February 8, 2010 Why Spend Time in Public Discussion on “Concepts”? A lot of people wonder why IF public discussions focus on conceptual possibilities. Instead of talking about abstract ideas, why not deal with something really practical? The short answer is...
February 3, 2010 Two Cheers for the Disciplines There’s a lot of talk these days—as there’s always been—about reforming higher education. One of the more popular ideas getting a lot of play is that doing away with the...
January 15, 2010 Learning and the IF Discussion Process Earlier last year, I came across a striking passage in a book on how computer “games” should be re-shaping education. One needn’t be familiar with the specifics of the game mentioned...
January 14, 2010 Public Discussion: We’ve All Done It Before Some people think there’s something magical or mystical about IF-style citizen discussions. Others think they’re just plain mysterious. They are none of these things. In fact, they’re a lot like...
November 30, 2009 Where Do We Make Public Policy Choices? IF public discussions are intended to help you think through the public policy choices you make. But it may be hard to see where and when such choices might actually...
June 2, 2009 Conceptual Background on IF I'm uploading here a series of "Conceptual Essays" on IF and our approach to public discussion. The essays complement our other more hands-on documents by placing our work in a larger...
June 2, 2009 Looking forward to August Let me add my hearty "Welcome to the '09 Summer Institute!" to those already expressed by Jeff, Pete, and Sue. I'm very much looking forward to the week, all...