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Middle of Nowhere |
| The links in the left column lead to more 150mB of information. The guidebook, courses, and article warehouse can help you get oriented. |
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Announcements |
| May 2001:MyBank.dom Technology Feasbility Demonstration |
| May 1998: The Taming the Electronic Frontier course
won the $25,000 Paul Allen Foundation
distance education competition. Jul 1998: I resigned from George Mason University effective January 1, 1999 to expore interests in object technology, distance education, and usage-based revenue collection for digital goods. |
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Articles |
| Plan for a New University A New University seamlessly
integrates Rigor and Relevance, Education and Training, and Individual
and Organizational Learning as distinct from the usual choice between a liberal
arts university or a technical training school and hiring organizational consulting
firms for services that universities could provide. A GMU Proposal in Response to the 1998 NSF Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence Solicitation propose to deploy two levels of web-based technology (T1-T2) within three academic organizations (O1-O3), and to conduct an interdisciplinary study of the impact from the world views of the multiple disciplines in this team (V1-V7). Objects as Property by Brad Cox; January 1997 IEEE Software Magazine Managers Column. Superdistribution Wired Magazine Idees Fortes Column by Brad Cox. Stop selling software. Give it away. Get paid for its use. Meter ware is so logical it could be the foundation of the new, networked economy. No Silver Bullet Revisted by Brad Cox "Superdistribution can allow software engineers to overcome the software crisis as tangible domains surmounted the same problem, by encapsulating complexity so thoroughly that everyone else can forget it. The solution requires enforcing property rights in digital goods as robustly as conservation of mass enforces them for tangible goods." For why this is hard today and techniques for overcoming it in the future, see Superdistribution: Objects as Property on the Electronic Frontier. For a commercial system based on this approach, see the Tragoes RightsMarket. For how manufacturing techniques could apply to software construction see Planning the Software Industrial Revolution by Brad Cox and Technology Transition: An Historical Perspective, by Allan Wiley. Also Historie Economique: La standardisation au bout du fusil by Bernard Kapp, Le Monde. Credit Card Transactions: Real World and Online A Spring 1996 directed readings project by Keith Lamond. "To most of us, the credit card system is a black box. We hand the merchant are credit card and then the purchase shows up a month later on our credit card statement. We never considered what is going on in the background, or even the safety of the transaction." Nanotechnology Wired Brain Tennis Debate with Ed Regis, author of "Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology". |
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Books |
 Superdistribution; Objects as Property on
the Electronic Frontier by Brad Cox. Addison
Wesley Publishing Company 1996Evolving a Distributed Learning Community by Brad Cox "Technology can extend traditional teacher/learner relationships beyond the space/time limitations of the brick and mortar classroom. And it can challenge and redefine how teachers and learners have related since antiquity. This chapter describes the evolution of a course in which traditional relationships have been and are being challenged, via Internet and television, in pursuit of the elusive potential of a fully distributed global community of empowered learners." (Presented at the Sloan Foundation ALN Conference in New York; Oct. 1997) Forward: Developing Software Using OVID User interface designers face a big challenge. On one hand are the implementors, the programmers struggling to churn out enough content to make steadily doubling telecomputing capacity pay off for its users. On the other hand are the users, Apple's "rest of us," those who determine worth through buying the software that pays everybody else's salaries. Getting these groups to work together is no job for quick fixes. But this book doesn't promise that; just a novel way to facilititate interaction and collaboration between programmers and users. This is a refreshing alternative to the pervasive assumption that users and implementors will inevitably misunderstand one another. I plan to incorporate this approach in my own work and hope you will see the worth of this in your work also. |
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Book Recommendations |
| Guns,
Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond 1997 New York: W.W. Norton. New Rules for the New Economy: Ten Ways the Network Economy Is Changing Everything by Kevin Kelly; 1998; London: Fourth Estate: 0670881112. |
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Presentations |
| A list of recent and upcoming external presentations, normally with conference descriptions and powerpoint (and html) slides, is here. |
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Mentions |
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PDF Dissertation Chatper by Marilyn Eggers
reviewing the Taming the Electronic Frontier course. The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net by Michael H. Goldhaber Hardboiled Economics by Bernard Lang Times Higher Education Supplement by Mike Holderness |
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People |
| Jerry Weinberg This site is not about
me. It is about you joining me in creating a new world: Shaped through intelligent
technology Applied in a more fully human manner. Arnold Kling established an incredible home buyer's fair as a way of bringing mortgage buyers and sellers into contact without the traditional real-estate agent as middleman. Philip Greenspun See Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing. Amy Wohl Software Components Study JenniCam: "Initially I bought the camera to update portions of my webpage with pictures of myself. A friend joked that it could be used to do a FishBowl cam, but of a person. The idea fascinated me, and I took off with it. Initially the JenniCAM had an audience of half a dozen of my close friends, and it spread like wildfire from there." Lonesome Turkey: Incredible story/advertisement. |