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Leaning into online struggles
Oct 17, 2011 | Self, Top Posts of 2011: Personal
The fourth time I got a call from the principal's office, I knew I had to rethink our school year. One of our kids was having a tough time in class, and I had already made several visits to the teacher, the classroom and the principal's office. Not only was I worried...
Internet researchers tackle the future of reading & publishing at AOIR
Oct 13, 2011 | Career
True confession: I treat conference panels as competitive events. Whenever I'm participating in a multi-speaker panel my secret goal is to "win" the panel. This doesn't mean I try to take down my fellow panellists: it's not like wrestling or ice hockey, where you've...
10 myths about ethnography, from Tom Boellstorff
Oct 12, 2011 | Career
This post originally appeared on the SIM Centre website. There was a lot to love about anthropologist Tom Boellstorff's dynamic, thought-provoking keynote to the Association of Internet Researchers. But I figured that my design colleagues, many of whom use...
Social e-books as online communities, for AOIR 2011
Oct 11, 2011 | Community
Tomorrow I'm off to the conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, an event I've always wanted to attend and this time actually get to present to! I'm part of a session on Books and Publishing, where I will be talking about the e-book research I am now...
Pastebin highlights the relationship between technology and political change
Oct 10, 2011 | Community
Today's New York Times has a must-read article by Noam Cohen about the role of Pastebin in Occupy Wall Street. Pastebin is a site that is primarily used by programmers; it's a way to store, share and retrieve snippets of code. You might use Pastebin to share the...
Imagining innovation in the Google era
Oct 7, 2011 | Community
Neal Stephenson has written an important essay, Innovation Starvation, which I discovered via Ron Burnett. In it he grapples with the decline in world-changing inventions, and focuses particularly on the potential role of science fiction as an inspiration for...
#RIPSteve
Oct 6, 2011 | Community
We live and love online because Steve Jobs saw that technology could satisfy not only our brains, but also our hearts. Read the rest in my blog post for Harvard Business Review, Steve Jobs, Father of Social Media.
Steve Jobs in 10 Infographics
Oct 5, 2011 | Community
Steve Jobs is the rare tech innovator who will be remembered as much for his aesthetics as for contributions to functionality. No wonder that so much of his legacy can be captured graphically: 1. The history For an at-a-glance overview of the intertwined histories of...
Can smartphones create stillness?
Oct 4, 2011 | Career
If you want to learn something about stillness, visit a kindergarten class. I spent about 45 minutes with Little Peanut and his classmates today, and it gave me a whole new perspective on quiet -- or the lack thereof. In the half-hour in which these 19 kids were in...
10 early warning signs that you need to decrease (or increase) your time online
Oct 3, 2011 | Self
Yesterday I received what I accurately diagnosed as the Best Error Message Ever: Being a deeply religious person, I figured that an error message this…ummm…ironic? apt? transcendant?…must be some kind of sign from the universe. At first I thought it might be a sign to...