Posts from — February 2007

YouTube – Being an Unperson:

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this is… perhaps one of the most profound statements of institutionalization of our time.

the dreamlife of letters, Brian Kim Stefans:

Blogumentary: A Documentary About Blogs:

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completely available online…

Natural History Magazine — :
It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments. Months later, after I discussed what I had seen with the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, perhaps the world’s leading expert on flotsam, he began referring to the area as the “eastern garbage patch.” But “patch” doesn’t begin to convey the reality. Ebbesmeyer has estimated that the area, nearly covered with floating plastic debris, is roughly the size of Texas.

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scary….
when the world is more like the waterworld than we thought.

Media @ LSE Group Weblog » Blog Archive » Dangerously overstating the significance of Web 2.0:

While I am by any measure a heavy user of Web 2.0 technologies, the sunny optimism of this video and the absence of a wider social perspective on the phenomenon really irks me. The fact remains that according to a recent survey only a little more than a quarter of US online users have ever tagged anything and only 7% of them do so daily. And who are the people who tag (and by extension use a variety of Web 2.0 services?). As Pew notes, “classic early adopters of technology. They are more likely to be under age 40, and have higher levels of education and income.” Eszter Hargittai’s earlier research bears out this relative lack of interest in Web 2.0 usage – even among American college students. Hell, this video itself, although it is the toast of the blogosphere at the moment, has been viewed less than 20,000 times. Doesn’t that say something about the limited scale of interest in Web 2.0?

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David makes some interesting points about web2.0 technology following the wesch video. he is spot on, though I’m not sure that Eszter’s study can really be generalized, it is clear from my classes that far fewer people know and use these technologies than one might suspect. however, it should also be noted that capitalism does not need ‘everyone’ to operate, nor do other socio-economic forms. early-adopters, if sustained, are usually enough to perpetuate a service.

YouTube – Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us:
Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

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if you’ve not seen this video on web 2.0…. you probably should.

How you can get a library job, too:
More on successful library job searches over at Wanderings of a Student Librarian.
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not to dissimilar from my opinions.

Researchers of the World: Unite to Support European Commission Open Access Policy:
The European Commission, the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB) and the European Research Councils have each recently recommended adopting the policy of providing Open Access to research results.

(Very similar recommendations are also being made by governmental research organisations in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Asia).
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Open access is important for most research, it may be the most important push in my generation of academics.

Master Plan – About the power of Google:

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google master plan… scary.

Money can’t buy you love, but it might buy you science:
The Guardian online reports that the American Enterprise Institute, funded by a generous grant from Exxon and from the Mobil Oil Corporation, has begun offering $10,000 to scientists who are willing to write essays that call into question the findings on a recently released UN report on global warming.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.