In an Internet minute

The futurologist Ray Kurzweil once said that 'change is not linear, it is exponential.' Sociologist Alvin Toffler described three waves of evolution in our interaction with tools. The first two, the agricultural and industrial revolutions laid the foundations for the larger, Third Wave - the technology revolution. Prior to the technological wave,  life changed relatively slowly, and change was linear, but in the advent of new technologies, we are lurching from change to change without pause. The technological Wave has changed everything in life, including the way we work and trade, learn, provide healthcare, entertain ourselves, conduct our relationships and interact. Arguably, old rubrics which described, but did not govern the pace of technological change (see for example Metcalfe's Law or Moore's Law) may already be outmoded.

The infographic on this page illustrates the sheer volume of  user generated content and user activity that occurs every 60 seconds somewhere on the Internet. In one minute there are over 2 million search queries on Google, 6 million Facebook views, over 200 million e-mails sent and 100,000 tweets. These staggering metrics are only the tip of the iceberg. We can expect to see exponential rises in all of these and the emergence of new and more dynamic social media and communication systems. One of the most marked changes are the upsurge in the use of mobile technology, with 1,300 new mobile users every minute. Mobile phones, tablets and laptops are portable gateways into the Internet, and it is predicted by 2015 that there will be twice as many mobile devices on the planet as there are humans. This means that access to the Web will increase, and there will be a steep rise in Internet activity, probably beyond what we can ever imagine. This assumes that the growth rate will continue at its current pace, which of course it won't. It also assumes that people will (and are) using more than one device to access the Internet. I currently have 3 devices with me, and I'm using two of them to write this blog post.

Whichever way we look at this, we know beyond reasonable doubt that demands on the Internet will continue to rise. Are we prepared for this exponential rise in use? The biggest challenge facing us now is not how to use the Internet, but being able to futureproof it so that we have enough bandwidth, capacity and storage space to hold all of the user generated content that is coming. Another challenge is to ensure that the Internet improves in terms of speed, security and usability.

Image source


In an Internet minute by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

...context is king

In yesterday's post I made the statement that the internet is better as a creative space than it is as a repository. Let me clarify this statement. Much of pre-social web based content was difficult to edit or change. Web 1.0 - sometimes referred to as the 'sticky web'- was largely controlled by webmasters and corporations, and was used mainly as a broadcast channel to promote ideas and products. The advent of Web 2.0 type participatory tools and services such as social media and social networks, voting and filtering tools and personalised spaces, provided users with the ability to be directly involved in the creation of web content. Media sharing sites such as Flickr, YouTube and a variety of podcasting services offered users the capability to go beyond the repository mentality of earlier web iterations, to host their own TV and radio channels, blogs enabled them to publish their own newspapers. The web had become a place where people could generally create and share their ideas on a global stage.

The concept of digital repository - collections of useful artefacts that are aggregated together online in an accessible form - is a good one, but the idea loses traction if users cannot interact with the content and hold relevant conversations about it. Increasingly, users also want to repurpose and remix content they find, something which the old style repositories did not allow. The introduction of copyright workarounds such as Creative Commons have given web users the capability to use content in new and creative ways, thereby extending the capabilities, reach and scalability of the content beyond the original intentions of its creator.

As I argued yesterday however, content is no longer the driving force of the web, and should not be viewed in isolation. The context within which the content is situated should also be focused upon as an important component of any analysis of web based learning activity. Content can have two completely different meanings (or functions) if seen in two different contexts. Writing about assessment methods on a teacher discussion site would probably be well received, and users would no doubt engage with any ensuing conversations. Posting the same article up on a site frequented by accountants would be stupid. Unless of course the assessment you were talking about was tax assessment.

I was joking yesterday when I tweeted that my post 'Content is a tyrant' had received over 500 hits in just a few hours, and perhaps the reason was because I used a pretty picture. I was of course being ironic, because it's debatable whether the picture is content or context. For me, the images featured in my blogposts are better seen as contextual, in that they frame the content and provide additional meaning. Photographs are indeed content, but in this setting, they serve as signposts and illustrations to situate the content. We also need to be aware that the value of such content, any content, is subjective and can be interpreted any way the reader wishes.

More to follow on these thoughts in a future post...

Image from Fotopedia (can you see what it is yet?)


...context is king by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Web feats

I'm away on my family holidays for the next two weeks, and I am fairly sure that where I'm going there will be no wifi Internet connections. That's probably a very good thing, because it will mean that I won't be tempted to continue working, and I can have a well needed rest. Yet I also suspect that I will probably begin suffering from web withdrawal symptoms after... well, a few hours really. No Twitter, no Facebook, no Google searching for stuff I really want to know more about. How many others are in that position? Am I an internet addict? Who knows? I don't think so, but I enjoy using it whenever I can, and miss it when I can't. But I need a break and so there you have it.

I'm also conscious that there is a readership for this blog (already this month over 10,000 views have been recorded), and so, during the time I'm away, I have arranged for some of my new blog posts - a series of 7 called 'Web Feats', about the most useful social media tools for learning - to be time released during the next two weeks. So keep watching this space and don't touch that dial, as they say in television land. I hope you enjoy reading the posts, and will also keep sending in your comments. Keep participating, and adding to our knowledge of the web and how it can enhance, extend and enrich learning. That's what this blog is all about. So, please keep coming back. I won't be here for the next two weeks, but my robot will look after you.

Image source

Web feats by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Net curtains

Today is World Net Safety day! Hooray! - all around the globe, in 31 countries, events are being held to raise awareness of the dangers of Internet use, particularly for the vulnerable, such as young children. Blogathons are being held in places such as Canada and Australia (where people run for 26 miles with a personal computer strapped to their backs) and there is a training scheme being launched in the UK to raise awareness of the issues amongst those working with young children.

According to recent surveys, many teenagers stumble across nasty sites on the web by accident. Presumably there are now moves afoot to remove said offending images, so it's curtains for the 10 Downing Street website, I guess....