Super video! I have been creating content websites with XML since a couple of years and it is just amazing to see all that can be done, not just for content but also as a database.

I really enjoy reading your post.

ProsNGurus
www.prosngurus.com
www.cafe-nett.com

I have been saying for years that the way that most education institutions (regardless of level/age level) place far too much emphasis on rote learning, teaching/cramming to the test/big exam, and drilling down into levels of detail without ever providing the necessary context, or integration with other materials.

That is why most people remember preciously little of any depth from high school or college: The information just isn’t interconnected enough to form into applicable knowledge. It is a waste of resources (teachers, buildings, etc. etc.) on a gigantic scale. To think where our society could be already if things were being taught in an integrated fashion for decades…

If anything, it seems to have gotten worse in recent years. Let’s hope that a new administration grasps this key concept and puts it into action somehow. Good to see that your daughter’s school is part of an “advanced wave”.

No telling what would be possible if I and others hadn’t had to figure these things about interconnected learning out for ourselves, but had been systematically supported in this from an early age (well, I was by my family in an indirect way, because my parents valued a broad, “classical” education, but you know what I mean… if the SYSTEM had been doing this all along…).

Best - Alex

I truly believe that we are in the middle of the largest social revolution in history, a revolution that is the internet and web 2.0.

You’ve outdone yourself, Rich. Again. Thanks for sharing this mind boggling video.

Gil

There’s a man called B.J. Fogg at Stanford who is attempting to use web 2.0 to bring about a more peaceful world. There is a website you can Google for about it, unfortunately if I enter it here most likely this comment will be eaten by a filter!

The strength of web 2.0 is that it makes a network of connections much in the same way as our brains work. The result is a ‘holistic bite-sized’ message, rather than a long laborious novel.

B.J. may be onto something since our language is predicated upon culture, but the web is creating a new culture, at least in some parts of the world.

Unfortunately there are threats to web freedom. The programmable P.C.s we take for granted may well have numbered days. Google for Jonathen Zittrain for more information on this.

Thanks for this post, I enjoyed it.

BRAY

The experiments by B.J. Fogg and his students at Stanford are a case in point. Fogg is currently hosting a class at Stanford, and also on-line. The web site is at http://peace.stanford.edu/

Despite the simplicity of the message in the video above there are huge problems associated with attempting to build peace, or to influence the way we consume and maybe pollute our environment. This is because, as the video flashed, we need to rethink rhetoric.

For the past few days I’ve been remarking on one of my blogs how Twitter may achieve more reform of written English in a few weeks, than philosophers and educationalists have managed in 100 years. We must welcome this, but it will be lamentable if it costs us the ability to relate to the world in the ways that Shakespeare was able.

One of the threats to web 2.0 may come from the ability of large institutions to effectively sensor content. Today we are used to flexible networked communication because when Steve Jobs put the first Apple on the market people were free to write software for it. The XBox, TiVos, and iPhone, however, represent a return to products that may only be programmed by their manufacturers.

Jonathan Zittrain, is of course, the expert on this.

Rich, thank your for stepping outside of the ‘promotional frame’ with this post. Your products and services are valuable, to be sure, but when you lead us to explore new horizons for humanity you are perhaps at your best.

BRAY

I have believed for many years that the record labels, and even movie making houses are an outmoded and doomed business model as they currently stand.

And they already have the answer, their merchandising is already a significant business today. If they shift their model to make this their mainstay, they can get to the point that giving great movies and albums for free on the web is a money-making proposition for them.
- This can’t be too far away now.