By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Futures thinking with Bruce Sterling
Bryan Alexander, 2019/01/03
Summary and link to a talk by Bruce Sterling. There are two propositions: first, to be a futurist is to pick an audience "that agrees to value a certain aspect of futuring." Second, these audiences can be defined along the lines of Stewart Brand’s Pace layers. Clearly Sterling's talk was tailored to this audience, the Long Now Foundation. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Partnership Working to Connect Degrees and Certifications
Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology, 2019/01/03
Universities may eventually regret this arrangement. By pairing their programs with third-party certificates they risk losing their monopoly on credentials. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Presence (2019)
Wendy Wickham, In the Middle of the Curve, 2019/01/02
There's an interesting conundrum here, and it bears drawing out. On the one hand he have 'presence' as described here - as something like Senge's description: paying attention to "What is happening right now? What biases and assumptions am I bringing to this observation? How do I choose to respond to this?" Sure. Fair enough. Good  questions. But performance-killers. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 96 edtech predictions for K12 in 2019
Ellen Ullman, eSchool News, 2019/01/02
People don't ask me for my Ed Tech predictions any more, probably because I don't join the usual crowd of predictions focusing on content delivery media (VR, XR, etc) or business focus (socft sckills, socio-emotional learning , etc). Or predictions describing stuff that happened last year. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Netflix debuts interactive film, expects to usher in new era of active streaming
Nick Whigham, News.com.au, 2019/01/02
Netflix's Bandersnatch is an example of the branched scenario format that has been in use in e-learning for a number of years. They've done a very nice job of it, adding some new twists (such as remembering earlier chances to add variability (cereal choices, music choices) in later scenes. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. If Not Venture Capital, Then What?
Ben Werdmuller, 2019/01/02
Ben Werdmuller, who is an unusually good position to comment, writes that "Venture capital has, inadvertently, created a template for what can be built on the internet. It's harmful, and it's a lie." The template dictates that internet companies scale rapidly and, therefore, depend on revenue models that scale rapidly, like advertising. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Philosopher Redefining Equality
Nathan Heller, The New Yorker, 2019/01/02
The premise of this engaging long-read about philosopher Elizabeth Anderson is that her bringing together of the ideas of freedom and equality is just the sort of left-right merger needed today. The left-right frame being imposed on Anderson doesn't sit well, and I've known many left-wingers over the years who have advocated for both freedom and equality as two sides of the same coin (the idea that the left opposes freedom is a right-wing trope, and entirely inaccurate). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. 2019 eLearning Predictions – Hype Curve
Andy Hicken, Web Courseworks, 2019/01/02
I might have done this chart differently, but I like the way they've documented their process and made it harder to make a case against their hype cycle diagram. But where I disagree: they have blockchain right at the start, pre-hype, while I would have put it at peak hype a year ago. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ad Tech’s Impossible Mission
Rick Webb, Medium, 2019/01/01
It's the image that brings the most to this post as it details the many steps of the internet advertising value chain. The premise of the article is that television remains the most potent advertising force out there - " television is more effective than the internet for emotionally inspiring someone to purchase something." It is also, I would contend, the leading driver of political persuasion and of fake news. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Let’s Create a Secure HD Bitcoin Wallet in Electron + React.js
Michael Michailidis, Coinmonks, Medium, 2019/01/01
I haven't tried this one yet - I've been taking a course on Electron in Udemy (it cost me $15 'on sale') which I won't recommend (I've had to work my way through a number of errors) and I'm not quite ready to tackle this yet (maybe by the end of my extended holiday break). In any case, you won't be building an actual Bitcoin wallet - the project is built for 'Testcoin', which is as the name suggests, a test coin that has no value. More...