I blame all of this on Stephen Downes and George Siemens and their first c-MOOC – CCK08.
The idea of knowledge as network nodes/endpoints was a brand new idea to me along with the introduction of a new set of collaborative tools that introduced me to a whole new set of folks on the network some of which I still follow today through their blog posts.
Stephen’s recent curation effort highlighted Doc Searles recent metaphor for the internet “The Giant Zero” as “a place without distance, and lots of challenges and opportunities that arise from its lack of distance.” The lack of distance thing is about how we no longer have communication delays like snail mail or cost barriers because of network apps like email or Skype or Twitter that instantly connect us for “free” without regard to where we are on the globe. The challenges and opportunities he says are in the areas of cooperation, politics/governance, economics, privacy and several others. The privacy one spurred me on to doing something about it when Searles said –
“It helps to remember that nature in the physical world doesn’t come with privacy. We have to make our own. Same goes for the networked world. And, since most of us don’t yet have clothing and shelter in the networked world, we’re naked there.”
I started with Searles’s “clothing and shelter are privacy technologies” that “We use them to create secluded spaces for ourselves. Spaces we control.” I finally jumped in and signed up with Reclaim Hosting and have fully embraced the idea of a “Domain of One’s Own” This is my first piece of privacy technologies thanks to Jim Groom et al and this is my first post from my secluded space “Doin’ Stuff”.
Thanks Frank
