In recent years, new socially‏oriented Web technologies have been portrayed as placing the learner at the centre of networks of knowledge and expertise, potentially leading to new forms of learning and education. In this paper, I argue that commercial social networks are much less about circulating knowledge than they are about connecting users (“eyeballs”) with advertisers; it is not the autonomous individual learner, but collective corporate interests that occupy the centre of these networks.

For the longest time, we have focused on sites of information as a destination; we have viewed accessing information as a process and producing information as a task. What happens when all of this changes? While things are certainly clunky at best, this is the promised land of the technologies we are creating. This is all happening because of how our information society is changing. But before we talk more about flow, we need to step back and talk about shifts in the media landscape.

Remember back in the 90s, when you loved the internet? When you saw it through a child's eyes, and clapped with delight at dancing hamsters, cruddy Flash animations, and Suck.com? Everything was shiny and new, and every innovation was a revelation that made you eager to see what the wizards would come up with next.

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