This morning I read through the latest post by Ajit Jaokar on his Open Gardens blog. This is Ajit’s synopsis of his post:
Beyond Web 2.0 is still more Web 2.0(for now). The full impact of Web 2.0 will be felt only in 2008 and beyond. The Semantic web is not the future of Web20. The full impact of Web 20 itself has yet to be felt because Web 20 technologies like cloud computing and ‘umbrella social networks’ (i.e. social networks encompassing the personal web, enterprise and the mobile web and incorporating presence) are still emerging and will gather momentum in 2008 and beyond.
As usual, Ajit’s writing in this long post is loaded with crisp and deep insights into the virtual world. Thinking later about what I had read, this idea resurfaced: Ajit wrote: the data has to ideally reside in the ‘Cloud’.
In terms of the Internet, the Cloud has come to mean for most people something like out there in cyberspace instead of on hard drives and servers. But what if we think of the Cloud as being miscellaneous pieces instead of hierarchies. If we do that we can see this Cloud as what David Weinberger has written about in Everything Is MIscellaneous and what I mean when I blog about the GoldenSwamp.
In terms of a network, nodes are the smallest pieces; when nodes are linked together they make the next step up in size of hunks, which are patterns of linked nodes. It seems fair to say that for a cloud, stuff that is miscellaneous and the small stuff in a swamp are all nodes. Cloud is actually the best word here for a world of smallest things, which is what nodes are.
It is worth using this analogy in understanding that educational resources online have not yet managed to move much toward the cloud phase. Most online education stuff is embedded in structures like curricula and courses, which are patterns and not miscellaneous. GoldenSwamp.com is dedicated to writing about the cloud of learning resources that surely will be crucial in the learning enlightenment that lies ahead. Patterns are not inherently bad, but nodes that are free to participate in more than one pattern offer a richer learning environment. Cloud learning would be such an environment.
