The top list of hated Internet-spawned words

Living in an era where world events, emerging technologies, hobbies, cat food, those little aglets on your shoe laces, seemingly EVERYTHING needs a creative, pithy name or description, it’s little wonder that many of these terms soon become as pleasant to the ear as a rusty bullethead nail.

The Interweb certainly must shoulder its own fair share of the blame. So is this poll on the most hated Internet words any real surprise?

Fancy a trip down memory lane?

I don’t wish to alienate any non-West Aussie readers, but I’m sure all those who lived in Perth during the 80s and early 90s remember these classic educational advertisements produced for Channel 9 Perth. And for those who are seeing them for the first time, I hope you enjoy. I know I did. At least 8 times thanks to the playback controls

1. Important nutrients in your diet!

2. Don’t be a Ding a Ling!

3. Dirt and Germs

4. Know your vitamins!

I love how engaging and catchy the advertisements are. To this day, I still remember all the words! Chalk another point up for storytelling in education!

Perhaps my next PD session should be in song…

In the interests of greater workplace well-being

Daniel James, CEO of games design outfit Three Rings is my new hero. Oh, to work in a place that would do things half as cool as this!

From the Wired article:

The company’s loft, in the trendy South of Market district, has been painstakingly outfitted to resemble The Nautilus from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The offices have an attacking octopus couch, a secret lounge hidden behind a bookcase, captain’s quarters and a steampunk bike rack, plus a ton of other Victorian details.

I am suitably distracted.

Link – Finding Nemo at a Game Studio’s Steampunk Office Suite (Wired)

Today’s posting is brought to you by the word…

Fugule (fy-oo-gul) Noun.

A mental state whereupon you reach the Google search page, only to have forgotten what it was you intended to search for.

“Oh man, I just had the worst fugule. What was I looking for again?”

RSS has made me fussy…

The majority of my Interweb browsing is done via my RSS aggregator. With the amount of content I go through in a day, there’s no way I could actually go to each and every site, filter through and find the good stuff, whilst juggling work at the same time.

I’ve been an RSS jockey for a few years now and with my daily feed count now running over 35, I’ve become ever-so picky as to what I actually read and what gets thrown back on the pile.

What I’m finding now is that the success of the article/posting (ie, whether I read it or not – note the inflated sense of self-worth ) pretty much rides on the head and by-lines. If it doesn’t hook me in with the brief extract I’m given in my reader, then I’m not going near it.

The moral of the story? Well, there are several.

1. A well-crafted posting is not complete unless it has a well-crafted by-line. Sell it to us!! We don’t see the article until we’ve clicked into it! It’s akin to hiding the Mona Lisa behind a busted, bent-nail adorned door. With a battery hooked to the door knob. And rabid dogs. Attached to more batteries. (Okay, so that metaphor sucked, but either way, I ain’t gonna open that door!)

2. Be consistent with your by-lines. Readers get used to the way you present your information. When we get what we want, we feel on top of things and confident.

3. James has the attention span of a hyperactive mosquito.

Acts of Futility Episode #48

By telling someone to ignore something, are you not sabotaging your very intent?

Hmmmm…

The Cybernomadic Framework

A couple of years old now, but still a very interesting read, the Cybernomadic Framework was produced by the very excellent Institute for the Future, an independent not-for-profit research group focussing on the implications of emerging technologies (I’d love to think they all walk around wearing capes as well).

It discusses the fusion of the physical and digital realms, as well as the very people that enable this bringing together of worlds. Here’s a juicy excerpt:

Leading-edge cybernomads include knowledge workers (particularly creatives, designers, and innovators), service workers, students, and gamers. As did their nomadic ancestors, they work the edges and gaps of the global economy producing, gathering, trading, and creating value for others who do not travel to the outer reaches of their organization, discipline, or social group. They need to move, physically and intellectually, and work at the margins. Changing environments frequently (physical to digital, one social group to another, one intellectual domain to another) allows them a broader perspective from which to create and produce value. They cultivate ideas across physical and digital settings—a sort of knowledge husbandry— and they often exchange these ideas or perform special services with the expertise and niche perspective that they gain from working at the margins. While somewhat unsettling and risky, these outliers could not produce their successful outcomes through conventional processes.

It tends to have more of a business slant, however the concepts discussed can be relevant to education and training, particularly with more “digitally-enabled” learners (and that doesn’t necessarily mean they can do that thing where it looks like you’re removing your thumb).

Link (in PDF format – 813kb) – The Cybernomadic Framework

The game geek within…

I need someone to talk me out of buying a Nintendo Wii. For the last couple of days, I’ve been doing that thing where you mentally collate a list of justifiable reasons why you should have something. So far, this list runs to:

1. They’re damn cool
2. See number 1

I’m not entirely sure if that’s enough of a good case to convince my beautiful wife to let me fork out 400 Aussie dollars for it, but I can only try…

The democracy of the Internet

The beauty of blogging and collaborative Internet publishing tools is that users who may ordinarily have little voice in the context of our flesh-based hierarchies of reality are able to speak out and have their ideas and opinions heard.

The ideas of objectivity or veracity may often be discussed in relation to posted articles, but to take on board an impartial or objective approach to a blog posting robs it of its very value. It’s one thing to read what an encyclopaedia may have to say, but it’s a completely different thing to hear what someone actually thinks.

In my mind, contributions to the edublogosphere should be personal. They should be drawn from experience, from reflection, from a first-person view of the actual content. There is value in subjectivity; it broadens the mind, encourages debate and discussion and provides numerous perspectives. It’s the very embracing of cerebral and experiential diversity.

And with the Internet providing a democratic playing field for such discussions, users are able to take to task anyone from a practitioner to a CEO to an e-learning guru. The playing field is level for all. It’s this grand potential for discussion and feedback that makes it all so enriching.

For example, I listened today to a podcast interview conducted by Sue Waters, talking to Dr. John Mitchell about e-learning in the VET sector. He raises some interesting points as well as some that would surely get the hackles up for a number of VET practitioners.

Step 2 features people who listen to the podcast and are then able to provide their own rebuttal either in comment form or on their own sites. In this case, a well-worded rebuke from Alex Hayes.

Having such debates and discussions can only take our understanding and appreciation of subject areas to a new and deeper level.

Unless of course, those discussions are YouTube video comments.

**Updated: The interview has since been removed.

Lamentations

Last night, Perth had the honour of being the start line for the national tour of the Dalai Lama (6/6).

My train journey home takes me past the venue where he was to speak and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many cars packed in like vehicular sardines at this place. It was incredible the interest that was being shown in seeing this spiritual leader (ironically enough, one of the main topics he covered was climate change – something that I’m sure to which all those cars contributed).

My lamentation comes from the fact that I didn’t get to hear him speak. There are numerous great thinkers around the world and it’s always a privilege to hear their own musings, regardless of whether you agree with them, are part of the denomination or whatever.

If you ever happen to have the chance to hear people that challenge, question or stimulate thought, take it! It’s people like these who keep us on our toes and adaptive to the world around us.

And if anyone did happen to hear him speak, please leave a comment and tell us what it meant to you and what impact did it have.