Last month’s outcry over the change and then quick reversal in Facebook’s Terms of Service proved that users will demand an active role in control over their own information. It brought to the forefront the issue of our digital dossiers. My digital dossier compromises of much more than a Facebook profile of course – in [...]

Last Thursday, Alex and I were lucky enough to be interviewed by Steve Hargadon for the Future of Education interview series. The experience was quite remarkable, in a number of ways; our conversation felt a like a tele-unconference, with everyone bringing ideas and energy and questions to the table, thoughtfully pursuing answers. The [...]

I’m going to wax lyrical about the humble hyperlink – it’s quite remarkable where just clicking links can take you sometimes! One of my favorite blogs is Nerdcore, partly because its mishmash of German and English keeps me up on my German while throwing me a few lines of English when I get stuck. Plus, [...]

Just yesterday, we got word that Born Digital — written by DN’s own John Palfrey and Urs Gasser — was named one of Library Journal’s “Best Science and Technology Books of 2008.” This is quite an honor, particularly since it’s the only book to appear in the Computer Science category!
We were especially excited to see [...]

If you just skim the headlines, it seems like we might be screwed: “Social websites harm children’s brains: Chilling warnings to parents from top neuroscientist,” “Facebook and Bebo risk ‘infantilising the human mind: Greenfield warns social networking sites are changing children’s brains, resulting in selfish and attention deficient young people,” “Oxford Scientist: Facebook Might Ruin [...]

How viable is the digital classroom?
I’ve only ever approached this question from the perspective of a student. For me, it’s always been a personal question rather than a policy decision. It’s taken four (four!) years of college to get things straight: will I really be able to devote my full attention to a [...]

What a week for controversy! As the hubbub over Facebook’s of terms of services is dying down, Tumblr just weathered its own round of controversy over its ToS. Tumblr hasn’t permeated the mainstream as much as Facebook, but it’s remarkable how much the situations mirror each other. In both cases, a sudden top-down policy decision [...]

Over the past few days, my information sphere (comprising a haphazard cross-section of RSS feeds, Twitter, and Tumblr) has been dominated by one slightly alarming piece of news: Facebook has changed its Terms of Service. And now it has the rights to everything, ever.
“Everything, ever” might be an exaggeration, but it’s not much of [...]

Our blogging colleagues over at Snarkmarket are publishing a book, and they’ve issued a challenge to the blogosphere: invent the new liberal arts.
The challenge, from their post on the project:
It’s 2009. A generation of digital natives is careening towards college. The economy is rebooting itself weekly. We have new responsibilities now — as employees, citizens, [...]

Last week, Sarah wrote about experiencing President Obama’s inauguration online. “I wasn’t standing in the middle of an animated crowd,” she wrote, “but watching a stream of my friend’s statuses placed me amidst an equally excited digital crowd.” For Sarah, watching the inauguration online was a fitting end to an ambitiously digital presidential [...]