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Beyond file-sharing, peer-to-peer is an alternative way of looking at work, live and the way we make money. Although mainstream media coverage of P2P has mostly focused its spotlights on the on-going debate around file-sharing and pirated media (music, movies, games), the social, economic, and political consequences of peer-to-peer go well beyond that narrow focus.

Michel Bauwens - Photo credit: Robin Good

The success of Wikipedia is a perfect example of how peer-to-peer collaboration extends well beyond the walls of pirated media. Wikipedia demonstrates that as a mode of production, peer-to-peer can succeed and even operate with efficiencies that closed systems cannot compete with.

Furthermore, p2p as a governance and economic model holds promises and solutions to problems that other models (including democracy and capitalism) are incapable of dealing with. As an economic model it can create new incentives to work. Rather than money being the driving force to create, as with capitalism, “voluntary passionate production” takes precedence.

Perhaps an even better example of how peer-to-peer can fundamentally affect (for the better) the world in which we live is the potential it has to alter our monetary system. The growing success of microlending and microlending institutions like Prosper has already demonstrated that even an entrenched social system like our financial system can benefit from becoming more distributed.

In this exclusive video interview with MasterNewMedia, Michel Bauwens, founder of the Peer-to-Peer Foundation, discusses some of the greater social effects of peer-to-peer.

Here are all the details:

Peer to Peer: Why P2P Is Better Than Capitalism

I think if you want to know what is wrong with capitalism and how peer-to-peer is an improvement over it, you have to look at the history of motivation and cooperation. Pre-modern societies were based on coercion / force - a slave had to give everything and serf had to give half or more of what was produced.

The dream of capitalism said that instead of forcing you, why don’t we create mutual self interest, so we will just exchange things of equal value with each other. In a way that is great progress because we go from external negative motivation (fear) to external positive motivation (money).

The problem with that is that if you don’t have money - if you don’t have positive motivation on the outside, you don’t do it. Also the problem is if you have a system based on self interest then no one looks at the other consequences. No one looks at pollution. And no one wants to do anything that is not paid.

Furthermore if you look at the way innovation works in a company you want to innovate and improve because you don’t want to be buried under competition. If you don’t have competition because it’s a monopoly for example, then you don’t improve. Look at Microsoft’s Internet Explorer… nothing really moved for 5-7 years because Netscape was dead.

Now think about a peer production like Mozilla Firefox. These people want to innovate not to be better than the other guy, but because they just want to make the best possible browser. Firefox doesn’t have to protect its property rights; anyone can make a plug-in. So Firefox is innovating all the time. It is moving all the time.

The genius of peer-to-peer is that it filters out negative outside motivation / positive outside motivation and focuses on internal motivation - voluntary passionate production. Your individual interest in improvement corresponds with the values of everyone within that organization. And the whole project is available to all of humanity via the network.

• When a for-profit institution competes with a for-benefit institution, the for-benefit institution like the Mozilla Foundation can draw on a community so the for-profit companies lose a competitive advantage. I think in those ways peer production is an improvement over for-profit production models.
• Similarly, if you have two for-profit companies competing, it is the one that opens up and invites user participation that will do better than the one that doesn’t. That means that for-profit companies are adopting peer-to-peer practices. If you take any two communities where one is locked and isolate while the other says we can collaborate with companies and cooperate with others (individuals, corporations) the second will have an advantage. What that points to is that peer production and for-profit are not antagonistic, they are complimentary in many ways.

But I would still argue that peer production is post capitalist because it is not about commodities, wage relationships, or about producing for the marketplace with commodities and exchange value.

So in many ways if you do that, part of you is already outside of the market. You are learning to do things differently and not just out of pure self interest.

Peer To Peer: The Economic Viability of Peer Production

Yes, I just think it’s an interesting proposal to think about. And the way I explain it is the following.

Right now we’re split. We have two sides of our lives:

• We have the side who has to survive… that has to make money and we engage in the formal economy, we get paid, we get a salary. But we also often very much work in an alienated way. We don’t do what we like, we have a boss we don’t like. All kinds of elements which make this not the perfect solution for many people.
• And then we have a surplus. And that surplus of intellect, of computers, of access to the networks, makes that, when we do not have to work for a living, More and more of us are engaging in our passions. And we produce what I call peer production, governors, and property.

Now what we notice today, I think increasingly, is that actually the part of us, our surplus, is more productive than when we are in the system.

Now, that should tell the system something. So the system can start thinking. Well actually when people… let’s assume they’re unemployed… so between jobs you fall in a kind of intermediate period when you’re jobless what before you used to think you’re worthless, you have no value.

Today I will argue maybe is exactly in those moments you actually produce the most value for society.

• So the first thing to do is create a system that at least allows people to move more easily from the market to the non-market. It’s kind of life-long career planning which allows people to say I want to engage with my passion and I can do that for a certain time and then I go back to the market.
• And I think as we mature in this… as we strengthen peer-to-peer, we discover that actually more and more value is created in the informal economy.
• At that moment I think we can start arguing for basic income because then it is
  no longer welfare. I am not just giving you money to help you. I’m actually recognizing a society that by the mere fact that you’re a citizen engaging in networks and producing value in common, you’re actually giving society crucial value and therefore I give you back what you give.

I don’t think we’re there yet. I think that maturation of peer production might actually lead to the situation where I don’t know, ten, twenty, thirty years from now, this becomes a really debatable issue.

Peer To Peer: The Potential For P2P To Unite The World

It does happen very rarely. Because most people today have an inner sense that openness is better than enclosure. You know when they hear about free software and open-source development actually most people recognize that it’s a good way of doing things. That if you want to cooperate you have to be open with each other.

So I think that actually peer-to-peer to has a potential unite many people that are politically opposed to each other because it has different values embedded. It has a freedom which liberals like and libertarians like. It has the equality aspect that people on the left like. It has a relation aspect that conservative people like, you know, being embedded in a community.

So what we have to do is look at the common interest of a group of people in advancing concretely the space for this to emerge. And not to overly politicize it and to a create kind of almost artificial oppositions.

Peer To Peer: How Peer Governance And Democracy Differ

I think there is a difference between peer governance and democracy, direct or indirect. I’ll try to explain it in the following way:

Think about the market. Think about hierarchy and think about democracy. Those are simply three different ways to allocate resources.

• The market says it’s all about the price. The effort will go to the most valuable thing to do.
• Hierarchy says we’re clever, because we know everything so we will organize production for you.
• And democracy says we have different groups with different interests so we’ll negotiate about who gets what.

Peer governance functions in the immaterial environment of intellectual cooperation over the networks. And you are basically self-aggregating your resources. So as long as you’re self-aggregating your resources, you don’t need any other way to aggregate your resources. You don’t need a market, you don’t need a hierarchy and you don’t need democracy. And the type of relations you have is I voluntary contributed to other projects, so do you. And you don’t pay me so why should I listen to you. So you need consensus. You need expertise. You need engagement and somehow and we see that it works that people can actually have very complex projects that are organized through peer governance. This is one side of the equation.

The other side of the equation is that in order to cooperate you have a number of fixed cost you need infrastructure of cooperation. You need servers. These servers are a renewable resource so you need a cost-recovery mechanism. So there you are in different domain. You actually need to allocate and protect resources. So what happens in peer production is in that environment people create nonprofits… the Mozilla Foundation, the Apache Foundation, Wikimedia Foundation. And they will manage the infrastructure of cooperation on behalf of the community. But because they have scarce resources, you need the democratic structure.

And so I would say overall a society is dealing not just with immaterial resources, but mostly with scarce material resources… with hunger, food, physical things. We still need democracy.

But to the degree that you did with intellectual cooperation, culture and knowledge, and open design, you are in peer governance. So what I think is happening is that… let’s say that this is the volume of democracy we have in society. This is the volume of peer governance. It is that the space of peer governance will grow but we’ll not totally replace the sphere of democracy. I think it’s impossible as long as we live in a material world.

Peer To Peer: Michel Bauwens’ Vision For the World

My dream is a world where more and more people can follow their passion… find meaning in their life… express themselves. And that more and more value is created that way.

In the current world we think that nature is infinite, and we think that we have to make things (intellectual, spiritual, cultural things) scarce artificially. My dream is that we turn that around. That we recognize that sharing is infinite and that nature is not infinite. And therefore change the way our civilization, our society runs. Based on that recognition.

I think once you start working peer-to-peer in your field, that you’re following your life’s dreams that you’re passionate about, then you don’t want to go back.

I think more and more people should have a chance than just a minority of people.

Peer To Peer: Why People Are Afraid Of P2P

I think it is the issue of expertise. The fear of dumbing down. The fear that if you broaden participation the people who know more will be lost in the masses. And I think the more hierarchical a society is, the more power experts have, and the more fear they have of losing it.

I think in some countries for example like in France they get more easily angry than in others. So, there’s this fear that if you open up that the people who know less will take power. And the quality of society will go down. And it’s a fear that I recognize.

I think peer-to-peer runs a danger in some circumstances of having that effect. I don’t think it’s inherent to peer-to-peer. I think it’s bad design, bad governance. That leads to those kind of processes. And now we have value-conscious design, a value-sensitive design that designs for diversity, for autonomy, for selection of excellence. And are the best processes to do that better than even other forms of social organization.

I think this fear is the same fear of democracy. When people started arguing that everybody had the right to vote. There was a very similar fear that democracy would bring the rule of the mob. Now we have had two-hundred years of democracy and democracy is far from perfect. But who wants to go back to an authoritarian state? Not many people want to go back.

It is the same thing with peer-to-peer. Once it’s there… once you’re used to it, when you have problems, you try to solve it in a peer-to-peer way. We don’t want to go back to the old systems.

Peer To Peer: How P2P Can Change Our Monetary System

I define peer-to-peer as a direct social production value by civil society.

And when you look at money, money is created by banks through their loans and it’s regulated by the central banks. One of the things that we also discovered in peer-to-peer is the importance of invisible architectures. The kind of protocol, the design rules that favours some kind of behavior and make other kinds of behavior difficult.

So I think that what this shows us is that these protocols of money today, interest-based money, is a protocol which drives infinite growth. Infinite growth in a finite system. So I think that this is not a good thing this kinda monetary system which is based on fighting for scarce resources. And so the scarcity for the people who need it. And then you have ninety-eight percent of the money which is floating around speculatively and creating one bubble after another. I don’t think this is a very good system.

Now how would a system like this change? Well of course the people who would profit from it are not gonna change it. So what if we create an open money system that we can manage ourselves. That we can choose a protocol from. And that virtual and physical communities can start using from the bottom up. I would say that’s one of the particular changes that could happen through peer-to-peer.

The other one is the following: to have peer-to-peer, you have access to your own resources. So today we have:

• Our brains
• A community of surplus
• Computers
• Access to the networks

Now, when machines start becoming miniaturized, we will have desktop manufacturing, personal fabricators, flexible manufacturing, multi-purpose machinery. All these trends point to capital becoming cheaper and more distributed.

When financing becomes more distributed, which is the point of social lending (like Prosper - the American system or Zopa - the English system). That means that people can get money from each other.

Then we have:

• Computers are distributed
• Machines are getting distributed
• Money is getting more distributed

What it does is it augments the peer-to-peer in society. So that peer-to-peer production can move from pure knowledge production to open design for machinery, to actually making things in a more peer-to-peer way. And finding the capital to do it as well.

All these are not changes that are happening over night. But I think the direction of change is in that direction. So in the next ten, twenty, thirty years, we’ll see more of these different steps taken up by different people and creating the basis for another type of society which I call the peer-to-peer society.

Peer To Peer And Alternative Currencies: Michel Bauwens’ View

Open money for me is a particular type of alternative currency which has the capacity to follow different rules.

The important thing is not to have an alternative currency which does the same thing as the old. The important thing is to have new rules for that currency. As long as they are local currencies, they can’t scale. So what I am thinking of are open money systems which are virtual (through the internet) and can therefore scale globally and be an interchange between different communities.

Peer To Peer: How P2P Can Continue to Grow

I think that the most important thing for peer-to-peer to grow is through example. And that is really what the Peer-to-Peer Foundation wants to do. We want to be an inter-networking platform, where people in the open and free, participatory, and community oriented movements (in whatever field they are) can publicize their efforts, can see who else is doing something similar and can share experiences.

And when people see that peer-to-peer ways of doing things are more efficient… are more pleasant… are more democratic, they will find more and more in common with it. So I think that we are at the very beginning of that revolution where people are beginning to see that.

Peer To Peer: The Relationship Between The People and The Technology

The engineers who created the internet did it for scientific research and for peer review and exchanging information amongst peers. And gradually as the internet became more and more popular then there were more and more centralized elements within it. Now this is true, and the Web, for example, is a client-server system. But I think the important thing is not to get blinded by technology.

It’s really about the people. Can you as individuals produce information, share it, distribute it? And can I as a user find it, take it, and use it? As long as those things are guaranteed we have peer-to-peer human relationships.

And of course we have to be careful about the technology. We have to look at it, we have to see who is in charge… who owns it, what the rules are, and we have to be careful about it. But we shouldn’t be blinded by the technology.

It’s really about enabling and empowering human participation. That’s the key. And sometimes what peer-to-peer does is in a pure way it might make systems less efficient. Take Napster, Napster was more efficient because it had a centralized database. But that made it vulnerable. So politically the file-sharing community was obliged to go more purely peer-to-peer not because it was technically superior but because they wanted a system that couldn’t be broken. That is a political decision.

You have to make a balance between going in a more pure peer-to-peer way and maybe having more redundancy, or going toward more efficiency with more centralized elements. But then they are more vulnerable to ownership and control. So this is a technical decision not a philosophical decision. You have to see what is happening concretely in order to make those decisions.

In general we have to have a preference for distributed systems because that is what allows people to be in charge of their own productive resources.

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on October 8th 2008 as “Peer To Peer: Social, Political, and Economic Issues In A P2P World - A Video Interview with Michel Bauwens“.

About Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens (1958) is a Belgian integral philosopher and Peer-to-Peer theorist. He has worked as an internet consultant, information analyst for the United States Information Agency, information manager for British Petroleum (where he created one of the first virtual information centers), and is former editor-in-chief of the first European digital convergence magazine, the Dutch language Wave. With Frank Theys, he is the co-creator of a 3 hour documentary TechnoCalyps, an examination of the ‘metaphysics of technology’. He taught and edited two French language anthologies on the Anthropology of Digital Society.

Although a student of Ken Wilber’s integral theory for many years, he has recently become critical of aspects of the Wilber-Beck movement, and is a powerful voice for a non-authoritarian peer-to-peer based integral society.

Michel is the author of a number of on-line essays, including a seminal thesis Peer to Peer and Human Evolution, and is editor of P2P News

He now lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he created the Foundation for P2P Alternatives and maintains a blog.

He has taught courses on the anthropology of digital society to postgraduate students at ICHEC/St. Louis in Brussels, Belgium and related courses at Payap University and Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

If you are looking for web-based collaboration tools to manage your team projects, share your screen with other people or have web-conferencing sessions, I have picked some really cool new online collaboration apps for this issue of the Sharewood Guide.

Photo credit: Erik Reis

Here the full set of online collaboration tools for this week:

1. Scribblar: Engage in web-conferences with your team, featuring audio calls, text-chat and whiteboarding
2. Mikogo Skype: Select one or more Skype contacts and share your screen, remote control and share files with them
3. TeamTexting: Send emails and text messages to your group
4. ShareYourBrain: Submit an idea for your project and see what other people can suggest to you
5. Convos: Organize your team by assigning tasks, sharing files and more
6. Kadoo: Create your personal page to share images, videos and documents with 10GB of total storage space
7. MatchBoxCalendar: Schedule all of your appointments and let people see them
8. PokeTalk: Call any mobile or landline for free using your phone and Internet

Here all the details:

1. Scribblar
   
   Scribblar is a web-conferencing application that you can use to collaborate with your team. You can have live audio conferences with other members, while engaging in multi-user whiteboarding sessions and text chats. You can also use Scribbler to brainstorm ideas, review works, share images and files, and more. Free to use.
   http://www.scribblar.com/
2. Mikogo Skype
   
   Mikogo Skype is an extra plug-in for the popular VoIP software that lets you have free screen sharing sessions and free phone calls all in one. Simply by clicking on any Skype contact, you can instantly invite them into a Mikogo session, and you’ll be able to share your screen in real-time with up to 10 participants simultaneously. While sharing, you can change presenter, remote control, pause the transmission and transfer files. Free.
   https://extras.skype.com/1672/view
3. TeamTexting
   
   TeamTexting is a free group messaging platform that lets you keep in touch with your team. Just create a group and invite people to join it, and start sending messages to the group: people will receive the message via email and SMS, and wait for them to reply. No matter how many team members you have, you will be charged for just one text-message. Free.
   http://www.teamtexting.com/
4. ShareYourBrain
   
   ShareYourBrain is an online brainstorming platform that you can use to submit ideas and make other people review them. After you describe the project you are working on and make a detailed request, such as what would be the best name, people will provide their ideas and comments about it, and you will be able to monitor and select the best ideas in real-time. Free.
   http://www.shareyourbrain.com/
5. Convos
   
   Convos is an online project manager application that allows you to effectively organize your team. You can invite people into your group, and start scheduling appointments with the other members, share files, assign tasks and more. The free version enables you to create two groups with up to 50MB to share your files and documents. Paid versions available.
   http://www.convos.com/
6. Kadoo
   
   Kadoo is a personal webspace that you can use to share files with other people. After you create your page, you can start sharing files, photos, videos and even bookmarks, with a total storage space of 10GB, deciding what people in your contact list can see. The service is completely free to use, registration is needed.
   http://www.kadoo.com
7. MatchBoxCalendar
   
   MatchBoxCalendar is a shared calendar application that enables you to schedule all of your appointments. You can add as many events as you want in a single day, which will be reminded to you via email or RSS, and invite people to actually see your appointments to schdule what is the best day and time to meet with them. The service is free to use, registration needed.
   http://www.matchboxcalendar.com/
8. PokeTalk
   
   PokeTalk is a web service that lets you have free international calls using the Internet and your phone. After you register, all you need to do is to provide your and your friend’s phone number, wait for your phone to ring, and you’ll be automatically connected with the other person, wherever he is in the world. You can have up to 50 calls per month, to both mobile and landlines phones. Free, registration needed.
   http://www.poketalk.com/

Originally written by Nico Canali De Rossi and Robin Good for Master New Media and first published on October 5th 2008 as “Online Collaboration Technologies - New Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Guide Oct 5 08“

How do you know whether the information you are searching for online has been verified and comes from reliable sources? Are you getting into the mass-media habit more of taking for granted whatever you read online? Is your critical evaluation attitude miserably fading?

Photo credit: Stephen Downes

George Siemens, MasterNewMedia official guide to education technologies and media literacy, scouts and reports from his ongoing research key future scenarios where the increased adoption of collaborative approaches and more effective learning approaches unveil a new way of managing, and living successfully during these fast changing times.

Here all the details:

eLearning Resources and News

learning, networks, knowledge, technology, trends

by George Siemens

Innovate: Downes on MOOCs and CCK08

Over the last several weeks, we have seen a substantial amount of conversation on open education, open teaching, and accreditation. Rather timely then that Stephen Downes‘ article in the latest issue (free registration required) of Innovate is focused on our Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course. He details how the course is set up, technologies used, participant contributions, language translations, and other delivery modalities (in Second Life, for example).

Recordings of Previous Presentation…

Recording conference presentations seems to be a given. Great way for people who couldn’t attend an event to still benefit from the various talks given. Also a great way for presenters to relive mis-spoken words. Several recent presentations I’ve delivered are available online:

• Leading Learning - On Becoming: The cognitive and social impact of technology (.wmv file)
• Madison conference - Curt Bonk links to both of our keynotes at Madison from August… and our panel on Web 2.0 and scholarship.

Learning Communities and Learning Cities

Education is generally confined to institutions. Learning, on the other hand, is a continual, ongoing experience, running a range from formal to informal, organized to emergent, self-organized to planned.

As institutional lines continue to blur, concepts of learning communities and learning cities become more attractive (and realizable):

“Neighbourhoods, villages, towns, cities or regions that explicitly use lifelong learning as an organizing principle and social / cultural goal in order to promote collaboration of their civic, economic, public, voluntary and education sectors to enhance social, economic and environmental conditions on a sustainable, inclusive basis.“

It could probably be better said with less words, but the idea of entire communities and related webs of libraries, museums, and other societal institutions forming the basis for a new integrated view of learning is quite attractive.

Tradition and Emergence

I’ve posted the slides for a presentation I’ll be delivering to COHERE’s Blended Learning conference later today. Topic: Tradition and Emergence.

History of Educational Technology

Click on the image above to open the presentation

The educational technology field is almost disdainful of its own history. This is most unfortunate. We have much to be thankful for in the early innovators of the last century (and even beyond). Given the tremendously rapid pace of technology development today, I’m concerned that even the little history we have will vaporize.

Which is why I’m quite excited about a new initiative with SCoPE, Richard Schwier, and the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba: Building a Virtual Museum of Educational Technology. We all agree that museum is not the best word, but it will do for now. We are running a three week online seminar (Oct 1-21) devoted to the theme and planning ways that we can get a larger group involved.

Please join in the conversation! Rick’s current master’s class will be tackling the museum as a project, but we’d love to get more classes, groups, or people involved. The recording of our first session is available.

Journalism and the Internet

In education we are facing similar concerns that news media has faced for over a decade - how can the mass of amateurs online possibly recreate the authority and value of the news industry? Who will do the hard work of investigative journalism? How will we ensure that the information shared is credible?

William Dutton asks similar questions in Journalism, the Internet, and Empirical Research. He emphasizes that many concerns exist not only in internet journalism but in the information consumption habits of people in any media. In the process, he offers a fairly broad (but shallow) overview of areas needing more research…

The Next Internet

It’s generally a good idea to listen when Google starts to talk about how it sees the next stages of internet development. Even more so when it is Vint Cerf speaking on behalf of the company. In a short post, he offers a (very) small glimpse of a future where the internet is integrated into all areas of our lives. Apparently, we’ll be able to do our laundry through a browser. I’m just not sure how I’ll do the sorting :).

Visualization

iCharts is a fairly new entrant into the data visualization space. This particular service allows people upload Excel documents and create / share interactive charts. Related - Gapminder continues to offer some of the worst URLs possible, but some of the nicest graphs for comparing data from different regions around the world.

Photo credits:
Innovate: Downes on MOOCs and CCK08 - Stephen Downes
Recordings of Previous Presentation… - Reeltoreeltaperecorder
Learning Communities and Learning Cities - University of Waterloo
Journalism and the Internet - Radu Razvan
The Next Internet - Tony Phillips
Visualization - iCharts

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on October 3rd 2008 as a weekly email digest on eLearning Resources and News.

About the author

To learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book “Knowing Knowledge“.

Is virtual learning better than classroom face-to-face instruction? Are the benefits for learning at a distance as effective as those obtainable from a traditional in-class curriculum? Tough to say. Different researchers report different experiences and given sometimes the shallowness of their investigation or the limited numbers on which this data is often based, it is wise to move cautiously when making important claims relative to the new emerging learning paradigms.

Photo credit: Teemu Arina

Skepticism, questioning, verification and analysis of multiple diverse sources and research data, remains the best way to make sense of any similar fast changing topic as learning is today.

And this is exactly what I would think is most needed in our present educational institutions: tangible time and specialized resources devoted to grow your personal analysis and information investigation skills. How to verify information, where to find alternative sources, how to check for plagiarism, how to question and check for uncorroborated claims, and more.

But while our educational system still ponders and evaluates whether change is part of its future, and whether to replace notionistic lectures with explorative and output-focused group investigations, what you and I can keep doing, is to research and evaluate new information by always utilizing some degree of conscious, critical analysis. Much like educational technologies expert George Siemens does, by bringing to you this weekly digest of stories, issues, and resources he has found in his never-ending journey to make sense of new media technologies and of the fast changing times we’re living in.

Here all the details:

eLearning Resources and News

learning, networks, knowledge, technology, trends

by George Siemens

Looking to The Future: Higher Education in the Metaverse

I had an interesting experience yesterday - I presented to a group from Spain in Second Life. I spoke for 20 seconds and paused for translation. Then spoke, then paused. And then someone would ask a question and it would be translated to me. I would reply and it would be translated to them. The language aspect was interesting, but so was the venue. I have a weak tie relationship with Second Life. I go in every few months and play around for a while.

Virtual worlds are important. Lots of innovative teaching and learning happening there. For some reason, I just haven’t fully embraced the experience. Chris Collins has just published a well-written article for people like me - Looking to the Future: Higher Education in the Metaverse:

“It’s almost unfortunate that we talk and think about virtual worlds as a kind of “technology” application rather than as an exciting new laboratory, or as a giant sandbox to test new theories, or as a way to step into our collective and individual imaginations in a manner that we have never been able to do before.”

Effectiveness of Traditional and Blended Learning Environments

Effectiveness Of Traditional And Blended Learning Environments:

“Strickland discovered that there were few statistical differences between the effectiveness of a traditional course delivery method and a hybrid one.“

This is likely true, but context is always the critical factor. I’m increasingly distrustful of research that is generalized after only one or two studies and with small numbers of participants. In a research project I was involved with last year, I found significant differences in learner satisfaction in comparison to blended vs. face-to-face learning. Learners didn’t like the online portion.

Why? Well, it was due to context: their expectations, the curriculum, their experience with technology, and numerous other factors. Context. Context. Context.

Lots of Tools…

I should reference where I found this site - 270 tools for your online business - but I’m clueless as to where I found it. The list includes a combination of free and for-fee applications. Includes tools for roughly every conceivable task: accounting, communicating, planning, brainstorming, project management, and on and on. Educators will likely find a few new tools in the mix…

William Farish - The Joys of The Grade Scale

Ever wonder how we ended up with a grade system in schools and universities? This topic came up in a recent CCK08 thread. We only need to look back a few hundred years to discover William Farish.

Apparently, Farish is to receive the credit for initiating grade structures as a sharp departure from how learners were previously evaluated:

“When a student graduated, the most impressive thing she or he could share with a prospective employer was not a Grade Point Average (GPA) or even the name of the institution attended: it was the name of the teacher.

Students of the great teachers of history often became famous themselves because of the thoroughness with which their mentors had inculcated knowledge, understanding, skill, and talent in them“

(Postman also briefly addresses this in Technopoly).

Everything starts somewhere (duh!). Most of us have been in a grade system all of our academic lives (as students, educators, trainers). It’s difficult to imagine there was a time when grades didn’t exist.

Social Media Is Changing The Shape of Scientific Debate

Social media is changing the shape of scientific debate:

“The drawback of the journal process is that it doesn’t allow a space for public and open debate and discussion of ideas in a convenient and quick way. This isn’t necessarily their fault, that’s not what they are designed for. But there is a space in the scientific community for this kind of reviewing, commenting and evaluation of ideas, allowing groups of scientists to work together to refine and improve ideas.“

I’m in agreement with the notion of needing an open space for the exchange and development of ideas. Last year, I posted an article - Scholarship in an Age of Participation - trying to make exactly this point. Change is multi-faceted. It is rarely complete in overwriting the existing system. As such, especially when we consider scholarship, we are adding to, not replacing, the intent of the traditional journal process. We still need the peer-review process of experts evaluating the work of others. But it’s not a complete picture. Chaotic spaces of innovative thought are critical too.

Ghost of Days Past: Blogs and Blogging

Click to enlarge picture above

In 2002/03 most posts on elearnspace eventually returned to blogs. They were cool back then.

Now, they are so common as to almost cease to exist as a unique entity. Universities use blogs to recruit students. Corporations use them for marketing. Activists use them for promoting their message. Blogs have become background noise in the rush to interactive social media.

Over the last few days, however, recent reports/posts have revived blogs as a unique concept. Consider:

• State of the blogosphere (2008)
• TechCrunch focuses on blogs for revenue generation
• ReadWriteWeb suggests they are not as mainstream as suggested by some. They detail that of the 133 million blogs, only 1.1% have updated in the last 7 days.
• And finally, a brief consideration of the history of blogging.

Education in 2050: Neural and Networked

Last week, I appeared on TVOntario to discuss the future of education. The recording is here: Education in 2050.

The discussion didn’t focus as much on the future as I would have hoped. I also discovered that I’m too long-winded to present ideas in 15 second sound bites! What I find somewhat discouraging about education reform advocates is the emphasis on hype; broad sweeping statements that may sell books and stoke conference invitations. Unfortunately, reform needs a firmer foundation. I’m troubled most by the current lack of experimentation with alternate models.

OECD has offered potential scenarios. But that’s not enough. Experimentation must follow conceptualization…

Ethics of Searching…

We don’t fully understand the impact of our transparent online lives. We haven’t yet had a president or prime minister elected that used facebook or myspace. We reveal things in these online forums that we might not always want others outside of those forums to know about.

In the past, we had compartmentalized lives. I was a son, father, employer, husband, employee, brother, and so on. Now, those compartments of identity have imploded. If we’re active online, we are increasingly the same to everyone. Our communications flow into other spaces - an employer reads what we said to a friend on the weekend. Or a friend might encounter our professional interactions on LinkedIn.

What are the ethical considerations of searching for information on a potential employee or applicant to an elite school? These are questions worth pondering. A growing number of schools are beginning to search social networks as an additional tool in determining enrollment suitability…

Reflections on Knowledge

The joy of discussing knowledge is found in that it is a never ending discussion. This week in CCK08, our focus was on connective knowledge. Tom Whyte interviewed a few colleagues on their views of knowledge. I enjoyed this 7 minute video, expressing, from a nontechnical perspective, much of what many edubloggers have been talking about for years. Our ability to cope, function, and even make sense of change pressures is a function of our connectedness to others.

Photo credits:
Looking To The Future: Higher Education In The Metaverse - Popsci
Effectiveness Of Traditional And Blended Learning Environments - MiddleSchoolWorld
Lots Of Tools… - Ricardo Alves
William Farish - The Joys Of The Grade Scale - Graça Victoria
Social Media Is Changing The Shape Of Scientific Debate - Andy DeSoto
Ghost Of Days Past: Blogs And Blogging - Technorati
Ethics Of Searching… - martin33

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on September 27th 2008 as weekly email digest on eLearning Resources and News.

About the author

To learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book “Knowing Knowledge“.

Want to have a video conference with up to 8 people at cost zero? Need to send huge files without worrying of their size? I have the collaboration tools you need right here.

Photo credit: Vlad Kochelaevskiy

In this collaboration tools digest here the best tools and services I have hand-picked for you:

1. iVisit: Have video conferences with up to 8 people on Windows and Mac machines
2. Podmailing: Transfer any file with no size limit to other people’s PCs
3. Mousecloud: Create web meetings and collaborate with people online
4. Toksta: Text-chat and video talk with your site’s viewers
5. BabbleStream: Have voice conferences or simply text-chat sessions with your site’s users
6. QTask: Manage your projects online with 1TB of storage space
7. Wiggio: Collaborate with your group sharing files, instant messaging and more
8. OpenGoo: Create, edit and collaborate on any kind of document online

Here all the details:

1. iVisit
   
   iVisit is a free software for mobile and desktop computers that enables you to have video conferences with people. You can transmit live video/audio with up to 8 people at the same time, share hi-res photos, text-chat, and even track mobile users with the integrated GPS system. The software is free to download and use, with pro plans available.
   http://www.ivisit.com/
2. Podmailing
   
   Podmailing is a kind of P2P application for Windows and Mac machine that enables users to exchange files with absolutely no size limit. When sending a file, a notification email will be sent to the other user, and the file will be transferred directly from your PC to your recipients, who can download it using the Podmailing software, any BitTorrent client or with a standard http download, so that your recipients are not required to install the Podmailing software. Free.
   http://www.podmailing.com/
3. Mousecloud
   
   Mousecloud is a real-time collaboration app that anyone can use to instantly create webmeetings. After you create a meeting, you can invite people to join you with a direct link or via email invitation, and you can start sharing files and presentations, have whiteboarding sessions, text-chat, and more. Mousecloud is completely free to use.
   http://www.mousecloud.com/
4. Toksta
   
   Toksta is a free instant messenger that you can embed into your website or blog to collaborate with your viewers. It enables your users to chat with your and other people on the site, or even engage in real-time video conferences, with one active speaker. Toksta is free to use, requires registration.
   http://www.toksta.com/
5. BabbleStream
   
   BabbleStream is a web widget that lets you engage with your site’s visitors. It can be embedded onto most social networking pages and various blog sites, enabling you to text-chat, but also have voice conference with all the people that are on your webpage. The service is still in beta phase, and it is free to use.
   http://www.babblestream.com/
6. QTask
   
   QTask is a project management service that lets you organize your team. With 1TB of free space and up to 5 users per project (more users can be added), you can share all of your files and organize your work with the integrated calendar, discussions boards, contacts, wikis and task assignment facilities. The service is free to use for the first year.
   http://qtask.com
7. Wiggio
   
   Wiggio is an online toolkit that makes it easy to work in groups. With a simple registration form, you can access to all Wiggio’s features, such as shared calendar, instant polls, file sharing, text and audio messages, chatrooms and group conferences, and more. Wiggio is free to use, registration is needed.
   http://www.wiggio.com/
8. OpenGoo
   
   OpenGoo is a full featured open-source document editor which runs on XAMPP servers that lets you create, edit, and collaborate on every kind of documents. You can create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and task lists, and invite people to collaborate with you. You can then also publish on the web your final work for everyone to see. Free.
   http://www.opengoo.org/

Originally written by Nico Canali De Rossi and Robin Good for Master New Media and first published on September 22nd 2008 as “Online Collaboration Technologies - New Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Guide Sep22 08“

Understanding the concept of “information funnels” is critical to anyone passionately dedicated to become a successful independent web publisher. This is it.

Photo credit: Teemu Arina

I am indeed glad that George Siemens, who weekly authors these insightful digest, has himself chosen to point to the relevance of this very concept by highlighting the excellent mini-guide on info funnels authored by holistic-designer-philosopher Wikkel that I am very honoured to host in its first web-only format on Master New Media.

As always, George highlights for you the starting points, the hot spots and the new emerging discussions and ideas, that in his view, create the “pulse” of our fast-changing media and technology-infused society.

Here many great take-off points for what I would call “explorative understanding“:

eLearning Resources and News

learning, networks, knowledge, technology, trends

by George Siemens

Information Overload

Robin Good has posted an article (by Mikkel) on information overload.

It’s a challenge that most of us face on a daily basis. When we find a tool - such as RSS - that makes information easier to manage, we simply gorge ourselves again. We always live at the end of our attentional and informational schemes. New tools = more information.

This article suggests a few approaches for helping to stem the deluge. And after you’ve mastered those concepts, you should be able to take in even more new information :).

The End Of ‘Command Control‘ Approaches To Knowledge Management?

The End of ‘Command Control‘ Approaches to Knowledge Management? is a fairly short article tackling knowledge management from the field of law:

“For the KM purist attached to the command and control ethos, the idea of unregulated proliferation of content sounds like chaos. However, the success of Wikipedia, in creating one of the world’s leading reference tools, shows how much trust around content can be established even on the internet.“

Yes, I know, Wikipedia is not perfect. The flaws it does have, however, pale in comparison to what it reveals about the ability for people to collaboratively contribute to the creation of an information resource. Could any one person create a resource like Wikipedia? No. Could Wikipedia be centrally mandated and created with command/control structures? Possibly. But to date that hasn’t happened.

Most of the creative works in the public (online) sphere have not been mandated and controlled. They’ve “grown” if you will. Complex systems, after all, can’t be planned and structured. When given sufficient flexibility, however, the natural iterative/feedback process (i.e. response to emerging conditions) of complex systems is the basis of innovation.

Visualizing Financial Markets

Visualization of data helps to provide new insight (patterns). Few organizations do it better than NYTimes. Consider their recent visualization of the current financial sector.

Teens, Video Games and Civics

Pew Internet has released research on Teens, Video Games, and Civics (.pdf). It runs 70+ pages and largely says what most parents/teachers already know: kids like video games.

The break down of games played is interesting. Not surprisingly, racing/puzzle/sports/action games are the most popular. Other games and virtual worlds - such as WoW and Second Life - are not as common. Which is interesting. At most conferences, when someone says “games” or “virtual worlds” the natural thought is WoW or Second Life.

I have no doubt about the academic value of games and simulations. I’m still undecided on the degree to which games popular for recreation can be morphed into games for learning…

Social Web: All About The Small Stuff

The web, especially in the last five years, has lowered the barriers for individuals to create and share content.

A secondary, but likely more profound trend, is the ability for individuals to share roughly everything. It’s been called lifecasting (any new term first needs ‘casting‘ somehow attached to it). At the heart of the process is the ability to share what you’re doing, where you’re doing it, and to capture the process in audio, video, and text. The transparency is actually a bit blinding.

Google, never one to overlook opportunities to become the central influence online, is fully aware of this trend:

“Fortunately, as the web becomes more social, I won’t have to spend as much energy thinking about what’s “interesting enough” to share with a certain group. The people who care about me and that I allow will increasingly be able to tune in to the parts of my life that interest them…

In the coming decade, the web will become as effortlessly social as chatting with your family or roommates at home is today. Social features will be embedded and around and through all variety of spaces and places on the web. Sometimes you’ll go to a place because you want to see your friends, and sometimes the place you’re in will get better because you can bring your friends there.

It will make it easier to strike up new relationships, new communities, new expressions of what your life is about. The web will connect people to the small moments that in many ways matter most.“

Why does that cause me anxiety?

New Battle Ground Of Ethics

As we come to understand more about the human brain, we quickly discover that we bump up against many of our views of free will, personal agency, privacy, and more. What is the outcome of this? Well, for starters, we are seeing misapplication of technology - i.e. using technology to do what it simply cannot do.

Consider this astonishing article - India’s use of brain scans in courts dismays critics:

“The new technology is, to its critics, Orwellian. Others view it as a silver bullet against terrorism that could render waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods obsolete. Some scientists predict the end of lying as we know it.“

On first read, the concept seems beyond credible. And yet, I recall years ago in a faculty meeting where significant funds were required to support LMS deployment. The decision makers didn’t understand what was being approved. The danger here is not technology in itself, but when people extend technology beyond what it is intended to reasonably do.

Interview With Dave Cormier: Rhizomatic Education

Dave Cormier’s article in Innovate on Rhizomatic Education drew a fair bit of attention. I had the opportunity to chat with him today to explore in more detail his view of knowledge and education. The recording is available here.

CCKo8

It’s been a busy week in our Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Course. I’ll reference course developments once a week here, so readers that are not interested don’t end up being overwhelmed. I’ve posted a short summary on my reactions to week one.

Photo credits:
The End Of ‘Command Control’ Approaches To Knowledge Management? - Ljupco Smokovski
Visualizing Financial Markets - pablo631
Teens, Video Games and Civics - Leah-Anne Thompson
Social Web: All About The Small Stuff - Eddypedro
New Battle Ground Of Ethics - Ron Chapple Studios
Interview With Dave Cormier: Rhizomatic Education - Dave Cormier
CCKo8 - Edukacja-Online

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on September 19th 2008 as weekly email digest on eLearning Resources and News.

About the author

To learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book “Knowing Knowledge“.

Information overload: are you affected by it? How can you better manage it? Are big companies giving us more and better information? How can you determine which information is worthwhile looking at? How to you decrease the noise created by the huge volume of info coming at you everyday?

Photo credit: Mikkel

Information overload is a two-sided problem:

1. The sender does not communicate her message efficiently
2. The receiver is unable to filter the information and evaluate which is the one she really needs

In this brilliant paper Mikkel explains very clearly what information overload is and how it is silently affecting our life.

It does not matter where you were born, which type of religion you belong to or the color of your skin. Mikkel suggests that individuals are just information-driven, they don’t belong to any sociological category when dealing with communication. They should be treated and communicated to only by being highly aware of what specific information they are are looking for.

Here all the details:

Information Overload

In our everyday life we are bombarded with information: advertisements in the mail box, fast paced TV, interviews never lasting more than three minutes, signs and symbols everywhere we go, internet pages, chat sessions, offers to buy this or to do that, and lots of other stuff.

We are overloaded with information: the more input, the more we shut off and become cynical. But ad-people, designers and producers respond by feeding us MORE information!

The reason is that we / they rest in a 300 year old mindset, established and maintained by newspapers: that as much information as possible should be conveyed in as little space as possible. The Latin word omnibus means “everything for everybody” and that old newspaper doctrine shows as a desire to impress through a diversity of features mixed in a big bowl of confusion.

The intention is to show the most products and information, so that each one has a ”scatter-gun”-ish opportunity to reach a target audience: ”Look how exciting I am, here you won’t be bored”. The focusing on features results in everything being emphasized - and therefore that nothing really is!

I call it featureism.

• Featureism is a statement of what the transmitter wants to sell. It’s not a guide for the recipient to find what she wants.
• Featureism is not information. It’s desperation.
• Featureism is to go against our nature. It is to go against the way humans naturally interprets our surroundings.
• Featureism is bad communication and the result is information overload.

But there is another way…

Focused Information

All communication is basically about saying the right thing to the right one at the right time in the right way. The easiest thing in this equation is the external part, finding the target audience, while the hard thing is to handle the internal part: the transmitter:

• ”me”
• ”myself”
• ”I”
• ”we”
• ”us”

The hard part is to shut up. The result, however, is transmitter focus, instead of recipient focus, the result is lost attention and lost market shares.

I know how hard it is, as a transmitter, to focus on the recipient and how easy it is to think of oneself. Besides philosophizing on media, communication and technology, I also (once in a while) design websites. I know the feeling of wanting to sell websites but ALSO sell my ideas (you’re reading some of them now) - because I love both so much and would hate to prioritize between them.

My brain knows that it’s best to split the two areas, but my heart would rather not let go - and the result is that I send mixed signals of who I am and what I do. My customers also know how hard it is to limit oneself - when I create their sites, the hard part isn’t to convince them to try a radical design-idea of mine, but rather to convince them to limit themselves in terms of content. They respond in a slightly desperate tone: ”…but Mikkel, I also do this and that - those things must be included!”

But the customer is NOT always right - and the brochures and websites of even big and famous companies cannot be used as an ideal of well designed communication - to the contrary! The bigger the company is, the worse it’s communication usually is - simply because it isn’t capable of administering and conveying all the information.

Information Tunnels

Focused information often use what I call information tunnels. Communication is focused when it’s precisely adjusted to a certain group of recipients. When a transmitter adjusts a certain message to several groups of recipients, and allow the individual recipient to choose which group she belongs to, the transmitter has created an information tunnel.

Using information tunnels effectively, means that one can divide all recipients in groups - but these doesn’t have to be socio- or demographically based. I believe that dividing people by age or income, or voting pattern, is less important. It’s why they interact with you, their intention, that counts!

To illustrate: all recipients of this very article can be divided into three categories:

1. Those that has found it by curiosity - they are interested in an easy-understandable and entertaining communication.
2. Those that were looking for information on marketing - they want a practical guideline in using the theories.
3. And those recipients that are media- and communication theorists - they desire a scientifically valid communication.

In this case, the recipient’s age or daily-life is of no or little importance, only their intention for reading this: whether they are belonging to 1, 2 or 3.

My claim is that whatever we do, we are not sociologically founded, we are intentionally founded. Key to reaching a recipient is not knowing her age, but what she wants to do. As you see, this article is not an example of information tunnels or focused information (rather it is one of featureism) but this article would have been so, if I had made three of them, each catering to the desires of each of the recipient groups.

For instance, take this example of how to effectively create an information tunnel: On the front page of “www.tag-eksperten.dk” there’s a large picture of a craftsman on a roof, and the explicit text:

”we lay new tile roofs for home owners on Sealand) - specific offer, thorough consultation, a new roof in a league of it’s own, delivered in only four weeks”.

In this way the company’s business, mission, geographic reach and terms of trade are all precisely defined in words and pictures.

At the bottom there are three boxes which might seem like features, but in reality are information tunnels:

• ”Choose tiles”
• ”Calculate price of a new roof”
• ”8 tips on roof renovating”

Thus exists an entrance for those most interested in the looks of their new roof, one for those worried about the price, and one for those with a do-it-yourself attitude. On the other hand, it must be said that the language is the same throughout the website, so in this way it doesn’t abide the principle of information tunnels.

An accepted idea in business communication is integrated communication:

• That all parts of a company ”speaks the same language”
• That communication is stream-lined

Besides this principle being de facto impossible - maybe even undesirable - to realize, it doesn’t influence focused information: integrated communication deals with the company’s communication with, and in relation to, it’s surroundings: what’s to be said. Focused information deals with how it’s to be said.

Focused information is therefore not to change the message, but to vary the delivery and expression, depending on whom the recipient is.

The Trend In Society

Another way to view information overload, is as trend in society. The problem today isn’t obtaining information - the problem is to organize it.

• The history of media started with the invention of writing, which made it possible to convey knowledge across time and space.

• The printing press, with its efficiency and cheapness, made the written knowledge accessible to many.
• The telegraph contributed with a previously impossible speed, resulting in an even greater availability of information.
• The original internet was merely a new form, a technological reincarnation, of the principle.
• Today’s internet, by some called Web 2.0, gives an even greater amount of information, through easy tools for creating, publishing and sharing - this article is an example.

The history of media is thus a single continuous expansion of access to information, now available in enormous quantities - the key word here is quantity. The new is the opposing movement that is awakening: de-selecting quantity and passive reception, to the advantage of quality and active selection. We see it in avoidance of advertisements, traditional media loses readers/viewers, growing numbers even stop watching TV, internet technologies allows customized information channels, etc.

The key word here is quality. For on the one hand, technology increased the availability, but at the same time it has lowered the ”cost of access / entry” and increased individuality. ”Ordinary people” have regained control, in a form of technological democratization. The individual can avoid information overload and increase the amount of relevance in her life.

The New Way Of Living

In everyday life, this reaction to information overload, is seen in a general return to origins, to a lower pace. It shows in an mild increasing interest in spartan ways of living, nudism, and a general “turning inwards”, among other things towards philosophy, religion and emotional health.

The opposite of information overload - silence, emptiness and thoughtfulness - is trendy already: monasteries experience great interest, pilgrimages have returned. The most successful publications are niche-oriented and deals with a narrow subject, or they are dealing with any kind of emotional issue. A symbol of this movement could be Eckhart Tolle: a secretive author that sells millions of books about spirituality.

In the last 20 years, the most talked about, has been that which didn’t strive for being talked about:

• The café that is only discovered though word of mouth
• A membership only obtained through fulfilling secret criteria
• a musician that appears incognito
• A product in limited editions, etc.

All this is a a different kind of quality.

Another result of information overload, is the way we relate to each other. Because a greater part of our time is used on a computer, and as being single, an increasingly greater part of our role models and friendships are found in, and through, the new media. The common theme of almost all currently successful companies and technologies, is the fact that they connect people:

• Auction houses
• File-sharing
• Services
• Chat services
• Dating- and meeting services
• Mobile- and internet services
• MMO-computer games, and so on.

The success of a product or service depends on how many connections it opens. The two major themes that has to be considered in any project, is thus that which is immaterial, and that which connects. The third major theme which I’ll write about in another IDmag, is that which I call The CoCreating Consumer.

You’ve now reached the end of my introduction to information overload, and a couple of my tools and advice on how to avoid it. The rest merely requires you to use your critical sense, a little imagination and some courage.

Good luck!

Mikkel

Photo credits:
All images by Mikkel

Originally written by Mikkel for Design Af Mikkel and first published as “Information Overload: What It Is And You Can Avoid It” on September 18th 2008

About the author

Mikkel is a market expert and web-designer. He focuses his attention on communication techniques and how information should be provided to be as efficient as possible. On his own site Design Af Mikkel he writes: “My philosophy is about balance, about holism. About reaching each other in the best way, about doing it honestly and about having fun along the way.” Mikkel has written some valuable papers about information design and “Information Overload” is one of them.