[Edu-sig] Business in Education

[kirby urner]

On 9/27/06, ajsiegel at optonline.net <ajsiegel at optonline.net> wrote:
> It is a finely tuned clock, indeed - except that it is now attached to a
> detonator.  It is nobody's intention that this be the way it is.  But that doesn't
> help.
>
> And something or other about breakfeast cereals, but I'm not sure what.
>
> Art
>

Well, that's disturbing imagery, so I'll send in my defusers and try
to fill in more of the picture as I see it.

There's this cold hearted business logic that'll chew up good people,
spit em back zombies for The Establishment, and then there are good
hearted people, still not chewed up yet, at least not completely (some
were spit back for some reason?  Not tastey?).

You and I both know it well (the Business World) and work for it, but
in different walkx of life.

I come from a crony capitalist Philippines, and before that from some
thriving Etruscan center, updated through centuries, a product of
Overseas Schools, interlude in Florida.  I had by 'n large wonderful
teachers, who gave me great faith and hope in this life.  Plus I was
blessed with great parents.

So I was already far in the direction of Loving Education, which is
probably what got me into Princeton (on top of the high test scores,
which many good schools don't even care about).  I dove head first
into computer science (by way of APL, including a graphical version
tucked away in the E-Quad) and philosophy (1879 Hall, since made
bigger).

This all goes to explain the importance of the Global University meme
in my writing (GU), which is acknowledged from the outset as a meme
i.e. not some real administration with one apex hierarchy.  We're
multi-apex and we know it.  We're a network of invisible colleges,
with real campus footprint manifestations.  The Fuller School is one
of these invisible colleges, and our campus ain't shabby:  radomes,
Montreal Expo, a long shelf of books, an Archive at Stanford, numerous
websites, a long pedigree of contributing professionals.  I thank my
lucky stars to have crewed among them, many of whom I'll never meet
probably.  But in a very big world, it's not stupid to have a crew as
cosmopoliton and polyglot as Fuller's, a lot like New York's (which
polyglot functioning also includes self policing as a necessary evil).

I won't go back over the breakfast cereal business.  That was a
one-off, although a Geek Brand cereal could conceivably tease kids
with Pythonic Equations amidst the fuzzy furries, with a DVD in the
box, one of those Distros we've been talking about.  Why not?

Let's just say I'm not too worried about our working at cross-purposes
sometimes, with respect to investors looking to pump up our snake,
make it a Macy Day balloon or whatever (Portland is getting a new
Macy's downtown, complete with hotel, and I think that's a very
positive development).  We can use edu-sig to compare notes, which I
like doing, because I advertise my 4D Solutions as "a pioneer in open
source" which is what Bucky called "thinking out loud" and took very
seriously (there's a good bio-documentary about him by that title you
could see sometime, first broadcast by WNET, which also did a
website).

Relevant:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/fuller_b.html

Kirby