Technology

information & communication technology

Negotiating the mesh of social meaning

by

I finally got around to reading Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger. I thought that I understood the premise and contents fairly well from my readings on the Web but I was pleasantly surprised by this book, which is now available in paperback. There is lots here that I will refer back to and the book will definitely stay on my reference library shelf.

For instance, I already knew this concept ;-)

In the miscellaneous order, the only distinction between metadata and data is that metadata is what you already know and data is what you’re trying find.

But then we go one step beyond the Cluetrain:

The markets that conversations make are real markets, not mere statistical clusterings.

I highlighted this passge near the end:

In the world after the Enlightenment, the cultural task was to build knowledge. In the miscellaneous world, the task is to build meaning, even though we can’t yet know what we’ll do with this new domain. Certainly some will mine it for knowledge that will change our lives through science and business. But knowledge will only be one product. Knowledge’s new place will be in an ever-present mesh of social meaning. Knowledge is thus not being dethroned. We are way too good at knowing, and our continued progress – and survival – depends on it. But knowledge is now not our only project or our single highest meaning. Making sense of what we know is the broader task, a task for understanding within the infrastructure of meaning.

This made me pause and think about what we mean when we discuss knowledge work, and if it may be the wrong label.

Your market is laughing; at you

by

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has hit some success with a program that gets viewers to create mash-up advertisements that spoof traditional advertising.

The number of ads made for a range of fictional products – a beer, an anti-ageing cream and a bank – and the number of times they have been watched, 280,000, has surprised ABC programming chiefs.

However, this is not going over well with the industry:

But yesterday the chairman of one of the biggest industry groups, Robert Morgan of Clemenger Communications, panned the series, saying it “demeaned and trivialised” the business.

Here is an important note to corporations; Cluetrain Thesis #20:

Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.

Gee, what’s next, people making fun of education?

Moncton’s open source community is growing

by

This week I attended the Social Media Meetup in Moncton and had the opportunity to spend some time with guest speaker Jevon Macdonald and several other folks, hosted by Steve in his new business digs. I met Steve Mallett over five years ago when I gave a presentation on open source at the local Cybersocial. Steve has been running the Open Source Directory for many years and at that time I’m sure he was trying to figure out who this local guy was talking about OS. Our meeting was my first glimpse that there may be people “below the radar” who work globally on open source projects but don’t advertise their local presence.

On my flight back from Ottawa on Friday evening I was lucky to meet another open source evangelist. Deb Richardson, the intrepid girl reporter, was on her way back from Silicon Valley after this week’s successful mega launch of Firefox 3.0. Her post on the Field Guide to Firefox 3 is worth a read for those +14 million who have downloaded it so far:

We’re done. Firefox 3 is going to be launched very soon. In anticipation of this long-awaited event, the folks in the Mozilla community have been writing extensively about the new and improved features you’ll see in the browser. The new features cover the full range from huge and game-changing to ones so subtle you may not notice them until you realize that using Firefox is just somehow easier and better. The range of improved features is similar — whole back-end systems have been rebuilt from scratch, while other features have been tweaked slightly or redesigned in small ways. Overall the result is the fastest, safest, slimmest, and easiest to use version of Firefox yet. We hope you like it.

Firefox 3 Deb Richardson

BTW, Deb, since you like the Peterson Field Guides so much, you’ll have to try your eyes on all the species in Sackville, or at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute [I work there from time to time].

Canadians demand fair dealing

by

In 2002, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that:

Excessive control by holders of copyrights and other forms of intellectual property may unduly limit the ability of the public domain to incorporate and embellish creative innovation in the long-term interests of society as a whole, or create practical obstacles to proper utilization.

On June 12, 2008, the government introduced Bill C-61, which strengthens the rights of media conglomerates and makes many everyday practices, by average citizens, criminal acts. Teachers, students, writers, musicians, business operators and especially start-up businesses stand to lose their rights with this bill.

More images from Gaetan.

It’s time to learn about Copyright Law in Canada.

Read the issues at Fair Copyright or from Michael Geist.

Contact your Member of Parliament, before it is too late. If this law passes, our children will become criminals. Is this what we want?

Analysing traffic

by

I installed Google Analytics last week because MapStats had crashed, though it’s back up now. I liked MapStats because it gave me data about individual visitors, such as where they came from and what search term they used. I could look at individuals and what brought them here. Google Analytics looks more at trends and overall activity and the available tools make it obvious that it’s about monetizing your site or tracking ad campaigns, which are of no interest to me.

I think it’s good to have an idea about where visitors come from, what brings them here and what’s of interest. Yesterday my WordPress dashboard showed that most new links to this site were in languages other than English. For me, that indicates that I should at least update the French section on this blog.

Of course, all of these are data points that can be interpreted in many ways so I don’t get too hung up with my stats. What’s more important is that I understand how these systems work so that I can help others.

Attribution-only

by

I’ve long been an advocate of open source (the business model and the software), as well as openly accessible educational content and the right to freely share ideas. On the eve of the fifth anniversary of Jarche Consulting, I feel that it’s time once again to put my money (or lack thereof) where my mouth is.

All content on this site is now licensed as Creative Commons Attribution.

I have lifted the “non-commercial” restriction. Do what you want with my work; you do not need any further permission, just give me credit.

I’ve listened to arguments that an attribution-only license is easy for academics or those who have regular jobs, but not for those who make their living with their words and ideas. I want to show that it is also possible for the self-employed to use this kind of open license for their professional work.

This is not purely altruistic. In the long run I hope that this makes it easier for people to use my work and in return someone may notice what I do and decide to engage my services.

Open Source Social Networking Platform

by

It seems that some folks have seen a business opportunity in developing an open source social network platform. From Insoshi’s website:

Insoshi is a product and a project. The product aims to be the best open-source social networking platform. The project is to make the product!

I posted my perspective on such an endeavour about six months ago on OS Social Networking Application. I thought for a while that Elgg had the makings of such a platform but it never really took off, except in a the educational field. We’ll see how Insoshi does and it’s good to have several OS options. I know that it will be a platform that I will look at for my clients.

I found out about Insoshi via Dan Martell on Twitter, so I’m sure the team at Spheric Technologies will be playing with it soon.

NRC IRAP Workshop Follow-up Links

by

Here are the follow up notes from the session in Halifax this afternoon on Open Source and Web 2.0.

The Open Source Initiative

Social Bookmarks, that are searchable and shareable, on the topics of Open Source and Web 2.0

Videos:

Web 2.0

Open Source by Greg Papadopoulos

Yochai Benkler (author of The Wealth of Networks) at TED 2005

Cathedral & Bazaar story

Tools & Applications:

If this is your first time to this blog, check out the Key Posts or look into the major threads here, such as OpenSource.

PS: For those who attended, and got a free book, I’m looking forward to the book reviews ;-)

Karyn asks, How did you get started in social media?

by

This is in partial answer to Karyn’s question. My first foray into using the Web for more than just gathering information was in asking questions to those who were publishing. Kieren Egan, author of The Educated Mind, posted e-mail comments on his web site, and my post from 1997 is the earliest I can find online. For the next several years, I read a lot online and made some comments. Jay Cross‘ earlier websites were a common spot for me to make comments. During this time, I used online discussion boards and many closed platforms, but not much on the open Web, as there weren’t many options.

My first step toward almost blogging was with QuickTopic in 2003, discussing topics like elearning R&D and Open Source for learning. I still find QT an excellent discussion board. I later moved to Blogger, which I found to be a more flexible platform for the expression of my opinions, such as this from October 2003:

I believe the next great business model for an elearning entrepreneur is to provide high quality installation and support services for a select group of open source learning systems. Your customers will soon realize that you are not trying to sell them the next upgrade to get more cash, because the software is free. You will be selling your knowledge, experience, and customer service. Many IT departments would be more apt to use open source if they knew that it was strongly supported. Also, there is a lot less conflict of interest when you remove the vendor from the ongoing support.

Maybe I should have invested in Blackboard stock instead ;-)

For me, social media have been closely linked with my becoming a free-agent (June 2003). Blogs were becoming easier to use, and by early 2004 I had this one up and running on Drupal. Since then, it has been a fast trip testing out so many different platforms and applications that I cannot remember them any more. Thankfully my blog has become a knowledge-base so that I can find out what I was doing and writing about four years ago.

Social media – first blogs, then wikis, bookmarks, SNS, micro-blogging, etc – have provided a richer way to engage people whom I would not have met other than online. It has allowed me to engage many communities, such as edubloggers and open source advocates. To say that social media have made a difference to my professional practice would be an understatement. Much of my current practice has become focused around social media. Five years ago I would have said that I was a training and performance improvement consultant. Today, I would say that I specialize in social media for learning and working.

Little Brother

by

I picked up Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother for my son this weekend and read it myself on the plane home. I don’t read much fiction but I really enjoyed this one, which I feel is a much better story than Eastern Standard Tribe, the only other book of his I’ve read.

I really couldn’t put the book down. It reminded me of books like Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Snow Crash, and I think that it will resonate with teenagers (I found it in the Teen section of the bookstore) as well as anyone interested in technology, culture and the limits of state-controlled security.

Little Brother is available as a free download (Creative Commons Licensed) so you don’t have to outlay any cash. I personally prefer the paper format for longer reads. Here’s the opening paragraph:

I’m a senior at Cesar Chavez high in San Francisco’s sunny Mission district, and that makes me one of the most surveilled people in the world. My name is Marcus Yallow, but back when this story starts, I was going by w1n5t0n. Pronounced “Winston.”

*Not* pronounced “Double-you-one-enn-five-tee-zero-enn” — unless you’re a clueless disciplinary officer who’s far enough behind the curve that you still call the Internet “the information superhighway.”

I know just such a clueless person, and his name is Fred Benson, one of three vice-principals at Cesar Chavez. He’s a sucking chest wound of a human being. But if you’re going to have a jailer, better a clueless one than one who’s really on the ball.

“Marcus Yallow,” he said over the PA one Friday morning. The PA isn’t very good to begin with, and when you combine that with Benson’s habitual mumble, you get something that sounds more like someone struggling to digest a bad burrito than a school announcement. But human beings are good at picking their names out of audio confusion — it’s a survival trait.

I grabbed my bag and folded my laptop three-quarters shut — I didn’t want to blow my downloads — and got ready for the inevitable.

“Report to the administration office immediately.”