Tribute to Aaron Swartz: Information Guerrilla Warrior
The internet lost a major figure in the person of Aaron Swartz on Friday January 11. Swartz, who was facing a possible 50 years in prison and $4 million fine for downloading the contents of JSTOR from an MIT computer, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 26 years old. Swartz is credited with [...]
Data Mining: The Price to Pay for Our “Free Parking” in Cyberspace
I can hear him now: “Come one, come all. Enter my parking lot and spend as much time as you want and it is free.” So says the P.T. Barnum of cyberspace. Welcome to the biggest parking lot in the world. At one time that parking lot grew so big it threatened to eat itself. [...]
Wired But Disconnected
Think about how one connects with others through all the wires that fill our lives. This is not about why people connect, whether they should connect, or that connecting is good or bad for society. I am not against wiring. Wiring is necessary to a life well lived, especially in the digital age. For some, [...]
Real Social Interaction Is on its Deathbed: Part I
Instead of bringing us together, social media through computers, smart phones, tablets, and all mobile devices is creating a great divide among people. Anyone who wants to communicate in person is fast becoming a minority. More people love their machines than they do other people. These devices are a convenient moat separating people from human [...]
Wake Up People: Your Life is an Open Book
Without warning, Microsoft, long considered the prince of evil for all things on the Internet, recently decided to be the good guy when it comes to protecting individual privacy on the Web. Microsoft added a Do Not Track embed to version 10 of its Internet Explorer browser. When someone uses it, it tells advertisers not [...]
