@brlamb I thought you’d like that one. cf bit.ly/L0x7hO for a list of emerging p2p architected projects

— Scott Leslie (@sleslie) July 4, 2012

Freedom requires infrastructure.

A man who has no tools to acquire his necessities of life is a slave to his necessities. Given those tools, he becomes a slave to the labour required to fruitfully use them. Only by transcending each difficulty as it comes, in a process not dissimilar to metasystem transitions, can the individual achieve freedom.

Similarly, if at any point the individual becomes removed from the infrastructure that allows him any of the previous metasystem transitions, then he becomes a slave to those who control that infrastructure.

• Smari McCarthy, FCF Discussion, February 2011

When we are using an endless list of provided infrastructure, magical clouds, startup services, and things we can’t possibly have any individual control over, how is our freedom impaired?

With virtual realities upon us, we may find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between our “natural” selves and the electronic extensions. Page 177.

The environment has ceased to be a neutral container for our activities. It is made of information, it is becoming “intelligent” and, via the media, everything is coming out into the open. Page 179.

The connection between public and private mind is done via the open and connected networks of the planet. We will soon recognize that reality and this “public” mind are the same. Page 188.

…the principle of the panopticon could and should be extended to various bounded sites of human activity, from asylums to the eighteenth-century equivalent of welfare institutions, to workplaces, to schools. Page 33.

The gathering of social statistics permits an historically unprecedented degree of collective self-consciousness. Page 41.

The object is always to construct an understanding of the social world in order to change or control it. Page 47.

…we are not autonomous entities clearly bounded by an inside and an outside; we are instead parts of a larger social ecosystem that combines nature, humanity, and the “artificial” extensions of humanity together in a cybernetic relational web. Page 64.

The private and public data bases that form the dark towers of cyberspace contain the shadow selves of almost every citizen and consumer. These data profiles, or shadow selves, in important ways overshadow our real selves. Page 136.

The strength of this new panopticon is that people tend to participate voluntarily because they see positive benefits from participation, and are less likely to perceive disadvantages or threats. Page 140.

The same panopticon that issues inclusive benefits, punishes by exclusion. Page 142.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the word “cyberinfrastructure” as it seems to make people glaze over in its made-up-wordness. But, it appears to have some legs. Whatever. I guess the next best thing to having a word that doesn’t suck, is having a crappy word with a half decent definition…

For the purposes of this paper, “personal cyberinfrastructure” will be defined as a customizable, individually managed infrastructure based upon distributed computer, information and communication technology (modified after NSF (2003), page 5.)1 . This infrastructure can include commercially hosted services such as Flickr.com or WordPress.com, but emphasizes personally managed software, usually open source, deployed on available webserver resources. Typically, this infrastructure includes a web server running content management or weblog software to publish content to the public internet.

1. National Science Foundation. (2003). Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure: Report of the National Science Foundation Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure. Retrieved from http://www.nsf.gov/od/oci/reports/CH1.pdf on March 20, 2010.

In a nutshell, what was happening was that the Web was shifting from being a medium, in which information was transmitted and consumed, into being a platform, in which content was created, shared, remixed, repurposed, and passed along. And what people were doing with the Web was not merely reading books, listening to the radio or watching TV, but having a conversation, with a vocabulary consisting not just of words but of images, video, multimedia and whatever they could get their hands on. And this became, and looked like, and behaved like, a network.

What happens when online learning software ceases to be a type of content-consumption tool, where learning is “delivered,” and becomes more like a content-authoring tool, where learning is created? The model of e-learning as being a type of content, produced by publishers, organized and structured into courses, and consumed by students, is turned on its head. Insofar as there is content, it is used rather than read— and is, in any case, more likely to be produced by students than courseware authors. And insofar as there is structure, it is more likely to resemble a language or a conversation rather than a book or a manual.

The e-learning application, therefore, begins to look very much like a blogging tool. It represents one node in a web of content, connected to other nodes and content creation services used by other students. It becomes, not an institutional or corporate application, but a personal learning center, where content is reused and remixed according to the student’s own needs and interests. It becomes, indeed, not a single application, but a collection of interoperating applications—an environment rather than a system.

More formally, instead of using enterprise learning-management systems, educational institutions expect to use an interlocking set of open-source applications.

It’s a really good article, framing some ideas around an Open Learning Network. Definitely worth a read. Much of it isn’t a good fit for what I’m looking for because it’s tied tightly to the OLN concept and examples.

While the LMS has become central to the business of colleges and universities, it has also become a symbol of the higher learning status quo. Many students, teachers, instructional technologists, and administrators consider the LMS too inflexible and are turning to the web for tools that support their everyday communication, productivity, and collaboration needs. Blogs, wikis, social networking sites, microblogging tools, and other web-based applications are supplanting the teaching and learning tools previously found only inside the LMS.

The article is intended to be used as a manifesto for institutional change, rather than a research-based paper. Some of it is a bit hyped, but the foundation is sound.

In building that personal cyberinfrastructure, students not only would acquire crucial technical skills for their digital lives but also would engage in work that provides richly teachable moments ranging from multimodal writing to information science, knowledge management, bibliographic instruction, and social networking.

This vision goes beyond the “personal learning environment” in that it asks students to think about the web at the level of the server, with the tools and affordances that such an environment prompts and provides.

Pointing students to data buckets and conduits we’ve already made for them won’t do. Templates and training wheels may be necessary for a while, but by the time students get to college, those aids all too regularly turn into hindrances. For students who have relied on these aids, the freedom to explore and create is the last thing on their minds, so deeply has it been discouraged.

We are told that classrooms should have straight rows of chairs so that the children will face the teacher, prisoners should be kept in separate jail cells, college students should have roommates, and park benches should be heavy and I destructable so that vandals will not cart them away. With or without a conscious philosophy or explicit recognition of the fact, designers are shaping people as well as buildings. page vii.

…most of the concern with functionalism has been focused upon form rather than function. It is as if the structure itself – harmony with the site, the integrity of the materials, the cohesiveness of the separate unite, has become the function. Relatively little emphasis is placed on the activities taking place inside the structure. Page 3.

Designing functional areas or multipurpose space does not complete the architect’s task. It is equally important to show the residents how to use the space productively and to develop effective institutional policies governing space allocation and utilization. A man who is assigned a large work area may use it less efficiently than someone assigned half the area. This is related to life style since some people will accomodate themselves to anything, no matter how uncomfortable or dysfunctional, either because they do not know how to improve the situation or believe that rules forbid them to alter the arrangement. This is especially likely to happen in institutional architecture where space is occupied by nonowners for short periods. How many people significantly alter the chairs in an airport terminal or a doctor’s waiting room? It is a matter of intimidation, inertia, and the belief that results do not warrant extra effort. People accept the idea that the existing arrangement is justified according to some mysterious principle known only to the space owners. Page 10.

The school is an institution devoted to learning but designed for a particular model of teaching (sit and learn) that many educators feel is outmoded. The influence of custodians upon spatial arrangements is evident in both the school and the mental hospital. Page 75.

At the present time, teachers are hindered by their insensitivity to and fatalistic acceptance of the classroom environment. Teachers must be “turned on” to their environment lest their pupils develop this same sort of fatalism. Page 119.

Somewhat breathless about the Web 2.0 hype.

Social software tools such as blogs, wikis, social networking sites, media sharing applications and social bookmarking utilities are also pedagogical tools that stem from their affordances of sharing, communication and information discovery.

These affordances stimulate the development of a participatory culture in which there is genuine engagement and communication, and in which members feel socially connected with one another.

Learning management systems (LMS’s) that integrate geographically dispersed learners in asynchronous educational interactions have been widely available for a number of years. However, many higher education institutions are discovering that new models of teaching and learning are required to meet the needs of a new generation of learners. Today’s students seek greater autonomy, connectivity and socio- experiential learning.

The PLE is an example of such a learning environment, in which learners manage their own learning by selecting, integrating and using various software tools and services. It provides contextually appropriate toolsets by enabling individuals to adjust and choose options based on their needs and circumstances, resulting in (ideally) a model where learner needs, rather than technology, drive the learning process.

Downes (2005)1 describes a learning environment as an approach, not an application, one that protects and celebrates identity, supports multiple levels of socialising and encourages the development of communities of inquiry. The PLE is an example of such a learning environment, in which learners manage their own learning by selecting, integrating and using various software tools and services. It provides contextually appropriate toolsets by enabling individuals to adjust and choose options based on their needs and circumstances, resulting in (ideally) a model where learner needs, rather than technology, drive the learning process.

Many earlier e-learning efforts simply replicated traditional models of learning and teaching in online environments; by contrast, Web 2.0 tools and technologies offer rich opportunities to move away from the highly-centralised industrial model of learning of the past decade, towards achieving individual empowerment of learners through designs that focus on collaborative, networked communication and interaction (Rogers, Liddle, Chan, Doxey & Isom, 20072 ; Sims, 20063

Current views of learning regard the notion of a teacher-dominated classroom and curriculum as obsolete, and embrace learning environments and approaches where students take control of their own learning, make connections with peers, and produce new insights and ideas through inquiry. Thus, to keep pace with the content creation processes enabled by Web 2.0 and social software, it appears to be necessary to go beyond the acquisition and participation dichotomy.

Pedagogy 2.0? Really? That phrase almost invalidates anything else of worth in this paper. Breathless 2.0 bullshit. Actually, screw it. I can’t read the rest of this paper. It just keep going on and on and on about Pedagogy 2.0…

1. Downes, S. (2005). E-learning 2.0. ELearn, Oct. http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=29-1
2. Rogers, P.C., Liddle, S.W., Chan, P., Doxey, A. & Isom, B. (2007). Web 2.0 learning platform: Harnessing collective intelligence. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 8(3), 16-33. http://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde27/pdf/article_1.pdf
3. Sims, R. 2006. Online distance education: New ways of learning; new modes of teaching? Distance Education. 27:2.

Abstract:
Life-long learning is a key issue for our knowledge society. With social software systems new heterogeneous kinds of technology enhanced informal learning are now available to the life-long learner. Learners outside of learning institutions now have access to powerful social communities of experts and peers who are together forging a new web 2.0. This paper reviews current work in pan-European initiatives that impact upon life-long learning via views of professional learning, learner competence and social networking. It seeks to provide an overview of some of the critical research questions for the interdisciplinary field of social software research.

An important theme in life-long learning… is the nature of “informal and non-formal learning”. Once you step beyond traditional institutional boundaries you can find learning which is driven by and for, “you, the learner”.

Participants can gain significant reputation in their community by “being seen” publicly creating valuable artefacts that is of use to new members of their group. The individual satisfaction and perception of effectiveness in that sense is closely related to the commitment of the individual to contribute and actively participate.1

…effective and efficient learning need to be individualized – personalized and adapted to the learner’s preferences, acquired competences, and evolving knowledge, as well as to the current context. Adaptive learning systems keep the information about the user in the learner model and based on it they provide certain adaptation effects. Based on the information about the learner and the current context an appropriate educational method should be chosen, which uses suitable learning activities that reference proper learning materials.

Blogs are great tools for personal knowledge management. They help people organizing and exchanging their personal knowledge and the knowledge they have acquired. In the corporate context, personal business blogs helps the dissemination of knowledge through the organization and offer a platform where knowledge can be shared among employees by reading each other blogs, giving feedback and linking to other entries found in a colleague’s blog or elsewhere in other learning communities.

1. I wonder if this kind of reputation management is seen in conventional bulletin board systems…