Last week I threw my hat into the ring of pundits who presume to be able to foretell the future (hah!). Here are links to a few news articles (the BBC, and the Independent, which present predictions for the next 100 years. I thought my post was treading on some pretty thin ice, but 100 [...]
I have just finished an externally imposed hiatus from this blog. Somehow, my WordPress installation was corrupted while upgrading to the latest version. The net result is that I have been forced to screw around with the Htaccess file, the database, reinstalling WordPress, and looking through as much code as I could find on my [...]
I use the term ‘four year old questions’ to signify questions which are so obvious, yet elusive to answer, that most adults shy away from them. We have all considered these questions…before we had this sort of whimsical curiosity drummed out of us. As a thought experiment, try to see how many of them you [...]
This is the time of year for big lists of what the future may bring us. I’ve read, not hundreds, but at least tens of these sorts of articles during the last month. So I decided to make my own list of things and ideas, which may very well be in our short to medium [...]
I have been on the search for internet memes and buzz words lately, and the term ‘big data’ has to be near the top of the heap…right now. I have a few links that might help you understand what this is and what it may mean for you in the near future: To Know, but [...]
In the coming year I expect to see more of the impact of online social networking (i.er Facebook in particular) and the Apple iPhone 4GS’s Siri app to showcase the idea that we are in the process of becoming more and more physically disconnected from almost everything (not necessarily a good idea…). In the last [...]
Another thing which has slid into the front of our cultural view (with little comment) has been the continuing resurgence of Apple in almost every niche of computing (Laptops, phones, the iPad, apple TV, market share and profits) is an amazingly obvious but little realized nor understood phenomenon. Maybe is has become so obvious that [...]
More and more computers are being seen primarily as mobile devices (except for gamers and those with old hardware). Connectivity using laptops, along with other mobile devices is slowly edging towards the norm for all students (and post students). Smart Phones are growing on the public consciousness as a thing worth having, and the iPad [...]
Even a year ago, the idea that high school students should be encouraged to use their phone as tools in class was considered so far beyond the pale that anyone proselytizing hits idea must be insane (according to seemingly the majority of school principals)…now it is a cutting edge progressive education idea Back to (the [...]
EReaders are becoming mainstream gadgets for more and more people. When the Kindle 1 (or even Kindle 2, Nook, or the older Sony devices) came out they were seen (by many) as eccentric gadgets at best, now they are taking as prominent a place in public view as the Walkman had two decades ago. I [...]
Even in the short time that this blog has been online (two years), there have been some big changes in how we (in the aggregate) consume information. Newspapers and magazines are still making their inexorable decline into oblivion, more and more people (people I have talked with, i.e., anecdotal information on my part here) who [...]
My latest idea has been to change riehler blog into riehler weblog. This simple change in nomenclature has deeper components than just a revisionist return to the original term for this activity. I found that Maria Popova’s Brainpickings site to be inspirational, in that her moniker (‘interestingness’) lead me to consider some of the underpinnings [...]
This strikes me as one of the unstated problems with the modern world. We live in a global economy which is becoming more and more dependent upon computers, internet, and software. In a vaguely related situation (i.e. post Gutenberg), almost every person who had access to literacy (i.e. learning how to read) did so, in [...]
This is a pretty big list of interesting articles related to science and technology. I have listed these links into some subcategories: (1) Cosmology and Physics, (2) computing, (3) book reviews, and (4) the future. Obviously there are plenty of other topics within the realms of science and technology, but these are the links I [...]
I have been a fan of Maria Popova’s Brainpickings site for a long time now. I often wish that there were more sites like this, where the content is based almost solely upon one person’s iconoclastic interests. There as almost always lots of value on this site, even though I don’t always find every single [...]
I have filled a lot of blog space in the last year writing and presenting a variety of perspectives about education (secondary and post secondary education in the USA),and since there is so much tumult and so little coherence, a lot of my coverage has been more negative of this industry than I would have [...]
Back in the day, many kids got chemistry sets, erector sets, and other platforms for technical exploration on Christmas Day. The modern equivalent is the Arduino board. This small piece of hardware (which you can get as a completed board, or solder up yourself) is an interface (via USB) between your computer (where you write [...]
If you have ever considered a few rather obvious questions, such as: · With the competitiveness of the global market increasing, with the rapid changes in technology and our society…just how well is a traditional liberal arts degree serving new graduates as they enter the workforce? · Are college tuitions increasing so rapidly as to [...]
