Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Infecting an alien architecture, Part VII

In my last article on infecting an alien architecture (May 13th), I relied again on my favorite science fiction authors for a road map. I spent yesterday at a remarkable tour de force of another non-fiction kind, where author Curtis Linton talked about infecting another kind of alien architecture: eliminating any learning achievement gaps caused by ethnic, cultural, economic or language barriers. What my friend Mr. Linton doesn't realize is that the same philosophical toolset required for achieving equity in education is identical for constructing a computer virus that meets the Black Box Portability standard I outlined in principle #7 in creating The Perfect Virus (click here for all 22 principles). The book is called Equity 101 and is published by Corwin Press.

I have two purposes for mentioning this book.
  1. For those of you who don't think educational equity is achievable in any school district in the country (or world), where equity is defined as eliminating achievement "gaps" of any kind, you're simply wrong. Don't worry, as this came as a giant surprise to me, too. I didn't realize I had so many ingrained social/racial/economic/cultural biases that were just downright wrong, either.
  2. For those of you interested in understanding Black Box Portability as it applies to cracking an alien computer architecture, IMHO the principles in this book can be extrapolated to that task. I'll say no more, because (once again) I'm not playing these cards face up.
Have a nice day. And congratulations to Curtis Linton, who has turned this right-wing reactionary into a bomb-throwing liberal when it comes to public education and the possibilities for doing it right.

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Implementation suggestions for THE MORGAN DOCTRINE are most welcome. What are the "Got'chas!"? What questions would some future Cyber Privateering Czar have to answer about this in a Senate confirmation hearing?