Original Source
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Fleabyte: A medium for global civics
by Henry K van Eyken
 
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Ingenuity gap 1

The future is inexorably on our minds. We raise children and provide for their education, we take out insurance, participate in civics, recycle garbage, donate to medical research; on it goes. Among our global concerns: dwindling natural resources, climate change and environmental degradation, epidemics, terrorism and criminality, poverty, racial and ideological strife, malign dictatorships or poisoned democracy. The list goes on ad nauseam. 1A
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Many groups exist to address mankind's problems, or try to. They may raise funds for the downtrodden or to improve a hospital near or far, they may investigate issues of a global scale as is done by the Millennium Project which aims to advise the United Nations on how to address some of mankind's major ills. 1B
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There is an insight to be gained from knowing what goals the Millennium Project is currently working on. Here is the list:
  1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
  2. Achieve universal primary education
  3. Promote gender equality and empower women
  4. Reduce child mortality
  5. Improve maternal health
  6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
  7. Ensure environmental sustainability
  8. Develop a global partnership for development 1C
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Each of these goals entails an immense amount of judgments, organization, persuasion, expertise in many fields, dissent between academic disciplines, and plain slugging - all of which effort may go to naught in the arena of political trade-offs and power play. A careful reading of these goals shows just how inadequate they really are. Why, for example, that word extreme in goal 1, Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger? Why not address poverty and hunger, period? And why not make goal 2 the achieving a higher level of universal education than merely primary? Or to put it differently, why not educate for a better grasp of what is read? The answer to these questions is that the more ambitious goals are less likely to be adopted by the United Nations. And here is the rub: collectively we hinder our own progress. It has been said that we reach out with one hand and slap it away with the other. Might this be mostly due to our limited capability of taking a wider wider view of things? 1D
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Off hand it escapes me why items 4 to 6 are listed separately. One might think that all three could readily be covered by a single heading, say "Global access to quality health care." But then again, consider the current discord surrounding national health care programs within the U.N.'s member states. How can a world body readily come to terms on an issue that not only divides its members, but that divide the very citizens of these members? 1E
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Next look at those formidable issues, 7 and 8, in which improving our human habitat and economic development are pitted one against the other; a long-term desire against a short-term urge to excessively produce, consume, and discard. Humans act on a blend of rational thought and emotional impulses. Nothing wrong with that; it is in the nature of being human. But for our common survival's sake, wouldn't it be well to know how best to strike some balance and come to a widely understood agreement among people? 1F
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The above paragraphs show our inability to expeditiously deal with complex issues that are in urgent need of solution. Much time is wasted between recognizing a problem and overcoming it, an often fatal lag that political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon calls an ingenuity gap. 1G
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When as individuals we are faced with such questions we tend to simply turn away from them, perhaps preserving our individual sanity with some folksy wisdom, "give us the grace to accept what we cannot change." As for issues we might grasp and help do something about, we are confronted with their sheer number, a number so large that most of them occupy us only fleetingly at best. Chances are that something coming to our attention one moment is displaced by something else the next. Grasping complex problems is like pouring water in our cupped hands; we can only hold that which wets our skin. Ah yes, people may read and casually chat about issues large and small, but that is for being social more than to generate some action. Action we leave to scientists and politicians; the very they we complain about for not doing their job. 1H
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From the perspective of those politicians who sincerely wish to represent their electorate, it would be helpful if their constituents were mostly to sing from the same songbook. This ideal, one expects, would be furthered if people were more equally informed about issues and had the means for better understanding them. Such processes of refining opinion would be a way of shortening the time lag between sensing a problem and solving it, a means of lessening the ingenuity gap - which is an outcome we are seeking. 1I
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A good lesson was taught by the tsunami this last December killed nearly 200,000 people around the Pacific Ocean. The news of this disaster, the images, the stories, these combined to create a heightened popular sense that funds were urgently needed to bring help to the stricken regions. The initial effect was a rapid shrinking of the ingenuity gap. Most of the money given or pledged came from governments, except in the United States and Britain where most of it came from private donations. Politicians knew with greater certainty what their electorates (and worldwide public opinion) stood for (The Economist, Feb. 12, 2005). 1J
 
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Enabling and defeating ourselves 2

Inadequate knowledge makes us prey to manipulation. Convincing people is the art of driving out objections. So is misleading. So is just simply letting time pass that people may forget. 2A
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Case study: Recently it came to light that two syndicated columnists and a talk-show host received a total of $272,500 from U.S. government departments for promoting certain issues, ostensibly outside their day job. Those publicists are now suspected of returning quid pro quo by introducing a bias in the media on behest of their governmental paymasters. (The Economist, Feb. 4, 2005, p. 28.) 2B
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Citizens, are ill prepared for playing a socially responsible role while so much vies for attention. We perform poorly as citizens. Case in point: our inadequacy in judging what candidate to elect for the highest office in our lands (for those who have such choice), in knowing what he really stands for, how scrupulous he is, to what individuals and groups he is beholden. While on the one hand sincere attempts are made to expose electorates to balanced editorializing, on the other hand they are subjected to all sorts of trickery (sorry: strategies) to secure their vote. Planks in a political platform are sold like tomatoes in baskets: the rotten ones are hidden from view. 2C
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Not that we are altogether ignorant. Schools are there to prepare us for life. Books, professional associations, adult education, and the media are there, purportedly, to upgrade us afterward for our jobs and roles as citizen. Purportedly, I wrote, because the first aim of any of the commercial institutions involved is not to edify us, but to turn a profit. Media thrive on advertising income, advertising income is enhanced by increasing circulation, which is achieved  more with capturing attention than with unvarnished editorial content of what matters most. Look at the check-out counters of our groceries stores. There we find prominent displays of magazines that promise titillating entertainment more than insight in the welfare of our community. Grocery chains know what people will buy. Don't they owe that to their shareholders? 2D
 


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Fleabyte's objective 3



Fleabyte aims to become a networked academy for informed, good global citizenship; a network in which knowledge is continually refined for accuracy, balance, and topical relevance. Individuals ought be able to add to this pool of knowledge as well as draw on it, all in keeping with their cultivated talents. Ideally that knowledge should be under scrutiny, contributed to, and refined by expertise and made palatable by quality journalism. Ideally, the ensuing dynamic archive should alert us when to act and how. Ideally, also, it should show consequences of any action so as to provide a balanced perspective. A tall order, so let's expand on what's involved. 3A
 


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State of the art 4



Much of what is needed to meet that lofty objective is already available or almost within our grasp. Even the ultimate aim does not appear unrealistic but we shall need rely on some development work and practice to reach it. 4A


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We claim no originality. About 35 years ago, computer scientist Alan Kay set out to develop Dynabook, "a personal dynamic medium the size of a notebook, which could be owned by everyone and could have the power to handle virtually all of its owner's information related needs. It would respond to questions, it would have enough capacity to store anything the owner would like to remember, it would have high-quality audio and video output, and it would have enough power to respond instantly." From Wikipedia we learn that "Kay wanted the Dynabook concept to embody the learning theories of Jerome Bruner and some of what Seymour Papert, who had studied with developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, was proposing. The hardware on which the programming environment ran was relatively irrelevant. Since the late 1990s, Kay has been working on the Squeak programming system, an open source Smalltalk-based environment which could be seen as a logical continuation of the Dynabook concept" (Reference). In other words, Dynabook is not only for knowing, it is also for learning.Fleabyte, remember, wants to be an academy for informed citizenship, and as a member of the communal press it wants civic education to be a life-long affair. 4B


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Somewhat earlier, another pioneer of the digital age, Douglas Engelbart, developed theories and software for people to work cooperatively on the concurrent development, integration and application of knowledge (CoDIAK) (Reference). Over time, his efforts have been commercially overtaken by such tools as word processors and indeed by some other softwares for cooperative work, but even now, at age 80, he is still seeking further development of his Augment system. Engelbart used to direct a laboratory at Stanford Research International (now SRI Inc.) for realizing his vision for organizations to cope with urgent, complex problems. He and his team invented many tools and techniques that are now commonplace in everyday computing, examples of which are the computer mouse and the capability of displaying and editing text on a computer monitor. Fleabyte seeks to employ an archival system with CoDIAK capability. How do we envisage that? 4C


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Consider a stack of layers. At the basis we have a layer of snippets of information that includes news cuttings, personal experiences, emails, scientific and statistical data, graphics and sound, what have you. Above that layer, roughly speaking, we have a layer of papers, pamphlets, booklets, etc., that integrate and interpret selected items from the bottom layer. Prominent on a higher level still we have other documents and books with further integrated and refined knowledge contained in the layers below it. Successive steps of integration do not seek to bring together all available knowledge, but that specific knowledge thought useful for the achieving desired objectives such as contained in handbooks, textbooks, and so forth. 4D


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As we envisage further layers of integration of knowledge, we ought bear in mind that some side effects come to the fore. One of these is that our limited mental capacity will gradually lose track of the logical or historical development of what we know. We might compare of what we are getting to know to the roles actors play rather than the actors themselves. Other side effects are the forming of abstractions, concepts, principles (wood, concrete, glass are all building materials) and knowing in trms of models (mock-ups, graphics, mathematical equations, to name a few forms by which these may be concretized). All these affect the very way we think about the world around us. We alrady do, of course, but it will be more so. We shall move further away from consciously occupying ourselves with the finer granules of thought, and more and more think in terms of concrete and abstract things, symbols, models, action. 4E


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One obstacle to effective thinking is false memories; our minds accepts as true memories that have been altered over time. Hence, ideally again, we need to find ways to flag false memories when they may corrupt our thinking. This problem illustrates that Fleabyte as we have it today still needs a way to go. Research and development need be an integral part of this work. 4F


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To follow Engelbart's pioneering thinking turn to the figure below in which the blobs represent a multitude of capabilities for attracting and manipulating knowledge. The perception of those blobs as capabilities of manipulating knowledge work is not to be confused with a perception of those blobs representing forms of knowledge such as data, articles, books. Hence we refer to the graphic as a capability infrastructure that highlights the interaction between humans and their tools for generating ever superior capabilities. The right-hand panel shows examples of actions permitted by the use of editing tools. The left-hand panel shows some human actions of which many only made possible by those tools. At the bottom we find panels showing innate human capabilities and how these may be greatly enhanced by training and education. Humans develop tools and tools improve humans, continually, in a coevolutionary upward spiral. As the tools that augment our thinking change, our thinking changes. 4G

 capability.jpg
The capability infrastructure may represent that of one person or that
of an entire group of collaborating people (Credit: Bootstrap Institute). 4H


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Orality, literacy, computency 5



People's mode of thinking (psychodynamics) began changing significantly already thousands of years ago with the inventions of writing in various regions around the globe. Writing made us rely on recorded symbols representing spoken words. Those symbols along with the previously mentioned abstractions and models can be readily manipulated by our brains - and now by our computers as well. Whereas writing may preserve a recipe or some other design, computers may actually execute recipes, generate images, weld automobiles. Whereas writing obviates the need for much of our use of memory, computing obviates the need for much of our thinking. Hence, digital augmentation of the human intellect holds out a huge boost to the effectiveness of our individual and collective thinking. 5A


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The gains do come with losses. In Plato's Phaedrus, Thamus rebuked the mythical inventor of writing, Thoth. 5B



Thoth: Writing will make people wiser and improve their memories. 5B1


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Thamus: O most ingenious Thoth, the inventor is not always the best judge of his creation's worth. And in this instance what you say isn't true. Your invention will cause forgetfulness in learners because they will no longer cultivate their memories; they will rely on writing rather than remember themselves. Your discovery fosters reminiscence, not memory. Your disciples will hear many things and learn nothing; they will seem omniscient, but know nothing; with a mere semblance of wisdom they will make tiresome company. And answers will be the same always, without any concern for circumstance or audience. 5B2


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A similar rant may be uttered about digital devices taking things further still. Not many decades ago, there was widespread concern about electronic calculators degrading students' capability of doing mental arithmetic. Even in Plato's time still, memory was equated with knowledge and wisdom, something that has been very slow to change since. By now we hardly do so. 5C


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In 1982, Walter Ong published a little book, "Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word." It shows much of how thinking in purely oral societies differs from that in literate societies. For example: 5D



"Since in a primary oral culture conceptualized knowledge that is not repeated aloud soon vanishes, oral societies must invest great energy in saying over and over again what has been learned arduously over the ages. This need establishes a highly traditionalist or conservative set of mind that with good reason inhibits intellectual experimentation. Knowledge is hard to come by and precious, and society regards highly those wise old men and women who specialize in conserving it, who know and can tell the stories of the days of old. By storing knowledge outside the mind, writing, and even more, print downgrade the figures of the wise old man and the wise old woman, repeaters of the past, in favor of younger discoverers of something new." 5E


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"Writing is, of course, conservative in its own ways. Shortly after it first appeared, it served to freeze legal codes in early Sumeria. But by taking on conservative functions on itself, the text frees the mind of conservative tasks, that is, of its memory work, and thus enables the mind to turn itself to new speculation." 5F



And slightly further: 5G


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"Of course oral cultures do not lack originality in their won kind. Narrative originality lodges not in making up new stories but in managing a particular interaction with this audience at this time - at every telling the story has to be introduced uniquely into a unique situation, for in oral cultures an audience must be brought to respond, often vigorously." 5H


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As we still find to a lesser or higher degree in religious services. Even in our highly literate, and now increasingly computent societies we feel enthralled by the vigor bordering on rapture of oral culture. 5I
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I have had a number of long-distance conversations with the inventor of a digital system for efficiently recalling vast amounts of information. Listening to him, I am astounded by his continuous stream of recall, punctuated by the soft clicks of a keyboard, linking what was recorded on different occasions. He, Rod Welch, inventor of an information management system, POIMS, has had decades of practice and, hence, has become highly proficient with it. But I, as a listener have a problem. My unaided mind is not sufficiently attuned to critically absorbing what an augmented Welch recalls so profusely and effortlessly. After all, we are only just beginning to slide into the digital age. 5J
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Back to Ong: "Thought requires some sort of continuity. Writing establishes in the text a 'line' of continuity outside the mind. If distraction confuses or obliterates from the mind the context out of which emerges the material I am now reading, the context can be retrieved by glancing back over the text selectively. Backlooping can be entirely occasional, purely ad hoc. The mind concentrates its own energies on moving ahead because what it backloops into lies quiescent outside itself, always available piecemeal on the inscribed page. In oral discourse, the situation is different. There is nothing to backloop into outside the mind, for the oral utterance has vanished as soon as it is uttered. Hence the mind must move ahead more slowly, keeping close to the focus of attention much of what it has already deal with. Redundancy, repetition of the just-said, keeps both speaker and hearer surely on track." 5K


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Studying is a foreign concept to oral societies. Learning came from oral instruction and showing how things are done, not from hitting the books. Today, we can barely imagine what studying will be like for humans increasingly augmented with computers. Barely we can imagine how CoDIAK will further enhance the understanding of ourselves, our fellow man, and our environment on this planet with its limited capacity to sustain us. And barely we can imagine the boost CoDIAK may bring to schools and media and our capability to improve humans' common prospect. 5L


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Something I like to emphasize here. We need to understand that our capabilities not only change with advancing technology, but also change naturally over a lifetime. Hence the way knowledge impinges on our minds will change over a lifetime. Expanding on this, we must perceive society as a global mosaic that embraces vestiges of orality, literacy, and advancing computency, that includes not only differences resulting from experiences (e.g. language, culture, talent), and differences in mental health and how we age. We must recognize that literacy is more than being able to read and write; it includes understanding what we read and trying to comprehend the motives of authors. The same goes for computency. It calls for more than using application softwares; it calls for a deeper insight into our tools and the motives behind the messages that reach us. Communicators need to understand how individual minds differ. We need to accommodate individual differences among those who contribute to the common pool of knowledge and among those who draw on it. 5M
 


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Obstacles to concurrency 6



Fleabyte aims - forgive the repetition - to be a networked academy for informed, good global civics. I should hasten to add that to me civics is anything from maintaining personal mental and physical health, through raising children and educating them, through attempting to improve our grasp of what being human is, to cooperation and democracy. 6A


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A vital enabling factor is CoDIAK - the concurrent development, integration, and application of knowledge - achieved through cooperation among knowledge workers. We have the digital technology that permits us to move in this direction. We perceive that a further refinement of that technology will move us close to that objective. 6B


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We also have some experience with the gathering and integration aspects of knowledge in the worlds of print and digital literature. Time is saved because, unlike other media, Fleabyte does not seek to attract freshly written materials as much as up-to-date materials. Consistent with our objective, we mostly draw on existing news and insight-engendering articles found throughout the world. The world-wide web is an efficient contributor because it eliminates the need to convert from print to digital format. We are increasingly bothered by the printed format because it cannot but lag further behind the instants new knowledge is created. 6C


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Doubt is another factor that retards concurrency. Of course, the quality of knowledge must always be under scrutiny, but there ought be as little doubt as possible about the sincerity with which information is presented. Fleabyte needs to scrupulous avoid any semblance of partiality. There shall be no hidden agendas. If it is not capable of escaping commercial or ideological interest, it at least must be clear as day where these may be present. I mention this because the project does need funding. Even though contributions may mostly be made voluntarily, there always will be expenses that need be met. It is hoped that we may generate funds the way public radio and television do. 6D
 


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What we have, what we need 7



The Fleabyte magazine one sees now is far from what it needs to become. It has an archive alright, but the archiving is inadequate for an efficient, dynamic integrating of knowledge, to say nothing of applying it. Yet it has some features that may carry it a long way as things may develop. Let's take a look. 7A


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You may first notice that, aside from this article, the publication has not been touched since January 2003. Personal circumstances and some disappointment prevented me from continuing the work. This article is part of a fresh attempt to rekindle the project. You may further notice that the magazine concerns digital augmentation of the human intellect ("thinking with computers") and do so to a social purpose ("Literacy. Computency. Both are needed for the proper functioning of an environmentally healthy, prosperous, democratic society"). 7B


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Perusing the page you'll find it divided into two main sections named "First off" and "Reflections." You will also find that we consider the editorial content as open, i.e. free for the taking, but with the expectation the source is credited as indeed Fleabyte credits all its sources, doubly when possible: by publication and by author. 7C


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Perhaps you will also recognize a small technical contribution to Internet journalism called "click-step." Clicking on either up or down arrows one will quickly step from headline to headline, a feature that permits faster perusal of a page than scrolling by either mousing a slider or turning a mouse wheel. (An elaboration of this feature may be found by clicking on the demo  listed in the left-hand margin.) 7D


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The latest articles are first placed in the archive and a copy is put on the front page subsequently. For the archive's contents, click on "archive." When viewing an article, observe that purple numbers mark title, paragraphs, illustrations, and tables. This will permit a rapid finding of each article's components. For example, the URL for this particular paragraph is www.fleabyte.org/eic-18.html#7E. 7E


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Having now seen some aspects of this magazine we might turn to some features that regular readers would only grow conscious of over time. For one, it attempts to stay within its scope: digital augmentation for a world-wide social objective. Secondly, it attempts to do so with a minimum of words; but still enough words to maintain a story format for even the shortest article. We want the publication to be and remain interesting to busy people. Interest, Jerome Bruner found, is the best stimulus to learning. To maintain interest, we also try to limit the number of new items added each day of publication. 7F


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As already said, Fleabyte does not aim to publish original content, although it will do so when it will contribute to its objective. We recognize that there hardly exists a subject about which others are far more knowledgeable. Thus we like to simply publish the lead paragraphs of articles that appear elsewhere on the Internet and then link to those original articles. We like to avoid duplication; the Internet is cluttered as it is. What we would like to do, though, is to take a next, essential step: to integrate the contents of various articles relevant to a topic into digests, digests that make for good reading, in other words, not digests like those introducing technical articles or so-called "executive summaries." Fleabyte aims to develop stories with sufficient depth to maintain good contextual linkage with the publication's objectives. Consider it a form of civic journalism. 7G


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What is meant by <i>civic journalism? I'll take the Fleabyte approach to practice what I just preached: copy a few paragraphs from elsewhere on the Internet: 7H



"What makes civic journalism different from every-day good journalism? Civic journalism is everything that good journalism is -- but it's also a bit more. 7I


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"Civic journalism is both an attitude and a set of tools. The attitude is an affirmation that journalists have an obligation -- a constitutionally protected obligation -- to give readers and viewers the news and information they need to make decisions in a self-governing society. The emerging tools try to help readers and viewers see how they can be active participants, not only in building news coverage, but also in building their communities. 7J


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"Simply raising an alarm or spotlighting an injustice, which is traditional journalism, is not enough. Citizens these days need more help. They need to see some ways they play a role, have a voice, or make a difference -- some ways they can reclaim their participation in civic life. Citizen participation, therefore, is a defining feature of civic journalism. For journalists, citizens help them do better journalism. And citizens, once invited and once engaged in a menu of opportunities, seem to be developing a civic appetite." (Source.) 7K


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Clearly, Fleabyte is still falling far short of the practice of good civic journalism. In part this is because one person can only do so much. In part, also, we are hindered by too much literature only being available in print format. How much more efficient we would be if we simply simply could extract from electronic texts and work with those extracts. This would be especially helpful in doing book reviews that highlight the nub of their authors' contribution to the social literature. 7L


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An other obstacle to serving readers better is the absence of purple numbers in our sources. Such numbers allow us to direct reader attention to specific paragraphs in our sources. It is said that web publishers don't like such aids because they want readers to encounter all the advertisements on their pages. We like to find a way, therefore, to add paragraph identification to existing web pages. Engelbart seeks to achieve this as a feature of technology he calls open hyperdocument system (OHS). Also needed are appropriate ways, legal ways, to hang on to pages that are removed from websites by their publishers. (I imagine that many links in our archive and articles have died.) 7M


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We are handicapped by our current inability to make good use of available technologies to permit reader participation and do so in a ways that make every word count, to keep reader contributions as brief as possible (while maintaining story format). Reader participation calls for tools designed for cooperative authoring such as Doug Engelbart's Augment and/or Wiki. Digesting stored or otherwise referenced materials may be best done with the aid of a good search engine, topic maps, and/or a tool such as Welch's POIMS for optimizing editorial memory. 7N


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And then there is a lack of funds that prevents us from purchasing all the books we wish to peruse and from subscribing to newspapers and journals that restrict access to paying subscribers. 7O



Clearly, for Fleabyte to work best we need management, technical expertise, and appropriate journalistic skill. This is not to say that this publication cannot do a creditable job when run by one person. I did so for several years running, but it did become exceedingly tiring. I am 77 years of age now and no longer able to do what I did before. That leaves the question, should I or should I not continue to maintain the Fleabyte website? Should I just give up? 7P
 


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Cooperation among web publications 8



The public should not have to pay for the results of academic research that was funded by their taxes. Writes The Economist of February 12, 2005 in an article about open-source publishing, "Needless to say, most existing publishers of such information, who make a good business out of selling it to what is more or less a captive academic audience, are not too keen on the idea of “open access”—ie, publication free to anyone. But open access seems to be on its way. On February 3rd America's National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world's biggest sponsor of medical research, announced that from May it will expect the research work which it has helped to finance to be made available on-line, to all comers, and free, within a year of that research having been published in a journal." 8A


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This is only a partial victory for those who campaign for open access. Continues that publication, "The NIH's announcement is actually a retreat from the proposal originally circulated last year, which was for open access within six months of first publication. The NIH appears to have backed down under pressure from commercial publishers, as well as from professional societies that fund their activities by publishing journals. Elias Zerhouni, the NIH's director, acknowledged that the step back was an attempt to “preserve the role” of these groups." 8B


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Thus we see that scientific publishing has still a long way to go. Not only is there that one-year lag between the first publishing of a paper and the public access to it, but missing also is a potentially fuller deployment of expert authors in the creation of more highly integrated documents. There is a great advantage for networked publishing with true CoDIAK as an objective. Not only will that allow the public to benefit sooner from discoveries made; it will also speed up the very research efforts through an earlier availability of data and critical interpretation by peers. On top of that, it would make better use of scientists skills and cut down on equipment costs. 8C


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Hence, development work toward improving cooperative publishing should serve not only Fleabyte, but indeed all networked publications. This, in turn, ought lead to a wider cooperative effort in developing the hardware and digital tools desired by organizations embracing this mode of publishing. 8D


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For efficiency's sake I like to provide a link to that article in The Economist which appears in print and on-line. Unfortunately for us it is not available without paying for it. Of course, we realize that The Economist cannot be the high-quality publication it is without income. In his case we are happy to be subscribers and that the above quotes appear to suffice for making our case. Unfortunately also, we cannot partake of commercial software code. Private ownership is a barrier to open-source development. A way need be found to breach this barrier without hurting the owners. 8E


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An early pioneer of computing, Ted Nelson, has contributed the notion of paying a copyright holder when part of his work is included in someone else's document (transclusion) (Reference). It is claimed, however, that there is no guarantee that due, financial credit will be given. Moreover, it is said. many authors object to their work being used as the basis of the sort of derivative works which transclusion would allow. A pity. Transclusion would help to narrow the ingenuity gap. 8F
 


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Editorial bias and scope 9



Fleabyte's principal editorial objective is improving civics. Digital augmentation of the human intellect playing a major role in this process. It is hoped that this publication may eventually produce continuously updated textbooks and an encyclopedia of what constitute civics. In the process it seeks to provide relevant news and report on studies and progress in sufficient detail. Can we do this entirely objectively? The short answer, as we now see it, can only be "no." We are biased, but the least we can do is show our biases. 9A


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There are those who gladly give their life to enjoy a better afterlife and in the process take or risk the lives of others. Clearly, a concern about our global environment and the world's limited natural resources is not shared by all. So, just what is being objective about in these matters? 9B


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Democracy, control by the people, is an ideology, and a poorly defined one at that. There is direct democracy where the right to make political decisions is exercised by the whole body of franchised citizens among which the majority rules. There is representative democracy with periodical elections of those in who we put our trust. A refinement of representative democracy is liberal or constitutional democracy which incorporates constitutional restraints and attempts to respect minority interests. Referendums on specific issues incorporate an element of direct democracy into constitutional democracy. And finally, I quote from my ancient Encyclopaedia Britannica, "the word democratic is often used to characterize any political or social system which, regardless of whether or not the form of government is democratic in any of the first three senses, tends to minimize social and economic differences, especially differences arising out of the unequal distribution of property. This is known as social or economic democracy." Needless to say, we are warned, that the various uses of the word democracy should be carefully distinguished. 9C


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Fleabyte likes to present the best of well-integrated views and to this end we favor, at this time, the doing of review-essays of what we consider important books. Examples of this approach are reflections on "Coercing virtue: The worldwide rule of judges" by Robert H. Bork and "The Ingenuity Gap" by Thomas Homer-Dixon. This approach has been well received (as far as I know). It should be noted that book reviews can be done far more efficiently when their texts are available in digital format. A creditable review calls not only for reading and rereading, but also searching for passages read, and it may include direct quotes. 9D


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We can't continually discuss augmentation without keeping abreast of developments in computing and accumulating insights in just what it is we are augmenting, human minds. Here, too, does bias enter the picture for to what extent shall we permit automation to replace human thought? Digital calculators; fine. Direct linking of a brain with a computer to prevent epileptic seizures; well, that looks like progress. But spiritual machines replacing our offspring? Let's put some communal thought into this one first. Which brings into the picture an important interest group: our young people. 9E


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Education ought serve to prepare students for an uncertain future with a horizon over half a century away. This calls for educators to be long-distant thinkers, to be more preoccupied with the future than with the past. Environmental degradation and dwinding non-renewable resources invite bitter conflicts, outright slaughter even of humans by humans. (Sample reference: "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fall or Succeed" by Jared Diamond.) It seems evident to me that much attention need be paid to human nature and human virtue, that these subjects need rank high in lifelong education and rank high on Fleabyte's editorial smorgasbord. 9F
 


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How now, brown cow? 10



Doug Engelbart was so good as to recently invite me again for a visit to Silicon Valley. One important reason was that he wished to help me with revving up Fleabyte by giving me access to some quality thinking that's prevalent there. The advice I received from a number of people was unanimous: just do Fleabyte, it is a fine publication, people and resources will come forward to move things forward. 10A


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Maybe so. But I am getting older and tardier. Writing this article took me many times as long as I promised some it would. Family affairs and exercising for health take up more of my time. And then, as experience has shown me, even when people offer help, I am baffled by how to make good use of their offer (so embarrassing). Fleabyte needs financial resources; it needs a manager (salaried, presumably) and sufficient editorial guidance (remunerated as well) and lots and lots of qualified contributors and editors. One source of talent would be academia, another retirees. Another source might be such important stakeholders in the future as students in the upper grades of secondary schools. We might explore this. 10B


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And would it nott be great if we could adopt public radio and television as a model, to be funded by people around the world? Ah! Hope is one thing, expectation another. I do not expect that Fleabyte will make it in this world, but do feel compelled to give it this last one try by presenting this publication's predicament for readers' consideration. 10C

What, if anything, can we realistically do? 10D