We need a social media with heart that gives us time to think
I am going to make the argument that the predominant form of the social web — that amalgam of blogging, Twitter, Facebook, forums, Reddit, Instagram — is an impoverished model for learning and research and that our survival as a species depends on us getting past the sweet, salty fat of “the web as conversation” and on to something more timeless, i... See more
Mike Caufield • The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral
So much genius and trickery and money have gone into a mistaken metaphor. The competition to create and own the digital square may be good business, but it has led to terrible politics. Think of the hopeful imaginings that accompanied the early days of social media: We would know one another across time and space; we would share with one another ac
... See moreNew York Times • Opinion | the Great Delusion Behind Twitter - The New York Times
"If we turn this wonderful technology we have for knowledge into a weapon for disinformation," he told me, "we are in deep trouble." Why? "Because we won't know what we know, and we won't know who to trust, and we won't know whether we're informed or misinformed. We may become either paranoid and hyper-sceptical, or just apathetic and unmoved. Both... See more
Tom Chatfield • Daniel Dennett: 'Why civilisation is more fragile than we realised'
An Albert Einstein quote: “Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times since he never gets to see or hear anything else.”
Even though on the Internet, we’re just a click away from t... See more
We have never before had access to so many perspectives, ideas, and information. Much of it is fleetingly interesting but ultimately inconsequential—not to be confused with expertise, let alone wisdom.
Thomas Chatterton Williams • The People Who Don’t Read Books
Like a raging river, information courses along faster than ever before.The maelstrom will never cease. In fact, her gales will blow harder, her raindrops grow fatter with the bits and bytes that make up our digital deluge.We have too few hours to comb through too much information. Not to mention, it takes real, hard, honest work to separate the whe... See more
Tom White • Curation as a Cure
The “conversational web”. A web obsessed with arguing points. A web seen as a tool for self-expression rather than a tool for thought. A web where you weld information and data into your arguments so that it can never be repurposed against you. The web not as a reconfigurable model of understanding but of sealed shut presentations. And a web that c... See more
Mike Caufield • The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral
What good is it to have all of the world’s knowledge at your fingertips if you don’t have the bandwidth to prioritize it, or the expertise to know if it is competent? At one time we had a scarcity of information, but today our attention is in the midst of a massive DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack.