On December 21st, 2010, the Home News reported that Tyler Clementi’s parents filed notice of their intent to sue Rutgers University. In the notice, the Clementi family’s lawyer contends that the university failed to protect Clementi from the “unlawful or otherwise improper acts perpetrated against” him. The notice goes on to say: it appears Rutgers University failed to act, failed to put in place and/or failed to implement, and...
What better way to sum up the last couple of weeks’ meditations on the transformative powers of Web 2.0 than WikiLeaks? When Paul and I make our presentations on the future of higher education, we begin by stipulating that the dominance of digital media is not inevitable at some future time, but rather is already a fait accompli. Here’s one way to illustrate this fact: a few months back, the New York Times ran an article with a...
“We are living through the most momentous change in human communication in human history.” Over the past couple of weeks, I have considered three of the four main responses Paul and I receive when we insist upon seeing the advent of Web 2.0 as a paradigm shift in human communication. So far, I’ve ruminated on: 1. We are not; 2. I can ignore it, so it can’t be that big a deal; and 3. It’s not a change at all, but a...
In Orality and Literacy, Walter Ong makes the startling–and since much debated–claim that writing “heightens consciousness,” because it alienates the writer from the present moment. He goes on to explain: Alienation from a natural milieu can be and indeed is in many ways essential for full human life. To live and understand fully, we need not only proximity, but also distance. This writing provides for consciousness as...
Admit it. This picture’s just the teensiest bit creepy. It accompanies John Tierney’s “When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays,” a NYT article reviewing research by Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert published last week in Science magazine. The image is, in other words, twice removed from the original research, which involves using an iPhone app to collect data on the relationship between attentiveness and...
When I was required to turn my attention to the sky as a sophomore in college, I was baffled by Ptolemy’s description of the “apparent motion” of the stars. Even though I grew up in central Florida prior to the night polluting boom set off by the Disney invasion, I didn’t spend much time with my eyes turned heavenward. The moon came and went and that was about the extent of my interest in the universe. I had my own angst...
