The Internet, According To mememolly

April 11, 2008 – 11:20 am

By Casey | Posted in Questionable...funny. Pointless. | Comments (0)



Internet Safety

November 6, 2007 – 12:25 pm

NPR : Back to School: Reading, Writing and Internet Safety
As students return to school in Virginia, there’s something new in their curriculum. Virginia is the first state to require public schools to teach Internet safety.

By Casey | Posted in Blink, Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (0)

Who Owns The Network?

October 5, 2007 – 6:52 am

Note: this cross-posted item is my contribution to our Banned Books Week recognition. We’ve been pitting books against each other, hoping to illustrate that there are always (at least) two sides to every story. Most of the other books were more social or political, but I liked this pair.

Wikinomics authors Don Tapscott and Anthony [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (0)

OneWebDay

September 13, 2007 – 4:27 am

Have You Thanked the Internet Lately? OneWebDay, our opportunity to celebrate ?one web, one world, one wish? is just about a week away (though it falls on Yom Kippur). This video explains a bit and Tim Berners-Lee is planning his own video (worth mentioning: his net neutrality post).
If things work out, I’ll be posting [...]

By Casey | Posted in Dispatches, Technology | Comments (0)

Whose Technology Is It Anyway?

July 11, 2007 – 12:55 pm

I wasn’t planning on posting much about Keen’s Cult of the Amateur, but I did. And now I find myself posting about it again. Thing is, I’m a sucker for historical analogy, and Clay Shirky yesterday posted a good one that compared the disruptive effects of mechanized cloth production to today’s internet.
Yes, that’s actually the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Books, Movies, Music, Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (0)



Keen Says I’m Killing Culture, Byte By Byte

July 10, 2007 – 1:25 pm

Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur; How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture is getting a lot of attention from usually quiet corners of the web, and I’ve had to quell the urge to write a story under the headline ?Andrew Keen Tells YouTubers to Eat Spinach.?
Keen’s argument rests on the belief that ?culture? [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (3)

“Smart Networks” Are A Stupid-Bad Idea

April 4, 2007 – 12:27 pm

This story in MIT Technology Review scares me.
Instead of letting all computers within the network communicate freely, Ethane is designed so that communication privileges within the network have to be explicitly set; that way, only those activities deemed safe are permitted. ?With hindsight, it’s a very obvious thing to do,? McKeown says.
No matter how obvious [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (1)

?This Would Make A Really Great Blog Post…?

September 29, 2006 – 12:27 pm

A comic from XKCD:

?I feel like I’m wasting my life on the internet. Let’s walk around the world.?

?Sounds good.?

[panels showing the world's great beauty, a truly grand adventure]

?And yet all I can think of is ‘this will make for a great Livejournal entry.’?

By Casey | Posted in Questionable...funny. Pointless., Technology | Comments (1)

…It’s How You Use It

July 25, 2006 – 12:46 pm

Not A Pretty Librarian has kicked things off well with a first post titled ?It Is Not A Tool,? covering an argument about which has more value to a teenager: a car or a computer.
On one side is the notion that ?She can?t drive herself to work with a computer.? While, on the other side [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (1)

Don’t Think You Use Web 2.0? Think Again

April 4, 2006 – 11:59 pm

It can be hard for library folk to imagine that the web development world might be as divided about the meaning and value of ?Web 2.0? as the library world is about ?Library 2.0,? but we/they are. Take Jeffrey Zeldman’s anti-Web 2.0, anti-AJAX post, for instance. Zeldman’s a smart guy, and he’s not entirely off-base, [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (1)

As The Useful Becomes Useless, It Becomes Art

February 23, 2006 – 6:51 pm

The story here isn’t about why I’m on the Kate Spade mailing list. The story is about their new line of ?paper.? It’s stationary, of course. The kind of formal paper people use to send out wedding invites and thank yous and whatever other little missives that email or AIM seem too uncouth for.
I made [...]

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy, Style, Fashion and Food, Technology | Comments (4)

The Future Of Privacy and Libraries

February 1, 2006 – 12:23 pm

Ryan Eby speaks with tongue firmly in cheek in this blog post, but his point is well taken. Privacy is serious to us, but we nonetheless make decisions that trade bits of our patrons’ privacy as an operational cost. While we argue about the appropriate time keep backups of our circulation records, we largely accept [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (0)

CIO’s Message To Faculty: The Internet Is Here

January 24, 2006 – 12:20 pm

As part of a larger message to faculty returning from winter break, our CIO offered this summary of how he sees advancing internet use affecting higher education:
Are you familiar with blogs and podcasts? Google them, or look them up in Wikipedia. Some of you may already be using these new tools. Others may think these [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (3)

The Arrival of the Stupendous

January 23, 2006 – 10:02 pm

We can be forgiven for not noticing, but the world changed not long ago.
Sometime after the academics gave up complaining about the apparent commercialization of the internet, and while Wall Street was licking it’s wounds after the first internet boom went bust, the world changed.
Around the time we realized that over 200 million Americans have [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (19)

The Library vs. Search Engine Debate, Redux

January 8, 2006 – 12:14 pm

A while ago I reported on the Pew Internet Project’s November 2005 report on increased use of search engines. Here’s what I had to say at the time:
On an average day, about 94 million American adults use the internet; 77% will use email, 63% will use a search engine.
Among all the online activities tracked, including [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (0)