The problem is perspective. Google is not in a fish bowl. Google owns a fish bowl.  Getting creatures into the fish bowl [...]]]> Stephen Arnold makes some great observations on his blog frequently.  Here he is trying to explain why Apple, Microsoft and Cisco have a hard time fathoming the “Open Approach” that pervades almost all Google undertakings:

The problem is perspective. Google is not in a fish bowl. Google owns a fish bowl.  Getting creatures into the fish bowl is the name of the game. Once in the Google fish bowl, the inhabitants have a tough time figuring out life beyond the glass walls. I can’t see very well underwater, and the folks in the fish bowl can’t see very well either.

As a result, the Android is one way of putting inhabitants in the Google fish bowl. Open source is one method but not the only method. The objective is to become the owner not of a fish bowl but an aquarium, maybe dozens of aquaria. That’s the perspective. The Android is not an Apple play. It is operating at a much higher level of abstraction, which may be difficult for Google to achieve. 

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Open systems have the potential to spawn industries. They harness the intellect of [...]]]> Open systems appear to have a huge advantage over traditional, closed systems. Witness Firefox 3.5 ascending to the most used Web browser, or Wikipedia revolutionizing the world of online encyclopedias.  The folks at Google recently outlined their understanding of the meaning of open.  This paragraph stood out:

Open systems have the potential to spawn industries. They harness the intellect of the general population and spur businesses to compete, innovate, and win based on the merits of their products and not just the brilliance of their business tactics. The race to map the human genome is one example.

Sustainability metrics are growing in importance as organizations attempt to better measure their environmental impact.  For more information, see the Aquinas College Center for Sustainability.  If you doubt the importance of these initiatives, have a look at the Walmart Sustainability Index and consider how the third largest company in the world might drive some new requirements in this area.

I believe that the need to share, compare, and aggregate sustainability data will drive the creation of open standards in sustainability metrics.  We need transparency, collaboration, and standardization in order to build meaningful measures.

Disparate IT systems typically store information in silos and surface that data in closed formats that cannot be aggregated or integrated across organizations. Measuring the percentage of recyclable/reusable materials, use of hazardous materials/chemicals, and carbon/energy footprint of a product will continue to be guess work without standards and protocols to collect and surface this data.

Blue Sphere experienced this dilemma first hand when we helped create a system to measure the sustainability of products consisting of parts supplied by many different manufacturers within a supply chain.  We quickly learned that without standards and open systems by which to communicate data, measuring the recyclable content or carbon footprint of an assembled product is almost impossible. 

Open standards, XML and Web Services could be the answer.  Manufacturers could require an XML schema for each part or piece of material supplied.  That schema could describe the relevant sustainability data, which would be consumed and aggregated by a standardized process.  Each supplier in the value added supply chain could feed sustainability data to the consumer of their product or material.  The end result would be the transparency we need, with consumers and businesses choosing sustainable products based on accurate data and a meaningful feedback loop.

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Research has consistently shown [...]]]> Eyes are opening to the world of open systems, the movement started by open source software, that has the potential to revolutionize leisure, education, government, and a myriad of other not for profit projects.  Wikipedia, Mozilla, YouTube,  and other open systems have shown that group efforts, organized around open systems, are extremely effective at generating organic effort and innovation.

Research has consistently shown that educational results improve when students percieve that their work will make a difference.  An engaged learner is more likely when results matter.

So how do we make results matter in learning situations?  Meritocracy in it’s purest form is the answer.  By connecting open groups to performance measurement feedback in real time.  Cognitive efforts become aligned with intellectual captital, expressed in the form of scoring via project results.   

The content used for learning systems can become one of the many creations of the contributors.  Advanced students become the producers and maintainers of open content repositories.  The circle is complete with rewards, content, parameters, contributers, leaders, and innovation.

Electronic open systems (likely expressed as social networks) allow for the all participants to see and understand the contributions of all other participants.  Copying work from another is no longer possible, as original content and contributions are recognized in real time by leaders.  Trying to cheat your way to the top of an open system?  Not likely, the other contributors will make sure you are exposed.

Organizing learning objectives and course content around open social network systems will be challenging, to say the least.  But the rewards could literally change the face of learning:

• - Problems solved online and graded instantly by the system
• - Fingerprint recognition touch screens prevent cheating during testing
• - Engaged participants working hard to outdo their peers
• - Testing and assessment results shared with peers instantly
• - Peers commenting on success and failure
• - Feedback on questions and answers to other learners and teachers
• - Third party interaction as appropriate (parents, other faculty, friends, etc)

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Clay Shirky has made it clear that the cognitive surplus out there is [...]]]> All that time we spend watching tv, movies, surfing the web, tracking sports and playing games can be classified as passive cognitive activity.  Passive activity (also known as consumption) is not inherintly evil, but the opportunity that technology offers to produce and share, instead of consume, could change the dynamics of work and learning.  

Clay Shirky has made it clear that the cognitive surplus out there is huge:

How big is that surplus? If you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project — every page, every edit, every line of code, in every language Wikipedia exists in — that represents something like the cumulation of 98 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it’s the right order of magnitude, about 98 million hours of thought.

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television.

There are millions of American’s out there spending billions of man hours on tasks that are passive, instead of active and creative.  Are they just waiting for someone to invent a cause  that could motivate them to start producing, instead of watching or playing?

We can harness the surplus of cognitive activity in our educational systems by re-architecting the core rules of engagement.  We need to enable open, social networking systems as the platform for new educational systems.  Purpose driven learning projects will take root if we plant the seeds.  Thought leaders and teachers will become subject matter experts leading teams of doers, who just so happen to be learning. 

Open social systems encourage collaboration and group participation organically.  These systems, defined by collaborative applications such as Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia, will foster exponential improvements in learning.  Group exposure to results, delivered to the group in higher quality and quantity (compared to existing systems), will add to the experience via competition and natural cognitive engagement.

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