TED talks

The TED talk by Yochai Benkler was quite interesting, and it shocked me how old that TED talk is.  I realize that it's taking 10 years at least for this concept of knowledge sharing, collaborative social production, peer production, open source, etc, to get rooted. In many ways, ten years later, I realized that this is so much a part of our culture, and not just the culture of the Digital Generation, but more and more, it has become  the culture of those who are Digital Migrants.   Probably about 15 years ago, when buying a new computer, I received a CD with an enyclopedia on it. It never worked, but it was considered then something new and different. Yochai Benkler reminded me of that encyclopedia on CD that I never used when he mentioned searching for information about Barbie Doll on Encarta, Encyclopedia.com and in Wikipedia. What differences the three sources provide! My guess is that if I looked up Encarta now, I wouldn't find anything.  10 years ago when Yochai Benkler made this TED talk, 60,000 volunteers were working on an Open Source Directory for Yahoo, which he noted people did for social motivations. I'm always surprised when I come across a directory of sources on the internet, as this seems so old-fashioned and out-dated already.



I liked how Benkler framed these (then) emerging social collaborative platforms, as challenges to the market-based sites, i.e. the P2P is a challenge to the record industry, the free open source is a challenge to Microsoft etc. It's important to realize that this isn't only limited to the internet revolution.  In the last few years, we can now study and learn with the best professors around the world through open sourced university classes.  All that's needed is an internet connection.

I also very much enjoyed the TED talk by Lawrence Lessing. The remixed videos were very funny. I particularly agreed with his statement about the internet being an opportunity to revive the read-write content that Souza had envisioned, even if some of it represents an "amateur culture."  I also agree 100% with Lessing's statement that our generation lives life against the law.  If there is one thing that I've learned from this class, it's that I am involved in this digital culture without even realizing it, such as contributing the occasional Wiki edit, and relying on the weak links on facebook for various favors, to living against the law by downloading books and music without regard to copyright laws.



I did want to comment briefly on the Community of Practice. I've participated in one that brings together fundraisers, mainly to complain about lack of funds, but also to discuss new ways of getting funding etc.  The group is mainly internet-based, but it also meets on occasion.  My experience in organizations, however, has been that they don't care what employees learn in their communities of practice.  So while it's a good chance to share information, often it's rarely applied.