If the debate about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter tells us anything, it’s that people – including those in governments – don’t understand how the World Wide Web works. We know that the algorithms Twitter uses to recommend content can guide people to develop more extreme views, but what is considered extreme has changed since […] … learn more→
Tag Archives: Internet
It’s not just Twitter. The whole Internet is broken and we’d better fix it soon
How do children use the internet? We asked thousands of kids around the world
The internet has reached almost every corner of the globe, but most research on how it is used, particularly among children, focuses on the US and Europe. This is a problem, because according to best estimates one in three children around the world now uses the internet – most of them outside the West. An […] … learn more→
Why the Internet isn’t making us smarter – and how to fight back
In the hours since I first sat down to write this piece, my laptop tells me the National Basketball Association has had to deny that it threatened to cancel its 2017 All-Star Game over a new anti-LGBT law in North Carolina – a story repeated by many news sources including the Associated Press. The authenticity […] … learn more→
How ‘offline’ came to mean ‘online’
I read this sentence in The New York Times not long ago: “Most evenings, before watching late-night comedy or reading emails on his phone, Matt Nicoletti puts on a pair of orange-colored glasses that he bought for $8 off the Internet.” The phrase that caught my inner ear was “off the Internet.” It sounded odd […] … learn more→
A good, dumb way to learn from Libraries
Too bad we can’t put to work the delicious usage data gathered by libraries. Research libraries may not know as much as click-obsessed Amazon does about how people interact with their books. What they do know, however, reflects the behavior of a community of scholars, and it’s unpolluted by commercial imperatives. But privacy concerns have […] … learn more→
The internet of words
Ten years ago, an odd request landed in my email inbox. It was a message from my sister, Anne, sent to me through a company called Friendster, prompting me to join her friend network. I puzzled over the missive for several minutes, trying to determine what she was asking me to do. Was this some […] … learn more→
Outsourcing memory: the internet has changed how we remember
When Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” hit newsstands in the July/August 2008 edition of The Atlantic, the reaction was predictably vociferous. The essay itself – a 4,175 word editorial monolith of the kind The Atlantic does so well – was a thoughtful exploration of the fear that heavy reliance upon the internet […] … learn more→
Living in Orwell’s world: how to disappear completely online
Your friend Kate answers the phone. You remind her you’re meeting at 10am tomorrow for breakfast. You tell her your fractured wrist is healing but the doctor said there’s still some way to go. Your mum’s illness … well, that’s a different matter. Your hang-gliding, of course, is on hold, but you want to get […] … learn more→
A tale of ‘betrayal’ – what Anonymous can teach us about online relationships
Whenever the press covers a story about hackers, a great deal of the discussion concerns the nature of online identity, the cohesiveness of hacking groups, and the individuals that identify with these groups. This is particularly the case with discussion of hackers that consider themselves part of the hacktivist group Anonymous. This is due, in […] … learn more→
How exciting new developments in online learning can benefit you
Learning and the internet are two things that seem to be made for each other. More and more people are using the internet to learn and teach. These days you can learn to cook online, learn to sew, learn to tie a tie, and you can even get a college degree. With all these exciting […] … learn more→
