Graphical Displays, Statistics, and Thinking Straight — "Picturing the Uncertain World"
Simplifying the complex isn’t a simple task. A new book by a practiced hand and statistician proves entertaining and enlightening.
Does Access Create New Types of Scarcity?
A compelling essay points out some interesting wrinkles to the access debate.
Old and Busted: Facebook for Scientists — The New Hotness? eBay for Scientists
Hitting the wallet, watch, and workload makes more sense, but Science Exchange still has some details to iron out.
Software and the Audience of Audiences — Is Academic Passivity Inhibiting Cultural Change?
The world is changing. Is academic culture an artificial and unhelpful cap on inevitable and productive innovation in communication potentialities? Or is there a failure of leadership?
Is "Dissemination" Mission-Worthy Anymore?
Dissemination may be necessary but not sufficient as an element of an information mission in today’s world.
What Happens to Your Online Social Self . . . After You Die
What happens to your online persona after you die? A surprising number of people are thinking about this.
The Power of Language, the Choice to Share Ideas Widely, and Why Humans Have Prospered
A bizarre evolutionary scenario gave us the most powerful tool nature has ever created.
The Good, the Bad, and the Sexy: Our Espresso Book Machine Experience
Being an early adopter of an Espresso Book Machine has its price and rewards.
The Human Spirograph Visits the National Academy of Sciences
Patterns drawn by a man on his stomach. Only by seeing and listening did I realize how inspired his approach truly is.
Does "The Price of Typos" Justify the Price of Remaining Focused on Print?
The price of typos exists, but the price of not seeing solutions that are right in front of you could be higher.
Patterns In and Across Aggregated Data — Is "Anonymous" Collaborative Filtering Really Safe?
New research demonstrates that there’s a decent likelihood that your data exhaust can be used to find out sensitive things about you.
Dyslexie — A New Typeface Cleverly Designed to Help Dyslexics Read
The alphabet, as redesigned to help dyslexics achieve lower reading error-rates than their non-dyslexic counterparts.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Clay Shirky? Or, Silicon Valley Discovers Impact Factor
Boiling down the social Web to create a measure of influence? Not as easy as it looks.
Revisiting PressForward – A Good Idea Facing an Uphill Battle
PressForward has a lot of potential, but a lot of potential barriers to overcome. How it fares will depend on how much the larger culture of academia is interested in change.
The Demand for Convenience — Attention Scarcity Reverses the Equations of Publishing
Convenience is a major driver of content usage. But what other changes are afoot that feed into this amorphous concept of “convenience”?