Ben Porter – Prometheus Endeavor

About Charles Symons

Social Media and AI: The Second Great Pollution.

Social Media and AI: The Second Great Pollution.

By Charles Symons December 17, 2024Artificial Intelligence, Society2 Comments

The industrial age brought enormous benefits but also the First Great Pollution of our physical environment. Similarly, the benefits of IT are now being offset by the Second Great Pollution - of our ‘Infosphere’ - by social media and AI spreading mis/disinformation, vitriol, fakes, hallucinations, etc. We discuss the resulting harms to Society and recommend urgent countermeasures.

The Thrill of Another MS Office Update

The Thrill of Another MS Office Update

By Ben Porter February 14, 2022Society1 Comment

There is a vast group of people who don’t need all the bells and whistles in today’s software. We keep being inundated with upgrades we don’t need and forced to buy subscriptions that chunk away at our fixed incomes. We need less capable and cheaper software.

Here we go again… Getting Rid of IT?

Here we go again… Getting Rid of IT?

By Ben Porter December 8, 2021Endeavors1 Comment

Interesting points, but it paints all of IT with a single brush. And it brings back many of the experiences of business in the past.

Virtual Schools Exist — They Work — And All Schools Can Learn from Them

Virtual Schools Exist — They Work — And All Schools Can Learn from Them

By Ben Porter January 31, 2021Education1 Comment

Virtual Schools have been in existence for at least a decade. There are virtual K-12 schools in about 35 states, with a total enrollment of 375,000 students. These students are taking…

square peg round hole

Student Needs are Fragmented – Schools are Monolithic

By Ben Porter October 26, 2020Education, Uncategorized2 Comments

When you bring together any group of children, you immediately notice the wide range of interests, talents, and capabilities. We then pack them off to our school systems for instruction…

Broadband Internet is Critical to Learning – Getting it to Everyone is the Difficult Task

Broadband Internet is Critical to Learning – Getting it to Everyone is the Difficult Task

By Ben Porter September 8, 2020Infrastructure, Uncategorized3 Comments

One of the first lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic was the value of the broadband[1] internet to our education system. While there was a massive amount of retooling (new applications…

So Many Experiments, So What Are We Learning?

So Many Experiments, So What Are We Learning?

By Ben Porter August 27, 2020EducationNo Comments

Colleges and Universities today are embarking on a vast array of seemingly random trials to try to get through the COVID-19 pandemic. If someone were in the cat-bird seat, they…

Old Fashioned Typewriter With Paper Showing E-Learning

Back up the Technology Dump Truck, Martha. We’re going to save the Colleges!

By Ben Porter August 6, 2020EducationNo Comments

The arrival of COVID-19, to coincide with Spring Break at US Colleges and Universities forced the issue on moving to on-line classes. The reaction on campus has been to double…