Book People Archive

Re: OCW as System of Electronic Books

[Moderator: I usually don't let discussion crossposts through, but
 I'll permit a bit of it on this thread, as it covers an intersection
 of topics that may bring in some useful ideas from folks in rather different
 areas from the usual topics of this list.  Moderation may tighten
 later on if things get too noisy. - JMO]

It is surprising how many implications there are to "just" transferring
books to a computer. Ebooks could become "expert systems" or automated
teachers in themselves. The other day I was browsing in the Vancouver
Vocational College book store. I came across a text book set up for
self-instruction. You know the kind. Each mini-lesson is followed by
questions and is presented so as to be as clear as possible. The basic
idea is sound. What it lacks is the ability to quickly test out the
pedagogy with a lot of students and improve upon it. With online Ebooks
this problem is solved. So MIT's OCW should be able to give us a first
rate course on computing taught by a computer (Ebook).
FWP 

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Superhuman AI (SHAI) could be achieved in as soon as 10 years at NASA-Ames
with enormous political implications. What would 'political avatars' do
for Election-2012 or around that time?
              <Robot-for-President-subscribe@[redacted]>
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On Thu, 7 Jun 2001, Eric Eldred wrote:

> I've spoken with MIT Professor Hal Abelson about
> this.  He has already placed his works on the web,
> including the textbook, "Structure and Interpretation
> of Computer Programs," loved by programming students 
> for many years.  MIT has set up a team to help
> develop the courseware and courses.  Most likely
> copyright will remain as it is now, in the hands
> of the professors or creators of the work, but that
> will not prevent its being published freely on the
> web for all to read.  But the whole project is
> only in the early development stage now.  
> 
> MIT is also known for its Shakespeare site, but I don't
> know what further developments will happen there.
> 
> I discussed with Abelson the need for open courseware
> and he assured me that it would all be "open source"
> or basically under the GPL except that like the
> BSD or X Windows license MIT would probably require
> attaching its name to the software it develops.
> 
> An interesting point is how to publish some work
> on the web openly and at the same time convince a
> paper book publisher to print it and sell it and
> make money.  Even O'Reilly and Associates has
> not quite figured out how to make money on the
> print books that way.  However, Abelson tells me
> he has discussed the project with MIT Press, so
> we will have to be patient and see how this
> grand experiment works out.
> 
> One implication for our work in publishing e-texts
> would be to consider how to make deep hyperlinks 
> directly into the texts, for the purpose of aiding
> the courseware that can refer to them.  We might
> for example include the page numbers of the paper
> print text in the e-text as anchors, as well as
> anchors for other structural elements such as
> chapters and so on.  Since the MIT project will
> take advantage of Dublin Core metadata, we might
> consider adding that to our e-texts and follow
> whatever form they decide to use for Dublin Core.
> 
> In any case, Franklin, you are right to call it
> to our attention.  This project is a great victory
> for those of us who treasure online books.