The Cathedral and the Bazaar

I was pleasantly surprised by how much is in Eric Raymond’s now classic The Cathedral & The Bazaar. Thinking I was going to get one essay on Linux and the open-source movement, instead I was treated to four! I’m surprised how unaware I was of this book, given that I used various versions of Unix back in the day before Linux came together. This book brings back memories of earlier days, and although I was never a bona fide hacker I found the history fascinating. I was actually pointed to this book from reading about management, creativity and disruptive new tech. The book that led me to this gem was Scott Berkun’s The Year Without Pants, which chronicles his time with Wordpress.

The premise of the first essay, which also takes the title of the book, is to contrast two approaches one could use in designing a computing platform. The old-school cathedral-building approach uses highly controlled project management – an ethos that still reigns in many I.T. departments. The bazaar approach, on the other hand, is more like the Wild West. Can a bazaar-like approach build a coherent system that is economically viable, works well, and won’t suffer from the “tragedy of the commons”? It is clear that at least in the tech world, Linux is a marquee example that the bazaar approach can work, although other earlier open-source attempts failed to gain enough momentum (or ran into problems).

The second essay in the book titled “Homesteading the Noosphere” was even more interesting than the first. The author delves into the social workings of why and how a bazaar-style open-source approach works. Clearly it doesn’t work in all cases, and the author outlines the advantages and disadvantages of both closed and open-source approaches. My first thought when reading the chapter was to think about hacker culture from a craftsmanship model (since I recently read Shop Class as Soulcraft and blogged about it here). But Eric Raymond had considered it already, and had a better explanation on hand – a gift culture with quirks unique to the hacker world. I had previously stereotyped hackers as narrowly interested in hacking, but the subculture turns out to be fascinating – and the author has a coherent thesis analyzing anthropologically his own “tribe”. He anticipates what we’re seeing in the Big Data and Sharing movements of the last several years.

Raymond’s book has gotten me thinking about whether a bazaar approach could work in higher education. From a knowledge/information point of view we see parallels with Wikipedia although there seem to be a few differences in the control system and culture (from the little I know). A ranking system of helpful educational videos or books (e.g. YouTube or Amazon) makes use of crowd-sourcing, but not in the same way that hackers contribute to building and maintaining source code, distributions and writing patches. The videos and books aren’t crowd-edited – certainly not any good ones.

As a college professor I have control over my own materials and how I will teach my classes. (I suppose that if I was teaching younger children in a public school I may be constrained by having to deliver a specific curriculum possibly in a particular way.) While I would search the World Wide Web for helpful illustrations, animations, strategies, source-material, I am still the final arbiter for my class. I choose how to arrange the materials and activities, and they are tailored to who I know to be my “audience” (albeit, one that interacts with me as the instructor). However, I can only do so much to customize the learning process for each of my students. (It would work great if I only had 3 students per class, but this would not be an economical model!)

This is where adaptive learning technology may prove to be superior – customization for every student. I mentioned ALEKS and Knewton in a previous post and how these systems may put us teachers out of a job, even as we contribute to it – at least if I’m feeling dystopian. At the moment, these systems are proprietary (closed-source) and the behemoth publishers (McGraw-Hill and Pearson) are banking on holding on to the keys to make their profits. This sounds strangely reminiscent of the cathedral-building approach in the tech world. Could the bazaar work here? Is there a community of hacker-professors out there in critical mass? Or can a platform be built that allows non-hacker professors to collaboratively leverage an open-source adaptive system built by hackers?

Maybe. Raymond’s book suggests the ingredients of the culture that might sustain such an endeavor. There certainly are some parallels between academic and hacker culture, but also distinct differences. The lack of a clear objective standard in higher education of what should take place to best enhance learning perhaps contrasts to clear and efficient code that works smoothly – something hackers of different stripes could probably agree on. The Minerva Project is banking that they might learn something by collecting lots of data monitoring both students and instructors in their online-only courses (they’re sort of the anti-MOOC). Could a Big Data feedback approach help coalesce educational mechanics?

If I think up a Killer App for all of this, should I post it and sound a clarion call for the open-sourcers to gather around? Or go start my own company? The possibilities!

Advanced Arithmancy: Isn't that just P-Chem?

Advanced Arithmancy is not mentioned in the books (as far as I’m aware), but it does show up in the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. In a couple of previous posts I tried to make a case of why Hogwarts or some other school of magic should hire a chemistry professor – namely me. As someone who teaches Physical Chemistry I would like to make a case of why I would be suitable for Advanced Arithmancy.

Let’s start with basic Arithmancy. The term comes from the Greek words arithmos and manteia, meaning number and divination respectively. So says Wikipedia. “Arithmancy is thus the study of divination through numbers.” Numerology remains quite popular today as it did in times past. Even Hermione, who rejected Divination class with Trelawney as being “wooly”, seems to think there is something more concrete in Arithmancy class with Professor Vector. But can you really divine the future with numbers?

In Newtonian mechanics, if you know the positions and velocities of all particles in a system at any instant, you can predict the future behavior of all those particles. The caveat is that they must obey Newton’s laws. There are three problems: (1) Knowing all the positions and velocities is a tall order but possible, at least in theory, (2) particles at the level of atoms are governed by quantum mechanics, and (3) for any “real” system of interest, there are likely to be external influences that must be taken into account.

This is where Physical Chemistry, or P-Chem, comes in. It turns out that for an ensemble of particles, you can make good predictions using the “laws” of quantum mechanics. The field of statistical mechanics then allows you to derive thermodynamic quantities. Why is thermodynamics important? It tells you, at least for equilibrium thermodynamics, where things are headed given where you are now. And you don’t need to know the individual details of all particles. The thermodynamic quantities allow you to make macro-scale future predictions without needing to know everything that’s going on at the micro- or nano-scopic level. That, in principle, helps overcome the first two problems. A year of P-Chem (required of Chemistry majors) should give students a headstart in this area. Now, it’s not going to be easy – but it will be very interesting. And at the end of the course, students can even get the famous bumper sticker that says “Honk if you passed P-Chem”. These were quite popular some years ago but I haven’t seen many recently. The third problem is more complicated but a follow-up class, perhaps Double Advanced Arithmancy, could cover the fundamentals of non-equilibrium thermodynamics.

So can numbers predict the future? This is what scientists are attempting in many areas. Probably the most familiar are large-scale simulations of the earth and its environment – that show up non-stop on the Weather Channel. Closer to my field, simulations are run to predict the properties of new catalysts, advanced materials, and biochemical evolution. We build mathematical models, estimate the “present” conditions, and using the “laws” of quantum and/or classical mechanics we can predict the future of something not yet physically seen or built.

But what most of us care about from a Divination point of view is “what is going to happen to me in the future”? That’s not so easy to tell. Like a single quantum particle, perhaps an individual’s “future is not set” (I admit to recently watching Terminator Genisys). We seem to do reasonably in making some macro-level predictions for ensembles of particles (or individuals), but what if these individuals started to collude in ways that were not represented in our models. Do we know what all the feedbacks might be? Maybe that might be the heart of quantum mechanics. (Or at least I’m a quantum mechanic at heart.) Sounds like another class: Triple Advanced Arithmancy. Is there a Hogwarts College, I wonder? Maybe I could help start one.

Shop Class and Craftwork

I just finished reading Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford, a philosopher and mechanic who owns and operates a motorcycle repair shop. How he ended up in motorcycle repair is an interesting story. While he does go into specific details about engines and bike parts, what I found most interesting are his observations about education and craftsmanship. The book is aptly subtitled An Inquiry into the Value of Work.

The book begins by extolling the values of the “useful arts” which involve manual work with one’s own hands. Crawford discusses the psychic satisfaction and the cognitive demands when problem solving, contrasting the work of the craftsman-artist with the assembly-line worker. The latter is characterized as degrading, mindless and lacking in pleasure. Crawford makes a connection between the Smith-Hughes Act (1917) and the rise of vocational education to the “error” of separating blue-collar and white-collar work into the mindless and mental respectively. Children with stronger academic capabilities (often correlated with higher socio-economic status) were tracked away from the “lower” trades and into the “higher” educational track – College.

This “separation of thinking and doing” (the title of Chapter 2 in Crawford’s book) traces the degradation of blue-collar work to the rise of “scientific management” popularized by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the early 20^th century. Once the worker’s tasks have been decomposed into parts, the most efficient sequence of motions can be optimized thereby turning assembly line workers into the first robots. Here Crawford argues is where “the concept of wages as compensation achieves its fullest meaning, and its central place in modern economy.” I always wondered why the word compensation was used for “extra administrative tasks” in the workplace. Given my dislike of being a mindless paper-pushing cog in the administrative complex, I now see that this compensates for the less-than-satisfying work.

Crawford makes the very good point that the same thing is happening in white-collar work. The popularity of the comic strip Dilbert is a testament to the degradation of the office worker in his or her cubicle. In the quest for efficiency, automization, “cover-your-butt” bureaucracy, “best practices”, we have gone down the same robotic road. Crawford quotes Barbara Garson describing how “extraordinary human ingenuity has been used to eliminate the need for human ingenuity”. The title of Garson’s book is The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers are Transforming the Office of the Future into the Factory of the Past. Crawford writes that “genuine knowledge work comes to be concentrated in an ever-smaller elite… we must take a cold-eyed view of knowledge work… reject the image that [it] lifts all boats… more likely [leads to] a rising sea of clerkdom.” I think of the vast complexity of a university, the constant hiring of more staff to do the ever-increasing clerical work, and it seems a tad ironic that the university is in the “knowledge” business.

Crawford’s critique of corporate culture is stinging when it comes to the rise of “teamwork”. Why are there “managers”? Because they are there to manage corporate culture, using “anthropological finesse, not [taking] the form of detached analysis, but rather of charismatic world making (with executive pay to match).” This matches very well to the pronouncements of the gurus in the tech world and the innovators and disruptors of the higher education world. “Buying-in” to “the mission” of the organization becomes paramount. Teambuilding activities are all the rage. Everyone in the team is a valuable contributor and undergoes “360 review” as the hierarchy is supposedly flattened. I couldn’t quite articulate why these things irked me until Crawford laid it out in his plain and direct prose. The scary thing is that to some extent I have imbibed part of corporate culture and I occasionally find myself using similar strategies to motivate others.

Should we go back to the craftsman apprenticeship model of the middle ages? I don’t think so. Living in an information-rich era has changed the way we learn and we need to find ways to retain the “craft” nature of work instead of allowing the modern industrial complex to lead us to ever-increasing mindlessness. Maximizing efficiency and profits should not be the goal of mankind. We should be more homo sapiens than homo economicus optimus. Crawford does not articulate a religious point of view, but some of his points come remarkably close to some Christian notions of how the “ideal work” of mankind should be characterized.

Reading Crawford’s book made me want to sign up for a shop class. I never took one in school, having been shunted into the “white collar work” stream of classes. There’s a reason I’m a theoretical chemist – I have lousy hands in lab. But on the rare occasion that I “fix” something in the house (and my abilities are very limited), I do feel a sense of accomplishment and well-being! Thanks to internet videos, I can actually do some of these things without being an apprentice craftsman. A couple of days after reading the book, the local community college system sent its list of classes. Usually I just recycle the booklet, but this time I perused the list. I could learn automotive repair, plumbing, metal sheet work, and more. Then I thought about all my daytime “knowledge work” and I just wasn’t sufficiently motivated to sign up for a night class. But I’m pleased to say that I do view teaching as a craft, and find it exciting, creative and fun! It’s indeed a blessing to enjoy one’s vocation.

Gamp's Law and Creating Food

According to Hermione in Book 7, the creation of food out of thin air is one of the five exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration. Perhaps it depends on how thin the air is, and whether one can manipulate the elements in thin air. Oddly enough, supposedly you can multiply food if you have some to begin with. Interestingly water can be conjured via the aguamenti spell. But perhaps even the thinnest air has traces of water vapor and it can be extracted from the surroundings. This presumes that the water conjured via aguamenti is indeed similar to molecules of H₂O.

Food might come in various ways. For example, at the beginning of Book 6, the Muggle prime minister recalls his first visit from Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic at the time. Fudge turns a teacup into a gerbil presumably via Transfiguration. This is an example of turning something inorganic into a living organic creature, which can run around. Presumably the gerbil could be killed and eaten as food – although in this case the prime minister gives the gerbil to his niece as a pet. There are other examples of what we might call inorganic to organic (or vice versa) transformations in the Harry Potter books. So why not just use Transfiguration to convert something into an organic creature, and then kill and eat it?

Here’s a hypothesis: Maybe Transfiguration has certain limitations. Maybe when you transform one object into another, it is only the outer characteristics that get transformed such that the new object is perceived to “behave” in the right ways (at least macroscopically), but that internally it has not changed. One might say that its elemental transfiguration (to use Gamp’s Law) has not truly taken place at least where an organic living object (that can provide nutrition) is concerned. This was my train of thought in a previous post where I postulated that Transfiguration or Conjuring is limited by the ability of the spellcaster to understand the underlying principles of the object being conjured or transfigured.

To continue with this line of thinking, perhaps an understanding of the organic nature of an object can permit the appropriate Elemental Transfiguration. If the physical nature of objects is built upon atomic and molecular theory, rather than Aristotelian alchemical (four elements) principles, then all that is needed is the development of spells that effect organic transformations. If aguamenti has the power to extract oxygen and hydrogen atoms from various sources and recombine them into water, or less dramatically simply siphon off water molecules from some other source, one might argue that there should be related spells that can do the same for carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen (sometimes called the CHON species).

Since food is simply made up of molecules with these elements, an understanding of organic chemistry should aid the spellcaster in creating such molecules through recombination in some way. Wood is an organic material, mainly containing the elements carbon, hydrogen and oxygen (or CHO) – the same elements you would find in carbohydrates and fats. (Proteins have nitrogen too, and the occasional sulfur.) So let me make the same pitch as in my earlier post: To the wizard or witch reading this, I recommend learning organic chemistry as well as you can. Because when you understand the differences between this panoply of substances at the molecular level, you will be able to create food out of thin air! And if you then go on to learn Biochemistry, you could become one of the greatest healers of all time! You might even be able to live forever (if only Voldemort had bothered learning chemistry) and you would not need to create a philosopher’s stone!

Technology Trajectories in Higher Education

The cover story of the most recent issue of EDUCAUSE review is titled “Six Trajectories for Digital Technology in Higher Education”, and was written by Malcolm Brown (the Director of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative). The article starts out by explaining the use of the word “trajectory” as compared to “prediction” for reasons of lack of omniscience. This sort of preamble always makes the words “plausible deniability” pop into my head. But on to the meat of the article!

Before discussing the six trajectories, the author sets the stage by defining three characteristics of teaching and learning: (1) personalization and customized learning, (2) the adoption of hybrid face-to-face and online modes, and (3) collecting large amounts of data and “analyzing” it (whatever that means). The author then makes a very bold claim, that “digital technology is the core strategic enabler of learning in higher education.” However, apparently for higher education IT folks, there has been a “shift in our thinking… that the technology is no longer in the foreground; instead, our attention is focused on the learners and the learning experiences that the technology enables.”

As an educator I certainly think that the focus should always be on the teaching and learning and that technology should never be in the driver’s seat. The fact that a “shift in thinking” was required in the first place bothers me. While I was an early adopter of using technology in my classes – I was probably one of the earliest in my department to write my own course web page in HTML so there was a centralized syllabus and I could deliver materials easily – I was rather resistant to using the Learning Management System (LMS), at the time an earlier version of WebCT. I was also rather resistant to adopting the online homework system associated with our General Chemistry textbook publisher. Back in the early days it was clunky to use. Now the LMS is a much smoother experience and chock-full of data analytic tools. I understand its advantages and do use it now, but I think there’s something particularly valuable about person-to-person dialogue in the teaching and learning process.

And now, the six trajectories along with my by brief commentary:

(1) Device Ownership and Mobile-First. It’s clear that device ownership among college students has increased significantly over the years. I remember the epiphany I had a number of years ago (I should have taken note of the date!) where I was walking out of class with my students and in an almost robotic motion all the students around me pulled out their mobile devices. I did not own a mobile device at the time. In any case, I am in agreement with the author that this is a clear trajectory by which students will be accessing any parts of their “digital learning environment” (another buzzword).

(2) The Textbook and Open Educational Resources (OER). The author points out that all the large textbook publishers are moving towards selling “software and services that are related to educational content.” The exponential rise in textbook costs has certainly made instructors like myself very reluctant to assign expensive textbooks to our classes. In this regard I am very thankful for the rise in OER. The question will be how usable the OER content is when adapted to one’s local environment. A good well-written textbook can be very valuable, although it seems that students know less and less about how to really use their textbook. Back when I was a college student, I found the books invaluable to my learning, but perhaps if I was in today’s generation of students I might not.

(3) Adaptive Learning Technology. This is something I’ve been watching closely after first learning about Knewton and ALEKS. (I like how they both sound like names of persons. How fitting!) I have mixed feelings about this trajectory. Can the computer indeed learn the intuitive feel that I have as an experienced instructor of how to move students along a productive learning direction? Possibly. However I can’t help but compare this to the on-board computer diagnostics in newer cars. Instead of an old-school car mechanic who learned via a combination of apprenticeship, tinkering, and frequently consulting mechanic friends (the guild), one goes through a checklist flowchart that might lead to “this part is faulty, replace it.” It is questionable whether the learning analytics will instill some of the deeper parts of learning (that we don’t completely understand). What I like about learning technology is that it is good for drilling (thanks to the infinite patience of the computer) and for developing certain skills. But I think it has its limitations. Anyway, this trajectory will be interesting to watch. As educators we should watch it closely because we could be well putting ourselves out of a job.

(4) Learning Spaces. I’ve had the opportunity to visit specially designed technology-enabled active-learning classrooms for team-based learning. I’ve also visited some “maker spaces” with 3-D printers and the like. All the spaces were quite new, and folks like to show them off to visitors. The ones I’ve seen are impressive looking (lots of money being poured in) and do actually get utilized somewhat effectively. I say somewhat because the mileage varies with the disposition/skill set of the instructors and the course content/learning goals. I am however skeptical that the amount of money spent on such spaces justifies the more nebulous “learning goals” of fostering innovation and creativity that supposedly come from the space design. I think too much credit is given to the space and technology for the learning than is warranted. (I don’t disagree that better design spaces can be enhancing – it’s a question of proportion.)

(5) The Next-Generation LMS. Apparently the big question is what LMS version 2.0 will look like. I don’t know. However I strongly suspect that when it does show up, it will be hailed as the great leap forward. It will then be thrusted on me as instructor as a tool that will greatly enhance teaching and learning.

(6) Learning Analytics and Integrated Planning and Advising Services (IPAS). The main idea behind this is tracking and alerting the appropriate person when some student is going “off track” or is becoming “at risk”. What happened to the old days when you as a teacher did your part to help students but they could also choose to go their own way without coddling and have freedom to make their own mistakes (and learn from them!)? As a frequent adviser of first-year college students, I was introduced a number of years ago to my institution’s version of IPAS. I chose not to use the system and it’s name has been blanked out in my memory. I make every effort to get to know my student advisees but I want them to have the room to choose how much they want to share. I treat them as adults and I feel that the IPAS infantilizes the students. It’s also only as good as the data it can collect (and I’m against much of this collection). I won’t say much about Learning Analytics because I’m hoping to make a more extensive blog post about them, but suffice to say they have their uses. I find some aspects of this feature helpful in our online homework system, although frankly I’d prefer more students to come into my office hours (I’ve seen a decrease since employing the system).

I agree with the concluding paragraph made by the author: “It is a time that is both stressful and energizing, with both loss and new opportunity. Our task as educators is to carefully sift through these new options, being wary not only of clinging to the past but also of embracing digital snake oil. The fundamental challenges to us are to not look into the future ‘through a rear-view mirror’ and to not have our tools shape us.” It seems a good thing to be circumspect but also to have a willingness to embrace changes that can truly enhance teaching and learning. Paper, the printing press, and books significantly changed learning (I think for the better overall) and our new technology is likely to do so as well so long as we don’t put the cart before the horse.

Better Living (Magic) through Chemistry (Potions)

I learned from Wikipedia that the phrase “Better Living Through Chemistry” was often used on products to avoid trademark infringement of the du Pont slogan for almost fifty years: “Better Things for Better Living… through Chemistry”. Interestingly when I did a Google search for the phrase, a 2014 movie of the same title came up on the first ten entries. I haven’t seen the movie so I have no comment on this. Instead I am going to put forward a theory that learning aspects of Muggle chemistry could make one a better spellcaster.

Formulating my theory began with a question: Why should students at Hogwarts, or any other school of magic, bother studying Potions in the first place? If you can cast a magical spell to do almost anything you can imagine, why not just cast the spell? Why do you need to bother making any Potions? All you have to do is figure out the right incantation, wave your wand appropriately where needed, and have the mental focus and willpower to successfully cast a spell. If you can Transfigure virtually anything (including oneself as Slughorn does when he turns himself into a chair), or Conjure up something-from-apparently-nothing (such as orchids or a flock of birds as Ollivander does in the “weighing of the wands” at the Triwizard tournament), you should be able to make any changes that a potion could make. Are there limitations?

To explore this idea, let’s think about what Potions are mainly used for. Healing or curing seem to be the most common uses. Certainly you could brew a poisonous or harmful potion. The Wolfsbane potion that Lupin takes monthly apparently is the only thing that really helps his “condition”. There are love potions, euphoria-inducing potions, lucky potions, and potions that can change one’s appearance. Snape claims that he can teach you how to “bewitch the mind, ensnare the senses, bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death”. The Polyjuice Potion shows up prominently in many of the books. Why doesn’t someone Transfigure themselves to appear as someone else? Why bother with a Potion that you have to take every hour? A very capable magic user can cast a spell of invisibility so strong that an invisibility cloak would not be needed. One can certainly change one’s appearance or disappearance through a spell.

Maybe the effectiveness of a spell has to do with how much you understand what it is you are doing. Maybe Transfiguration or Conjuring is limited by the ability of the spellcaster to understand the underlying principles of the object being conjured or transfigured (both from and into). Perhaps “inanimate objects” such as teacups, stones, and bones are relatively simple objects. A ferret, small birds, or orchids, may be a bit more complicated since these are “animate” or living things. There are healing spells, which may fix some of the exterior wounds, but one still needs a potion for internal damage. Maybe the reason why Polyjuice is still the masquerade-of-choice is because casting a spell on yourself to appear as another is very complicated if you need to get all the details exactly right. Perhaps the reason you need a Potion is because it can interact chemically with the biomolecular chemistry of the body more effectively than any spell can.

But if the key to more advanced and powerful spellcasting is understanding the complexity of the spell being cast, it seems that learning chemistry (and biochemistry in particular) could lead to some very powerful spells. Imagine casting a spell that acts on the detailed molecular level with long lasting effects rather than just changing the exterior macroscopic level “look” of an object or a person. Perhaps things that are transfigured or conjured look right on the “outside” but may not have much on the “inside” and therefore a trained magical eye can tell the difference. Polyjuice though seems quite undetectable – perhaps because it interacts (albeit reversibly) at the molecular level.

Why was Snape such a capable spellcaster? Perhaps it’s because he was particularly good at Potions. (I’m sure Dumbledore was too!) When Malfoy is struck by Sectumsempra, Snape is at least able to reverse much (but perhaps not all) of the damage, and he aids Dumbledore after the incident of the cursed ring.

So to the wizard or witch reading this, I recommend learning chemistry. In great detail! Because when you understand changes at the molecular level, you will be able to devise and cast spells of great power. And while this blog is called “Potions for Muggles” (which incidentally could be the title of one of my current chemistry classes), perhaps I could teach a class called “Chemistry for Spellcasters”. If only I actually knew how magic worked, I could teach at Hogwarts!