The Horizon Report 2008

The Horizon Report for 2008, looking at emerging technologies predicted to hit mainstream take-up in the next 5 years in education, is out.

It looks at six technologies which are spread along three "adoption horizons" over 5 years.

It predicts that grassroots video and collaboration webs will hit the first horizon which is in the next 12 months. Grassroots video is almost a non-brainer - already easy to create and edit, videos are being nudged into mainstream use in education with services such as YouTube which eliminate the need to invest in expensive infrastructure. Collaboration webs are small inexpensive tools which facilitate collaboration in terms of exchanging information, data and ideas. Of these two, collaboration webs are more interesting in their potential to disrupt and transform educational practice. Grassroots video is arguably only an additional medium which will leave the basic structure of the HEI untouched.

The second adoption horizon brings in two further technologies predicted to achieve mass educational takeup in 1-2 years. These are data mashups and mobile broadband. Mobile technology is about as significant than grassroots video, in the sense that it still doesn't threaten the fundamentals of HE, but it does make education more portable and ubiquitous. Data mashups may clarify some ideas and enable some imaginative re-presentation of data, but again no real change.

The third adoption horizon, a couple of technologies about 4-5 years away, is quite different though. First up is collective intelligence, knowledge and understanding derived from large groups of people, which may be explicit (stand up wikipedia and community tagging) or implicit (such as search behaviour online by large groups of users, or purchasing behaviour on sites such as Amazon over time). And secondly, and more controversially, I think, are social operating systems, sort of next generation social networking. The underlying premise is that networks of the future will be people-centred rather than content-centred. I'm struggling to see how true this is for scholarly output, and I don't think (I hope) that I'm being some sort of luddite.

For example, the report states:

“Every idea, paper, experiment and artefact is, in reality, attached to a person or group of people who helped to bring it about. Imagine the impact of tools that place those people and relationships at the center of any research inquiry: concepts clearly linked to people; connections between those people and others clearly indicated; a much more complete picture of the topic would emerge.”

How much value is this really expected to yield over and above a traditional content-based approach? Isn’t it the idea that has primacy, rather than the underlying relationships. For half a century now we've had citation data. The beauty of citation networks is that they remain idea-centred whilst allowing for the deep and meaningful links that only humans can create. In fact, most of the criticism of citation data is focused on the subjective relationship between the citer and the cited, which is usually seen as a drawback of citation in information retrieval terms. Nevertheless they are more about the academic subject than they are about the surrounding human relationships. I can only see limited applications for such as relationship-based approach. I can appreciate the fact that to have access to more human-based intelligence would have its uses in the collaborative research arena, in terms of helping to make judgements around trust. But surely, even in this intellectually-impaired era in which we live, the idea still has primacy in scholarly life? Or am I missing something?

Control

First of all, what the hell am I doing blogging at 03:40am when I've got work tomorrow morning?

And on the subject of mental anguish, Dave and I went to see Control - the film of the life of Ian Curtis - on Sunday afternoon. That screenshot on the left is pretty much how I feel right now.

As a Mancunian in exile, currently living in Birmingham, the film was a reminder that there is still a lot of Manchester within me. But the film also demonstrated to me that I'm very much of my time. It was absolutely brilliant hearing Joy Division again, leaving aside the over-played "Love will tear us apart". I always did love the echoing minor chords that characterised the indie / alternative guitar bands of the late 70s and (particularly 80s), but there are a small number of bands that really stand out. For my money, they include Joy Division and Magazine - both years ahead of their time. New Order was never going to live up to Joy Division; I think in retrospect that their sound was too thin to stand the test of time.

The film was wonderful. The cinema was packed on a Sunday afternoon, mostly with 40-something saddos like me and Dave. The performances were amazing. How the hell did Sam Riley get the voice and body language so close to the original Ian Curtis? And John Cooper Clark was breathtaking. The only character who didn't come over well was Tony Wilson. Tim at work says that the actor in question was basing the role on Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson in 24 hour Party People rather than on Tony Wilson himself, and the diluted secondary nature of the interpretation really showed.

I didn't realise until the end that it was co-produced by Deborah Curtis. I did a Google image search and she now looks incredibly conventional. She said in interview that she didn't really recover from the Ian Curtis years until she met her current partner who's never heard of him. As she said, when someone takes their own life, they are effectively having the last word. The residual anger must have been almost intolerable.

I found the film's ending to have an almost genius-like beauty. It showed smoke coming out of a crematorium chimney against a backdrop of Macclesfield hills, reminiscent of the chimneys of the holocaust, to which the name Joy Division was a deliberate reference.

It's now 04:15 and time to renew my attempt to get some sleep...

My fab new running gloves

As you can imagine, the cold weather is a bit of a problem for us runners at the moment. And never more so than first thing in the morning when you can actually hear the howling wind before you even step out of bed. So I've treated myself to a pair of Vangard lightweight gloves. I did a Buy Now on eBay, for £9.49 and gave them a test run yesterday morning.

They're fantastic. or at least that's how they seem, though the test run did coincide with a particularly good performance from me, especially for a morning run (must have been the pasta I had the night before at Sophie's).

I'm pretty sure they're designed for cyclists - at any rate I bought them from an online cycling store. Well I think they work just as well for runners if not better. When you're running in the UK, even on the coldest wintry days, most people will only really need gloves for the first 1o minutes or so. Because my limbs are constantly moving, I'm pretty warm all over after that. Whereas cyclists arms and hands are more stationary, so maybe these only work as liners for them. However I only need these lightweight gloves, and because they wick properly, I don't overheat later on in the run. Previously I was wearing fleece gloves and then finding that I had to take them off mid-run.

So that's £9.49 well spent. Vangard lightweight gloves highly recommended and not just another gimmicky running product that we don't really need.

Slaughtering the Arts to pay for the Olympics

For two consecutive days now, I have stumbled accidentally on arts projects or organisations being decimated through the starvation of arts funding that seems to be a direct consequence of the spiralling costs of the London 2012 Olympics. Yesterday at lunchtime I was browsing the Birmingham Post in our downstairs cafe area when I saw to my horror that the Birmingham Opera Company was threatened with closure due to the stoppage of its funding from the Arts Council. Whilst I'm not opera-literate myself, a condition that I have no wish to defend, I'm aware of how innovative the productions of Birmingham Opera Company are, and as they said themselves in the Birmingham Post, once you get rid of organisations such as this, you can't get them back.

This evening, I went onto the website of my favourite theatre company, The Wrestling School, which performs the works of Howard Barker, arguably Britain's most innovative playwright. On the home page, was news that for the first time, The Wrestling School had failed to obtain the necessary funding for one of its productions. I remember very clearly the first time I saw one of their productions. It was at The Door studio of the Birmingham Rep (who usually premier their productions), and when it began, it was so different from anything I'd ever experienced in a theatre that it was like breathing in oxygen for the very first time. The Wrestling School urged people to sign the online petition on the Downing Street website calling for The National Lottery Fund to stop funding the Olympics. This petition has now closed.

But it's not an either or situation. I am a big fan of athletics - I attend live athletics events in Birmingham whenever I can, and last year sat in the NIA for three days with my friend Sally watching the European Indoor Athletics championships that Birmingham was privileged to host. Athletics is about the physical nobility of being a human being. It's about competing, but it's also about demonstrating the human potential at its finest. The arts is something different. It takes us out of our mundane lives and raises us up into a higher sphere. In 1997, when my life dipped into what I hope will be an all-time low, I was in Cornwall, and went to the Tate St Ives on my own. Just for two hours I was able to revel in the light and beauty of the St Ives school of painters and leave the utter misery of my existence behind.

Individuals and society need both the arts and sport. British society could benefit considerably from hosting the 2012 Olympics in so many ways. It's not just about regeneration and improved facilities. At the European indoor athletics, the renaissance of Spanish sports as a consequence of the Barcelona Olympics was there to see in terms of the success of its athletes and the passionate fervour of its supporters. The arts in Britain, already weakened by decades of funding cuts since the Thatcher era, is now severely under threat, and that that is a problem for all of us, not just those employed in the cultural sector.

A personal review of 2007

Every year, on New Year's Eve, Dave and I each write a list of the most positive outcomes of the past year, plus a list of the bad things. In my quaint little way, I then put the lists into a box labelled "Nostalgia" in our study. So this year I decided to blog our lists.

Sarah's Best of 2007 List

1. Our one-week holiday in Morocco (Marrakesh) in February, including picking up over £500 from British Airways for agreeing to get a later flight than the one we were booked on.
2. Dave's outlandish huge Afro wig that he wore at Christian's 40th (seventies fancy dress) party.
3. Dining at Simpson's in Birmingham with Dave after my Marketing exams in June.
4. Wave jumping on the island of Koh Chang, Thailand, in August.
5. Thai cookery course at Chiang Mai, Thailand, in August.
6. The whole of our weekend in St Ives, Cornwall, in the middle of December. Wintry walks on the beach, Barbara Hepworth sculpture garden and the Alba restaurant were all highlights.
7. My relations with my in-laws improved considerably over the year, due mainly to activities around Dave's Dad's 80th birthday.
8. Debating Matters - I was a judge in the West Midlands round of this inter-school debating competition, and it was enormously fun and rewarding.
9. Sitting with Dave and Elsie at Hilary's barbecue. I hadn't seen them for years, and we chatted the afternoon away in the sunshine. Dave died a few weeks later.
10. Going to the Take That concert in November at the NEC with friends.
11. Kevin Rowlands (ex Dexy's Midnight Runners) DJs at the Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath. When I heard him play Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen, I thought that anything could happen next. And when I saw Shug dancing to Eddie and the Hot Rods 70s hit "Do anything you want to do", I knew I'd been right.
12. My paper is accepted for the ER&L conference due to take place in March 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia.
13. Dave and I treat my brother to the 7 course taster menu at Juniper's restaurant, Altrincham, one of the best restaurants in England.
14. Working on Project Xedio for Talis.
15. My social life improves immeasurably, for reasons I've not altogether worked out, but maybe it's something to do with good luck.

Some bad things in 2007...

1. Gina Owens dies.
2. Dave Hallsworth dies.
3. The CIM Marketing course took up far too much of my time.
4. Too ill to run the Manchester 10K race.
5. Car crash at Five Ways, Birmingham. A taxi driver runs into the back of me while I'm waiting at the roundabout.
6. My head splits open at home when I bash my head into an item of furniture, and I end up spending a whole Friday evening in A&E.
7. Dave was too ill to go out exploring Kuala Lumpur with me, and I had to go on my own.
8. I faint on the Bahrain - Bangkok flight due to dehydration.
9. The bathroom, which was supposed to be done in 5-7 days, wasn't complete for 4 months, and was an absolute nightmare, in the midst of which we started contacting the media.
10. My Dad's brother, my Uncle John, sent my Mum the nastiest Christmas card imaginable. It began "To Dora. What a shame you haven't got any grand-children at this time of year." And then got even worse...