As we learn more on an almost daily basis about the growing power and influence of social media and Facebook in particular, Alison Mudditt spoke recently with Siva Vaidhyanathan about the intricate relationship between media and democracy, and the critical role that cultural institutions – including scholarship, publishers and libraries – need to play in countering this pernicious hold on our attention.
Is copyright infringement malum prohibitum (wrong only because it’s prohibited) or malum in se (morally wrong in and of itself)? Interestingly, scholcomm commentators and legal reference materials often characterize it as the former–while both statute and case law treat it like the latter, classifying it as “property theft” and regularly awarding its victims both statutory and punitive damages.
Haggling for cheaper content today will certainly have hidden and unpleasant costs — large and small — down the road.
John Linton offers his thoughts on diversity, perspective, and the need for empathy.
These powerful testimonies, by people of color, about their experience of racism in scholarly publishing, clearly show that we have “a great deal of powerful and humbling work to do” to address racism and the white-dominated culture of our industry.
In part 2 of Nancy Roberts’ and Phill Jones’ collaboration, Nancy, the founder of Business Inclusivity lays out the starting point for an emerging manifesto on diversity based on the recent workshop at the Researcher to Reader conference.
At the end of February, Nancy Roberts of Business Inclusivity and I co-organized a workshop on diversity for the Researcher to Reader conference. In this post I explore my motivations for doing so and talk about why I think so few men seem comfortable participating in these discussions.
Techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufecki provides a stark view of the potential future of artificial intelligence (AI) and the possible dystopia toward which we are heading.
In honour of International Women’s Day, Time’s Up, #MeToo, and a range of recent initiatives trying to tackle equality in the workplace, Charlie Rapple provides thoughts on how to avoid inappropriate comments and behaviors that unintentionally give offense.
A recent study of the spread of lies on Twitter is an important advance, but the authors missed a potentially huge factor, and one we can’t ignore.
We continue to battle the tidal wave of data with a bucket brigade of individual privacy settings. Maybe it’s time to pause and consider a state-level solution, ala Estonia.
In this update, the focus shifts to the value journal publishers offer, and who benefits.
There are various ways that customers get locked in to services in scholarly communications. These methods are longed for by publishers and disliked by customers, but they naturally emerge as a part of the economy.
A new book explores how biases and broken systems get built into technology products and platforms.
2017 may have been a watershed year for the Internet and its future. What did we learn? And what factors may shape 2018?