I liked the article, but loved the David McCandless TedX talk about data visualization embedded within. I am a total geek for effective data visualizations. And never has their been a greater need for it, given the volume of data being produced.

Thanks for sharing. The stages make sense to me, but I chuckled at this statement: "We need to find ways of sorting through all of the data that crosses our path and finding that part of the data that is relevant to our work and for which we have a purpose."

Can tell that statement was written back in 1998! Anyone who attempts to sort through all the data that crosses their path will implode. We need better filters for establishing relevance. And I think that help is coming with next generation search and information filtering technology.

I've read this article a few times now in different contexts and I'm still not sure on where I come out on connectivism being a new learning theory or not. The world has certainly changed because of the internet and how we process information (and likely our brains) have changed too. But when placed in the context of existing learning theories as it is here, I'm not sure if the theory is truly unique or not. This helped me better understand connectivism, more than reading Siemens (and certainly Downes) directly. Not sure what that says about me or them.