The heightened awareness of the limitations of a single human lifespan, brought on by illness, has opened up many new themes and avenues of thought regarding academic research and teaching. Timo Honkela has never championed reliance on measurement, because measurement alone cannot capture the enormous variety found in reality in a manner respectful both to reality itself and the behaviour of people. Short-term measurable results seems to Honkela, in the current situation, ever-more shallow; although he does understand decision makers’ desire for tools that could help them in their work. In an article for the scientific magazine Tieteessä tapahtuu, Honkela states the following:

“Speech and interaction that are off the record also play an essential role in contemporary science, even when measurements are now based solely on formal written output.”

However, Honkela does not want to reject measuring altogether, and reminds us of the differences between qualitative and quantitate research. In some cases and under certain circumstances, the qualitative can be seen through the quantitative, but that requires there to be a large number of elements under inspection. Semantic models in computational linguistics, which are closely related to this topic, can have millions of variables.

While thinking of possible ways to improve web-based teaching, Honkela decided to start filming different kinds of active presentations that can be used as study materials. The idea is to produce small modules that can be put to use as parts of a wider programme and combined with interactive teaching. An example of such a video is a presentation Honkela gave on the topic “On Knowledge.”