This one is more of a web log entry than my usual ramblings.
Executive Summary: Life Is Good.
Latest in the line of corporations getting a clue, Swiss pharmaceutical Novartis releases data it can’t process alone:
Biology Goes Open Source – Forbes.com
For its part, the NIH has suggested making this kind of free access the standard operating procedure for all of its genetic research.
[Update May 21, 2007: Trackbacks closed because of spam.]
This is getting fun!
Which is faster? Communication in a relatively small group of academics, “viral marketing” from Internet celebrities, or blogs by entreprising Web-savvy people? In this case, seems like the latter has an advantage.
Not that it matters. But it’s interesting, in the context of the move toward Open Access in academia.
A quick rundown of a few elements in a timeline surrounding the dissemination of ideas about the “Web 2.0” via a video created by a fellow anthropologist. I haven’t been really involved in this dissemination process but I find interesting some of the links that connect some of the people who are involved.
On January 31, Kansas State University anthropologist Michael Wesch posted a neat video on YouTube, apparently in response to a video about Web 2.0 posted by China-based tech educational specialist Jeff Utecht almost a year ago. The video has been attracting a lot of attention from different people and some of this attention has followed interesting paths.
On February 5, Montreal Web strategist Martin Lessard posted a blog entry (in French) about Wesch’s video.
Lessard had already written a piece on six cultural groups characterising Internet’s continuing history. That piece has been at the back of my mind for a while, especially when the concept of “Web 2.0” is discussed.
(FWIW, since hearing about it in Tim O’Reilly’s writing a few years ago, I have been thinking of “Web 2.0” as a decent label. That label has already been overused but it did lead to interesting discussions by diverse people.)
Apparently, Lessard found Wesch’s video through someone else. Others have certainly created buzz about Wesch’s video for other reasons (techno-enthusiasm) but Lessard appears to have been rather quick at noticing the insight in Wesch’s video. In fact, Lessard’s blog entry about the video is itself quite insightful and rather elaborate.
This is the first example, in the paths I’ve observed, through which Wesch’s video has been commented. It’s the one linking what we may call “entreprising Web analysts.” People who make a living online (and may depend on online social networking like LinkedIn and blogs). Seems like this path was the fastest one, though I have no idea what happened with Weisch’s video between January 31 and February 5.
A second line of dissemination: what we may call “viral marketing by Internet celebrities.”
On February 6, Internet celebrity and science-fiction author Cory Doctorow (a fellow post-Buster Canadian) mentions Wesch’s video on his well-known blog BoingBoing (through a mention on gaming blog Wonderland). Internet celebrity and Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig then posts a blog entry about Wesch’s video on February 7. (Interestingly enough, on Lessig’s blog, some comments about the video relate to ethnography and cultural anthropology.)
Now, the third mode of dissemination: informal communication among academics.
By February 9, Michigan State University librarian Shawn Nicholson sends a message to librarian mailing-list ANSS-L about the video. This message is relayed to a Google Group on Open Access Anthropology by Weber State University librarian Wade Kotter.
(As luck would have it, I attended a brewclub meeting later on February 9 and fellow Montreal coffee and beer enthusiast Aaron Marchand was asking about Web 2.0 after having seen Wesch’s video.)
As it so happens, Michael Wesch himself is a member of the OA Anthropology Google group and he explained to the list, on February 10, that this video is a draft created for an online edition of academic journal Visual Anthropology Review.
It’s only at that time that I found the time to watch the video and share it here. Anthropologist and artist Sarah Butler then commented on the video via my blog. Which motivated me to to send a message to OA Anthro about Web 2.0 in the context of Open Access. It’s only while writing that message that I noticed Lessard’s earlier blog entry on Wesch’s video.
Phew!
Now, what’s my point in all of this? Well, I’m simply trying to emphasise Wesch’s idea that online communication (and the Web, specifically) may be forcing us to rethink different aspects of the dissemination of knowledge. Including the differences between , one one hand, academic gatekeeping (experts and “peers”) and, on the other hand, the fluid relationships of online-savvy, motivated people.
In other words, I’m emphatically not saying that any of this proves that academics are too slow for the current means of online communication. Nor am I trying to imply that communication among Web-savvy people is in some ways “better” than group discussion among academics. But we do need to reassess the value of “publishing” as the sole model for the dissemination of knowledge.
Why do I care so much? Well, apart from the fact that my doctoral research has to do with what we may call “knowledge workers” in Mali, I happen to care about the way academics and others handle issues surrounding communication. As naïve as it sounds, I still do think that dissemination of knowledge is an important mission for academics.
My battle cry: RERO!
And I mean that in a positive, optimistic, hopeful, idealistic way.
Been pretty busy recently. Have a bunch of things to read and catch up with. So this’ll just be a series of links. I feel they’re all related, in a way…
Will the GBN jump in now or did it do so already?
Who said anthropologists were out of the loop?
YouTube – Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us
Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE]
Hey, blog-brothers and sisters!
Feel free to put a plug to your blog, here. Doesn’t even need to rhyme.
Got the idea from YULBlog last night and thought it might be neat. (Besides, it’s a shameless attempt at getting more comments and/or pings.)
Otherwise, if you came for stuff about craft and homebrewed beer, homeroasting and other coffee geekery, or musical diversity, do browse and comment.
I also have two blogs on music. One for a course in the anthropology of music, the other Thinking Globalisation Through Music.
Though it might not seem so obvious, I’m longing for comments… 😉
Aux blogueurs, carnettiers, carnettistes et cornettistes.. Y compris ceux de YULBlog.
Ploguez votre blogue (carnet, billet, journal personnel, fluegelhorn) ici. Même pas besoin de rimes… 😉
Pour ceux qui viennent pour la torréfaction de café, le brassage de la bière, ou la musique, promenez-vous un peu…
J’ai aussi deux blogues dédiés à la musique. Un sur l’anthropologie de la musique (pour un cours à Concordia), l’autre sur la mondialisation pensée à travers la musique (pour un projet plus vaste).
Waiting for Google’s presentation app, I tried some of the other suggestions contained here:
Google prepping presentation product | Webware : Cool web apps for everyone
I had already prepared my presentation in “the application that should remain nameless but has a name rhyming in ‘Showerpoint’,” so I didn’t want to rebuild it from scratch.
Thumstacks looked perfect for my needs (I specifically do clean, simple presentations for my classes). Unfortunately, I couldn’t see a way to import content directly (maybe it’s there but I didn’t have a lot of time) and, in Firefox, I couldn’t paste content from my presentation. Too bad. It would have been most excellent, I think.
Then tried Zoho Show. It imported my PPT presentation just fine (though the dialog box was confusing) and it’s exactly the kind of “web-based Show-her-point” thingie I was looking for. Except for one thing. Switching from one slide to the next was just way too slow for my needs. Maybe there’s something I did wrong but it would take several seconds to show the next slide and my students were getting anxious. So I switched back to “Flowerpoint” during the break.
Spresent looks like a neat way to prepare Flash presentations, but that’s really my thing.
ThinkFree is probably the obvious choice and I’ll try it next time.
Why use a Web app for presentations? Well, there’s the possibility of collaborating, of course. But there’s also the issue of bringing the presentation from one computer to the next. Using the classroom presentation computer, you have to get the presentation on the computer (Zoolander flashback: “The files are in the computer?”). It’d be with a USB thumbdrive but, for some reason, the computer in my classroom doesn’t have a readily accessible USB slot (and I don’t have a thumbdrive but my media player works as one).
Besides, it’s easier for me to keep a file in a central place and keep adding material to it.
To me, the killer app is the outliner. A web-based outliner that could do presentations would be a wonderful tool, for me. It would fit sooooo well with my workflow, I would swoon.
So… Erm… Is there such a thing already? Pleeeeez?
I quite enjoy being powerless. Much more comfortable. And fun.
What’s more, nothing you say can nor will be used against you in a court of social capital.
Let’s hear it for power-free humanism!
Completely unsolicited, of course. In no particular order.