Organizing my Online Brain

So what have I been doing at the Think-Know course facilitated by Howard Rheingold? These past few weeks we’ve been using Diigo extensively. This social bookmark-service is well-suited for group collaboration. While the course group is reserved for members, you’re welcome to join my own group about the impact of… Continue reading

Fred Turner on Burning Man as the Cultural Infrastructure for Commons-Based Peer Production

“Fred Turner discusses his opinions on the social phenomenon of Burning Man and how he thinks the ideals of the festival apply to the marketplace that is evolving in our society, specifically in the Silicon Valley.” Turner is also the author of the fascinating book From Counterculture to Cyberculture.  via… Continue reading

Half an Hour: International MOOCs Past and Present

Stephen Downes on Half an Hour now has a list with international Massive Open Online Courses.  Let’s not forget: there is more out there than the xMOOCs such as offered by Coursera, edX and Udacity – the connectivist courses offer a very different learning experience, based on distributed platforms, the… Continue reading

Research the publishing industry by making things

Whiteboardmag has a story about how publishing giant Sanoma launches an in house startup accelerator. In other words: rather than endlessly researching and creating fiction-spreadsheets, they’ll foster intrapreneurship in order to find out about winning ideas in their industry. A kind of Makers-ethos:  “These days, the successful models come from… Continue reading

Do we get more happiness from virtual worlds than from real good news?

An academic study co-authored last year by leading virtual world academic Edward Castronova suggests that people get more happiness from being in Second Life than they do from good news in their real life.  Wagner James Au on New World Notes says this is probably also true for other virtual… Continue reading

Pilot Your Own Robotic Sub And Explore The Ocean With AcquatiCo | Singularity Hub

Another great story from Singularity Hub. If this Kickstarter project is successful, it will enable us to explore the oceans by just using our laptop or tablet.  Which in a way reminds me of those cute iPad-robots enabling people to move around , see, hear and communicate from  whatever distance…. Continue reading

Find out about the future by looking at Defense

The computer visionary Doug Engelbart designed in the 1960s the NLS – the “oN-Line System” – a revolutionary computer collaboration system implemented by researchers at the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). The NLS system, so explains Wikipedia, was the first to employ the practical use… Continue reading