Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Wildlife of Niger: How to create immersive and INSPIRING music-making video hangouts 24/7 for ALL instruments/ALL languages for learning?, And for ALL languages, for example, for Scots' Gaelic - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic_language, Scottish small pipes' chanter in A mixolydian, Edinburgh Scottish country dance, Can we do this in Hangouts? :), Inspiring Google video conference Hangouts, and very inspiring Harvard Graduate School of Education Talk by Karen Brennan









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I attached some further sheet music we just played on Monday in Open Band which I enjoyed playing on small pipes (as well as on a keyboard, playing bass lines). On the Scottish small pipes' chanter in A mixolydian, I play the tunes in D major and A major. Have any of you ever done Scottish Country Dancing - I just posted this nice video about SCD from RSCDS Edinburgh to OpenBand on Twitter - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhDsPBmglYc - https://twitter.com/dancingforth/status/736479294403252224 (https://twitter.com/TheOpenBand).

RSCDS Edinburgh & Gethin Jones Scottish country dance live on ITV Daybreak


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhDsPBmglYc

Can we do this in a Hangouts? :)

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SF Bay Salt marsh harvest mouse: Harvard Prof Karen Brennan, Very nice to meet you face-to-face in person, Harvard GSE commencement speech, We play from a similar "let's construct this knowledge together, instead of me just sharing" musical improvisational sheet music score - and I hope that Wiki and MIT OCW-centric WUaS might be able to explore this in new ways in all 7,097 living languages, A mini-ethnography of a Scratch Meet Up in the SF Exploratorium museum, How might WUaS build in or incorporate Scratch into all 8,000 of WUaS's universities and schools and for translation of it too? Planning for such possible Scratch integration will make for a complicated all-languages' WUaS web site!, Creative Computing Office Hour , Great-New Book: "Creative Computing" by @karen_brennan Balch Chung @Harvard http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/guide/download.html … Thank you @ScratchEdTeam SF MeetUp Sat 5/7


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Migratory woodland caribou: inspired by your Harvard talk, "Brilliant, Inspiring, Virtuosic - Faculty Speaker Karen Brennan ..., "Inspiration_in_learning_and_teaching," "Ph.D._Degrees_at_World_University_and_School," "Media_Lab_at_World_University_and_School," "Creativity," Are you teaching any edX or other online free courses this autumn that I might participate in, by any chance?, This autumn, I'm teaching the free "Information Technology, the Network Society and the Global University" on Harvard's virtual island in SL, in Google Hangouts and newly in Google Classroom, if you know of people who might be interested, In what ways might we best communicate further about some of our shared creativity-in-education interests?



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Monday, May 30, 2016

Grey Crowned Crane: Inquiry how to elicit loving bliss neurophysiology (brain chemistry or body mind chemistry), An out-of-the-box philosophical-scientific inquiry, Related article on an UC Berkeley Ph.D. student friend's twitter feed, who went to Stanford as an undergrad - https://theconversation.com/why-do-only-some-people-get-skin-orgasms-from-listening-to-music-59719 - which could inform even protocols for studying this, both online and possibly experimentally, Actually interested in finding ways to elicit loving bliss neurophysiology for 9 hours per day, every day, as a kind of on-off switch


As some of you may know, I have a long time focus of inquiry about how to elicit loving bliss neurophysiology (brain chemistry or bodymind chemistry, as I think of this). Here's the beginning wiki subject page for open teaching and learning about this at World University - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Loving_Bliss_(eliciting_this_neurophysiology). It's kind of an out-of-the-box philosophical inquiry - and definitely seeks to be scientific too - but with the ongoing goal of finding, as B.E. once said on Cuttyhunk, the on-off switch for this neurophysiology which I can also call 'neural cascades of pleasure' - and realizing this when wanted. Music-making is a main focus of this generative inquiry for me currently (all you professional violin players!:).

I just found this related article on an UC Berkeley Ph.D. student friend's twitter feed, who went to Stanford as an undergrad - https://theconversation.com/why-do-only-some-people-get-skin-orgasms-from-listening-to-music-59719 - which could inform even protocols for studying this, both online and possibly experimentally. While I'm actually interested in finding ways to elicit loving bliss neurophysiology for 9 hours per day, every day, for the next 50 years, for example (again thinking way outside the "box"), and whenever, there are a lot of questions I have in terms of thinking about how this would work bodymind chemistry-wise, and how different scientists and people would study this. It would be fun to come into further conversation about this with all of you with time.


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Sunday, May 29, 2016

Mountain hare: "[NTF-talk] University of Miami Establishes Chair for Study of Atheism," A, besides your helpful response to the historical-translational NtF approach I posed in the previous email thread in conceiving of this potential endowed Nontheistic Quaker Professorship job description language, What 10 NtF books might such a Professor in a NtF/Quaker Professorship be lead to write in the course of their work in this endowed chair at online Friendly-informed WUaS might be another further related query, for example?, Haverford College Human Resources' page, I'd also like to encourage a cultivation of wiki editing in all 7,943 languages with highest quality, (Nt) Friendly-thinking contributions in addition to a focus on goodness ... in addition to care and non-harming (ahimsa) as an expression of the Quaker Peace Testimony ...


Hi A and Nontheist Friends,

Perhaps NtFs could think of this new thread re - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/us/university-of-miami-establishes-chair-for-study-of-atheism.html and "[NTF-talk] University of Miami Establishes Chair for Study of Atheism" - as a RfC (Request for Comment, which process goes back at least through the 1970s when TCP/IP - internet protocols, the so-called back bone of the internet - was being written, with the intent to implement such a NtF job description by hiring someone, if this then seems to make sense.

The query I'm posing in a Friendly ways is ... "What is best NTFriendly job description language for an endowing online Professorship/Chair of Nontheistic Friendly/Quaker Studies at Friendly-informed World University and School?" Here's a recent and first job description at WUaS - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2016/05/leafy-seadragon-first-wuas-job.html - for the executive director of Italian World University and School (planned in Italian and CC MIT OpenCourseWare centric), which some heads of the Italian Cultural Center in SF and its affiliated Italian language school suggested I write because they had some possible candidates they wanted to send it to, of whom there weren't any after all, by way of comparison. While this would be an administrative position at Friendly-informed WUaS, the NtF professorship/chair would be a faculty position. Here's the Haverford College Human Resources' page - https://www.haverford.edu/human-resources - with just a few science faculty positions open presently, by further way of comparison. WUaS seeks to become the MIT/Stanford/Harvard of the Internet - and in the Quaker world too - offering free CC BS/BA, Ph.D., Law, M.D. and I.B. degrees - and no Quaker college offers Ph.D., Law, M.D. and I.B. degrees that I know of. And WUaS seeks to create online Universities in all countries' main languages, which would be relevant in this NtF Professorship position language conceiving. (CC Wikipedia is in ~358 languages and CC MIT OCW is in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC is in English).

A, besides your helpful response to the historical-translational NTF approach I posed in the previous email thread in conceiving of this potential job description language, what 10 NtF books might such a Professor in a NtF/Quaker Professorship be lead to write in the course of their work in this endowed chair at this online Friendly University (WUaS) might be another further related query, for example?

Thanks for asking.

Friendly regards,
Scott

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Scott:

I'm unclear as to what you are asking of us.  Perhaps you are just sharing your thoughts.

I don't think the professorship needs to be an either/or.  It could include historical and translating areas.  It might also include the effects and/or implications of the presence of nontheists in the SOFs.
Anita 

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Hi Anita, Bill, Os, James, David Boulton and NtFs, 

Starting a new thread here ...

In thinking through how to conceive of a possible job description for an endowing online Professorship/Chair of Nontheistic Friendly/Quaker Studies at Friendly-informed World University and School, your email, Anita, made me wonder about exploring conceptually a kind of historical approach, where NTFs emerge out of the Religious Society of Friends (most recently since the 1970s) vs a translating approach, where NtFs re-connote Quakerly and other related religious traditions' key beliefs / concepts in terms especially relating to non theism / theistic schools. The value of such an approach may only be in informing a conversation that would like to a clear NtF job description at WUaS. How would NtFs think we could best develop such a job description? (I'll probably start a new thread for this as well). Thank you.

NtFriendly regards, 
Scott



From the NTF email thread - 

[NTF-talk] University of Miami Establishes Chair for Study of Atheism

Hi Bill, Anita and NtFs,

Great. While endowing a chair at Stanford or MIT could cost even more than a million dollars, for example, it might be great to start gradually and by developing an annual salary for such an online Professorship of Nontheistic Friendly Studies at Friendly-informed World University and School. World University seeks to matriculate its first undergraduate class in English in 2017 in English with 2000? students potentially from all ~204 countries in the world (accrediting on CC MIT OCW - http://ocw.mit.edu/ - and CC Yale OYC - http://oyc.yale.edu). Shall we explore forming a NtF endowment committee for this? 

Friendly regards, 
Scott


Hi, NtFs,
Thanks for sharing this, Anita!
NtFs, let's explore with time creating a Nontheist Friends' endowed chair for the study of Nontheistic Quakerism re, for example - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Nontheist_Friends_(atheist_Quakers%3F) - i.e. an online Professorship of Nontheistic Friendly Studies at Friendly-informed World University and School, as WUaS accredits further to offer online free Creative Commons' licensed best STEM (CC) OpenCourseWare university degrees (accrediting on CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC), with high schools and high school students applying this autumn - http://worlduniversityandschool.org.
Friendly regards, Scott


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As such a scholar begins to study our NTF Google Group archives over 10-15 years now, as part of this new career position, I want to make a plug for a big focus on NtF loving bliss neurophysiology eliciting in such a way that in her/his writings she helps people facilitate this experientially ... George Fox's "This I know experimentally" (which meant experientially in 1656 - http://laquaker.blogspot.com/2012/01/this-i-knew-experimentally-friends-and.html; see too https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Fox) ...

I'd also like to encourage a cultivation of wiki editing in all 7,943 languages with highest quality, (Nt) Friendly-thinking contributions in addition to a focus on goodness ... in addition to care and non-harming (ahimsa - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Ahimsa_-_Nonviolence_-_Pacifism_-_To_avoid_harming - think India too) as an expression of the Quaker Peace Testimony ... 

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Drawing on my Reed College religion major, with its 4 part focus - social science, philosophy, theology and history - in the early 1980s, I wonder about exploring in this job description focusing on these for possible books, in addition to an evolutionary biological/naturalism focus (which Os Cresson has already written one NtF book about) ...





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Saturday, May 28, 2016

Cross River National Park, Nigeria: Stanford's "Africa Table - Engaging Africa," Great Stanford Medical Humanities' talk by Dr. Alvan Ikoku MD, Anyone can start a wiki subject (academic or creative) in any language, and WUaS would check if there is any related MIT OCW or Yale OYC, and people could teach to these subjects in a 4 minute Youtube for example, Here's WUaS's Creative Commons' licensed Nigeria World University and School - not yet in any Nigerian language (besides English if this is one)


Hi Alvan, 

Thanks for your edifying panel presentation at Stanford's "Africa Table - Engaging Africa" - https://sgs.stanford.edu/events/africa-table-engaging-africa-broadening-perspectives-cas-anniversary-roundtable - on May 25. It was nice to talk with you afterward especially. Here's the post of you I mentioned - https://plus.google.com/+ScottMacLeodWorldUniversity/posts/BsVLV3f7vhD - with your recent Stanford talk "Defining the Humanities: Medical - Humanities" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a5WYClw3dw - and with a few beginning related World University and School links to give you an idea of how WUaS works as a wiki. Anyone can start a wiki subject (academic or creative) in any language, and WUaS would check if there is any related MIT OCW or Yale OYC, and people could teach to these subjects in a 4 minute Youtube for example. 

Defining the Humanities: Medical Humanities


And here's WUaS's Creative Commons' licensed Nigeria World University and School - 
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Nigeria - not yet in any Nigerian language (besides English if this is one). World University and School, which is like CC Wikipedia (in ~300 languages) with best STEM CC OpenCourseWare (accrediting on CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC) is developing free online accrediting major CC universities in all countries' main languages (offering free CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and Yale OYC-centric BA/BS, Ph.D., Law, M.D. and I.B. degrees), on the one hand, and wiki schools in all 7,943+ languages for open teaching and learning, on the other hand, and would like to develop one main platform and information technologies in CC Wikidata/Wikibase/Wikipedia with artificial intelligence, machine learning and machine translation. 

And, since you're a M.D., here's the beginning Medical School at World University and School - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University_Medical_School - which WUaS is also planning with online Hospital in all countries' main and official languages in Africa, by way of example.  

I just wanted to get in touch and connect via email. (And perhaps I'll loop in Jim Ferguson and Laura Hubbard and others at a later point about some of this as well).

Nice to meet you. 

Best, 
Scott

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Great Stanford Medical Humanities' talk by Dr. Alvan Ikoku MD ...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a5WYClw3dw ... To http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Medicine & http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Literature & http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Humanities? Planned in many languages at World University and School ... To Yoga in Nigeria at Nigeria World University and School -http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Nigeria - further ...





https://plus.google.com/+ScottMacLeodYogaMacFlower/posts/JViGY9q7qYN






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Friday, May 27, 2016

Semien Mountains, Ethiopia: Wikidata supports 358 languages, Paper by VRANDEČIĆ, Denny, KRÖTZSCH, Markus, The possible number of Wikidata languages (and inter-lingual developments) will emerge as these two projects develop - RFC: Per-language URLs for multilingual wiki pages - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114662 - RFC: make Parser::getTargetLanguage aware of multilingual wikis - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114640, How easy ahead will it be to simply "populate" a list of all 8K languages in Wikidata/Wikibase for various artificial intelligence, machine learning and machine translation developments? Another aspect of the developing Wikidata/Wikibase languages' information technologies - with important Phabricator links to RFCs (Request for Comment) - from Ryan Kaldari, who helped install WUaS in MediaWiki in English on Wed., January 6, 2016 at the Wikimedia Foundation in SF during the Wikimedia Developers Conference. His thread mentions the important Wiktionary ... Phabricator is helpful developers' organizational software, used by Wikitech folks in both of these instances above ...

Hi all,
looking into [1] I read that Wikidata supports 358 languages. Is it still true? For example, I tried to add label in language coded as "nan" (defined in ISO 639-3) and it worked. However it didn't worked for e.g. "arb", which is also part of the ISO 639-3 standard. So how many?
Thanks
 Jan

[1] VRANDEČIĆDennyKRÖTZSCH, Markus. Wikidata: A Free Collaborative KnowledgebaseCommunications of the ACM. 2014-10, Vol. 57 No. 10, 7885. DOI 10.1145/2629489. http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/10/178785-wikidata/fulltext

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Hi Jan and Wikidatans, 

That sounds about right. 

I think the possible number of Wikidata languages (and inter-lingual developments) will emerge as these two projects develop a little further - 

RFC: Per-language URLs for multilingual wiki pages -

RFC: make Parser::getTargetLanguage aware of multilingual wikis - 

which I just learned yesterday in the #wikimedia-office hour at 2pm PT (on Wednesdays).

CC World University and School, which is like CC Wikipedia with CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC (and planning online free best STEM CC OCW accrediting university degrees in ~204 countries' main and official languages) is seeking additionally to develop wiki schools for open teaching and learning in all 7,943+ languages building in CC Wikidata/Wikibase, if possible - as well as for an universal translator. How easy ahead will it be to simply "populate" a list of all 8K languages in Wikidata/Wikibase for various artificial intelligence, machine learning and machine translation developments?  

Best, 
Scott



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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:LangSwitch

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Some recent Wikimedia office hours with related language developments ...

May 18

[15:03] <TimStarling#endmeeting
[15:03] == wm-labs-meetbot changed the topic of #wikimedia-office to: Wikimedia meeting channel | Please note: Channel is logged and publicly posted (DO NOT REMOVE THIS NOTE) | Logs: http://bots.wmflabs.org/~wm-bot/logs/%23wikimedia-office/
[15:03] <wm-labs-meetbot> Meeting ended Wed May 18 22:03:45 2016 UTC.  Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot . (v 0.1.4)
[15:04] <Scott_WUaS> :)


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May 25

14:36] <cscott> so in the unconference spirit the session got redirected to match what people actually wanted
[14:36] <Scott_WUaS> (gwicke: can you please share some URLs that currently focus "multi-lingual content should interact with caching & parsing"?)
[14:36] <gwicke> it's not specifically targeted at i18n currently
[14:37] <cscott> Scott_WUaS: that's daniel's RFCs
[14:37] <cscott> Scott_WUaS: T114662 and T114640
[14:37] <stashbot> T114662: RFC: Per-language URLs for multilingual wiki pages - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114662
[14:37] <stashbot> T114640: RFC: make Parser::getTargetLanguage aware of multilingual wikis - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114640
[14:37] <cscott> gwicke has commented on both of those, i believe, bringing up the caching issue
[14:37] <Scott_WUaS> Thnx:)




[14:59] <robla#endmeeting
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[14:59] <wm-labs-meetbot> Meeting ended Wed May 25 21:59:38 2016 UTC.  Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot . (v 0.1.4)
[14:59] == heatherw [~administr@wikimedia/heatherawalls] has quit [Quit: heatherw]

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Here's another aspect of the developing Wikidata/Wikibase languages' information technologies - with important Phabricator links to RFCs (Request for Comment) - from the Wikitech email list and in an email thread begun by Ryan Kaldari (who studied at UC Berkeley), who helped install WUaS in MediaWiki in English on Wed., January 6, 2016 at the Wikimedia Foundation in SF during the Wikimedia Developers Conference. His thread mentions the important Wiktionary (think wiki dictionary) aspect for WMF / Wikidata translation developments ...

[Wikitech-l] Should we switch the default category collation to uca-default?

Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org Unsubscribe

4:36 PM (16 hours ago)
to Wikimedia
There are currently 94 WMF wikis using UCA category collation rather than the default "uppercase" collation. The Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA) is the official standard for how to sort Unicode characters, and generally follows how a human would typically alphabetize strings. For example, uppercase collation sorts Aztec, Ärsenik, Zoo, Aardvark as "Aardvark, Aztec, Zoo, Ärsenik", but uca-default collation sorts them as "Aardvark, Ärsenik, Aztec, Zoo". UCA collation also (optionally) supports natural numeric sorting so that 100, 1, 99 sorts as "1, 99, 100" rather than "1, 100, 99". The WMF Community Tech team has recently posted proposals on English Wikipedia and several Wiktionaries asking if these communities would support switching to UCA collation. The proposal on English Wikipedia has received unanimous support so far.[1] We thought that Wiktionaries would be more skeptical of the change, but so far we have received only positive responses.[2]

Since it seems that most wikis are receptive to switching to UCA, maybe we should just make it the default rather than waiting on all the wikis to request it separately. Of the large Wikipedias, French, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian are already using UCA, and German is in the process of switching.[3] For non-Latin scripts, my understanding is that UCA will be a big improvement, especially if we switch them to language-specific implementations, like uca-ja, uca-zh, uca-ar, etc.

Three questions:
1. Does switching the default collation from "uppercase" to "uca-default" sound like a good idea?
2. Should this be proposed on meta or is it too technical?
3. Are there any wikis that would need to opt out of this for some reason? (I know there are issues with Kurdish,[4] but that's the only one I know about.)

1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#OK_to_switch_English_Wikipedia.27s_category_collation_to_uca-default.3F
2. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128502
3. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128806
4. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T48235
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Phabricator is helpful developers' organizational software, used by Wikitech folks in both of these instances  above...


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Thursday, May 26, 2016

Red lionfish: Introductions - Aldis is Head of Virtual Reality & Game Design for IBM Research and Ed is a Neuroengineer and Associate Professor at MIT Media Lab and MIT McGovern Institute, Dr. Gordon Pipa! Thanks for a fascinating IBM CSIG talk this morning on “Cognitive Computing” and your reply to my question about natural language processing and neuromorphic clusters of 1000 neurons, Let's explore further developing room-scale VR visualization for precise brain research at the neuronal, nano and Street View levels - and with CC in all 8k languages


Dear MIT Prof. Ed Boyden and Aldis Sipolins (Virtual Reality at IBM), 

I'm writing to introduce you to one another. Aldis is Head of Virtual Reality & Game Design for IBM Research (https://twitter.com/AldisSipolins) and Ed is a Neuroengineer and Associate Professor at MIT Media Lab and MIT McGovern Institute. Aldis and World University and School (which is MIT OCW-centric in its 7 languages +) have been emailing about exploring partnering around questions of developing online classrooms and Aldis recently emailed me with "I'd be happy to start a dialogue with MIT if you have connections there you could introduce me to, as well" so I'm emailing you both to introduce you to one another. 

Aldis, Ed speaks as an expert in this Youtube video - "Explorations with Bryan Johnson | Neurotechnology" to give you an idea of one of his current focuses ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=qT67rpURAgE - and it's at the top of Ed's Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/eboyden3). Ed, Aldis just gave this fascinating IBM CSIG talk recently, which I posted to my blog - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2016/05/white-tailed-tropicbird-fascinating.html - and I've also given a recent IBM CSIG talk - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2016/05/fertilisation-ibm-csig-talk-05-may.html - on WUaS's plans to develop a Universal Translator in all 7,943 languages and for brain research too. 

World University and School, which is like CC Wikipedia (in ~300 languages) with best STEM CC OpenCourseWare (accrediting on CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC) is developing free online accrediting major CC universities in all countries' main languages (offering free CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and Yale OYC-centric BA/BS, Ph.D., Law, M.D. and I.B. degrees), on the one hand, and wiki schools in all 7,943+ languages for open teaching and learning, on the other hand, and would like to develop our platform and information technologies by planning for all-languages' brain science research and classrooms. CC WUaS plans further to develop in CC Wikidata/Wikibase/Wikipedia with artificial intelligence, machine learning and machine translation. 

Having just attended a Stanford talk last week with Jeff Dean, a Senior Fellow and head of engineering at Google, and who was talking about their Google Brain project in many ways re Artificial Intelligence and language - "Deep Learning for Text Understanding and Information Retrieval" - WUaS would like to explore developing our all-languages' approach to A.I. while modeling neurons computationally in a direct co-constituting relationship with biological neuronal processes. In his talk, Jeff Dean showed the computational model of a neuron, which Google Brain is iterating on only very gradually (among many key AI foci for Google). Further developing computational neuronal modeling in a co-constituting relationship with actual neurons doesn't appear to be a main focus for Google yet - and yet this will make A.I. and machine learning remarkably robust and generative in multiple ways - and in room-size classrooms (Aldis's focus) especially. And this co-constituting relationship however is where Virtual Reality will be an amazing bridge between computational neurons and biological neurons and especially re room-size classrooms. 

Jeff Dean's research is fascinating for WUaS/me re Google's relatively open, excellent, free, best-value ecosystem (e.g. TensorFlow, its new chip, Street View/Maps/Earth, Google Translate in 180 languages, G+ Social Media, Youtube, Google Cardboard, Android, Brain, Search ... and all their A.I./machine learning/machine translation work beyond Brain) and with their licensing. Because of Google's relative openness licensing-wise, and the possibility for Creative Commons' licensed WUaS to build upon this and with CC MIT OCW in 7 languages, and with WUaS's plans to be in all 7,943+ languages in Virtual Reality especially (for ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy in Google Street View/OpenSim with time slider and specifically for all languages - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy - and for developing a comparative actual-virtual Harbin Hot Springs' ethnographic field site for my anthropological research and as a classroom too), WUaS sees much potential planning-wise in thinking in terms of Google's ecosystem. In developing World University's artificial intelligence room-size classrooms in something like Google group video Hangouts in a developing, ever more engineering-centric, virtual earth such as in Google Street View with time slider with Maps/Earth with OpenSim/Second Life, WUaS would like to develop our Virtual Reality both building on MIT OCW and via courses like yours, Ed, e.g. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/9-123-neurotechnology-in-action-fall-2014/

Furthermore, CC WUaS's brain research and courses will focus, for example, on -  http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/ - and again are planned in all 7,943+ languages. And WUaS would like to head toward developing online teaching hospital classrooms (e.g. http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Hospital) - and for clinically engaging brain related medical issues digitally (for our online medical students in all 200 countries' main languages, with a poorest country focus, to aid these countries medically) - again in all ~204 countries' main languages and in VR (e.g. something like Google Cardboard) as well as for brain research in Google Street View/Ecosystem with group-buildable OpenSim as WUaS's own project, as we grow. 

Brainwave head sets, such as Tan Le's or Brainfinger's - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2013/01/flower-coral-brainfingers-hands-free.html - would be an integral part of WUaS's all-languages' brain research platform and our room-size classrooms - for both directions  - brain neuron > computational neuron and vice versa - as brains learn and WUaS learns about learning via these technologies, and faculty members teach about this in classrooms. 

Given that Aldis is "exclusively interested in developing for room-scale virtual reality with the HTC Vive," ... and ... "given that the system costs about $2000 all told ($800 for the headset, $1200 for the computer to run it), [and that] it'll be a while before the hardware is cheap enough to scale," and as a way for me to contribute to furthering this dialogue, in what ways do you, Aldis, a) envision brain research to be taught in room size classrooms and b) in what ways will class-room dialogue itself (e.g. between, for example, MIT students in group video) emerge in the classrooms (such as moving this Google Hangouts themselves into a virtual earth / Google Street View/Maps/Earth-informed - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2015/03/parnassius-wuas-holding-conversation.html - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PpOy64y9O4) you envision? (By the way, Stanford's upcoming president in June is neuroscience pioneer Marc Tessier-Lavigne). 

Ed, I'm including Jim and Dianne in this email since both are heads of IBM Global University and have been involved in Aldis and my correspondence. (Jim Spohrer also has a BS from MIT in physics and a Ph.D. from Yale in CS). 

Looking forward to further communication about this. Thank you, Ed and Aldis. 

All the best, 
Scott


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Thanks for your email, Aldis Sipolins.

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Hi, Aldis and Ed, 

Thanks, Aldis. It will indeed be interesting how gaming technologies (see the MIT OCW in the beginning "Gaming-Digital" wiki subject at WUaS -  http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Gaming_-_Digital - as a kind of blueprint) emerge within a film-realistic, interactive, 3D, wiki, group build-able, all-languages’ virtual earth, with both realistic and fantastic avatars with brains (see too the MIT OCW in the beginning "Virtual World" subject here - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Virtual_Worlds - as a preamble to CC WUaS moving into CC Wikidata and adding CC MIT OCW in 7 languages to Wikidata too) scaled to room-size classrooms in physical space - for virtual multi-lingual teaching hospital classrooms and also for remote digital clinical brain care therein. The degrees and ways that the co-constituting relationships of brain-neurons to/from computational-neurons will inform versions and systems of AI and for gaming for learning are enormous. 

How CC World University and School will teach CC MIT OCW about this in countries' main languages (e.g. hiring MIT graduate students who are learning to become faculty members) re the systems you design with "brain-gaming" information technologies and Watson, Aldis, as well as in a realistic virtual earth in, for example, Google Street View / Google Brain systems with its word focus (Brainfingers is a brainwave headset that I’ve tried which allows one to pick letters from a keyboard with “brainwaves,” and without spoken words or gestures), and in new ways emerging from MIT, will create many new courses in many large languages (as well as much new virtual brain research potential).

Ed, where do you see brain research and virtual reality, and teaching about this, finding a generative future beyond the video you shared on Twitter, and in ways, as Aldis wrote, that  "capitalize on the cutting edge of VR tech that's hit the market in the past few weeks to make uniquely immersive, engaging lessons" and also particularly re university / company partnerships?

Best, Scott

Thanks for your email, Ed Boyden. 

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Thanks for your email again, Aldis.


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Hi, Aldis, Ed and Gordon (Jim and Dianne), 

Greetings, Gordon! Thanks for a fascinating IBM CSIG talk this morning on “Cognitive Computing” and your reply to my question about natural language processing and neuromorphic clusters of 1000 neurons. (Both IBM's Aldis and I have given recent IBM CSIG talks - http://cognitive-science.info/community/weekly-update/ - on VR and a universal translator). Ed Boyden here is a neuroengineer and MIT Professor; where you've worked I saw, Gordon (who is neuroscientist with IBM) and Aldis is the head of Virtual Reality at IBM. I'd like to introduce all of us to one another, Gordon, and invite you into this developing Virtual Reality / neural processing and engineering email conversation.

Aldis and Ed, in a parallel way, part of my long term actual-virtual Harbin Hot Springs' anthropological project is to digitally model the fluid environment of the Harbin warm pool - which is roughly 15 feet by 30 feet - for ongoing actual-virtual film-realistic, interactive, 3D, wiki, build-able, with realistic and fantastic avatars, all 8k languages' comparisons - at the Street View level, as well as at the neuronal and nano levels. Not only would there be aqueous parallels digitally/computationally between modeling and visualizing the brain at both the neuronal and nano levels/scales, but I'm also interested in terms of research on the effects on the brain re visualizing in the Harbin warm pool - and for a variety of ground-level specific mental / cognitive processes. And again in terms of AI, I'm further interested in the co-constituting relationship between computational neurons and biological neurons (see previous email).

In addition to Jeff Dean's recent Stanford talk on Google Brain - https://research.google.com/teams/brain/ - and words, which I mentioned attending initially in this email thread, I just came across Google Galaxy - https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-data/2016/05/explore-the-galaxy-of-images-with-cloud-vision-api (and Google Sky https://www.google.com/sky/ and Liquid Galaxy - http://www.google.com/earth/explore/showcase/liquidgalaxy.html) - as digital instantiations of some possible adaptable fluid/neuronal/nano processing environments. How best to make these precise for engineering at all levels - and in terms of 15 foot by 15 foot room-scale visualizing of the brain from within? 

And Watson Virtual Reality, Google Brain environments, your work, Gordon, and your team's "Multiplexed Neural Recording Down a Single Optical Fiber via Optical Reflectometry with Capacitive Signal Enhancement" work, Ed, will likely be taught at MIT OpenCourseWare - and in multiple languages. (Did you happen to watch and hear, Aldis, the very relevant CSIG IBM talk this morning by IBM's Dr. Gordon Pipa - http://cognitive-science.info/community/weekly-update/ - which touched on neuronal processing and cognitive computing?). Engaging brainwave headsets would be a very important part of this research and precise VR neural / nano developments.  

The important aspect of the methodology I'm developing which I'm calling ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy (here again are the slides from my UC Berkeley talk on this from last November - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2015/11/waters-36-slides-from-uc-berkeley-talk.html) relating to your, Ed, very precise engineering approach at the nano-level, and your precise VR engineering approach for brain research (and learning about the brain through gaming approaches), Aldis, is that World University and School would like to make very precise STEM building/engineering processes accessible to potentially all researchers from a very wide variety of disciplines in all languages. (Again, CC WUaS is like CC Wikipedia in ~300 languages with CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC, and planning to develop in CC Wikidata/Wikibase eventually in all 7,943+ languages).

I'm planning to apply for this MIT Media Lab junior faculty position - http://www.media.mit.edu/about/faculty-search application due July 15) - re World University and School which again is planned in all 7,943 languages as wiki schools and which is developing major accrediting online CC universities (CC MIT OpenCourseWare- in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC-centric) in ~204 countries (for online free CC BS/BA, Ph.D., Law and M.D. and I.B. degrees). I think databases at the nano and neuronal levels in all these languages, which WUaS plans to facilitate, will be key to room-scale VR and nano-level modeling. 

Let's explore further developing room-scale VR visualization for precise brain research at the neuronal, nano and Street View levels, as this could "be an exciting area for collaboration."

Best, Scott




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