Visual Communication Vistas Revisited

What a co-incidence (serendipity is not in fashion, any more)!!!

Oops! Some including the founder of the Web, nevertheless comfortably call this process of finding the unexpected Web resources, as serendipity.
View his words:

"You get this tremendous serendipity where I can search the internet and come across a site that I did not set out to look for." Tim Berners-Lee, in Web inventor warns of 'dark' net, BBC News, To Listen to him voice and watch the video here

But, let me add a message (before it is lost in the medium). I did a post in my previous blog on anti-social networking (READ: Isolatr Vis-a-Vis unifier on the Web ). And, today I found a blog that links social communication using the media and a medium.
Thanks to Dave for such a thoughtful blog, viz., Communication Nation.

Anyways, I found three interesting Visual Communication resources:

A quote that is very relevant here:

“The events communicate in a variety of ways -- the spoken word, the visual -- and we don't bypass the opportunity to communicate in the visual. In fact we invest in it. After all, sometimes it's the visuals that get you into the news,” Rob Stutzman at thinkexist.com

Communication Nation, by dave gray, Founder and CEO of XPLANE, the visual thinking company.
Herein, I enjoyed Visual thinking with Legos

Visual Mind - Mind Mapping Software:

Visual Mind is a powerful tool that will help you in your daily work, whether the purpose is business or personal related.

Through a mind friendly and simple to use interface, you can visualize your thinking, quickly arrange and organize your work, all to benefit you as well as people around you.

What do you think about this content, as well as, approach to communications? Does the above help you in adding value to business & / or daily life; or what have you to add on, please bring in, asap.

Note: This is a sequel to my previous Visual Communication vistas
Similar entries:

Books and senses - visualization conceptualized again

Guided Imagery / Visualization - Uses with the Cancer Patron

The Technique of Song and Sound Visualization

See also, my other blog's post: Knowledge Management Applications in Multifaith & / or Multicultural Transactions

Scientists and Artists: Who should design learning?

An interesting perspective, indeed!!! The above title is from an article posted by Gsiemens, at the Connectivism Blog.
[P.S. Incidentally, I tried to leave my comment on the same page, but the blog requires registration. Hence, I post my comments here. I hope this will benefit all those who have not crossed this creative visualization]
Thank you gsiemens for the balanced approach in presenting the debate. Also thanks to Deirdre Bonnycastle for highlighting the (intrinsic and extrinsic) value of information visualization. Here, I reproduce the comment by Deirdre Bonnycastle

Here's a question to ponder "Why are most educational Blogs full of words?" "What is it about the alphabet that consumes educational practice?"

While it is proverbial to say a picture is worth a thousand words, I would quote the original author (to show the true colors): “Words and pictures can work together to communicate more powerfully than either alone.” This quote by William Albert Allard, interestingly, also supports the reason for the existence of my blog, viz., Information Visualization.
Back to the article and its debate - who is more competent. My comments are as follows:

On the question who should design learning, my own answer will be (agreeing with the author), none of the above. I am a librarian, and understanding the process of educating the educators was my Fulbright project (more specifically, it was to get a feel of how user education program was implemented in American libraries, 1989-1990). I have taught library science for over fifteen years -- all without any formal training in the area of how-to-teach! Only recently I took a course (Teaching effectiveness Certificate), to get a look and feel of educational methodology. (Wherein, two courses are taught by a Nursing specialist).

Permit me to narrate my experience. I did a presentation in the above course. My presentation had three goals, viz., a) introducing the class to blogsphere, b) facilitating visualization of how blogs can be both entertaining and educative and c) present the results of my research on trends in blogging and blog as tool for the educators. View this research survey results at my blog: Blog As A Teaching Tool. At the end of the lecture, as a stimulant, I presented the Blogga song [See details of this on my blog: The Technique of Song and Sound Visualization]. Blogga song is by and for librarians, but entertains everyone.
What I learnt from this presentation is that the participants were motivated to a great extent by this lecture and the tools that I brought in. A few were familiar with the name blog, fewer had seen it, and finally I initiated them to be bloggers, at the end of day.
What I infer, from all the exposure and experience is, competencies and skills if shared collectively, and if digested professionally by any one, can result in producing good design and aid in good delivery.
Recall cases where teachers with master or doctoral degree in education have failed and failed badly in communicating actual sense of learning objectives (L/O) & / Or learning outcome (lot). The debate on the importance of such fundamental concepts continues even in this 21st century.
My belief is good teachers are not made; they are born.

Interestingly, the Connectivism Blog -with its subtitle: Theory of how individuals and organizations learn in a digital ecology- has much more content, context and concerns for us as teachers.

Blog-to Show

I found a very interesting blog. Anyways, are you ready for the Blog-to Show this weekend May 20-21 - [my shout] This is Last and Final Call!!!

The details of the show are:

We’re having a Blog-to Show Saturday and Sunday. Here’s what you do.

Write up a sentence or two about what makes your blog worth visiting.

Write up some advice or a short bloggy quote that you think other bloggers would like to know.

E-mail that information to Liz at lizsun2@gmail.com

All the best.
For more visualization-cum-creativity visit Successful Outstanding Bloggers

UPDATE, May 20, 2006:
[P.S. Dear Visualizers, just-in-case you missed the bus, now read the following note posted at their door]:
Link Leak Blog-to Show Is Open
ME Strauss wrote this at 11:26 am:

NOTE: We’ll do this again soon. So leave me comments on how we might do it differrently.
If you’d like to be part of the next Link Leak Blog-to Show see the last box on this post.

Every Book Its Reader - Ranganathan's Law Visualized

Here is a book. It borrows its title from Dr. S R Ranganathan's third (of the Five) Laws of Library Science. The details of the book are:

Nicholas Basbanes. Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World (HarperCollins, 2005). Reviews

What makes the book interesting for me as a librarian and a student of history?
Simply stated, it is my curiosity to find out how relevant is my Guru's Five Laws of Library Science and how his mantra is still floating in a world that is now flat (as per the history of the world by Thomas Friedman).
OK. What are these Five Laws? To read click here
Going by the title one may ask:

• Is this book about outsourcing?
  
• Is this book about extranets
  
• Is this book about offshoring
  
• Is this book about open-sourcing?
  
• Is this book about In-forming

Incidentally, such questions are bound to be asked, if one has just finished reading, India versus Indiana: Who is Exploiting Whom? - a chapter from The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. see my comments on Friedman's book
A single answer to the above questions would be, simply said, the book has none of the above.
A last question one may have, because as a student of Library Science, I succinctly recall that there is one significnat implication of this third law. This implication is all-a-do-about OUTREACH. That is, reach everyone of those who cannot reach the library.
Then, does this book deal with libary services and innovations in outreach and reaching out?
The answer, again, is in negative.
WHEREAS, the book is about how the printed word--or how the love of books--makes history (i.e.,Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow of the printed books). As a student of library history, I see this book is of great value for the posterity.
On the Law, per se, I have a word to mention.
The author writes an interesting note about Ranganathan and his Five Laws:

In time he wrote fifty monographs in his field, most notably Five Laws of Library Science (1931), which outlined a set of principles that ha become a guiding code among professinals.

Three of these laws--Books Are For Use, A Reader's Time is Precious, and Libraries are Growing Organisms--were directed primarily at his colleagues. The other two--Every Reader His Book and Every Book Its Reader---have meaning for anyone with an abiding respect for the written word. They also form the guiding premise, and suggested the title, for this book.(p. 15-16)

Furthermore, regarding the appropriateness of the Third Law for this type of library history (meta book, book about books, and bibliomania), I had my own doubts. And this doubt is clarified, to me, by a close assoicate of Dr. Ranganathan, viz., Prof. A Neelameghan, in the following words:

In general, the set of Five Laws constitute the guiding principles / the fundamentals of library and information service in the changing info environment. LIS professionals would do well to provide service that complies with these laws.
End-users (readers) may also use the first three laws to ‘evaluate’ the service they are getting from the library, again in the changing info environment. (personal communication, dated May 16, 2006)

‘Every Reader His/Her Book’ can, as I mentioned earlier, viewed from the library professionals point of view and also that of the ‘Reader’. A reader may search first an online catalogue / union catalogue (in a library or from home), then (or straight away) go to the library for his book, or to a book shop, and to a friend’s book collection, etc. depending on when his need gets satisfied. When he visits the library the latter is expected to have organized the collection, etc and provide services that ensure the reader gets his book from its own collection, or through inter-library loan, or reader given advice where and how else he / she may get his / her need satisfied; sometime it may be another book that satisfies his / her need better than the one he / she may be looking for. The interpretation of the Laws can comprehend different viewpoints. (further clarified in a second personal communication, dated 17 May 2006).

The Bottom Line: Thank you Nick (ie., Prof. Nicholas Basbanes) for this learning opportunity. And Wish You Good Luck to Write More Books. But, do not forget the mantra. I mean, remember there are four more LAWS of my Guru. I wish and pray that God give you a long life to write at least four more books.

Google Trend - Another Way to Visualize the Blogosphere

Click here: blogosphere, and you will see the true colors of search results.

• A good visualization of data, text and communication is at information aesthetics, form follows data - data visualization & visual culture, posted on 11 May 2006
  
• A Flickr image on Google Trends, visualized as googletrends clusters.
  
• Fun With Google Trends, Posted by Barry Schwartz on May. 10, 2006

In short, Google has another source of information visualization, viz., Google Trend. You can view graphs and news articles relating to whatever you search and wish to compare search results.

About Google Trends
With Google Trends, you can compare the world's interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they've been searched for on Google over time. Google Trends also displays how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often.

Examples. yankees, red sox · skiing, surfing · summer camps · earthquake · tax forms, tax extension · hurricane katrina, gas prices ...
Read all the FAQs

Blog As A Teaching Tool

This will be a running post: Updated 2 March 2007

Blogging for Scholars
Does your prof blog? If he or she does, you had better know about it. Professors who blog do so for a variety of reasons. Some are musing aloud over new ideas or research that will later appear in scholarly journals and on your library's shelves, virtual or physical. Some are exploring new ways of expression or appealing to a larger audience than they get in the paid lecture hall. Or they may be trying out a side of themselves that they don't quite dare expose fact-to-face with their primary community Continue reading @ Emerald LibraryLink

Moving Student Blogging Beyond the Classroom: Another Look, Posted by gsiemens, August 09, 2006

Emerging Teaching Tools. Distance Learning, Screen Recording, and Blogging, Ruth Duffy, July 24, 2006

The theme of this conference -- Unfolding the Future -- is focused on ways to enhance tomorrow's college and workplace environment. In our workshop, we have highlighted three of the emerging technologies -- Blackboard, Camtasia, and Weblogs -- and how they are being used at Shoreline Community College. Now we would like to hear from you...
If you are uncertain about how to do any of these steps, click here to go back and review. You may also listen by choosing "play this audio post" below. continue reading

Amanda @ blogwithoutalibrary.net, cites a new publication: "teaching social software," July 18, 2006, and Amanda states:

Heads up: if you have any interest at all in teaching social software, you should read Teaching Social Software with Social Software by Ulises Mejias in the current issue of Innovate: Journal of Online Education (free registration required for full-text)...
As you can imagine, I was thrilled to stumble upon this article (thanks, Paul!), given the fact that I’ll be doing a bit of teaching-social-software-with-social-software myself this Fall. I was even more thrilled to find out that Innovate hosts webcasts with their authors, and Mejias’ webcast happens to be this Thursday at 12pm.

A Biological Blogger, July 14th, 2006
Paul Z. Myers, an associate professor of science and math at the University of Minnesota at Morris, is something of an accidental blogger: He only started after setting up a Web site for students enrolled in one of his courses...

How does a blog on developmental biology become such a big hit? Injecting a bit of politics into the proceedings doesn’t hurt: Mr. Myers, who bills himself on the blog as a “godless liberal,” mixes strongly worded attacks on creationism and intelligent design in with other “random biological ejaculations.” —Brock Read . Continue reading from A Biological Blogger. More of this Genre Webblogged at Blog Juice for Educational Technology

Not sure, what is this all about?
Hearing, seeing and listening may change your perception.
Here you go [just-in-case you want to be oriented towards this subject] with a :

TITLE: How and In Which Situations Web Logs or Blogs Work: How and Why They are Valuable in Children's Education
SPEAKER: David Weinberger
EVENT DATE: 11/15/2004
RUNNING TIME: 55 minutes. (Thanks to Web Capture @ Library of Congress for sharing this excellent speech)

I guess I am the ten zillionth person who is trying to visualize the above question. The deep web has this question and stated in umpteen ways. Nevertheless, the most common concerns include, viz.: a) the suitability of this tool to communicate; b) the compatibility of this tool in interactive learning process; and c) find WHAT WORKS, WHAT DOESN'T, WHAT'S PROMISING

Let us begin with a reflection on the process involved and visualize the whole picture:

"...These days it is rare to talk about a single function tool. Many discussion board providers now bill themselves as community software providers and bundle other tools into their products such as chat, instant messaging, polls, blogs, wikis, member directories and file sharing. So you will find some overlap between the first few sections of the tour and the groupware section! In addition, there is sometimes a split in communities where some like blogs and wikis and others prefer discussion boards. This split may be generational, but regardless of its origin, it is helpful to be aware of this and figure out how to bridge between the groups when picking tools."[source: Web Based Discussion Tools, in Tool Tour, by Nancy White. See also herein excellent illustrations and examples in "Social Software Tools (Blogs, Wiki's, and Other Creatures)."

I will summarize my findings. The Webliography at the end of this article will give a link to some significant resources.

A. Blogsavvy's prescription very valuable (value added because, it has received 53 comments, which would mean some thing that is really worth looking at!)

How NOT to use blogs in education:

Never never approach blogs as discussion boards, listservs or learning management systems

Group blogs are a bad idea and don’t work

Don’t try and force blogging into something else

Ignore RSS at your peril

B. Arguments for and against using Blog are equally educating, in the Blog by Anthony Moretti, and I quote:

Arguments for using Blog as a Tool:

Young people are using this technology; they might not read as much as we would like them to, but they do blog (and love pods)!!

Can foster creativity and expression; if this gets students to write, think, analyze; why not use it?

Cheap; can be set up for no money and be used in a variety of ways

Errors, omissions, biases, etc. can be caught
Arguments against using Blog as a Tool:

Small audiences

Staying power?

Deciphering the junk from the credible

C. Despite the above inspiration, the Sixty Four Dollar question remains:

Are blogs good for education? Bill Bruck wrote in his blog as early as in December 2004 in Blended Learning:

Well, they aren't awful. They are fashionable right now, and so may gain learner acceptance. They get learners to write, which is inherently good, and to express their opinions - which may or may not be a good thing. But there's a fundamental problem with blogs: They are essentially optimized for easily publishing one’s opinions on the web. This is fundamentally a flawed model for education. It promotes narcissism, not dialog.

D. And the wise continue the debate. The latest evidence-based wisdom comes in a podcast, "Blogs in education: podcast," delivered by Keith Burnett’s blog, and posted on April 2nd, 2006

Educational uses of blogs include: as class diary for a specific group of students, as notice-board for a whole cohort, and even as a space for students to write themselves.
Students producing their own blogs requires careful thought. Web pages are cached by search engines and can be held in ‘frozen’ form for years – for this reason students might want to post under an assumed name. You also need to check College regulations about external publication by students. Some students find having their own page to show off work a motivational factor. Some teachers use blogs as notice boards for whole cohorts of students. I would suggest switching off the commenting in this case and possibly adding an e-mail list facility so students can have new notices e-mailed to their inbox.
I find that I have most success with blogs used as class diaries – each class has a page. I can pop a summary of each lesson on the blog, and I can add links to Web pages with exercises, explanations, interactive quizzes or demonstrations. The blog can then be used by students who were at the lesson as a reminder of the main themes (and homework) and as a guide to carefully chosen and relevant Web pages. Students who had to miss all or part of the lesson can find a summary, possibly with text-book readings and some links that will enable the student to get the gist of the lesson and be able to join in a little more next week.

E. Research Prospects in this Area

Blogs help students think for themselves,by Anna Salleh, ABC Science Online, 2 September 2005:

Blogging is helping students to think and write more critically, says an Australian researcher, and can help draw out people who would otherwise not engage in debate.
These are the preliminary findings of PhD research by Anne Bartlett-Bragg, a lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney, who has been using weblogs or blogs in her own teaching since 2001.
She says blogs are also extremely useful for categorising and managing a large collection of thoughts, whether they are from lecture notes, a student's own ideas, or comments on the ideas of others.

F. Webliography:

Susan Crawford. Blogging on blogging on blogging, 02 Jun 2006

Zarah Grace C. Gagatiga. Blogs as Teaching Tools, 1 May 2006 

--. Blogging as a Tool for Teaching, March 29, 2006

Anthony Moretti. Using Blogs as a Teaching Device, 2 May 2006

Minjuan Wang, and Laura Bock, The Use of Blogs in Teaching, Knowledge Management, and Performance Improvement, World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (ELEARN) 2005
Vancouver, Canada October 24, 2005, ELEARN, Volume 2005, Issue 1.

Craig W. Smith. Synchronous Discussion in Online Courses: A Pedagogical Strategy for Taming the Chat Beast

Teacher dude. blogging and teaching ESF/EF, 3 May 2006

GIL KLEIN. iPods, podcasts latest teaching tool in classrooms, May 1, 2006

Ben Yates. Wikipedia as a teaching tool, 19 Jul 2005 

Learning from blogs, by Anna Davis, at EduBlog Insight [EduBlog is a place to reflect, discuss, and explore possibilities for the use of weblogs in education]

A. S. Tolba. The Potential of Blog as a Teaching and Learning Tool, 4 Nov 2005

Bryan [ http://killthefattedcalf.blogspot.com/2006/02/academic-blogs.html dead link ], Academic Blogs

Ewan McIntosh.Assessment is for Learning - so is blogging

What are the pitfalls of using blog as a teaching environment?

See also Blogsphere Search results 1 and Blogsphere Search results 2

Natasha Spring and William Briggs, Ed.D.The Impact of Blogging: Real or Imagined? [text in pdf]
Microsoft's technical evangelist Robert Scoble met recently with CW Executive Editor Natasha Spring and frequent CW contributor William Briggs to set the record straight on blogs, their impact on the media, whether companies have anything to fear from this new communication medium, and the release of his new book, Naked Conversations.

Dorai’s LearnLog. Effective Bloggers are Learners, Thinkers, Explorers and Dreamers, May 26, 2006

Nancy White. Seven Competencies of Online Interaction,from the Northern Voice 2006 Canadian Blogger Conference in Vancouver on 11 February 2006

Diane Levin ,Mapping the blogosphere yields information about human behavior for social scientists, June 27, 2006

Track A — Blogs, Wikis, and Collaboration Tools, Internet Librarian International 2005, Transcending Boundaries: Information Technologies & Strategies for the 21st Century, 10-11 October 2005 • Copthorne Tara Hotel, London

Improving the quality of online presence through interactivity, Information and Management archive, Volume 42 , Issue 1 (December 2004), 217 - 226: 2004
Online interactivity is becoming a valuable way of improving the communication quality of business web sites. As a result, it is important that web site designers understand the concept and how it affects the quality of web site design. This study empirically validated Ha and James' five interactivity dimensions (playfulness, connectedness, reciprocal communication, information collection, and choice) and their relationship to design quality. Continue Reading Improving the quality

Goodbye, Blog: The friend of information but the enemy of thought, by Alan Jacobs
Whatever one thinks about the structure of the internet as a whole, it is becoming increasingly clear that the particular architecture of the blogosphere is the chief impediment to its becoming a place where new ideas can be deployed, tested, and developed. Take, for instance, the problem of comments. Continue reading Goodbye

TLT Group. Exploration Guide: Educational Uses of Blogs, Wikis, RSS Feeds, etc.

Using technology in teaching and learning cited by Cindee. [Full citation ]
Using technology in teaching and learning: Resources to help you navigate a digital world, C&RL News, February 2007, Vol. 68, No. 2, by Bryan Alexander

Accuracy and the Blogosphere

Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education, by Maged N Kamel Boulos, Inocencio Maramba, and Steve Wheeler, BMC Med Educ. 2006; 6: 41.
Published online 2006 August 15. doi: 10.1186/1472-6920-6-41. [full text]


See also my previous posts:

Citing a Blog, Wiki - Style for bibliographic notes and references

What's a blog - WYSIWYG

Blogging Spree: Trends in Information Visualization

Information Visualization at Wikipedia - Blogspheres Perspectives

Quotable quote from Library Stuff:
The power, posted December 19, 2003
Anna writes:

"There's something seriously wrong with the world when one innovative, blogging, rarin' librarian can have more links in a web directory than one of the most important theorists on classification and indexing."

That's the power of weblogs, especially in the library world. I'm not sure why this is surprising, however. Who is more likely to have more content on the web, Jessamyn or Ranganathan? You will probably find more information on Ranganathan in books (library science 101, etc), than Jessamyn. Also, as Greg so dutifully points out, most of the links are interviews. When was the last interview you read on Ranganathan?

Isolatr Vis-a-Vis a Unified Theory of Web 2.0

This will be a running post: Updated 19 Oct, 2006

The term "Web 2.0" (pronounced "web two point Oh") was conceived in 2005 to describe a new breed of websites that use newer web authoring tools, are low learning curves (for the user) and support a collaborative environment ... usually free and usually just all done in a web browser. source: Web Two Point Oh

Here, I wish to talk about a nascent Web-based movement called anti-social network (ASN) - i.e., the isolatr(s) who are in a crowded mall. The domain name, www.isolatr.com, was registered in March 2006, but the movement is getting stonger by day and is also supported by technocratis, business people, and the like. This is one side of our story. The other side, synchoronously active and up, is about pro-social and pro-technical development in sustaining the infrastructure and infostructure of the Web. It is about a proposed theory of strengthening the network by Ajit Jaokar and those associated with the Internet backbone. The question is: Whose practice & / or theory is consolidating the network (s)? And, which sort of network(s) will last longer? To hear these stories you will have to bear with the narration of a librarian-cum-techie.

In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, called 'isolate.'
Oxford English Dictionary, says: i·so·late
• v. cause (a person or place) to be or remain alone or apart from others: a country that is isolated from the rest of the world.

And, then, God wanted to be Known. Or, as some others would put it, know yourself.
So ended isolation, I suppose? And this movement continued till I was alerted to diagnose my blogging spree.
A creative minority among the Netizens wish to give me a break. And the story of their move, going with introverts, is making waves. Lets' begin with my acquaintance with the word: isolate.

As a student of library and information science, I was taught of common isolates.***

As a student of Multifaith world, I learnt about Solitude (also seclusion, isolation). An interesting quote is here: "May you discover solitude in a crowd." A blessing by: Swami Veda Bharati.
Now, comes from the blues, yet another isolatr:

"Link my blog! Link my blog. This shit is like gang rape sometimes. With Isolatr I can finally tell all these schmucks to get bent." source: Isolatr--the Anti-social Network

Thanks to Jen for the tip about the Isolatr.

And thanks to Tate for thinking loudly about a middle path, to any one who is looking around:

Is it possible to want to be in Isolatr and Linked-In at the same time? I want the best of both worlds. Give me access to people wanting to help or learn without being bombarded by people demanding to sell or preach.

My Sixty Four Dollar opinion and question: I don't like the analogy of 'gang rape' for a professional activity that is loved by all: also known as, citations, reference and linking. Dr. S R. Ranganathan's Third Law of Library Science says, Every book its reader (read as, every information its user). By this law of dissemination, asking other bloggers to index my blog is not akin to any kind of begging, let alone exhibitionism or leading to temptations of getting raped.
Moreover, a request to say "link my blog" is something which the faithful cherish to do forever. Because it directly fulfills the Divine plan of being known - collectively and individually. In short, to be known you have to know, and cannot remain in isolation or in a self-contatined well.

However, I like the creative visualization of the minds behind the Isolatr Web site.
And, you will agree: see a sample from the FAQs:
.Q: Can I invite you be [...] at this random web related conference I'm organizing?
.A: No.
.Q: Can I invite some of my friends to join me on isolatr?
.A: NO.

Anyways, this ASN phenomenon is catching up speed -- may grow or not, is not the question. The question is based on two other premises: First, the Web has gone deep into our daily life; second, Web has reduced the distances of both time and space. Based on this two factors, can we even think of going back into self-imposed (or randomly selected) categories of solitary confinement??? Will we be willing to loose the competitive intelligence (as well as the business intelligence) skills and competencies that we have built and brought so far?
And, what is this about the Web in our daily life? This may amaze some. And, those may like to read my review of the following book: The Internet in Everyday Life, by Barry Wellman (Editor), Caroline Haythornthwaite (Editor)

I think the Internet (despite it being both a bane and boon) with the forces of convergence that the technology today facilitates is likely to last longer.
And, all this visualization of a stong, connected and networked social capital is not in isolation - nor my own juxtaposition against the practices of the Isolatr.
See the other side of the coin: A unified theory of Web 2.0 loaded with a conceptual (social, technical, and infrastructural) framework is at A Unified Theory of Web 2.0
I like this mind-map and would love to share with my audience:

Ajit Jaokar, a member of the Web 2.0 Workgroup has made an attempt to formulate a unified theory of Web2.0 based on re-arranging the seven principles layed outlined by O’Reilly:

.The Web As Platform
.Harnessing Collective Intelligence
.Data is the Next Intel Inside
.End of the Software Release Cycle
.Lightweight Programming Models
.Software Above the Level of a Single Device
.Rich User Experiences

What about Ajit’s wrap up then?
.What is web 2.0? It’s the intelligent web.
.What makes it intelligent? We do.
.How does it happen? By harnessing collective intelligence
.What do you need to harness collective intelligence? The other six principles!

May the breed of thinking reative minds for social networking grow fourfold - Amen.
For those who wish to re-view the above theoretical perspectives, might get food-for-thought from Netanel Jacobsson's questions

***[That is, some isolates can be like minded, to be called common and unlike others. F.Y.I. This is the knowledge that matters in classification of documents, and defined by Dr. S R Ranganathan, in his Colon Classification. Ranganathan, a genius, had many isolates, including space, time, etc., that would go along with his pack of the Five fundamental categories in a book classification process, viz., Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, and Time]