In July, the Institute for the Future of the Book announced plans to build MediaCommons, a new kind of scholarly press for the digital age with a focus on media studies -- a social network in which academics, students, and other interested members of the public can forge critical pathways through a mediated world and publish dynamically in a mediated environment. Today we are pleased to announce the first concrete step toward the establishment of this network: making MediaCommons, a planning site through which founding editors Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Pomona College) and Avi Santo (Old Dominion U.) will begin to develop the project in public.

Another plug, but I couldn't resist after reading Matt Barton's review of the Steven Johnson book a couple posts down. I'd like to alert Kairos readers to a thread recently begun at if:book -- the blog of the institute for the future of the book -- where we have mounted a multi-post, ongoing critique of EBIGFY, in which Johnson himself is participating. We were moved to do this after witnessing the near-universal acclaim the book has received. Already, we've come across numerous instances of it being assigned as essential reading for new media and design classes, in some cases by teachers who haven't even read it. It seemed time for a more rigorous discussion...

Kim White, my colleague at The Institute for the Future of the Book, just posted on our blog a small informal case study of the "collaboration of the month" textbook featured at Wikibooks -- a spin-off project of Wikipedia developing open-content textbooks. Worth taking a look.

UPDATE: On fostering a better, more nuanced debate about Wikipedia and the open source model for education in general... HERE

(We're keeping Wikibooks in the corner of our eye as we continue developing our own digital textbook project next\text.)