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This is about the inequitable global power and how it dynamics the confronting global knowledge production in nowadays.

Underlying this notion of global knowledge production inequities is how developed countries "The Global North" dominate modern knowledge systems. This hegemonic control of global knowledge, driven by increased globalization, places pressure on virtually all societies to adopt global values and services. While this development does have positive implications (e.g. better understanding of modern health practices, nutrition, environmental protection, governance systems, etc), on the negative side, the imposition of cultural forms from the developing world could be considered a form of political and economic domination. This leads to the increasing homogenization of cultures and a threat to local knowledge, and the exacerbation of local differences and inequalities through uneven access to such knowledge and the means for it's application. The production of knowledge implicates and is implicated in power relations, as those with superior technology cannot only generate but also store, monopolize and disseminate information to safeguard their interests. Foucault (1972) suggests that the relationship between power and knowledge has its origin in the ownership of the means of material production and technical expertise. According to Said (1978), Western powers in a colonial and post-colonial context, using agents in developing countries, have been able to develop elaborate cultural and political institutions where knowledge production exists with supporting mechanisms that dominate and suppress African communities. In a critical examination of development policies and programs in Africa, Okolie (2003) considers these to be shaped by knowledge and assumptions about knowledge production that are primarily Euro-American centered, and are consequently "exclusionary and often contemptuous of other ways of knowing" (Okolie, 2003). The establishment of the continent's universities and research centers was primarily driven by Western powers, and the African elites who h

Learning modes and principles of open, commons-based peer-production therefor have the potential to provide the "gold standard" of enhancing future skills, competencies, connections, capacities of people and their organisations on a global scale. In short: peer-to-peer learning around open, commons-based peer-production is a game changer in international development cooperation.

"The current crisis, the deepest and longest in the history of capitalism, has opened a debate around the world about what appears, more clearly with each passing day, to be the simultaneous destruction of the two principal institutions of social and economic life: the State and the market. Never in living memory has the economic system been so universally questioned. On the other hand, never before have technical capacities been so powerful, and, more importantly, so accessible to people and small organizations. In fact, never before have so many small businesses taken part in the world market. Nearly free [gratis] P2P communication technologies let them create the largest commercial networks in history. The emergence of free software (which, by itself, represents the largest-ever transfer of value to the economic periphery) empowered them with unexpected independence. Millions of small businesses around the world, especially in Asia, were able to coordinate among themselves this way and hone their products just as new markets were opening up to them. It's "globalization of the small." It's not a marginal phenomenon: never before have so many people around the world gotten out of poverty."

"Showing "The World of Science", the map below portrays global research production as expressed through science journals' publishing in the early 2000s. It makes a dramatic point about the complexities of global inequalities in knowledge production and exchange. What would it take to redraw the knowledge production map to realise a vision of a more equitable and accurate world of knowledge?"

The research environment in the global South faces many pressing challenges given resource inequality. Technical and financial issues aside, Laura Czerniewicz asserts it is the values and practices shaped by the Northern research agenda which contribute just as much to the imbalance.

"The paper explains the effect of biased technological change (BTC) on total factor productivity (TFP) from the new perspective of appropriate technology. We have certified that the assumption of neutral technology progress of Solow is ostensible and also to get the general technological progress which can be divided into three parts: effect of knowledge progress, effect of capital intensity improvement and scale effect."

VERY interesting angle - thank you for sharing.

More than just playing and making, be able to reflect after creating something new is what makes this new mode of learning different. One step further would then be "open to critiques", then learn from both peers and master. Seemly Brown also discussed a new "networked identity": based on what one has created and what others have then built on it. This is the idea of building new things from other existing things, but give credit to where credit is due. Provide one's creation or product openly so that others can remix/build something new based on this product. This would be how an ideal knowledge environment would grow and sustain.

A really like the sequence of events he mentioned at the beginning: Create, Reflect, Share. It is so simple yet can result in so much production! And of course, it all starts with imagination :)

Great video! It will be/ is becoming the new mode of learning. We collaborate to create an active knowledge environment. It's definitely a mode of open learning, which can benefit all of us.

Why it "works" Network Effect Wikipedia benefits tremendously from the network effect. The network effect is when a user of a product benefits more from a product if other people also use the product. Telephones are a textbook example. If only a few dozen consumers have telephones, then the telephones aren't very useful. But if millions of consumers have telephones, they become more useful since each telephone owner can contact many people. The large number of Wikipedia users benefits Wikipedia. First, the more editors there are, the the higher the accuracy and quality of the articles. Secondly, it gives an incentive to users to edit. Since editors know the each article will be read by thousands of users, the sheer influence of each article is a strong enough incentive to edit, even though Wikipedia is free. Openness Wikipedia is free and open for any user to edit, even anonymously. This means there is a very large number of editors. This helps Wikipedia ensure accuracy since each mistake and inaccuracy will have to get by hundreds of editors. With so many writers, the scope of Wikipedia articles is very large, minimizing the amount of missing information. Although the openness of Wikipedia provides a powerful self-correcting method, it also makes Wikipedia vulnerable to vandalism. In addition, editors are anonymous and may have a conflict of interest, or might have inadequate knowledge of the article's subject. Yet, because Wikipedia is open to any edits, it is also likely to be corrected. It operates by a system of checks and balances from many editors. However, it has some guidelines to protect it against misinformation and bias: 1. Verifiability principle. To prevent bias and to protect the encyclopedic quality of its articles, all edits on Wikipedia must in theory be a verifiable fact. Moreover, it must have a reliable source to verify each fact. 2. No Original Research. As an encyclopedia, it is mean to be a secondary source of infor

"Responding to rapid and steep increases in the cost of scientific journals, a growing number of scholars and librarians have advocated "open access" (OA) to the scientific literature. OA publishing models are having a significant impact on the dissemination of scientific information. Despite the success of these initiatives, their impact on researchers in the developing world is uncertain. This article analyses major OA approaches adopted in the industrialized world (so-called Green OA, Gold OA, and OA mandates, as well as non-OA information philanthropy) as they relate to the consumption and production of research in the developing world. The article concludes that while the consumption of scientific literature by developing world researchers is likely to be significantly enhanced through such programs, promoting the production of research in the developing world requires additional measures. These could include the introduction of better South-focused journal indexing systems that identify high-quality journals published in the developing world, coupled with the adjustment of academic norms to reward publication in such journals. Financial models must also be developed to decrease the reliance by institutions in the developing world on information philanthropy and to level the playing field between OA journals in industrialized and developing countries."

Many interesting charts and data of the global internet use, access, and contributions

Atlas, publications, charts and tables of global information and internet geographies and impacts on information access, information production and information distribution, done over a four year period by Oxford Information Institute. Findings, data, and publication will be published in Open Access formats and platforms. The website is simple but contains lots of information relevant to the topics in Stanford. There are links to external related publications about information geography, access, distribution and production. Very good website. Some limitations include: bias from the two developers and producers as well as institution itself, unknown (not identified) contributors and sponsors.

A very valuable collection demonstrating how economic, political, cultural and linguistic ties impact the flow of knowledge is and information. Of course, such charts do little to explain, why this happens and where a more even distribution of knowledge is desirable. Also, the data that lies behind the visualisations is not always open. Especially vauable are the links to the data collections that are accessible.

"New technology and innovative business models offer proven opportunities for enhancing the sharing of scholarly information - research papers, primary data and other evidence, creative activity and other products of research and scholarship - across institutions and audiences. This scholarly communication - understood as the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use - promotes a shared system of research and scholarship. ACRL sees a need to vigorously re-orient all facets of library services and operations to the evolving technologies and models that are affecting the scholarly communication process. There is wide variance in the background understanding of and engagement in scholarly communication as a critical perspective and worldview for academic librarians. This Scholarly Communication toolkit was designed by ACRL's Scholarly Communication Committee as a resource for education and advocacy efforts in transforming the scholarly communication landscape."

"Increased access to information and knowledge, underpinned by universal literacy, is an essential pillar of sustainable development. Greater availability of quality information and data and the involvement of communities in its creation will provide a fuller, more transparent allocation of resources."

"In this context, a right to information would be transformational. Access to information supports development by empowering people, especially marginalised people and those living in poverty, to: - Exercise their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. - Be economically active, productive and innovative. - Learn and apply new skills. - Enrich cultural identity and expression. - Take part in decision-making and participate in an active and engaged civil society. - Create community-based solutions to development challenges. - Ensure accountability, transparency, good governance, participation and empowerment. - Measure progress on public and private commitments on sustainable development. "

This source makes many of the points made in the video and readings for this week; Specifically, that scholars have a duty to use open source culture as "creation and curation of human knowledge, scholarship is an open-source endeavor. The end product - human knowledge - is not a fixed product, it is distributed, has diverse manifestations, and belongs to no individual or entity." He extends this notion to pedagogy suggesting "the best pedagogy take the best of what already exists and make it better, at least better for the task at hand."

Trends in the production and distribution of self-published ebooks.

Very interesting. Let me share on twitter. Thank you.

I've saved this because it identifies a facet of open knowledge that is becoming increasingly important - the concept of "open manufacturing". Additive manufacturing - or 3D printing as it is more commonly known - is being used in more industry sectors than ever before. New materials and use cases have led to 3D manufacturing in Health, Entertainment, Automobiles, Fashion, Construction etc. I particularly liked this quote from David Rowan at Wired: "The democratisation of manufacturing will empower anyone with a compelling idea to prototype, make and launch a physical product ay speed and low cost".

The story of Aaron Swartz, incredible programmer and activist for internet rights, open access and open knowledge. Good documentary to learn a little more about the open access movement, see some important figures (Tim Berners-Lee, Lawrence Lessig, etc.) and the fight against the SOPA bill. A big part of the movie is about his personal life and legal battle over copyright infringement. Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

This was a great video! I enjoyed it very much and it was very touching. thank you for posting. @smoens - awesome blog too. thank you for the link.

For the Copyright section I recommend to watch this documentary: The Internet's Own Boy depicts the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. It features interviews with his family and friends as well as the internet luminaries who worked with him.

There's a lot to digest here, particularly if you want to read the whole report as well as the edited summary. I particularly liked the responses from JP Rangaswami: "The quality of real-time information that becomes available will take the guesswork out of much of capacity planning and decision-making......The net effect will be to reduce waste everywhere: in physical flows and logistics, in the movement of people and goods; in logical flows and logistics, in the movement of ideas and information; decisions will be made faster and better, based on more accurate information; prior errors in assumption and planning will be winkled out more effectively." And from Howard Rheingold: "We will live in a world where many things won't work, and nobody will know how to fix them." On a personal note, I can see there might be benefits with the IoT, particularly the use of sensors and actuators for monitoring and improving health, but will it put the final nail in 'privacy' and enable marketers to push their products and control my thoughts 24 x 7 through the pervasive use of wearable devices and biological interfaces with technology? Reading time: 60 mins

"Part of the trending 'DIY Culture', the 'Maker' subculture refers to the ideology of cutting out the middleman and creating your own product or idea which can then be shared or improved upon. "