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Vanessa Vaile

Marginal Revolution: *You are Not a Gadget* - 0 views

  • humanist critic of how the internet is shaping our lives and cultures
  • Of all the books with messages in this direction, it is the one I would describe as insightful.
  • I disgree too. I was there for the good old digital days, and I don't miss them a bit. Web 2.0 is far more inclusive than anything that has come before.
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  • I disgree too. I was there for the good old digital days, and I don't miss them a bit. Web 2.0 is far more inclusive than anything that has come before. The unwashed masses are welcome, I say.
  • having to manage one's reputation via a website seems very preferable to having to do so via fist fight, church and family proxies.
  • Countless hives permeate the net.
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    new book by Jaron Lanier, a humanist critic of how the internet is shaping our lives and cultures and providing a new totalizing ideology. Plus reviews & comments
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    Graff wrote of teaching and the culture wars, "teach the differences"
Vanessa Vaile

Education and the social Web: Connective learning and the commercial imperative - 0 views

  • I argue that commercial social networks are much less about circulating knowledge than they are about connecting users (“eyeballs”) with advertisers
  • not the autonomous individual learner, but collective corporate interests that occupy the centre of these network
  • business model restricts their information design in ways that detract from learner control and educational use
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  • Just as commercialism has rendered television beyond the reach of education, commercial pressures threaten to seriously limit the potential of the social Web for education and learning.
  • Web 2.0 and online social networking have been the subject of sustained and lively interest among practitioners and promoters of educational technology
  • what is seen as the radical potential of these services
  • Social networking is so central to these new versions of education that a new “connectivist” theory of learning has come to be closely associated with them
  • a theory in which “knowing” itself is seen to be “defined by connections” making “learning primarily a network forming process”
  • described in terms of the liberation of learners from traditional constraints, as allowing them go beyond the classroom, to network “with peers worldwide,” and ultimately, to “take control of their own learning”
  • These visions are above all associated with the “personal learning environment
  • The personal learning environment is envisioned as a set of applications and services — to a large extent, logos and brands — organized around a single user, according to his or her learning and informational preferences and needs.
  • Through these services, the user is to be connected with teachers, mentors and other learners
  • some advocates of these approaches to learning have been raising concerns about the commercial nature of many of these services.
  • “You are not Facebook’s customer. You are the product that they sell to their real customers — advertisers. Forget this at your peril”
  • “This simple reality underlies almost all considerations having to do with these tools,
  • To use these tools is to reinforce, however indirectly, the ‘advertised life,’
  • The question is whether there is a role for higher education to promote ‘safe spaces’ free of this influence.”
  • the business model of commercial social networks is based on advertising, assisted by the data collection, as well as powerful tracking and analysis capabilities.
  • powerful surveillance functions
  • theories of media ideology and hegemony developed some time ago by Raymond Williams and Todd Gitlin
  • constraints presented by commercialized forms and contents rendered educational television a failure decades ago
  • similar structural issues threaten to sharply limit the potential of much newer social media for education and learning
  • Facebook, Google and other Web 2.0 and social networking services are making enormous sums right now from the users and advertisers they attract, and they are in aggressive competition to do this more efficiently
  • The absence of references to advertising (and also to tracking and analysis) in many discussions of the personal learning environments is surprising given the proliferation of logos and brands of commercial services
  • Because advertising is the raison d’être of services like Google and Facebook, it also provides the basis for the design, organization and maintenance of all of these other services and functions.
  • This way of understanding advertising and Web 2.0 draws on critiques of television (and the role of advertising in it) that were articulated decades ago.
  • the goal of these media organizations, he says, is to sell a product, and the product that “the networks sell is the attention of audiences; their primary market is the advertisers themselves”
  • One thing that is different today is that there is no one monolithic audience that forms a generic product to sell to advertisers.
  • An obvious objection to be raised at this point is that Facebook or Google, unlike television, do not have significant control over the content that is used to assemble audiences for advertisers
  • users have a clear choice regarding the kinds of content that they wish to view and disseminate
  • complex and subtle but very effective ways in which advertisers’ interests shape online social contexts.
  • Raymond Williams’ 1974 critique, Television: Technology and cultural form.
  • Williams’ text requires only minor revision to speak to the situation of commercial Web services today:
  • whether there is a role for higher education to promote ‘safe spaces’ free of this influence.”
  • Williams is making the point that the relationship between content and advertising is subtle and insidious, and that it is slightly different in the case of content “made for TV” than for its non–commercial counterpart.
  • “a dominant cultural form;”
  • what is important for the similarly non–commercial content of the social Web is informational design, architecture, and algorithm.
  • operation in otherwise non–commercial programming is registered in terms of sequence, rhythm and flow
  • Users of Facebook are sure to have been struck by the numerous and varied ways in which it cultivates gregarity and interaction, the way in which it relentlessly structures and supports sociality and connection
  • It is common to observe that the term “friend” itself is emptied of meaning by this incessant use and quantification;
  • Facebook exemplifies a way of generating and circulating information that encourages the expansion of interconnections between users
  • The controversy arises from the possible addition of a corresponding “Dislike” button.
  • lowers the psychological barrier to connecting with commercial entities
  • Gregarious behaviour is rewarded on Facebook
  • approval of a resource will draw ever more attention to it.
  • To provide the option of expressing dislike for a brand like Coca–Cola or to disapprove of a newspaper report or an article like this one is contrary to Facebook’s business interests
  • The dynamics here are rather reminiscent of what television of a bygone era had to offer: In both cases, you can either watch (i.e., “Like”) the products and lifestyles being showcased, or simply walk away.
  • “Like buttons” similar to many other connective features of social networks, “are about connection; Dislike buttons are about division.”
  • Similarly, other services will also systematically exclude possibilities for the expression of dissent and difference.
  • Despite the current prominence of social–psychological and connectivist theories, it is easy to make the case that learning is just as much about division as it is about connection.
  • In fact, the consistent pattern of suppressing division, negativity and interpersonal dissent that is central to the business model of social networking services runs counter to some of the most common models and recommendations for online student interaction and engagement.
  • Opportunities for social selectivity, discretion, privacy and detachment are an important precondition for the acts of disclosure and mutual critique, falsification and validation central to these models
  • selectivity and discretion — the “safe spaces” hoped for by Lamb and Groom — are rendered structurally impossible in convivial, commercially–contoured environments
  • Knowledge is not exclusively embodied in ever growing networks of connection and affiliation, and it does not just occur through building and traversing these proliferating nodes and links
  • Education is clearly a social process, but it is probably much closer to an ongoing discussion or debate than an extended feast or celebration with an ever-expanding network of friends.
  • advertising, tracking and analysis functions of commercial social media present, as Raymond Williams says, “a formula of communication, an intrinsic setting of priorities”
  • It only remains to be seen whether this dynamic renders commercial social networking services as fully unsupportive of educational ends as commercial television has long been.
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    In recent years, new socially‏oriented Web technologies have been portrayed as placing the learner at the centre of networks of knowledge and expertise, potentially leading to new forms of learning and education. In this paper, I argue that commercial social networks are much less about circulating knowledge than they are about connecting users ("eyeballs") with advertisers; it is not the autonomous individual learner, but collective corporate interests that occupy the centre of these networks. Looking first at Facebook, Twitter, Digg and similar services, I argue their business model restricts their information design in ways that detract from learner control and educational use. I also argue more generally that the predominant "culture" and corresponding types of content on services like those provided Google similarly privileges advertising interests at the expense of users. Just as commercialism has rendered television beyond the reach of education, commercial pressures threaten to seriously limit the potential of the social Web for education and learning.
Beatriz Lupiano

click! Photography Changes Everything - 2 views

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    Part of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative: a collection of essays and stories about how photography helps to shape our culture and our lives
TESOL CALL-IS

An Epic Mashup of Science and Hip Hop | MindShift - 1 views

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    The Science Genius project is demonstrated through an energetic classroom teacher. The project aims to use students' local culture, in this case rap/hip-hop, to engage students' attention and draw them into science concepts actively. Great video demonstration by Dr. Chris Emdin, including several examples of students' creative projects. The approach also worked with students who hadn't ever written rap music before.Follow the series.
Maria Rosario Di Mónaco

We-think: The power of mass creativity - Charles Leadbeater - 0 views

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    We Think explores how the web is changing our world, creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and collaborate, ideas and information.
Vanessa Vaile

The Multiliteracy Project - 0 views

  • esponsibility to not only educate the minds, but also the hearts of my students
  • I want my students to look at knowledge in a connected and ethical way
  • personal self-understanding on an intellectual and emotional level
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  • higher level thinking skills
  • encourage students to attain greater self-understanding
  • The Multiliteracy Project is a national Canadian study exploring pedagogies or teaching practices that prepare children for the literacy challenges of our globalized, networked, culturally diverse world. Increasingly, we encounter knowledge in multiple forms - in print, in images, in video, in combinations of forms in digital contexts - and are asked to represent our knowledge in an equally complex manner.
  • ighlight two related aspects of the increasing complexity of texts
  • (a) the proliferation of multimodal ways of making meaning where the written word is increasingly part and parcel of visual, audio, and spatial patterns; (b) the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity characterized by local diversity and global connectedness .
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    A research collaboration of students, educators and researchers
TESOL CALL-IS

VITAE Project Book - 1 views

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    A pdf book with papers and articles describing pedagogic models and approaches to developing the VITAE e-portfolio "Chapter 1: Teacher competence development - a European perspective, Chapter 2: The VITAE Approach, Chapter 3: Exploring Web 2.0 and Mentoring as Tools for Lifelong Learning, Chapter 4: Guided course development on the basis of an e-learning patterns template, Chapter 5: Fun and Games in professional development, Chapter 6: The VITAE e-portfolio - a catalyst for enhanced learning, Chapter 7: Community-based mentoring and innovating through Web 2.0, Chapter 8: Web 2.0 - Learning Culture and Organisational Change,"
Vanessa Vaile

apophenia » Blog Archive » ChatRoulette, from my perspective - 0 views

  • It’s a game played by flaneurs walking the digital streets.
  • the Internet today is about socializing with people you already know. But I used to love the randomness of the Internet
  • Strangers allowed me to see from a different perspective.
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  • still a small percentage of folks out there looking for some amusement because they’re bored and they want to connect with randomness
  • a space where teens and young adults and the rest of us can actually interact with randomness again
  • randomness of the worl
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    originally in French ~ quelle surprise (pas de tout)
Vanessa Vaile

Does the Internet Promote New Forms of Communication? | HASTAC - 0 views

  • It is often remarked that email causes many problems because people often send emails as if it were oral communication (with a loose form of control) and receive them as if they are written communication (as if they are carefully crafted).  
  • ead by both "audience members" and the "author," and in different ways and in different
  • contexts.
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  • The speech act that is Internet communication is remarkably complex and comes with a variety of situational and cultural rules. 
  • locked-in syndrome
  • (Do we write in a different way with a pen than with a keyboard? In 140 characters?  In a term paper versus a blog?
  • who creates the protocols of communication and how
  • really unpack what communication and what it does on its most fundamental levels.
Vanessa Vaile

The Hidden Center of the "Gutenberg Galaxy" - 0 views

  • McLuhan and the Gutenberg Galaxy
  • What if the social changes that result from these technologies are intended , rather than unintended
  • Marshall McLuhan wrote a good deal about the "Gutenberg Galaxy" - the 'constellation' of changes wrought on European society after the German of that name figured out how to turn a winepress into a holder for movable type - in other words, a printing press - in the 15th century.
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  • changes in the political, religious, and social landscape.
  • Gutenberg's press also made possible the Protestant Reformation - because, as Martin Luther came to realize, the wide translation and printing of the Bible meant "every man be a priest."
  • It's certainly hard to see how any of the changes which followed
  • could have occurred without the widespread literacy and education that the printing press made possible
  • what is now happening to our society in our second "Gutenberg revolution" - namely, the rise of electronic media
  • But what if there were a hidden center to the "Gutenberg Galaxy?"
  • fostering our current phase of technological change
  • cultural determinism of technology
  • And then, the Renaissance
  • The Dawn of Writing
  • obvious changes made possible by writing
  • technology of writing was ascribed to some mythic "culture-bringer" - Ogham, Thoth, Quetzelcoatl, etc
  • Most people are not aware, however, what writing had undone.
  • writing may have destroyed man's own prodigious mnemonic talents
  • Art of Memory also involved using tools and images
  • earlier technological revolution - one that occurred perhaps five millenia ago - the birth of writing
  • The spoken word is intimate
  • writing is impersonal, does not carry emotional intonations
  • The written word makes possible the autonomous survival of knowledge - with an oral tradition, it disappears when the oralists have all been killed
  • throughout the great breadth of the Dark and Middle Ages, literacy was not very widespread.
  • Was the printing press purely serendipitous? It does seem to have arrived at the right place at the right time.
  • mysterious traditions of the printers' and papermillers' guilds
  • heretical content of many of these watermarks
  • Bayley suggests it was Huguenot refugees that brought papermaking and the printing art into England
  • "Gutenberg revolution" as quite a Gnostic coup - destroying the literacy monopoly of both the Catholic Church and the feudal state
  • Today, the Arrival of the Electronic Word
  • any people are openly saying it: print is dead, the era of the printed word and the book is fading, and thus a new kind of literacy - "teleliteracy," ("the grammatology of video,") the reading of the moving image and multimedia barrage before us - is being propagated
  • death of civilization itself, since in their eyes we seem to be leaving the printed text behind and returning to the moving image or fetish
  • immediacy, presence, and participation lost through writing and print
  • whether some of the changes electronic media will bring were not intended,
  • would not think for you, but would help you think better and function as a "Knowledge (gnosis? ) Machine."
  • hypertext meant that the world's knowledge could be seamlessly woven together, much like the integrated unified system of knowledge imagined by the mystic Ramon Lull.
  • could be used to facilitate "Community memory" and community activism. It meant access to information
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    shades of Dan Brown!
TESOL CALL-IS

Documentary Tube - Watch Documentaries Online for FREE - 1 views

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    Lots of documentaries on an enormous variety of subjects. These can be used to spark conversation and get students ready to do their own research for a paper. Professionally produced, and free. Many are award-winning. Categories are listed, and there is a search function. Not specifically directed to ESL/EFL, but good authentic content.
Vanessa Vaile

Why We Seek the New: A History and Future of Neophilia | Brain Pickings - 2 views

  • how hard-wired our affinity for novelty is
  • explores the evolutionary, biological, psychological, and cultural forces that drive our deep-seated neophilia
  • how our ability to respond to change saved us from extinction some 800,000 years ago to neophilia’s basic mind-body mechanisms to the profound ways in which the information age has altered our relationship with novelty
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  • tug-of-war between our need for survival, which relies on safety and stability, and our desire to thrive, which engenders stimulation, exploration, and innovation.
  • The three affective foundations underpinning neophilia — surprise, curiosity, and interest — are referred to as “knowledge emotions,
  • why the filter bubble exists
  • why the Internet is wired to give us more of what we are already looking for, rather than surprise us with something we didn’t know existed but might find infinitely interesting
TESOL CALL-IS

Infographics & Data Visualizations - Visual.ly - 1 views

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    "See the best data visualizations on the web all in one place." Mainly infographics--charts and informational maps. Students could upload their own graphs, et al., for comment and feedback, and the site purports to be creating new data visualization tools.
Vanessa Vaile

The Souls of the Machine: Clay Shirky's Internet Revolution - The Chronicle Review - Th... - 1 views

  • the goal is to study technology and society by making gadgets that challenge assumptions of how machines fit into daily life and get people interacting
  • as Web sites become more social, they will threaten the existence of all kinds of businesses and organizations, which might find themselves unnecessary once people can organize on their own with free online tools
  • Who needs an academic association, for instance, if a Facebook page, blog, and Internet mailing list can enable professionals to stay connected without paying dues?
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  • those who make playful social networks improve society more than all those now-unnecessary offline organizations.
Vanessa Vaile

P3 Conference 2010: Or, How Attending a Digital Humanities Conference Helped Me to Valu... - 1 views

  • P3 stands for Peer-to-Peer Pedagogy
  • ethics of using digital tools.  "Its not about homogenizing difference," she said; "its about making space for difference." 
  • P3 reminded me that it's not about the technology--it's about the people who create it, collaborate on it, and question it. 
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  • Even at a digital conference, it's ultimately the people that make that time worthwhile. 
  • The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, by Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg,
  • lateral rather than hierarchical modes of learning, individualized educational strategies, global vision, lifelong learning, and collaboration by difference. 
  • "technology is not just software and hardware.  It is also all of the social and human arrangements supported, facilitated, destabilized, or fostered by technology." 
  • On my way home, I read William Powers' Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.  Powers argues that by living in a world where "everyone is connected to everyone else all the time," we become disconnected from our own self-awareness and inner depth. 
  • Today's digital technology explosion is no different from the advent of language, writing, mass-produced print or the telegraph
  • Seven Philosophers of Screens: Plato, Seneca, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Franklin, Thoreau and McLuhan, who lived through other technological explosions
  • By following the lessons of these seven philosphers in "a tour of the technological past," Powers shows how we can combat "the conundrum of the connected life" with techniques he calls the "Walden Zone" and the "Internet Sabbath," sacred times and places to disconnect with the Internet and reconnect with ourselves and our loved ones.  Both of these books, like the P3 UnConference, celebrates technology not as an end to itself, but as a means to enhance the human experience.  And like the P3 UnConference, both value time away from technology as a way to enhance that experience even more. 
Vanessa Vaile

Multiliteracies at newlearningonline.com - 1 views

  • The term ‘Multiliteracies’ refers to two major aspects of language use today.
  • The first is the variability of meaning making in different cultural, social or domain-specific contexts.
  • the business of communication and representation of meaning today increasingly requires that learners are able figure out differences in patterns of meaning from one context to another.
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  • The second aspect of language use today arises in part from the characteristics of the new information and communications media
  • extend the range of literacy pedagogy so that it does not unduly privilege alphabetical representations, but brings into the classroom multimodal representations, and particularly those typical of the new, digital media
  • pedagogy of synaesthesia, or mode switching.
Vanessa Vaile

Media Habit - 0 views

  • the most modern communication tools — blogs, podcasts, YouTube — are actually returning us to an ancient form of media, one in which everyone participates on almost equal footing.
  • fundamental human urge to tell our own stories
  • Before mass media, before the written word — for all of human history — story-telling was a shared privilege.
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  • Mass media succeeded in creating a common culture, but did nothing to foster the communities that naturally emerge when people tell their stories to each other.
  • Now, finally, there is a counter-trend.
  • Howard Rheingold framed it beautifully, when he wrote The Virtual Community, nearly 15 years ago: "Perhaps cyberspace is one of those informal public places, where people can rebuild the aspects of community that were lost when the malt shop became a mall."
  • newest digital technologies are returning us to the most ancient form of media — one in which a natural order is restored; our individual stories take center stage
Vanessa Vaile

Twenty-First Century Literacies | HASTAC - 0 views

  • What cognitive skills are crucial for educators to attend to in our digital age? Media theorist and practitioner Howard Rheingold has talked about four "Twenty-first Century Literacies"--attention, participation, collaboration, and network awareness
  • see http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/rheingold/category?blogid=108&cat=2538
  • Futurist Alvin Toffler argues that, in the 21st century, we need to know not only the three R's, but also how to learn, unlearn, and relearn.  Expanding on these, here are ten literacies that seem crucial for our digital age.  
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  • Attention:  What are the new ways that we pay attention in a digital era?
  • Participation:  Only a small percentage of those who use new "participatory" media really contribute.  How do we encourage meaningful interaction and participation?  What is its purpose on a cultural, social, or civic level?
  • Collaboration:   How do we encourage meaningful and innovative forms of collaboration? 
  • methodology of "collaboration by difference"
  • Network awareness: 
  • how we both thrive as creative individuals and understand our contribution within a network of others
  • Design:   How is information conveyed differently in diverse digital forms? 
  • Narrative, Storytelling:  How do narrative elements shape the information
  • Critical consumption of information
  • Digital Divides, Digital Participation: 
  • Ethics and Advocacy:
  • Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning:
  • trying to unlearn ones reflexive responses to change situation is the only way to become reflective about ones habits of resistance.
Vanessa Vaile

"Digital Nation": What has the Internet done to us? - 0 views

  • My bosses at Suck.com, meanwhile, accurately predicted that the Web would soon become something between a gigantic mall catering to the lowest common denominator and an infinite tabloid echo chamber. Their mantra: Sell out early and often. Why? Because those of us musing about murderous robot showdowns (or scratching out angry cartoons under a pseudonym, for that matter) would all go back to grabbing ankle for The Man sooner than we thought. What they didn't know, and never could've predicted, was that the Web would also transform itself into an enormous, never-ending high school reunion (See also: hell).
  • My bosses at Suck.com, meanwhile, accurately predicted that the Web would soon become something between a gigantic mall catering to the lowest common denominator and an infinite tabloid echo chamber. Their mantra: Sell out early and often.
  • What they didn't know, and never could've predicted, was that the Web would also transform itself into an enormous, never-ending high school reunion (See also: hell)
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  • finally safe to proclaim, together, that the information age has officially arrived.
  • futuristic "Blade Runner"-esque digital dystopia
  • Douglas Rushkoff is currently reconsidering his unconditional love for new media in Frontline's "Digital Nation" (premieres 9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2, on PBS, check local listings), an in-depth investigation into the possibilities and side effects of our digital immersion.
  • how are we changing what it means to be a human being by using all this stuff?"
  • Dilbert-meets-Derrida perspective
  • "Most multitaskers think that they're brilliant at multitasking," says Stanford professor Clifford Nass. But "it turns out that multitaskers are terrible at nearly every aspect of multitasking."
  • IBM uses "Second Life" to hold virtual meetings between people who live thousands of miles from each other. Each person at the meeting is embodied by a different avatar, and the participants end up feeling like they've met in person,
  • Can we hold our Salon meetings this way, and can my avatar be an enormous roach that occasionally hits other people over the head with a crowbar?)
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    from I Like to Watch - Salon.com: internet criticism + review of PBS series on internet use
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    sharing this Luddite moment w/ Webheads... can you smell the irony in the air
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