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A Digital Village is a space where a community expresses their identity though ICT and Digital Media. This may be from an artistic, heritage, or economic perspective or a mixture of all three.This can be done through poetry, digital stories, community newspapers online, image collections (old and new), audio (Internet radio, oral history), animations, video, and text. To engage in the activities the participants need to learn new skills and so the Digital Village also becomes a learning community.

This exploratory study examines the relationships between article and Talk page contributions and their effect on article quality in Wikipedia. The sample consisted of three articles each from the hard sciences, soft sciences, and humanities, whose talk page and article edit histories were observed over a five-month period and coded for contribution types. Richness and neutrality criteria were then used to assess article quality and results were compared within and among subject disciplines. This study reveals variability in article quality across subject disciplines and a relationship between Talk page discussion and article editing activity. Overall, results indicate the initial article creator's critical role in providing a framework for future editing as well as a remarkable stability in article content over time.

We are often told that the best things in life are free, but few have ever tried to build it into a business model. Yet it is curious that while financial capitalism is in global meltdown, a completely different kind of entrepreneurial activity - call it commune-ism - is rising, from an admittedly low base.

Biophysical economics is a basis for economic analysis that acknowledges, analyzes and uses the biological and physical (as opposed to social) properties, structures and processes of real economic systems as its conceptual base and fundamental model. It acknowledges that the basis for nearly all wealth is nature, and views most human economic activity as a means to increase (directly or indirectly) the exploitation of nature to generate more wealth. As such, it focuses on the structure and function of real economies from an energy and material perspective, but often considers the relation of this structure and function to human welfare and to the money (i.e. dollar) flows that tend to go in the opposite direction to energy (Odum 1972).

Individual-intelligence research, from a neurological perspective, describes the cortex as a medium for performing conceptual abstraction and specification. This idea has been used to explain how motor-cortex regions responsible for different behavioral modalities such as writing and speaking can express the same general concept represented in the cortex. For example, the concept of a dog, abstractly represented in the higher-layers of the cortex, can either be written or spoken about depending on the context. Abstract models in the higher-layers propagate activation patterns down the cortical hierarchy to the desired region of the motor-cortex for worldly implementation. In this paper, the individual-intelligence framework is expanded to incorporate collective-intelligence within a hyper-cortical construct. This hyper-cortex is a multi-layered network used to represent abstract collective concepts. This collective-intelligence framework plays an important role in understanding how collective-intelligence systems can be engineered to handle collective problem-solving. To conclude the paper, five common problems in the scientific community are solved using an artificial hyper-cortex generated from digital-library metadata.

Among the activities that people participate in on the Social Web are argumentative discussions and decision making. This paper analyzes a series of use-cases (from the perspective of social media sites) that share the presence of such argumentative discussions and where the structure of online discussions can be represented in SIOC. Our goal is to externalize implicit argumentation structures hidden in the usergenerated content. For capturing it and making it explicit, we propose a SIOC Argumentation ontology module as a formal representation.

Computers need an activity model. They need to know what you are doing and why. As software becomes more complex and more responsible for what we do in our daily lives, this state of affairs is inevitable.

The present research analyses the 'social visualization' tool Sense.us, a commercial interactive Web application in which U.S. Census data are visualized. Sense.us was developed as a tool for social data exploration and interaction, in which it would be worthwhile to pay attention to the socio-cultural values that have driven the collection and categorization of the underlying U.S. Census datasets. It is argued that closer attention to value driven U.S. Census statistics would greatly enhance the social appeal of Sense.us, and would be a logical next step in the development of online social visualization tools. In order to allow for explicit socio-cultural values of statistics in online visualizations, three strategies are offered: pro-active annotation; more attention to visual aesthetics; and, a tighter integration of user profiles and represented data.

Assuming that meaning is dependent upon the interplay between lived experience and theoretical (cultural and social) constructs, the task of this chapter in analyzing the sensemaking processes and activities which occurred during the field trip is to integrate lived experiences with theoretical constructs in such a way that the meanings generated from this integration resonate as valid for both field trip participants and informed readers. Or to paraphrase Ken Wilber,1 through the integration of subjective truthfulness and objective truth we seek mutual understanding. To achieve this end, my analysis incorporates the three strands of valid knowing (instrumental injunction, direct experience, and communal confirmation), as outlined in chapter two, and the three cultural value spheres (subjective, intersubjective, and objective domains of knowing), also outlined in chapter two, with three sensemaking themes (being there, storytelling, and living together) which emerged directly from the lived experiences of the participants during the course of the field trip.

a particular methodology of Brenda Dervin

Sense-Making is an approach to thinking about and implementing communication research and practice and the design of communication-based systems and activities. It consists of a set of philosophical assumptions, substantive propositions, methodological framings, and methods. It has been applied in myriad settings (e.g., libraries, information systems, media systems, web sites, public information campaigns, classrooms, counseling services, and so on), at myriad levels (e.g., intrapersonal, interpersonal, small group, organizational, mass, national, global), and within myriad perspectives (e.g., constructivist, critical, cultural, feminist, postmodern, communitarian). The approach has been developed by Brenda Dervin and is being expanded, transformed, and enriched daily by the efforts of some 100-plus persons worldwide (academics and practitioners, teachers and students). This web site is designed to provide access to these efforts and links to those who are involved. On this site, Sense-Making (capitalized) refers to the methodology; sense-making (not capitalized) refers to the phenomena of making and unmaking of sense.

Yes, knowledge management is the hottest subject of the day. The question is: what is this activity called knowledge management, and why is it so important to each and every one of us? The following writings, articles, and links offer some emerging perspectives in response to these questions. As you read on, you can determine whether it all makes any sense or not.

This website has been created to help make visible an emerging field of collective wisdom, its study and practice. It came into being in 2002 with support of the Fetzer Institute and has evolved to the form you see today by the support and contributions of hundreds of people and organizations who have, for decades, been actively engaged in this field.

Online study group community Cramster announced today that the company has raised a $3 million investment and after checking out the site, we can see why. This active, full featured and well design service looks really compelling for students and has a solid business model. Members can participate in forums about homework, get quick answers to questions 24 hours a day and access explanations of problems from more than 200 of the most popular text books in 7 subject areas. There are free and paid membership levels at $10 per month and users deemed helpful by others can receive financial rewards like gift certificates.

Collaborative tagging describes the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content. Recently, collaborative tagging has grown in popularity on the web, on sites that allow users to tag bookmarks, photographs and other content. In this paper we analyze the structure of collaborative tagging systems as well as their dynamical aspects. Specifically, we discovered regularities in user activity, tag frequencies, kinds of tags used, bursts of popularity in bookmarking and a remarkable stability in the relative proportions of tags within a given url. We also present a dynamical model of collaborative tagging that predicts these stable patterns and relates them to imitation and shared knowledge.

This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively. Whether you need software to help you manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts, Digital Research Tools will help you find what you're looking for. We provide a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools in which we not only describe the tool's features, but also explore how it might be employed most effectively by researchers.

OpenCongress brings together official government data with news coverage, blog posts, comments, and more to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress. Small groups of political insiders and lobbyists already know what's really going on in Congress. We think everyone should be an insider.

Ashoka is the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs-men and women with system changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems. Since 1981, we have elected over 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support, and access to a global network of peers in more than 60 countries.

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?

Connexions works to connect individuals and organizations working for social change with each other, with information and ideas, and with the wider community. Connexions Online features resources and organizations fostering democratization, economic justice, environmental responsibility, civil liberties, and the creation and preservation of community.