My response to Dan Brown's Open letter to educators

First of all watch the original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2PGGeTOA4
My response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYqAKkxSu_w

Abundance of information on the Internet. Is it supposed to be like this?

After reading Lisa’s blog post “Open Culture: Burke, Paine and Jaron Lanier” I started thinking about the abundance of information available online. Since the Internet is open to everyone, it is almost impossible to regulate the information out there. Everyone can post online anything even without being a reliable source. And for us, the normal consumers it is very hard to differentiate what site is useful and what is just nonsense. When I go to Google or any other browser and try to find some information thousands of sites come up. Which ones are the ones I am looking for? I do not have time to go through all the recommended sites so I pick the ones on the first page. So is there still the idea of sharing information with everyone possible? Is it worth to write a blog or have your own web site when only few people will actually get to read it?  

I agree with Lanier that at the beginning of the internet the idea of sharing ideas between people was a great one, something revolutionary. But since then the Internet mutated into something nearly uncontrollable. It can be used for good and for bad. I believe the internet should be open to everyone with some restrictions. Educative sites should be available to everyone. But sharing music and other copyright file without giving the credit to the author needs to be controlled. Everyone wants to get things for free if it is possible, but if we keep doing it, nobody will want to post online anything anymore. And that is the whole point of the Internet, isn’t?

Another 200 words story

“Dad please, stop yelling! Calm down!” I was trying desperately to cover my ears. Tears were streaming down my face. I didn’t know what to do. There was no hope. I just wanted to run away and not come back. But I couldn’t do it to my mom. She had enough problems already and me running away wouldn’t help her. Dad was shaking all over and I couldn’t stand to glance at him. I ran to my room, closed the door and then collapsed on the bed. Between sobs I unwillingly sank into my memories.

As I stood outside the hospital room, my mind was racing down different paths of thought. “Did it really happen? “ I was constantly asking myself. I was motionless, unaware of my surroundings, utterly numb and disbelieving. It was shortly before Christmas, when my dad accidently felt from the stairs and I knew we won’t be together as a family on the Christmas day. Doctors told us he has a brain damage and he will have to learn everything again. I couldn’t understand what they meant, but I knew our life irrevocably changed.

200 words story: Farmer's trouble

He was standing in the middle of the field alone and not able to speak. Bright light was shining into his eyes making it harder to see his enemy. The farmer has worked hard his whole life and now this creature should destroy all of it? No, he could not let that happen. His shotgun was hanging from his shoulder and he was ready to use it.

Every morning he found one of his sheep dead, lying on the ground soaked with blood. He swore he would stop it.

The wolf was coming closer and closer baring his fangs. It was not an ordinary wolf. This one was huge; he has never seen such a thing.

The farmer backed one step. But then he regained his power and directed the gun at the wolf. Neither of them moved. Then he heard howling in the distance and he knew he needs to act quickly.

The wolf was faster though and jumped on the farmer, cutting his claws deep in the farmer’s skin. Wolf’s fangs were inches from his face. The only thing he could think of was his family. He pulled out his knife and cut the wolf’s throat.

Do the schools really know how to teach?

Have good grades, get into a good school, successfully graduate, find a good-paid job right after college. Is this the way how to have a happy life in our society?

I have been raised in Prague, Czech Republic. The Czech education is in some ways different from the American one. In high school is the work much more intense. I remember having fourteen subjects per year. Our schedule was given to us and we could not really choose what classes to take till our junior and senior year. Most of the schoolwork was about tests. It was not really about expressing our own ideas. Not about enhancing our imagination or the skills we were good at. If you have studied properly you would get a good grade. That is still the measurement who is intelligent and who is not. Students with all A’s on their transcript = intelligent students. Is it, however, that easy to classify the intelligence? The simple answer is no. Grades do not say everything. Grades cannot show if the student is just lazy or if he really tried, or if it was just a bad day.

Most of the tests in Prague are just about memorizing things you will forget soon anyways. What is the point of learning information by heart without even thinking about the essence of the subject? The crucial ability we should learn students is how to connect the information they have already learned with the new ones. Only that way they will be successful in the real life. The life is not about writing tests to show your proficiency or being caught during cheating. The life is about the experience and we need to realize that.

The birth registrationnumber/rodné číslo

Have you ever heard of it? Probably not, if you are American. I was having lunch with my friends yesterday and we started talking about middle name and how come I don’t have one. My friend asked me, “so how do you distinguish people with the same name?“ “Well we have the birth number,“ I told her rather confused. All Czechs have one.

Governments around the world have introduced national identification number systems which are used to keep track of citizens as well as for taxation, social security and healthcare purposes. The systems vary from country to country, and in the Czech Republic there are two principle forms: the ID card( občanský průkaz) and the birth certification number, which is given to all Czech citizens at birth.

The first part of the number is the date of birth of the holder in YYMMDD format. The second part consists of four digits. Both are separated by a slash. For women the number 50 is added to the month part of the number, so for an example a birthday in April is shown as YY54DD/XXXX.

It is actually pretty cool. :D

                                                         our ID card

Is the end of our world close?

Moviemakers are obsessed with the ideas of catastrophic movies, where nature finally demostrates its power. I can name few of them – The day after tomorow, 2012, and so on. Is it because we enjoy watching our final end so much? And at the same we are terrified it may happen in our real world? I personally enjoy very much watching catastrophic movies, because they are thrilling and dramatic, but I always know that the main characters will survive somehow. Even if it would be impossible in the real life. However if the end of the world would happen for real, are we ready to face it? Is the US government already secretly preparing way out of it only for few selected and we, the ordinary people, have no clue about it? If it is true than we are basically screwed. 

But let me go back to the cause of all of this. Are we the ones resposible for the global warming and other climate changes? Or are they just common and natural ones? Should we get disturbed with everyday news from all around the world about floods, earthqueakes or hurricanes? I am not an expert on global changes, so it is hard to say. Some experts say it is normal and that is how the nature works from its beginning. But than there are also few contradictory views. Either way I must admit we definitely have some partial guilt. We stopped thinking about the nature as part of  ourselves. In contrast to our ancestors, we are unwilling to see the bigger picture – our connection to nature. We are the nature and it is a time realize that. We should cooperate with each other to help the nature to regain its power.

Are we already that close to eating other people?

Overpopulation is a big issue of today and tomorow. It does not necessarily include only countries like China or India. Even though statistics say that the population in Europe and the United States is decreasing, we cannot be sure what the future holds. Do we have enough resources to accomodate and feed every living soul on this planet? We do not have that power even today. There are milions of people fighting to get a little loaf of bread to feed their family. Are we going to face the threat of overpopulated countries all over the world in the next fifty or one hundred years? This could very likely happen soon. But is it really possible that we will be forced to eat our deceased neighbours, friends or family members? A few years ago I watched a movie about a plane crash in the mountains. Half of the people died when the plane hit the ground and the other half began to die because of the lack of food. To survive they eventually decided to eat the people who were already dead. That was the only way to stay alive. Is this really what we will have to do in the future – close our eyes while eating someone’s friend? Will our desire for life be stronger than our sense of humanity? Personally, I hope we will find a way out of this without needing to resort to this extreme solution. But who knows...

The creepy toddler robot

I have never really given much of a thought about robots in the future. Of course our life is already full of modern equipment that we cannot imagine living without. However, does this technology include intelligent robots and cyborgs? I was convinced our technology has not reached that point yet, but after reading articles about a toddler humanoid (www.physorg.com, www.newscientist.com), I am very much convinced that the possibility of my world changing into a scene from a science fiction movie is actually realistic.

The Toddler Robot named iCub is designed to think for itself and is fully capable of imitating the actions and learning abilities of a three year old child with a toddler-sized brain. The main goal, according to the scientists, is to understand more about how humans learn, think, and cooperate with each other. Even though this project was designed with practical applications in mind, such as helping hospital patients to recover or cleaning the house, could something go wrong? The fact that scientists are expecting the robot to make its own decisions is rather alarming.

Is this just an innocent way of pushing our everday boundaries further or could this cute robot begin an era of intelligent robots who could eventually destroy us?

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-FOr7hEw1c