The headline is that the United States may soon ban TikTok, a story remarkable in its own right. The underlying thread is that centralized social media services (TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, etc) have become too unstable for individuals and businesses to rely on. Buried deep is the main story: that the only way to reliably access an audience is to give up on platforms trying to control access to it. Hence, "Vox Media's technology news publication The Verge says it also has plans to federate its own site to have more ownership over its content and audience." Via Ben Werdmuller.
Today: 46 Total: 299 Kimeko McCoy, Digiday, 2024/04/24 [Direct Link]Select a newsletter and enter your email to subscribe:
Stephen Downes works with the Digital Technologies Research Centre at the National Research Council of Canada specializing in new instructional media and personal learning technology. His degrees are in Philosophy, specializing in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. He has taught for the University of Alberta, Athabasca University, Grand Prairie Regional College and Assiniboine Community College. His background includes expertise in journalism and media, both as a prominent blogger and as founder of the Moncton Free Press online news cooperative. He is one of the originators of the first Massive Open Online Course, has published frequently about online and networked learning, has authored learning management and content syndication software, and is the author of the widely read e-learning newsletter OLDaily. Downes is a member of NRC's Research Ethics Board. He is a popular keynote speaker and has spoken at conferences around the world.
Stephen Downes,
stephen@downes.ca,
Casselman
Canada
There are many ways to read this article. I'm here for the way the author criticizes billionaires, but that's not why I'm sharing it, that's just a bonus. No, what I ask readers to consider is what we want the outcome of an education to be by considering the four points of a pyramid: a young Marc Andreesen who as a student at a public university was able to develop the first commercial web browser; the second, the author of the piece, an apparent 'intellectual', familiar with the works of Agnes Martin, Claes Oldenburg, Julius Evola and Corey Robin; the aforementioned billionaire who believes people like him "should get to make decisions to reorder life as we know it without interference from anyone else"; or the people in small towns who value "the ordinary comforts of kinship, friendship, craft, memory, legend, lore, skills passed down across generations." Don't answer too quickly. Via Dan Gillmor.
Today: 64 Total: 567 Rick Perlstein, The American Prospect, 2024/04/24 [Direct Link]Web bloat is something I take seriously because it impacts both cost and performance. If the reader is using a slower or less powerful device, accessing online services can be difficult or at times impossible (think about how unresponsive some shopping or airline sites are, for no good reason). This article looks not only at page size but also at how much of a load the page imposes on your computer once it has downloaded. For comparison with the web sites on the chart, my own home page comes in at about 140 kilobytes (0.14 mB). There's no Javascript on it and it doesn't have cookies. It should load easily just about everywhere (in my office it loads at 640 ms). The same can't be said of everything I build, though. But I don't stop trying. Via Molly White.
Today: 50 Total: 428 Dan Luu, 2024/04/24 [Direct Link]I probably wouldn't use the cute philosophical trick as in this post, but I nonetheless agree with the outcome: that respect for human life is not a form of value. The way you can show this (with cute tricks) is to tie yourself in knots arguing about what form of sacrifice of human life is 'worth' more than another in various circumstances. My observation is that in today's society the concepts of 'worth' and 'value' are so tied into our everyday thinking we can scarcely conceive of a world without them. But that, surely, is an error. The ideas of 'worth' and 'value' are not so fundamental as all that. All of the efforts devoted to (say) pedagogies of care, equity, social justice, etc., are attempts to show this. Image: 'Dignity', originally from the Simpsons.
Today: 8 Total: 357 Alexander R Pruss, Alexander Pruss's Blog, 2024/04/23 [Direct Link]Would Immanuel Kant - a world-famous philosopher who lived in 18th century Prussia - be as popular as an influencer today? The early evidence suggests he would. Created using an AI is "Manu, a 23-year-old influencer who, as @manumanukant, lives a typical young life in 2024. With an Instagram bio that describes himself as 'Spreading good vibes and deep thoughts' he's a handsome young guy who shares images, selfies (himself looking soulful in bookstores for example), stories, and reels and comments." The image is based on actual photos of Kant in his youth, while the content is drawn from his work (rewritten to be more accessible to a 21st century audience). "Since quietly launching on Instagram and Threads in January, the account, which was designed to peak on April 22, Kant's 300th birthday, has achieved over 384.8 thousand impressions, reached 82.4 thousand accounts, and has an engagement rate of 51.2%."
Today: 11 Total: 376 adobo magazine, adobo Magazine Online, 2024/04/23 [Direct Link]Creative Commons makes the following statement: "access to cultural heritage is a fundamental right. And preservation, access, sharing, use, and reuse of cultural heritage are all some of the essential functions that libraries, archives and museums fulfill to enable everyone to enjoy that fundamental right." That's similar to what the British Museum says as it stores half of Egypt's cultural heritage within its walls. Maybe Creative Commons should rephrase: 'access to our own cultural heritage is a fundamental right'. That would allow me to reproduce, say, Group of Seven paintings - which are part of my cultural heritage - while preventing me from converting Indigenous traditional artwork into cash commodities if that's not something they want to allow me to do. Image: A.Y. Jackson, Red Maple, from Wikipedia (had this as a poster as a child).
Today: 9 Total: 296 Brigitte Vézina, Creative Commons, 2024/04/23 [Direct Link]Web - Today's OLDaily
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Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Apr 25, 2024 07:37 a.m.