By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jeff Utecht[Edit][Delete]: Google in China, The Thinking Stick [Edit][Delete] January 26, 2006

As everybody (absolutely everybody) in the blogosphere has noted, Google has agreed to censor search results destined for China. My question is: if they are so willing to do this in China, could they have done it here? How would we know. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Tim Lauer[Edit][Delete]: Scuttle: Open Source Social Bookmarking Tool, Education/Technology [Edit][Delete] January 26, 2006

I talked about del.irio.us last week, an open source alternative to the del.icio.us social bookmarking tool, but noting that it was offline, contemplated authoring my own. Maybe I don't have to, if this open source tool does the job. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jeffrey Boase, et.al.[Edit][Delete]: The Strength of Internet Ties, Pew [Edit][Delete] January 25, 2006

A Pew study is released which casts doubt on the idea that online communication weakens local and family ties. Instead, the internet has assumed a role in supplementing those ties (the report even notes that people with more local ties also use the internet more frequently) while at the same time providing people with access to multiple communities worldwide from which they can draw help and support. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Brian Lamb[Edit][Delete]: The Network Delivers the Goods, Abject learning [Edit][Delete]Abject Learning [Edit][Delete] January 25, 2006

Brian Lamb is still sorting through the results he received from the community after asking for help for an unusually important presentation tomorrow night (which means, yes, you can still flood him with your responses) on blogs and wikis. Naturally, he offers links to it all, including a trackback from Germany, a "groovy wiki-based presentation" and a "Sessums-like tour de force post." Why is this relevant to anything. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Albert Boswijk , Thomas Thijssen and Ed Peelen[Edit][Delete]: A New Perspective on the Experience Economy, European Centre for the Experience Economy [Edit][Delete] January 25, 2006

"The experience economy is more than just 'excite me', 'feed me' and 'entertain me'," write the authors. A meaningful experience needs to be rooted in the individual experience, "his or her everyday world and societal context." But what does that mean? The authors do a good job of drawing this out, characterizing both the sensation, emotional impact and context of meaningful experience. "They have a high emotional impact, they have to do with letting go of old patterns, and discovering new frontiers." The having of a meaningful experience is itself an experience; the engagement of one's emotions and beliefs brings about (and this is my interpretation) what might be thought of as a secondary, reflective experience. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. David Wiley[Edit][Delete]: My Commission Testimony, Iterating Toward Openness [Edit][Delete]Iterating toward openness [Edit][Delete] January 25, 2006

[link: Hits] David Wiley prepares his testimony to the US Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education. And, happily, makes it availble to us first. It's a good account overall; I have only one major suggestion for him. I would add another line to the table describing the ways in which the world is changing, somingthing like: managed - autonomous. Or: directed - self-directed. Because I think the new technology empowers in important ways. But I certainly agree with the rest of the items in the table, and especially with this: "openness is the gateway to connectedness, personalization, and participation." David Wiley are of one mind, I think, when it comes to openness. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mark Hemphill[Edit][Delete]: Network Bias, markhemphill.com [Edit][Delete] January 25, 2006

Audio recording of a talk that sounds interesting. It is a "look at the way broadcasting holds critical sway in the virtual world (in spite of the amazing opportunities of internetworking)." There is a summary in PDF. It's dense reading, but the author draws us through a definition of broadcasting and distinguishes it from what may be called mesh networking. He then examines what he calls 'social conditioning' in these two types of communications of network. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Paul Graham[Edit][Delete]: How To Do What You Love, January 25, 2006

[link: 2 Hits] John Stuart Mill talked about this a little more than a century ago - "pursuing our own good in our own way." It is a philosophy that has become one of two great pillars of my own morality ever since (the other: each person is an end in themselves, and hence has inherent value). I still remember exactly where and when I first read On Liberty: in the Devonian Gardens in downtown Calgary in 1983. But, what is our own good? How do we define it, and pursue it in such a way as to not deprive others of the ability to pursue their own good. Harder questions, and in the end I think it comes down to a passion, a sensation or strong emotional feeling, or as this item describes, doing what you love. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Charlie Demerjian[Edit][Delete]: DRM is a Complete Lie, The Inquirer [Edit][Delete] January 24, 2006

Yet another article on DRM roughly paralleling my own (radical?) views on the topic. In a nutshell, "They protect their code in every way possible... This is all done under the guise of protecting content, but that is a lie... If you are a rival company though, you can't really violate such things and get away with it for long... So, you have to license it to play ball, or at least play music and movies. That is the true nature of DRM infections, to keep other big greedy companies out". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Michael J. Bugeja[Edit][Delete]: Facing the Facebook, Chronicle of Higher Education [Edit][Delete] January 24, 2006

Another anti-technology screed from the Chronicle (do they ever get tired of running these?) this time contra the Facebook, a social network with membership restricted to U.S. college students. To follow this article, everything bad happening on campus - from disengaged students to rising costs to homophobia to media manipulation - is caused by Facebook. The argument is as ridiculous as it is invalid (but shedding the principles of reason seems to be no obstacle to the professoriate these days, a phenomenon that puzzles me by its pervasiveness). Why do I think the author's "ethical concerns" (his words) are misplaced here? Perhaps it's because I obtained my degrees mostly by skipping class and learning how to think and to write at a student newspaper. More...