That’s the briefest summary of a very interesting report from University College London. A press release puts it this way:

A new study overturns the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation’ – youngsters born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most web-literate. The first ever virtual longitudinal study carried out by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web.

Very interesting, and alarming. But it’s important to keep the scope in mind: This report is looking at the Internet as a library. Good scope but not the only one. [Tags: born_digital digital_literacy google_generation ]

10 Comments »

We saw Michael Frayn’s Tony-award-winning play, “Copenhagen,” last night. Disappointing.

It’s about the mysterious meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in 1941 in Newark, NJ. (Nope. In Copenhagen. Just kidding. Haha.) The play goes over various “drafts” of the meeting, trying out possible explanations of why Heisenberg, a loyal German (or is he??), would seek out his former mentor, a half-Jewish Dane living in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Heisenberg was the head of the German effort to create an atomic bomb (or was he??), and Bohr snuck out of Denmark and joined the Manhattan project (or did he?? … well, yes, he did). The play has some crackling good scenes as the two men fill us in on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi effort. (Bohr’s wife is the third person in the play, but she’s just annoying, given to saying to the audience things like ‘And then: Silence.’ Embarrassing.) But it’s over-written and, worse, depends upon a stupid pun: Y’see, Heisenberg is famous for his Uncertainty Principle, and all of human understanding is also uncertain, so since both use the word “uncertainty,” they’ve got to be the same thing, right? So, let’s make a play about it.

Yech.

Say, I have an idea! Let’s write a play called “Croton” about Pythagoras. It will draw a dramatic parallel (so to speak) between Pythagoras’ theorom about right angles and his own uprightness. “It is all a matter of finding and living the right angle,” he will say. “After all, aren’t we all a hypoteneuse?”

Or we could do one called “Strasbourg” about Louis Pasteur’s family life, because just as is his work confirmed germ theory — small bodies pass from one to another, changing everyone they touch — his wife and he pass their children back and forth, each time changed by that gentle touch. Also, he had an infectious laugh and a contagious enthusiasm.

Or how’d you like to invest in this sure-fire winner: “Naugatuck.” It tells the story of Charles Goodyear, who discovered vulcanized rubber quite accidentally — or was it on purpose? — and who lived a “vulcanized” life because, well, um, you see, things happen sorta accidentally – or on purpose? – especially when we bump into fiery emotions that transform us into more rigid and yet more durable beings. Yeah, that’s it!

And then: Silence.

[Tags: copenhagen theatre plays entertainment arts heisenberg parody frayn ]

9 Comments »

Harold Feld, who understands this stuff as well as anyone and 150 times better than I do, is calling on the FCC to stop the current spectrum auction because of underhandedness in the killing of the bid by the Frontline group. Harold has more details here. And Dow Jones has a shorter version here. Harold also points to an op-ed by one of the Frontline members.

[Tags: fcc auction d_block harold_feld frontline spectrum telecommunications ]

5 Comments »

I haven’t tried the software yet, but I like how they’re developing it:

The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

It’s something we want to give you, along with some online media hosting, to see how you use it. The project will eventually turn into something else. Tell us what you think so we can figure out what that is.

Try it, you’ll like it. Find out more in the FAQ, or on the weblog .

Not so incidentally, I found out about this via a post by JP Rangaswami following up on a really terrific post about the incredible capacity of our new circulatory system (capillaries, not a fire hose, says JP). The follow-up post gives an example of capillary action at work. The first post frames the Net as how conversation — taken not just as chin-wagging but as how much of the the work and play of sociality are accomplished — scales. [Tags: jing screen_grab screen_capture jp_rangaswami conversation web_2.0 messiness ]

3 Comments »

Richard Sambrook of the BBC World Service has a fascinating post (from Dec 17, so I’m a little slow) about the meaning and effect of Facebook groups in different countries, focusing on the Middle East.

[Tags: facebook middle_east richard_sambrook ]

3 Comments »

Gov. Deval Patrick plans on funding necessary and humane projects in Massachusetts by licensing three casinos. I’m not crazy about that idea, in part because casinos stack the odds against customers. The house always wins. That’s unfair, even though casinos are transparent it.

If we’re going to finance public programs on the backs of the desperate, we at least ought to give our local pigeons fair odds. So, why not require Massachusetts casinos to pay out at odds that factor in no cut for the house? If there’s a 1:38 chance your number will come up at the roulette table, your winning number would be paid at 38:1, not 36:1. Even without their edge (5.26% in roulette), the casinos would make money selling food, liquor, lodging, parking, pay-per-porn in-room tv, and tickets to entertainers you thought died fifteen years ago.

Not only would this keep the state from profiting from an industry predicated on unfairness, it would also give Massachusetts casinos a competitive edge against the casinos in those other states. Why would you gamble in a place where the odds are stacked against you if you could instead “A mass more wealth in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts…the Fair Play State.”

[Tags: massachusetts gambling ]

6 Comments »

Poking around the photos the Library of Congress has posted at Flickr shows some of the strengths and weaknesses of social tagging.

For example, take this 1940 photo of two kids gathering potatoes in Maine. There are about 80 tags, ranging from potato, maine, and boys to rural, bucolic, plaid, browen, and pommes de terre. The comments include people appreciating the aesthetics of the photo, recollecting their own lives on farms, and nattering on gaily about the cute hats the kids are wearing. For example:

I grew up in southern Minnesota in the 50s. I was probably 5-6 yrs. old. In the fall after the potato fields had been harvested, they allowed people to come in and collect the potatoes that the machines had missed. I can still remember the cold cloudy day, playing with my brothers in the furrows of the field, throwing clods of dirt at each other, instead of picking up potatoes, and getting yelled at by my Mom.

and

this ‘human interest’ is really ‘awesome’ during the world war ll eras, you can survive eating potatoes in the whole year, wthout rice. potato a native of pacific slopes of s. america, in 16th c., with roundish or oval starch containing tubers used for food. batata or sweet potato, is widely known in the philippine island, brought to table and used for food. biggest plantation of potato in the philippines is in northern luzon.

Three people have played with Flickr’s feature that lets you draw a box around a portion of a photo and add an annotation. All three are wastes o’ time (obviously in my opinion): “I love these barrels” is not worth the visual interruption. (You only see the boxes if you move your mouse over the photos.) So maybe Flickr will turn these off for the LC photos. Maybe not. We’ll see.

Nevertheless, this is some very cool stuff. Sure, some of the tags are oddball. So what? In the great wash of tags, they will lose significance. Meanwhile, that photo of two children harvesting potatoes, which had been locked away behind brick and paper walls, now is in the world, gathering meaning, memories, and connections.

[Tags: library_of_congress flickr everything_is_miscellaneous tagging folksonomy taxonomy]

4 Comments »

Vista has an integrated Web server, but it’s off by default. If you want to use your machine as a Web server (I do because I use some javascripts that write to my hard drive and thus need to believe that my hard drive is the Web server they’re running on, and if this is stupid or incredibly insecure please don’t tell me because I think I’ll cry), you have to jump through some hoops.

Unfortunately, they’re invisible hoops. Fortunately, over a year ago, Blondr, in his very first post, explained how to do it, with words and screen captures. Incredibly helpful. And along the way, he even explains how to find the !@#$%-ing Web server control panel: Go to Run and type “InetMgr.exe.”

Once you have it running, pages are served up by default from C:\inetpub\wwwroot. I think. It looks like once you’re in the Web server manager (the IIS Manager), the left-hand panel lets you add sites and specify where those sites live on your hard drive, but I haven’t tried that yet.

Anyway, thanks Blondr! [Tags: tech vista web_server blondr]

6 Comments »

My unreliable MacBook has a brand new motherboard, thanks to The Computer Loft. Thank goodness, the intermittent failures intermitted while they were watching.

Much as I appreciate the loaner from the Berkman Center, I’ll be very glad to get my own back. Using a loaner feels like wearing someone else’s shoes. [Tags: macbook]

3 Comments »

Just received the following mass email mailing from the John Edwards campaign:

Dear david,

When it comes to protecting the rule of law, words are not enough. We need action.

It’s wrong for your government to spy on you. That’s why I’m asking you to join me today in calling on Senate Democrats to filibuster revisions to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would give “retroactive immunity” to the giant telecom companies for their role in aiding George W. Bush’s illegal eavesdropping on American citizens.

The Senate is debating this issue right now — which is why we must act right now. You can call your Senators here:

Edward M. Kennedy, (D): (202) 224-4543
John F. Kerry, (D): (202) 224-2742

Granting retroactive immunity is wrong. It will let corporate law-breakers off the hook. It will hamstring efforts to learn the truth about Bush’s illegal spying program. And it will flip on its head a core principle that has guided our nation since our founding: the belief that no one, no matter how well connected or what office they hold, is above the law.

But in Washington today, the telecom lobbyists have launched a full-court press for retroactive immunity. George Bush and Dick Cheney are doing everything in their power to ensure it passes. And too many Senate Democrats are ready to give the lobbyists and the Bush administration exactly what they want.

Please join me in calling on every Senate Democrat to do everything in their power — including joining Senator Dodd’s efforts to filibuster this legislation — to stop retroactive immunity and stand up for the rule of law. The Constitution should not be for sale at any price.

Thank you for taking action.

John Edwards
January 24, 2008

You can find your senators’ phone numbers here. (Disclosure: I sometimes get to talk wit the Edwards campaign about Net policy but had zero to do this with.) [Tags: telcos net_neutrality politics john_edwards ]

4 Comments »