For several years, there has been a rule-of-thumb, called “90-9-1″ , that 90% of online participation in groups/community consists of “lurkers” or more politely, “passive participants”, and only 1% are active creators. Often, they simply  lurk  in the background. The medium is the message, or so it seems. MORE >>

Digital technologies are enabling us to develop systems with huge numbers of interconnected components and sophisticated software that infuses them with seemingly unlimited capabilities.  They are penetrating just about every nook and cranny of the economy and of society in general.  We are not just passive observers.  Let me discuss a few.  . MORE >>

Harvard professor Peter Galison (he’s actually one of only 24 University Professors, a special honor) is opening a conference on author attribution in the digital age. NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small matters. Paraphrasing badly. MORE >>

According to  The Cost of Reading Privacy Policies , a paper by Aleecia M. McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor of Carnegie Mellon University, “national opportunity cost for just the time to read policies is on the order of $781 billion.” billion hours for the U.S. population reading those polcies. MORE >>

The five informal learning methods described in yesterday’s post on Learning in the Workplace have one thing in common. They are all relatively simple. Most of today’s larger companies have a complicated structure. Over time, to enable growth and efficiencies, more processes have been put in place. It’s time to simplify. MORE >>