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Different Social Networks

danah boyd tackles a much needed discussion – different types of social networks. Network language has been integrated into society. This is partly due to the experience many people have now had with linking, connected, and sharing information through social media. Simple network terms long tales, power laws, strong/weak ties, etc. are thrown around rather casually.

 
Image Credit: D’ Arcy Norman

Because living is fundamentally about networking and connecting, a sense of understanding exists in the use of terms, but I think they are often misunderstood. Or, they are used to bluntly. Within education, I’ve been arguing for the development of more nuanced use of language in discussing learning networks. Most conference attendees have by now seen the conference social map – a map that draws attention to how attendees are connected…but provides very limited value.

The question for me is not “how are people connected?” but rather “what are the implications of people being connected in a certain way?”. In a classroom, for example, I’d like to know how student interaction influences learning. Frequency of contact isn’t that important to me. But the implication of an interaction is. But we have limited language (and very little discussion that I’ve seen to date) addressing a more nuanced view of networks. danah’s post is a start in this regard…but much more is needed before networks move from understanding novelty of form to understanding implications of form.

Science, Publishing, And Such

Discussion of science and publishing in the digital age is growing in popularity. A surprising uniformity of need (open, shareable data), collaboration, and systemic change (incentives, publishing process, etc) is found in various conversations. This theme is similar to what one that has been developing more broadly in education for the last (almost) decade.

For example, Science 2.0 is a workshop in France at the end of September (organized by Erik Duval and others). Elseview announces the article of the future (now with 70% less fake journals!): “to redesign from scratch how to most effectively structure and present the content of a traditional scientific article in an online environment”.

Publishing science on the web: “science is already a wiki if you look at it a certain way. It’s just a really, really inefficient one – the incremental edits are made in papers instead of wikispace, and significant effort is expended to recapitulate the existing knowledge in a paper in order to support the one-to-three new assertions made in any one paper.”

What exactly is open science?: “your research shouldn’t be considered complete until the data and meta-data is put up on the web for other people to use, until the code is documented and released, and until the comments start coming in to your blog post announcing the paper.”

A Stroll Through Repositories Of Days Gone By

As part of his course on open educational resources, Peter Tittenberger hosted a case study on Collaborative Learning Object Exchange (recording and slides). The contrast in thinking during the learning object repository days vs. thinking on social information creation and management (emerging technologies, social networks, tagging) is remarkable. While it’s obvious in hindsight, I was surprised at the many assumptions made in CLOE (and other repositories) that seemed to ignore how people work with information (creating, sharing, reusing). Imagine filling out a form to post your object, waiting for peer review before inclusion in the repository, then filling out another form to use objects created by others. The process was antagonistic to affordances of technologies. I guess that’s why so many repositories failed…

War Between Awareness And Memory

Patrick Lambe suggests that we face a war between awareness and memory: “there is evidence that faster, easier, access to current awareness broadens our absorption of the present and thins out our access to the past. Simply put, too much of now means less and less memory”.

I’m not very active on my Twitter account (maybe a few posts a day with many skipped days in between). I have found, though, that Twitter is far more about relationships than about content. Twitter is about conversations that vaporize rather quickly. When I access Twitter, I’m not too concerned about conversations that went on before (”before” defined as anything more than 5 minutes ago). I jump in to catch a bit of a stream, share a thought/link. A relationship does exist between time on Twitter and how productive I feel: more time, less productive. Twitter can help a person become aware of new technologies and information, but for depth of learning (reflection, thinking, writing – i.e. getting past “what it is” and moving to “what it means”) Twitter is limited.

In terms of searching content, I have noticed a change in my habits. Since Google Reader started allowing users to search their own RSS history, it has become my primary search tool. I know I’ve come across a certain topic before, and Google Reader provides something that is missing in almost all other search options: context.

The Internet Of Things

We can do far more with information communication technologies than we are comfortable with. Privacy and security are big roadblocks to utilizing new opportunities generated by technology. For example, Google (now mainly Bing) knows what I’ve searched in the past. And, with GPS/maps, knows where I’m currently located. Tying my search history to my location to provide targeted advertising is not too far a leap. The pieces are in place, but the connections have not been made.

The “internet of things” fits into the category of “potential but not actual” as well. Have a look at some developments in the field: Henry Holtzman on Internet of Things. I suspect that social, not technological, concerns will prove to be the primary adoption barrier. Short update on status of RFID is also posted on Read/Write. RFID Map is quite interesting as well. Practical examples of RFID use in various fields.

The Brain’s Interpreter

Michael Gazzaniga in a short 15 minute interview discusses neuroscience and the law, future directions in brain research (i.e. the future prospect that others will know – through imaging, I guess – what we have encountered even if we deny it), weaknesses in current understandings, finding answers in complex systems sciences, split brains, etc. The enormous prospect of neuroscience influencing society, legal systems, and education raises the importance of people developing at least an acquaintance with developments the field.

Digital Nomads

Space and physical presence are far less important for me than they were only five years ago. With fairly reliable internet access, I can teach online and stay caught up with most work tasks while traveling or attending conferences. I don’t need an office (though I would miss coffee conversations with colleagues). When undergoing change, a system has an interesting mix of new attributes and hold-over mindsets that are no longer applicable. A physical space at an office fits into the latter category for many people. Washington Post calls these people Digital Nomads:

They work — clad in shorts, T-shirts and sandals — wherever they find a wireless Web connection to reach their colleagues via instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and occasionally by voice on their iPhones or Skype. As digital nomads, experts say, they represent a natural evolution in teleworking. The Internet let millions of wired people work from home; now, with widespread WiFi, many have cut the wires and left home (or the dreary office) to work where they please — and especially around other people, even total strangers.

Machines Getting Smarter

Society must periodically embrace outlandish fear in order to normalize and dissipate concern. Here’s how it happens: someone forecasts something of great concern, society then adopts the point of fear as part of its narrative (i.e. 1984), and we eventually become immune (acclimated) to the idea even as it is unfolding. I can recall hearing stories of “the machine is overtaking us” in early 1980’s. Scientists are also expressing concern:

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone. Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.

Slightly related, I’ve collected a series of robot-related resources on delicious.

Complexity in Government

Periods of change present a duality that conspires to derail even the best organizations:

• Change draws many people to points of security – a move to conservatism, to what has worked during stable periods
• Responding well to change requires a reformulation of practices, as previous actions have partly contributed to the need for change

In essence, what we turn to in tumultuous times may well have contributed to creating those environments in the first place. Dave Snowden ( slides and audio from a keynote (why .pdf? Why not slideshare?)) offers the following insights: “During a period of change you can’t work from past practice, organisations that do go under or undergo some form of catastrophic failure from which they may or may not recover…You can’t put new wine into old wineskins, new methods and tools have to be adopted in full, attempting to dress them up in the familiar clothes of the previous paradigm helps no one.”

Article written by George Siemens for elearnspace

Source: July 30th, 2009 George Siemens newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About The Author

George Siemens is a theorist on learning in a digitally-based society. He is the author of the article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and the book Knowing Knowledge – an exploration of the impact of the changed context and characteristics of knowledge.

Source: en.wikipedia.org.