By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Yesterday's Tomorrows: Notes On Ubiquitous Computing's Dominant Vision
An interesting argument that I don't think can really be sustained but which is nonetheless certainly worth a look. According to the author, references to ubiquitous computing are focused on a certain vision of 'tomorrow', suggesting that it is not yet here. But it is here, he writes, it's just not evenly distributed (how original *sigh*). The city-state of Singapore, he writes, is fully wired, as is, arguably, the Republic of Korea. What these examples tell us is that the tomorrow-land of ubiquitous computing is not some seamless fully interoperable utopia, but a messy infrastructure of hacks and kludges; he writes about the auto maintenance system in Ghana as an example. While his argument stands against a certain version of ubiquitous computing - the pristine Semantic Web oft-criticized in these pages. But for the rest of us, the idea of 'more evenly distributed' (messy or otherwise) is at the heart of ubiquitous computing - indeed, there's not much point to it otherwise. Found on Dourish's website (do look, lots of stuff here) - no blog or RSS (tsk!) so its discovery was accidental. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jerry Springer U.
This is pretty wild. A male student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill decides to break up with his girlfriend and invites her to 'The Pit', a meeting place on campus, for a "Valentine's day Surprise". Nothing unusual in that, but this guy advertised it on Facebook, and as many as 1,000 people showed up to record the breakup on video and hurl abuse at her. This article is a good account of the event and the phenomenon of online-initiated abuse in general, good because it doesn't automatically blame the internet but rather prompts us to ask what would make people think such behaviour is acceptable in the first place. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Future of Learning Is DIY
It has taken me a while to put my finger on exactly what it is that bothers me about the 'School 2.0' movement that has developed in the States, but I think this item on the issues before us comes closest. "By locking into the concept of 'school' the proponents, while looking for all the world like they are embracing change, are in fact freezing the state of education into an archaic past, where the school is the centre and where everything else - including the students - revolve around that central concept." The reason why I think this way is because of the sort of thing summarized here by Harold Jarche (from Donald Clark). More...