All in Fragmentation

Technology Hasn't Given Us a "Direct Democracy" - Yet

Dennis D. McDonald
Fragmentation, Governance, Internet, Local Government, Newspapers, , , Technological Literacy, Video, Web 2.0, eGovernment
Chris Cizilla’s White House Cheat Sheet: Bypassing the Media Filter is an oversimplification of the shifting role of social media in politics. He makes the usual “Obama is using social media to bypass the mainstream media to go directly to voters” comment, which I think misses the point.

Is It Too Late to Reverse the Fragmentation of the Web?

Dennis D. McDonald
Change, Collaboration, DataPortability, Fragmentation, Network Effects, Search, Semantic Web, , , , Software Islands,
One year ago I published Balkanization of the Web - or Just Better Focus? There I expressed concern that the proliferation of specialized search engines — and the indexing to support them — would lead to a more fragmented web. I thought that gaining the benefits of specialization could ultimately reduce the benefits we experience from the nearly universal access to web based contents that we’ve been taking for granted.