internet

Google+ and the False Sense of Privacy

by Brian on 07-02-2011

in web

I’ll probably use Google+ for sharing photos, but not much else, for now. It seems great for that, giving me enough reason to recommend it. For conversation and news sharing I’ll have to wait and see. I’ve wanted a way to share family photos, etc., without sharing everything with every acquaintance — not because I [...]

We have to make a choice: divert more & more energy to avoid & repair leak after leak or come to terms with an open world. # This is the big ethical and practical choice we need to confront. Every time we choose to keep even the smallest secrets we sow seeds that’ll grow into [...]

I just had a crazy thought about The Social Network. It turns on this controversial and often-repeated remark (found here) by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin: I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling. I’m #TeamInternet all the way but I appreciate where Sorkin is coming from. I’m sort [...]

I love that it’s constantly changing. For now. It’s still pretty unpredictable, like the midst of a great big game — like the kind of games that Calvin & Hobbes played. It isn’t just the outcomes that change; our boundaries and rules keep changing too, without much notice. And we can change them (or at least [...]

Bob Lefsetz wonders whether Cee-Lo’s “F**k You” is going to be another here-today-gone-tomorrow novelty. He uses the song as a jump-off to appeal for music with more staying-power and quality. His point of comparison is the popular series of TED talks: These TED talkers didn’t start yesterday, most have spent years dedicated to their field, to [...]

Digital Natives

by Brian on 08-09-2010

in education,web

There’s an astonishingly bad article at Spiegel Online citing some research that has got a lot of discussion, arguing that notions like “digital natives“ and “the Net Generation” have been wrong because young people say that the Internet isn’t important to them. But the evidence all seems to confirm the ideas behind the “digital native” metaphor: Young [...]

Minds for Sale

by Brian on 03-04-2010

in civics,economics,web

This talk is causing me to reconsider many assumptions and ideals. For the most part I still believe in cultivating more creative and educational autonomy for ourselves in order to overcome the digital sharecropping and sweatshop-type mind labour that critics are warning us about. Ultimately I keep coming back to my belief (for now it is based largely on faith) [...]

For 2010′s Edge Annual Question, John Brockman asked 165 of the smartest people he knows “How has the Internet changed the way you think? ” [It's a familiar topic around here... and I actually answered the question when I wrote about last year's.] A surprising number of answers are about sex. More than a few [...]