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About Me

The first time I was in college ('78-'80) I was pre-med Biology. I became disillusioned with the medical industry and dropped out. I bounced around and eventually joined the Marine Corps to get training in electronics. Afterward, I worked at the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles, fixing all the cool exhibits. After moving back home to Kansas City, MO, I talked my way into a promotion to network manager at a small company. After seven years there with few raises and no possibilities for advancement, I job-hopped my way to a position as the network manager for a small hospital near KC. But the politics got to me so I moved to Lawrence, KS and eventually became an independent computer consultant. I did fine for three years but then worked myself out of a job by making my customer's computers "too reliable." Not being much of a salesman, revenues plummeted. I had been dreaming of going back to college for years. So, when a friend reminded me that "after being poor for two years is a great time to go back to school," I went for it.

So, here I am, a 48 year old undergraduate student. I have to tell you it has not been as easy as I had thought it would be. I was astounded at the poor quality of the textbooks I had to buy and was not exactly impressed by the quality of some of the teaching I witnessed. The biggest problem I had was that the books contained mostly just a rigid stating of facts instead of real explanations that real people could understand. Here I was, an A student, having to reread the same paragraph half a dozen times, then Google till I was blue in the face, just to figure out what the heck the author was talking about. Often I would discover that the authors could have just included one or two more sentences and I would have easily understood it. Finally, I literally said, out loud, “There has got to be a better way.” and I immediately sat down and started figuring out how to do it. Inside of a month I had worked out the basic plan for an entirely new system of storing and disseminating educational material. I call that system the “Distributable Educational Material Markup Language”™ (DEMML™) You can learn more about it at www.demml.org.

Now, DEMML™ is far from complete. I haven't even created the XML Schema yet. Even the web site has some rough spots. But it is getting there. I intend to create the schema and write some preliminary code to demonstrate how the system will work for my senior capstone project. And then I will present at what we call "Apieron" here at Washburn in April of next year. After that I hope go go on to graduate school at the iSchool at Berkeley. Hopefully, they will be able to help me make DEMML™ a reality.

Location:
United States, Tucson, AZ
Current organization:
Washburn University
Current role:
Student Researcher and Developer
Gender:
Male
Areas of expertise:
Figuring it out, Organising, visualizing and presenting complex ideas simply
I am:
Atheist, Brainstormer, Concerned citizen, Educator/Teacher, Idea generator, Inventor, Student
Associations:
Phi Kappa Phi
Languages:
English
My website links:
DEMML.org, Ideationizing
Universities:
Drury University, University of Kansas, Washburn University - Topeka, KS
Member Picture

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Saving the world through free, easily obtained, and self administered education. Completely rebooting how education is done in this world.

An idea worth spreading

The Distributable Educational Material Markup Language™ (DEMML™) is both an XML format for marking up educational material in a highly structured yet incredibly flexible manner and a system for authenticating and distributing that content throughout the world. Once distributed, no internet connection is required to use the material. This material is organized and classified to a degree never before attempted, using what turns out to be a rather simple system of encoding the hierarchical tree of all possible educational material right down to the paragraph level. This allows anyone to easily contribute any amount of material to what will quickly grow to be a vast library of vetted content for all to use. In addition the format facilitates a new level of flexibility in computer based learning by allowing educators to specify what material the student should study while still allowing the student instant access to additional material as their needs require. (more at www.demml.org)

Talk to me about

How to start an international non-profit.

People don't know that I'm good at

Singing old 40's blues tunes.

My TED Story

I don't have a TED story yet. Naturally, I do hope to present at TED some day. In the mean time, I watch TED talks online rather than watch TV.

Comments

  • TEDCred score: +0.60 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

  • A comment on Talk: Richard Dawkins: Why the universe seems so strange

    Apr 18 2012: Someone may have posted this already, but I was disappointed that he never even touched on his last point: Are there things queerer than ANY intelligence can suppose? That would truly be an interesting discussion.
  • +1

    A comment on Talk: Julian Baggini: Is there a real you?

    Jan 22 2012: Philosophers, redefining the English language so they can sound like they are saying something profound bore me to tears. This kind of Glenn Beck logic is ludicrous. Just because you can make a "You" disappear from a diagram and draw lines between all the other things does NOT mean the "You" that was removed is irrelevant. The "You" that was there is the filter through which all the other things is interpreted. It is the unique connection between all of them.

    It is as if this guy is trying to start a new pseudo-religious, metaphysical movement or something.

  • A comment on Talk: Clay Shirky: Why SOPA is a bad idea

    Jan 21 2012: In his talk, Clay Shirky claims the solution to the problem is to convince congress that criminalizing sharing is not the way to go. However, as long as the big content companies have the money to pour into politicians' pockets, convincing congress of anything of the sort will be as difficult as catching the Niagara with a thimble. Instead, I propose a different approach, one I call "Starving the Big Fish." The idea is to simply bypass the big content providers all together. Don't buy their products. Don't share their products. Don't steal their products. Ignore them completely. Buy and consume only from independent or sharing-friendly distributors as much as possible. I know, it is radical. I know, it will be incredibly difficult to break the addiction that has been created by so many decades of content poured down our throats by big content providers.

    Only by starving the big fish of all the profit they have come to expect over the years - all the profits they use to manipulate congress - will we be free of their domination. Sure, all that flopping about in their death throes will cause some problems for a while. But won't it be great when they finally give up the ghost and leave us alone?
  • +1

    A comment on Talk: Sheila Nirenberg: A prosthetic eye to treat blindness

    Jan 2 2012: I am not wanting to "horn in on" Dr. Nirinberg's incredible work. However, her emphasis on the encoding of information within the pattern of pulses makes me believe she may be the first scientist who is ready to listen to a hypothesis I have been stewing on for almost forty years. I believe the physical shape of the neuronal cell body, as well as the placement of synaptic connections, axons, and dendrites, plus various chemical factors, make up the core of how neurons actually process all those patterns of pulses streaming into them. I wrote up a full description of my hypothesis back in 2009 and posted it up on my blog. If you are interested you can read about it here: http://www.ideationizing.com/2009/10/information-processing-in-nerve-cells.html

    I have written to Dr. Nirinberg with this hypothesis. Here's hoping she sees my message, reads it, and can do something with it. If anyone reading this thinks I have a valid hypothesis, please contact her or other neurobiologists you may know. I am not trying to get anything out of this other than to try to help further scientific progress. Unfortunately, as a non-scientist it can sometimes be hard to get people to listen.

  • A reply on Talk: Sheila Nirenberg: A prosthetic eye to treat blindness

    Jan 2 2012: I think she is one of the many scientists who is brilliant in their work but who are shy in public and don't know how to communicate with the public well. Notice how she demurely dips her knees whenever she says anything important. Her university web site is just one huge paragraph of full-justified text. You would think that someone who does such profound research into sight would know that such a design makes a web page very difficult to read. But sometimes they don't think of such things because they are concentrating on their work.

  • A reply on Talk: Sheila Nirenberg: A prosthetic eye to treat blindness

    Jan 2 2012: As color blindness is generally congenital, I would assume that the nerve pathways necessary for color sight never formed in the first place, rather than forming but then lying unused. But then I could be wrong. It is certainly worth a "look."

  • A reply on Conversation: If you could magically make everyone know one thing, fact or idea, what would it be?

    Dec 15 2011: Sharon,

    Yes, instilling the value of education would help. However, I don't think it would be the whole solution. Most people know the value of education. They just don't believe they could actually get one. Most people have been convinced they are stupid by an education system that tries to be a one-size-fits-all solution and fails miserably. If people can't fit the mold then they are led to believe there is something wrong with them and they give up.

    I am working on a system that will enable EVERYONE to get a college level education and actually remember more than most current college graduates. Take a look at www.demml.org.

  • A reply on Conversation: Its time for a new type of university

    Dec 14 2011: Ah, the DEMML content will be free. Because all of the content will be free, people won't have as much need for going to class. Therefore, the only things that universities will have left to offer is access to mentors and use of facilities. Those are outside of the DEMML system. I am sure many other organizations and ad hoc groups of people will offer many, if not all, of those services for free. So, a person will be able to learn all they want for free. Some of the methods that may make that learning a little bit easier for some people may cost some money but that money will not go to DEMML.

    Think of it this way: I can go to the library and check out books for free. But, if I want a computer program to help me keep track of all the books I have read and my notes on them, then I MAY have to pay some money for that program, depending on my needs and desires, but that is not the library's fault.


    P.S. I certainly FEEL as if I may die of pneumonia this week. But I'm sure that's not what you meant. (Oh, and would I have to wear the hat?)

  • A comment on Conversation: In ten words or less, what is a question no one (yet) knows the answer to?

    Dec 11 2011: James,

    Emotional and "spiritual" intelligence are not some magical properties that exist outside the operation of our brains. They are nothing more than sub-classifications (some consider them imaginary classifications) within the universe of "human" intelligence. If you want to start using TV series as "proof" then consider the latest BattleStar Galactica series. The artificial intelligences in that series had their own religion and based many of their decisions on "emotion." All "emotion" is is a subconscious (the conscious part of the mind doesn't have direct control over it) bias within the circuits of the brain which influence the final outcome of the intelligence, often in ways that contradict the outcome one would get if that bias were not present. If you paid close attention in ST-TNG you would see that data did, in fact, have his own set of emotions; his own set of driving forces. One of which was the desire to be more human.

    Besides, Logan, the original poster, has confirmed that his intent was not to generate an intelligence identical and indistinguishable from a human, but an intelligence on par with the capabilities of a human. Emotion and spirituality can easily be incorporated into the fundamental operation of any AI complex enough. If you remember your robotic fiction, the three laws of robotics could be considered just such an underlying bias. Asimov's stories fully explored what kinds of irrational decisions can be made, even by a relatively simple AI, when such an underlying bias exists.

  • A comment on Conversation: Fill in the Blank - If I knew I could not fail I would ___________ ?

    Dec 10 2011: If I knew I could not fail I would ....

    move to Berkeley, CA and finish my system for educating the world.

    Unfortunately, I am still just a little bit afraid of becoming homeless or starving to death before I can get the help I need to finish my project. Perhaps, only after I embrace that possibility and move past it, will I be able to take that giant leap. A leap that truly will be for mankind.
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