e-Clippings (Learning As Art)

Two Papers from Downes and Siemens That I Need to Re-Read

Way back in December of '04, George Siemens wrote a great piece entitled "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age" (his site indicates that he updated it in April of '05 and there is now a whole blog/community around this paper). Then in December of '05 (what is about winter, deep thinking and Canadians?) Stephen Downes published "An Introduction to Connective Knlowedge" (along with the 1.5 hour audi version).

I need to re-read these pieces again (and go through all the connectivism stuff on George's other site) and I thought I'd just take a minute to make sure that you knew of them as well. Be warned though - clear some time to go through these - not because of the writing - they're both fine writers - but this is long form and packed with ideas, thoughts and pieces that will surely send you off in other directions as well.

Free Culture (again)

Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig as a Series of MP3s (free)

I know I've blogged this before, but just felt I should do it again. Actually, in an effort to turn Old Media's worldview upside down - this book, Free Culture, is actually available for free as a PDF file and now is available here as a series of audio chapters read by various folks (this version is also free) but the real kicker is that I actually own the book! That's right, went right out and bought it - shocking I know but maybe, just maybe it says something about the power of content and that there is a value-add beyond the valley of control.

The Big Question

There is a group known as The Edge. It is a non-profit, 501 (c) (3) and according to their official write-up it:

"was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world. The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society."

Here is a little tip folks - they aren't joking when they talk about their members being some of the most interesting minds in the world - its understatement on the order of Bill Gates saying that he is 'well off.' Every year, this group poses a question ot its membership and publishes their answers. These are not small questions as you can see by the list of past questions:

"WHAT QUESTIONS ARE YOU ASKING YOURSELF?"

"WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?" ... AND "WHY?"

"WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?"

"WHAT QUESTIONS HAVE DISAPPEARED?"

"WHAT NOW?"

"WHAT'S YOUR QUESTION?"

"WHAT ARE THE PRESSING SCIENTIFIC ISSUES FOR THE NATION AND THE WORLD, AND WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE ON HOW I CAN BEGIN TO DEAL WITH THEM?" —GWB

Then there is this year's question....

Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO

Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO
Jennifer L. Mnookin

Update from: The State of Play:Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds

Post-Conference Buzz
Conference Papers

Amazing article on Virtual IP

The State of Play: Free As In Gaming?


Posted by James Grimmelmann on Thursday, December 04 @ 00:25:25 EST


The State of Play conference was a couple weeks ago. The big news at the conference, of course, was Fridays morning's announcement that Second Life is disclaiming any copyright interest in the content its players add to the gameworld. (See also the discussion at Terra Nova and Slashdot.)

Near the end of the question-and answer period, Yale's Yochai Benkler rose to pose a most provocative question. Here, in very rough paraphrase, is what he said:
I'm baffled by this embrace of IP rights, given your own descriptions of what you find valuable. You're creating this world in which people come to play and be creative, and yet you've given this world a system that has been extensively criticized as limiting creativity. Haven't you just given them a new set of hurdles to creativity?
I'd like to devote the rest of this piece to explaining just how deep Benkler's question was, just how many unresolved issues of law and gaming it ties together.

**UPDATE 9 December: If you are smart enough to go and read this article, then do yourself a favor and scroll all the way down and read the comments at the bottom.
**Further update: Now think about this - how much of a stretch is it to see a situation in which a school or e-learning provider, can sued via copyright infringement by a student over IP created in class?

Lessig Keynote from 2002

Free Culture: Lawrence Lessig Keynote from OSCON 2002 by Lawrence Lessig -- In his keynote address to a packed house at OSCON 2002, Lawrence Lessig challenges the open source audience to get more involved in the political process. Read the complete transcript of Lawrence's keynote presentation made on July 24, 2002.

Stolen Knowledge

from the papers of John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid (found via eLearningPost)
"Instruction vs Learning
The distance between the initial question ("How do you operationalize this theory?") and our transformation ("How do you legitimize theft?") can be illustrated most quickly by pointing to the inversion implicit in the question. Where "situated learning" talks of learning, questions about educational technology tend to be framed around teaching and instruction. A situated approach contests the assumption that learning is a response to teaching. "

Bladerunner was the tip of the iceberg...

"We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudorealities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives. I distrust their power. It is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing." Written in 1978 by Philip K. Dick. I heard a phrase this weekend - history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Follow this link, to go to a great story in WIRED about the life, impact and estate of an amazing writer.

2 Important Articles

The Age of Social Transformation

Quote: "Increasingly, an educated person will be somebody who has learned how to learn, and who continues learning, especially by formal education, throughout his or her lifetime. There are obvious dangers to this. For instance, society could easily degenerate into emphasizing formal degrees rather than performance capacity. It could fall prey to sterile Confucian mandarins--a danger to which the American university is singularly susceptible. On the other hand, it could overvalue immediately usable, "practical" knowledge and underrate the importance of fundamentals, and of wisdom altogether."

Beyond the Information Revolution by Peter Drucker
Quote: "The psychological impact of the Information Revolution, like that of the Industrial Revolution, has been enormous. It has perhaps been greatest on the way in which young children learn. Beginning at age four (and often earlier), children now rapidly develop computer skills, soon surpassing their elders; computers are their toys and their learning tools. Fifty years hence we may well conclude that there was no "crisis of American education" in the closing years of the twentieth century -- there was only a growing incongruence between the way twentieth-century schools taught and the way late-twentieth-century children learned. Something similar happened in the sixteenth-century university, a hundred years after the invention of the printing press and movable type. "