By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Government 2.0 Slammed
I am supportive of the idea of decentralizing government, but not at the expense of placing governance into the hands of undemocratic institutions. I have often made the point that no society is democratic until its institutions are democratic. Its institutions include things like government agencies, corporations, NGOs and non-profits, schools and universities, and the like. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Revenge of the Blog People!
American Library Association president Michael Gorman has spoken again, this time asserting that "the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote." Gorman, recall, argued that "Massive databases of digitized whole books, especially scholarly books, are expensive exercises in futility..." He now writes that he is not against digitization. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Global Digital Divide Narrowing
The global digital divide is rapidly closing, asserts the World Bank, which then uses this information to criticize a United Nations program to increase usage and access to technology in poorer nations. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Little More on DRM
A recent paper from the Cato Institute has drawn the ire of copyright activists as it insists that while governments should continue to protect the "property rights" of copyright holders, market solutions should be allowed to define the integration of digital rights management (DRM) with peer to peer (P2P) file sharing technologies. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Knowledge Management Systems
George Siemens links to this useful course outline linking to numerous useful works on knowledge management. He comments, "When an instructor puts a course like this online (as compared to a password-protected LMS), many people benefit (and the institution doesn't really lose anything by sharing)." Quite right. More...