Bringing the Internet to Remote African Villages

This is an interesting article, Bringing the Internet to Remote African Villages, published February 3, 2009 in the New York Times about a project funded by Google and installed by engineers from the University of Michigan that has made the Internet accessible in Entasopia, Kenya. It addresses some of the benefits (such as raising consciousness about local issues online) and challenges (such as computer illiteracy and illiteracy, in general) of making high-technology available in such a rural setting. I think it shares some interesting threads with our projects, such as sustainability, race/ethnicity, class, access, etc.

Online Journalism Scholarly Articles

In case anyone need some online journalism or multimedia journalism articles to help with your projects, I found this list of them by University of Florida professor Mindy McAdams via her Twitter feed.

http://www.macloo.com/journalism/refs_online_journalism.htm

There's lots of options on there.

Next Nature

This video made me think about Leo's work; I didn't get to watch it all, but looks like it might be relevant...

share economy

Stumbled across a really cool online magazine about the share economy. Not really sure if it would play into any of your research, but it's still a very cool thing to check out.


http://shareable.net/

Materials for Claire's Class

Everyone should've received an email on Saturday morning with a link to the Donna J. Haraway readings from her book When Species Meet, but in case anyone missed it the link to download the pdfs is here. I've been reading like mad in search of sources that will resonate on the technology side of things, specifically regarding the nature of the human relationship with technology. I had hoped to find something that would pertain enough to include another entire reading, but instead what I've found to be useful has been too fractal; usable bits and pieces of all kinds of different things. So here are some of the main points from various things I've read that might help you get an idea of where I'm heading with all of this (especially after having read Haraway).

- McLuhan's assertion in The Medium is the Message that the very essence of technology is fragmenting.

- McLuhan's concerns presented in The Gadget Lover that media and technology are destroying (or at least debilitating) our imaginiative capabilities.

- Heidegger (in Critique of Technology) maintains that we are "unfree and chained to technology."

- Both anecdotal evidence and a wide range of articles out there (such as this one) illustrate the ever increasing prevalence of digital technologies in Americans' every day lives.

Other things to think about:

- Dogs as technology (ie breed manipulation, cloning, etc)

- Dogs differentiating themselves from other technologies because not only do we spend our money on them, but they themselves are pseudo consumers in the market

- Understanding the ramifications of and vast contexts to our modern digital media technologies and the roles they play in our everyday lives

- Understanding the totally separate skill set necessary for communing with this "other" (canine), as opposed to the skill set necessary to navigate technologies

- Questions of design; canine design (including the human element) + the design of technologies

Looking forward to class tomorrow!

Does Technology Reduce Social Isolation?

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/does-technology-reduce-social-isolation/

By Stefanie Olsen
Americans are more isolated than ever, but don't blame the technology, says a new Pew study. It suggests that the Internet and cellphones actually expand our social networks

Cool study by the Pew Research Center on our social networks, physical and digital.

a little humor

If you want to check out the source, it's good for a few laughs. PhD Comics