Cosmic latté

Buzzfeed asks “What color is the universe?” and offers an answer in this video via Digg.com:

“Meet Meta” [or, MOOC-ing a character, Part 1]

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Meet Meta.

A septuagenarian culture blender. She was once described as a flâneuse.
Those who did understood little, or knew nothing, of her uncommon ability.

Her entry is viewable as an interactive PDF through the image below.

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Meta is a character I created in 2 days as a Task (assignment) under iversity.org’s The Future of Storytelling course in which I am enrolled.

Now on its 3rd week, The Future of Storytelling is conducted by faculty members of Fachhochschule Potsdam (the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam) or FHP, together with resource persons from the film, television and transmedia industries.

The lectures are done via videos and the Course divided per Chapter. Each video averages from 5-10 minutes. I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle “going back to school” but since I spend pretty much my time online replying to emails, researching, and the occasional Tweets and blog updates, I thought as well spending some of it doing something more interactive with others, something more focused and with a definite goal.

I was intimidated at first but the past 3 weeks have been with some nice surprises, a lot of interesting reads and, overall, amazingly fun learning.

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BACKGROUND
The “Future of Storytelling” is one of 10 awarded (from 250 submitted) proposals received by iversity.org when it conducted a MOOC contest between March 11 to April 30 2013. It currently has the most number of enrollees at around 50,000.

Berlin-based iversity.org launched in October 15, 2013 with estimated 115,000 enrollees from around the globe. This number makes iversity.org Europe’s youngest and biggest MOOC provider. It is Europe’s answer to the U.S.-based Coursera.

iversity.org conducts its courses in English and German.

This year’s iversity.org MOOC programs and the higher learning institutions handling them are as follows (DATE/CATEGORY)
List is only the English courses:

■ “The Future Of Storytelling” (Ongoing)
Prof. Winfried Gerling, Prof. Constanze Langer, Christina Maria Schollerer, and Julian van Dieken
25 OCT. 2013 /  INTERDISCIPLINARY

■ “Dark Matter in Galaxies: The Last Mystery“ (Ongoing)
15 OCT. 2013 /PHYSICS
SISSA di Trieste

■ Contemporary Architecture (Ongoing)
15 OCT. 2013
Prof. Dr. Ivan Shumkov / iversity.org

■ “Political Philosophy: An Introduction” (Ongoing)
27 OCT. 2013 / PHILOSOPHY
Universitá degli Studi di Firenze

■ “Design 101” (Ongoing)
 28 Oct. 2013 / ART STUDIES
(Accademia di Belle Arti, Catania)

■ “Public Privacy: Cyber Security and Human Rights”
02 DEC. 2013 / POLITICAL SCIENCES
Universiteit Utrecht

2014

■ “Monte Carlo Methods in Finance”
20 JAN. 2014 /  ECONOMICS
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

■ “Modelling and Simulation using MATLAB®”
01 APR. 2014 / INTERDISCIPLINARY
RheinMain University of Applied Sciences

■ “DNA – From Structure to Therapy”
05 APR. 2014 / BIOLOGY
Jacobs University

■ “The Fascination of Crystals and Symmetry”
15 APR. 2014 / CHEMISTRY
Universität Hamburg

■ “The DO School Start-Up Lab”
15 APR. 2014 /  INTERDISCIPLINARY
The DO School

■ “The European Union in Global Governance”
20 APR. 2014 / INTERDISCIPLINARY
KU Leuven / European University Institute / Universität Passau

■ “Vehicle Dynamics I: Accelerating and Braking” / ENGINEERING / 15 APR. 2014
■ “Vehicle Dynamics II: Cornering” / ENGINEERING / SPRING 2014
■ “Vehicle Dynamics III: Vertical oscillations” / ENGINEERING / FALL 2014
Helmut-Schmidt-Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg

Go ahead. Check them out.

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Proof of life

“The truth finally dawned” – via Hillary Allison, Internetsentinel.com

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?doc_id=268309

“Conference calls” / Justin Leibow

Very familiar. Glorious typography.
I’ve been in these situations before and frequently been exposed to this kind of chatter-filled environment.
via Justin Leibow.

your brain on Google

Neuroscientist, Gary Small, tells CBS News’ Daniel Sieberg how technology may be making us smarter.

(2008)

Read the video in context from The End of Cyberspace here or Newsweek’s The Daily Beast where it was first featured here.

View other videos of Dr. Gary Small on his website here.