Monthly Archives: August 2004

Informational Cascades, Network Theory, and Behavioral Economics

Stephen Downes’ mention of my article on informational cascades (thanks for the plug, Stephen) led me to his post in the trdev discussion group. He writes:
In network theory, ‘groupthink’ is an instance of what is known as a cascade phenomenon. A cascade occurs (all other things being equal) when the propogation of a property (an [...]

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Book Recommendation: Why Societies Need Dissent

If you liked my article on informational cascades then you will probably want to read Cass Sunstein’s Why Societies Need Dissent. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago, writes in detail about the impact of informational cascades on democratic dialogue, the rulings of panels of judges, and other critical areas related to civil [...]

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New Article on Informational Cascades

My new article just came out in eLearn. It started out wanting to be about “emergent learning” but, once I realized that I still have no idea what emergent learning actually is, I removed all references to it in the article. At any rate, I feel pretty good about the piece.
The question will arise whether [...]

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Brilliant Discussion Board and Blog Feature

Update: If you came here from Stephen Downes’ Online Daily post, then you were probably looking for my article on informational cascades, which you can find here.
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Last night I posted a longish comment to the OpenACS discussion boards. (OpenACS is the Open Source toolkit upon which the dotLRN course management system is based.) OpenACS, with [...]

Posted in Open Source, Open Content, Open Access, Usability and Human Factors | Tagged | 1 Comment

Doubts about OKI and Sakai

I almost appended this as a comment to a previous post, but I decided it was important enough to elevate to the top level. I received this email from a person who wishes to remain anonymous but who has at least some first-hand knowledge of OKI:
I didn’t want to publicly disparage the OKI project but [...]

Posted in Open Source, Open Content, Open Access, Tools, Toys, and Technology (Oh my!) | Tagged , , | 3 Comments
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