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Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

Feature Article
AI Drift
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2024/01/05

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It's this phenomenon whereby you sort of 'drift' into new patterns and habits when you're in an AI environment. It's not the filter bubble; that's just one part of it. It's the influence it has over all our behaviour. One of those patterns, obviously, is that you start relying on the AI more do do things.

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Towards a modest and critical inclusive teaching
Sarah E. Silverman, 2024/01/05

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I like the idea of "a modest and critical approach to inclusive teaching" but I don't see why the "potential language shifts around inclusive teaching" needs to be so much longer and wordier than the alternative language it's replacing. I mean, I get that we probably shouldn't say "we are inclusive" or "we are a leader in x group inclusion". These presume that we have been successful in our efforts, when in all likelihood there have been exceptions to that success. But a modest attitude doesn't have to mean a verbose attitude. Why not say what we do instead of what we are?

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The New News Business
Doc Searls, Doc Searls Weblog, 2024/01/05

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Doc Searls has two interesting posts, one describing the utter collapse of the news industry, and a second, this one, describing what may come next. "The three current business models for local news were advertising, subscription, and philanthropy," he writes, "and (I) promised a fourth. This is it: emancipayments." It's not easy to figure out exactly what he means. It's not new (see also here and here); he's been promoting it for almost 15 years. It has something to do with relationships and conversations. And it's about having the customer decide what to pay, when to pay, and how much to pay. I don't know. Obviously it's good to pay people to report news and to create learning resources and such, and obviously changing each individual reader at the door is a bad idea (which is why the news media industry collapsed). But I'm not sure we can engineer our way out of the problem.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Third-party cookies restricted by default for 1% of Chrome users
Google for Developers, 2024/01/05

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Google has started implementing its plan to restrict third party cookies on its Chrome browser. A third party cookie is a cookie used by someone other than the website provider, and is often used by advertisers to track users as they go from one site to the next. As a longtime user of Firefox and Ublock Origin, I haven't been exposed to third party cookies for a long time. It's good that they're going away. What's more controversial is how they'll be replaced, because Google more than anyone depends on two things: advertising, and tracking users.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

A girl was allegedly raped in the metaverse. Is this the beginning of a dark new future?
Nancy Jo Sales, The Guardian, 2024/01/05

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I want to draw attention to this just so readers are aware (even if the author is not) that there is a history here. The article reports on a girl who "was reportedly wearing a virtual reality headset and playing an immersive game in the metaverse when her avatar was attacked." Is this the beginning of a dark new future? Well, no. People my age will remember the Village Voice article from 1993 called A Rape in Cyberspace where basically the same thing happened in a multi-user domain (MUD) called LambdaMOO. Attacks against women in cyberspace haven't slowed since, as people like Kathy Sierra can attest. I urge readers not to forget the past and to not label each new attack as a "beginning".

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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