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Category Archives: Information Technology and Information Literacy
Historians Don’t Have to Live in the Past
In what way is the American Historical Association’s notion of a six-year embargo on digital open-access distribution of dissertations even remotely sustainable in the current publishing and media environment surrounding academia? On one side, you have disciplinary associations like the … Continue reading
A New Approach To My Honors Seminar
Swarthmore’s Honors program is one of its claims to distinction. I’ve always enjoyed teaching the seminars, with their close-knit and ambitious discussions, but I have also found the whole program somewhat frustratingly in its eccentricities and emphasis. Essentially the program … Continue reading
The Slow Poison of the Covert Imagination
Terms like “rape culture” and “gun culture” are useful when they remind us that the harm of a thing is bigger, subtler and more pervasive than the thing itself. When we talk about guns, we’re missing an important point if … Continue reading
If It Gets you Tang, Space Foodsticks and Miniaturization, Then Go Ahead and Fly to the MOOc
So I remain firmly in the camp of people grumpy about the hype over MOOCs. Not so much about the reality of MOOCs, which is something that most of the hypesters remain defiantly unacquainted with. Digitization in higher education has … Continue reading
“Our Rate Even for Original, Reported Stories is $100″
About two years after I’d started blogging, a journalist friend of mine gently needled me about what I was doing. “You’re going to put us all out of business if you keep giving away all that stuff for free,” he … Continue reading
Digital Learning Is Like a Snow Leopard (Real, Beautiful, Rare and Maybe To Be Outdated by a New Operating System)
Maybe it’s just because it’s my obsession of the moment, but the digital camera strikes me as the single greatest example of a new “disruptive” technology that permits a fundamentally new kind of learning experience. However, precisely because digital photography … Continue reading
Getting to Wrong
About a month ago, I started writing an entry about Gawker Media as a model for the “new journalism”. When I started writing that, I mostly meant it as a compliment. I was thinking about Deadspin’s Manti Te’o expose (by … Continue reading
The State of the Art III: Facebook (and 500px and Flickr) as a Window Into Social Media
III. The Business Model as Belief and Reality Why is Facebook such a repeatedly bad actor in its relationship to its users, constantly testing and probing for ways to quietly or secretly breach the privacy constraints that most of its … Continue reading
Now
I don’t think there’s much more to say about Aaron Swartz. I didn’t know him personally but like many others I am a beneficiary of the work he did. And I have agreed for much of my life as an … Continue reading
Apres Le Perturbation
There are three ways to look at what’s happening right now to the economic and social viability of the professions and various kinds of cultural work. One is silly, one is depressing and one is ambiguous. Guess which I prefer? … Continue reading