@ the intersection of people & technology

The news industry will have the same problem. Anyone who makes a living off the process of supplying, writing, editing, printing and distributing printed piles of paper all over the country will have to be transformed if the news industry is to embrace the digital opportunity. Most importantly, consumers will always prefer free.

I've also heard this phrased (eg. @academicdave) along the lines of anyone who engages in the creation and distribution of information/knowledge will have to transform in order to continue its existence. So it's not only what can old media learn, but what can structures like education and government learn from these previous examples of the digital/social/Web challenge. And, as open information/sources/courses (http://www.ocwconsortium.org/) establish new "free" models in education, how will (could/should) the ecosystem evolve and respond...?

Google argues that its new Google Wave system could replace e-mail by blending instant messaging, wikis, and image and document sharing into one seamless communication interface. But some college professors and administrators are more excited about Wave's potential to be a course-management-system killer.

"Just from the initial look I think it will have all the features (and then some) for an all-in-one software platform for the classroom and beyond," wrote Steve Bragaw, a professor of American politics at Sweet Briar College, on his blog last week. 

Mr. Bragaw admits he hasn't used Google Wave himself -- so far the company has only granted about 100,000 beta testers access to the system. Each of those users is allowed to invite about eight friends (who can each invite eight more), so the party is slowly growing louder while many are left outside waiting behind a virtual velvet rope. But Google has posted an hour-long video demonstration of the system that drew quite a buzz when it was unveiled in May. That has sparked speculation of how Wave might be used.

Greg Smith, chief technology officer at George Fox University, did manage to snag an invitation to try Wave, and he too says it could become a kind of online classroom.

That probably won't happen anytime soon, though. "Wave is truly a pilot right now, and it's probably a year away from being ready for prime time," he said, noting that Wave eats up bandwidth while it is running. Google will probably take its time letting everyone in, he said, so that it can work out the kinks.

And even if some professors eventually use Wave to collaborate with students, colleges will likely continue to install course-management systems so they know they have core systems they can count on, said Mr. Smith.

Then again, hundreds of colleges already rely on Google for campus e-mail and collaborative tools, through a free service the company offers called Google Apps Education Edition. Could a move to Google as course-management system provider be next?

 

 

No doubt GWave is going to have an impact, though there are already some mixed reviews (and let's face it, it's still very early). What this story doesn't mention is the embed aspect of GWave. If most of the functionality of Waves can be had when they are embeded into other spaces... what impact will this have on LMS/CMS systems (among many other things), in both the short and long run? Wave functionality living inside something like Blackboard is an interesting possibility to ponder...

"We are working on reputation systems ... You may not know someone is trustworthy, but other people who are trustworthy trust them."

One of the challenges, he said, is the balance between anonymity -- anyone can create a twitter account -- and reliability. He noted that anonymity was key to the Iranians posting images and news of the government crackdown.

"Anonymity was a key thing for the people there ... How do you have anonymmity and trust ... that is a key thing,'' he said.

These quotes from Evan Williams in this CBS News story are very intriguing. I'm interested in these "reputation systems" that Twitter is developing, how they will be implemented, and their effectiveness. What kind of systems can you think of that would address the complex intersections of anonymity and trust/credibility in an ecosystem like Twitter? Is this a real need and how will the Twitterverse respond to the implementation of some sort of reputation system?

cool graphic from Mashable via InformationIsBeautiful.net