George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
"Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically 'dead' (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a 'rift,' for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase."
(George Orwell)
George Orwell (1950). "Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays", Secker & Warburg Publishers, UK.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Handbook of social media for researchers and supervisors
"Social media such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking tools, social networking websites (e.g. Facebook), or photo- and video-sharing websites (e.g. Flickr, YouTube) facilitate gathering and sharing of information and resources and enable collaboration. Social media is a new form of communication that is changing behaviours and expectations of researchers, employers and funding bodies.
The goal of this handbook is to assist researchers and their supervisors to adopt and use social media tools in the service of their research, and, in particular, in engaging in the discourse of research. The handbook presents an innovative suite of resources for developing and maintaining a social media strategy for research dialogues."
(Careers Research and Advisory Centre Limited)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Cooperation and collaboration: problem solving and problem finding
"The economists Richard Lester and Michael Piore have studied the firms that sought to create the switching technology, finding that cooperation and collaboration within certain companies allowed them to make headway on the switching technology problem, whereas internal competition at other corporations diminished engineers’ efforts to improve the quality of the switches. Motorola, a success story, developed what it called a 'technology shelf,' created by a small group of engineers, on which were placed possible technical solutions that other teams might use in the future; rather than trying to solve the problem outright, it developed tools whose immediate value was not clear. Nokia grappled with the problem in another collaborative way, creating an open-ended conversation among its engineers in which salespeople and designers were often included. The boundaries among business units in Nokia were deliberately ambiguous, because more than technical information was needed to get a feeling for the problem; lateral thinking was required. Lester and Piore describe the process of communication this entailed as 'fluid, context-dependent, undetermined.'[20]
By contrast, companies like Ericsson proceeded with more seeming clarity and discipline, dividing the problem into its parts. The birth of the new switch was intended to occur through 'the exchange of information' among offices 'rather than the cultivation of an interpretative community.'[21] Rigidly organized, Ericsson fell away. It did eventually solve the switching technology problem, but with greater difficulty; different offices protected their turf. In any organization, individuals or teams that compete and are rewarded for doing better than others will hoard information. In technology firms, hoarding information particularly disables good work.
The corporations that succeeded through cooperation shared with the Linux community that experimental mark of technological craftsmanship, the intimate, fluid join between problem solving and problem finding. Within the framework of competition, by contrast, clear standards of achievement and closure are needed to measure performance and to dole out rewards.
[20] Richard K. Lester and Michael J. Piore, Innovation, the Missing Dimension (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 98.
[21] Ibid., 104."
(Richard Sennett, 2008, pp.32-33)
1). Sennett, R. (2008). "The Craftsman". New Haven & London, Yale University Press.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Cleverbot: talk to an intelligent bot
"Cleverbot is Artificial Intelligence. Say whatever you like - songs, jokes, memes or anything, and it will respond. It learns what people say, in context, and imitates. Cleverbot is an entertainment - not made to be logical, give advice, or be useful. Many people keep talking for hours, and say it's too clever to be a bot - that it must be human. Yet it never is: it is a bot. Cleverbot is software. Maybe it even contains a little Actual Intelligence."
(Rollo Carpenter, Icogno Ltd.)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Rare Archival Footage of Marshall McLuhan
"This rare archival footage of McLuhan speaking to an ABC journalist on his visit to Australia was recorded on 19 June 1977 in Sydney.
ABC Archive notes: 'Canadian expert on electronic media, Marshall McLuhan, arrives in Australia to address a seminar on Australian radio. He advocates shortening of TV transmission time and better balance between TV, radio and press. McLuhan speaks about the effect of TV on children.'
From other sources we know that he was brought to Australia by Sydney radio station 2SM.
Sadly no record of the interviewer has been kept, though we think she has a New Zealand accent."
(ABC Radio National, Australia)
Fig.1 This rare archival footage of McLuhan speaking to an ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] journalist on his visit to Australia was recorded on 19 June 1977 in Sydney.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
