Stephen Downes

This is a good argument. Diamond open access refers to academic texts that are published, distributed and preserved with no fees to either reader or author. Curt Rice points out that it used to exist in the pre-internet era: "Manuscripts circulated through departmental working papers series and informal scholarly networks." I remember those days. Rice writes, "What made this ecosystem possible was not heroism, but tractability: limited scale, manageable volume, and informal governance. And that is precisely what has changed." A lot of the commercial publishing infrastructure developed as a way to try to account for this scale, but it has failed as a scholarly activity. "Paying reviewers or editors reframes scholarly contribution as a transactional service rather than a professional responsibility embedded in institutional roles... More importantly, payment does not solve the problem of alignment. What many academics seek is... assurance that their professional contributions are recognized, supported, and valued within the institutions that depend on them." This makes sustainability for diamond open access publication an institutional responsibility, and underlines the need to built structures that supports it.

OK, forget about all the tech in this post (and there's a lot of tech in this post). Take a look at the diagram and reflect on what it says about thinking generally. In the past we've had things like critical thinking and computational thinking. These were useful concepts. We might now want to coin a new discipline 'agentic thinking' to follow this sort of model, summarized as "autonomous execution, multi-step problem solving, persistent context, tool use," and deploying skills such as 'task planning', 'tool orchestration', 'multi-turn conversation' and 'evaluation'. None of this is new, per se, but organizing our approach to creativity, problem-solving and decision-making is, I think.

I'm mentioning this here so people know that this relatively new newsletter exists, and also to urge Glenda Morgan to add an RSS feed so I fan follow it in my RSS reader. It's a sibling publication to Phil Hill's On Ed Tech, which mentioned it today. Hill's posts are often for subscribers only, which is why I cite it less often than I might, but I always read the stubs on his RSS feed, just to keep track.

"In April 2025, Meta started recruiting U.S. middle and high schools to participate in Instagram's new School Partnership Program, inviting schools to partner with Instagram to help combat online bullying," reports Faith Boninger. This is an arrangement more likely to benefit Meta than the schools, she writes, by enlisting schools in their (limited) content moderation efforts. And "the idea that Meta will review content reported by partner-school accounts sooner than other reported violations also implies a veiled threat: that schools that do not partner with the company will find themselves waiting longer for review." Schools should disassociate themselves from Meta, she says. "Yes, many kids will still use Instagram. But at least their school won't be leading them there." Via Larry Cuban. Related: Meta plans to add face recognition to its smart glasses.

I mostly agree with what's in this article, not simply because disagreements within organizations are essential for democratic processes, but because (as I've often said) diversity is necessary for any organization to learn and adapt. There's a nice way of putting it buried in the centre of this article: "If neutrality is impossible, pluralism is an essential ideal." It doesn't matter whether we're talking about a person, a company, a university or a society: we have to make decisions. We cannot remain neutral (whatever that even means). And in such a case, the best and only reasonable approach is to consider various possibilities and negotiate our way to a resolution. These are never final; we have to do it each time. And as the article notes, the trick is to do it without rending ourselves in the process. "Hannah Arendt argued that a good life requires consequential debate among equals who are meaningfully different; Jürgen Habermas insisted that collective legitimacy depends on free, inclusive, and reasoned deliberation." This isn't just the responsibility of leaders. Everybody has a role to play. That's why, in any company, university or society, everybody is important.

The developments in AI technology continue apace. Today's new concept to learn is the 'harness'. Ethan Mollick writes, "A harness is a system that lets the AI use tools, take actions, and complete multi-step tasks on its own. Apps come with a harness." He continues, "Until recently, you didn't have to know this. The model was the product, the app was the website, and the harness was minimal. You typed, it responded, you typed again. Now the same model can behave very differently depending on what harness it's operating in." This makes a big difference in how an AI works for you, so you need to check. If you're using ChatGPT 5.2, for example, are you using 'auto', 'thinking' or 'instant'? It depends on what you're using it for.