I still read the news. I currently get most of my news via the news aggregator, Feedly. The app collects news stories from a variety of sources and puts them all in one place. On a daily basis, I get stories from The Atlantic, The New York Times, NPR, Jezebel, and The Commercial Appeal. I used… Read More Still Reading the News
I’m currently rereading Jürgen Habermas‘s (1991) The Structural Transformation of the Public Space and thought about writing a post about that. However, I’m not sure I’m ready to tackle German philosophy in this space … yet. Instead, I want to talk about photocopiers. This boingboing article by Mark Frauenfelder highlights how Xerox did not anticipate… Read More Photocopier
As we start reading Wikinomics, I find the news full of stories about collaboration and prosuming. In 1980, futurist Alvin Toffler coined the term “prosumer” to describe the type of work new technologies would enable us to do. Prosumers produce and consume the information marketplace. Or, that they actively participate in the creation new idea, products,… Read More Prosuming News
Today’s Atlantic ran a story about University of Marquette professor John McAdams who being stripped of tenure because of a story he posted on his blog. While I am unwilling to weigh in on the validity of this decision or the opinions expressed, I think the medium and genre that sparked this debate has ramifications for… Read More Public/Private Blog
Current debates about net neutrality have gone largely unnoticed. Ironically, this is something everyone who uses the web should be marching in the streets about. I think John Oliver sums up the issue quite well here: Inaction could mean that corporations like Comcast and Time Warner could control how we access information. If we think about the current affordances… Read More Access, Access, Activism
Like this article in The Onion, we tend to anthropomorphize technology. Like the woman in the article, I talk about how my computer hates me or about how my phone seems to know exactly when to run out of battery power. We give machines human emotions and motives. But for how complex these machines are,… Read More Computers Aren’t People
The concern for how technology will change how we communicate is ancient; in The Phaedrus, Plato recounts the myth of Theuth who brings writing Thamus, king of Egypt. Theuth claims that writing will make the Egyptians wiser. However, Thamus is skeptical: “this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use… Read More Re-Reading Plato’s Phaedrus
Alison A. Lukowski 