Group items tagged

Interesting cultural studies piece in the NYTimes about unwanted email. The law is that marketers and businesses must have an option to let you unsubscribe, but fledgling businesses or friends' businesses fall through the cracks. What to do about it? Some new software, hitting delete, creating an email account you never use or view.

Great blog by Nick Bilton in the Sunday NYTimes July 16, 2014 about how social media sucks us in to spend a lot of time on it. Although there isn't data as such, scientists are beginning to wonder if this diversion of our time sucks creativity too. The author ends the piece by saying instead of spending the first hour of the day on social media, he has been reading a book and finding it much more satisfying, enlightening, and stimulating.

Very interesting article from the NYTimes on how mindfulness has taken hold in Silicon Valley encouraging tech workers and beyond to take time out, meditate even for a minute, and creating new apps to help you do it. Google has a course on mindfulness that sells out whenever offered. Rebranding mindfulness from groovey discipline to way to clear your head to increase productivity, prioritize to do lists, unclutter your work life.

Jessica Bennett of the NYTimes writes about how emoji are replacing words in emails. on twitter and other social media, even though it might be less time to type in the words. Although use is skyrocketing, communication by emoji is open to interpretation by the recipient. There are now sites, blogs, and a social network (Emoji.li) that uses only emoji for communication. A nonprofit devoted to emoji standardization across platforms (Unicode Consortium) has been formed. Examples: In their short life, emoji managed to find an exceptional cultural range: One Internet wit put out an emoji translation of Beyoncé's "Drunk in Love," and an emoji-only version of "Moby Dick," called "Emoji Dick," was recently accepted into the Library of Congress. Legal experts have even discussed whether an emoji death threat [gun and face] could be admissible in court. "I'm not sure you can really speak of it as a full-fledged language yet," said Ben Zimmer, a linguist, "but it does seem to have fascinating combinatorial possibilities. Any sort of symbolic system, when it's used for communication, is going to develop dialects."

I am certainly out of the loop on this one! A whole new language is developing - back to cave drawings but in a digital format?

Opinion piece in the July 19th 2014 NYTimes by Joshua Wolf Shenk, the author of the forthcoming book: Powers of Two: Finding Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs". He begins:"the lone genius is a myth that has outlived its usefulness. Fortunately, a more truthful model is emerging: the creative network, as with the crowd-sourced Wikipedia or the writer's room at "The Daily Show" or - the real heart of creativity - the intimate exchange of the creative pair, such as John Lennon and Paul McCartney and myriad other examples with which we've yet to fully reckon." and ends with: "This raises vital questions. What is the optimal balance between social immersion and creative solitude? Why does interpersonal conflict so often coincide with innovation? Looking at pairs allows us to grapple with these questions, which are as basic to the human experience as the push and pull of love itself. As a culture, we've long been preoccupied with romance. But we should also take seriously something just as important, but long overlooked - creative intimacy."

Although the author stresses pairs, the history of genius is really interesting - for example, before the 16th century, individuals were not geniuses, but having genius which was a value that emerged from within a person given to them at birth".

Letter to the editor in response to a NYTimes article by Bill Keller that touts the benefits of online learning, and the need to adapt to new technologies, not just teach the same way and put it online.

Good argument for online learning and the use of new teaching methods when using technology.

Interesting article in the NYTimes magazine, August 7, 2013, on choices made by high-powered, elite credentialed working mothers to leave the workforce to become full-time mothers for extended periods (10+ years) and the consequences for their marriage relationships, financial standing, and re-entry options for returning to work. Bottom line: every decision yields both good and unanticipated impacts, new opportunities, and closed doors especially when the decision to depart is made prior to a recession, and the decision to re-enter workforce occurs after recession.

As tweet mobs become more prevalent, and more and more people have experienced cyberbullying, a new conversation about cyber civility is starting to take hold, from Monika Lewinsky on TED to the aftermath of Justine Sacco's tweet and the apology to her from her "outer" Sam Biddle, thinking more about responses is necessary.

New York Times, May 28. 2015 by Claire Cain Miller "The biggest obstacle to women in joining the highest ranks of the business world is a lack of family-friendly policies. That, at least, has been the conventional wisdom in recent years, and it has been embraced by progressive companies that offer flexible schedules or allow people to work from home. But some researchers are now arguing that the real problem is not the lack of family-friendly policies for mothers, but the surge in hours worked by both women and men. And companies are not likely to want to adopt the obvious solution."

Video on some apps for shopping for presents, creating a fun video card, and finding gift trends for people on your list.

Video on some apps for shopping for presents, creating a fun video card, and finding gift trends for people on your list.

The New York Times examine the MOOC phenomena.

Facebook exec on women and leadership, and having it all. Her philosophy is: "believe in yourself, give it your all, and don't doubt your ability to combine work and family and thus edge yourself out of plum assignments before you even have a baby." I will purchase the book and read it!

new book by one of the execs of Facebook (after leaving Google)

how algorithms and humans act together now for search engines and finding info and categorizing info.

Interesting article on algorithms and humans working together to retrieve and catagorize as well as provide search engine information.

Interesting article on free courses vs paid courses, and how charging for specific skill courses and rebroadcasts makes money and is becoming more prevalent.

paid vs free courses: online training business is attracting users and investors

Rachel Sklar is holding networking events for women who work in the tech industry. She is about to make it a business, where women pay to be connected with other women like them. Interesting business design.

Women to women networking in a specific industry: tech

An article view by Jenna Wortham at the New York Times of different online learning sites for mastering computer codes and programming, March 27, 2012. Mentions Codecademy, Girls Develop It, Treehouse, General Assembly, etc. Excerpt: "Peter Harsha, director of government affairs at the association, said the figure had been steadily climbing for the last three years, after a six-year decline in the aftermath of the dot-com bust. Mr. Harsha said that interest in computer science was cyclical but that the current excitement seemed to be more than a blip and was not limited to people who wanted to be engineers. "To be successful in the modern world, regardless of your occupation, requires a fluency in computers," he said. "It is more than knowing how to use Word or Excel but how to use a computer to solve problems." "

informed assessment/report by Justin Wolfers, NYTimes, on how extending parental leave policies cause unintended impacts

I saw this debate this morning and engaged with the topic and format. I like this way of presenting different perspectives on a hot-button issue and would like to experiment with it in WLStudio.

How crowdsourcing is impacting scientific research, and how blogging about scientific findings is changing how information about new discoveries gets supported/debunked. Interesting in the social media crowdsourcing aspect of how information is not in the hands of just experts anymore.

CrowdSourcing is changing the power dynamics of scientific information. Interesting article for the power of blogging and commenting vs professionals and scientific community.

article on business owner-peer support groups, NYT, May 24, 2012. Ken Prest sent me this article. Interesting set-up. What is/should be transferrable to Studio idea?