What to do with mobiles
While people are developing what you can do with your mobile phones, like
playing Tetris on the Bibliothèque Nationale, I am still struggling to get my new
Sagem connected with my Palm or PC. (Sorry you can't see the great pictures IT takes yet.)
P.S. I was stupid to have assumed invisible stuff like infrared or bluetooth have no
branding. (Would you tell me if you see Sagem on the list one day?)
P.P.S. Tomorrow is the Lunar New Year, I hope my X-8 could say all "Kung Hei Fat Choi" for me...
(Photo from
Project Blinkenligths: Arcade)
Wikiversity
The Wiki-community is further expanding. You almost follow how civilization evolves, from defining (
Wiktionary), to compiling and classifying (
Wikibooks), and archiving and specifying knowledge (
Wikipedia).
Because of the recent debate about the role of a university (my last post), the introduction of
Wikiversity appears to be a bit more provocative than
Wikimedia Foundation's other projects. Taking the advantages of the Internet, Wiki can probably do much better in terms of the supposed
universality of a university, sharing a larger space for anybody's (well, anybody who has a connected computer) participation in its structure and content building. It's interesting to see how far it will go, particularly from its present predominance by the English-speaking culture (see the School of Literature AND ENGLISH STUDIES). I have just moderately added "Buddhism" to its
School of Theology and left "Esoteric Buddhism" under the branch of "Mysticism".
Further Reductions
The Chinese University of Hong Kong has announced a new policy that implies a drastic and mandatory change of the medium (language) of instruction for most courses provided by different faculties within the next few months. The rationale claims that:
"CUHK has embraced the ideal of a broader student mix, in order to provide global exposure to students, to give them the opportunity to come into contact with different peoples and cultures, and to keep abreast of societal needs." (from CUHK E-Newsletter)
The newly arrived
Vice-Chancellor is severely
criticized for such "internationalization" measure at the expense of the most distinguished characteristic of the 40-year-old university associated with Chinese culture. The evolving
debate (Chinese website) manifests a lot of existing questions about the present Education in relation to values, such as cultural mission, educational aims, roles of language, significance of history and tradition, etc. Whether these things are still (really) in the context of our education is in fact a myth. Internationalization or marketization seem unavoidable anyway. The consideration of how to preserve other values at the same time shall at least be addressed and discussed openly (before decision). For the purpose, a
good study of the subject can be inspiring.
(
Further Reductions is a forum to be held tomorrow night at the university campus.)
