coating and color technologies, performance materials and safety and protection.

It was Ms. Kullman's assertion that Dupont's core values were:

• Safety
• Ethics
• Environment
• Respect for people and environment

Ms Kullman came up with examples of Dupont's commitment to corporate responsibility. It is a concept, however, that can be attacked from both sides of the political spectrum. One such example was its membership in the World_Business_Council_for_Sustainable_Development . This is also subject to debate. Dupont's commitment to the environment can be questioned.

Yet, despite such concerns, there is still a great deal to be learned from Ms. Kullman's talk. Ms Kullman focused on 7 principles that can be as readily adopted by change-agents and social-entrepreneurs as they are by corporate businesses.

7 principles

• 1. focus on opportunity not current capability
• 2. thrive on fast cycle time and feedback
• 3. communicate, communicate, communicate
• 4. go beyond assets tremendous opportunity beyond assets
• 5. open up business models
• 6. embrace future
• 7. think big think different

Ms Kullman emphasized Surrounding yourself with the right people with the right skills.

From the Leading Global Growth side of the question global exposure means global impact. To sustain the lead for growth meant looking to:

• Who is the customer. Listening and respect
• Interdependent innovation
• Collaboration without borders requires reciprocal relationships
• Recognizing that while technology and innovation are global humans needs are local
• That science and technology are not enough, you also need commitment.
• Finally, it requires optimism

Ms Kullman has the same bias that I do, that most problems are solvable and that science will help. Organizations seeking to bring about change need to address short term pressures in addressing long term needs. We must realize that people must see innovation to appreciate it.

She left the audience with some optimistic inspiration.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. - antoine de saint-exupery

Sustainability And Collier And Ending The Homo-Defictus Age

Paul Collier is an economist with a vision of raising the economic viability of people at the bottom of the world's scale of wealth - 4 ways to improve the lives of the "bottom billion".

Around the world right now, one billion people live in poverty because of a simple piece of bad luck: they were born in a poor or failing country. What can be done? Economist Paul Collier lays out a bold, compassionate plan for closing the gap between rich and poor -- and makes the case that we must. Watch this TED talk >>

Accomplishing this goal will take in part Chris Luebkeman' vision, director of Arup, a global design, engineering, and urban planning firm calling for ending the "Homo-Deficitus Age," in which we spend and use more than we have. It will also take an optimistic engagement of the future.

Several hundred million Chinese residents are expected to move from rural areas into cities over the next quarter-century. Dongtan, in Shanghai, will be one of those destinations. Arup is working with local officials to add the necessary homes and infrastructure while integrating sustainable practices and technology. Dongtan is designed to generate its own energy, using a variety of sources, from wind to recycled trash. Public transportation will run on hydrogen fuel cells. The city's three villages will be surrounded by land reserved for farming.

Arup built the Bird's Nest for the 2008 Olympics and other icons of global architecture. Their approach to this effort brings to mind the work of William McDonough of William McDonough & Associates who will be working with Arup on some of the China projects.

diigo tags: community-planning, design, cities, architecture

Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution gives us further insight into Collier on the Food Crisis

Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion was my pick for best economics book last year (not written by a dear friend), it was smart, hard-hitting and unconventional. Collier hasn't lost his touch as a great comment, more like an op-ed, on the food crisis over at Martin Wolf's Economic Forum illustrates.

diigo tags: economics, poverty, global, economicpolicy

The challenge is how to implement these changes on a global basis.While many may be working towards this lofty goal, one major institutional resource in this effort has been MIT.

We can't afford to think of business as the enemy. Businesses in many cases are realizing the importance of sustainability more quickly than the public sector which too often defines its view by outdated political philosophies. This video provides a great deal to think about.

MIT World » : Implementing Sustainability Strategies ---

• ABOUT THE PANEL DISCUSSION:
  Companies sometimes regard sustainability as “metaphoric low-hanging fruit,” says moderator Peter Senge, and reach for a few easy targets to achieve cosmetic improvements. His three panelists describe how their corporations are attempting to embrace sustainability as more than just another high-profile, low-impact initiative that “goes right into an overloaded bucket.”

  "Environment is not a special, short-term project, not a fad or flavor of the month," says Balta. IBM pursues opportunities in and out of the company, including "making brown green:" reducing waste in its business and industrial processes around the world; designing intelligent networks to improve the efficiency of electrical utility operations; developing systems for mitigating traffic congestion in cities; launching a Big Green innovation business unit; and creating an Eco Patent Commons, enabling users the free and unrestricted use of IBM technologies that help solve environmental challenges.

  "We're trying to find the sweet spot between social, economic and environmental areas that define sustainability, because at the end of the day if any one of those three legs of the stool aren't available then the model itself falls down." says Mark Buckley.

  British Telecom is tackling three interdependent areas, says Kevin Moss: sustainable economic growth, climate change and creating a more inclusive society.
  

  diigo tags: sustainability, environment, business, management, leadership

Innovation At MIT Inspires Experimentation At Home

MIT is, I have no hesitation saying, synonymous with innovation. Not only with technical innovations, for products or projects but process innovations which are often of greater long term impact and implementable by more people in the organization. This post is experimenting with its own innovations. You can either just go ahead and see what happens or peek at the bottom.

The two resources that are combined here deal with organizational transformation and how to bring that about. One featuring Rebecca Henderson, the Eastman Kodak LFM Professor, MIT Sloan School, describes the process and one describes on ongoing program that helps to bring that objective about. These are part of a series on Strategies for Sustainable Business Practices. How to you get all the different components of a large complex organization to work together for a common goal and set of principles. The principles presented here at a somewhat more abstract level, though they are derived from practical applications, but other presentations within this series provide tested pragmatic solutions.

MIT World: Why It's So Hard to Do New Things In Old Organizations... - StumbleUpon - diigo Annotated diigo tags: management, innovation, sustainability, strategy, mit

• It is not just the technology, its how you use the technology, its how you use the technology together. Quite a few insights that sound logical when your hear them but so few organizations take the time to listen, even to themselves.

MIT ILP - MIT Industrial Liaison Program - Annotated

• Corporate Access to MIT


• Innovation is your lifeblood. Your company's survival depends on your ability to nurture growth with a continuous flow of generative ideas. Ideas for new products. Better processes. Superior services.


• MIT's Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) is your one-stop shop for MIT expertise. The vast resources of MIT - one of the world's outstanding research universities - can provide a rich vein of technological and managerial innovation that will help sustain your competitive advantage for decades to come.


• Leading companies from across the globe turn to the ILP for professionally coordinated access to MIT experts, research facilities, and information resources that will help them bring innovation to market. For its part, MIT has long held that leading, breakthrough research is the product of open, consultative dialogue. And the MIT faculty has come to expect its colleagues at the ILP to identify companies that can add meaningful input and perspective to important new areas of scientific inquiry.

The first link above goes to a StumbeUpon review of the target page with the link to the targeted page at the top. The second link is the same StumbleUpon page tied in with diigo. Subsequent sets of links go directly to the site or to the diigo account. If you decide to become a member of either tagging system, then there are more connection for you to explore by others. This post was created by tagging the sites first then creating the post from those tagged links. The idea is finding ways to make these separate components integrate together better. StumbleUpon, diigo and this weblog itself serve to organize and disseminate information, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The diigo account, under its "About" function under "More" in the diigo menu bar, indicates that this page is also found under my own delicious account and BlogLines through EURFORIC a member of my del.icio.us/network.

Laws of Thermodynamics and Laws of Giving

I have a strong belief in finding solutions to problems through the acquisition and application of knowledge. Not only understanding practical or pragmatic forms of information, but also understanding the deeper principals behind them. At the very least, one should develop some sense of appreciation for them.

Recently I have been going over some of the MIT World videos on a program they had on Meeting the Entropy Challenge.

To be truthful, much of it went over my head, but much of it was both very interesting and informative. I have referenced the ones I personally found interesting elsewhere in this blog, others can be found through the diigo tag links below. One in particular focused on the physics of energy used in engineering and industry, the Second Law and Energy, Stephen Chu, Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Tracing the Second Law by Howard W. Butler provides a good start on understanding the entropy issue.

"Tracing the Second Law", by Howard W. Butler - Feature Article, July 2007 Annotated diigo tags: science, 2ndLaw, entropy

While man learned to control and use fire many thousands of years ago, only in the last 300 years has the nature of heat been given serious consideration. In this short time, it has been explained as phlogiston, a mysterious fluid created by fire, and as caloric, a material fluid flowing from hot to cold. The modern view, that heat is a convertible form of energy, is fewer than 200 years old.

James Joule

The above citations aid providing the principles, but little good is done if they remain in academic towers. Fortunately, there are some stellar examples of how they can be applied.

MIT MechE - News + Events - MechE Features Annotated diigo tags: MIT, engineering, meche

Amy B. Smith is an inventor who creates useful technologies for others. Yet before she could do that, she had to invent something else: a way to channel her skills into a path that was meaningful to her. "When I was working towards my bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering here in the 1980s, the chief focus in the field seemed to be cars and bombs," she says. "I don't drive and I don't like war, so I had to find my own way."

Amy Smith was the inspiration for my Genius and Passion at Work post

• - diigo post by brianddrpm

.

Language Programming The Human Decision System

The following links are from a MIT symposium, Where Does Syntax Come From? Have We All Been Wrong?. To be honest, it is a laundry list but if one is into computers and cognitive psychology it's a pretty good one.

A number of this weblog's posts have been dealing with issues of marketing and communications, all of which involve language. The analogy of the human mind being like a computer is standard, but with concepts such as crowd-sourcing and social networking through Web 2.0 environs the extension of computer coding being analogous to language becomes all the more interesting. One area of particular interest would be human group decision making or interaction between groups with different language structures. The following MIT departments were involved in the symposium.

LIDS: Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems Annotated

This is an Overview of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems/LIDS Annotated

The Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) is an interdepartmental research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It began in 1939 as the Servomechanisms Laboratory, an offshoot of the Department of Electrical Engineering. Its early work, during World War II, focused on gunfire and guided missile control, radar, and flight trainer technology. Over the years, the scope of its research broadened.

MIT : Brain and Cognitive Sciences Annotated

MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences stands at the nexus of neuroscience, biology and psychology. We combine these disciplines to study specific aspects of the brain and mind including: vision, movement systems, learning and memory, neural and cognitive development, language and reasoning. Working collaboratively, we apply our expertise, tools, and techniques to address and answer both fundamental and universal questions about how the brain and mind work.

MIT Computational Cognitive Science Group Annotated

We study the computational basis of human learning and inference. Through a combination of mathematical modeling, computer simulation, and behavioral experiments, we try to uncover the logic behind our everyday inductive leaps: constructing perceptual representations, separating "style" and "content" in perception, learning concepts and words, judging similarity or representativeness, inferring causal connections, noticing coincidences, predicting the future.

Other talks will be added when the become available. A bit of web-trekking resulted in discovering this site at the University of Pennsylvania.

Neuroethics Publications Annotated

'Neuroethics' is the ethics of neuroscience, analogous to the term 'bioethics' which denotes the ethics of biomedical science more generally. It encompasses a wide array of ethical issues emerging from different branches of clinical neuroscience (neurology, psychiatry, psychopharmacology) and basic neuroscience (cognitive neuroscience, affective neuroscience). These include ethical problems raised by advances in functional neuroimaging, brain implants and brain-machine interfaces and psychopharmacology as well as by our growing understanding of the neural bases of behavior, personality, consciousness, and states of spiritual transcendence. This collection brings together the work of a growing number of Penn researchers from across the academic disciplines who are contributing to the neuroethics literature.

diigo tags: brain, decisionsystem, language, mit learning psychology science video
neuroethics

MIT World » : Human Simulations of Language Learning Annotated

This workshop, explains Michael Coen, is an effort to engender temperate, collaborative discussion of a matter that inspires hot dispute: whether machine learning helps explain how humans acquire language. In particular, says Coen, machine learning advocates believe they have evidence against Noam Chomsky’s “poverty of stimulus argument,” which in essence states that language is built into us, that “children don’t receive enough linguistic inputs to explain linguistic outputs.”

MIT World » : Explorations in Language Learnability Using Probabilistic Grammars and Child-directed Speech Annotated

How do kids manage to figure out that the word “dog” applies to a whole category of animals, not just one creature? Joshua Tenenbaum wants to understand how children and adults manage to solve such classic problems of induction. Throughout cognition, wherever you look, he says “we see places where we know more than we have a reasonable right to know about the world, places where we come to abstractions, generalizations, models of the world that go beyond our sparse, noisy, limited experience.” Tenenbaum’s goal is to come up with “general purpose computational tools for understanding how people solve these problems so successfully.”

Past posts in my blog also dealt with the evolution of language. I am wondering how this plays out in larger organizational and social systems and the interaction of different systems i.e. Americans in Iraq or other situations. Especially with the web accelerating communications even when it is not directly connected to everybody within a culture. - diigo post by brianddrpm

MIT World » : The Computational Nature of Language Learning Annotated

Niyogi believes that an “evolutionary trajectory” links how acquisition happens at an individual level, and how variation in language springs up from one generation to the next. But rather than inheriting the grammar of your parents, you have to learn it. Examining language variation over time as if it were genetic variation, “you get a different mathematical structure…and probabilities start playing an important role.” Small differences “can have very subtle consequences giving rise to bifurcation in nonlinear dynamics of evolution.” For instance, 1000 years ago, the English were speaking a language that’s unrecognizable to us today. How has it come to be that “we have moved so far from that point through learning which is mimicking the previous generation?”

Niyogi explains that within a single population two varying languages may be in competition (say, a German and an English-type grammar). While a majority may speak the dominant variant, some children will likely be exposed to a mixture of the two. There’s a “drift” in language use, “and suddenly, what was stable becomes unstable.”

MIT World » : Machine Learning of Language from Distributional Evidence Annotated

Christopher Manning thinks linguistics went astray in the 20th century when it searched “for homogeneity in language, under the misguided assumption that only homogeneous systems can be structured.” In the face of human creativity with language, rigid categories of linguistic use just don’t help explain how people actually talk and what they choose to say. For every hard and fast rule linguists find, other linguists can determine an exception. Categorical constraints rise, then come crashing down.

Helping To Pave Over The Health Equity Gap

As a quick look would likely show, this weblog has a high regard for the work that is being done at MIT. I only recently learned of their motto and its meaning though. This weblog has long held the view that social-entrepreneurs and activists have a good deal to learn from business and private-entrepreneurs. MIT is taking a lead in making that a reality. They are now applying that effort to global health care.

Mens et Manus - Home (Annotated with diigo)

Welcome to mens et manus

mind and hands describes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology approach to learning by doing. Part of a rich tradition of real-world engagement at MIT, mens et manus may be more important than ever as an approach to transforming the world by combining rigor, innovation, action and learning. Start here to join some exciting projects emerging at MIT, and to nurture new ones.

Their current focus: global health delivery (learn more)

Dean's Innovative Leader Series - MIT Sloan School of Management Corporate Connection

Achieving Health Equity Requires Bridging The Delivery Gap

This weblog featured Paul Farmer in the Global Health Equity From MIT World post. This current post features Jim Yong Kim's lecture on Bridging the Delivery Gap to Global Health from MIT World Annotated

Jim Kim - DSMHI Annotated

Jim Yong Kim, MD, PhD holds appointments as François Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a major Harvard teaching hospital; director of the François Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights; and chair of the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Some of his many writings include:

• Dying for Growth: Global inequality and the health of the poor at Amazon.com
• Beyond Bellagio: addressing the challenge of sustainable child health in developing countries

What I find even more fascinating is that this endeavor that MIT is undertaken combines business management practices from the Sloan School of Management with medical social activism. More on that here.

A Hopeful Idea Hopelessly Mired?

One of the ongoing stories in the web 2.0 world that this weblog has kept an eye on is Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child program. Most of that though has been outside the main parameters of this weblog. The Fast Company article One Laptop Per Child: Failure is not an Option is listed under Paradigm Pathways Web 2.0 Pathways. All About Yves - Fuseproject - One LapTop per Child - Masters of a Design can be found under the del.icio.us tagging system. Back in October of last year Cognitive Daily had the following post Is the "$100 laptop" headed for a flop? by Dave Munger which had a response from me.

Now OLPC is back in the news.

Intel Breaks Up with OLPC | Epicenter from Wired.com

After close to a year of trading insults Intel finally joined Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child Initiative last July. The move came as a surprise to many, not only because of the bad blood between the chipmaker and the nonprofit, but also because Intel was, and is, working on a similar project called The World Ahead. Yet with Intel officially joining the OLPC board and offering to supply CPUs for the next iteration of the nonprofit's low-cost laptops, it appeared the beef between the two parties over who was going to save the world with low-cost, easily deployed computers seemed to be over.

More from the New York Times TECHNOLOGY | January 5, 2008
Intel Quits Effort to Get Computers to Children
Intel and the One Laptop Per Child group had a rocky relationship from the start in their short-lived effort to get inexpensive laptops into the hands of the world's poorest children.

No Child Left Offline - Nicholas Negroponte - OLPC - Intel
The Fast Interview: MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte on Intel's "dishonesty" and the long, tough road to the $100 laptop.

One of three looks at the One Laptop Per Child program. This program has had an up and down track record since its inception. . Yet the 'optimism' of the social-entrepreneur set never seems to diminish. Is it realistic? More importantly if it is not and this program is hitting a dead-end, what went wrong? Is there anything actually wrong or is it that in today's instant gratification media not having a quickly completed success is seen as the same thing as a failure?

I am providing additional websites for background information in an online Ask.com MyStuff folder OLPC.

Forwarding webpages with highlights and sticky notes, powered by Diigo

Global Health Equity From MIT World

Paul Farmer speaks about public entities being enabled to confer rights while at the same time speaking about the need for business practices like supply chains to create comprehensive healthcare and medical delivery systems for the world's poor. This is a concerted effort to address the challenges raised by Best Intentions Unintended Consequences

MIT World » : Global Health Equity

• ABOUT THE LECTURE:
  Don't foolishly advise Paul Farmer that his bold projects can't succeed. For the past 20 years, Farmer's been toppling orthodoxies concerning the delivery of health care to people of developing nations, and to our country's inner city poor. In a talk full of insights and anecdotes, Farmer brings his audience up to date on his groundbreaking work and methods.
• Farmer has written extensively about health and human rights, and about the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases. He is the author of Pathologies of Power (University of California Press, 2003); Infections and Inequalities (University of California Press, 1998); The Uses of Haiti (Common Courage Press, 1994); and AIDS and Accusation (University of California Press, 1992). In addition, he is co-editor of Women, Poverty, and AIDS, (Common Courage Press, 1996) and of The Global Impact of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (Harvard Medical School and Open Society Institute, 1999).
• Farmer is the recipient of the Duke University Humanitarian Award, the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, the American Medical Association's Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award, and the Heinz Humanitarian Award. In 1993, he was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "genius award" in recognition of his work.

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Breaking Through The Paradigms With Science

Human Genetic Variation: 2007 Breakthrough of the Year video.

With the December issue of Science Magazine - the science oriented interest of this weblog hit the jackpot.

According to an article in Science Magazine Human Genetic Variation:is the 2007 Breakthrough of the Year.

On 21 December 2007, Science unveiled its Breakthrough of the Year for 2007 -- the realization that DNA differs from person to person much more than researchers had suspected. That conceptual advance, driven by results from several fields, may transform medicine, but could also threaten personal privacy.

In this video presentation, featuring Science news writer Liz Pennisi, Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health, and David Altshuler of the Harvard/MIT Broad Institute, we offer a look at the past year's discoveries in human genetic variation and their implications.

For a basic understanding of modern biology, a good place to start is the MIT Introduction to Biology course co-taught by Professor Eric Lander, one of the founders of the Harvard/MIT Broad Institute.

Another past post of possible interest is This Software builds its Own Hardware.

Interesting Papers, Articles and Web Sites from Science Magazine
Human Genetic Variation: An NIH Curriculum Supplement
A creative, inquiry-based instruction program, designed to promote active learning and stimulate student interest in medical topics.

International HapMap Project
A multi-country effort to identify and catalog genetic similarities and differences in human beings.

Database of Genotype and Phenotype (dbGaP)
Developed to archive and distribute the results of studies that have investigated the interaction of genotype and phenotype, including genome-wide association studies, medical sequencing, and molecular diagnostic assays.

Genetic Association Information Network (GAIN)
A public-private partnership that aims to understand the genetic factors influencing risk for complex diseases.

ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements)
Project launched by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) that aims to identify all functional elements in the human genome sequence.

SNPs: A Science Primer
An introduction to single nucleotide polymorphisms, provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

SNPedia
A web site for sharing information about the effects of DNA variations on traits and disease.

The Human Genome: Your Genes, Your Health, Your Future
A comprehensive resource on the human genome, its role in health and medicine, and the broader social impact of unravelling its mysteries; produced by the Wellcome Trust.

Professor Walter Lewin, Web Star Rocks

At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star - New York Times

At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star

"CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace."

I am one of the many who have enjoyed Professor Lewin's online lectures having gone through his Physics 8.01 and 8.02 video lectures. It was Professor Lewin who showed me the potential of the Internet as a tool for education and learning. Of course the true value is in Professor Lewin himself, the world wide web is merely a highly scalable medium for dissemination. His approach to teaching both in the class room and on the web is an inspiration of what can be created with passion, which is what Professor Lewin exhibits in every class.

"Professor Lewin delivers his lectures with the panache of Julia Child bringing French cooking to amateurs and the zany theatricality of YouTube’s greatest hits. He is part of a new generation of academic stars who hold forth in cyberspace on their college Web sites and even, without charge, on iTunes U, which went up in May on Apple’s iTunes Store."

Professor Lewin's lectures and other MIT lectures are featured in the Education web-slide found at the post Philosophy For Kids Starting Paradigm Shifts Early .

Define How We Communicate Define Our Culture

What is Civic Media and Fair Use?

MIT World » : Copyright, Fair Use, and the Cultural Commons
I am still on about the Fair Use debate. There was, my memory was telling me, another MIT panel discussion on Copyright and Fair Use. The links to the MIT World video and the websites that are cited in the post's synopsis are again being added to the "What is Civic Media and Fair Use?" online folder. The other choice, which will likely be taken as well is to tag the related websites with a common link. Still haven't decided which is best. Perhaps focusing on a specific subject is good use of the diigo webslides.

ABOUT THE PANEL DISCUSSION:
Moderator William Uricchio sets the scene for panelists' discussion of current copyright wars with a brief historical overview of copyright protection. In 1790, when news traveled by horse and carriage, copyright protection was good for 14 years. Today, when a digital, networked society enables instant transmission of data, protection lasts 70-plus years. Uricchio notes, "Bizarrely, the faster information circulates, the longer we're extending copyright protection. It seems totally at odds with where our constitution framers and case law emerged from."

Copyright came into being not just as a way of protecting authors' rights, says Wendy Gordon, but as a set of liberties for the public as well.

There is also a further aspect to this which gets into the expansion of culture. MIT and other resources have dealt with in insightful that I also want to explore.

Liberating Human Potential

TED | TEDBlog: Iqbal Quadir's new Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT.

This post from TEDBlog has been out for about two weeks, but I am putting it up any way because it deals with Iqbal Quadir's new Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT. The Center for Development is not new but obviously the money from the Dubai-based investment firm is. The Center will receive a $50 million structured gift from Legatum.

The newly named it would seem Legatum Center "will help MIT students start enterprises in developing countries, to foster organic and durable economic growth and more equitable societies",

"We will champion bottom-up economic growth, rather than the prevalent top-down, state-led, aid-funded projects that by and large have not worked"

Iqbal Quadir

Reconnecting to MIT Low Technologies High Aims

There are a few past posts that I did not give the full attention that I wanted to at the time I placed them. One of those was MIT Low Technologies High Aims back in October. One goal of this weblog is to make meaningful connections from different sources. MIT continues to be a source of information and nspiration for this Weblog. The New York Times article cites Amy Smith, a lecturer at M.I.T, as the primary brainchild of the International Development Design Summit and a MacArthur winner. The article also feature the D-lab nicknamed “Amy’s World” "In homage to Ms. Smith’s passion for attacking poverty from the ground up".

“Nearly 90 percent of research and development dollars are spent on creating technologies that serve the wealthiest 10 percent of the world’s population,” Ms. Smith said. “The point of the design revolution is to switch that.”

The article also features Dr. Polak, who has become something of a guru to the design revolution movement, and Mr. Brandis who now helps run the Full Belly Project, which develops machines to simplify village work.

“What you try to do in virtually every situation is make their lives more efficient,” Mr. Brandis said. “That’s what the big revolution in America was between 1860 and 1960 — that a person doing a day’s work can produce a lot more product. And that means time is more valuable and that means he has more time to do other things.”

This weblog has also featured other MacArthur winners with an interest in design.

Below is a video of Amy Smith lecturing at TED.


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Transcending Economic Castes

Although it is not the primary purpose of this weblog, I will still contribute on occasions to the comments under the Marginal Revolution blog. One in particular was a post on the caste system in India.

One reader's comments struck me as being particular relevant for where we are today.

"The tribulations of Russia's economic liberalization teaches us that doing the right thing 'too quickly' can be sub-optimal in the wrong circumstances, posted by Nick seemed to me to be a very valid point.

It again raises a comparison with China which I originally did back at the Why the Left should learn to love liberalism post. Some comparisons seem obvious but some insights from those with more experience and education would be appreciated. George David of United Technologies provides some comparisons between India and China in this MIT Sloan video (don't remember exactly where but the entire video is interesting).

I realize that this was off on a bit of a tangent, but it seemed we are talking about economic systems and their sustainability. Cross comparisons of current systems seem more enlightening that overly in-depth analysis of a hopefully antiquated system.

Sounded something akin to the Law of Unintended Consequences though this time from the side of the unfettered capitalists. It also argues that understanding local culture is as important to creating beneficial paradigm shifts as understanding economic principals. Something that may be relevant to the study of the mosquito nets.

MIT Low Technologies, High Aims

This article from the New York Times SCIENCE from September 11, 2007 talks about the direction MIT is taking to create beneficial paradigm changes.

Low Technologies, High Aims
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
M.I.T. has nurtured dozens of Nobel Prize winners in cerebral realms, but lately it has turned its attention toward concrete thinking to improve the lives of the poor

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