Free book on future of the internet download under read now) Bunch of essays about impact of internet on society, how internet should be managed, privacy, intellectual property etc . Various perspectives but published by a libertarian think tank. Critical of Lessig for proposing controls on internet development. Some good reads (Dean, beware - lawyers). Also check out the video presentations - panel discussions - some fascinating stuff.
This book is both a beginning and an end. Its publication marks the beginning of TechFreedom, a new non-profit think tank that will launch alongside this book in January 2011. Our mission is simple: to unleash the progress of technology that improves the human condition and expands individual capacity to choose.
"Teaching people 'how to' write an essay in Word, or 'how to' use shortcuts in their browser, or 'how to' use hashtags in Twitter is the same as giving them fish, rather than teaching them how to fish."
"This review essay examines literature from a variety of disciplines on the technological, social, behavioural, and neuroscientific impacts that the Internet is having on the practice of reading."
"Musical instruments produce sounds. Composers produce music. Musical instruments reproduce music. Tape recorders, radios, disc players, etc., reproduce sound. A device such as a wind-up music box produces sound and reproduces music. A phonograph in the hands of a hip hop/scratch artist who plays a record like an electronic washboard with a phonographic needle as a plectrum, produces sounds which are unique and not reproduced - the record player becomes a musical instrument. A sampler, in essence a recording, transforming instrument, is simultaneously a documenting device and a creative device, in effect reducing a distinction manifested by copyright."
As we increasingly move toward an environment of instant and infinite information, it becomes less important for students to know, memorize, or recall information, and more important for them to be able to find, sort, analyze, share, discuss, critique, and create information. They need to move from being simply knowledgeable to being knowledge-able.
"...Drs. Curto and Laudato describe a technique for providing feedback via rich media capture. Much like comments in the margins of a written assignment, feedback is received at the appropriate time point in the presentation."