community finds

I am a member of several private online communities and I also host one — the perpetual beta coffee club. There have been some interesting conversations over the past few weeks and I would like to highlight some online resources that were shared. I learn a lot from these communities.

Why relationships are the key to existence

“We understand reality better if we think of it in terms of interactions, not individuals. We, as individuals, exist thanks to the interactions we are involved in. This is why, in classic game theory, the winners in the long run are those who collaborate. Too often we foolishly measure success in terms of a single actor’s fortunes. This is both short-sighted and irrational. It misunderstands the true nature of reality, and is ultimately self-defeating.”

The Five Orders of Ignorance

0th Order: Lack of Ignorance — Something you know, or known-knowns.

1st Order: Lack of Knowledge — Known-unknowns.

2nd Order: Lack of Awareness —Unknown-unknowns.

3rd Order: Lack Of Process — a lack of a means of finding out that you don’t know that you don’t know (PKM?)

4th Order: Meta Ignorance — When you don’t know about the 5 orders of ignorance.

Helen Blunden’s review of Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus on YouTube.

Externalising the autobiographical self: sharing personal memories online (related again to PKM)

“In sum, findings from the present study suggest that sharing personal memories online facilitates memory retention. Instead of serving as an external memory storage to ease memory burden, social media afford an essential outlet unique to the Internet era for retrieving and sharing personal memories and may further have important mnemonic consequences. This work is the first step towards a better understanding of the autobiographical self in the Internet era where the virtual externalisation of personal memories has become commonplace.”

Skills Development for Engineers: Innovative model for advanced learning in the workplace

Note how the development of higher proficiency requires social (cooperative & collaborative) learning including mentoring, teaching, and dialogue with experts.