So you thought I was a bit off-beam with my blog ‘And man will live for evermore’ in that man and machine will become one? It wasn’t meant to be a dystopian view of how the machines would take over, where our creations would eventually enslave us but rather a utopian view of how man will evolve and expand across the universe.
Well, let me tell you about a couple of things that have come to my notice over the last week or so. Both of these I heard on the radio (digitally of course). The first I haven’t been able to verify but the second I have.
The first is that apparently most music that is played on American radio stations these days is selected not by the DJ (if ever there was an antiquated appellation?) but rather by computers. Algorithms have been developed which take into account the target demographics of the listeners, their buying habits, voting preferences and the like and work out the types of music that they will listen to and perhaps more importantly will encourage them to buy into whatever the station is selling.
The second was a story about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and some online courses that they had been working on. Launched in March 2012, the prototype electronics course known as MITx was engineered to provide study materials and the awarding of grades online. At these early stages the assessment relies upon students being honest and expects them to complete the interactive exercises that check their understanding themselves but in future the university will develop mechanisms to check that they really who they say they are and that they really did the work.
MIT had expected a few hundred students to apply but over 150,000 did so, a number too large for the existing lecturers to cope with. Instead online communities developed around the different topics being taught that discussed and reworked ideas until the correct solutions to the problems were discovered. The technology had allowed the creation of a self managing system with the potential for students to teach themselves. Indeed at this year’s TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh details of the first cloud based schools were announced for areas of the world where access to traditional education is poor. Students would have access to adult moderators but would principally arrange their own learning.
Are these a couple of examples showing our inexorable journey towards our virtual destiny, or have we already arrived?
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 
I think it is just that we are finding new ways to network and communicate – mustn’t forget that *digital* is just another tool at the end of the day not the ultimate. Human beings are expert at adapting tools…(saying that – it is that very process that fascinates me!)
Reminder to self to get my PhD stuff down from the *junk* room and do some serious blogging. And to show you *my* model of communication 😉 (I think you will find it interesting!)
Look forward to it – I’m sure I will