How to think about ringing in your ears as something bigger than you: Check out Mack Hagood’s new piece on tinnitus and the prospects of an applied sound studies: http://bit.ly/MA5wzn
Category: Reflections
The Ethics of Attention (Part 2): Bots for Civic Engagement
Cross-posted from the Department of Alchemy blog. Last month, Ethan Zuckerman of the Center for Future Civic Media (MIT Media Lab) posted a great article on his blog called The Tweetbomb and the Ethics of Attention (constituting Part I to this story, so make sure you read it!), in which he calls into question the …
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Is Anonymous vetting presidential candidates?
Anonymous Hispano, the Spanish-speaking branch of the famous hacker collective, issued a statement a few weeks ago announcing that, despite their efforts, they "could not find any evidence of corruption" to incriminate the Mexican presidential candidate López Obrador. The group prefaced their message by clarifying that they "do not have any partisan agenda and do not support any one" of …
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Reflecting on Dharun Ravi’s conviction
On Friday, Dharun Ravi - the Rutgers student whose roommate Tyler Clementi killed himself - was found guilty of privacy invasion, tampering with evidence, and bias intimidation (a hate crime). When John Palfrey and I wrote about this case three weeks ago, I was really hopeful that the court proceedings would give clarity and relieve …
The Power of Youth: How Invisible Children Orchestrated Kony 2012
To many people unfamiliar with Invisible Children, the Kony 2012 campaign looked like a brilliant example of "viral" media spread. The center of the campaign is a compelling 30-minute film where a father talks to his son about the evil practices of the Ugandan war lord Joseph Kony. The father makes it clear that his …
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Stop the Cycle of Bullying
[John Palfrey and I originally wrote this as an op-ed for the Huffington Post. See HuffPo for more comments.] On 22 September 2010, the wallet of Tyler Clementi - a gay freshman at Rutgers University - was found on the George Washington Bridge; his body was found in the Hudson River the following week. His …
How Parents Normalized Teen Password Sharing
In 2005, I started asking teenagers about their password habits. My original set of questions focused on teens' attitudes about giving their password to their parents, but I quickly became enamored with teens' stories of sharing passwords with friends and significant others. So I was ecstatic when Pew Internet & American Life Project decided to …
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Are Internet companies using us to fight against SOPA?
Like many of my colleagues I oppose to SOPA and PIPA. I have been a proponent of Free Culture for many years (which I know is funny to say next to the Microsoft logo) and I have studied young people's perceptions of intellectual property because I find the topic fascinating and extremely important. However, there …
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We need to talk about piracy (but we must stop SOPA first)
Much to my happiness, the internets are in a frenzy about the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (aka SOPA). Congress is currently in recess, but the House announced a hearing on the potential impact to the Domain Name Service on January 18 and everyone expects the Senate to begin discussing a similar bill "PROTECT IP Act" …
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In Defense of Friction
There is no doubt that technology has made my life much easier. I rarely share the romantic view that things were better when human beings used to do the boring tasks that machines now do. For example, I do not think there is much to gain by bringing back the old telephone operators. However, there …
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