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Amy Whitaker

Blogger Status - 1 views

status.blogger.com

blogger status

shared by Amy Whitaker on 13 May 11 - Cached
  • Amy Whitaker on 13 May 11
     
    I'm sure all of us have been appalled by Blogger's temporary lack of service. I found this site useful because it at least lets me know when it is my computer's fault vs. Blogger's fault.
Krista S

Internet Use and Child Development - 0 views

www.ifets.info/...17.pdf

shared by Krista S on 16 Jun 10 - No Cached
  • Krista S on 16 Jun 10
     
    In the context of middle class families, elements in the techno-subsystem (e.g., Internet access) may not necessarily facilitate child cognitive development; effective use of those elements, highly dependent upon parent behavior, may promote development. For example, Cho and Cheon (2005) surveyed families and found that parents' perceived control, obtained through shared web activities and family cohesion, reduced children's exposure to negative Internet content. Using the Internet at home to learn was reported in 65 cases, to play was reported in 57 cases, to browse in 35 cases, and to communicate in 27 cases. Fuchs and Wößmann (2005) inferred, having controlled for socioeconomic status, "a negative relationship between home computer availability and academic achievement, but a positive relationship between home computer use for Internet communication" (p. 581). DeBell and Chapman (2006) concluded that Internet use promotes cognitive development in children, "specifically in the area of visual intelligence, where certain computer activities -- particularly games -- may enhance the ability to monitor several visual stimuli at once, to read diagrams, recognize icons, and visualize spatial relationships" (p. 3). Van Deventer and White (2002) observed proficient 10- and 11-year-old video gamers and noted extremely high levels of self-monitoring, pattern recognition, and visual memory. In a comprehensive review of the literature of the time (when interactive digital games were relatively unsophisticated), Subrahmanyam, Kraut, Greenfield, and Gross (2000) concluded that "children who play computer games can improve their visual intelligence" (p. 128). It should be noted, however, that playing video games has also been linked to childhood distractibility, over-arousal, hostility, and aggression (Anderson, Gentile, & Buckley, 2007; Funk, Chan, Brouwer, & Curtiss, 2006).
Bri Zabriskie

We Are Visible - SIGN UP SPEAK OUT BE SEEN - helping you connect to the social world - 0 views

wearevisible.com/why-social-media.html

social media web2.0 homelessness

shared by Bri Zabriskie on 06 May 11 - No Cached
  • Bri Zabriskie on 06 May 11
     
    more about our discussion about the anonymity of presence online: This site is a diving board for people who are homeless to begin using social media. It advocates the use of social media to give these people a voice in a community that is more apt to ignore them. People don't often listen to people who "look" homeless, but because with social media they can blog/tweet/status update from their hearts and be judged only on the basis of what they say without being preempted by something else, people listen.
Audrey B

Digital Zapatismo and the Threatened Persecution of Prof. Ricardo Dominguez (UCSD) | Ca... - 0 views

thevirtualcampfire.org/...ricardo-dominguez

shared by Audrey B on 09 Jun 10 - Cached
  • The EDT and other Digital Zapatistas succeeded in furthering the message of the EZLN and the indigenous peoples of Mexico, but they never physically harmed anyone or anything, in spite of the government violence directed at them.
    • Audrey B
      Audrey B on 09 Jun 10
       
      nonviolent electronic civil disobedience
  • As an artist, Dominguez has always looked to open “disturbance spaces” inside our contemporary communication platforms. He is a former member of the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), a group of artists and activists whose focus is “the exploration of the intersections between art, critical theory, technology, and political activism.” Later Dominguez helped found the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) which sought to expand the work of the CAE into cyberspace. They developed the idea of Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD), which just as the name suggests is an electronic extension of Thoreau’s old idea.
  • With black tape across their mouths, surgical masks marked with X’s, and holding signs that read “Art is not a Crime,” and “Academic Freedom,” over 200 students gathered on Thursday, April 8th at the Silent Tree on library walk.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • In 2009 Dominguez was named by CNN one of its “Most Interesting People” for his work in developing the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT
  • Professor Dominguez’s work, first with Critical Art Ensemble and then with Electronic Disturbance Theater, has been highly cited, and he has been invited to lecture on the work across a host of important international venues…The esteemed status of Professor Dominguez’s field-defining work has been duly noted by the external referees, who include major international intellectuals working in performance art, new media and globalization.
  • EDT illuminates a new set of possibilities for understanding the relation between performance, embodiment, and spatial practice in cyberspace. Unlike a number of other performance artists, who have explored the relation of the body to technology through the literal encounter of individual physical bodies to machines, those working at EDT have placed the very notion of “embodiment” under question. Rather, they have sought to understand the specific possibilities for constituting presence in digital space that is both collective and politicized.
  • taking known forms and then augmenting or subverting their messages in order to provoke thought, discussion and emotion. What made the EDT different is how they applied these age-old principles of artistic expression to “new” media and digital technology.
  • performances and interventions were based upon questioning (but never fully answering) contemporary social problems and injustices.
  • Members of the EDT, including Dominguez, contributed to the artistic front of the EZLN’s fight for the indigenous people of Mexico. They crafted themselves as Digital Zapatistas, “attacking” the websites of the Mexican government and the agencies of the US government, which were supporting the oppression of the people in Chiapas. But the “attacks” were never effective… only affective.
  • developments of EDT was FloodNet — the technology behind Virtual Sit-Ins such as the one against the UCOP website for which Dominguez is now under investigation.
  • EDT’s goal was to take the long respected tradition of a peaceful sit-in to the virtual space of a website.
  • And, just like an embodied sit-in, to be effective the virtual sit-in must be open and transparent.
  • There are key differences between the virtual sit-in and a “Distributed Denial of Service Attack,” which Dominguez has been accused of launching. With the latter, computers of unknowing individuals become conduits to increase traffic to a particular Internet address, therefore rendering it inoperable, threatening the potential crash of the system itself. In this type of attack the identity of the perpetrators remains obscured in a prolonged assault usually motivated either by retribution, financial gain, and/or attempts to censor free speech.
  • In contrast, with the virtual sit-in, the goals of the action are stated, grievances described, participants known and once it is over no physical damage is done. FloodNet is a Java applet that is the code equivalent of going to the target website and constantly clicking the “reload” button. It also allows the participants to leave messages in the server’s error log by looking for non-existent URLs in the target server, which will then generate error messages. For example, a search for “human_rights” will generate an error message “File not found. ‘human_rights’ does not exist on this .gov server.”
  • by the same administration, which is now threatening him.
    • Audrey B
      Audrey B on 09 Jun 10
       
      So let me get this right, basically UCSD hired him after they knew that he co-founded EDT, had participated in ECD, and they knew what he was capable. So they were fine with him "attacking" the Mexican government. But when he and students non-violently protest through a virtual sit-in, because it is aimed towards them, they get mad and are now trying to take his tenure away? Hello, Dr. Dominguez is a professor teaching ECD. Are they going to fire him and take him to court for something he teaches their students?
  • Also among his scholarly and artistic accomplishments cited as reasons to grant Dominguez tenure were the various uses of FloodNet technology to conduct virtual sit-ins on websites run by governments, international finance organizations, anti-immigrant sites and even UCOP’s website.
  • In the hour to come Professor Dominguez would frame his encounter with the administration “Zapatista style,” transforming a closed meeting, the purpose of which was to conduct “fact finding” in relation to his March 4th actions, into a collective meeting or “consulta.”
  • Rejoining the crowd of supporters he sat quietly listening to faculty and students as they read letters that spanned the globe, and which voiced solidarity, alliance, and outrage at the administration’s criminalization of his work.
Neal C

Want Smart Kids? Here's What to Do - Percolator - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...24200

shared by Neal C on 28 May 10 - Cached
  • Thus it seems that scholarly culture, and the taste for books that it brings, flows from generation to generation largely of its own accord, little affected by education, occupational status, or other aspects of class
    • Neal C
      Neal C on 28 May 10
       
      Books matter...physical, tangible things
  • I wonder what e-book readers like the Kindle will mean to these statistics. On the plus side, a lot of e-books are free and those that aren't are often discounted, so a family with a Kindle might be able to afford more books (assuming they can pony up for the device). But the books aren't as easy to share and you probably don't want your 5-year-old dribbling juice onto your fancy expensive gadget.
    • Neal C
      Neal C on 28 May 10
       
      Does online competency indicate to children the same priority on education or scholarship?
  • Want Smart Kids? Here's What to Do Buy a lot of books.
    • Neal C
      Neal C on 28 May 10
       
      Want smart kids? Get books, not the internet (at least until someone does a similar study on the internet).
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • onducted over 20 years, in 27 countries, and surveyed more than 70,000 people. Resea
Weiye Loh

Our Greatest Political Novelist? : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...eatest-political-novelist.html

Science Fiction Politics Identity Society

shared by Weiye Loh on 24 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Science fiction is an inherently political genre, in that any future or alternate history it imagines is a wish about How Things Should Be (even if it’s reflected darkly in a warning about how they might turn out). And How Things Should Be is the central question and struggle of politics. It is also, I’d argue, an inherently liberal genre (its many conservative practitioners notwithstanding), in that it sees the status quo as contingent, a historical accident, whereas conservatism holds it to be inevitable, natural, and therefore just. The meta-premise of all science fiction is that nothing can be taken for granted. That it’s still anybody’s ballgame.
  • Robinson argues that, now that climate change has become a matter of life and death for the species, it’s time for scientists to abandon their scrupulous neutrality and enter into the messy arena of politics. Essentially, Robinson attempts to apply scientific thinking to politics, approaching it less like pure physics, in which one infallible equation / ideology explains and answers everything, than like engineering—a process of what F.D.R. once called “bold, persistent experimentation,” finding out what works and combining successful elements to synthesize something new.
  • Weiye Loh on 24 Dec 13
     
    "When we call literary writers "political" today, we're usually talking about identity politics. If historians or critics fifty years from now were to read most of our contemporary literary fiction, they might well infer that our main societal problems were issues with our parents, bad relationships, and death. If they were looking for any indication that we were even dimly aware of the burgeoning global conflict between democracy and capitalism, or of the abyssal catastrophe our civilization was just beginning to spill over the brink of, they might need to turn to books that have that embarrassing little Saturn-and-spaceship sticker on the spine. That is, to science fiction.2"
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