The Belgian newspaper De Tijd has a great interview (Dutch language) with Singularity University co-founder, author, entrepreneur and futurist Peter Diamandis. When asked about the short-term evolution, Diamandis referred to virtual worlds. He expects interesting stuff to happen there as those worlds become more “real”. People will go there for work and… Continue reading
Virtual worlds are often weird environments. The innovators in that industry have a broad view on our future. Conferences and community conventions offer fascinating insights and discussions. I remember how futurist and technologist Ray Kurzweil gave a (virtual) presentation during the Second Life Community Convention 2009 in San Francisco. Afterwards I… Continue reading
This video illustrates two things: first the interesting stuff the Isovista people are doing and second how difficult it is to translate the Oculus-experience into a 2D-video. What is obvious is how one can immerse oneself into a virtual art exhibition and use clever tricks to navigate around (follow a… Continue reading
So I bought an Oculus Rift virtual headset and ventured into Second Life using the special viewer. This was rather frustrating using a MacBook Air 1.7 Ghz, Intel HD Graphics 5000, but things went a lot better with a MacBook Pro 2.5 Ghz and an Intel Iris Pro for graphics…. Continue reading
Today I made a presentation about my MOOC-experiences for a Blended Learning Symposium. Turned out I only had ten minutes, this text is the elaborate version. Blended Learning is about learning in the physical, digital and social space. My question: what about the virtual? A university can think it is out… Continue reading
Listening to Stephen Downes discussing Massive Open Online Courses (see previous post) I felt the need to make an overview of the online courses I participated in during these last few years. Downes inspires me a lot and I fundamentally agree with the discintions he makes between connectivist MOOCs which are… Continue reading
Stephen Downes, the Canadian MOOC-pioneer (Massive Open Online Courses), delivered a talk in Armenia and as usual he generously shares the recording and the slides. My own MOOC-experiences started in 2008 with CCK08, facilitated by Stephen Downes and George Siemens. Back then we lived in full euphoria about the power… Continue reading
I just supported (very modestly) the Kickstarter project of Radiotopia – and if you care about storytelling, radio shows and podcasting, you should consider it too. The Kickstarter campaign for this new kind of public radio still runs for 4 days as I write this. The goal of $250,000 was… Continue reading
Just learned about Frederator‘s Bee and PussyCat show in The Wall Street Journal. It’s a great story about an indie production for YouTube, getting no corporate response yet mobilizing a lot of devoted fans on Kickstarter and now launching on YouTube. This is the first video they published in August… Continue reading
‘The web is a terrorist’s command-and-control network of choice.’ That’s the title of an opinion article in the Financial Times, written by Robert Hannigan, the chief of Britain’s electronic spying agency GCHQ. The digital natives who joined the terrorist organization Isis are very adept in using social media and in… Continue reading