Harold Jarche

don’t know much about technology

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I would never describe myself as a ‘techie’. In my second year of undergraduate studies (1978) I failed my computer programming course in Fortran Watfor & Watfiv [that was with punch cards and a terminal that sent the batch to Vancouver and returned results in 24 hours] but the professor gave me a pass if I promised to never take a programming course again. I have kept true to my word all of these years.

You could say that I am not one to jump on the next technology craze. I ignored computers through the 1980s and into the 1990s. However in 1994 I saw my first website at the Computer Research Institute of Montreal (CRIM). It was a revelation. For the first time I saw how computers could connect people. During my undergraduate years nobody explained the relevance of computer programs. It was all about making some arcane program work. I could not relate my life to any of these programs. The web made sense to me.

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talking to people

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In a post called, I am fed up with hiding myself, Mita Williams concludes that academic writing removes authors from their work by turning them into ‘sources’ and ‘references’ and that large language models are doing the same, but making authors even further removed from their work.

In writing this post, I’ve come to realize that the concerns here dovetail with a long-standing bugbear of mine: that libraries overemphasize authority from sources, and does not do enough to support bibliography, a format in which authority derives from people and their choices.

In a separate post, Williams states that, “The alternative to AI is talking to other people.” —Mita Williams 2023-09-19

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Whither peer to peer?

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“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” —Frank Herbert (1965) Dune

In 2012 Dave Weinberger described how software developers learn — mainly peer to peer.

… in the knowledge network that developers have created for themselves … the idea is instead that all learning ought to be in public and be something that makes the public better. It improves the public act of learning. The act of educating — of teaching — are done in public so that others will learn from them and this idea of education as a public act has tremendous power and tremendous benefits because it makes the entire network — the entire ecosystem — smarter. If we can apply this within our businesses and within our educational system and beyond then our own knowledge network will become much smarter, much faster. —YouTube 2012-05-29

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caution, confusion ahead

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On the last Friday of each month, without any assistance from Gen AI, I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

Disinformation, Misinformation, or Propaganda?

1. A video posted directly by Israel’s Defence Forces claimed that it had found Hamas weapons and technology, as well as a “list of terrorist names” in Arabic, showing each agents’ rota guarding Israeli hostages under the Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza. However, a translation of the document shows that it contains no names but instead a calendar of the days of the week. Vedika Bahl explains in this episode of Truth or Fake. —France24 2023-11-16

2. Before [Preston] Manning’s real Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel of 2023, there was his imagined COVID Commission of 2023.

To read both is to behold the fantasy evolve into reality. Although the Smith government gave him a panel and a $2-million budget for research and support — they also endowed him with the restraints of reality, one supposes — many conclusions essentially remained the same. —CBC 2023-11-23

3. Right-wing U.S. media covered fiction as fact: A non-existent terrorist attack from Canada at Rainbow Bridge — “I have been sounding the alarm bell about the northern border for a long time,” said Vivek Ramaswamy [US Republican Presidential candidate] during a lengthy interview about an incident he did not witness, was not a subject-matter expert on, and had no insight into. —CBC 2023-11-22

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nothing time is for deep work

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In slow media for the great reset I noted that one nice thing about blogs is that there are few trolls because it takes more time write a comment on a blog post and often there is an approval process. Plus, anyone can easily delete crap comments from their own blogs. If more people engage in longer form writing and share through blogging, we may collectively address some of the challenges we face with the misinformation and disinformation on consumer social media. Perhaps ‘slow media’ can slow the reversal effects of digital platforms which create a mono-culture of noise without meaning and meme wars. Or, in the words of Marshall McLuhan, “The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially”.

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the dying social bookmark

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I have been publicly promoting social bookmarks since 2005, when I was using a defunct tool called FURL. Since then I have used Magnolia, Delicious, Diigo, and Pinboard. The first two are gone and the last two seem to be waning. For example, I cannot access my account settings when logged-in to Pinboard. Others are having no luck getting support from Diigo.

What are social bookmarks? They are like bookmarks on your browser except they are available online from any device, they are searchable, and you can add metadata like hashtags and categories. They can be public or private. The most important aspect is that they are shareable. Here are my Diigo bookmarks and Pinboard pins, as examples.

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friday’s mindset

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On the last Friday of each month, without any assistance from Generative AI, I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Technology is not the sum of the artifacts, of the wheels and gears, of the rails and electronic transmitters. Technology is a system. It entails far more than its individual material components. Technology involves organization, procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and, most of all, a mindset.” —Ursula Franklin (1989) The Real World of Technology, via @cornazano

“I’m grateful for Mastodon. I have very mixed feelings about social media, but a social media platform that:

• Isn’t controlled by billionaires
• Has no advertising
• Doesn’t harvest your data, and
• Doesn’t algorithmically promote anger and hatred is a precious thing.”
—@Bodipaksa

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crucial knowledge may be impossible to express

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In many fields, there is some critical knowledge that is very difficult to codify. “It’s the kind of knowledge that is never written down and yet can be crucial, even in the highest of hi-tech enterprises. And you won’t find it in ChatGPT, either”, says John Naughton in The Guardian.

KM expert, Nick Milton discussed the codification of knowledge and created this breakdown.

  1. impossible to express,
  2. can be expressed but has not been yet,
  3. expressed in speech but not documented,
  4. recorded knowledge, or
  5. information.

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sensemaking routines

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“Data doesn’t say anything. Humans say things.”
—Andrea Jones-Rooy, Professor of data science, NYU

In 2014 I asked — what is your PKM routine?  I highlighted the routines of Jane Hart and Sacha Chua, and then described my own. Over time I added dozens of other examples that were shared online. My own PKM routine has changed over these years. My general principles are to keep my routine simple, use as few tools as possible, and limit any automating processes. My last post — manual sensemaking — explains the latter.

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manual sensemaking

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Sensemaking is a manual skill, which can be assisted with various tools, but the most important tool is our mind, using good practices.

Ideas often emerge in the complex domain, which is where people working in a network economy need to be active, probing, and playing. We also need to do shallow dives into the chaotic domain. Neither of these activities will be helped through automation. If anything, automation will make us lazy, or unaware.

The process of seeking out people and information sources, making sense of them by taking some action, and then sharing with others to confirm or accelerate our knowledge, are those activities from which we can build our knowledge. Managing and sharing information, especially through conversations, are fundamental processes for sensemaking in the complex domain. Sensemaking is acting on one’s knowledge.

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