Technology

Librarian Ian Linkletter remains one of Proctorio’s biggest critics after 5-year legal battle

He got sued for sharing public YouTube videos; nightmare ended in settlement

The more that Linkletter researched Proctorio, the more concerned he became. Taking to then-Twitter, he posted a series of seven tweets over a couple days that linked to YouTube videos that Proctorio hosted in its help center. He felt the videos—which showed how Proctorio flagged certain behaviors, tracked “abnormal” eye and head movements, and scanned rooms—helped demonstrate why students were so upset. And while he had fewer than 1,000 followers, he hoped that the influential higher education administrators who followed him would see his posts and consider dropping the tech.

November 21, 2025 by Librarians Technology

Generative AI makes it harder to teach humanistic skills

AI makes the humanities more important, but also a lot weirder

But in the longer run, the damage is being done to students. By making effort an optional factor in higher education rather than the whole point of it, LLMs risk producing a generation of students who have simply never experienced the feeling of focused intellectual work. Students who have never faced writer’s block are also students who have never experienced the blissful flow state that comes when you break through writer’s block. Students who have never searched fruitlessly in a library for hours are also students who, in a fundamental and distressing way, simply don’t know what a library is even for.

October 21, 2025 by Technology

ode to libraries (the book ones)

Not just for working. Use it for thinking, for reconnecting, writing or creating. The library is a sanctuary where your mind slows down, even though the world outside keeps running. Maybe you’ve been postponing to think, to reflect, to spend time by yourself, like I did before I discovered my local library. You’ll find some kind of joy and productivity in there. We don’t have so many pure-good organizations in our world. We should appreciate them while we still have them.

ode to libraries (the book ones)

September 26, 2025 by Libraries Public Libraries Technology

The EdTech Revolution Has Failed – by Jared Cooney Horvath

The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

The fact that dozens of meta-analyses comprising thousands of calculated effect sizes has done little to quell excitement over digital technology in education suggests that we may be dealing less with an issue of evidence and more with an issue of wishful thinking. So let’s step back from the data and explore why it is that digital technology in students’ hands may be doing more harm than good.

November 12, 2024 by Technology

Guided by Vices

Guided by Vices

The biggest social platforms are fond of reminding us about how they facilitate connections and help us communicate around the world. They are a little bit like a digital third place. And, just as you would not hang out somewhere that was actively trying to sabotage your ability to chat with your friends in real life, it is hard to know why you would do so online, either. Happily, where Google and Meta and X exhaust me with their choices, there are a wealth of new ideas that bring back joy.

October 15, 2024 by Internet Technology

Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App – The Atlantic

Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App

It’s enough to drive you crazy, which is a process you can also track with apps for mental health, such as Headspace and Calm. Lots of apps are aiming to help you feel your best. My iPhone comes with Apple Health, but you might also find yourself with Garmin or Strava or maybe Peloton if you’re into that, or whichever app you need to scan into your local gym, or Under Armour, a polyester-shirt app that is also a jogging app. The MyChart app may help you reach a subset of your doctors and check a portion of your medical-test results. As for the rest? Different apps!

October 4, 2024 by Technology

Meta smart glasses can be used to dox anyone in seconds, study finds

Meta smart glasses can be used to dox anyone in seconds, study finds

Opt out of PimEyes now, students warn
For Nguyen and Ardayfio, the point of the project was to persuade people to opt out of invasive search engines to protect their privacy online. An attempt to use I-XRAY to identify 404 Media reporter Joseph Cox, for example, didn’t work because he’d opted out of PimEyes.

But while privacy is clearly important to the students and their demo video strove to remove identifying information, at least one test subject was “easily” identified anyway, 404 Media reported. That test subject couldn’t be reached for comment, 404 Media reported.

October 2, 2024 by Internet Privacy Technology

Libraries on Maryland’s Eastern Shore Have Been Detoured From the Information Highway

That should be “Super Highway” shouldn’t it?

Libraries on Maryland’s Eastern Shore Have Been Detoured From the Information Highway

Libraries across Maryland are operating without internet access. An underground fire in Baltimore interrupted service and has sent libraries on the Eastern Shore back to doing things the old-fashioned way.

“It’s almost every Maryland public library that is affected today,” said Talbot Library Director Dana Newman. “I heard Talbot County Government and Talbot County Public Schools are also impacted because they’re on that same network.”

October 1, 2024 by Internet Libraries School Libraries Technology

GPT-fabricated scientific papers on Google Scholar: Key features, spread, and implications for preempting evidence manipulation

GPT-fabricated scientific papers on Google Scholar

Academic journals, archives, and repositories are seeing an increasing number of questionable research papers clearly produced using generative AI. They are often created with widely available, general-purpose AI applications, most likely ChatGPT, and mimic scientific writing. Google Scholar easily locates and lists these questionable papers alongside reputable, quality-controlled research. Our analysis of a selection of questionable GPT-fabricated scientific papers found in Google Scholar shows that many are about applied, often controversial topics susceptible to disinformation: the environment, health, and computing. The resulting enhanced potential for malicious manipulation of society’s evidence base, particularly in politically divisive domains, is a growing concern.

September 16, 2024 by AI Google Publishing Technology

Why a ruling against the Internet Archive threatens the future of America’s libraries

Why a ruling against the Internet Archive threatens the future of America%u2019s librariesThe decision locks libraries into an ecosystem that is not in readers; interests. Congress must act.

This decision harms libraries. It locks them into an e-book ecosystem designed to extract as much money as possible while harvesting (and reselling) reader data en masse. It leaves local communities’ reading habits at the mercy of curatorial decisions made by four dominant publishing companies thousands of miles away. It steers Americans away from one of the few remaining bastions of privacy protection and funnels them into a surveillance ecosystem that, like Big Tech, becomes more dangerous with each passing data breach. And by increasing the price for access to knowledge, it puts up even more barriers between underserved communities and the American dream.

September 11, 2024 by Archives Books EBooks Internet Legal Issues Libraries Privacy Technology

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