More food for thought. “And Google is scanning every book on the planet. Everything will be scanned into computers the size of Kansas owned by Google, and everything will become searchable — but why would anyone want to search? Because it’s all just data, digital crap floating around. In that environment, young people won’t want […]
Archive for the ‘Techno-dysfunctions’ Category
Technology doesn’t necessarily makes things better
September 6th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 6 September 2009 Something for us all to ponder I feel, not just for camera phones. “It’s funny how in the end, technology doesn’t always make things better, it just makes it more accessible …” David Bailey on camera phones (Guardian, 3 September 2009) Download article as PDF
eBook development gets newspapers “out of gaol”?
July 7th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 7 July 2009 Does the following represent as possible “get out of gaol” for the newspaper industry? Or is it just an interesting cul de sac? The current generation of ebook readers don’t do visual multimedia, they try to be a two dimensional paper analogue; al la paperback format, e.g. Sony Reader […]
Open opportunities, open threats?
April 30th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 30 April 2009 N.B. The following online essay represents the personal views of the author and should not be construed as necessarily representative of any other individual or organisation. I would prefer to think that technological developments and experience would have, by this time, made the debate about what Virtual Learning Environment […]
Social networking as a killer app … not?
April 15th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 15 April 2009 In the UK press this week we find Facebook fans do worse in exams (Sunday Times, 12 April 2009) which employs journalistic devices like “researchers have discovered… ” to establish credibility and “findings will confirm the worse fears …” to engage the attention of the anxious parent. Nevertheless, I […]
Total personalisation = total surveillance?
March 27th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 27 March 2009 Seth Finkelstein’s column in the Guardian always makes for an interesting read. Yesterday’s print version was titled Google’s would-be watchdogs are distracted by its chew-toys but in the online version the same article was called Google’s surveillance is taking us further down the road to hell (Guardian, 26 March […]
Audio: for the discerning learner
March 12th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 12 March 2009. I’m a big fan of speech radio so my attention was attracted to the short article Knowledge via radio: Learn in waves (Times Online, 8 March 2009). Later in the week I listened to a really interesting programme in the BBC Radio 4 Analysis series called Clever.com (BBC Radio […]
Project Canvas
March 7th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 7 March 2009 The BBC’s iPlayer is undoubtedly successful but yet the service constrains its users to viewing its streamed or downloaded material on a computer. Not for much longer apparently. Over on the BBC Trust site we find an account of Project Canvas which in essence seems to be broadband connection […]
Flexible working, flexible learning?
February 13th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 13 February 2009 There was an interesting set of articles on flexible working in The Independent’s SustainIT section (10 February 2009). Ok, this Independent pull-out was in association with BT so we have to be alert to implicit product placement but, nevertheless, there was some interesting stuff that I think could be […]
Clickable music videos – product placement or useful model?
February 8th, 2009
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by Derek Morrison, 8 February 2009 The headline Pop fans click on to stars’ sing’n’sells was enough to make me wince when reading the Sunday newspapers and the story also offered its own share of reflective shudders about how those clever marketing types are ramping up product placement big time. The story was based around […]
