Blog Forums
News & the Net
Election 2008
Target Iran? Founders & Faith
Web 2.0
Cult of Celebrity Animal Advocacy

Recent Authors

About this Blog

Britannica Blog is a place for smart, lively conversations about a broad range of topics. Art, science, history, current events – it’s all grist for the mill. We’ve given our writers encouragement and a lot of freedom, so the opinions here are theirs, not the company’s. Please jump in and add your own thoughts.

Feeds

Recent Comments

RSS Britannica Blog via RSS   RSS Web 2.0 Forum via RSS 

Britannica Blog: Web 2.0 Forum


Web 2.0 Forum: Overview

According to some, expertise and the people who possess it are a thing of the past. Thanks to the Internet, they are being replaced by new kinds of collective authority in the form of blogs, wikis, and peer-to-peer Web sites. Is it real, is it hype, or does the truth lie somewhere in between? That’s the question this forum sought to understand. Read on for an overview of the forum and participants…

» Read more of Web 2.0 Forum: Overview

The Threat to Individuality

I fear and resist any threat to the idea of individuality. If an idea like that of a collective “hive” mind were seriously to gain ground, it would erode further the already eroding status of non-factual kinds of intelligence.

» Read more of The Threat to Individuality

Technology, Temptation, and Virtual Reality

The problem is not computers or indeed any particular technology but rather our disposition toward the common world that culture defines. If that is what Michael Gorman is worried about, I am with him 100 percent. But in anatomizing the “siren song” of the Internet, he had many other tunes in mind, axes to grind…

» Read more of Technology, Temptation, and Virtual Reality

Knowledge Access as a Public Good

The society that Dr. Gorman laments has lost faith in the public good. Elitism and greed have gotten in the way. By upholding the values of the elite, he is perpetuating views that are destroying efforts to make knowledge a public good.

» Read more of Knowledge Access as a Public Good

Brave New (Digital) World, Part II: Foolishness 2.0?

As a librarian, I’m particularly concerned that grand visions of digital libraries may entail trade-offs whose full implications are not being attended to.

» Read more of Brave New (Digital) World, Part II: Foolishness 2.0?

10 Ways to Test Facts

We live in a sea of information. In a time of educational crisis, when reading and analysis are fading skills, teaching students how to recognize the condition of the waters seems an ever more difficult task.

» Read more of 10 Ways to Test Facts

Jabberwiki: The Educational Response, Part II

Some folks endorse Wikipedia heartily. This mystifies me. Education is not a matter of popularity or of convenience….A professor who encourages the use of Wikipedia is the intellectual equivalent of a dietician who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs.

» Read more of Jabberwiki: The Educational Response, Part II

Brave New (Digital) World, Part I: Return of the Avant-Garde

After having just read the three essays in this forum by Michael Gorman, I happened to go to a local museum exhibit on “Modernism.” I couldn’t help noticing a few parallels with our current “digital age.”

» Read more of Brave New (Digital) World, Part I: Return of the Avant-Garde

Jabberwiki: The Educational Response, Part I

The academy must replace the present posturing and trendiness with a serious and wide-ranging discussion of how it can accommodate positive aspects of the digital revolution in its structures and policies without abandoning its belief in the importance of teaching, the value of true research, and the value of lifelong interaction with complex texts …

» Read more of Jabberwiki: The Educational Response, Part I

Web 2.0: Hope or Hype?

What is Web 2.0, after all? Was there at some point in recent time a technological innovation that rendered the Internet an entirely different entity from what it had been before? No, I don’t think so.

» Read more of Web 2.0: Hope or Hype?

Older Posts »