Date: Apr 4, 2009 11:16 PM
Author: Kirby Urner
Subject: Re: Gnu Geometry (again) -- reporting from Chicago

Also, it occurs to me some of you might not understand 
my subject line (Gnu Geometry...).  

Let me explain: GNU stands for "GNU is Not Unix" and 
was started by Richard Stallman and colleagues from MIT 
in order to provide software engineers with tools they 
could legally use for business purposes even after 
leaving the universities.  

Instead of paying for the same thing over and over, these 
folks gathered together and developed free and open 
source tools.  If you have Netflix, I might recommend 
this documentary, which I often show excerpts from in 
my math classes:

Revolution OS (more historical than current, still good
storytelling, a reminder of where we've been):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308808/

Portland, Oregon was hailed as a FOSS Capital by 
Christian Science Monitor in 2005 and we're continuing to
consolidate around that reputation, looking forward to 
OS Bridge this June, where I'm giving a talk:

http://opensourcebridge.org/proposals/34  (my talk)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p03s02-ussc.html (that
2005 newspaper article)

The other part of the pun, which many here are too young 
to remember, is back at the height of the Cold War, the 
Russians launched this thing that went beep beep, like 
the North Koreans just launched.**  Some in the USA got 
this panicky feeling of being left behind and tried to 
get more serious math and science going in the schools.

This was called the New Math and there's a long history
I could go into.  So Gnu Math is a pun on New Math, but
is otherwise quite different in that (a) we rely on FOSS
tools like the Internet and (b) we work with counterparts
around the world, and that specifically identified with
any one country, although MIT, with its Media Lab and 
One Laptop per Child, is one of our leading lights 
(lots of OpenCourseWare too).

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
http://laptop.org/en/ (OLPC)
http://media.mit.edu/ (Media Lab -- Landman Report Card 
looks interesting)

Kirby

** 30 minutes ago:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7982874.stm