By the 1880s, Chicago enthusiasts were soon making comparisons with Rome, noting however, that while “all roads lead to Rome;” Chicago would become “the Rome of the railroads.” The famous city got its start after 1833, when the local Indian tribes were forced to sign away the last of their legal rights to the area and the construction of the Erie Canal meant a new waterway to New York and the East Coast. It prospered through the Civil War where it played a key role in supplying the North with foodstuffs and other resources from the western frontier. Into the next century, Chicago would continue to grow into the central node of a vast trading network of nature’s bounty, what would generically be called “commodities.”

The “commodity” emerged as an abstract term to refer to items such as grains, meat products, and even metals that are bought and sold in a market environment. Commodities also came to be sold in “futures”, a legal contract specifying the change of ownership at a future time and at a set price. Bakeries in the East, for example, could lock in prices for future wheat deliveries. Key developments in the emergence of commodity trading were the notions of grading and interchangeability. To the extent that products could be separated into different qualities, they could be grouped together according to a set standard and they could then be sold anonymously.

While technological innovations such as the railroad and the steamship would dramatically increase the efficiency of transporting goods, the development of Chicago’s famed exchanges would facilitate their allocation. The Chicago Board of Trade was started in 1848 as a private organization to boost the commercial opportunities of the city, but would soon play a crucial part in the development of a centralized site for the Midwest’s earthly gifts. It was the Crimean War a few years later that spurred the necessity for such a commodities market. As the demand for wheat sales doubled and tripled, the CBOT prospered, and membership increased proportionally.

In 1856, the Chicago Board of Trade made the “momentous decision to designate three categories of wheat in the city – white winter wheat, red winter wheat, and spring wheat – and to set standards of quality for each.”[2] The significance of the action was that it separated ownership from a specific quantity of grain. As farmers brought their produce to the market, the elevator operator could mix it with similar grains and the owner could be given a certificate of ownership of an equal quantity of similarly graded grain. Instead of loading grain in individual sacks, it could be shipped in railroad cars and stored in silos. The grain elevators were a major technological development that increased Chicago’s efficiency in coordinating the movements and sales of its grains.

The Board was still having problems with farmers selling damp, dirty, low-quality and mixed grains, so it instituted additional variations. By 1860, the Chicago Board of Trade had more than ten distinctions for grain and its right to impose such standards was written into Illinois law making it a “quasi-judicial entity with substantial legal powers to regulate the city’s trade.”[3]

During this same time period, the telegraph was spreading its metallic tentacles throughout the country, providing speedy access to news and price information. The western end of the transcontinental link was built in 1861, connecting Chicago with cities like Des Moines, Omaha, Kearney, Fort Laramie, Salt Lake City, Carson City, Sacramento, and on to San Francisco.[4] The western link quickly expanded to other cities and connected Chicago with farmers, lumberjacks, prospectors and ranchers eager to bring their goods to market. News of western harvests often triggered major price changes as it was transmitted rapidly between cities. News of droughts, European battles, and grain shortages brought nearly instant price changes in Chicago. Newspapers were a major beneficiary of the electric links as they printed major news stories as well as price information coming over the telegraph. The telegraph quickly made the Chicago Board of Trade a major world center for grain sales and linked it with a network of cities such as Buffalo, Montreal, New York, and Oswego that facilitated the trade of grains and other commodities.

The telegraph also instituted the futures market in the US. As trust in the grade system sanctioned by the Chicago Board of Trade grew, confidence in the quality of the anonymous, interchangeable commodity also increased. The telegraph allowed for one of earliest e-commerce transactions to regularly occur. The “to arrive” contract specified the delivery of a specified amount of grain to a buyer, most often in an eastern city. The railroad and the steamboat made it easier to guarantee such a delivery and the guarantees also provided a needed source of cash for the Western farmers and their agents. These contracts could be used as collateral to borrow money from banks. While the “to arrive” contracts had seen moderate use previously, the telegraph (along with the grading system) accelerated their use. Along with the traditional market in grain elevator receipts, a new market in contracts for the future delivery of grain products emerged. Because they followed the basic rules of the Board, they could be traded. “This meant that futures contracts–like the elevator receipts on which they depended—were essentially interchangeable, and could be bought and sold quite independently of the physical grain that might or might not be moving through the city.”[5]

During the 1860s, the futures market became institutionalized at the Chicago Board of Trade. The Civil War helped facilitate Chicago’s futures markets as such commodities as oats and pork were in high demand by the Union Army. After the war, European immigration increased substantially in the eastern cities, further increasing the demand for western food and lumber commodities. Bakers and butchers needed a stable flow of ingredients and product. The new market for futures contracts transferred risk from those who could ill-afford it, the bread-bakers and cookie-makers, to those that wanted to speculate on those risks.

In 1871, Chicago suffered from a devastating fire, but the city came back stronger than ever. By 1875, the market for grain futures reached $2 billion, while the grain cash business was estimated at the lesser $200 million.[6] Abstract commodity exchange had surpassed the market of “real” goods. “To arrive” contracts facilitated by telegraph in combination with elevator receipts had made Chicago as the futures capital of the world.

In 1874, the precursor to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was formed. Called the Chicago Produce Exchange, it focused on farm goods such as butter, eggs, and poultry. In 1919, at the end of World War I, the Chicago Produce Exchange changed its name to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). It later expanded to trade frozen pork bellies as well as live hog and live pigs in the 1960s. The CME expanded yet again to include lean hogs and fluid milk, but its most important innovations came a decade later in the financial field.

Notes

[1] Quote on Chicago’s strategic location from Nature’s Metropolis, (1991) William Cronen, p. 25.
[2] Chicago Board of Trade’s momentous decision from William Cronen Nature’s Metropolis, (1991), p. 116.
[3] Additional information on the Chicago Board of Trade William Cronen Nature’s Metropolis, (1991), p. 118-119.
[4] Transcontinental link cities from Lewis Coe’s (1993) The Telegraph. London: McFarland & Co. p. 44.
[5] Quote on futures interchangeability from William Cronen Nature’s Metropolis, (1991), p. 125.
[6] Estimates of the grain and futures markets from William Cronen Nature’s Metropolis, (1991), p. 126.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea. Before joining SUNY, he taught at Hannam University in South Korea and from 2002-2012 was on the faculty of New York University. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, Marist College, and Victoria University in New Zealand. During the 1990s he was also a Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Category: financial news, financial technology, telegraphic political economy
Tags: Chicago Board of Trade > commodity > Erie Canal > Nature's Metropolis > William Cronen

Computer Technology and Problem-Based Learning (PBL)

Posted on | December 7, 2015 | No Comments

Many computer labs are now designed around the concept of problem-based learning (PBL), a student-centered approach where participants work in groups to solve open-ended problems. Instead of teachers presenting relevant material first and then have students applying the knowledge to solve problems, PBL engages the students in the problem, inviting them to engage higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, creativity, evaluation, and logic while working cooperatively in teams. Computer labs can facilitate problem-based learning as they are increasingly being designed with an eye towards collaboration, critical thinking, communication, research, and project management.

Theory Based Pedagogy

PBL applies insights from social constructivist and cognitive learning theories to create educational environments that reflect real-world complexities and foster personal responsibility for problem-solving. It builds on prior knowledge and fosters multiple ways of understanding and solving problems. It is an active process that seeks to drive motivation and understanding through challenge, relevance and accomplishment. PBL can be framed within the theory of John Dewey and educational philosophy of pragmatism that believed human beings learn best through a practical ‘hands on’ process.

Applications of PBL

PBL emerged primarily in medical schools as a curriculum development and delivery system to help students develop and hone problem solving skills in an information intensive environment. Medical professionals need to develop life-long learning skills to keep up with new information and techniques in their field, so PBL was implemented to help students to acquire necessary knowledge and skills. PBL is increasingly used in corporate environments as it promotes stronger working relationships and problem-solving tendencies. The case study method is a classic example of problem-based learning used in business schools.

Advantages of PBL

Don Woods has suggested that PBL is any learning environment in which the problem drives the learning. The problem is meant to be the vehicle that moves the group and each student towards the cognition of the situation and the construction of a set of solutions.

PBL mainly involves working in teams but can include independent and self-directed learning. Teams offer opportunities for leadership, stress communication and listening skills, and reward cooperation. Technologies enable asynchronous and synchronous collaboration schemes that challenge leadership skill-sets but translate into real world capabilities to manage projects and facilitate teamwork.

Central to team success is the self-awareness of individual capabilities and the evaluation of group processes. PBL stresses competences in oral and written communication as well as the ability to explain and often visualize key concepts in schematic forms for infographic slide presentations and short videos.

Whether working in a group or alone, critical thinking and analysis are combined with the ability to do additional online in-depth research across various related disciplines. Independent work can facilitate self-reliance and a sense of self. Self-directed learning lets students recognize their own cognitive strategies and understand concepts at their own pace. Major components are the application of the problem to course content and being sure it is situated in real world examples.

What are the Steps Involved?

Rather than teaching relevant material and subsequently having students apply the knowledge to solve problems, the problem is presented first. The process generally involves these steps:

– Introduce the problem in a carefully constructed, open-ended set of questions
– Establish groups, including rules and etiquette
– Organize and define roles including a leader/facilitator and a record keeper
– Initiate discussion by examining and defining the problem
– Explore what is already known about the problem
– Clarify related issues and define variables
– Determine what additional information needs to be learned and who is it pursue it
– Determine where to acquire the information and tools necessary to solve the problem
– Pursue individual tasks
– Regroup, share, and evaluate possible ways to solve the problem
– Strive for consensus and decide on a strategy to solve the problem
– Report on their findings and proposed solutions
– Assess learning acquisition and skill development

Limitations of PBL Include:

– Participants may need fundamental knowledge in key areas
– They must be willing to work within a group
– Time to organize is needed to engage fully, and report findings in a coherent way
– Assessment becomes more complicated and often less quantitative
– Teachers must learn to be facilitators of the learning process
– Group dynamics can compromise effectiveness
– Wrong decisions can influence real world solutions
– Results are better when working within flexible classroom spaces

PBL and Technology

This last risk raises questions of how technology and designed learning environments can assist the collaborative and research processes that are central to PBL. Educational technologies can help the learner and diminish many challenges faced by the instructor. Technology can streamline the instructional processes by structuring communicative interactions and knowledge finding. Group processes can proceed synchronously in a simultaneous face-to-face system or asynchronously online and across geographic divides. Web-based learning can offer personalized learning tools to students of different abilities in and out of the classroom.

Computers are increasingly being used in classrooms to provide interactive experiences. Students working around a table with one computer within reach and easy viewing can conduct collaborative, and group decision-making exercises. These desk-based terminals provide many kinds of curricular resources: informative websites, games, manuals, online books, simulations, etc. that present problems that can challenge the students and drive learning. Games, in particular, can engage students in relevant and rigorous “meaningful play” through structured activities that provide context and feedback in instructional learning.

Web-based tutoring systems have not consistently been designed to be challenging and deliver interesting curricular knowledge with a tested instructional pedagogy. However, computer-based learning environments based on PBL and gamification have come a long way in offering online and packaged media with problem-based learning and tutoring complete with homework assignments with grading and feedback.

To what extent are educational pedagogies limited by the architecture, spaces, and technology available to us? This is a major challenge now in education and seems to the be contingent on the willingness and creativity of educational professionals. While the most immediate responsibility rests on the shoulder of teachers and professors, it is also contingent on classroom designers and school administrators to construct spaces that support coherent strategies and technologies to implement problem-based learning.

In summary, PBL is a curriculum development and delivery system that recognizes the need to develop problem-solving skills, including information literacy and research capabilities that reach across disciplines. Many medical and professional schools already use these practices as the training they impart has real-world consequences. It requires a structured approach to communication and group organization while remaining committed to real-world relevance as well as a willingness to let the students control their own learning.

Resources

Monahan, Torin. 2002. “Flexible Space & Built Pedagogy: Emerging IT Embodiments.” Inventio 4 (1): 1-19.
Pawson, E., Fournier, E., Haight, M., Muniz, O., Trafford, J., and Vajoczki, S. 2006. “Problem-based Learning in Geography: Towards a Critical Assessment of its Purposes, Benefits and Risks.” Journal of Geography in Higher Education 30 (1): 103–16.
“Problem-Based Learning.” Cornell University Center for Teaching Excellence, n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2015. .
Woods, Don. “Problem-Based Learning (PBL).” N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. .

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is the Professor of Global Media at Hannam University in South Korea. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas and was on the faculty of New York University from 2002-2012. He also taught at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and was a Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii during the 1990s.

Category: educational innovations, meaningful play, multimedia, telelearn/telework

YouTube: Alice’s Rabbithole or Hypertext to Hell?

Posted on | November 24, 2015 | No Comments

Edited remarks from the conference on
YouTube: Ten Years After
November 20, 2015
Hannam University
Linton School of Global Business

I’m happy to be a part of this commemoration of YouTube’s tenth year anniversary and thank Dr. Youngshin Cho for being our keynote speaker and enlightening us with his very informative talk.[1]

Hopefully, you are familiar with the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The young girl from Lewis Carroll’s (1865) classic follows a giant rabbit into a dark hole and falls into a world of strange experiences, exotic creatures, and unusual paradoxes…

The story has been much discussed over the years, and speculations on the meanings of Alice’s adventure range from experiences with psychedelic drugs, spoiled foods, wild dreams, and even repressed sexual fantasies.

YouTube has all of these things, but my interest today is not to focus on content specifically but to point to, and for us to think about, the path, the journey, the discovery process inherent in the YouTube experience. I want to talk about the user experience, and specifically how it is guided by computer algorithms and a type of artificial intelligence.

While the meaning of Alice’s story will no doubt continue to be a topic of curious debate, there is a consensus that Carroll’s narrative is based on a sequence, a trajectory, a path that she follows. The term “rabbit hole” does not refer to a destination as much as it has come to mean a long, winding, and sometimes meandering journey with many connections and offshoots that often lead to serendipitous and surprising discoveries.

I’m not the first to connect Alice’s journey to online activities. Others have pointed to the Internet as essentially designed to function as a “rabbit hole;” primarily because of the way hyperlinks work, connecting one web page with another, taking the user down a voluntary “surfing” trip into new sites and visiting strange ideas and wonders along the way.

Interestingly, before we had the World Wide Web, we had the Xanadu project by Ted Nelson. He coined the terms “hypertext” and “hypermedia” in a publication way back in 1965. Xanadu is originally a name for Kublai Khan’s mythical summer palace, described by the enigmatic Marco Polo. “There is at this place a very fine marble palace, the rooms of which are all gold and painted with figures of men and beasts and birds, and with a variety of trees and flowers, all executed with such exquisite art that you regard them with delight and astonishment.” Nelson’s Xanadu strove to transform the reading experience with computer technology for an equally rich experience.

Let’s go to another mythical place, South Korea’s Gangnam district. Psy’s musical parody of the Seoul suburb’s delights and duplicities was an extraordinary YouTube hit.

With over 2,450,000,000 hits, the Korean singer’s Gangnam Style is leading YouTube with the most plays, but my immediate interest is the list of thumbnails of recommended hypertexted videos on the lower right side.

A key to understanding YouTube is its recommendation engine, a sophisticated computer algorithm and data collection system that finds content related to your search or the content you are watching. These computer programs reduce what could become a complex decision process to just a few recommendations. It will immediately list a series of videos based on metadata from the video currently displaying and from information gathered about your past viewings.

In a business context, this is called customer captivity, an important competitive advantage and a barrier to entry for other firms. It’s a technique to engage people in your content and keep someone on a web site by offering related or similar choices. Amazon and other e-commerce firms are increasingly using it. Netflix’s recommendation engine is also noteworthy.

The list of Youtube’s recommended videos are likely to vary but will probably include other versions of Gangnam Style and the rather awful Gentlemen, which brings me to my next topic.

Hypertext to Hell? Well, you may have heard the music hit “Highway to Hell” by Australian heavy metal band AC/DC whose lead singer drank himself to death a year later. Well, I wish him all the best and thank him for the excusing my homonym.

I think hell differs for each of us. There is an SNL skit where a very famous musician, Paul Simon, of Simon and Garfunkel, meets with the devil and sells his soul in order to be a famous musician. Years later, when the time comes to pay up, he discovers he is stuck in an elevator, listening to Muzak, the soft “easy listening” instrumentals of his classic songs, such as The Sound of Silence and Mrs. Robinson, for all eternity.

Here I am referring not to anything afterlife but rather the earthly hell we put ourselves into on occasion. YouTube can offer that same experience, if you choose. I discovered one pathway to a personal hell in a series of videos arguing for the validity of the “flat earth.” Some people actually believe the idea that the earth is round is NASA propaganda. I guess that is my personal hell because I was always fascinated with space and interstellar travel and perhaps quaintly believe astronauts landed on the Moon.

Well, I don’t want to leave you in hell. So I’ll return you to (1980) Xanadu with this video from the movie of the same name with the late Olivia Newton-John and the Electric Light Orchestra.

In closing, I’m going to make a slight jump and suggest that the human mind works very much like a recommendation engine. It gives you more of the thoughts on which you choose to focus. If you focus on positive thoughts, your mind will start to give you more of those, presenting you with similar ideas and emotional experiences. If you focus on topics you hate, your mind will give you more of that, driving you into a personal hell.

So be careful with your mental clicks, and avoid the highways to hell. Sometimes you go down that rabbit hole; sometimes you traverse the hypertext to hell. Make the right choices and get out if you find yourself going down the dark side (switching metaphors). Just do another search.

Notes

[1] Dr Youngshin Cho is a Senior Research Fellow at SK Research Institute in Seoul where he is conducting research on media trends and strategies of media and ICT companies, as well as looking at the impact of change in media policy. He obtained his PhD in Media and Telecommunication Policy from Pennsylvania State University in 2007 and his MA from Yonsei University in 1998. One of the country’s acknowledged authorities on these subjects, Dr Cho is also a consultant with the government on media policy.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea. Before joining SUNY, he taught at Hannam University in South Korea and from 2002-2012 was on the faculty of New York University. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, Marist College in New York, and Victoria University in New Zealand. He has also spent time as a Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Category: characteristics of digital media, meaning makers, meaningful play, media strategies, multimedia, social media
Tags: Rabbit Hole > recommendation engines > Ted Nelson > Xanadu Project > YouTube > YouTube Tenth Anniversary

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