ideas

Linking news and action

Swiss author and entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli recently published a provocative essay titled “News is Bad for You” in The Guardian.

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:04:43 -0700

Big stories and little details: what Charles Mann misses

Charles Mann offers a big story in the latest issue of the Atlantic. It’s 11,000 words, and it’s based around an audacious premise: the end of energy scarcity.

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:33:59 -0700

What comes after election monitoring? Citizen monitoring of infrastructure.

I spent last week in Senegal at a board meeting for Open Society Foundation, meeting organizations the foundation supports around the continent. Two projects in particular stuck in my mind. One is Y’en a Marre (“Fed Up”), a Senegalese activist organization led by hiphop artists and journalists, who worked to register voters and oust long-time president Abdoulaye Wade.

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:19:21 -0700

Schneier and Zittrain on digital security and the power of metaphors

Bruce Schneier is one of the world’s leading cryptographers and theorists of security. Jonathan Zittrain is a celebrated law professor, theorist of digital technology and wonderfully performative lecturer. The two share a stage at Harvard Law School’s Langdell Hall.

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:26:41 -0700

Have books, need hashtags

My book, Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, comes out on June 10th on Kindle, June 17th in hardcover. My publisher, W. W.

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 07:33:01 -0700

Beyond “The Crisis in Civics” – Notes from my 2013 DML talk

Two weeks ago, I gave the opening keynote at the Digital Media and Learning conference in Chicago. The conference, which explores how digital media is and could be changing education and learning, focused on the theme of “Democratic Futures: Mobilizing Voices and Remixing Youth Participation“.

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:03:10 -0700

Harper High School, and finding solutions to complex problems

Every few years, This American Life puts forward a piece of radio reporting that raises the bar for journalism as a whole.

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 06:39:16 -0700

Is civics in crisis? Or just changing its shape?

In late January of 2012, Austin Oberbillig and Evan Ricks, students at Olympia High School in Olympia, Washington made a video called “Lunch Scholars“.

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:51:10 -0800

The Globalization of Sumo – My talk at MSR SCS 2013

Microsoft’s Social Computing Symposium is one of my favorite conferences of the year. It’s small, invitation only, curated by some of the smartest people in my field, and attracts a wonderful combination of smart folks I hadn’t previously known about and friends I’ve known long enough that they are becoming family.

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 08:15:30 -0800

The flywheel in the farmer’s field, or why innovating around infrastructure is so hard

So we’re in the Home Depot, which we’ve visited almost every day since Colin’s been staying with me. That’s because we’re building a cabin, and while we’ve got a good local hardware store, they don’t have lumber, and while there’s a good lumberyard a bit further away, their tool selection is lousy.

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:24:25 -0800
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