Brad’s Ve-learning project

I read an interesting contrarian style article on the collaboration side of social software, “DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism”  by Jaron Larnier at http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html .  Also have a look at the responses. 

Yes, I suspect the dabate has been pushing the benefits of the collaborative side of things somewhat, & Wikipedia has been a spectacularly visible example of what might be achieved. 

But I know people are not necessarily all that collaborative.  My experience with collaborative efforts is that contributions are often patchy & subject to personal politics.  Sometimes the collaboration works, sometimes it presents us with the camel that is the horse designed by a committee.

And I also know that a lot of my use of social software is not for sharing, but quite selfish.  Some of my Flickr shots are private, as are some of my Del.icio.us & FURL weblinks.  Other times they are available to all the world to see.  Irrespective, most software has capabilities to limit who gets involved & how.

Perhaps we need to focus less on what the higher end collaboration is capable of & look at the full spectrum, from selfish individual use to limited access, limited comments, memberships etc.  In an educational setting, as with the corporate sector, what is sought is collaboration within an organisation rather than putting stuff out there for the world to get involved.