Hummingbird Mentality

Discussing online communities today with one of Trinity FM’s up and coming editors, the problem of data migration came up. Web 2.0 services are fantastic, but what happens when we want to leave their walled gardens? As it stands right now there exists no feasible way of say, carrying an identity from Bebo to Myspace, complete with user information, photographs and more importantly ‘friends’ (correct me if I’m wrong, but such a service would undoubtedly violate the TOS of one or both sites).

So far, so minor, a problem easily soluble, or at least survivable - on the user end through the duplication of accounts, on the social network provider end through competition. Just as Yahoo and Google trump other web based email services by allowing free forwarding and address book export (effectively providing a jumping off point for users - one I found convenient recently when switching from the increasing bloat of the new Yahoo mail to Gmail, privacy be damned); and just as websites which link to other sites gain links in return - so a truncated form of universal Darwinian selection will eventually cull social networks based on the criteria of connectivity and selectivity. To rephrase, only the most flexible networks, allowing (and encouraging) interconnectivity with other social networks, mashups, linking with mobile / cellphone accounts, and connecting users to their butcher, baker and candlestick maker, will survive in the long term as social networks become truly mainstream. [Thankfully the web currently lacks implimentation of the bandwidth protectionism (read Net Neutrality) which has allowed Murdock Media to become an exclusive supplier of Digital Satellite television in Ireland and the UK. But don't be surprised down the road, if services like MySpace lobby to restrict access to 'unpoliced' social networks]. Think about it, who’d use a telephone which could only call one set of friends? By contrast, services which provide selective connection will also find an evolutionary niche - humans love elites, and expertise is quantitatively valuable.

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Someone needs to build a decent open source 3d brain model in shockwave, VRML or a stand alone OpenGL application (not pseudo 3d quicktime). As far as I can see, none exists. Believe me, when you’re trying to understand functional neuroanatomy, such a thing could not be more useful.
This is the sort of thing that education software does better than books or lectures, greatly accelerating the practical comprehension of complex 3d systems. Educational institutions would do well to develop such software for engineering, medicine, and physics modelling.

Start-ups, currently thinking about building yet another social bookmarking app or firefox extension, might find a market for an advertising sponsored (or paid institutional subscription) folksonomy application, which could allow lecturers to build three dimensional tours to accompany their lectures, or mail students links which would open specific interactive 3D representations of models discussed.

The whole copyright in education thing really came home to me in first year, when one of our lecturers (a brilliant speaker) delivered out lecture notes in PDF form, with all of the accompanying diagrams (most of complex brain regions) removed; making the notes literally useless for exam revision or essay writing. This is an area that needs to be urgently addressed, both legally (with intelligent copyright exemptions for educational use), and through the development of common open learning platforms.

Also, isn’t it obvious that universities should do their best to enable the creation of educational resources by their computer science / education / psychology departments - not in a service provision role, but a pragmatic brain trust style solution development role; by encouraging and financially facilitating interdepartmental projects where divergent expertise could be used to mutual benefit - sort of like an intrafaculty open source movement.