Being all things to all people: and virtually 2nd

I don't ever want to be like 'jam', as that may indicate that one has also become a statistic. In IcT though it's very difficult to spread yourself as completely as you might like. The desire and apparent need to 'multi-webtech' is profound. So it is gratifying (if that's the right word?) when news comes through that the grass is not always greener being an 'early adopter' and in with the in-crowd. For me this missed opportunity and news comes c/o Second Life.

As with the philosophy dialogue there is a virtual effort that dates back to 1991. I realised ages ago that if you are going to build a community dedicated to the compound conceptual space that is Hodges' model then virtual - augmented reality is the space to Be. I have long thought of the model as the ideal portal for a virtual learning environment. So here is news that actually indicates a trend, a shift in the maturity of the web as the established newspaper media also takes stock of traditional journalism, its investment in web content and how to monetise. The latest sign of change is today's news of a possible NewsCorp and Microsoft alliance against Google in The Independent. Here's the Second Life news item:

Subject: [NetBehaviour] Second Life To Remove Free Content From Web Search.

"In a move that continues to shake the Second Life community of content creators, merchants, and consumers, Linden Labs has declared that free virtual content will no longer be searchable without listing payments on their website portal - (formerly at:)
(http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Managing_Freebies_on_Xstreet_SL_Roadmap_FAQ);
and additional fees will be added with the intention of discouraging content listed for inexpensive selling prices. The move is particularly troubling because the online Web listing service is the de facto search engine for virtual content in Second Life, since the in-world search tools are unable to provide information about an object beyond name and location - basic textual descriptions, pictures, or descriptions of licensing, size, or content-category are not possible. While initially the change was explained as a response to community feedback, the residents involved in this feedback process were revealed to be fewer than 100 in number, primarily larger merchants among a community of millions. Within 24 hours of the announcement, the feedback thread (https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/38923#38923) has swelled to over 1,000 overwhelmingly negative responses. Additionally, in-world protests have erupted throughout the day, and over 20,000 objects have been voluntarily removed from the online store by angered merchants."

Read on for more details on the brouhaha.

Adding to the controversy are the officially stated justifications in the FAQ
(http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Managing_Freebies_on_Xstreet_SL_Roadmap_FAQ),
such as 'They [free content listings] hinder the shopping experience because a "sort by price" puts all freebies first,' and the perplexing statement 'They [free listings] garner so much attention that Residents are driven toward the freebies instead of quality, fairly priced items.'

Various independent virtual content listing sites have been proposed, such as Meta-life.net and Slapt.me, but attempts to post this information on the Second Life forums has been met with aggressive administrative censorship of these links.

Found originally on slashdot.org
My source: CI list and marc garrett (FurtherField)

Additional links:
FurtherField
NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity

Learning Disability & Hodges' model

It is Brian E Hodges who created Hodges' model in the early 1980s and one of his qualifications is RNMH - Registered Nurse for the Mentally Handicapped. Today this course and qualification is known as RNLD, that is - Registered Nurse for Learning Disability. What has not changed is the foresightedness and need for a political care domain within the model.

You might well ask:

What is so foresighted about that?

Well a moments reflection and we can soon appreciate the extent to which the following have changed since the early - mid 1980s, not only in terms of theory, policy and practice, but attitudes also:

• learning disability - independent living
• human rights
• institutionalised care
• role of medication - side effects, consent
• mental capacity
• epilepsy
• educational opportunity
• special needs
• social inclusion
• nurse training
• social care
• outcomes directed care

The foresight that Brian extended in realizing the opposition of intrapersonal - political retains its relevance today. There is still so much to do.

There is much more that the existing and any new website could offer in supporting the care agenda, its delivery and refinement for this group of people and their families. It pains me that to date there is a gap here on W2tQ (a paltry six tags), website and links content. By rights the links pages deserve a specific listing for this client group, either in the intrapersonal or political domains. What do you think? More than this though what future content types might support the care, welfare and well-being of people with a learning disability? If you have any ideas, suggestions, or guidance to offer please get in touch.

Additional links:

British Institute of Learning Disabilities
Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education
Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities
Mencap

Nurses as modellers and informaticians: surely not!

Nursing is still trying to escape and evade the sexual 'Carry On' stereotypes that have plagued the profession in the popular imagination. For the majority of people talk of nursing and models more readily conjures up visions of catwalks than an academic pursuit.

You can still see and hear the response of bright-eyed girls and boys (aged 9-10...) to the age-old question: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" The answer: "I want to be a nurse and help people get better!" Even though youngsters are more sophisticated these days (the reference to girls and boys is not just me being politically correct), they are still most likely primarily motivated by humanistic leanings as opposed to wanting to pursue the necessary studies in the sciences.

Despite efforts worldwide practicing nurses do not all see themselves as data modellers enthralled by IcT. IT isn't usually why they came to nursing, although many mature students may have started their career in the IT sector. Chapter 1 of Programming the Semantic Web highlights how a basic table is a model (p.6-7). So of course gifted with natural language we are all data modellers. Hodges model then is the ubiquitous high-level data model - a two-by-two table and a whole lot more.

An invitation to mine data, gather information and deliver nuggets of knowledge.

Ref:
Programming the Semantic Web: Build Flexible Applications with Graph Data
By Toby Segaran, Colin Evans, Jamie Taylor
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Released: July 2009

The WWW, spam, personality - mood and idealism

According to Technology Guardian 19.11.2009 Cisco estimated late last year that there are around 200bn junk e-mails a day. The (newspaper) article Mixed Messages states that although filters intercept a vast amount of spam, it remains the route for malware and viruses now disguised as 'friend' invites. What is the impact of that ever growing volume of junk? Yesterday being World Philosophy Day reading this I was instantly reminded of:

• ideal worlds;
• the web;
• and a lady who finally ventured out to the shops.

The cogs turned as I wondered about what the web would be like without that spam. What would the internet be like if even for a day the spammers - and criminals - lay down their keyboards, phones, servers, botnets ... and we could see what the web might really be like? Or is it that spam just represents noise, the noise that is inevitably part of any system?

Then thinking about yesterday and setting intelligence aside for a moment - what would the world be like if everyone exercised true common sense? Imagine there being no totally illogical, knee-jerk, prejudiced, greed, hatred, violence, purely emotionally driven decisions and actions in our homes, communities, boardrooms, town halls and seats of governance. And then finally that lady, who having been on tranquillisers for decades finally kicked them into touch. In the same way we don't know the real internet, this lady did not know herself, neither did her rather limited social network.

It's a case of will the real internet and Mrs Goggins please stand up!

Original image source: Digital stores

Additional link:
The Honeynet Project

World Philosophy Day 2009

The world's population really needs the skills (literacy!) to balance arguments and debate issues. Today being World Philosophy Day, 19 November 2009 we can see this need as global events re-frame our words. For decades now some of the world's cities - capitals have become synonymous with fevered political debate, equality, equity, poverty, power.... 'Copenhagen' is the latest example, stressing the need for informed argument and rationale thinking on an individual and group level, as the UNESCO introduction reveals:

Ever since its inauguration as a “Philosophy Day at UNESCO” in 2002 and particularly since its institutionalization in 2005 as a “World Philosophy Day”, this celebration of philosophy has inspired much enthusiasm. With its aim to bring philosophy closer to everyone, academics, students and the general public alike have all shown great interest in this activity that offers new opportunities and space for philosophical reflection, critical thinking and debate.

My previous studies comprised a joint honours degree in computing and philosophy, which may account for the appeal of Hodges' model and the reflections here on W2tQ. As mentioned previously, in the 1990s I wrote a dialogue (of sorts):

The aims of this 'dialogue' are threefold. First, simply to explore through the minds and voices of two ancient characters, contemporary nursing informatics and telematics issues. Secondly, to test the viability of the dialogue as an alternative format to the usual academic paper. And thirdly, to introduce unfamiliar readers (students?) to 'the' master of the dialogue form - Plato.
Readers may (hopefully) be stimulated to seek out Plato's works, which are freely available in affordable paperback editions. 'The Last Days of Socrates' is recommended as a starting point. Plato captures in the dialogues the technique employed by Socrates, that still bears his name - 'Socratic questioning'.
As health professionals search for ways to reassert values amid unprecedented technical and social change, philosophy is once more on the agenda. This attempted 'dialogue' has two protagonists. Telemachus, who is in name from Homer's Odyssey and other Hellenic literature. The name appeals to me here due to the study of 'tele'-matics, a key branch of informatics research.
Epictetus (50-120A.D.) was a philosopher of the stoic school. Sometimes we find unexpected connections in things, as with Epictetus: nursing - health - ethics/values - philosophy - Enchiridion (Manual) health - how to live ones life - leadership - 3,000 drachmas paid for E.'s lamp after his death - Florence Nightingale - nursing!
Telemachus is a student of the Academy established by Aristotle, starting his third year of nurse training. Epictetus is staged as a professor, a member of the faculty for health. With apologies...

Nursing Telemachus and Computers

There is also a philosophy listing on the INTER-INTRAPERSONAL links page. One initiative here in the UK which I must admit I have not attended thus far is Philosophy in Pubs. Many colleges also do courses were you do not necessarily have to sign-up for the whole deal - that is exams - but you can still enjoy what is a marvellous subject. I remember a lady of some 70 years who did just that with literature, she also beautifully shredded my unspoken thoughts on Sylvia Plath's Ariel and other works. So do go and check what's happening in your area.

Despite the significance of today it is troubling that the existence and value of university philosophy departments can be thrown into doubt as recently as March this year. I must check what happened in Liverpool? And also wonder what there is to learn from Eastern and African philosophy?

Ageism: Four year old ideas and big pictures

Models of nursing are still alive and kicking on nurse education curricula. One day ;-) I will do that literature search and look at the numbers and dates of publication. It seems reasonable to assume that there are now fewer newborn and infant examples compared with the 70-90s. While internet time may be compressed there must be strange goings on in nursing academia if some students (apparently) only refer to sources within the past four years. The field is going to be very furrowed with so many wheels being brought to bear on theory and practice and then suddenly cast aside to rust (if mechanistic) or go rotten (if humanistic) or perhaps both (holistic). Wither a space for creativity and innovation that also supports sustainability, continuity, stability, integrity...? Are they mutually exclusive?

If there is an over-four-year-can't-go-there! rule then logic suggests that a newly realised evidence-based method or tool has a limited life span for some students. This constant, iterative, critique of theory and practice IS crucial, but in terms of doing those things that depend on nurses weaving between subject disciplines and other professions where is the big picture? How old are your stories: the ones that really count?

Dementia, Drugs, Nursing by Degr[EE]s and Care Transitions

Of all the policy issues that government faces the care of an ageing population is irresistible in demanding attention. This one will keep tapping MPs, policy makers and families ... on the shoulder. It will constantly cycle through the government's gamut of official papers. In the UK this past week people suffering with dementia and the prescribing of anti-psychotic medication and deaths arising from the same has been highlighted and not for the first time.

Whilst my spare time web attention is also given to nursing IT and socio-technical matters, as an NHS community mental health nurse these vulnerable individuals are the primary focus of my work and that of my colleagues. There are three strands to the current role - in brief:

• Nursing home liaison - dedicated to specific homes;
• assessment, intervention and subsequent review;
• working with social services integration project duty desk.

Drugs are of course a day-to-night constant for all nurses, with the addition of debate across all the knowledge domains of Hodges' model - that is interpersonal, sciences, sociology and political domains of knowledge. We have witnessed this in the scientific evidence of substance misuse and the government misuse of drugs advisory group 'difficulties' and now this issue which is professionally closer to home: right on the doorstep in fact.

'Home' is the operative word as many of the people concerned reside in residential care and nursing home facilities. Let's scratch the surface of what we already know:

• These people can be very confused, vulnerable, they may be agitated and not easily reassured and placated without repeated skilled intervention.
• Facilities are subject to inspection and care standards.
• Many do not have an advocate in the sense of a family member who visits at least weekly and will challenge and question care and prescribing.
• Older people may already be on several drugs (polypharmacology) due to other chronic health problems.
• There is still a disconnect (holistic gap!) between the interdependence between mental - physical health problems.
• These facilities are that individual's home - they continue to live and hence age there.
• Homes get attached to their residents; in the best homes they (and their relatives and friends) become part of a greatly extended family.
• For confused people there is a potential community (albeit a closed one) that people can participate in or choose to stay in their room. This space, the freedom of movement it affords - toing-and-froing - should itself be subject to history taking and ongoing assessment.
• The quality of this community depends on the core staff and additional skills seen as essential by the organisation and care standards, e.g. activities coordinators, residents committees that also engage family, friends.
• NVQs and mandatory training in the sector is making a positive difference.
• There remains a high level of staff turnover.
• Some homes are dual-registered catering for nursing care with another floor for dementia care (does a 1st or 2nd floor provide secure access to a garden in the summer?).
• Homes rely greatly on the specialist services of local community mental health service, also given the placement of people in homes 'out of area' this involvement may be more remote and subject to varying degrees of engagement and hence quality.
• Homes are businesses and the movement of clients incurs changes in income.
• The quality and standards of architecture and design for residential accommodation has seen great strides in the past decade.

The bottom line (no pun intended) is the need for macro-management in terms of multidisciplinary team input; that is, primary care, modern matron, mental health and micro-management in terms of personalised care with regular review of physical and mental well-being and medication.

As government's of all persuasion utter the mantra of education! education! education! - this must be heard in the residential and nursing home care sector. The good news is that standards, competencies and the quality of care in the sector are improving; but to education we must add environment! environment! environment! As someone who appreciates aesthetics in design we should all be aware of the seductive properties of newly designed and furnished nursing homes (new carpets plus brand new flat screen LCD TVs does not automatically mean multi-dimensional care).

The counterpoint to this are the long stay, geriatric wards of old (c. 1977-1984) and the reaction of family friends when they first walked through the (three) doors.

They were distraught.

In time they came to appreciate the efforts of the staff and the importance of the knowledge, skills and attitude of the ward team. They could understand and see what staff were trying to achieve regards individualised care. Many responded to the open invitation to be part of the team, to get involved. Yes, the environment was far from 'right' (it was terrible), but it's the people on all sides of the care equation that count. It is the same today, but if the care environment is no longer appropriate then people should be moved to a place were their care needs can be met without recourse to anti-psychotic medication. That is why initial and ongoing person-centred assessment is very important.

It is very difficult to predict future needs and yet trying to anticipate them is the primary nursing challenge. If life is a book, then the turning of the page that ends one chapter and starts a-new is a non-trivial transition. That said and make no mistake, it is not for dramatic effect that we describe the behaviour of some individuals as challenging. Drugs are a tool and like all tools it is how they are used in assuring the highest standards of care, retaining personal dignity and maximising whatever quality of life an individual can achieve. Accounting for care interventions including medication is critical. If due diligence cannot be effectively applied in the financial sector then perhaps there is scope for due diligence in the care of older adults*?

*Some clients are under 65 years of age.

2nd iConference Workshop on Sociotechnical Systems

Workshop: “Keywords of the Sociotechnical”
Organizers:
Steven Jackson, University of Michigan;
David Ribes, Georgetown University;
Sean Goggins, Drexel University

We invite participation in the 2nd iConference Workshop on Sociotechnical systems, to be held prior to the iConference on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana-Champaign on February 3, 2010. To see “who we are”, check out the facebook group – “Researchers of the Sociotechnical” or our website at http://www.sociotech.net .

You may register here: https://www.ischools.org/conftool/

In 1975 British cultural historian Raymond Williams published his influential pocket dictionary Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. The text tackled the most difficult, contested and often under explored terms in his field: culture, agency, technology, etc. Today studies of sociotechnical systems finds itself at a place not unlike where British Cultural Studies was in the early 70s: a meeting place for scholars of multiple disciplinary backgrounds deploying concepts and tools whose commonality (and separateness) of meaning has yet to be fully established.

What are the words that transcend the sectional interests of, say, organizational science and HCI, CSCW and science and technology studies? When an HCI researcher and a social informatics scholar say ‘system’ or ‘design,’ are they really talking about the same thing? Relatedly, how do we go about attaching these keywords to concrete socio-technical research
problems in our diverse disciplinary traditions? How do we go about transforming a cross-field coincidence of research objects (Wikipedia, eScience, social practices in pervasive computing spaces, and countless others) into a mutually informed set of research problems?

This workshop will provide a venue to gather and discuss our intellectual traditions, research objects, and vocabularies in order to elaborate and clarify the keywords of the sociotechnical.

*Studying Sociotechnical Systems*

The workshop builds on and extends efforts that have included the 2008 & 2009 Summer Research Institute of the Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST). These Research Institutes, supported by the National Science Foundation and held at the University of Michigan (2008) and Syracuse University (2009), brought together a diverse set of researchers from fields as diverse as science and technology studies, human-computer interaction, management and organizational studies, library and information science, sociology, social informatics, and computer science, to begin exploring and framing a future research agenda centered on socio-technical research.

David Ribes, Ph.D.
Communication, Culture & Technology (CCT)
Georgetown University
http://davidribes.com

Additional links:

The Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST) [and above image source]