Shared Intentionality

Posted on December 4, 2009 by nadodi

The shared intentionality lies at the basis of human society, Dr. Tomasello argues. From it flow ideas of norms, of punishing those who violate the norms and of shame and guilt for punishing oneself. Shared intentionality evolved very early in the human lineage, he believes, and its probable purpose was for cooperation in gathering food. Anthropologists report that when men cooperate in hunting, they can take down large game, which single hunters generally cannot do. Chimpanzees gather to hunt colobus monkeys, but Dr. Tomasello argues this is far less of a cooperative endeavor because the participants act on an ad hoc basis and do not really share their catch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html?_r=1

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments Off on Shared Intentionality

Kuwaiti Women No Longer Need Husband’s Consent to Obtain Passports

Posted on October 21, 2009 by Usha Devi Venkatachalam

After electing first women MPs this year, we have more good news from Kuwait. A constitutional court has declared that the law requiring women to obtain consent from their husbands for obtaining a passport is in violation of the constitutional guarantees of freedom and gender equality.

Continue reading →

Posted in Issues, Law, Middle East, Region | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Kuwaiti Women No Longer Need Husband’s Consent to Obtain Passports

New Social Change Game: Emergence MMOG

Posted on October 20, 2009 by Usha Devi Venkatachalam

There seems to be a new social change game in the works. Development is afoot for Emergence, a massively multi-player online game (MMOG) to be released in 2011.

The Backstory: A technical glitch in android programming causes the androids, the global mechanical labour force, to rebel against their human makers. A 12 hour war follows. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons employed by both sides leave the earth a shattered shell. Continue reading →

Posted in Issues, Technology | Tagged , | Comments Off on New Social Change Game: Emergence MMOG

Evidence…

Posted on October 19, 2009 by nadodi

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Carl Sagan

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments Off on Evidence…

Adapting the ICT Manual in Arabic

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Usha Devi Venkatachalam

Arabic version of Making IT Our Own: Information & Communication Technology Training of Trainers Manual is almost ready for prime-time. Most of the translation work is complete. We are now in the process of reviewing and adapting it until WLP can put its seal of approval on the final work.

Translating a manual, a challenging information and communication technology (ICT) manual at that, would be a difficult job in itself. However, if you take into account a language like Arabic (spoken by 530 million people and the official language of 25 countries according to Wikipedia’s entry on Arabic Language) with many dialects and variants, the task of adaptation becomes an even bigger challenge. Translation begins to look like a cakewalk in comparison.

Continue reading →

Posted in Middle East, Technology | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Wikipedia’s Growth Stalling?

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Usha Devi Venkatachalam

Yesterday’s Time magazine has an intriguing question: Is Wikipedia a Victim of Its Own Success?

Up until about two years ago, Wikipedians were adding, on average, some 2,200 new articles to the project every day. The English version hit the 2 million — article mark in September 2007 and then the 3 million mark in August 2009 — surpassing the 600-year-old Chinese Yongle Encyclopedia as the largest collection of general knowledge ever compiled (well, at least according to Wikipedia’s entry on itself).
…
But Wikipedia peaked in March 2007 at about 820,000 contributors; the site hasn’t seen as many editors since.

Continue reading →

Posted in Asia, Technology | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Wikipedia’s Growth Stalling?