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If access to higher education is a necessary element in expanding economic prosperity and improving the quality of life, then we need to address the problem of the growing global demand for education, as identified by Sir John Daniel.3

Fortunately, various initiatives launched over the past few years have created a series of building blocks that could provide the means for transforming the ways in which we provide education and support learning. Much of this activity has been enabled and inspired by the growth and evolution of the Internet, which has created a global “platform” that has vastly expanded access to all sorts of resources, including formal and informal educational materials. The Internet has also fostered a new culture of sharing, one in which content is freely contributed and distributed with few restrictions or costs.

Perhaps the simplest way to explain this concept is to note that social learning is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning.5

As more of learning becomes Internet-based, a similar pattern seems to be occurring. Whereas traditional schools offer a finite number of courses of study, the “catalog” of subjects that can be learned online is almost unlimited. There are already several thousand sets of course materials and modules online, and more are being added regularly.

When I spoke to him, Zuckerberg argued that News Feed is central to Facebook’s success. “Facebook has always tried to push the envelope,” he said.

Users’ worries about their privacy seemed to vanish within days, boiled away by their excitement at being so much more connected to their friends

social norms catching up with what technology is capable of.”

In essence, Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?

“I really hate it when people clip their nails on the bus”

The phenomenon is quite different from what we normally think of as blogging, because a blog post is usually a written piece, sometimes quite long: a statement of opinion, a story, an analysis.

Haley discovered that he was beginning to sense the rhythms of his friends’ lives in a way he never had before.

But they also discovered that the little Ping-Ponging messages felt even more intimate than a phone call.

the idea of using communication tools as a form of “co-presence”

Ambient intimacy becomes a way to “feel less alone,” as more than one Facebook and Twitter user told me.

“I have a rule,” she told me. “I either have to know who you are, or I have to know of you.”

awareness tools aren’t as cognitively demanding as an e-mail message.

“Things like Twitter have actually given me a much bigger social circle. I know more about more people than ever before.”

What sort of relationships are these? What does it mean to have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook? What kind of friends are they, anyway?

This makes them skimmable, like newspaper headlines; maybe you’ll read them all, maybe you’ll skip so

psychological studies have confirmed that human groupings naturally tail off at around 150 people: the “Dunbar number,” as it is known. Are people who use Facebook and Twitter increasing their Dunbar number, because they can so easily keep track of so many more people?

“I outsource my entire life,” she said. “I can solve any problem on Twitter in six minutes.”

This rapid growth of weak ties can be a very good thing. Sociologists have long found that “weak ties” greatly expand your ability to solve problems.

Parasocial relationships can use up some of the emotional space in our Dunbar number, crowding out real-life people.

“They can observe you, but it’s not the same as knowing you.”

the sheer ease of following her friends’ updates online has made her occasionally lazy about actually taking the time to visit them in person.

It brings back the dynamics of small-town life, where everybody knows your business

a culture of people who know much more about themselves.

t’s like the Greek dictum to “know thyself,” or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness. (Indeed, the question that floats eternally at the top of Twitter’s Web site

The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act.

“It drags you out of your own head,