I'm absolutely wary of any technology that's going to enable/encourage bullying or trolling. I think there's a fine line between censorship and ensuring a safe community (especially in the wake of the Oregon shooting and corresponding reddit thread), but I see this app leading to Bad Things happening.
That said, the thing I'd like to see the discourse focusing on is not necessarily an app that encourages bullying, but bullying itself. I think the intensity of the uproar this is causing is throwing up a huge red flag - people as really scared about bullying. I think we as a community/country/world should absolutely talk about Peeple, but in talking about the symptom, I hope we can also get to talking about the root cause and what we can do to treat it.
Bullying is something that people do because it's easy -- picking fights with people who can't fight back. So this maybe be a fine distinction, but I think that anything that enables or makes bullying easier is not just a symptom, but is contributing to the root cause. In any communication tool, certain kinds of interactions are easier than others and are thus encouraged. For instance, the fact that Facebook has like button but not a dislike button is a deliberate choice that affects how easy it is to express different sentiments on Facebook. I believe it's possible to design a communication tool that encourages positive interactions and discourages negative ones.
Other good examples: George Orwell's concept of Newspeak from 1984, a language literally incapable of expressing concepts like freedom or dissent against the government. For another example, consider Journey, a multiplayer video game where the only possible interactions between players are positive or helpful.
>Journey where the only possible interactions between players are positive or helpful.
There was a GDC presentation a few years back where the lead designer Jenova Chen talked about how difficult it was to make only positive/helpful interactions possible. In playtesting even the ability to collide with another player was used against them, e.g. to push them off a cliff.
The presentation should still be online for free at http://gdcvault.com very interesting from a game-designing point of view.
that's exactly what I came here to post. I find it even more troubling that the teacher was clearly aware of this possible outcome - going so far as to tell the kid to hide it from other teachers. but for all we know maybe he did speak up and was shushed by administration? who knows...pretty frustrating either way.
My bet is that the engineering teacher is the sole adult geek in this environment and is used to those around him acting this way. I feel for him. There's a personality that's overwhelmingly common in schools, that seeks conformity and uses their own ability to be frightened as a weapon against the weirdos. Perhaps someone can describe it better than me.
I've been thinking how interesting (fun and a little mean) it would be to teach a Software Development class where you
- assign groups of students that don't really get along,
- have groups consume APIs written by previous groups,
- change the assignment (slightly or significantly) every week or so,
- constantly email students asking if they could "just make one little tweak"
- etc...
If you were completely up front about expectations (this is about learning the processes/pitfalls of software development, not about submitting a polished assignment at the end) maybe you could give students a sense of the skills needed to succeed not just at computer science, but software dev as well.
>I've been thinking how interesting (fun and a little mean) it would be to teach a Software Development class where you - assign groups of students that don't really get along, - have groups consume APIs written by previous groups, - change the assignment (slightly or significantly) every week or so, - constantly email students asking if they could "just make one little tweak" - etc...
Sounds like CS320 at UMass Amherst. We all considered it one of the most work-intensive courses in the degree.
This is what I would have said. I've only been a software dev for a couple of years, but by far the most important thing I've experienced is buy-in. Every team I've been on that all understands and trusts our process has been significantly more successful and efficient (not to mention more enjoyable as a dev) compared to teams where members don't understand or agree with why we're doing a-b-c or x-y-z.
I think in order to get to that point of buy-in, you NEED the team to be able to say "this isn't working, so let's throw it out and try something new."
To add to this, I always find that making sure everyone understand the 'why' as well as the 'what' makes a world of difference. My favorite project manager would always ask "do you understand why we do this?" when suggesting/introducing new process, and she maintained a good deal of fluidity in our methodology so that we could adjust as needed. One big thing about Agile is quick iteration cycles - build, test, tweak - and I think that applies just as much to process as it does development.
Just regarding the imposter syndrome aspect of your comment:
But isn't the thing about imposter syndrome that it's not about whether YOU think the musician is good, but whether THEY think they are. As an amateur musician I can totally understand feeling like I'm really not that good, even if other people tell me I am - I just assume they didn't hear that sour note in the 3rd lick I played, or that they didn't notice I should've played a certain phrase more staccato. Especially when I hear recordings of myself, all I hear is the bum notes or the missed opportunities to do something better than I actually did. Even if I put on a performance that people say they enjoy, I often feel like it was just dreadful and I shouldn't have been on stage in the first place. To me, that's exactly what imposter syndrome describes.
(Not trying to throw a pity party...I love music and will happily keep playing anywhere that will let me for the rest of my life.)
I'm exactly the same way. I have a weekly gig that occasionally gets recorded and thrown up on the web. I hate watching the video, because whenever I do, all I hear are my own mistakes. People tell me it sounded great, and I think, "Sure, to someone with no musical training, maybe."
It never occurs to me to realize that "someone with no musical training" describes easily 80% of the audience. Maybe more.
I'd like to leave you with something my music teacher told me. There are no mistakes.
"Music comes from inside of you, and through thought and motion you set it free into the air around you. When you are true to the music, whether you are tone deaf or have perfect pitch, the musician hears your song that is uniquely yours and yours alone. If you want a perfect note for note reproduction of a song, buy a tape recorder."
It really helped me let go of some my perfectionist tendencies and just let the music out.
Even those with no musical training will probably disregard your mistakes if the overall performance is good.
Example: My favorite Irish traditional duo is Peter Horan and Fred Finn (both RIP, alas). They were legendary for the tightness of their unison playing. There is a great video [1] of them from 1982, when they had been playing together for 25 years. At the 1:05 mark, Peter (the flute player) switches to the next reel, and Fred doesn't. The result is complete musical chaos ... and then, at 1:07, Fred finds the tune, and they suddenly are both in perfect sync again.
Now, this sort of screw-up is almost the worst mistake a competent Irish duo could make. But hell, for me if anything it makes this video stand out in a positive way. Seeing the fumble and recovery is endearing.
You're absolutely right, as are the other commenters. I didn't think that one through as well as I should have before writing. In the spirit of the topic, I'll leave my "sour note" unedited.
For me, the second video was different but it kept repeating, so after 6 tries I quit. Also, it's impossible to navigate back to a sequence of the video, so I couldn't train to see when the child started to go wrong. There's also no link to Youtube. And finally on the iPad the background is black and the video is black and doesn't start, so I really wondered what the website was about at the beginning. Typical example of how doing less design and not removing Youtube's default controls would have helped. The rest of the website is a great idea implemented with talent, despite the details I teport.
I don't remember how old I was, but I distinctly remember an occurrence at one of my first swim lessons. It was a group class, and we were all hanging on a rope taking turns swimming to the instructor a few feet away. I thought I heard my name called, so I tried to push off the rope to swim to them. Since it was a floating rope, I didn't get the momentum I was expecting, so before I knew it I was frantically trying to get to the rope, or the wall, or the instructor, or ANYthing I could grab onto. After what seemed like hours (but I'm sure was a few seconds) the lifeguard hopped in and grabbed me. It's been at least 20 years, and I'll never ever forget the panic - and to think it happened in the middle of a swim class with an instructor not 10 feet away.
My dad always told me when we went on vacation to the beach to "respect the ocean", and if I ever have kids I will for sure expand that message to "respect the water" and pass it along - whether it's the atlantic or a kiddie pool.
I lifeguarded throughout high school and college, and it always surprised me that most of the difficulties I had were with parents/adults. For the most part, kids would give a sullen look and then listen. My only memorable troubles were the occasional adults who would just flat-out ignore or contradict rules, no matter how many times you told them (I always assumed because they thought they knew better than a ~15 year old). At that point, you have a young lifeguard who has to choose between causing a minor scene (ie: whistling a manager over to "tattle" on them) or having other children see rules not being consistently enforced, which they perceive as license to do whatever they want.
I made one rescue after a little girl faceplanted from the high dive and came up crying and clearly struggling - the whole time I was helping her to the wall, I had her mom yelling at me from the pool deck that "she's fine, you're just scaring her!" I came away from that second-guessing myself - that maybe I SHOULDN'T have gone in after her, and that I should've just let it play out a little more - which is a really scary thing to second-guess.
hey, look at it this way. the girl was fine. by definition, you did your job well. that's the best desired outcome of all cases, whether or not you made the wrong call.
My first hope was that the video was actually a performance of the discovered sheet music, but is that actually correct? The video is amount a minute in duration but according to the article, "The scrap of music...would have lasted no more than a few seconds."
The description of it as "lasting no more than a few seconds" is inaccurate, as shown by the notation (at http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/images/Varelli%... with a modern transcription at http://www.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cam.ac.uk/files/inner-images/...). The first two texted lines "Sancte bonifati ... digneris" with the points and squiggles right above the words are typical plainchant notation as found in a lot of early manuscripts (pre-diastemmatic, not staff notation); while the two textless lines up top which look more like modern notes are the 'accompaniment' to that plainchant. FWIW those two top lines look nothing like other notation from that period.
That said, the thing I'd like to see the discourse focusing on is not necessarily an app that encourages bullying, but bullying itself. I think the intensity of the uproar this is causing is throwing up a huge red flag - people as really scared about bullying. I think we as a community/country/world should absolutely talk about Peeple, but in talking about the symptom, I hope we can also get to talking about the root cause and what we can do to treat it.