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…
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.
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…
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.
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.
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 …
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.