(OLR) Topic 10 Special topic: Complexity and Social Networks

1. Who is following who? B, C & D are following A in a conversation started by A on the Blue Ning. D has followed A, B, & C and C has followed D, A & B
2. The pattern that has emerged is a very even one. Each person has spoken or followed each other person once and this has occurred in an even distribution. The number of interactions is even between nodes..
3. If you were to repeat this analysis on another set of blogs from another POD, would you find the same patterns?

I might expect to see this pattern repeated in another group of blogs that were similarly arranged around a set task requiring equal effort / participation from all members / nodes. Beyond this I would not expect to find this pattern repeated because the variables that influence the selection of whom to follow in the nodes of a given blogosphere would be subject to quite random and unpredictable variables. For example. A blogger does nothing for weeks of a project and then starts blogging prolifically to catch up. People either start to respond to this node or not.

Of course equilibrium should be considered. Even in an unpredictable blogosphere certain sustainable patterns would have to emerge: otherwise one would predict that everyone stops blogging or a strong relationship emerges between two bloggers (or a similar small core) whilst other bloggers follow intermittently and are in turn perhaps followed by other, downstream bloggers.

I think that my understanding is consistent with what Kirshbaum refers to as a traditional reductionist approach that attempts to summarize the dynamics, processes, and change that has occurred in terms of lowest common denominators and the simplest, yet most widely provable and applicable elegant explanations. This sounds good but it isn’t - Kirshbaum continues to say that powerful computers all insights that complexity yields without simplification or reduction. This reminds me of fractals and the idea that even in complex - seemingly unpredictable interactions emergent patterns will begin to exhibit fundamental properties (Hallinan, 2005).

Michael Crichton has a field day with these ideas by creating a fictional alter ego (Ian Malcolm a Mathematician in Jurassic Park) who draws out the idea of early patterns in a complex system being unrecognizable but later iterations make things clearer (by about page 500 usually!). This is a common theme in much of Crichton’s work. I mention it because as an author, Crichton usually dealt with the idea that people fundamentally fail to understand complex human made systems. The blogosphere is a good example of a complex human made system. Authors like Hallinan really draw out the idea that such complex systems can exhibit emergent qualities and these qualities are more than the sum of their parts.

Hallinan, J (2005). Introduction to complex systems

Kirshbaum, D, 2002, Introduction to Complex Systems

[OLR] Exercise 9.2 Research and evaluation in Government 2.0

Ever since our state and federal politicians began using tools like Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook, the 'mashup' of social networking with politics was inevitable. Now all over the world there are summits on Government 2.0. In Australia, The Gruen Report is due in late 2009. Here is an intersting audio to explain about Participatory democracy, Web 2.0 and the Government 2.0 Taskforce

Summarise the use of:

1. Wiki drafts of papers for public discussion

Government 2.0 is an attempt to provide more effective processes for government service delivery to individuals and businesses. Integration of tools such as wikis could potentially be used by governments to provide information to people in a manner that is more immediately useful to the people concerned. Consider that governments are generally notorious for bureaucracy. Even simple articles and briefs often take government agencies months to write, when they should take no more than a few days. In effect governments are in the position of trying to provide present day information services using only tools that date back (or predate) the 1970's:

• Circulating drafts for review and comment
  
• Emailing or conference calling
  
• Holding meetings
  

These methods do not take advantage of the collaborative possibilities of the Internet. By contrast, Wikipedia is the seminal example of those possibilities.

A tools like wikis have demonstrated that they can scale up to very large numbers of users. Consider Wikipedia:

• 6 million contributors
• 9 million articles edited together without scheduling meetings, trading emails, or holding conference calls.
• Articles start small and grow organically into authoritative pieces.

Wikis have features that allow contributors to quickly collaborate and develop ideas being discussed:

• A single working copy anyone can edit
  
• A forum to discuss controversial issues
  
• The ability for anyone to revert to previous versions of articles
  
• Email alerts to "watch" articles
  
• The option to "lock" articles so changes require approval

Logen, Coby (2008). How to Make a Wiki-Government. .govWatch. Accessed online here.

2. Twitter in Government

Twitter in government seems like a sound concept because it would provide a way of fostering discussion and awareness of the business of government by citizens and also raising the awareness of government of the mood of people regarding specific situations. Perhaps this could be of more benefit to local members so that they get a better base of knowledge concerning their electorate. However there's a lot of 'noise' out there and many issues get swamped at a superficial 'what people think right now' level. Government isn't just about gauging the mood of the people. It's about leadership and making long term, often unpopular and frequently misunderstood decisions. Twitter's all about 'right now'. Would a government have the courage to follow the 'right course' if all the tweets (a form of polling?) were against that course?

3. Did you see yourself as a supporter of Government 2.0? If so how did you benefit?

This is a tough one. In principle I see many reasons to be a supporter of Gov 2.0 because, at its core Gov 2.0 is about participation, collaboration and efficiency in government (http://www.gov2.com.au/) and Web 2.0 tools do offer technological solutions to do things in new ways and make government more visible and accessible in ways that encourage thought and participation about politics beyond the 3-yearly ''day that you vote / participate' election cycle that seems to define our present democratic involvement.

[OLR] Exercise 9.1 Is social networking a business model ?

Join the site called linkedin.com and setup your "business" profile. While many businesses use social networking sites or buy islands in virtual worlds, some argue that their use is not a model for doing business.

What are the arguments for and against social networking being classified as a business model?

I had a quick play with linkedlin.com but I didn’t bother to set up a business profile. As a site Linkedlin caters, in the words of its founder, for 3 types of user:

$2000 a year users

$200 a year users

$60 per year users.

Linkedin’s owner explains here: In a nutshell a $60 a year user is bought primarily by people who want to be found, like professional service providers, job seekers and networkers. This ain’t me at the moment.

This is starting to feel a bit like how many wikipedia articles can you quote from. I won't quote from Wikipedia. Rather I'll quote from somewhere else that I like the look of. For the sake of clarity a business model is:

The plan a company uses to generate revenue. Companies that distribute open source software can't depend on control of the source code for their business model, so they have to thrive on service and other sources of revenue.

So in other words a business model basically sets out how an enterprise / organisation is going to make money or generate revenue so that it can continue to provide its services to the community that it operates within.

Given this, it’s somewhat debatable if a site like, for example, Facebook, really does have a business model. Facebook claims to be “free cash flow positive" which means that:

(It) might be making more than enough money to cover its taxes, capital expenditure and the cost of around 700 staff - but that the money put into the company by its backers (such as the $300m recently raised from Russian group Digital Sky Technologies) doesn't count. ... (Consider that) at the height of its powers a couple of years ago, rival MySpace was boasting that it was making almost $1m a day simply from selling adverts on its homepage. Since then, it has struggled to keep up momentum and found itself needing to slash jobs and refocus its business. .... (This segways into the belief) that Facebook ... making any money at all might come as a surprise to some, given that many are skeptical that social networking sites have real money-making potential (and for good reason, given the history of the dotcom bubbles and here-today, gone-tomorrow social websites). Accessed online at The Guardian Technology Blog.

Pros

Peer networking opportunity leading to $ contracts

A way of connecting with targeted people interested in a given profit

Connects consumers / providers in a social manner

Recruiting tool

A chance to market yourself

Accessible by all people for free

Cons

Might be too dependent on advertising to work

Questions about financial viability?

You might release confidential or unintentional information

Could be used by social profilers for ID theft or similar

Could lead to a lot of irrelevant interaction

Negative employer impressions (social tools = social times not work times)

[OLR] Exercise 8.4: Aggregation, syndication and the social engine

a) RSS is an XML application needed for aggregation and syndication, often called a Web 'feed'. What is RSS and explain what aggregation and syndication are and how they have changed the nature of the Web. How do you subscribe to an RSS feed? Try some of these RSS enabled sites such as itunes.com and the notions of "swarm" and "stack" at digg.com

RSS is generally accepted as meaning 'Really Simple Syndication' or 'Rich Site Summary'. In a nutshell it is:

Just a web feed format, or a means of transporting data across the web. It's often specified in XML (extensible markup language), which is simply the way the data inside a feed is structured. Says Molander, "Think of RSS as an Internet plumbing system and XML as a standard way to transmit and receive data through those pipes ... If you get news updates through an information portal like Yahoo, Google, or BlogLines, those updates are powered by RSS behind the scenes." Malta, Chris & Cowie, Robin RSS in a Nutshell - What It Is and What It Does. Accessed here.

b) del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website. What does this mean and what are the advantages for workgroups? Discuss how del.icio.us uses the term 'tag' in a different context to what Web publishers would be familiar.

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them. Accessed from Wikipedia.

Social bookmarking is an advantage for workgroups because it allows for descriptions to be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadara, so that other users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves. Such descriptions may be free text comments, votes in favor of or against its quality, or tags that collectively or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy's are also called social tagging, "the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content". Accessed from Wikipedia .

Tags as used by sites such as del.ico.us are informal and not agreed upon as such. However tags as used on these sites do tend to, through sheer use by many people, agregate around a common vocabulary. Accessed from Wikipedia. In this sense these tags differ from those used in the context of web publishers et al in the sense that those tags would be clearly defined and standardised.

c) How do you see services such as those provided at the GoToWeb20.net site as changing the way that YOU and your future workgroups operate?

Well I'm not sure that this site would change the way that I and my future workgroups would operate beyond this site making me aware of JUST HOW MANY Web 2.0 services are available. It might make me cling more tightly to Google: My thinking being I've never heard of any of these sites - how can they possibly prosper and do well? In other words how safe (in terms of me accessing it next year or during a major project) will my data be down the track. I still remember a free webmail service that I loved: zenmail.net. They folded right after I paid for upgraded services. :) If anything a site like this makes you realise how the Internet is really composed of a few giant everyday names that are in the Zeitgeist of everyday people - and everyone / everything else.

d) Explain how the Elgg social engine works on a Web site where it is installed? Is this the type of application you want on your Web server in the workplace?

Elgg is an open source social engine that provides the building blocks for incorporating Web 2.0, tools such as forums, blogs, media sharing, social grouping / tagging / bookmarking tools, a wiki and other collaborative toolsets to enrich a site and help take it from from being static (serving up documents) to active - where users create the content, add the value.

This is the type of application that I would want on my server if it were up to me. This is because it is open source and therefore it can be understood, diagnosed and extended by my organisation and it won't, link an closed source or proprietary application be dependent on the whims of its providing company. In effect Elgg is a community based tool (Drupal also comes to mind) that provides, in Drupal's words "The community plumbing": The stuff behind the scenes, under the covers, which provides all of the essential services that I take for granted - all without me having to go off and hire a developer and literally reinvent the wheel.

[OLR] Exercise 8.3 Data portability, FOAF and the Semantic Web

Like a chain letter, our data seems to move within and between tools like Facebook and Twitter. Is this a good thing?

I think that data following us around is a good thing. To me data being able tomove around and between web-based applications is a sign of data maturity and flexibility. A practical application of such a technology is that it would allow us to reuse are connect with a persistent identity across multiple sites (without being locked into to the ID given to us by any particular site). A technology that can allow data to follow us around is the FOAF (Friend of a Friend) project which is about creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do. As the FOAF website states:

FOAF is part of a shift towards a Web where we can choose the sites and tools we like, without being cut off from friends who made different choices. FOAF lets you share and inter-connect information from diverse sources, move it around, and use it in unexpected new ways. http://www.foaf-project.org/

So FOAF, as an example of data following us around, is a good thing because it delivers, as Brian Kelly and Leigh Dodds point out (quoted online at http://www.communitywiki.org/en/FOAF) specific benefits:

1. The underlying data can be integrated with current and future applications
2. This can be achieved without any agreement with, or notification to, other consumers of FOAF data
3. Other application developers […] can easily develop or extend applications to process it

In other words FOAF is easily extensible and can be extended to new uses / sites / purposes that haven’t yet been imagined.

How does the FOAF tag from part of the Semantic Web and Web services via social networks?

According to http://www.foaf-project.org/about, the "Friend-of-a-friend" project or FOAF is described as:

FOAF is a simple technology that makes it easier to share and use information about people and their activities (eg. photos, calendars, weblogs), to transfer information between Web sites, and to automatically extend, merge and re-use it online. The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

According to this website, the Semantic Web is an evolution or development where data itself becomes part of the Web and is able to be processed independently of any specific application, platform, or domain. The semantic web then, is a web of data that is not locked into applications or websites or specific documents, but which goes beyond these boundaries to allow people to link information from and across websites. This facilitates people in linking to each other by creating a metadata that identifies people, their interests, relationships and activities (Dodds, 2004. An introduction to FOAF (in) O’Reilly XML.com http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/02/04/foaf.html

Assignment 2, part B: How do Web 2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, podcasts and video lectures) complement such social networks? - FOR MERGING / EDITING

As observed by Paul Scott: Web 2.0 is about users and content, rather than just surfing on the Internet. Web 2.0 is about what the Internet can do for an active collaborator, rather than a passive viewer. To this end Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and video lectures can complement enterprise-centric social networks (networks focused on creating value by taping into the knowledge of active collaborators) by allowing employees to present / share relevant information in ways that fellow employees will find accessible and easy to access, interpret and understand.

Consider the flexibility of Web 2.0 tools with regard to the issue of supporting effective knowledge management (KM) within an organisation: KM, according to Wikipedia, is about the practices used by an organisation to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable the adoption of insights and experiences (the 'common knowledge' held by experienced employees). I would propose that blogs, wiki's, podcasts and video lectures could be used by an organisation to support a fuller range of knowledge capture about the organisation to be then stored and transmitted between employees within that organisation in ways that transcend the constraints of the formal memo or a formal written document. An example of such a constraint is the traditional way that documents are created for print (and then distributed and filed) and shared on a perceived needs basis that doesn't necessarily allow for future knowledge discovery.

However, the use of Web 2.0 tools could support an organisation to move away from the creation of static documents and allow the organisation to more achieve such organisational objectives as

improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, and continuous improvement of the organisation. KM efforts overlap with organisational learning, and may be distinguished from that by a greater focus on the management of knowledge as a strategic asset and a focus on encouraging the sharing of knowledge. KM efforts can help individuals and groups to share valuable organisational insights, to reduce redundant work, to avoid reinventing the wheel per se, to reduce training time for new employees, to retain intellectual capital as employees turnover in an organisation, and to adapt to changing environments and markets (McAdam & McCreedy 2000)(Thompson & Walsham 2004)

Perhaps the key flexibility of Web 2.0 tools is that they encourage the getting 'out there' of knowledge and content and they make such knowledge easy to comment upon, build upon and respond to. At the most obvious level this could take the form of an organisation archiving or publishing online its documents onto a tool like Scribd which is a social publishing site designed to convert and share documents online. Obviously an organisation would be looking to use an 'in-house' solution or license Scribd's functionality for its own internal (company / private behind a firewall) use. Similar solutions exist for the online collection and sharing of PowerPoints and Spreadsheets (Google documents, Slide Share, EditGrid, etc.). A key advantage of these solutions is their ability to allow for responses and commentary. And this sociability, literally the encouragement to add one’s voice to the discussion - to see the organisation’s knowledge documents not as an endpoint but as a starting point for further conversation and response and growth of ideas and understanding.

However transcending this, the use of such Web 2.0 tools as blogs, wikis, podcasts, video lectures and other digital media can also allow for a wider range of informal, anecdotal, ad hoc or published media releases / advertising to be captured, stored and shared in way that makes it accessible to vie, link to, embed, MASH-up and generally be taken advantage of by employees in future situations. Corporate memory is more than just words or memos and Web 2.0 tools raise a possibility for capturing and taking advantage of a range of content that exists (and has meaning) within an organisation. As tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Second Life demonstrate, Web 2.0 tools can be inherently social but they can also be private and users (organisations) can set and control who gets access to information and who doesn’t - with full ability to revert to previous versions of information. A good example of this is to be found in the ability of a wiki to allow for data to be added or deleted without destroying earlier copies / revisions of related data. This allows for data integrity in a Web 2.0 world whilst giving employees an 'in' to data with the intention of employees gaining benefit for themselves (and ultimately the organisation) from the accessing of that data.

So in these ways, Web 2.0 tools can provide a substantial complement to a company's social network because they provide easily extensible (and generally comprehensible to employees) ways of linking to, extending, responding and explaining key data (or even supplanting that data with more contemporary information) in a way that non-destructively adds to existing data / knowledge. This can potentially also happen in extremely rapid ways - through, for example, mobile devices that are capable of connecting to Web 2.0 services from remote locations - and receive updates equally remotely (as evidenced by access to Facebook or Twitter via mobile phones).

Ultimately I don’t believe that there is single Web 2.0 technology that will be all things to any given organisation. Perhaps metaphorically, Web 2.0 tools will be best used in collaboration with each other - a mashup or amalgam of blogs, wikis, tweets, podcasts, video and so on.

(McAdam, Rodney; McCreedy, Sandra (2000). "A Critique Of Knowledge Management: Using A Social Constructionist Model". New Technology, Work and Employment 15 (2)

Thompson, Mark P.A. & Geoff Walsham (2004), "Placing Knowledge Management in Context", Journal of Management Studies 41 (5): 725-747

POD Assignment Notes

POD Assignment

[OLR] Exercise 8.2 The avalanche of applications self-interview

1. How relevant are Web 2.0 apps and tools to me as an educator?

Increasingly Web 2.0 apps and tools are not just relevant to me as an educator - they are starting to seem ever more central. Recently after years of using Gmail, and to a lesser extent, Google Documents, I've started to use Google Calendar and its been a revelation for me! I've always struggled with calendars (kind of thinking: "What's the point - I know what I'm doing"). But as I've started to take on more leadership roles in education (and have one a principal position starting next year) I now see the benefits of being able to, for example, share and collaborate with other people, have them interrogate and add to the data and tasks of my schedule. Despite having used Outlook, Google Calendar just feels like a slam-dunk for me.

Why? Well because I can see how this tool could be vital for me to keep in touch with other people - and adding users to my schedule is only as far away as an invitation - no need for people to give up their work habits, or download new software. Plus Web 2.0 makes my schedule into an application in its own right.

2. What have been the benefits of doing this course?

As an educator I have been given food for thought and an awareness of is now and what can be done. These are powerful inducements for me to start to think of new ways to implement and update my practice and they provide a basis for me to be informed about the practice of others and aware of 'new ways' of delivering curriculum, sharing information, being informed and creating / sustaining communities based on the free flow and commonly shared ideas of myself and the people I work with - either a teacher to student or peer to peer.

3. Will the rise of Web 2.0, 3? mean the demise of informed expertise?

I grew up in a very different access-to-information world. I look back now - even to as short a time ago as the 1980's / early 1990's and I see a very different world of information. Information was certainly much harder to come by. I remember doing my first degree and sitting in the lecture theatre and listening to a lecture about Epicurus, then reading the photocopied readings (2) and having a look in the library and eventually finding some 40 year old book that had two relevant pages that I assumed were relevant (Epicurus is a lot tougher than he sounds). I just Googled Epicurus (actually Google kindly offered me a spelling correction) and got 3,480,000

hits! Wow, how easy is that?

Now because I've actually done the hard spade work, as it were, over many years, I have a fair

ability to interpret those hits. But what about future things I learn about? What about people that

follow me who have less experiencing spending a long to time to understand a little fine point?

Well I don't know about them.

And what will they be reading? Consider this quote from the Sydney Morning Herald:

The heady scent of revolution is in the air and there is a sense that finally the People have pushed beyond the velvet rope shielding the cultural elites, who should get out of the way and stop spoiling the party for those people who get it.

It's a very seductive proposition. Now we can all show off our talents – something that has been denied us for so long by the cultural gatekeepers. (And there's no shortage of people out there who think their genius has gone unrecognised only because of the unfair system. Unfortunately, they are mostly wildly deluded – try sitting through an early round of Australian Idol or reading most self-published novels). The argument is that culture has been liberated and democratised, allowing those outside the mandated mainstream to have their say.

Of course there are many referred, valid sources of information out there - heck alot is being

mashed, mushed, collaborated on, shared, remade and wiki'd as I write this (poorly edited,

symptomatic piece). I can't help wondering in age where the barriers to self-publishing are

effectively made irrelevant what will become of informed opinion. As the same SMH article

noted, it's financially difficult to keep publishing when nobody's (or too few) are buying:

May 16, 2009: The Tucson Citizen, Arizona's oldest daily newspaper, produces its last edition after 138 years. In its heyday, the Citizen had a circulation of about 60,000. That number had dwindled to 17,000 by the time its owners, Gannett, pulled the plug. The publisher, Jennifer Boice, pens an emotional open letter in that final edition. "It has been an honour to be a part of the community, invited daily into your homes . . . " she wrote. "Newspapers don't just close, they die. And death is personal."

Perhaps the signs are already here:

(CNN) -- Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch expects News Corporation-owned newspaper Web sites to start charging users for access within a year in a move which analysts say could radically shake-up the culture of freely available content.

So probably not. Web 2.0 won't mean the demise of informed expertise. It will be challenged by the idea of what free is worth, I imagine. This is certainly a question that runs around my head a lot. For all of the collaborative sharing that we do - what do we really know as opposed to agree on? I like the Socratic position "I know that I know nothing." Now how do I collaborate with that? :)

[OLR] Exercise 8.1 The 30-minute walk

The rain patters on and off as I think about going for a walk and procrastinate around the idea of putting my shoes on. Eventually sneakers are pulled - somewhat unwillingly - onto my feet and the back door is opened by me and I make my away across damp, pooled in places, decking that I put down last year whilst on study leave. I smile to myself and make my way across the deck, down the step and along the wooden pathway. I move past the roses that I can remember cutting back oh so long ago. They are there now, foliage thickly shining brightly damp in the moonlit sky and I trot past their vivid freshness and step down onto the grass that always needs a cut.

I am out on the road now making my way past dark houses with the odd glowing rectangle of luminosity that tells me people aren't home. It's drizzling harder now and my face is damp and my hair - all short inch of it - is taking on a slick wetness that you only get when you're out in the rain. The wetness of the shower is so different. And a touch warmer.

It's a mill town so I can see the endless rising of the mill ahead of me as I make my way down Adelaide street. Smoke always seems so lazy in the rain.

I've walked (jogged really) on at this point and the rain has cleared over again as it continues to go, and come, as it has all night. I've run on and am at a good trot and can feel my calves begin to let me know that too much time (and not enough distance) has passed since their last outing. To my left a shadowy church is being passed and I can smell woodsmoke in the air and hear my feet clopping on the road as I make my down its centre.

Another corner turned and I am moving back homewards bound (with apologies to Simon and Garfunkel). In the distance (but not too far away) I can hear the forlorn mooing of some cow. It probably has its butt directly pointing towards the now freshly increasing rain. A guy knows how it feels.