A book talk with professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger who examines the technology that is facilitating the end of forgetting in his book, “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age“. Mayer-Schönberger argues that in our quest for perfect digital memories where we can store everything from recipes and family photographs to work emails and personal information, weve put ourselves in danger of losing a very human quality—the ability and privilege of forgetting.
Google is hosting a forum on Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age on Oct. 27-28, 2010. Didn’t get an invitation? See below for details on tweeting questions and listening to a live stream of the talks.
Forty years after the “War on Poverty” and twenty-five years after “A Nation at Risk,” a new forum has been designed to advance a new paradigm for learning by harnessing the largely untapped potential of digital media. Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age will bring together 200 of the nation’s top thought leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, research, philanthropy, and policy to create and act upon a breakthrough strategy for scaling-up effective models of teaching and learning for children. The forum will showcase cutting edge research, proven and promising models to challenge decision-makers in key sectors to help “refresh and reboot” American global leadership in education.
Please get involved in the Breakthrough Learning discussion by posting your questions, reading our blog and becoming part of our Twitter community!
And if you can’t make it to the event, please be sure to watch the live broadcasts on October 27th and October 28th.
Tim O’Reilly: The Twitter Book: Co-written by Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media, and one of Twitter’s most-followed thought leaders, with more than 250,000 followers, this practical guide will help you: * Get comfortable using Twitter, whether you’re a new user or already have some experience with it * Learn all aspects of this service quickly, with full-color illustrations on every spread * Make the most of Twitter, with advice and ideas for using the best third-party tools * Determine how Twitter can help your business, with a special chapter on viral marketing.
TED Talk: At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?
Kevin Kelly has been publisher of the Whole Earth Review, exec editor at WIRED, founder of visionary nonprofits, and writer on biology and business and “cool tools.” He’s admired for his new perspectives on technology and its relevance to history, biology and religion. Read more.
You should be able to carry all your relationships around via social networking sites. This is where we’re heading. You have to be OPEN to having your data shared which is a bigger step than sharing your webpage.
We’re heading toward the internet of things. Total personalization requires total transparency.
Our dependency is nothing to be afraid of. Look at our dependency on the alphabet and writing—a technology that changed our lives
WE are the web and it’s getting smarter, more personalized, ubiquitous
This machine/large organism is more reliable than its parts
One machine. The web is its OS. All screens look inside the ONE. Let the one read it. The one is us. We are in the one.
eMarketer reports that, according to the “Consumer Internet Barometer,” the majority of Twitter users (42%) use the service to communicate with their friends. About 29% use Twitter to update their status, 26% to find news, and 21% for work-related reasons. Oddly, only 0.3% said that they use Twitter for fun. Significantly more women use Twitter to keep in touch with friends than men (48.4% vs. 33.6%). Besides this, though, there is little difference between how men and women use the service. About half of the survey respondents were introduced to the service by a friend or family member, and a third heard about Twitter from a co-worker.
… These numbers clearly show that users under 35 are far more comfortable with the idea of publicly broadcasting their status, while older users tend to have a slightly more utilitarian approach to the service. Read more
According to the numbers, the top reasons for joining a social network across all generations are to “keep in touch with friends” and “for fun.” However, as expected, older users are primarily using the site to keep in touch with family.
Generation Z users (13 to 14 years old) use MySpace and Facebook more than any other site in the study by a long shot, with Facebook slightly trailing behind MySpace at 61% to 65%. 9% of this group use Twitter, and none use LinkedIn.
75% of Generation Y users (15 to 29 years old) use MySpace compared to Facebook at 65%. Usage of Twitter (14%) and LinkedIn was up for this group. Respondents in the Generation X (30 to 44 years old), baby boomers (44 to 65 years old), and the WWII categories are more likely to use Facebook, followed by MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In other words, Facebook is becoming a popular site among the older generations – but the more telling stats here would be on growth and engagement.
The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called “orphan works” that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. It need not have been this way.
This workshop seeks to bring a fresh, unique perspective to a complex and widely debated topic. It will focus not on the specific merits and demerits of the settlement itself, or the particular antitrust and privacy and other objections that have been raised. Instead, it will examine the idea of possible alternative universes and offer specific proposals for scenarios that may arise whether or not the settlement is approved. What can libraries, or universities, or non-profits, or Congress, do in the current landscape? And how might these possibilities help us to define a better world than the one that we have today and, more importantly, than the one that will exist if the Google settlement is approved in its current form? Regardless of what happens with respect to the Settlement, what alternative possibilities could lead to a richer, more open and better information ecosystem than the one we have today or might have tomorrow with the Settlement?
By exploring these alternatives, this workshop seeks, in the end, to help inform the debate over the Settlement and its terms and to illuminate some of the key policy considerations that are at stake. Its ultimate goal is to develop a series of options and proposals that could improve on the status quo in novel ways.
When the University of the People launches this fall, the learning model will be based on social media and networking, and the tuition will be free. Founder Shai Resheff discussed the concept on WBUR’s Here and Now:
“The University of the People” is the brainchild of Israeli entrepreneur Shai Resheff. It’s doors open this fall. Resheff says the school is tuition-free — it charges students for tests, and the amount depends on where you live. Professors, he says, are eager to volunteer their time, and he envisions a school where students teach students using online social media sites. Listen now.
Universal McCann has released a new report that looks at the state of social media today. Apparently, this trend is showing no sign of slowing down. In fact, it’s still growing. From posting photos to writing blogs, the desire to share has become a universal phenomenon. However, the latest report shows that internet users are beginning to now center their digital life around social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut, choosing to share their content within these sites instead of on services with a single focus, like Blogger or Flickr.
After four surveys of active internet users, a group whose total estimated global audience is now 625 million (or one in thirteen of people worldwide!), UM found that the usage of social networks is on the rise. For example, 76% of social network users upload photos and 33% upload videos – percentages that were up from 45% and 16.9%, respectively, as noted in UM’s previous report released in spring of last year.
The new report also found that social networking is not a niche activity. Nearly two-thirds of internet users have spent time managing their online profiles. Also, 96% of active social network users have visited their friends’ pages. And these numbers can be taken to the bank. UM questioned 22,729 active internet users in 38 countries between November 2008 and March 2009 to deliver what is the largest global analysis of social media we have seen to date. Read more
The Canadian Internet Project (CIP) provides comprehensive information on how Canadians use the Internet, emerging technologies and traditional media and how they feel about them, As an ongoing longitudinal study, CIP compares patterns and trends over time.
