Author: Stephen Downes

Hey there, great to meet you. I’m Pi, your personal AI. My goal is to be useful, friendly and fun. Ask me for advice, for answers, or let’s talk about whatever’s on your mind. How can I help? Hi Pi Hey there! ?? Glad to chat with you. What’s up?

Suchith Anand poses some interesting questions on the OPENED SIG mailing list, and though I am not the British government agency to which the questions are addressed, I have thoughts… What are the main human rights issues in the digital age?  They are to my mind the same human rights

These are the things I encountered following Dave Lane’s instructions here: https://tech.oeru.org/installing-nextcloud-hub-onlyoffice-ubuntu-1804 and finally restart the network stack and ufw on your serversudo service networking restart Failed. Used systemd-networkd restarthttps://superuser.com/questions/1423959/ubuntu-server-fail-to-restart-networking-service-unit-network-service-not-foun ————— sudo apt-get install nginx-full Failed. Ran sudo apt-get update first. Then it worked. ————— sudo apt-get install mariadb-server-10.0 mariadb-client-10.0

Proposal to the 2023 Open Education Conference. Status: rejected. I hate rejection. 🙁  72 On the Nature of Praxis Stephen Downes National Research Council Canada, Ontario, Canada Abstract The concept of ‘praxis’ can be thought of as the relation between experience and reflection in practice and learning. As most commonly

Last November Creative Commons posed a question to 12 prominent global open advocates: “What does better sharing for a brighter future look like to you?” I was not one of the advocates in question, but I do have opinions. So I thought I’d comment on each of the 12 visions

It’s popular in some circles to argue that we are unleashing AI as a completely untested technology with possibly dangerous implications on society.  My own experience is different. Ever since I studied intelligent systems, connectionism and neural networks in the 90s I’ve tracked the development of AI. Much of my

My response to the Pew/Elon University Survey. By 2035, will smart machines, bots and systems powered by artificial intelligence be designed to allow humans to easily be in control of most tech-aided decision-making that is relevant to their lives?  This question can be interpreted multiple ways: Could there be any

This is what I posted on a Reddit thread: With a bunch of new people coming into the game, and old players returning, what is a helpful tip that you know that could save someone a headache in the future? – get a terrain manipulator if you don’t already have

In a lengthy and well-thought-out post on Stratechery Ben Thompson describes the The Four Horsemen of the Tech Recession. Following Thompson’s lead Maria Anderson offers a corresponding Four Horsemen of the Higher Ed Crisis. But I found the latter a pale shadow of the former, so I decided to work

Image: Pew   By 2035 two trends will be evident, which we can characterize as the best and worst of digital life. Neither, though, is unadulterated. The best will contain elements of a toxic underside, and the worst will have its beneficial upside. The best: everything we need will be

1. Create a new environment in reclaim cloud Resource: https://support.reclaimhosting.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404919752215-Creating-New-Environments-in-Reclaim-Cloud  I selected node.js as my application and Maria DB as my MySQL database.  2. Set up an end point for the node.js application     – click on ‘Settings’ for the environment    – select ‘End Points’ from the menu to

Image: Heise Magazine Today Alex Tarkowski launched a 24-part Twitter thread into the digisphere expanding on his views about participatory governance and fediverse. It builds on his article Priorities to Make the Fediverse Sustainable, which I commented on last week, as well as some work he and his collegagues have

The Conference Board of Canada makes four recommendations for innovation in Canada. It’s based on a self-styled ‘report card’ that ranks Canada as a ‘C’ on innovation (the U.S. and Switzerland rank ‘A’, which should tell us something). In my opinion, they are wrong across the board, make the same

  Here is a section from my book-in-progress (which may never be completed, but I continue to toil away). Please read it keeping the following in mind: – It should be thought of as a conversation. Sure, it’s a conversation with you as a very patient and quiet partidipant, but

These are some posts collected from my Mastodon postings which together sort of form a coherent picture of the fediverse. Sort of. So much fun watching tech people pour in from Twitter. Others, too, but it’s the tech people who interest me, because I remember when they were doing interesting

Doug Belshaw points to a recent article in the Jacoban in the form of a review of Vitalik Buterin’s Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains saying there is no socialist case for crypto. The argument in the Jacoban review is that whenever the question

Anticosti Island is a large but mostly uninhabited island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Covered with subarctic pine and spruce forest, inhabited by hundreds of thousands of deer, and surrounded by rugged and scenic coastlines, it is an attractive destination for adventurers. In August, 2022, I bikepacked more than

It’s that time of the year again when educators and developers send their list of top tools to Jane Hart. You can see my full list of web-based tools and services on my website. Here’s my top ten list. Firefox – I know, most people won’t even list their browser,

My contribution to a report by Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center and Pew Research, The Future of the Metaverse.   Opportunities for fraud and scams will abound. As well, there is the risk of a non-traceable shadow economy developing. It will be hard for people to grasp the idea

Mojolicious is a real-time Perl-based web framework that can be used for writing modern web applications. Today in an episode of Stephen Follows Instructions I took it out for a spin. It mostly worked well out of the box, but there were a few quirks that needed some thinking. I