By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship
The new Journal of Computer Mediated Communication is out, featuring articles on social networking, with danah boyd and Nicole Ellison guest-editing. The pair also team up to write an introduction that defines 'social network sites' ("as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system"), gives a history (with a good timeline), and then outlines the scholarship. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Social Media: 10 Principles of Social Object Design
Teemu Arina is talking about 'social objects'. On John Searle's theory "social objects are higher order objects whose inferiora are constituted by physical objects, which account for their apparent concreteness." The use of physical objects seems to be optional; "there is a great number of social objects - complex entities such as states, universities or corporations - which don't seem to have any obvious physical realization." We need, on my view, to understand that social objects - and therefore their physical counterparts - are fictions, no matter how real they may seem. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Personal Network Effect
Reflections on the structure of personal networks. Just one piece of a larger puzzle. "Each connection produces value to the person. But the relative utility of the connection - that is, its value compared to the value that has already been received elsewhere - decreases after a certain point has been reached. The reason for this is that value is derived from semantic relevance." Stephen Downes, Half an Hour November 12, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Networks, Semantic Web]. More...

The UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC) is an international policy-oriented network providing inspiration, know-how and best practice. UNESCO GNLC members benefit from sharing of lifelong learning policies and practices, production and exchange of knowledge on key challenges and solutions, capacity building and training initiatives, and participation in global events such as the International Conference of Learning Cities. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OECD On Learning Networks
So the Red Hat up2date feature kicked in and knocked out my website, disabling all CGI functions with a security update to Perl. So that's how I spent my day. I would rather have had the chance to look more closely at the diagram from this post on OECD's description of learning networks (if only to have something 'official' to point my management to when I say I'm working on 'learning networks'). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World
Very detailed survey from six western nations on internet use, privacy, security and trust. Sponsored by the Online Computer Library Center. Use of almost everything is up from 2005, including blogs (to 46 percent, from 16 percent) and even email (to 97 percent, from 73 percent). Only library web sites are down (to 20 percent, from 30 percent). (page 1-2). Security and privacy concerns are not surprising: "The highest privacy concerns were of two types: advertising/spam and identity theft/protecting personal information." (page 3-7) Most of us share quite a bit of information online, but we also want to be able to determine who sees it and who uses it. More...