off

I'm off to China again in a minute. So don't expect much to be going on here for a while. It will be service as usual from February though.

in the club

I got my first delivery from Album Club yesterday, here it is. It's Animal Collectives new album which is nice as I like Animal Collective. The albums got good packaging as well that does funny things to your eyes.

open university

I've started to get really into this open learning/ life long learning lark after watching a good number of TED and DO talks on the way to work. Now I've just come across iTunes U which is going to keep me busy for a while longer. The concept was originally championed by MIT's Open Course Work programme, of which you can learn a bit more about here.

The really exciting bit about this though is what's going to happen when developing countries like India and China get hold of this stuff for free. How many times have you heard people say they learnt English by listening to BBC World Service? Think how much further they could go by getting their hands on Stanfords, Yales, MITs etc learning programes.

There was a great quote in one of the OCW Milestone videos I was watching about how universities used to be closed communities with no one ever knowing what went on inside the campus walls other than lecturers and students. Just like Forbidden City. Now it's not the case. Kind of true for the way business is going as well.

I also think there's an opportunity here for Apple to sell ipod's that are already pre-loaded with a major institutes learning programe (like they did with the special edition U2 ipod) or for ipods to be curated my someone inspiring with a mix of different talks and courses around a specific concept such as creativity.

Steve Jobs has said that he learnt more when he dropped out of university but stayed on campus to drop into random lectures rather than do a set structure (he went to Caligraphy courses which ended up directly effected how type was done on mac's). 

Could be the way of learning for the future for either higher education or life long learning after it. 

tinker, taylor

There's an interesting bit in this MIT panel discussion on the future of OCW about how we've become a society of tinkers again.

Where as engineers in days of old used to take the backs of off watches we now take ideas and add to them, take videos and mash them up, and make things like the iphone better through creating new software apps. Always trying to make things better, doing kaizen.

It makes a for good job description as well. Tinker and thinker.

TV on the computer

I sometimes read Salma's magazines to try and work out how the other half think. This time I got some digital insights out of it as well though, courtesy of Elle magazine.

The new series of Skins have invited viewers to contribute towards the shows renowned soundtrack (curated by Alex Hancock). And Gossip Girls are selling each episodes soundtrack and clothes featured in the show (curated by Patrica Field's assistant Eric Daman) after each episode.

Two things: 

-Television entertainment is hooking up with digital communities and commerce channels more and more. 

-Having an individual with specialist knowledge/ reputation responsible for curating standards of content is a good thing. 

there may be problems ahead

Who doesn't use the same password for at least a few sites these days? There are just too many sites to have different passwords for each. I've even been had by a scam like this once before in the past.

There's either going to be problems ahead or a unique opportunity for someone to solve the risk, and make some money along the way, with a key chain type thing.

Vaguely related posts: digital archiving, the lost generation