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each day can be a celebration day – it is up to us

Hmmm…. for me “New Years” is like the earth’s birthday. Humans made it up, as we have no idea when our planet born but anyway humans celebrate together this day. Most of the people in this season are happy and with good energy, however it is possible to find depression too, which is understandable. However, what it is common and easy to see in this period is: the reflection of  what people did on the year that is finalizing and thinking in their personal wishes and/or new intentions for next one. Example of this is at the beginning of each year exponential amount of promises about: lose weight, finalizing things, do sports, etc. are present.

My “New Years Celebration” or my way to celebrate our planet’s birthday, as many cultural things and events  has been mutating. This is understandable as I am moving around in our western hemisphere, adapting and merging with different special persons and traditions, then for me it is not a unique way to celebrate and I enjoy a moment.  But this “New Years”, as in my 2009 birthday (yes I am THAT old 😉  ) had not a visible party, and still it offered me a magical moment of existence. Writing about this makes me remember about the book of Marlo Morgan, “Las voces del desierto“, highly recommended.

In brief, few hours after I reached Joensuu on  Dec. 31st I hurt my eye with my contact lenses. Oh man!!!! It hurts!!!  On the 010110 = the first day of 2010, I went to the hospital. Thanks to the life was nothing serious just a small “erosion” or scratch in my eye due to my lack of care. Gina was taking care of me, from the distance, and actually she sent me to the hospital since the 31st. I was stubborn to do not go, but I paid my dues for that decision.

The right eye is healthy but connected to the sick one, thus the perception of any light was VERY painful, even to look the hour on my phone was a challenge.  Any movement of the eye hurt.  As a result my both eyes must keep closed and still. I realize how dependant I am of my eyes.

In this process I was able to listen more carefully.  That was interesting, rich and enjoyable. I knew my eyes will be back, and I truly trust in Mikko who took me to the hospital, therefore I had no worry  just experiencing my “sick” state and focusing in recovering ASAP! .

Then, my “New Years” was not a noisily party, instead it was a  discovery-celebration of all what I have.  We live in a magical planet that we do not observe and less listen to, very sad indeed. And I am blessed to have my wonderful chassis 😉  I will not win a beauty contest, which it is fine with me as long as  I am healthy, complete and my body cope with my exploring craziness. I am blessed 😉

Without a doubt, I can celebrate every single day! 😉 and I think all of us could! 🙂

calm full of life

when mind and heart are in conflict

Three main points create me conflict and/or impotence:

1) Digital technology is a powerful and fragile tool.

One of the reasons why I see it powerful is because it can connect ideas, reflections, experiences, without physical boundaries. One reason why I think it is fragile is because without infrastructure (besides accessibility and know how) is useless.

A pencil or even a crayon is less fragile than a mobile phone. For example it can survive better natural disasters than a whole wireless or electricity network require for a mobile phone to work. Things to think about….

2) We see only what we want to see, and what media allows us to see.

In the transition from Sept to October 2009, millions of lives have been changed due to natural disasters just in Asia alone. My records only have the following events:

Those are only few tragedies, no idea how many are present. And yes I know natural disasters are always present, I shouldn’t get that surprise someone could say.

But what makes me wonder today is the press (at least the one that I usually read) hardly cover these events. Those sources of information are focusing in other matters as politics and fraud. Hmmmm…. if I remember well in December 2004, with the Tsunami where citizens of several western countries were victims, the same press I read had bigger coverage about this. I do not want to speculate, but…

… from what we are “allow” to see, we only see what we can see and want to see.

3) We have information about climate change through digital and not digital formats. But how many of this information indicates how to change our behaviors to diminish this.

Wondering who generates most of the CO2? who are the ones who demand more raw material to produce “x”? Who are the ones who flight? who are the ones who waste heater and air conditioner in their houses? Who consumes most of the meat produced overseas? Who are the ones who use driers? who uses a car only for one person? how many products wrap with layers of plastic do we buy?, who produces most of the e-Waste? ….

And when I find articles as “Debate Follows Bills to Remove Clotheslines Bans” I do not know if I should laugh or cry.

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*** Summarizing…

Each one of our actions are like a grain of sand. One grain might look insignificant, but all together form wonderful beaches. The same happened with disasters.

Even that I am a privilege person and have access to quality of information about how to be a better human for my planet, and I want to help and do things right. My trace of CO2 surely supports the actual disasters in Asia, and other countries….. I declare myself guilty 🙁

No related to environment, but related with lack of understanding to take proper action. This year I have 8 papers rejected in a row. I appreciate the referees’ feedback as they had stressed that focus is my main problem. I knew it, but I can’t fix it yet. Should I declare myself guilty too?

*** All these makes me think….

It is not enough to get the information on how to improve something. It needs to be adapted to the reality of the listener, to support as much as possible the understanding of such information. Learners are smart, and if it is close to their ZPD they will do fine and get into proper action.

But how can I change/improve “X” if the information that I seemed to understand is not linked to my reality?, less to the ZPD.   The clearer this information is adapted to my reality, the possibility increases to get close to my ZPD, and then move in some direction instead to follow an inertia.

It is not matter that others do my job or live my life, or lecture me about something. I want to understand how to improve and do things. I would imagine this happens with all the topics, and with all the persons.

*** Do not give up….

If I succeed with myself one day, I am optimistic that maybe I could support others to success by themselves afterward.

My research, baptized as Hypercontextualized Game, seeks to create awareness in-site about specific subject matter. It is paradoxical, right?  I want to be an expert of my weakest side.

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Then, my conflict makes me feel helpless when I know with my mind and my heart that something must be done. I kind of figure it out a proposal to take action to solve something, but I can’t succeed to make my message clear neither match my actions with my intentions.

My conflict makes me feel helpless when I see how humans are working constantly to make of our planet a mess. I do not understand humans and I do not want to do the same, but at the end I am one of them doing the same 🙁

Image source: Rachmat Lianda

from interactivity to back-channel (3/3)

 

Understandable reaction to boring lectures, in our early 21 century, is to hear the desire to have interactive ones. Wait, what do we mean by interactive courses?  Again everybody turns to digital technology for the answer, but is the answer there?

I start to believe that what we refer to interactive is when the conversation between me and the other is in balance. Understanding by other either a person, or a system or a thing, etc. The conversation will not exist if we do not want to listen, and one will never listen someone that one does not want to hear or it is not ready to hear.

When the conversation between two or more is in balance constructive-interactivity exits, because we are able to act on each other. 

I will try to make an example: let’s go with the “less” interactive media such as a book. It only has words, in the best of the cases perhaps some graphics. But some books one can’t put them down, because their content is really interacting with our inner, we do not need more sounds, smells or graphics, all it is between me and the book in full interaction. The book is “talking” to me, acting on me.  Am I acting back on the book? At the moment I am reading it I am not acting on it, but each time I recommend it or I talk about it, my actions have an influence on the book. The relationship human-book is a constructive-interactivity, however maybe no synchronous in time.

Let’s go to a webpage where we can push tons of buttons, where the information is messy and irrelevant, where the “interactivity” is “high”.  First one tries to push all what is possible to see what happens, if the system can capture my attention, after little while one gets bored and quit it. Was the system interactive? According to the definition “a program that responds to user activity” yes, plus the system had a reaction on us to quit it. But in this system did not exist the “conversation” between the user and the system, just an action-reaction type of of relationship.

Why all these babbling? Well, this weekend I “join” the conference of  State of Play” via my Twitter. A full experience, thanks to these folks that are SO ACTIVE, they have interesting topics but overall wonderful backchannels. One can say that these backchannels promote interactivity between their members on-site at real-time, using technology as a tool.

Liz Lawley in 2004 already made an interesting reflection about this backchannels. It calls specially my attention when she writes: “good content + great speaker(s) = near silence in the backchannel, as people focus their attention entirely on the stage“.

She has made a point that made me write these posts. When we talk about interactivity are we refering to physical action? to be entertain? to have a visible action-reaction system?  or to relevant an meaningful conversations? As we can see and experience, even if we use all the tools available (technology, resources, people, etc.) what it matters at the end of the day is the combination of the content and the speaker to keep an interactive conversation. Then, what do we mean as interactivity?

Time to the time, as I need to think more on this, and for sure as more I will hear about interactive lectures, interactive systems, interactive games, etc. as more  I have the impression I should understand what we “mean” with interactive.

people "backchannel" in a conference - Photo credit : Pete Lambert

people "back-channel" in conference. - Photo credit: Pete Lambert.

 

source image: http://pistachioconsulting.com/twitter-presentations/

 

 

context part 2

I need my time for understanding things, and making up my mind. In addition I try to be flexible while admitting that things can change and my understanding evolve, as I am aware there is a high probability to make mistakes, then keep the eyes and ears open. Awareness, persistence and patience are the best allies.

 

From my previous post about context I got new information that gave food for my though:

a) Matti’s reply (on the the previous post) and his reminder of an “old” reflection of his about the same term. (Thank you for your input Matti !! )

b) The Document “Report of State of the Art in Personalisation common Framework” from the ePerSpace – IST Integrated project, even that it presents a more technical approach, it clarifies at least 8 different user- contexts. I said at least, because sill I believe this is a reflection from a very specific point of view, and perhaps from another perspective another classification might appear with other number of possibilities.  However this is a thoughtful and clear document.

 

Then after some brain digestion, my pre-conclusions about how I had used this noun “context” can only be partiality respond by understanding why (probably) is it used?. From my personal opinion  sees two main reasons:

a) Getting lazy and in a comfortable zone

b) The increasingly speed of events and information is forbidden us to have a clear and deep reflection. Without this, it makes more difficult to even express our thoughts.

 

Let me elaborate:

One can’t live the life or have the experiences of someone else except oneself. One can’t have direct control over the thoughts of someone else, neither over his/her understanding. We only can have theories of how things work, in addition that there is much more than what we actually know (that is why we keep on researching and learning).

However one can make an effort to draw in detail one’s ideas or reflections. By making connection with all the relevant information and circumstances that have an impact to the specific description we are pursuing to do, instead to lock all all this information and understanding in one noun.

With this effort  one can support a clear understanding (of oneself and of others) about our own thoughts, reflections and experiences.  All these can be done by avoiding the noun: “context” and attempting to a richer communication. However this implies: a lot of effort in different levels and a considerable amount of time.

 

Well written and thoughtful books, specially the no-technical ones, are good examples for improving the understanding of a phenomena and all what surrounds it, before and after it. The clarity of a message in a “long” paper of 8 pages, can’t be compared with the clarity of a  book of 300 pages. (assuming that both are quality exemplars)

And do not get me wrong, make summaries or  be able to synthesize is a relevant skill to have (it is not a trivial skill). However,  one should take care of the quality of this summarizing process while writing it, as one should be critic and aware that a full and clear message can’t be delivered in a 8 pages “long paper”.

 

My personal advice:

– Never stop reading:  books, conference papers, journal articles, etc.

– Be critic and understand the meanings of the information in written form (or any other type) by going beyond the words itself of the content of specific domains. In few words make the knowledge mine. This might need a lot of extra effort and time.

 

Perhaps, I had been stuck in this issue of: context.  Perhaps because this noun of 7 letters has enormous implications in my way of thinking if it remains blurry or unmanageable. Then, at this moment it is a must for myself to learnt to situate my own thoughts and ideas in a manner that I can express them clearly. In addition, if I want to convey my message to others and with this create a constructive dialog, then better start to clarify things.

Much to learn regarding the basics: writing and reading.

games updates from east

It has been long without posting, but soon I will write about my research. Meanwhile some updates (it is important to keep ourselves update on what is it happening in our world.Â

My personal opinion on this is a clear division of tactics in reaching the market between Nintendo and Sony. One is more focus in the game play while the other is in interested in the integration of high end video visual technology.Nevertheless making use the capitalism system advantages with a no monopoly, let’s see how these companies will improve themselves to convince the market  🙂

Also from a global capitalist perspective, but from another point of view, for those who are into game research or with interest of the topic I recommend the article from Larissa Hjorth from RMIT University / Yonsei University.  About “Games @ NeotRegionalism: Locating Gaming in the Asia Pacific” Good food for the though! .

From all these, even that excites me the news and I enjoy the topic, deep inside I wonder: when other areas of our globe will be able to put their own presence in digital gaming too?!  – I know there are a lot of socio-economical factors on this, but still, the wish is there.