Ruminate

It doesn’t take a team of business gurus to know that Web 2.0 is at the peak of its hype cycle, but I do find these Hype Cycle charts by Gartner rather interesting. If nothing else, it’s a snapshot of what the truly rigid corporate world is thinking about when it comes to the web!

For comparison, here is their graph from 2005:

It’s interesting how many items pop onto the chart at or near the peak of the cycle– a year is too long!

Serious props to Thomas Hawk, lead Zooomr Evangelist, for his well thought out post regarding Flickr’s new geotagging facilities. Especially since Zooomr is pretty clearly a competitor and that the geotagging was one (but just one) of their distinguishing features!

The updates from others at Yahoo and Flickr and the comment thread are interesting as well. Sometimes it’s easy to take this kind of open communication for granted when, in reality, it is a relatively rare and precious thing.

The most damaging– and most prevalent (being supported by the NN opposition, and so repeated ad nauseum)– fallacy about net neutrality is that NN regulation would disallow “levels of service.” It’s simply untrue. That’s why fud like this:

I’m not seeing a really compelling case for Net Neutrality; different levels of service are available for pretty much every other form of private infrastructure

particularly dangerous. NN regulations don’t prevent levels of service, as long as those levels are based on bandwidth rather than content. NN doesn’t seek to prevent charging more for more bandwidth or more traffic. Those who want high-speed cable or DSL will be charged more than low-speed, those who need more thoroughput will still pay for it.

Net Neutrality simply says that the provider of bandwidth can’t charge me more or less based on content. I can’t be charged more for downloading NPR streams than NBC, or for using VoIP more than gaming. Bandwidth providers want to double-dip– allowing them to be compensated for their service from us and from content providers while we still have to pay whatever content providers wish to charge.

Imagine if your provider told you, in January, that you would be paying $69 monthly for your high speed connection with 5 gigabytes of transfer, but you would have to pay an extra tariff for accessing content from media outlets other than MSNBC and affiliates because the provider was being paid by MSNBC. Or they tell you they will charge you $49 a month but then double it because you use Vonage and Skype– even though you receive/use no more resources than before. Talk about squelching competition and innovation.

That’s simply unfair, and in our marketplace– which is effectively a duopoly– not countering such unfairness will have dramatic consequences for consumers. Providers, on the other hand, have a vested interest in casting NN in a bad light because they are the ones who stand to profit handsomely… twice.

On a mailing list I belong to (which involves academics, but is not about teaching), a member recently posted this query under the subject “Online Teaching”:

Is anyone using Blackboard, WebCT, moodle, eCollege for online teaching? Have you learned any specific shortcomings of these learning systems?

One problem I am having is getting students to write using their own words and ideas rather than simply paraphrasing the textbook. Any ideas etc welcomed.

How do you even begin to answer this question? Clearly this person is interested in becoming a better teacher. My flip answer would be to change the query to “online learning” (putting the emphasis back where it belongs) and JFGI, but he deserves better.

On the other hand, I have no time to try to synopsize and contextualize decades of theory, practice, and thousands of points of current debate and inquiry. It’s like being asked for help by someone who wants to “learn about this whole Internet thing,” though even that seems simpler to approach.

Suggestions?

I’m going to have to think more on the River of News business, particularly this observation by Doc Searls:

Mobile feeds and systems for looking at them on phones may not be new. But getting publishing in alignment with the needs of Web users with cell phones is new. That’s why River of News is a business hack. It’s not a social hack, because the users are already there. The River of News idea calls attention to an opportunity opening up for everybody who produces news. Not just for those who consume it.

So I deleted my two earlier posts as hasty and potentially unfair. There are all kinds of definitions of the word “new.” It remains true that Dave Winer seems prone to self-aggrandizement, and it’s clear that there is nothing technically new being discussed. But I should learn to ignore the former and I know well that there are many values and kinds of innovation that don’t involve the latter. So I will post again after thinking a bit more on it.

My good friend Link briefly ponders this quote on the tragedy of the commons:

“The tragedy of the commons arises, after all, precisely because nobody owns the commons.”

I don’t think I’m overstating the case to say that Link’s discussion gets at what is probably the root of the vast majority of the suckage that pervades modern society: lack of responsibility towards anything and everything we don’t own or have any but the most clearly vested interest in. I don’t (just) mean charity and giving, but the communal interactions and sharing that make communities worth living our ever-lengthening lives in.
It may have always been thus, but as populations grow bigger and more dependent on services and goods provided through fragile chokepoints, with less and less time to worry about anything except survival, it sure seems worse.