Sunday, June 28, 2026 Strategy, technology, media, and social systems

I Think

Sorin Adam Matei

Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.

Tag: intellectual

The theory of mob rule in academia (and cyberspace)

A perfectly random rump through the meadows of hyperspace lead me from this post on In Trade about volatility as a predictor of bias to this blog full of equations, to this note and then to this Chronicle article about mobbing in…

The building of community and self-expression in online groups

Submitted by "Adrienne Hall" on October 22, 2008 to the On-line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2008, Purdue University, Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog. Abstract This essay attempts to begin explaining how participation in online social interactions impacts…

Don’t Contradict Yourself: Community and its Paradoxes in Cyberspace

Submitted by Colleen E. Brown on October 15, 2006 to the On-line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2007, Purdue University, Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog (http://www.matei.org/ithink) The growth of computer mediated communication (CMC) has sparked much debate across…

Front Porches and Public Spaces: Planned Communities Online

Front Porches and Public Spaces: Planned Communities Online Susan Huelsing Sarapin Comm. 632: Online Interaction Professor: Dr. Sorin Matei November 19, 2006 Introduction Where else today but in the cost-effective frontier of cyberspace can the average person construct a community?1 With widespread…

The seven principles of designing communities of practice

Wegner’s Communities of Practice concept is rooted in seven design principles. All good online communities, which are variants of communities of practice, should keep them in mind: 1. Design for evolution Design elements should be catalysts for a community’s natural evolution. As…

A Simple Helpful Site…

Powazek (2002) stated three key issues in his book Design for Community that should be initially considered when building a community; audience, content, and community. Likewise, Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002) in their book entitled Cultivating Communities of Practice spoke of a…

I Link, Therefore, I Am: Connection and Identity in Computer-Mediated Communication

By Susan Huelsing Sarapin Submitted on October 22, 2006 to the On-Line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2006, Purdue University Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog (http://www.matei.org/ithink) Introduction Today, people all over the world are connected, or “tethered” (Turkle,…

Citizendium

Larry Sanger, Wikipedia’s confounder, is at it again. He decided to “fork” Wikipedia, that is to create another flavor, which includes more editorial control, of the famous online encyclopedia. I am part of the project, called Citizendium, and I hope to be…

Televised Education without the Television

A thought on our discourse on television. Many people felt that TV was not an interactive medium – rather it was a passive medium that broadcasts messages. It made me think about the history of education. Traditionally, modern education has been broadcast…

A project on Internet trust and credibility

Aligning with this week’s discussion of the credibility of information on wikipedia and other online sources, I ran across this project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, on credibility and trust in Internet settings, called the “Credibility Commons“. Interestingly enough, this research project…

Songs of the Mock Turtle: Ways of knowing in an online world

For many, the democratic and liberatory promise of the internet lies in the potential to allow collaboration, interaction, and exchange of information, ideas, and resources at a scale not otherwise possible (or at least, not highly probable) in a simple offline world.…