Why ICT-points ?

After several years of following ICT developments, I concluded that a consistant experience associated with ICT major advances, if communicated appropriately, can become a learning object, a content to be re-used, it exhibits a form of knowledge encoding that is quite interesting in view of the fact that ICT involves fast and full appreciation and documentation of the events remains behind significantly (*)

Experimenting with a group of students, foraging knowledge and dexterities about Internet Security tools, methods and concepts under an "open source" like collabotation scheme managed to drive the creation of a collective knowledge structure (encoded in postnuke cms) made of personal learning paths. These were the result of (almost) free reflection of their respective owners. It was the overall appreciation of this three year project that influenced my present thinking.

Understanding of Internet has been my goal, initially set as a problem in mid 80s, brought about by circumstances related to the advance of Networking in Europe.

It has incorporated my previous problem solving affairs related to distributed computing and fundamental issues of software construction. Prior to that, it was Computer Science and Mathematics fundamentals .

I consider such a chain of cognitive steps in ICT to be 'naturally' inter-related because they converge to a single object, namely the internet. An object that various development paths converge to. My steps prior to the 80s seem to have given rise to a framework in which to analyse internet's emergence.

It was a consequence of being close to activities that relate to big events of Internet development. Although the questions were set at the time it took me quite sometime to arrive at conclusive answers. In particular about the nature of the advances and my appreciation that they can be woven into a single entity.

For example, I was part of the process that constructed the initial Web. Although I was pondering at the time the question 'What is Networked Information ?" the material that made up my answer to the question was not constructed in time to be communicated. This took place around 1989/90 but it matured inside my private domain on 1993 and finally it attached itself as a lego piece to a novel knowledge structure in around 1999. There my reflection on Internet evolution points gradually lead to the fixing of some concept that I was after since the late 80s. In short I got to the point where the question 'What is the Net ?' obtained a definate picture A moving picture, in fact, made of socio-technical advances like the introduction of multimedia with MIME 1.0 prior to the Web. The social component concerns the increased involvement of the human element closely coupled to the global infrastructure and tools of access.

So, a number of postings that will reflect the critical points of my Knowledge trail will be made here.


(*) my ICT appreciation started with lambda calculus which originated from the theory of functions (as an alternative to set theory). The concept of self-application impressed me deeply. Applying a program to itself is the corresponding concept in Computing. You can see where I am driving to ... with respect to Internet undestanding, sharing a view and field testing it.