Technology | voxygen.net

Outside the interface

By ~LS~ On February 25, 2012 · Add Comment · In Politics, Technology, The Web and tagged Tagged With: Interface Value, Marc Prensky, Rhetoric, Technoculture, Technology, Twitch speed

Today I opened something somewhere and got another nag message from Google about its new privacy policy. The nag message invited me to “dismiss” it, a language choice that reflects a mildly amusing and disturbing political and interpersonal frame that we’ve developed with internet computing. Perhaps my amusement about being nagged over privacy derives from my almost-divorced status, but that is neither here nor there.

I’m not going to waste time knifing through the current policy change. The short version: it will consolidate the privacy options for multiple Google services into one statement to accept or reject with one click of a button, all for the sake of clarity and simplicity. Bundled privacy, in other words. I’ll get back to Google first, but I want to talk about the issue of interface. This will be a branching, circuitous route, so bear with me.

Sherry Turkle’s [...]

Read Full Article →

Where’s Neil Postman when you need him?

By ~LS~ On January 22, 2011 · 2 Comments · In Pedagogy, Rhetoric, Technology, The Web and tagged Tagged With: Books, Computer, Generations, Media Ecology, Pedagogy, Rhetoric, Technoculture, Technology

I’m contemplating teaching Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death in my Introduction to Humanities class this semester, particularly Chapter 4 (“The Typographic Mind”). I don’t feel like scanning the chapter and I couldn’t find a pdf or doc online to use. Then it occurred to me that my students in all likelihood won’t read anything anyway, so why waste time scanning a document in the first place. I began to look for Sparknotes. I know, I’m bankrupt as an educator. At least I opted not to show the seventh grade history teacher’s youtube version of the Renaissance. I should get props for that.

Anyway, in my surfing, I ran into an amusing exchange on a forum. I don’t think the people involved were amused. I was, though, but in a depressing and ironic way. The exchange is started by a desperate student trying to locate a free copy of the [...]

Read Full Article →

Gratitude for copy machines

By ~LS~ On November 13, 2009 · Add Comment · In Technology and tagged Tagged With: For Wordies, Gratitudes, Technoculture, Technology

A current facebook meme is to post a gratitude in your status. Today I am grateful for copy machines. I have to return comments on group projects to students today and I don’t have to rewrite the comments for each student. I can simply copy them on my magical combo printer/fax machine/copier/scanner. This morning I remembered the days where this sort of task was impossible.

I remember carbon paper, ditto machines, and mimeographs. I remember members of the academic generation before mine telling me that they had to type their dissertations on carbon paper and store copies in the freezer to ensure they would survive a fire. Editing and revising under those circumstances were herculean. Carbon paper gave us the origin of the phrase carbon copy. Does anyone use that term anymore?

I remember my life as a work-study student where making copies was the bulk of the [...]

Read Full Article →

Random Musings – Gen Y Goes to College

By ~LS~ On June 26, 2008 · Add Comment · In Generations, Pedagogy, Random Musings, The Web and tagged Tagged With: BRCC, Generations, Goals, Information Literacy, Teaching Speech, Technoculture, Technology

There’s a great article in Slate by Michael Agger a couple of weeks ago about how we read on the web. Apparently we don’t really read as much as skim. This is based on interesting research cited in the article. My website doesn’t really fit the guidelines that ‘experts’ advocate in order to retain audiences. There’s also a great article in this month’s the Atlantic Monthly, Is Google Making Us Stupid, which takes a media ecology approach to the web, citing the Phaedrus, McLuhan, and Mumford, among others. The article was a long column, which I had to scroll over, and it didn’t have any bullet points, so I only skimmed it! No, kidding. I read it. He makes the standard argument that all critics of new media do, we are losing our ability to think linearly, critically, and substantively. He concludes by saying, “as we come to [...]

Read Full Article →

Outside the interface

Where’s Neil Postman when you need him?

Gratitude for copy machines

Random Musings – Gen Y Goes to College

Categories

Archives

Blogroll

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Meta

Catch me if you can!

Outside the interface

Where’s Neil Postman when you need him?

Gratitude for copy machines

Random Musings – Gen Y Goes to College

Categories

Archives

Tags

Blogroll

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Meta

Catch me if you can!