Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Time

“Time” is the most used noun in the English language, yet it remains a mystery. We’ve just completed an amazingly intense and rewarding multidisciplinary conference on the nature of time, and my brain is swimming with ideas and new questions. Rather than trying a summary (the talks will be online soon), here’s my stab at a top ten list partly inspired by our discussions: the things everyone should know about time. [Update: all of these are things I think are true, after quite a bit of deliberation. Not everyone agrees, although of course they should.]

1. Time exists. Might as well get this common question out of the way. Of course time exists — otherwise how would we set our alarm clocks? Time organizes the universe into an ordered series of moments, and thank goodness; what a mess it would be if reality were complete different from moment to moment. The real question is whether or not time is fundamental, or perhaps emergent. We used to think that “temperature” was a basic category of nature, but now we know it emerges from the motion of atoms. When it comes to whether time is fundamental, the answer is: nobody knows. My bet is “yes,” but we’ll need to understand quantum gravity much better before we can say for sure.

2. The past and future are equally real. This isn’t completely accepted, but it should be. Intuitively we think that the “now” is real, while the past is fixed and in the books, and the future hasn’t yet occurred. But physics teaches us something remarkable: every event in the past and future is implicit in the current moment. This is hard to see in our everyday lives, since we’re nowhere close to knowing everything about the universe at any moment, nor will we ever be — but the equations don’t lie. As Einstein put it, “It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.”

3. Everyone experiences time differently. This is true at the level of both physics and biology. Within physics, we used to have Sir Isaac Newton’s view of time, which was universal and shared by everyone. But then Einstein came along and explained that how much time elapses for a person depends on how they travel through space (especially near the speed of light) as well as the gravitational field (especially if its near a black hole). From a biological or psychological perspective, the time measured by atomic clocks isn’t as important as the time measured by our internal rhythms and the accumulation of memories. That happens differently depending on who we are and what we are experiencing; there’s a real sense in which time moves more quickly when we’re older.

4. You live in the past. About 80 milliseconds in the past, to be precise. Use one hand to touch your nose, and the other to touch one of your feet, at exactly the same time. You will experience them as simultaneous acts. But that’s mysterious — clearly it takes more time for the signal to travel up your nerves from your feet to your brain than from your nose. The reconciliation is simple: our conscious experience takes time to assemble, and your brain waits for all the relevant input before it experiences the “now.” Experiments have shown that the lag between things happening and us experiencing them is about 80 milliseconds. (Via conference participant David Eagleman.)

5. Your memory isn’t as good as you think. When you remember an event in the past, your brain uses a very similar technique to imagining the future. The process is less like “replaying a video” than “putting on a play from a script.” If the script is wrong for whatever reason, you can have a false memory that is just as vivid as a true one. Eyewitness testimony, it turns out, is one of the least reliable forms of evidence allowed into courtrooms. (Via conference participants Kathleen McDermott and Henry Roediger.)

6. Consciousness depends on manipulating time. Many cognitive abilities are important for consciousness, and we don’t yet have a complete picture. But it’s clear that the ability to manipulate time and possibility is a crucial feature. In contrast to aquatic life, land-based animals, whose vision-based sensory field extends for hundreds of meters, have time to contemplate a variety of actions and pick the best one. The origin of grammar allowed us to talk about such hypothetical futures with each other. Consciousness wouldn’t be possible without the ability to imagine other times. (Via conference participant Malcolm MacIver.)

7. Disorder increases as time passes. At the heart of every difference between the past and future — memory, aging, causality, free will — is the fact that the universe is evolving from order to disorder. Entropy is increasing, as we physicists say. There are more ways to be disorderly (high entropy) than orderly (low entropy), so the increase of entropy seems natural. But to explain the lower entropy of past times we need to go all the way back to the Big Bang. We still haven’t answered the hard questions: why was entropy low near the Big Bang, and how does increasing entropy account for memory and causality and all the rest? (We heard great talks by David Albert and David Wallace, among others.)

8. Complexity comes and goes. Other than creationists, most people have no trouble appreciating the difference between “orderly” (low entropy) and “complex.” Entropy increases, but complexity is ephemeral; it increases and decreases in complex ways, unsurprisingly enough. Part of the “job” of complex structures is to increase entropy, e.g. in the origin of life. But we’re far from having a complete understanding of this crucial phenomenon. (Talks by Mike Russell, Richard Lenski, Raissa D’Souza.)

9. Aging can be reversed. We all grow old, part of the general trend toward growing disorder. But it’s only the universe as a whole that must increase in entropy, not every individual piece of it. (Otherwise it would be impossible to build a refrigerator.) Reversing the arrow of time for living organisms is a technological challenge, not a physical impossibility. And we’re making progress on a few fronts: stem cells, yeast, and even (with caveats) mice and human muscle tissue. As one biologist told me: “You and I won’t live forever. But as for our grandkids, I’m not placing any bets.”

10. A lifespan is a billion heartbeats. Complex organisms die. Sad though it is in individual cases, it’s a necessary part of the bigger picture; life pushes out the old to make way for the new. Remarkably, there exist simple scaling laws relating animal metabolism to body mass. Larger animals live longer; but they also metabolize slower, as manifested in slower heart rates. These effects cancel out, so that animals from shrews to blue whales have lifespans with just about equal number of heartbeats — about one and a half billion, if you simply must be precise. In that very real sense, all animal species experience “the same amount of time.” At least, until we master #9 and become immortal. (Amazing talk by Geoffrey West.)

14 More Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent

1. Shemomedjamo (Georgian)
You know when you’re really full, but your meal is just so delicious, you can’t stop eating it? The Georgians feel your pain. This word means, “I accidentally ate the whole thing.”

2. Pelinti (Buli, Ghana)
Your friend bites into a piece of piping hot pizza, then opens his mouth and sort of tilts his head around while making an “aaaarrrahh” noise. The Ghanaians have a word for that. More specifically, it means “to move hot food around in your mouth.”

3. Layogenic (Tagalog)
Remember in Clueless when Cher describes someone as “a full-on Monet…from far away, it’s OK, but up close it’s a big old mess”? That’s exactly what this word means.

4. Rhwe (Tsonga, South Africa)
College kids, relax. There’s actually a word for “to sleep on the floor without a mat, while drunk and naked.”

5. Zeg (Georgian)
It means “the day after tomorrow.” Seriously, why don’t we have a word for that in English?

6. Pålegg (Norweigian)
Sandwich Artists unite! The Norwegians have a non-specific descriptor for anything – ham, cheese, jam, Nutella, mustard, herring, pickles, Doritos, you name it – you might consider putting into a sandwich.

7. Lagom (Swedish)
Maybe Goldilocks was Swedish? This slippery little word is hard to define, but means something like, “Not too much, and not too little, but juuuuust right.”

8. Tartle (Scots)
The nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember.

9. Koi No Yokan (Japanese)
The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall into love.

10. Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego)
This word captures that special look shared between two people, when both are wishing that the other would do something that they both want, but neither want to do.

11. Fremdschämen (German); Myötähäpeä (Finnish)
The kindler, gentler cousins of Schadenfreude, both these words mean something akin to “vicarious embarrassment.” Or, in other words, that-feeling-you-get-when-you-watch-Meet the Parents.

12. Cafune (Brazilian Portuguese)
Leave it to the Brazilians to come up with a word for “tenderly running your fingers through your lover’s hair.”

13. Greng-jai (Thai)
That feeling you get when you don’t want someone to do something for you because it would be a pain for them.

14. Kaelling (Danish)
You know that woman who stands on her doorstep (or in line at the supermarket, or at the park, or in a restaurant) cursing at her children? The Danes know her, too.

Ingestion / Planet in a Bottle

Christopher Turner

“Ingestion” is a column that explores food within a framework informed by aesthetics, history, and philosophy.


Self-portrait by Dr. Roy Walford illustrating the startling effects of his CRON-diet. Courtesy the Roy L. Walford Trust.

At 8:15 am on 26 September 1991, eight “bionauts,” as they called themselves, wearing identical red Star Trek–like jumpsuits (made for them by Marilyn Monroe’s former dressmaker) waved to the assembled crowd and climbed through an airlock door in the Arizona desert. They shut it behind them and opened another that led into a series of hermetically sealed greenhouses in which they would live for the next two years. The three-acre complex of interconnected glass Mesoamerican pyramids, geodesic domes, and vaulted structures contained a tropical rain forest, a grassland savannah, a mangrove wetland, a farm, and a salt-water ocean with a wave machine and gravelly beach. This was Biosphere 2—the first biosphere being Earth—a $150 million experiment designed to see if, in a climate of nuclear and ecological fear, the colonization of space might be possible. The project was described in the press as a “planet in a bottle,” “Eden revisited,” and “Greenhouse Ark.”

Before entering, the Biosphere’s pioneer inhabitants had enjoyed a final, hearty breakfast consisting of ham, eggs, and buttered bread, but from here on, they would be self-sufficient—everything they ate would be grown, processed, and prepared in their airtight bubble. A few years before designing the Biosphere, architect Phil Hawes had proposed a space city 110 feet in diameter, a flying doughnut that would spin to create its own gravity and in which miniature animals could be kept and plants cultivated, along with a store of cryogenically frozen seed for the propagation of twenty thousand other species. The space frame of the Biosphere, a terrestrial version of such a sci-fi fantasy, had been built by an engineer who had worked with Buckminster Fuller, author of Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, which compared the planet to a spaceship flying through the universe with finite resources that could never be resupplied. The Biosphere was intended as a similar symbol of our ecological plight.

The project caught the national imagination. Discover, the popular science magazine, declared the mission “the most exciting venture to be undertaken in the US since President Kennedy launched us towards the moon.” Tourists came by the busload to peer through the glass at the bionauts, trapped in their vivarium like laboratory rats (the project was an acknowledged precursor to the Big Brother reality-TV show). Over the first six months, 159,000 people visited, including William S. Burroughs and Timothy Leary.

Life inside the glass city was colored by its inventors’ countercultural idealism. They had all met on the Synergia Ranch, a commune they founded near Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the late 1960s and ran according to Wilhelm Reich’s idea of “work democracy”; they practiced improvisational theatre and made a fortune building developments of adobe condos, which helped pay for the Biosphere (the commune is described in Laurence Veysey’s 1971 ethnography, The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Communities in Twentieth-Century America). The Biosphere’s half-acre arable plot had been cultivated for three months in preparation for the crew’s arrival to what was supposed to be a high-tech Eden. However, the members of the chosen team lacked experience as farmers and, despite reading how-to manuals with titles such as How to Grow More Vegetables than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You Can Imagine, yields were disappointing and they began to starve.

The bionauts had to perform hard physical labor to produce their food, but there was only enough for them to consume a measly 1750 calories a day, and they found it difficult to sustain such active lives. On a diet of beans, porridge, beets, carrots, and sweet potatoes, their weight plummeted and their skin began to go orange as a result of the excess beta-carotene in their diet. “It was very stressful, especially with a crew like that,” recalled Sally Silverstone, the Agriculture and Food Systems Manager, “essentially white middle-class, upper-middle-class Western individuals who had never been short of food in their whole life—it was a tremendous shock.”

Silverstone would weigh out the day’s allotment of fresh food for whoever’s turn it was to cook, entering into a computer database the amount of nutrients to check that the crew was keeping above the recommended intake levels of calories, proteins, and fats. At first the meals were served buffet style but, as the crew got hungrier, the cooks scrupulously divided their offerings into equal portions. Leaving every meal still hungry, all the bionauts could think about was food, and their memoirs of the two-year project are full of references to their recurring dreams of McDonald’s hamburgers, lobster, sushi, Snickers-bar cheesecake, lox and bagels, croissants, and whiskey. They bartered most of their possessions, but food was too precious to trade. They became sluggish and irritable through lack of it, and were driven by hunger to acts of sabotage. Bananas were stolen from the basement storeroom; the freezer had to be locked.

The medic who presided over the team’s health was Dr. Roy Walford, a professor of pathology at UCLA Medical School who had served in the Korean War and, at sixty-nine, was the oldest member of the crew. He was a gerontologist and specialist in life extension who, in studies with mice, thought that he’d successfully shown that one could live longer by eating less; his skinny mice outlived his fat ones by as much as forty percent. In his books Maximum Life Span (1983) and The 120-Year Diet (1986), Walford promised that “calorie restriction with optimal nutrition, which I call the ‘CRON-diet,’ will retard your rate of aging, extend lifespan (up to perhaps 150 to 160 years, depending on when you start and how thoroughly you hold to it), and markedly decrease susceptibility to most major diseases.”

The disappointing crop yields in the Biosphere allowed Walford to experiment with his “healthy starvation diet” on humans in unprecedented laboratory conditions. While his subjects pleaded with mission control for more supplies, Walford—who had been on the CRON-diet for years—maintained that their daily calorie intake was sufficient. “I think if there had been any other nutritionist or physician, they would have freaked out and said, ‘We’re starving,’” Walford said, “but I knew we were actually on a program of health enhancement.” Every two weeks he would give them all a full medical checkup. He discovered that their blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol counts did indeed drop to healthier levels—which he presumed would retard aging and extend maximal lifespan as it seemed to in mice—though an unanticipated side effect of this was that their blood was awash with the toxins that had been stored in their rapidly dissolving body fat.


Group photo of candidates for Biosphere 2, 1989. Only six of the fourteen individuals shown were ultimately chosen to live in the biosphere, along with two others not present. A trim Roy Walford is in the back row sporting a moustache.

In their 1993 book Life Under Glass: The Inside Story of Biosphere 2, crew members Abigail Alling and Mark Nelson note: “Each biospherian responded differently to the diet. Initially, over the first six months or so, we lost between eighteen and fifty-eight pounds each. ... Roy continued to assure us not to worry when we commented on our baggy pants and loose shirts because our overall health was actually improved by the combination of our diet and the superb freshness and quality of the organically grown food.” They acknowledged that their natural diet was incredibly healthy: “The only problem was that there never seemed to be enough of it.” Every month Walford took a Polaroid photo of each member that recorded their dramatic physiological changes—men lost eighteen percent of their body weight, women ten percent, mostly within the first six months.

During her two years inside, Silverstone wrote a cookbook with the fantastic title, Eating In: From the Field to the Kitchen in Biosphere 2, which contains forty-eight recipes from the biospherian diet, along with the story of how the crew planted, grew, processed, and prepared the food on their half-acre farm. In the book, the team are photographed a year into the mission, standing behind a table loaded with food, but they all look gaunt and bony. By this time, the team had splintered into two opposing factions that barely spoke to each other, but they still ate together (a favorite dinner spot was the balcony overlooking the Intensive Agriculture Biome, from which you could see the sun setting over the Catalina mountains and which they dubbed the Café Visionaire). They stockpiled their supplies for such feasts, sacrificing livestock and saving milk, eggs, figs, and papayas, and lubricating the meals with homebrew or punch spiked with alcohol from Walford’s medical supplies. The menu for their first Thanksgiving feast was:

Baked chicken with water chestnut stuffing
Sautéed ginger beets
Baked sweet potatoes
Stuffed chili peppers sautéed with goat cheese
Tossed salad with a lemon-yogurt dressing
Orange banana bread
Tibetan rice beer (chung)
Sweet potato pie topped with yogurt
Cheesecake
Coffee with steamed goat’s milk

The rest of the time they were so famished they chewed on peanut shells, coffee grounds, and banana skins. Fennel leaves became known as “biospherian chewing gum.”

When the crew emerged from the experiment after two years, the project was judged by the media to be a failure. Early in the second year, carbon dioxide levels had risen so high (twelve times that of the outside) that the crew were growing faint and Walford asked for more oxygen to be pumped into the structure on two occasions. The Biosphere had proved not to be a self-sufficient, autonomous world as it would need to be if it were to become a base station on another planet. In 1999, by which time the Biosphere had been taken over by Columbia University as a research center into the effects of climate change,Time magazine judged it one of the hundred worst ideas of the twentieth century. But Walford’s experiments with diet, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December 1992, were judged a success. The bionauts not only showed dramatic weight loss (stabilizing at an average of fourteen percent overall), but also lower blood pressure and cholesterol, more efficient metabolisms, and enhanced immune systems.

The year after his release, Walford began the Calorie Restriction Society, which now has seven thousand members (it is estimated that one hundred thousand practice the diet worldwide). The CRONIES, as Walford’s devotees refer to themselves, measure and weigh out everything they consume using electronic scales, the idea being that each calorie you consume should contain as many nutrients as possible (you can download Cron-O-Meter software free on the internet to help plan such a diet). The CRONIES live at the border of self-starvation, in the hope of delayed gratification; like their mentor, they live in their own biosphere, a self-absorbed bubble of discipline and resolve, and maintain the science-fiction dream of an age when we will all be able to live forever. Calorie restriction failed to dramatically increase Walford’s lifespan, however: he died in 2004 of Lou Gehrig’s disease, aged seventy-nine.

Willat Effect Experiments With Tea

The Willat Effect is the hedonic change caused by side-by-side comparison of similar things. Your hedonic response to the things compared (e.g., two or more dark chocolates) expands in both directions. The “better” things become more pleasant and the “worse” things become less pleasant. In my experience, it’s a big change, easy to notice.

I discovered the Willat Effect when my friend Carl Willat offered me five different limoncellos side by side. Knowing that he likes it, his friends had given them to him. Perhaps three were homemade, two store-bought. I’d had plenty of limoncello before that, but always one version at a time. Within seconds of tasting the five versions side by side, I came to like two of them (with more complex flavors) more than the rest. One or two of them I started to dislike. When you put two similar things next to each other, of course you see their differences more clearly. What’s impressive is the hedonic change.

The Willat Effect supports my ideas about human evolution because it pushes people toward connoisseurship. (I predict it won’t occur with animals.) The fact that repeating elements are found in so many decorating schemes and patterns meant to be pretty (e.g., wallpapers, textile patterns, rugs, choreography) suggests that we get pleasure from putting similar things side by side — the very state that produces the Willat Effect. According to my theory of human evolution, connoisseurship evolved because it created demand for hard-to-make goods, which helped the most skilled artisans make a living. Carl’s limoncello tasting made me a mini-connoisseur of limoncello. I started buying it much more often and bought more expensive brands, thus helping the best limoncello makers make a living. Connoisseurs turn surplus into innovation by giving the most skilled artisans more time and freedom to innovate.

Does the Willat Effect have practical value? Could it improve my life? Recently I decided to see if it could make me a green tea connoisseur. Ever since I discovered the Shangri-La Diet (calories without smell), I’d been drinking tea (smell without calories) almost daily but I was no connoisseur. Nor had I done many side-by-side comparisons. At home, I had always made one cup at a time.

In Beijing, where I am now, I can easily buy many green teas. I got three identical tea pots (SAMA SAG-08) and three cheap green teas. I drink tea every morning. Instead of brewing one pot, I started making two or three pots at the same time and comparing the results. I compared different teas and the same tea brewed different lengths of time (Carl’s idea).

I’ve been doing this about two weeks. The results so far:

1. The cheapest tea became undrinkable. I decided to never buy it again and not to drink the rest of my purchase. I will use it for kombucha. Two of the three teas cost about twice the cheapest one. After a few side by side comparisons I liked the more expensive ones considerably more than the cheaper one. The two more expensive ones cost about the same but, weirdly, I liked the one that cost (slightly) more a little better than the one that cost less. (Tea is sold in bulk with no packaging or branding so the price I pay is closely related to what the grower was paid. The buyers taste it and decide what it’s worth.)

2. I decided to infuse the tea leaves only once. (Usual practice is to infuse green tea two or more times.) The quality of later infusions was too low, I decided. Before this, I had found second and later infusions had been acceptable.

The Willat Effect is working, in other words. After a decade of drinking tea, my practices suddenly changed. I will buy different teas and brew them differently. I will spend a lot more per cup since (a) each cup will require fresh tea, (b) I won’t buy the cheapest tea, and (c) I have become far more interested in green tea, partly because each cup tastes better, partly because I am curious if more expensive varieties taste better. When I bought the three varieties I have now I didn’t bother to learn their names; I identified them by price. In the future I will learn the names.

To get the Willat Effect, the things being compared must be quite similar. For example, comparing green tea with black tea does nothing. I have learned a methodological lesson: That tea is a great medium for studying this not only because it’s cheap but also because you can easily get similar tasting teas by brewing the same tea different lengths of time. I haven’t yet tried different water temperatures but that too might work.

I have done similar things before. I bought several versions of orange marmalade, did side-by-side tastings, and indeed became an orange marmalade connoisseur. After that I bought only expensive versions. After a few side-by-side comparisons of cheese that included expensive cheeses, I stopped buying cheap cheese. You could say I am still an orange marmalade and cheese connoisseur but this has no effect on my current life. Because I avoid sugar, I don’t eat orange marmalade. Because of all the butter I eat, I rarely eat cheese. My budding green tea connoisseurship, however, is making a difference because I drink tea every day.

What's the best way to escape the police in a high-speed car chase?

The following strategies may improve your odds:

• Try to elude the police in a district with a strict pursuit policy. Because of the danger of high-speed pursuits, many districts will call off high-speed chases almost instantly
• Going near the airport or going into tunnels may require helicopters chasing you to give up pursuit
• Cut across a field / go off-road -- cops may try to continue on the road and meet you on the other side. You may be able to escape before they make it around
• Pull ahead of the cops then turn off the road. Repeat with multiple turns and eventually stop and kill your lights.

Simple: Elude law enforcement in a jurisdiction with a strict pursuit policy. In my department, unless a suspect vehicle was an obvious DWI (swerving white line to white line, erratic speed changes) or had committed a violent felony, vehicle pursuits got cancelled by a commander almost instantly. There is so much liability at play in a pursuit situation that many departments are getting very conservative in their response protocols to situations like this.

As far as maneuvering tactics when they're actually pursuing you, there's really no sense diving in - you've got too many things going against you:

• Communication. Every involved officer, as well as their supervisors and their supervisors' supervisors, have radios, both in-car and portable on their person. Can you dial your cell phone and drive with one hand at 120 mph while you coordinate with accomplices miles down the road? Probably not.
• Collaboration. If a pursuit has been sanctioned, the longer it goes on the more officers are going to be in on the hunt. And if you stray toward the boundary of a jurisdiction (city limit, county border, and so on), you're going to get mutual aid response from other agencies, who may be even less restricted than your original pursuers. Have fun with that.
• Convergence. You can go in one direction at a time, but law enforcement response to your location will be omnidirectional. You're going to have LEOs swarming your vehicle from 360 degrees and, if a helicopter gets tossed in the mix, three dimensions. You simply cannot go fast enough to counter this. Even if you were trying to elude the North Dakota Highway Patrol on I-94 in an Italian supercar, you've still got a lot of variables to buck regarding interagency cooperation.
• Contraptions. Hope you've got solid rubber tires, because if the agency gets a lock on your direction of flight, you're getting spiked - and if you hit spikes, you're hosed. You'll drive for a while, because spike strips are designed to puncture tires so they slowly deflate as opposed to blowing out. But once they're flat, driving on them will make them disintegrate; then you're driving on rims. Now you're limited to fifteen to twenty miles per hour, and you're in danger of your vehicle catching fire from the spraying sparks. Meanwhile, the agency is moving the K-9 unit to point position so when you shoulder your smoldering jalopy and make a run for it, Cujo's got less ground to cover before he eats your forearm. Did you think to wear chain mail?
• Concentration. How often do you drive in this manner? Unless you're running because you're on parole, this is likely your first dance. Sure, you've driven fast before - for a while. Then, for whatever reason, you got uncomfortable and backed off. Maybe your car made a sound you got concerned about, maybe you caught a glint you thought might be a trooper's windshield, maybe you thought you heard the faintest pulses of a siren. Whatever it was, it weakened your resolve and you slowed down. You have no such luxury here. And while this is fresh for you, this is, to many of the people pursuing you, another day another dollar. They've trained for this in training scenarios and have been involved in pursuits in the field. They run code multiple times a week. Even if one of your pursuers was a rookie who got eaten up by the stress, there will be a dozen vets to take his place.
• Cognizance. Unless you've lived around and driven on your path of flight for decades, I can almost guarantee you do not know it as well as your pursuers. I drove a hundred miles a night, four nights a week, on the same few dozen streets in my beat. I knew every pothole and curbstone, every back alley and shortcut. Plus, supplementing my knowledge was dispatch, who had a real time, God's eye view of the situation, and who could foreshadow upcoming turns based on officers' GPS and current road conditions.
• Conveyances. Your chosen city of flight may have the rattiest squad cars in the country, but they have the distinct benefit of redundancy. Your escape vehicle is precious, because there is only one. Nuke a tire from hitting spikes or a pothole, and you're roasted. If a patrol car has a blowout, that unit will fall out and be replaced by another. If you think your car can outrun and outlast what will effectively be an infinite number of responding unit vehicles (when you account for interagency involvement), have at it; otherwise, you may need to rethink your day.
• Control. What is your flight plan - are you going to rely on top end speed on the open highway? Or are you going to try to lose responding officers in an intricate series of turns? You've got a tall order ahead either way.

1. First, if you've got something in your hands that can outperform Crown Victoria and Charger interceptors on the interstate, you're going to be relatively easy to spot - you won't be doing this in a stock Toyota. Second, you've got Little Brother to worry about - if you wax someone's doors at double the speed limit, they're probably going to call the police. Instant update to last known location and direction of travel, which allows retriangulation if you managed to create space. You probably haven't, though, because even with vehicles capable of impressive top end speed, there comes a point where the vehicle is so functionally light you can no longer safely operate it in real world driving conditions. My top speed running code in a Crown Vic was 134 mph, which was frankly stupid - the suspension was floating so badly that driving over a heads-up penny probably would have sent me into a terminal fishtail. This all means that, while you may maintain some semblance of distance between yourself and the point car, you're very unlikely to be completely leaving them in your sonic wake.
2. Alternately, if you're banking on turns (you got me, pun intended), you're going to have to keep your head about you. Stress has a tendency to get the better of your attempts at rational thought. Was that three lefts or four? This looks familiar, I'd better go the other way...was that a school crossing sign or a dead end sign? Is Main Street continuous this far south? Which side of the tracks am I on? Ah, now we're cooking with - what? Since when is there a cul-de-sac here? Game over - whether that consists of walking backward at gunpoint or feeling Cujo getting his nom nom nom on.

The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition?

Have you ever flipped a coin as a way of deciding something with another person? The answer is probably yes. And you probably did so assuming you were getting a fair deal, because, as everybody knows, a coin is equally likely to show heads or tails after a single flip—unless it's been shaved or weighted or has a week-old smear of coffee on its underbelly.



So when your friend places a coin on his thumb and says "call it in the air", you realize that it doesn't really matter whether you pick heads or tails. Every person has a preference, of course—heads or tails might feel "luckier" to you—but logically the chances are equal.

Or are they?

Granted, everybody knows that newly-minted coins are born with tiny imperfections, minute deviations introduced by the fabrication process. Everybody knows that, over time, a coin will wear and tear, picking up scratches, dings, dents, bacteria, and finger-grease. And everybody knows that these imperfections can affect the physics of the coin flip, biasing the results by some infinitesimal amount which in practice we ignore.

But let's assume that's not the case.

Let's assume the coin is fabricated perfectly, down to the last vigintillionth of a yoctometer. And, since it's possible to train one's thumb to flip a coin such that it comes up heads or tails a huge percentage of the time, let's assume the person flipping the coin isn't a magician or a prestidigitator. In other words, let's assume both a perfect coin and an honest toss, such as the kind you might make with a friend to decide who pays for lunch.

In that case there's an absolute right and wrong answer to the age-old question...

Heads or tails?

...because the two outcomes of a typical coin flip are not equally likely.

The 50-50 proposition is actually more of a 51-49 proposition, if not worse. The sacred coin flip exhibits (at minimum) a whopping 1% bias, and possibly much more. 1% may not sound like a lot, but it's more than the typical casino edge in a game of blackjack or slots. What's more, you can take advantage of this little-known fact to give yourself an edge in all future coin-flip battles.

The Physics of Coin Flipping

In the 31-page Dynamical Bias in the Coin Toss, Persi Diaconis, Susan Holmes, and Richard Montgomery lay out the theory and practice of coin-flipping to a degree that's just, well, downright intimidating.

Suffice to say their approach involved a lot of physics, a lot of math, motion-capture cameras, random experimentation, and an automated "coin-flipper" device capable of flipping a coin and producing Heads 100% of the time.



Here are the broad strokes of their research:

1. If the coin is tossed and caught, it has about a 51% chance of landing on the same face it was launched. (If it starts out as heads, there's a 51% chance it will end as heads).
2. If the coin is spun, rather than tossed, it can have a much-larger-than-50% chance of ending with the heavier side down. Spun coins can exhibit "huge bias" (some spun coins will fall tails-up 80% of the time).
3. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor, this probably adds randomness.
4. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor where it spins, as will sometimes happen, the above spinning bias probably comes into play.
5. A coin will land on its edge around 1 in 6000 throws, creating a flipistic singularity.
6. The same initial coin-flipping conditions produce the same coin flip result. That is, there's a certain amount of determinism to the coin flip.
7. A more robust coin toss (more revolutions) decreases the bias.

The 51% figure in Premise 1 is a bit curious and, when I first saw it, I assumed it was a minor bias introduced by the fact that the "heads" side of the coin has more decoration than the "tails" side, making it heavier. But it turns out that this sort of imbalance has virtually no effect unless you spin the coin on its edge, in which case you'll see a huge bias. The reason a typical coin toss is 51-49 and not 50-50 has nothing to do with the asymmetry of the coin and everything to do with the aggregate amount of time the coin spends in each state, as it flips through space.

A good way of thinking about this is by looking at the ratio of odd numbers to even numbers when you start counting from 1.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

No matter how long you count, you'll find that at any given point, one of two things will be true:

• You've touched more odd numbers than even numbers
• You've touched an equal amount of odd numbers and even numbers

What will never happen, is this:

• You've touched more even numbers than odd numbers.

Similarly, consider a coin, launched in the "heads" position, flipping heads over tails through the ether:

H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H T H

At any given point in time, either the coin will have spent equal time in the Heads and Tails states, or it will have spent more time in the Heads state. In the aggregate, it's slightly more likely that the coin shows Heads at a given point in time—including whatever time the coin is caught. And vice-versa if you start the coin-flip from the Tails position.

The Strategy of Coin Flipping

Unlike the article on the edge in a game of blackjack mentioned previously, I've never seen a description of "coin flipping strategy" which takes the above science into count. When it's a true 50-50 toss, there is no strategy. But if we take it as granted, or at least possible, that a coin flip does indeed exhibit a 1% or more bias, then the following rules of thumb might apply.

1. Always be the chooser, if possible. This allows you to leverage Premise 1 or Premise 2 for those extra percentage points.
2. Always be the tosser, if you can. This protects you from virtuoso coin-flippers who are able to leverage Premise 6 to produce a desired outcome. It also protects you against the added randomness (read: fairness) introduced by flippers who will occasionally, without rhyme or reason, invert the coin in their palm before revealing. Tricksy Hobbitses.
3. Don't allow the same person to both toss and choose. Unless, of course, that person is you.
4. If the coin is being tossed, and you're the chooser, always choose the side that's initially face down. According to Premise 1, you'd always choose the side that's initially face up, but most people, upon flipping a coin, will invert it into their other palm before revealing. Hence, you choose the opposite side, but you get the same 1% advantage. Of course, if you happen to know that a particular flipper doesn't do this, use your better judgment.
5. If you are the tosser but not the chooser, sometimes invert the coin into your other palm after catching, and sometimes don't. This protects you against people who follow Rule 4 blindly by assuming you'll either invert the coin or you won't.
6. If the coin is being spun rather than tossed, always choose whichever side is lightest. On a typical coin, the "Heads" side of the coin will have more "stuff" engraved on it, causing Tails to show up more frequently than it should. Choosing Tails in this situation is usually the power play.
7. Never under any circumstances agree to a coin spin if you're not the chooser. This opens you up to a devastating attack if your opponent is aware of Premise 2.

I hope I've made it clear that none of this is really to be taken seriously. The point is that adding even 1% of wobble to a situation of pure chance can create a lot of additional complexity, and that in turn, can create strategy where none existed before.

Commons in a taxonomy of goods

Commons are common pool resources. Commons are common goods. Commons are social relationships. You can find all of these descriptions for the term. Which is the correct one? All three versions are valid—at the same time!

The word „common“ is the best starting point for the analysis. The common thing within a commons are the resources, which are used and cared for, are the goods resulting from joint activities, and are the social relationships emerging from acting together. These three aspects are so different for all commons, that no one could describe them in a reasonably complete manner.

Commons are at odds with commodities, although a commodity is a good which is produced in a specific social form using resources. But it is usual that traditional economics only consider resources as social forms of production in a marginal way or even not in any way. I will try to overcome this limitation by using the following taxonomy of goods [Illustration 1]. I decide to put the concept of „good“ into the center, while describing from the triple definition explained above: as a common good, as a resource and as a social form.



Illustration 1: Proposed taxonomy of „goods“

In the adjoining illustration a good is designated by five dimensions. Beside the already mentioned dimensions resource and social form, there are constitution, usage and legal form. They will be presented in the following paragraphs of this document. After that I will emphasize the characteristics of commons once again.
Constitution

The constitution describes the type materiality of a good. We can found two types: material and non-material goods.

Material goods have a physical shape, they can be used up or crushed out. Purpose and physical constitution are linked with each other, material goods perform their purpose only by their physical constitution. If the physical constitution gets dismantled the purpose also gets lost.

On the other hand non-material goods are completely decoupled from a specific physical shape. This contains services defined by a coincidence of production and consumption as well as preservable non-material goods. In fact, a service often leads to a material result (haircut, draft text etc.), but the service itself finishes by establishing the product, i.e. it has been consumed. Now the result is falling into a material good category.

Preservable non-material goods need a physical carrier. Having non-digital („analog“) goods the bonding of the good to a specific material constitution of the carrier can yet be tight (e.g. the analog piece of music on the audiotape or disk record), while digital goods are largely independent from the carrier medium (e.g. the digital piece of music on an arbitrary digital medium).

Usage

The usage has got two sub-dimensions: excludability and rivalry. They grasp aspects of access and concurrent utilization.

A good can only be used exclusively, if the access to the good is generally prevented and selectively allowed (e.g. if a „bagel“ is bought). It can be used inclusively, thus non-exclusively, if the access is possible for all people (e.g. Wikipedia). The usage of a good is rival or rivalrous, if using the good by one person restricts or prevents use options for other people (e.g. listening to music by earphones). A usage is non-rival, if this does not result in limitations for others (e.g. a physical formula).

The usage scheme is used by classical economists as the authoritative charateristic for goods. But it is far too narrow-minded. It combines two aspects which in fact occur together with usage while the causes are completely different. The exclusion is a result of an explicit activity of excluding people, thus closely linked with the social form. On the other hand, the rivalry is closely linked with the constitution of the good—indeed, an apple can only be eaten once, for the next consumption a new apple is needed.

Resources

The production of goods requires resources. Though sometimes nothing is produced, already existing resources are used and maintained. In this case the resource itself is the good, which is considered to be preserved—for instance a lake. We can usually find some mixed case , because no produced good can go without the resource of knowledge which has been created and disposed by others. By resources, we generally understand non humans sources .

In the illustration, natural and produced resources are distinguished. Natural resources are already existing and raw resources which, however, are seldom found in uninfluenced environments. Produced resources are material or non-material created preconditions for further use in the production of goods or resources in the broadest sense.

Social form

The social form describes the way of (re-)production and the relations that humans commit to each other when doing so. Three social forms of (re-)production have to be distinguished: commodity, subsistence, and commons.

A good becomes a commodity, if it is produced in a general way for the exchange (selling) on markets. Exchanging has to occur because, in capitalism, production is a private activity and each producer produce separated from the others and all are ruled by competition and profit searching. The measure of exchange is the value, which is the average socially necessary abstract labor being required to produce the commodity in certain historical moment. The medium of exchange is money. The measure of usage is the use value being the „other side“ of the (exchange) value. Thus, a commodity is a social form, it is the indirect exchange-mediated way of how goods obtain general societal validity. Preconditions are scarcity and exclusion from the access of the commodity, because otherwise exchange will not happen.

A good maintains the form of subsistence, if it is not produced in a general way for others, but only for personal use or benefit of personally known others (family, friends etc.). Here, exchange does not occur or only for exceptional cases, but the good is relayed, taken, and given—following any immediately agreed social rule. A transition form to commodity is barter, the direct non-money mediated exchange of goods.

A good becomes a commons, if it is generally produced or maintained for others. The good is not exchanged and the usage is generally bound to fixed socially agreed rules. It is produced or maintained for general others insofar as it neither has be personal-determined others (like with subsistence) nor exclusively abstract others with no further relationship to them (like with commodity), but concrete communities agreeing on rules of usage and
maintenance of the commons.

Legal form

The legal form shows the possible juridical codes which a good can be subjected to: private property, collective property, and free good. Legal arrangements are necessary under the conditions of societal mediation of partial interests, they form a regulating framework of social interaction. As soon as general interests are part of the way of (re-)production itself, legal forms can step back in favor of concrete socially agreed rules as it is the case within the commons.

Private property is a legal form, which defines the act of disposal of an owner over a thing with exclusive control over the property. The property abstracts from the constitution of the thing as well as from the concrete possession. Private property can be merchandise, can be sold or commercialized.

Collective property is collectively owned private property or private property for collective purposes. Among them, there are common property and public (state) property. All designations of private property are basically valid here. There are various forms of collective property, for instance stock corporation, house owner community, nationally-owned enterprise.

Free goods (also: Res nullius, Terra nullius or no man’s land) are legally or socially unregulated goods under free access. The often cited „Tragedy of Commons“ is a tragedy of no man’s land, which is overly used or destroyed due to missing rules of usage. Such no man’s lands do exist yet today, e.g. in high-sea or deep-sea.

Commons—jointly creating the life

Peter Linebaugh puts the inseparable connection of good and social activity into one sentence: „There is no commons without commoning“—commons can not exist without a respective social practice of a community. The size of the community is therefore not fixed. It considerably depends on the re-/produced resource. The re-/production of a local wood will presumably be taken over by a local community, while the preservation of the world climate certainly needs the constitution of a global community. In that case the state can supersede the community role by fiduciary taking over the re-/production of the resource. But this is not the sole possible option.

The size of the community as well as the rules depend on the character of the resource. For a threatened wooded area it is reasonable to agree upon more restrictive rules of use than for a resource which can easily be copied. Free software, for instance, can be unhesitatingly determined to be available under a free access regime, thus a social rule of use which explicitly does not exclude anybody.

The „freedom“ of plundering and exploitation, which commonly occurs under the regime of separated private production of goods as commodities, does find its limitation at the freedom of others to use the resource. Especially by preventing random plundering of a used-up resource, the needs of general others who currently do not use the resource, are included. The community being connected very closely to the resource is only appointed to produce and reproduce the resource in a way that is generally useful. It is their „task“ to pass over the resource to further generations in an improved manner. However, there is no guarantee that the destruction of the resource will happen anyway. The history of capitalism is also a history of violent destruction and privatization of the commons.

Within the commons, production and reproduction can hardly be separated. The production serves their reproduction at the same time. In case of used-up resources, rules of usage make sure that the resource can regenerate itself, or in case of copyable digital goods, that the social network producing the resource is maintained. However, it has to be distinguished between a common pool resource as such and goods which are produced on the basis of a resource. Produced goods can become commodities if they are sold on markets. It is the goal of socially agreed rules of use within the community to limit the use of the resource and to prevent that it is overly used and gets finally destroyed.

There have always been commons in human history. However, its historical role and function has changed dramatically. In former times commons had been a general fundament of human livelihood, while with the uprising of class societies they have been integrated into different regimes of exploitation. Capitalism is a climax of exploiting general human living conditions, which—carried by an abstract notion of freedom—is not able to guarantee survival of the human species. This is due to the fact, that common interests are not part of the way of production but have to be additionally coined onto the blind acting of partial interests via law and state. Therefore, it is necessary to aim at a new socially regulated way of production, where common interests are part of the way of production itself.

Moreover, capitalism has cut off essential moments of production from societal life and banned it into a sphere of reproduction. Production as „economy“ and reproduction as „private life“ have been separated. Private production is structurally blind and only mediated afterward. Therefore it could only expand at the expense of subsistence and commons production which in turn are needed to compensate the (physical and psychic) consequences of „economy“. Private production has always pointed to a complementing subsistence and commons production, it permanently takes from the sphere of commons without giving anything back.

The Commons has the potential to replace the commodity as the determining form of re-/producing societal living conditions. Such a replacement can only occur, if communities constitute themselves for every aspect of life, in order to take „their“ commons back and to reintegrate them into a new need-focused logic of re-/production.

A taxonomy of customer experiences

When we started to explore a “customer experience” approach to understanding customer requirements and needs one of our first steps was to create a taxonomy of customer experiences. The idea was to help development teams systematically deconstruct (i.e. “unpack”) the ways a customer could experience their new products and services (and everything wrapped around these new products/services) and so provide a new tool in designing a winning customer experience. We identified six types of customer experiences:



One obvious insight from this taxonomy is that there is a lot more involved with a customer’s total experience with a product or service (and the company that provides it) than just the functional utility and use experience. While it is important to pay attention to functional experiences (and they are often the dominant experience element), you ignore the others at your peril since one (or more) of them may be a critical differentiator driving a buy decision. We all know the famous quote from marketing guru Ted Levitt - “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill …they want a quarter-inch hole” . But that ignores a whole class of serious home craftsmen who buy their tools because of the aesthetics of the design or the “professional feeling” they get when using them or the good story line they provide when talking with peers.

Now clearly the different types of customer experiences are not necessarily independent for a given offering, particularly around the functional element - e.g. for Wikipedia the functional experience is all about content (and content delivery) and for a corporate investment instrument the financial experience is what functionality is all about. But we believe this potential overlap is much less important than the insight that functional performance is not the be-all and end-all of what is important to customers, particularly as you consider their experiences at other points along the full experience cycle from purchase to installation through use and servicing to final disposal (we will say more about the customer experience cycle in our next post.)

Networks Versus Groups in Higher education

Blending Groups and Networks in Higher Education
A pervasive ‘buzz’ in education these days relates to development of ‘blended learning” (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004) . In most cases the ‘blending’ refers to developing educational programs that employ an appropriate mix of face-to-face and online activities. However, this use of the term implies that it is the tool rather than the activity that defines learning outcomes. While not wishing to prolong the decades old debate about the relative importance to learning between tool and its use or design (see (Clark, 1994); (Kozma, 1994), it is apparent that it is not just the use of online tools that makes a difference to learning, but how they are used. In this paper I argue that notions of blending should expand to include blending network and group based learning models and activities. These activities may take place on line or face-to-face, but just as groups developed naturally in face-to-face contexts, networks are native to the global digital network we call the Web.

A Model of Networked Learning
In an attempt to provide a guiding heuristic for learning in a net infused context, my colleague Jon Dron and I (Dron & Anderson, 2007) have developed a model for network learning that focuses on learning in three “aggregations of the many”.

In brief, the model illustrates three levels of aggregation of learners in either formal or informal learning. The most familiar level is the group. Groups are cohesive and often have formal lines of authority and roles, such as designated chair/chairperson, team leader teacher, enrolled student etc. Groups consist of individuals who see themselves as part of that group. Groups are often structured around particular tasks or activities that may be term-based or ongoing. Groups may institute various levels of access control to restrict participation, review of group artifacts or transcripts to members so as to provide a less public domain in which to operate. Group members often use and create opportunities to meet face-to-face or online through group synchronous activities. Groups are more or less tightly knit teams of individuals who are committed to each other and usually to a task or tasks. Classic examples of groups include online education classes and short or long term business teams.

The second level of the “many” is the network. Networks connect distributed individuals. (Koper, Rusman& Sloep, 2005) define A Learning Network as “an ensemble of actors, institutions and learning resources which are mutually connected through and supported by information and communication technologies in such a way that the network self-organizes”(P. 18). Learners may be connected to other learners either directly or indirectly and may not even be aware of all those who form part of the wider network. The shape of the network is emergent, not designed. Most of us are members of many networks. Some are associated with religions, (church congregations), sports (home town fans), hobbies and interests (car clubs) vocations (school teachers or members of the chamber of Commerce) and many other networks. Entry and exit to networks is usually easy and persons drift in and out of network activity and participation based on relevance, time availability and other personal constraints. Many of the social networking sites such as FaceBook, Linked In and MySpace are recent web examples of network support and facilitation tools, but earlier email lists and threaded discussions can also support networked learning.

The final level of aggregation of the Many is collectives. Collectives are machine-aggregated representations of the activities of large number of individuals. They achieve value by extracting information from the individual, group, and network activities of large numbers of networked users. Commercial examples of collectives include recommender systems such as Amazon’s book recommendations that are derived from aggregating and comparing books I have ordered with the purchases of thousands of others and deriving recommendations for further purchase. There are many so called web 2.0 applications that create value through aggregation and analysis of collective activities such as user clickthroughs (Google Pageranks), information contributions (Wikipedia), photo and video tags and downloads (Flickre, Utube), article evaluations (Digg, SlashDot) and consumer rating services (ratemtyteacher.ca). Collective behavior can be as easy to extract as mere participation on the Net at individual, group or network levels. This data is harvested and aggregated to create collective knowledge. For example storing one’s favorite net resources on a social bookmarking site such as del.icio.us can have individual benefit as the resource can easily be retrieved, organized and managed by that individual owner. These resources, especially when they are aggregated with recommendations from others, could be very useful to group or network members. Moreover, when large numbers of resources are sorted, annotated and rated by many, the resultant resource listing gains considerable collective value.

Figure 1 illustrates these three social aggregations with the individual learner in the centre.



Figure 1. Taxonomy of the Many (Dron & Anderson, 2007)

Challenges of Groups
Group learning has been the norm for formal education for at least two centuries. It is thus a familiar model for learners, teachers and education administrators. There is considerable evidence demonstrating the increase in completion and participation rates in group-based formal learning activities as compared to individual learning models (Coldeway, 1986); (Anderson, Annand& Wark, 2005) . However, these advantages are traded off by restrictions in access (group cohorts commence only a few times a year and are arbitrarily paced) and many group activities include face-to-face meetings. As importantly, group leadership and direction by teachers can inhibit the development of self directed learning skills (Hiemstra, 1994). Group learning is also associated with the establishment and propagation of various ‘hidden curricula’ in higher education much of which is designed to extend hegemony of particular groups and classes often at he expense of others (Margolis, 2001).
Finally the group as an ideal organizational type in formal education has been grossly extended to include large lecture theatres in which students may share physical space for a semester of meetings, but have almost no personal contact nor even hear the expression of personal viewpoints or arguments of their peers. Thus, the group as both an ideal and as practiced can be a problematic form of organization in higher education that at least needs to be supplemented by other models of human organization.

The Network solution
In the following section I present the main arguments for the inclusion of networked learning opportunities in higher education programming. The most compelling arguments to date arise from the value of weak connections, increases in social capital and the development of lifelong learning skills.

Enhanced development of social capital
The concept of social capital has gained currency among both researchers and the public since Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1986) differentiated among economic, cultural and social forms of capital and Robert Puttman (Putman, 2000) deplored the loss of social capital in his book Bowling Alone. Generally the possession of social capital, like other forms of capital, allows individuals and groups to accomplish their goals because they can draw on the resources, support and encouragement of resources – in this case human beings. Sandefur and Lauman (Sandefur & Laumann, 1988) argue that social capital confers three major benefits upon its owners. These are information, influence and control, and social solidarity. Unlike economic capital though, social capital is not depleted through use, rather just the opposite occurs. The more we use our social capital, the stronger and larger it becomes. Like other sociological notions, social capital was initially developed and measured in face-to-face interaction. Now, there is considerable interest in the capacity to build and use social capital in both blended and online contexts and particularly in online educational contexts. For example, Daniel, Schwier & McCalla (Daniel, Schwier& McCalla, 2003) note how increase in social capital is associated with increases in “norms of reciprocity through which learners become more willing to help one another, and which improve coordination and dissemination of information and knowledge sharing.”

A number of authors have differentiated between types of social capital. Bonding social capital serves to increase and enhance reciprocity and connectedness among homogeneous groups of people. While bridging capital is used to develop supportive relationships and links across cultural or geographic divides creating new social relationships. Ellison, Steinfield & Lampe (Ellison, Steinfield& Lampe, 2007) in an investigation of Facebook, identified a third subtype of social capital which they referred to as “maintained social capital” that operates to sustain relationship among people who were formally geographically connected, but now use social networks to retain social relationships.
While both groups and networks are used to grow social capital, networks with their wider reach and greater capacity to connect distributed and socially disparate members, will be more effective at creating at least bridging and maintained forms of social capital.

Many learners loosely tied
Internet scholars (Wellman, Boase& Chen, 2002) have written about the distinction between ‘dense bounded groups’ and ‘sparse unbounded networks’. This work flowed from the study of informal organizations in wired communities but I believe that similar forces are at work in the socializing modes found in networked based groups and networks. Wellman et al. found that group and networked relationships are common in both work and community contexts. He also notes that groups are most associated with locally bound communities in which relationship evolves through proximity – even in the absence of choice. We are forced to interact with those we live, work and attend class with regardless of any affection or interest. Distributed networks, of course, eliminate this constraint and allow us to form both networks and groups with people who may be very widely physically distributed.

Beyond physical proximity, networks are supportive of the creation of weak bonds (Granovetter, 1973) that serve as bridging connections to other groups and networks. Networks often have higher percentages of weak ties, then strong ties, but each type of tie has comparable advantages and disadvantages. Strong ties are associated with closeness, multiplexity (multiple forms of interaction), higher levels of intimacy, immediacy and frequency of interaction. These are generally positive attributes but strong links can also lead to “amplified reciprocity” where individual freedom is constrained due to obligations of mutual support and inertia and lack of interest in building relationships outside of the group (Gargiulo & Benassi, 2000). Networks and other organizational models of human organization associated with weak ties offer greater diversity, provide wider and less redundant sources of information and opinion and serve to increase individual and community forms of bridging capital (Ellison et al., 2007) . Finally, Gargiulo & Benassi found that the development of social capital is not directly related to the creation of stable and secure strong ties, rather “managers with cohesive communication networks were less likely to adapt these networks to the change in coordination requirements prompted by their new assignments, which in turn jeopardized their role as facilitators.”p.183. In rapidly changing contexts the creation of social capital remains important, but change requires flexibility and the diversity more often associated with weak ties than more stable, strong relationships. Moreover Burt (Burt, 1997) argues that these weak ties allow for exploitation of “structural holes” or disconnections that allow the nimble to exploit opportunities “to broker the flow of information between people and control the form of projects that bring together people from opposite sides of the hole”( p 340). Thus creating personal and community opportunities to create knowledge and wealth.

Lifelong learning Skills Development
It has become a well-used truism to note that citizens must always be lifelong learners, learning throughout their lives in order to maintain currency, employment and relevancy in the context of a rapidly changing knowledge based society. Rather than immersion in full time study for a few pre-professional years of postsecondary education, it is argued that learners need to develop skills, attitudes and connections that will afford their participation in many forms of learning throughout their lives. Most educational groups and especially those that are institutionally organized and led by professional teachers, end very abruptly at graduation. Networks, however persist and can be used as the basis of lifelong and professional education and learning as long as the participants remain in networked relationship. Further, networks with participants from professional practice and pre-professional students serve to connect the often theoretical study of the classroom with the everyday problems and challenges of real life. Networks provide opportunities for mentoring, for recommendations, for posting queries and requests for help that are heard beyond the confines and protected environs of group based learning. The capacity to add value and gain recognition within a network also serves students when they complete their studies. They are not only established with membership in a set of existing networks, but more importantly they have experienced and practiced the skills needed to effectively use networks throughout their professional careers.

Global collaborations – Networks support connected learning on both local and global scales. Recent interest in global warning illustrates the growing awareness of the connectedness of all who inhabit our globe. Many global problems will not be resolved in the absence of global dialogue and globally coordinated efforts. Networks afford opportunities for learners to associate, negotiate, plan and execute projects, on a global scale with other learners. For example the centre for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (http://www.ciese.org/collabprojs.html) coordinates a range of projects that allow learners around the globe to share data collection and analysis in areas such as water and air quality, real-time weather, genetic variations in human body size and other challenging and intrinsically interesting study of real life science.

Although more commonly associated with informal and non-formal learning, networks offer flexibility, exposure and social building that warrant more serious consideration for the adoption of network models in formal education. The most widely known research related to networks in workplace contexts is the work of Etienne Wenger on what he refers to as communities of practice. COPs usually consist of co-workers, located at a common workplace who develop and share their skills as needed, thereby creating solutions to common problems. In the process of completing tasks with common aim, they develop mutually defining identities, shared jargon and “shared discourse reflecting a certain perspective on the world” (Wenger, 1998) p. 125). Learning networks however are not defined as much by a shared location or description of work, but rather by an individual’s need for task performance, learning, advice or interpersonal support. The type of support or aide required causes the learning network to constantly morph its structure, frequency of interaction among members and communication tone in response to these tasks.

Networking Tools
I have written about the affordances of social software that are most often contained in software tools designed to support Networks (Anderson, 2005); (Anderson, 2006) and so will just briefly list them here. Networking tools must allow users to find each other. This is most usually done by disclosure of personal attributes (addresses, workplaces, interests, skills, hobbies etc) in personal profiles. As importantly network members discover each other though their comments and contributions to network discussions and resource collections. Discourse tools including blog postings and threaded discussion, also allow members to enhance their personal reputations and publicly develop their own thoughts and opinions. Network environments usually provide spaces and tools to collaborate, store and display project work. They also provide calendars and other means by which network members can meet each other –face-to-face or online. Finally, network environments provide tools that members use to recommend, organize, annotate and endorse collections of resources and artifacts that other network members will find of value in their work or play.

Network Privacy
The flow of members in and out of network relationships gives rise to concerns about privacy and sharing of information. Anecdotal, popular press and research studies indicate that many users of networking sites are not overly concerned with the privacy implications of public disclosure. In a 2005 study at Carnegie Melon University of over 4,000 students registered on Facebook, Gross, Acquisti, & Heinz, found “only a small number of members change the default privacy preferences, which are set to maximize the visibility of users profiles”. It is interesting to speculate the reasons why users are not more actively constraining the visibility of private content. It is likely not because of lack of awareness of the problem, given the coverage in the popular press on issues related to identity theft and, cyber- stalking. In a 2007 qualitative study of Facebook users Strater and Richter found that “”While users do not underestimate the privacy threats of online disclosures, they do misjudge the extent, activity, and accessibility of their social networks.” Rather, network users realize that constraining access to personal views, artifacts and information, serves to reduce the benefit of networking software in connecting them to new ideas and friends and in the growth of their individual social capital.

Identity exposure is especially relevant to institutional use of networks where restriction of access of data is often controlled by legislation. In my own institution, I have had to argue that although we are not authorized to release personal information about our students, we also do not have the right to deny a person their right to expose data about themselves. Since degree of concern over privacy is very much an individual variable, it seems the only solution to these concerns is to let learners control directly the degree of exposure they wish over their own information. This capacity to control permissions to both postings and personal data (accessible to everyone, including search engines, no one as a private diary, to those registered students, to those in a program or class, to only two or three designated friends) is the major reason why we have chosen the ELGG.ORG software suite to support social learning trails at Athabasca University.

Networked learning activities
There are many learning activities that can be imported from familiar group contexts or developed based on the unique affordances of networked learning. In many cases discussions, debates, critiques and presentations benefit when the audience is expanded beyond the group. These less homogenous contributions add authenticity and divergence of opinion that is often the basis for enhanced motivation and learning. Networks can be used effectively to expand learning beyond course-based groups. This expansion most easily includes students and faculty enrolled in the program but who are not or who have already completed a course of studies. These alumni add experience and diversity to networked deliberation. Expansion to professional groups is perhaps most valuable in professional faculties, but even general studies can benefit from the experience of professionals who are in practice, have retired or have even chosen to resign from professional life for which they trained. As noted earlier the web’s global connectivity and data collection capacity can be used to design new learning activities. Data collected, shared and analyzed in global contexts creates an expanded context that is inherently more valuable, fascinating and motivating then similar activities engaged on in only a local context.

Disruptive Networks
Informal networked learning presents both a challenge and an opportunity for formal education institutions. As more open and freely available educational resources become available the monopoly of formal institutions over content of learning is weakened. Similarly, as learners are able to connect with each other without mediation by employees of a formal educational institution they gain capacity to collaborate, share, stimulate and support individual cooperative and collaborative forms of informal learning. Finally, the interest by governments, professional bodies and employers in measuring and tracking competencies as opposed to credentials fundamentally threatens this last remaining monopoly of formal educational institutions (see for example (Richards, Hatala& Donkers, 2006)

Networked informal learning acts as profoundly disruptive technology to formal education institutions. Christensen described disruptive, as opposed to sustaining technologies as those that are “typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use.” (Christensen, 1997) p. xv). Since nearly all informal networked learning is completely free to the learner, it is obvious cheaper than institutionally provided learning opportunities. Informal learning is chunked, sequenced and scheduled by the learner themselves thus, creating appropriate sized and simpler opportunities to engage in learning. Finally, the ubiquitous access to content, fellow learners and automated agent assistants (Anderson & Whitelock, 2004) greatly increases both the efficacy and the convenience of informal networked learning.

The networked learning’s disruptive qualities are creating what Benkler (2006) describes as “A flourishing non-market sector of information, knowledge and cultural production … Its outputs are not treated as exclusive property. They are instead subject to an increasingly robust ethic of open sharing, open for all others to build on, extend and to own.” (Benkler, 2006 p.7) In earlier work we (Archer, Garrison & Anderson, 1999) described how formal institutions can use Extension and faculty support units to mobilize formal educational institutions to exploit the affordances of the Net. However, we note cynically that since the time of writing (at least in Canada) such semi-autonomous, outreach units are as likely to have closed as to have flourished. Thus, demonstrating the challenges that formal education has to embrace and benefit from the affordances of Networks.

Conclusion
Networks offer increased opportunities for the growth of social capital, for globally relevant distributed learning and for increased involvement and engagement of higher education in the world beyond the ‘ivory tower’. The power of networking tools, plus the relevance and popularity of networked learning activities provide motivation for higher education institutions to move beyond groups, to include networked forms of organization in their instruction and learning programming.

Anderson, T. (2005). Distance learning: Social software’s Killer app? Paper presented at the ODLAA, Adelaide Retrieved Dec. 2005 from www.unisa.edu.au/odlaaconference/PPDF2s/13%20odlaa%20-%20Anderson.pdf.
Anderson, T. (2006). Higher education evolution: Individual freedom afforded by educational social software. In M. Beaudoin (Ed.), Perspectives on the Future of Education in the Digital Age (pp. 77-90). New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Anderson, T., Annand, D., & Wark, N. (2005). The Search for Learning Community in Learner-Paced Distance Education Programming Or “Having Your Cake and Eating It, Too!”. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 21(2), 222-241 Retrived Dec. 2007 from http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet21/res/anderson.html.
Anderson, T., & Whitelock, D. (2004). The Educational Semantic Web: Visioning and Practicing the Future of Education. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1 Retrieved Dec. 2007 from http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2004/1.
Archer, W., Garrison, D. R., & Anderson, T. (1999). Adopting disruptive technologies in traditional universities: Continuing education as an incubator for innovation. Canadian Journal for University Continuing Education, 25(1), 13-30 Retrieved Sept. 2006 from http://www.extension.usask.ca/CJUCE/eng/Ab251.html.
Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale: Yale University Press. Retrieved June 2006 from http://habitat.igc.org/wealth-of-networks/
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241-258). New York: Greenwood Press.
Burt, R. (1997). The contingent value of social capital. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(2), 339-366
Christensen, C. (1997). The innovator’s dilemma – When new technologies cause great firms to fail. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Clark, R. E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(2), 21-29
Coldeway, D. (1986). Learner characteristics and success. In I. Mugridge & D. Kaufman (Eds.), Distance Education in Canada (pp. 81-93). Dover, NH: Croom Helm.
Daniel, B., Schwier, R., & McCalla, G. (2003). Social capital in virtual learning communities and distributed communities of practice. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology., 29(3) Retrieved Jan. 2006 from www.cjlt.ca/content/vol29.3/cjlt29-3_art7.html.
Dron, J., & Anderson, T. (2007). Collectives, Networks and Groups in Social Software for E-Learning. Paper presented at the Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education Quebec Retrieved Feb. 2008 from www.editlib.org/index.cfm/files/paper_26726.pdf.
Ellison, N., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Studentsí Use of Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1143-1168 Retrieved Dec. 2007 from http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x.
Gargiulo, M., & Benassi, M. (2000). Trapped in your own net? Network cohesion, structural holes, and the adaptation of social capital. Organization Science, 11(2), 183-196
Garrison, D. R., & Kanuka, H. (2004). Blended learning: Uncovering its transformative potential in higher education. Internet and Higher Education, 7(2), 95-105
Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360-1380
Hiemstra, R. (1994). Self-Directed Learning. In T. Husen & T. Postlethwaite (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Koper, R., Rusman, E., & Sloep, P. (2005). Effective learning networks. Lifelong Learning in Europe, 1(18-27) Retrieved Feb. 2008 from dspace.ou.nl/handle/1820/304.
Kozma, R. (1994). Will media influence learning? Reframing the debate. Educational Technology Research & Development, 42(2), 7-19
Margolis, E. (2001). The hidden curriculum of higher education. London: Routledge.
Putman, R. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Touchstone.
Richards, G., Hatala, M., & Donkers, P. (2006). Campus Canada Records of Learning: Secure validation of competence assertions. Paper presented at the Proceedings of International Workshop in Learning Networks for Lifelong Competence Development. from Retrieved Jan. 2008 from http://dspace.learningnetworks.org
Sandefur, R., & Laumann, E. (1988). A paradigm for social capital. Rationality and Society, 10(4), 481-501
Wellman, B., Boase, J., & Chen, W. (2002). THE NETWORKED NATURE OF COMMUNITY: ONLINE AND OFFLINE. IT&SOCIETY, 1(1) Retrived Oct. 2006 from http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/itandsociety/v01i01/v01i01a10.pdf.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Taxonomy of Philanthropy

Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies

How to Write a Book in Three Days: Lessons from Michael Moorcock

In the early days of Michael Moorcock's 50-plus-years career, when he was living paycheck-to-paycheck, he wrote a whole slew of action-adventure sword-and-sorcery novels very, very quickly, including his most famous books about the tortured anti-hero Elric. In 1992, he published a collection of interviews conducted by Colin Greenwood called Michael Moorcock: Death is No Obstacle, in which he discusses his writing method. In the first chapter, "Six Days to Save the World", he says those early novels were written in about "three to ten days" each, and outlines exactly how one accomplishes such fast writing.
This is not the best way to write every novel, or even most novels. Moorcock used it specifically to write sword-and-sorcery action-adventure, but I think it could be applied more-or-less to any kind of potboiler. Once Moorcock himself had perfected this method, he became bored with it and moved on, restlessly playing with one genre and style after another, and turning in some of his best work, including the literary fiction Mother London (shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize) and the quasi-historical romance Gloriana. (Which took him six whole weeks to write!) The rest of Death is No Obstacle is about writing in these other forms.

So all of the quotes below are from just the first chapter of the book. I cannot recommend enough for fiction writers to hunt themselves down a copy (it's sadly out of print) and studying it, especially if you want to understand the purpose of form and structure in fiction. If you want to think of this post as a naked advertisement for this brilliant book, I'm okay with that.
To be clear: This is not my advice. This is Michael Moorcock's advice. I have never written a book in three days. I am planning on making the attempt, however, on the weekend of September 18th, which is Jewish New Years (Rosh Hashanah), and the next time in my calendar when I'll have three days straight with nothing else to do. Digesting this material is part of my preparation.

How to Write a Book in Three Days

• "If you're going to do a piece of work in three days, you have to have everything properly prepared."
• "[The formula is] The Maltese Falcon. Or the Holy Grail. You use the quest theme, basically. In The Maltese Falcon it's a lot of people after the same thing, which is the Black Bird. In Mort D'Arthur it's also a lot of people after the same thing, which is the Holy Grail. That's the formula for Westerns too: everybody's after the gold of El Dorado or whatever." (Cf the MacGuffin.)
• "The formula depends on that sense of a human being up against superhuman forces, whether it's Big Business, or politics, or supernatural Evil, or whatever. The hero is fallible in their terms, and doesn't really want to be mixed up with them. He's always just about to walk out when something else comes along that involves him on a personal level." (An example of this is when Elric's wife gets kidnapped.)
• "There is an event every four pages, for example -- and notes. Lists of things you're going to use. Lists of coherent images; coherent to you or generically coherent. You think: 'Right, Stormbringer [a novel in the Elric series]: swords; shields; horns", and so on."
• "[I prepared] A complete structure. Not a plot, exactly, but a structure where the demands were clear. I knew what narrative problems I had to solve at every point. I then wrote them at white heat; and a lot of it was inspiration: the image I needed would come immediately [when] I needed it. Really, it's just looking around the room, looking at ordinary objects and turning them into what you need. A mirror: a mirror that absorbs the souls of the damned."
• "You need a list of images that are purely fantastic: deliberate paradoxes, say: the City of Screaming Statues, things like that. You just write a list of them so you've got them there when you need them. Again, they have to cohere, have the right resonances, one with the other."
• "The imagery comes before the action, because the action's actually unimportant. An object to be obtained -- limited time to obtain it. It's easily developed, once you work the structure out."
• "Time is the important element in any action adventure story. In fact, you get the action and adventure out of the element of time. It's a classic formula: "We've only got six days to save the world!" Immediately you've set the reader up with a structure: there are only six days, then five, then four and finally, in the classic formula anyway, there's only 26 seconds to save the world! Will they make it in time?"
• "Once you've started, you keep it rolling. You can't afford to have anything stop it."
• "The whole reason you plan everything beforehand is so that when you hit a snag, a desperate moment, you've actually got something there on your desk that tells you what to do."
• "I was also planting mysteries that I hadn't explained to myself. The point is, you put in the mystery, it doesn't matter what it is. It may not be the great truth that you're going to reveal at the end of the book. You just think, I'll put this in here because I might need it later."
• "You start off with a mystery. Every time you reveal a bit of it, you have to do something else to increase it. A good detective story will have the same thing. "My God, so that's why Lady Carruthers's butler Jenkins was peering at the keyhole that evening. But where was Mrs. Jenkins?"
• "What I do is divide my total 60,000 words into four sections, 15,000 words apiece, say; then divide each into six chapters. ... In section one the hero will say, "There's no way I can save the world in six days unless I start by getting the first object of power". That gives you an immediate goal, and an immediate time element, as well as an overriding time element. With each section divided into six chapters, each chapter must then contain something which will move the action forward and contribute to that immediate goal. "Very often it's something like: attack of the bandits -- defeat of the bandits -- nothing particularly complex, but it's another way you can achieve recognition: by making the structure of a chapter a miniature of the overall structure of the book, so everything feels coherent. The more you're dealing with incoherence, with chaos, the more you need to underpin everything with simple logic and basic forms that will keep everything tight. Otherwise the thing just starts to spread out into muddle and abstraction.
  "So you don't have any encounter without information coming out of it. In the simplest form, Elric has a fight and kills somebody, but as they die they tell him who kidnapped his wife. Again, it's a question of economy. Everything has to have a narrative function."
• [On "The Lester Dent Master Plot Formula"]¹ "First, he says, split your six-thousand-word story up into four fifteen hundred word parts. Part one, hit your hero with a heap of trouble. Part two, double it. Part three, put him in so much trouble there's no way he could ever possibly get out of it. Then -- now this could be Lester Dent or it could be what I learnt when I was on Sexton Blake Library, I forget -- you must never have a revelation of something that wasn't already established; so, you couldn't unmask a murderer who wasn't a character established already. All your main characters have to be in the first third. All you main themes and everything else has to be established in the first third, devloped in the second third, and resolved in the last third." (Note: this last sentence is reminiscent of the classic three-act structure.) (Note 2: Lester Dent's Master Plot Formula is actually a bit more complex and specific than this. Here it is in its entirety.)
• "There's always a sidekick to make the responses the hero isn't allowed to make: to get frightened; to add a lighter note; to offset the hero's morbid speeches, and so on.
  ...
  The hero has to supply the narrative dynamic, and therefore can't have any common-sense. Any one of us in those circumstances would say, 'What? Dragons? Demons? You've got to be joking!' The hero has to be driven, and when people are driven, common sense disappears. You don't want your reader to make common sense objections, you want them to go with the drive; but you've got to have somebody around who'll act as a sort of chorus."
• "'When in doubt, descend into a minor character.' So when you've reached an impasse, and you can't move the action any further with your major character, switch to a minor character 's viewpoint which will allow you to keep the narrative moving and give you time to think."

One last note: later in the book, Moorcock talks about how he is also fond of using stock characters, especially those from the Commedia Dell'Arte.

More information about Michael Moorcock can be found at his official website Moorcock's Miscellany, which includes articles, blog, forums and a wiki.

¹ Lester Dent was another extremely prolific author, known for churning out upwards of 200,000 words a month. He wrote in the heyday of the pulps in the early 20th century, and is best known for the adventures of Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, who became a prototype for later superheroes like Superman and Batman. According to Moorcock he is also "credited by both Hammett and Chandler with being the first of the hardboiled detective writers".