Software is just the beginning … open source is doing for mass innovation what the assembly line did for mass production. Get ready for the era when collaboration replaces the corporation.
A task force exploring ways that open governance can be brought to public administration in Quebec has produced a welcome report that represents a step in the right direction.
The report lays out an impressive series of recommendations on how to improve public accountability in real time, as well as facilitate more citizen input on the design of government policy. It rightly takes the view that more openness is the key to restoring public trust in government, something currently in sparse supply in this province.
Earlier today, Harvard and MIT announced edX, an open-source technology platform designed to deliver online courses. Now, anyone from around the world with an Internet connection can have access to, what MIT President Susan Hockfield called, "one of the best kept secrets of Cambridge and the entire higher education community" - the "richness of collaborations" between Harvard and MIT.
"The maker movement is gathering momentum. Slowly but surely people around the world are changing from passive consumer of the latest gizmo to active maker and modifier of existing designs. The promotion of an open source philosophy in the online era has given people access to myriad designs allowing them to make and modify almost anything. These days DIY not only applies to making simple home improvements, you can go online and learn how to build a robot if you feel up to the challenge! In America, MAKE magazine is the go-to publication for DIY and hack enthusiasts. Humans Invent spoke to MAKE's editor and overall hack guru, Mark Frauenfelder, to get an insight into how this movement is changing the nature of our consumerist culture."
This encyclopedia covers areas relevant to the design of interactive products and services like websites, household objects, smartphones, computer software, aircraft cockpits, you name it.
The encyclopedia is free, includes HD videos, commentaries, and lots more. All chapters are written by elite professors or elite designers who have contributed greatly to the area they write about.
We think you deserve free access to materials written by the world's foremost authorities - worth thousands of dollars - whether you are from New York or New Delhi. In fact, we wrote a mission statement about what we want to continue to do for you. And since we save you time and money, we know you will help us in return!
"Arduino is probably the world's most popular open source physical computing platform. The little microcontrollers show up in everything from wild art projects to serious home automation efforts. It's great and all, but couldn't it be … smaller? Electrical engineer Ken Burns thought so, and got to work on the TinyDuino."
"If you're interested in human development, the opportunity set has never been more interesting. Search in the browser marked the beginning of anywhere/anytime learning opportunities, but the official beginning of the new era was a decade ago with the Wikipedia launch.
As noted in the Lessons from SkillShare blog, anywhere, anytime learning sites have been popping up at an increasing rate. You can learn about rate of change and differential calculus on Khan Academy. Academic Earth was an early source of college knowledge. Udemy let anyone teach anything. Saylor.org and P2PU.org made it all free. Anya Kamenetz outlined the expanded post-sec landscape in DIY U last year. This year, massively open online courses (MOOC) from Coursera, Udacity, and Edx are all the rage. The aggregate impact is a dramatic increase in access to great content and great teachers."
Pardon the hyperbole, but this may be one of the biggest partnerships in education since chalk met the chalkboard. MIT has officially joined forces with Khan Academy to launch a new set of educational videos. In this new partnership, MIT students will be making videos, not the professors. It's a truly inspiring time in education when you see a school ask its own students to become the teachers. It's like the ultimate flipped classroom. It's a flipped school. "Our students have responded with all the energy and enthusiasm we knew they would. We worked with them to design the program, and the results are fantastic." -Ian A. Waitz, Dean of the School of Engineering and the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Recent research shows that consumers collectively generate massive amounts of product innovation. These findings are a wake-up call for both companies and consumers - and have significant implications for our understanding of new product development.
Every so often a piece of technology can become a lever that lets people move the world, just a little bit. The Arduino is one of those levers.
It started off as a project to give artists access to embedded micro-processors for interaction design projects, but I think it's going to end up in a museum as one of the building blocks of the modern world. It allows rapid, cheap, prototyping for embedded systems. It turns what used to be fairly tough hardware problems into simpler software problems.
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