Category Archives: Mind & Society

Concepts of Class

By | December 15, 2017

What does class mean? In the last week I’ve encountered three conceptualizations – financial, cultural, and aspirational. Under the financial concept, class is determined by whether one’s assets and income are below or above some threshold. Here, class is external to the individual and might vary relatively easily as an individual gains more wealth. This… Read More »

CHI 2012 – HCI for Peace workshop

By | May 6, 2012

I spent Saturday at the HCI for Peace workshop representing the Voices from the Rwandan Tribunal project. It was fairly informal, with only 10 participants, which made it easy for everyone to participate in the discussion. Several participants presented projects they’ve worked on, including: Lahiru Jayatilaka, a Sri Lankan PhD student from Stanford, who presented… Read More »

On Motivational Momentum

By | July 23, 2009

Another quick observation about motivation: I was lying in bed just now, tired and thinking of sleep. I picked up the book I’m currently reading (the 2008 Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthology, if anyone cares), thumbed to the next story, but barely made it to the end of the second paragraph before giving up.… Read More »

Concepts – Group Dynamics – ‘Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing’

By | June 10, 2009

Came across this in an issue of IEEE Computer today. It’s a simple conceptual model from the 1960s by a guy called Bruce Tuckman of the stages small groups go through; groups such as committees, work groups, and project teams. The basic stages seem obvious, but, as with many models of human behaviour, the value… Read More »

One giant step for intelligence..

By | May 15, 2009

Imagine a search engine that, instead of just doing text matching, attempts to parse your statement into questions it can answer, then provides you with as many of those answers as it can. Imagine a search engine that can deal with numerical relationships and analysis. Imagine a search engine that’s tailored towards returning facts and… Read More »

Wicked Problems & Decision Making

By | April 18, 2009

Today I read a paper from 1971 by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber about “wicked problems” – problems that are intrinsically difficult or impossible to solve in the sense that one can solve a crossword or mathematical proof, or win a game of chess. Wicked problems abound in policy questions and design, and it’s interesting… Read More »