Thing #10 of “23 Things”

Set Up an RSS Reader and Add Feeds

I chose to set up an RSS with Google Reader because it was easier since I already had a Gmail account, but also because I know that Google is not likely to go away anytime soon. Also because Google has proven to be good, i.e., user friendly, innovative, inclusive etc.
Here are the 5 feeds that I chose to subscribe to:

1. KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News
2. Learning 2.0 - 23 Things for Teachers
3. Sylvia's 23 Things
4. Texas Tornado
5. KStanley_EDUC 5540

RSS are definitely a good solution if you are fallowing several “Blogs”. It works as an email account which only delivers selected emails with updated information about your topics of interest. Most prestigious websites do allow you to choose them to send regular emails with their updated information. Many let you decide how often you want the updates and those which add a lot of information daily, will let you choose what information you want them to update you on.
RSS let you see changes on any website or blog, leaving the owner unaware of this. I like Stephanie Gottschalk’s (Texas Tornado or Miss Texas) definition: “It's like creating your own newspaper of your interest” “…your very own customized newspaper.”
I think the best part of this activity (and the 23 Things in general) is all the questions it raised. As I was thinking about this tool, I remembered two books that I read a couple of years ago by Ray Kurzwail: “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” and The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. Ray Kurzwail is a famous American scientist, an accomplished inventor and more importantly a visionary. His main idea (he has many!), explained in “The Singularity is Near” many years ago, in a nutshell, is that technology is approaching an explosive moment, a singularity, at which point new discoveries and new technologies are going to happen on weekly, daily and even hourly basics. We are seeing this happening already! So much is happening on the web that we just can’t keep up with everything. According to him it is going to get worse. RSS is only one of many desperate solutions humans are using to keep up with this explosion in information.
I think (I suppose I could cite Kurzwail here!) that the solution is going to be Artificial Intelligence. Funny, yes, these are my own thoughts thanks to him and many, many conversations I had with many, many smart and not so smart people over the years since I was in college, in the eighties, when I used to argue with philosophy students, physics students and math students about the future, about today and tomorrow, about computers and AI, the universe, astronomy (not astrology please) about consciousness, extraterrestrial life, multiverses and even the supernatural… yes, all these questions in the eighties. In other words, at one moment we will not be able to keep up with all the new technologies, discoveries, ideas etc and we will have to rely on AI solutions – Software that searches, chooses, summarizes and even make decisions and creates for us. This is where we are heading folks (read Kurzwail and many others in his references!). If you pay attention you will see that it is happening already.
I can barely keep up with all my passwords, my email accounts, my websites, my pictures… even my friends and family members! Not to mention all the things that I must and want to learn, the games that I like to play, or the books that I want to read. To all these I just added these 2300 things that I am working on for this class which, I must say, has given me all kind of new ideas. Hey, I am even thinking about writing a book on line. Imagine that… no pressure, no deadlines, no API references, your own format… no profit? Most likely, but definitely, a lot of fun and a medium to reach anyone, especially my family. It is like publishing for free (It seems to me that formal papers will became less important in the future).
To answer the question “How can teachers use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?”- I think teachers can use it the same way everyone else is, to organize themselves and their students. Perhaps teachers could teach students how to organize themselves in cyberspace.
One final thought: I would like to see a place on the internet where I could create personal hidden websites, private websites, places that only I can access. I would use this website to collect in one place all my website links, all my email accounts links, all my passwords (not sure about this one), names of friends, addresses, phone numbers etc. If anyone reads this blog and knows of anything similar please let me know (Update: iGoogle is a partial solution because... Wikis could be a better solution).

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