You can find (almost) anything you want on the Web. But how do you know how to find it, how do you know that you should be looking for it, how do you know what you want before you’ve seen that it’s out there, and how do you get the ‘freshest’ information on topics you’re deeply interested in?
A researcher nails a piece of fresh, cogent information and is immediately burdened with the task of communicating it to his colleagues – by the time he finishes, the information has grown stale. Multiple researchers in different locations duplicate each other's efforts, and researchers with unique knowledge take it with them when they leave the organizationOpenCola is a system of collaborative, distributed agents which can run behind an organization's firewall. Used inside a research organization, OpenCola aggregates, stores and forwards the intellectual assets of the research staff, providing information at a hitherto untold depth and freshness.
OpenCola Folders constantly search for information you’ve said you like. Once an OpenCola Folder has been told what to search for, it continues to search until you tell it to stop.
OpenCola is also working on a high-speed content distribution system for large files called Swarmcast. Essentially, Swarmcast splits a file up into small packets and leverages the bandwidth of users who are currently or have just finished downloading that file to simultaneously serve parts of the file to the next user who requests it.
David Gelernter of Mirror World Technology, says Scopeware will replace the desktop metaphor for retrieving information on your desktop.
Gelernter calls Scopeware a 'narrative information system,' basically a diary metaphor where every file is store chronologically in what appears on-screen as a tiling stack of file cards. Placing the cursor over a card brings up a quick preview, double-clicking on the card brings up the entire file.
Inxight, a Xerox supported startup, is working on a desktop alternative called Star Tree. Even Microsoft is trying to replace the desktop metaphor or at least refine it into something with increased usability for large storage systems and has invested in research projects that use 3-D graphics representations of data such as Data Mountain and Task Gallery.
Faculty of 1000 is a new online research tool that highlights interesting papers in biology based on the recommendations of over 1,000 scientists. It's produced and published by Biology Reports and BioMed Central
Every report isn't evaluated by all 1,000 scientists. The researchers who do evaluate the report contribute to the overall rating which appears when someone accesses the abstract. Reviewers can also add invidiual comments.
In an August, 2001 article in WebReview, Steve Franklin discusses the eleven best tools for collaborating with colleagues over the web. The list includes:
He suggests that work teams invest some time in analyzing their work flow. Lots of time spent organizing information rather than accomplishing tasks may indicate that there's benefit to be gained by investing in some collaboration tools.
From Intellectual Stimulation (an article in Intelligent KM)
CoPs are more about pursuing a passionate interest and making friends than doing business. Therefore, they're a source of genuine meaning for their members — they possess a powerful, positive emotional component born of personal relationships. The personal aspect makes CoPs more manageable and collaboration within them more intimate and direct than traditional methods, such as meetings and workgroups.
Communities of Practice provide a way for people to share knowledge and to continuously recreate and expand that knowledge. Communities of Practice are also process, not product oriented. Their focus is not on 'what we're going to do with this' but on 'what can we learn about this.'
The corporate mandate to eliminate unproductive time from work processes helps companies execute more efficiently. Execution is the overriding instinct of most corporations — often superceding innovation. The mandate to execute often crushes creativity, which can be at odds with fiscal quarter objectives — even though innovative thinking is perfectly consistent with the overall corporate mission of being, for instance, the best network router manufacturer in the industry.
Promoting Communities of Practice within an organization can provide a way to increase employee motivation, broaden learning and application, expand creativity and cross-network in new ways.
Fathom, an online learning source, has put together A Special Fathom Learning Center on Terrorism, Political Violence, and Religious Extremism.
To learn about--and learn from--the events of September 11th, we must acknowledge the complexities and interdependencies of the modern world system. A notable feature of the Learning Center, then, is the inclusion of learning materials from a very wide range of disciplines. If, as many analysts argue, terrorism has traditionally risen in part from the disillusionment of people who feel they are not the masters of their own fate, then we must look closely at phenomena such as fundamentalism, imperialism, nationalism and democratization, along with issues such as economic development and the status of women. And while the World Trade Center was a proud symbol of New York City, there are those who considered it a symbol of US hegemony and globalization. Because we want to explore the multifaceted links betweeen globalization and the causes, but also possible resolution of, the present crisis, we have devoted an entire section of the learning center to the study of globalization.
The learning center contains pointers to online seminars and classes, online articles, and points to additional resources, like books.
In addition, RAND, a Fathom consortium member, is offering a free seminar called Insurgencies and the Role of Refugees: Focus on Afghanistan and the Taliban.
‘Weaving’ is the process of periodically summing up an ongoing discussion and pointing up similarities and differences in the ideas brought forth so far.
TextWeaver is a tool that attempts to make this a more ‘automatic’ part of online discussions. It consists of a composition interface, an ‘active reading’ interface, and a filing interface.
The composition interface includes a view of the archive, allowing the user to refer to the discussion-so-far as they type their response. The active reading interface lets the user set up keywords on the fly. The filing interface is a way to file pieces of the discussion according to user preferences.
TextWeaver appears to require users to change the way they read and respond to discussion. Most people read for overall context and to formulate a response. Adding the role of categorizing and archiving at the same time will be a change that may obscure and slow the discussion itself. Thinking that one will go back later and archive gets away from looking at the process of technology adoption as one of finding ways people want and need to work and developing ways to help them.
Each stereotype limits how we see scientists, what our views are of ‘how science is done,’ and how we critique and interact with the public process of progress and scientific research.
The Association for Science in the Public Interest
includes the following definition of 'public interest science' on their website: