One of the most powerful ways to reimagine the status quo is to engage in lateral thinking. When you combine this practice with the insight that we think and speak in metaphors (even though this is difficult to recognize because […]
A recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education covers the 2008 meeting of the Association of Learned Societies meeting, held last week in Pittsburgh, PA. It’s interesting reading, given the tenor of our times. Academic freedom is a major […]
A great video on YouTube shows what it would be like if Facebook were made real. It’s very funny and a little bawdy by my prudish American standards, so don’t watch with your kids, and turn your speakers down to […]
Skeptics keep you honest, and should be celebrated. A skeptic about Web 2.0 is David Crotty, author of the Cold Spring Harbor Protocols blog “Benchmarks.” In a recent post, he pointed me to a review of Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes […]
Last week, I wrote about the new “racetrack memory” described in a recent Science paper. The commercial application of such high-capacity devices naturally falls toward high-demand media like music and movies. An interesting tangent of this is that while the […]
Last Friday, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story about the emerging anti-plagiarism software marketplace, with CrossRef’s CrossCheck spotlighted. It’s a good story that broadens nicely upon the CrossCheck angle. Defining plagiarism is potentially fraught with difficulty, but it […]
The New York Times broke the news yesterday that Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Sage Publications are suing Georgia State for copyright infringement via distribution of digital coursepacks. Georgia State alleges that their use falls within “fair use,” […]
Image via Wikipedia On March 31, the Section 108 Study Group released their report and recommendations, three years in the making. The Study Group was convened to make recommendations to the U.S. Copyright Office. Mostly, the recommendations revolve around a […]
I have to confess to a sick joy. I find the blog MagazineDeathPool.com full of dark humor and interesting news, even if it is a bit twisted. It’s also very funny and informative. Written by Grim, an anonymous magazine editor […]
In recent months, a lot of new citation approaches have landed in my email box. Alternatives and tangents seem to have arisen amidst angst about the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and their traditional impact factor. (Note to ironists: displeasure […]
The mainstream media may be registering the revolution, but is it too late? A recent New York Times story reveals in all its glory how younger readers parse news through social media. One focus group participant is quoted saying, “If […]
In a superb article by Eric Alterman, the New Yorker has assessed the state of American newspapers, and the rise of the Huffington Post. The (r)evolution is viewed through the lenses of Walter Lippmann‘s debates with John Dewey in the […]
A federal judge’s decision this month (reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education) cleared plagiarism-detection tool Turnitin of charges that it violates student copyrights, even though it stores digital copies of their papers. An appeal will likely be filed. The […]
The March 2008 issue of the online journal First Monday is entitled, “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0.” It’s worth a look. Some pieces are especially provocative, including “Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation,” “Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance,” […]
The New York Times reports that Google has unveiled a new search trick, allowing users on Google to search within a specific site and generate results without visiting that site. Google sells ads against this additional captive traffic, sometimes for […]