Speculations on the company's contribution to moral philosophy
Last week, another distasteful use of your personal information by Google came to light: The company plans to attach your name and likeness to advertisements delivered across its products without your permission. As happens every time the search giant does something unseemly, Google's plan to turn its users into unwitting endorsers has inspired a new round of jabs at Google's… read more
These days, Apple is more properly thought of as a fashion label, not an electronics company.
When Apple launched the iPhone 4 in 2010, the company’s website featured large images of the device with the text “This changes everything. Again.” Change has been a constant refrain in Apple’s marketing over the years. The famous 1984 Macintosh ads framed the computer as an agent of revolution. And the “Think Different” ads of the 1990s implied that purchasing… read more
The "cool" origins of flipping
Last week I published an essay on the flipped classroom, arguing that condensation and abstraction might be better descriptions of what happens in such a classroom than flipping. I suggested that the flipped classroom is intimately connected to MOOCs and other educational efficiency measures, and that a truly flipped classroom would work more like a seminar than like an assessment… read more
Op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Everyone’s been there: you’re having a face-to-face conversation when your interlocutor reaches for her smartphone. Just as often you’re the culprit: pawing your iPhone at family dinner, stealing glances at Facebook during a business meeting. It took fifty years for computers to move from office basements to handbags, and scarcely five more for them to enter our pockets. Now we… read more
"Flipped" classrooms don't invert traditional learning so much as abstract it
Some promote MOOCS as the future of lower-cost higher eduction, while others lament them a solutionist privatization of educational practice. Despite the polarization, both MOOCs and flipped classrooms enjoyed positive mentions last week from President Obama, who announced a White House plan to make college more affordable: A rising tide of innovation has the potential to shake up the higher… read more
MOOCs scale for bankers and industrialists, not for students
You might want to read this New York Times article about Georgia Tech’s new online masters degree in computer science. The article is pretty good, reasonably balanced, and looks at the issue from (almost) all sides. Notable side missing, as usual: what students think. Anyway, I’ve said enough about this whole MOOC thing, but I did want to highlight one… read more
Resignation beyond sorrow on the Facebook Platform and beyond
In recent weeks, Facebook has been sending emails imploring me to complete a survey about how they might improve their development platform. I’d been deleting the messages, but after the third request or so, I decided to click through. For those lucky enough to have avoided it, the Facebook Platform is a set of tools and services that allows developers… read more
A roundtable at the LA Review of Books
On June 14-15, 2013, the LA Review of Books hosted a two-part roundtable on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS). Participants included me, Cathy N. Davidson, Al Filreis, and Ray Schroeder. Below is my contribution to part two, which included responses to the statements in part one (which you can find here; this response won’t make much sense unless you read… read more
A roundtable at the LA Review of Books
On June 14-15, 2013, the LA Review of Books hosted a two-part roundtable on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS). Participants included me, Cathy N. Davidson, Al Filreis, and Ray Schroeder. Below is my contribution to part one, which included initial statements by each of the participa. Part two will include responses to these statements. Please visit the LARB website to… read more
An essay and book series on the hidden lives of things
Earlier this week we launched Object Lessons, an essay and book series on the hidden lives of ordinary objects, published by The Atlantic and Bloomsbury and edited by me and Chris Schaberg. We’ve been working on getting this going for months, and I’m excited to finally be able to unleash it on you. Here’s how it works: Object Lessons invites… read more