Emerging Technologies: Practical Artificial Intelligence

The term "artificial intelligence" has been an oxymoron for years in computer science circles. Computers and robots excel in narrowly-defined tasks in a controlled environment; think of how new cars are largely assembled and spray painted by robots. This article describes how a research robot at Stanford University is designed to learn to perform common tasks in environments like the kitchen and living room of a normal home. He doesn't look like much, but he can learn on the job! Significant progress has been made in Japan toward robots designed to serve and care for the aged. Korea is working on robots to help children learn to read. Intelligent robots will be in your future. How they will be integrated or excluded from domains like schools and hospitals will be a big question within the next fifteen years. 

Supreme Court Confirms COPA Unconstitutional

The Supreme Court has refused to consider an appeal to court decision to strike down the 1998 Childrens Online Protection Act (COPA). COPA was intended to protect children from unsuitable content on the Internet, but the court found that it "would violate the First Amendment, because filtering technologies and other parental control tools are a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content online," according to the article. Some of the problems arise when legislators pass legislation intended for quick fixes to complex problems without understanding the technology issues or the costs and problems in enforcing the act. The key words in the finding are that there are already "less restrictive" ways of protecting children. These are important questions that need to be addressed through extended dialog with school personnel and parents instead of avenues to get votes with regard for neither the consequences nor the Constitution.

Will Obama Support Open Source in Government and Education?

The Obama administration has reportedly requested Scott McNealy, respected co-founder of SUN Microcomputing, to prepare a report on the advantages of using open source software in government. Here's the link to the BBC article. Many of the arguments that support open source in government also support open source in schools. Two of the major reasons advanced for open source software are lower cost, greater accessiblity, and higher security, and it is obvious that these reasons would work for education as well. An additional reason for education would be the free access to software for students, particularly those from low-income families. While major open source initiatives in education have been common around the world, large implementations in the State of Indiana and the San Diego public schools are providing strong models for American educators to follow.