OCW - Free training via this Web 2.0 tool

http://www.ocwfinder.com/

This is a nice tool that allows you to search for free courses.  Although it focuses on freebies, this Open CourseWare Finder (OCW) will identify courses that you can take online ranging from Java to Chemical Engineering. This should be no surprise given that the OCW Consortium is made up of over 100 higher ed institutions and organizations from around the world. Check it out!

SDP and Intentional Communities

The residents of the Bryn Gweled (Bucks County, PA) intentional community, met on January 2003 with hopes of defining intentions for the future of their community. To this end, they decided to apply the Structured Design Process (SDP), as is documented in Alexander’s Christakis’ text, How People Harness Their Collective Wisdom and Power to Construct the Future in Co-Laboratories of Democracy.


The group of stakeholders generated 42 different intentions, of which the top five were selected based on their higher relative importance. Quite interestingly, the two most influential intentions, based on the diagnosed influence tree, were also among the top five.

By utilizing SDP, the residents of this community now feel that they’re on the correct path to constructing their future.

http://www.bryngweled.org/

This Web 2.0 app is really useful for all of us doing research (doctoral student or not). Refseek gives you the choice of searching through its mass library of documents and web sites, retrieving a host of useful links pertaining to whatever subject you enter. My initial test run returned about 150,000 more hits than Google Scholar, although I haven't tested the relevancy of each returned link. I did, however, spot most of my own research references, which were not easy to compile without this cool little app. Give it a try! http://www.refseek.com/

TED's Talk Video

I recently watched Tim Berners-Lee's video on the next web.  Tim, credited with inventing the World Wide Web (WWW) about twenty years ago, is recorded giving a presentation to TED about what he envisions the next web to be like.  The primary difference he notes from the current web is that he believes that the next web will be one where data is interchanged freely between users.  In other words, users would simply post their raw data online (at one point, he leads the audience in a "Raw - Data - Now!" chant, which invoked memories of many sub-par political speeches) and other users would be free to query the data in different forms.  He encourages listeners to demand that the data that governments have collected, be accessible to all.

While I applaud this type of innovative thinking, I am not too sure that we want all of our data to be accessible by all.  Recent world events have shown us that detailed information (such as a map) in the wrong hands can give an advantage to those seeking to do harm.  Furthermore, merging of different data points may portray a "digital profile" that might reveal private information. My point is, perhaps not all data should be released for public consumption.  Someone (due to security reasons, I would agree that the government would be best) would need to determine what is releasable and what needs to be kept from the public.  After all, once the data is made public, it would be nearly impossible to remove it from the web.

Horizon Report 2009

This report is a definite must read, as it provides an expert panel prediction of which technologies will have an impact on us, in the years to come. Their panel is made up of thirty to forty technology experts from around the world, that sort through the latest advances in search of technologies promising an impact.

A technology identified in this report that I found quite interesting is "Smart Objects". This technology is described in the report as "an Internet of things", and is expected to make an impact in about four to five years. These objects will be capable of knowing where they are, and communicate with one another. While it might be true that most readers will not find this too far fetched, especially when combining GPS and RFID technologies, what interests me is the opportunity to add "intelligence" to these devices. This might open a dimension of IT objects that will definitely find a place in our daily lives.