Peter Suber points out that FaceBook, Yahoo, Elsevier and Yahoo have joined
the NetChoice.org lobby that has issued a clarion call against open access
that blurs the line between lies and gibberish. Peter blows the statements
apart, leaving nothing but clean air and a whiff of ozone.
NetChoice.org is publicizing its monthly “iAWFUL” (Internet advocates
watchlist for ugly laws) list of policies that it doesn’t like. The list
has little to do with advocating for the Internet, and everything to do with
supporting the interests of Internet businesses (“committed to tearing down
barriers to e-commerce”). For example, this month’s iAWFUL list includes
data breach notification bills and a CT bill that “would force publishers
to sell digital books at ‘reasonable” prices to state libraries.”
That’s in addition to opposing actions (including the recent epochal White
House Me... (more)
Ryan Carson [twitter:RyanCarson] of Treehouse at the Mesh Conference is
keynoting the Mesh Conference. He begins his introduction of himself by
saying he is a father, which I appreciate. Treehouse is an “online
education company that teaches technology. We hope we can remove the need to
go to university to do technology.”
NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key
information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small
matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a spellpchecker. Mangling other
people’s ideas and words. You are warned, peo... (more)
Dan Gillmor is giving a Berkman lunchtime talk about his Permission Taken
project. Dan, who has been very influential on my understanding of tech and
has become a treasured friend, is going to talk about what we can do to live
in an open Internet. He begins by pointing to Jonathan Zittrain’s The
Future of the Internet and Rebecca MacKinnon’s Consent of the Networked
[two hugely important books].
NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key
information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small
matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a ... (more)
I remember well the first time I heard the word “attitude” used to mean
“negative attitude.” It was shortly after John Lennon had been killed. I
was in a mall and the poster shop was selling some crappy Lennon memorial
posters at jacked up prices. I was devoted to Lennon, and muttered something
about it being opportunism. “You got an attitude,” the clerk said,
sneering. “I don’t need your attitude.”
I was tempted to say, “Yes, I have an attitude. We all have attitudes.”
But I knew what he meant.
Likewise, nowadays I hear weather forecasters predicting that there will be
“some w... (more)
Sarah Parmenter has posted about just how ugly it gets for women in tech. She
recounts a horrifying story about how as a speaker at a tech conference she
was methodically assaulted online. I want to believe that this was a rare and
random act, but apparently it happens more than we know because it’s not
something generally the victims want to get yet more publicity about.
Thanks to the rise of feminism, the change in behavioral norms over the past
50 years has eliminated many of the superficial, public expressions of
misogyny. Not all, of course, but in the circles that I’ve move... (more)