By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Talk On Deployment Strategies For Web 2.0
I suppose the talk on deploying Web 2.0 applications is OK but I could get past the audacity of putting up an 'Acceptable Use Policy' on the first slide. I know it was intended to be permissive and to allow people to do things like record the talk. But still, the mechanism is really disturbing. It gets me thinking I should put an AUP on my handshake, or perhaps attaching terms of use to my next telephone call. Whatever happened to just saying "please don't distract others" or even just relying on common politeness? The idea that one person can (or should need to) stipulate conditions to another like that is abhorrent and should be rejected. Let's not let our standards of common decency be dictated by the publishing industry. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Web2.0 Prophecy: An Adventure
Styled somewhat on the book The Celestine Prophecy (which I haven't read, so I can't say whether it's a faithful rendition nor even whether that would be a good thing) this post leads us through an unveiling of Web 2.0, identifying the "point where we are stuck" as "the seventh insight - engaging the flow." Truss asks, "When we are stuck, when things aren't coming together, when our universe is not unfolding as it should, how do we make things flow?" And in keeping with the spirit of the question, I would say that we don't make things flow, rather, the matter is one of finding things that are already flowing and flowing along with them. Douglas Rushkoff observed web users "surfing". We don't create the wave, we don't tell it where to go - that is, if you will, the "management fallacy" (yes I've coining a phrase here, live with it), the idea that we can, through management, direct the outcome of a complex process, where in fact, the outcome is an emergent property, dependent on the autonomous and willful actions of a large number of people. Seeing this - reading the patterns, watching the wave grow, this is not leading, this is not following, this is being the flow, being the web. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Thinking About 3D Web - or Is It Web 3.0?
Reflections on Vicki Davis's recent post on Second Life and Web 3D. While nodding toward the educational benefits a 3D web will offer, Alja Sulcic says there should be open protocols and standards, that it should be more accessible, more cross-platform, and preserve the values of Web 2.0. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Cool Cat Teacher Gets It - the Future of the Web (and Maybe Online Learning) Will Be 3D
Another response to Vicki Davis's post on Second like and Web 3D. Though it covers a lot of ground and is largely encouraging, this post mostly takes Davis to task for criticizing Second Life. Most significant is the following observation: "the 3D web may not be Web3D, it may be built on a completely different architecture using a completely different client. The X3D standards will have an impact, but may not win out in the end. One of the biggest drawbacks of VRML/X3D is that it does not allow for multi-user interaction, and I believe this social, collaborative aspect of 3D worlds is what has been driving their adoption". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Is Web 2.0? Ideas, Technologies and Implications for Education
This is a very good report capturing some of the main ideas behind Web 2.0 and looking into some of the implications. If you are new to Web 2.0, this is an excellent introduction. The author depicts Web 2.0 not simply as a new set of technologies but also as the emergence of six major ideas: individual production and user generated content, harness the power of the crowd, data on an epic scale, architecture of participation, network effects, and openness. The author gets into the details quite well - there is, for example, a nice outline of AJAX, an informed discussion of SOAP vs REST, and a good sketch of the issues between Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web. At other times, though, the document reads as though written by an outsider - it depends too much on formal sources and people like Tim O'Reilly and Chris Anderson and John Seely Brown. And it addresses teaching and learning in just over a page, while devoting almost ten pages to the big problem of permanence of web resources (how did that become the major issue involving Web 2.0 in education?). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Living the Web 2.0
I like ths account of how Web 2.0 has entered into her personal life, but what I really like are the 'click', 'learn' and 'share' icons. See the on this post as well (sorry about mashing the accents on the author's name - I have to confess, the handling of special characters continues to elude me; I've tried making everything UTF-8 and yet they still get gibbled when I try to put them in my posts). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Web 2.0 - SOA and AJAX - the Next Killer App?
I was pleased today to discover that Bill St. Arnaud has a blog - I remember a decade ago reading (and gaining a lot from) his regular email newsletter. Anyhow, in this post he links to two articles to make the comment: "There is no Web 2.0 without SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)... SOA doesn't need Web 2.0 [but] Web 2.0 does need SOA... SOA lacks a face; that's where AJAX comes in - it puts a face on SOA." If course, this is to depict Web 2.0 as nothing more than the fancy AJAX interfaces. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Designing Websites for Learning and Enjoyment: A Study of Museum Experiences
I've gotta say, this article took all the enjoyment out of the subject. Not that the work isn't worthwhile, but if you're going to go to the philosophers to understand what is meant by 'enjoyment' (and you should) you could probably do better than prickly analytics like Perry or Warner (Perry: enjoyment is "non-evaluative, non-conative pro-attitude toward some actual object for what it is in itself, which object is a present doing, undergoing, or experiencing on the part of the subject or is something which is intimately connected with a present doing, undergoing, or experience on his part." - philosophy is full of stuff like that, which is why I no longer contribute to the philosophical literature). The diagram of enjoyment in Figure 1 is worth while, though. You can stop reading once you read the 'Method' heading. More...