July 2013

Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection

Book: Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection

A rousing call to action for those who would be citizens of the world—online and off.

We live in an age of connection, one that is accelerated by the Internet. This increasingly ubiquitous, immensely powerful technology often leads us to assume that as the number of people online grows, it inevitably leads to a smaller, more cosmopolitan world. We’ll understand more, we think. We’ll know more. We’ll engage more and share more with people from other cultures. In reality, it is easier to ship bottles of water from Fiji to Atlanta than it is to get news from Tokyo to New York.

In Rewire, media scholar and activist Ethan Zuckerman explains why the technological ability to communicate with someone does not inevitably lead to increased human connection. At the most basic level, our human tendency to “flock together” means that most of our interactions, online or off, are with a small set of people with whom we have much in common. In examining this fundamental tendency, Zuckerman draws on his own work as well as the latest research in psychology and sociology to consider technology’s role in disconnecting ourselves from the rest of the world.

Book: Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection

A rousing call to action for those who would be citizens of the world—online and off.

We live in an age of connection, one that is accelerated by the Internet. This increasingly ubiquitous, immensely powerful technology often leads us to assume that as the number of people online grows, it inevitably leads to a smaller, more cosmopolitan world. We’ll understand more, we think. We’ll know more. We’ll engage more and share more with people from other cultures. In reality, it is easier to ship bottles of water from Fiji to Atlanta than it is to get news from Tokyo to New York.

In Rewire, media scholar and activist Ethan Zuckerman explains why the technological ability to communicate with someone does not inevitably lead to increased human connection. At the most basic level, our human tendency to “flock together” means that most of our interactions, online or off, are with a small set of people with whom we have much in common. In examining this fundamental tendency, Zuckerman draws on his own work as well as the latest research in psychology and sociology to consider technology’s role in disconnecting ourselves from the rest of the world.

For those who seek a wider picture—a picture now critical for survival in an age of global economic crises and pandemics—Zuckerman highlights the challenges, and the headway already made, in truly connecting people across cultures. From voracious xenophiles eager to explore other countries to bridge figures who are able to connect one culture to another, people are at the center of his vision for a true kind of cosmopolitanism. And it is people who will shape a new approach to existing technologies, and perhaps invent some new ones, that embrace translation, cross-cultural inspiration, and the search for new, serendipitous experiences.

Rich with Zuckerman’s personal experience and wisdom, Rewire offers a map of the social, technical, and policy innovations needed to more tightly connect the world.

Google’s Data-Trove Dance

Internal Debates Arise Over Using Collected Information and Protecting Privacy.
After much wrangling and many attempts to build the “slider” tool, whose three main settings were nicknamed “kitten,” “cat” and “tiger,” the idea was abandoned last year, according to people familiar with the matter. Because Google has so many Web services that operate differently, executives found it impossible to reduce privacy controls to so few categories, these people said. Also, allowing people to select the maximum-protection setting, known as the “tin-foil-hat option,” went against Google’s newer efforts to get more people to share information about themselves on the Google+ social-networking service, they said.

The Ghost Of Melvil Dewey Haunts The Web

Unfortunately, far too many websites feature an information architecture and content strategy more akin to the Dewey Decimal System then to today’s users needs. Dewey’s classification of books into searchable sections of the library was an excellent service for researchers and library lovers, but it’s a poor match for the online organization of information.

The categorical approach inspired by the Dewey Decimal System forces website visitors to spend more time and effort trying to figure out how what they want to learn fits into pre-assigned categories. Let’s face it—patience isn’t much of a virtue online. Web users want what they want, when they want it. There is no tolerance for designs that force them to forage from section to section. If users can’t get their questions answered quickly, they leave.
4 Tips From Google To Make Your Website More Compelling

MIT Didn’t Target Swartz; Missed ‘Wider Background’

Aaron Swartz, an advocate for open access to academic journals, committed suicide in January after being charged with hacking into MIT computers and illegally downloading nearly 5 million academic journal articles from JSTOR, one of the largest digital archives of scholarly journals in the world. At the time of Swartz’s death, the 26-year-old faced 13 federal felony computer fraud charges — and the near certainty of jail time.

In this NPR blog All Tech Considered, MIT denied “targeting” the programmer and claimed no wrongdoing. But the report raises concerns about existing university policies and whether MIT should have been actively involved in supporting Swartz.

Call for Speakers Open – Computers in Libraries 2014

Hack the Library!
http://infotoday.com/cil2014/
This is your chance to share your ideas!
Deadline is September 16, 2013

Information Today, Inc., a key provider of technology conferences for more than thirty years with Internet Librarian and KMWorld, is pleased to announce the 29th annual Computers in Libraries – the most comprehensive North American conference and exhibition concentrating all aspects of library technology.

Our theme, Hack the Library!, highlights the creative solutions, technologies and practices that those working with computers in libraries or libraries in computers are dealing with today. Libraries are changing – building creative spaces with learning commons and makerspaces; engaging audiences in different ways with community managers and embedded librarians; advocating for learning and literacy in new and exciting ways.

The focus of the conference is on leading edge technology that allows us to engage with, and bring strategic value to, our user communities. It provides the latest information and practices for you to make informed choices for your community — whether it is an academic, corporate, non-profit, public, or school library community.

If you would like to participate in Computers in Libraries 2014 as a speaker or workshop leader, please submit a proposal as soon as possible (September 16, 2013 at the very latest).

OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

How TCP/IP eclipsed the Open Systems Interconnection standards to become the global protocol for computer networking
Beyond these simplistic declarations of “success” and “failure,” OSI’s history holds important lessons that engineers, policymakers, and Internet users should get to know better. Perhaps the most important lesson is that “openness” is full of contradictions. OSI brought to light the deep incompatibility between idealistic visions of openness and the political and economic realities of the international networking industry. And OSI eventually collapsed because it could not reconcile the divergent desires of all the interested parties. What then does this mean for the continued viability of the open Internet?