Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
March 13, 2007

Wii.Js
I still think the Wii is bigger than 2L. Why? "wii.js (via) A JavaScript library that lets you detect the Wii browser, and provides easy hooks for reacting to keys pressed on the Wiimote." Of course, what we really want is a 3D distributed Wii. Um, right? Simon Willison, Weblog March 13, 2007 [Link] [Comment]

2005 - 2010: The OpenCourseWars
You will enjoy David Wiley's future history of open source even if it is ultimately a sustained argument for the abolition of the non-commercial clause in Creative Commons licensing (drawing on the previously noted conflict between what Creative Commons says the clause means and what MIT says it means). I stand by my defense of the clause and by my non-technical interpretation (specifically - if you're making money off it, it's commercial, and if you have to ask whether or not a use is commercial, it's commercial). Wiley also felt compelled to write a subsequent defense of MIT OCW. Not that I would ever doubt his support either for open courseware or MIT's version of it. And while Wiley's own passion for a future of open courseware may never merit 15 minutes on CNN, it should be known that there are other criteria more meaningful, and that his own work, as much as anything done over at MIT, is significant. It is not, after all, the size of the wallet that you open to support a thing, but rather, how much of your heart you give to it. I'm sure Wiley would be the first to agree. David Wiley, iterating toward openness March 13, 2007 [Link] [Comment]

Towards Passion-Based Conversations
How do we make e-learning work in today's classroom? I'm listening right now to a conversation devoted to the design of a conferencing system based around small group discussions - that age-old mechanism for ensuring that any dissenting or radical voice is thoroughly expunged before it can possibly surface publicly. On the other hand, "We need to learn how to sustain conversations that are initiated by the students themselves, not conversations that emerge from the official Ministry documents or our own interests and beliefs." It reminds me that we embody our beliefs in our technology, and that it is as easy to embody power and control as it is to embody freedom and openness. Konrad Glogowski, blog of proximal development March 13, 2007 [Link] [Comment]

Linux for Schools
Just quoting: "Do these numbers make sense to you - $2,500 versus $100,000? This is the price difference felt between migrating over to Linux or instead, upgrading to the next version of Windows. What's interesting is that I'm noticing that more often than not Novell is the company making this possible for schools." Harold Jarche, Weblog March 13, 2007 [Link] [Comment]

Matrix
Those familiar with Unix-style permissions will know that it constructs a number out of the biary values for read, write and execute, creating a separate number for each of the owner, group and world. This post extends that mechanism by adding Creative Commons values to it. Hence, "73333: This means that the person can view the open work freely... 77770 Free to access, use, modify, distribute, no guarantee of future freedom." Janet Hawtin, Weblog March 13, 2007 [Link] [Comment]

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. We are the web - and the flow happens when we stop trying to make it happen (in others) and just let it happen (in ourselves). David Truss, Weblog March 13, 2007 [Link] [Comment]

 

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