Design for Readability First

Safari 5’s seemingly innocuous new Reader feature, which isolates the text on a webpage making it easier to read, has sparked a surprising amount of outrage from web publishers who think Apple is trying to squash online advertisements and attack their livelihood.

But there’s been an equally distinctive and vocal reaction from readers, one that can be summed up quite simply: “Thank you.”

Similar tools have been around for eons, starting with the “Print this page” link of the last century, all the way up to tools like Readability, whose code Apple borrowed for its browser. But the advent of Safari Reader seems to have galvanized a point of view that’s been brewing for a while: Webpages are too cluttered and difficult to read.

So publishers, listen up. Your readers, the people you depend on to reach your bottom line, have something to say. It’s a pretty simple message: Your webpages are hostile to reading. It’s time to start paying much closer attention to the design of your pages — not just to reduce clutter and make everything easier to read, but to make sure your text maintains that readability across the broad range of screen sizes, devices and browser configurations people are using today.

It’s telling that Apple, a company with a history of only adding the most-needed features to its products, decided its browser would benefit from a tool that strips away the clutter on a page. Of course, one could make the argument that Reader is simply a subtle attempt to drive publishers toward Apple’s iOS platform, where you can create apps filled with iAds that can’t be removed. However, it would be a shame if that’s the only message publishers took from Safari’s Reader. After all, Reader is not an ad blocker, and given that there are ad blockers available for every browser, Reader is hardly a new threat. Reader is only presented as an option after the page has loaded, the ads have been displayed and impressions (i.e., the money part) have been registered.

The message of Reader (and tools of its ilk) isn’t that the online publishing model is doomed, but that it desperately needs a reboot to get rid of all the junk that’s clogging up the whole point of the system: connecting readers with the information they want.

Savvy publishers have an inkling that something is wrong. The popular British news site The Guardian, for one. The Guardian notes in its review of Safari 5’s Reader feature, “technologies like Safari Reader sound a salutary warning to media companies and advertisers…. From now on, we must love our readers or die.”

But The Guardian is putting its money where it’s mouth is. The site recently launched its Open Content Platform, complete with a Content API which allows anyone to grab an article from The Guardian and use it how they see fit — within the guidelines of The Guardian’s terms of service.

One of the best creations to come out of The Guardian’s new API is Phil Gyford’s Today’s Guardian.

The primary purpose of Today’s Guardian is to make reading news articles easier. For Gyford, that means eliminating distractions — sidebars are gone, comments zapped, menus pared down and page navigation radically simplified. We take issue with the removal of comments, but in short, it’s The Guardian redesigned with ease of reading as the primary goal.

As Gyford notes in his overview, it’s “a shame that such tools are even necessary … if you were creating a site whose purpose is to provide articles to read, wouldn’t you want to make it perform that task really well?”

If you’re wondering what makes a more readable design, read through Gyford’s post first. Also check out Mandy Brown’s In Defense of Readers on A List Apart. It’s filled with excellent advice on what to think about when designing a reader-friendly layout. (She’s the creative director at Etsy.)

“Limit distractions to the full extent possible,” Brown writes. Pull quotes are great, she says, as long as they’re near the top of an article where they can draw a reader in. But they become distracting farther down. She also advises on white space, typographic treatments, and where best to place your visual distractions so you don’t foul up the reading experience (the top and the bottom).

Brown’s own site, A Working Library is an exemplar of usability. Load it in Safari Reader and the only things that are removed are the header and footer.

A clean page layout falls apart when the proper attention isn’t paid to typography, and in that department, Blaine Cook has some homework for you. He gives you a way to calculate the proper text size mathematically by sizing all of your text in ems. This makes it much easier to find the proper pairing of column width and text size, giving your readers an easier time no matter what resolution, browser, or device they’re using.

He points to two useful tools: his own RePublish, which helps solve font-size issues across multiple screen resolutions, and Mathias Nater’s Hyphenator.js, a JavaScript library that intelligently reflows your text with clean hyphenation so you can run justified columns.

Cook’s methods will “make your site look amazing on the shiny new devices,” he says, but they will also improve readability in a good old-fashioned desktop web browser. On that note, he warns against the common practice of designing different layouts and serving different stylesheets for different-size screens.

“You shouldn’t be optimizing for iPads,” Cook writes. “Or iPhones. Or iPhone 4Gs. Or Nexus Ones. Or 30-inch 90ppi screens, or 30-inch 300ppi screens. You should be optimizing for reading experience, and you should be using the best techniques available to do so.”

via webmonkey.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

The Battle for Cloud-Based Education Services Heats Up as Kentucky Deploys Microsoft's Live@edu

The Kentucky Department of Education announced last week that it has implemented Microsoft Live@edu to provide its cloud-based communications and collaboration tools to students, staff, and faculty statewide. The service will be available to more than 700,000 people, and the state predicts it will save $6.3 million in costs over the next four years by using the Live@edu service.

Live@edu offers educational institutions free hosted, co-branded tools, including 10 GB of email storage, 25 GB of file storage, and access to calendars, document sharing, and instant-messaging.

Kentucky and Microsoft boast that the migration from the stage's old onsite Exchange service to the cloud-based one has been one of the quickest deployments - done over the course of one weekend, with over half a million people already accessing Live@Edu in the state.

According to Microsoft, Live@edu is now available in more than 10,000 schools in over 130 countries and serves 11 million people worldwide.

Microsoft's Live@edu versus Google's Apps for Education

The news from Microsoft and the Kentucky Department of Education follows on the heels of several recent announcements from Google in regards to their cloud-based educational offerings, including the Oregon Department of Education's announcement last month that Google Apps for Education would be offered to schools statewide.

According to their website, Google claims 8 millions students worldwide are using their Apps for Education, far fewer than the number served by Microsoft's Live@edu. Despite the demand for better collaborative tools in multiple enterprise and education markets, Google has experienced a number of setbacks with its push into the education realm recently, most notably with universities like Yale and < ahref="http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224700847">UC Davis scrapping their plans to adopt the service.

Nevertheless, some educators are pleased to see the battle for cloud-based communication and collaboration tools between these two tech giants, hoping that it will improve the product offerings made available for schools.

via readwriteweb.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Apple's App Store Hyperwall at WWDC

via youtube.com

At WWDC in San Francisco, Apple has erected a video wall containing 30 synchronized 24-inch LED screens that display the top 50,000 apps as they are being downloaded. In just a few minutes, the entire walls gets filled up with with 10,800 downloaded apps from around the world.

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Surprising Number of People Get It On While Driving

You don’t have to spend any amount of time driving to see people doing really stupid things behind the wheel, but we’re surprised by how many people are having sex while driving.

According to Jabra, which makes phone headsets, 15 percent of people surveyed said they “have performed sex or other sexual acts” while driving. There’s always the possibility people are claiming they’re getting freaky in traffic to sound cool, but the survey found many drivers are doing more than driving while commuting.

Jabra surveyed 1,800 people in six countries and says the study has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percent. People might have monkey-wrenched the online survey, but the findings are in line with some we’ve heard. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood calls distracted driving “a deadly epidemic” and says seven out 10 people use cellphones and other gadgets while driving. He’s working with automakers to address the issue.

As you’d expect, most of those surveyed — 72 percent — confessed to gobbling McFood or slurping a Frothed Milk Sugar-Laced Coffee-Flavored Beverage while driving. That’s to be expected when you realize most cars come with more cupholders than seats these days.

Another 35 percent said they’ve changed their clothes while driving, a feat we’d find exceedingly difficult because we drive a compact. Nearly one in four people admitted doing their hair and 13 percent said they apply makeup. It never ceases to amaze us when women apply mascara in traffic — putting a sharp object next to your eye while driving is just plain stupid.

Five percent of respondents said they shave behind the wheel. We’re assuming most of those are men, but we know of at least one case where a woman crashed while shaving her bikini line.

In this connected age, 28 percent of people say they text while driving (which is illegal in 26 states) and 12 percent say they read or send e-mail behind the wheel. Of course, just one-third of respondents are using headsets or other hands-free devices while yakking on their cellphones.

Another 10 percent said they read the paper while driving and 5 percent say they’ve played videogames.

“It is truly unbelievable what people are doing while driving,” said Jonas Forsberg of GN Netcom, which owns Jabra. “The results of our survey show that so many people are distracted and doing other things while on the road — even though they know the consequences that can occur. We hope that people will soon understand the implications of these bad behaviors and will change their own behavior accordingly.”

Yeah. Good luck with that.

via wired.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Gov 2.0: Washington D.C. To Launch Private Cloud

The city of Washington, D.C., already known as an innovative government user of technology when federal CIO Vivek Kundra was CTO there before he moved to the White House -- is now building a private cloud infrastructure, launching a startup incubation effort, and pushing new community involvement in developing applications and leveraging government data.

The new private cloud is the closest to being launched, Brian Sivak, the city's CTO, said Thursday at the Gov 2.0 Expo. The infrastructure includes automatic replication and failover, incorporates flexible resource allocation, runs both Windows and Linux, and will be available for city agencies within "the next month or so," Sivak said. Agencies will be able to order a server in a shopping cart, click okay, and automatically have a server spooled up.

"While that's not revolutionary for the world, it's pretty big for cities and government agencies," Sivak said. "Here, it takes a long time to procure hardware, but now, a guy wants to go buy a server, it's click-click-click and then it's done."

In addition to building a private cloud, Sivak has embarked on the journey toward creating what he calls the "GIS model city" of Washington, D.C. The city is already a heavy supplier of mapping applications, having 26 apps that mash maps up with data on crimes, evacuation routes, school data, emergency facilities, addresses of notaries public, leaf collection, and much more.

However, Sivak wants to go further. He's now working to develop a series of usable templates and best practices in order to spark even more development of mapping applications, such as city service and polling place locators. He's also looking to add a way for citizens to update or augment maps with their own geo-tagged information on the location of things in the city such as park benches and traffic lights. Further down the road, he would also like to enable the city and others to release geo-tagged press releases of goings on in the city.

Washington, D.C., has also launched an effort to incubate local startups. Sivak is looking for outside investors who will fund the effort -- and the startups. The city would seek out early-stage startups who have built a prototype that's interesting or beneficial to city government. Then, during an incubation period, the startups would work hand-in-hand with the city agencies for which they would develop applications or services.

Sivak said that such an effort could have numerous benefits for multiple parties, including a higher chance of startup success since their initial product was built to customer specifications, and lower cost for the government as the startup's launch customer.

Finally, Washington, D.C., is working on an effort called "Decode DC," which is a take-off on and quasi-successor to earlier Washington, D.C., application development contests. The problem with those earlier contests was that after the awards were handed out, too often the applications stopped being maintained. The city wants to reverse that by providing the public with certain business processes and related data, asking how to make the business processes better, and allowing the city to take the next steps.

For example, Sivak said, Washington, D.C., has a process to register landlords with the city in order to collect tax revenue, but the current process isn't able to determine who is skirting their duty to register. As an improvement, Sivak posited, the city could match rental property information on Craigslist and the Washington Post's classifieds against the rental registrations.

via informationweek.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Chicago-Philadelphia architecture faceoff

There is a long tradition in journalism when your hometown team is playing for a championship: You good-naturedly trash everything about the other city.

According to that playbook, with the Blackhawks about to face off against the Philadelphia Flyers for the Stanley Cup, I should be proclaiming Chicago's superiority in architecture. And frankly, that would not be difficult, given the city's long record of leadership in everything from skyscrapers to urban planning. When BusinessWeek rated America's top design cities in 2008, Chicago ranked first, Philly ninth.

But I'm not going down that road, and there are two big reasons.

First, the Blackhawks' home arena, the United Center, is nothing to brag about. It's just another corporate sports palace, a pale echo of the stirring art deco classicism at the legendary but long-gone Chicago Stadium. The Flyers' Wachovia Center at least makes a stab at bracing, contemporary design. It's also easily reached by public transit, and some fans claim it's a more intimate place to take in the action.

Second, as I discovered during a recent visit to Philadelphia, many of that city's iconic metropolitan images have a distinctly familiar feel: They were created, it turns out, in the drafting rooms of Chicago.

When the television cameras pan the Philadelphia skyline before the series' first game there Wednesday night, they will invariably settle on One and Two Liberty Place, Helmut Jahn's Chrysler Building-inspired exercises in postmodernism, with their bright blue glass, sculpted tops and an exultant spire crowning One Liberty Place.

Finished in 1987, the taller One Liberty Place shattered the anachronistic gentlemen's agreement that for decades ensured that no building in the city would rise higher than the statue of William Penn atop the ornate tower of Philadelphia's Victorian-era City Hall.

Philadelphians continue to appreciate the Liberty Place duo, even though postmodernism — po-mo for short — fell out of fashion years ago.

"Philly is so retrograde that people still like po-mo," e-mailed my colleague at The Philadelphia Inquirer, architecture critic Inga Saffron.

Liberty Place is simply the most obvious example of Chicago's imprint on the city of Ben Franklin and Rocky Balboa.

D.H. Burnham & Co., the firm led by Chicago's Daniel Burnham, designed Philadelphia's great John Wanamaker's department store (1911), an East Coast sibling of the former Marshall Field's on State Street. As at Field's, an austere classical exterior gives way to inner glory, a five-story atrium topped by a vaulted mosaic ceiling. Like Field's, Wanamaker's is now part of the Macy's empire.

The Burnham firm also designed Philly's handsome Land Title buildings (1897 and 1902), two muscular Chicago-style skyscrapers that rise side by side on Philadelphia's main drag.

It's "as though a bit of Chicago's South Michigan Avenue was transplanted to Broad Street," Francis Morrone wrote in his 1999 guidebook to Philadelphia architecture.

Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, the firm that succeeded D.H. Burnham & Co., turned out Philadelphia's two main train stations: Suburban Station (1929), which is stuck in the basement of an otherwise handsome office building, and 30th Street Station (1934), which shelters an art deco main concourse that ranks with New York's Grand Central Terminal as a magnificent urban gateway.

In recent years, Chicago's Solomon Cordwell Buenz has made a lively departure from Philly's stodgy reliance on brick for domestic architecture, bringing glassy modernism to the city with such praiseworthy condo towers as the blue-and-white, curving-walled Murano.

And what, one might ask, has Philly contributed to Chicago's architecture?

Not much in actual construction, but something quite significant nonetheless.

In the summer of 1873, while still learning his craft, Louis Sullivan, that future hero of Chicago architecture, worked in the office of Philadelphia's Frank Furness, the red-bearded, sharp-tongued genius who designed such idiosyncratic Victorian-era masterworks as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

It was in Furness' office, according to Sullivan biographer Robert Twombly, that key aspects of Sullivan's mature style had their origins: a preference for bold building forms, colorful "polychromatic" decoration and nature-inspired ornament.

So the next time you walk by Sullivan's masterful former Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. store at State and Madison streets — with its structurally expressive, white cellular walls and its forest-green cast-iron ornament sweeping around the corner — give Philly a well-deserved tip of the hat.

via chicagotribune.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Newspapers May Be Dead, But the News Business Isn't

Newspapers may be dying, but the news business is not. The paper part of the business—the physical newspaper itself—is doomed. It no longer makes any sense to print and distribute the printed packets of articles we call "newspapers" to individuals. Not when you can transmit electronic copies of every article on demand virtually anywhere in the world cheaply and instantaneously. But as long as people are still interested in the news—and they will always be interested in the news—there will be money in journalism.

Google has been accused—and with some justification—of killing the news business. Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation properties include Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the London Times, has in particular accused Google of stealing his company's content. But the truth is that while Google does make money directing people to News content, the limited previews of articles Google offers hardly constitute stealing. And while Murdoch has threatened to block Google from indexing his content—something Google has made very easy to do—he has yet to go through with his threats. After all, as Google often points out, its search engine and news aggregators drive traffic to news sites that might otherwise have gone elsewhere. Nevertheless, as I wrote when Murdoch made those threats, he does have a point. Readers who navigate to a website from a search engine spend less time there than regular readers and therefore generate less ad revenue. And the truth is that any way you look at it, search engines like Google are capturing a large share of the revenue that once went to newspaper publishers.

It's not actually Google's fault. It's certainly not as if Google isn't providing an incredibly valuable service by making it possible people to find content on the Internet. The problem is that precisely the things that make the Internet itself so valuable also make the news industry's traditional business model obsolete. And the Internet is just part of a larger, longer-term trend. The rise of radio, broadcast and cable television, and cell phones has marginalized newspapers, so that they are no longer the central clearinghouses of information they once were. In a recent cover piece in The Atlantic on Google—which is well worth reading in its entirety—James Fallows writes that

"The company’s chief economist, Hal Varian, likes to point out that perhaps the most important measure of the newspaper industry’s viability—the number of subscriptions per household—has headed straight down, not just since Google’s founding in the late 1990s but ever since World War II. In 1947, each 100 U.S. households bought an average of about 140 newspapers daily. Now they buy fewer than 50, and the number has fallen nonstop through those years. If Google had never been invented, changes in commuting patterns, the coming of 24-hour TV news and online information sites that make a newspaper’s information stale before it appears, the general busyness of life, and many other factors would have created major problems for newspapers. Moreover, “Google” is shorthand for an array of other Internet-based pressures on the news business, notably the draining of classified ads to the likes of Craigslist and eBay."

Where once we had to get most of our information from a couple of local papers, we now have an incredible variety of sources to choose from. Newspapers have been squeezed by the the proliferation of media to the point where they can no longer survive in their old form. The Internet is actually still accounts for just a fraction of the drop in newspaper revenue. But that fraction is only going to grow now that the Internet itself has become the global clearinghouse of information that local newspapers once were on a local scale.

If the bundle of printed features that has been sold on newsstands or delivered to your door is increasingly obsolete, the basic demand for what goes into newspapers hasn't changed. The demand for news itself certainly hasn't changed, even though the market has become more competitive. The problem is that in their effort to cling to their traditional business model, newspaper publishers are finding it increasingly difficult to make money off the news. But as they struggle to find a new model, news publishers may find they have an unlikely ally. That's because, as I'll explain in another post, the same thing that makes Google such a threat to newspapers also makes it uniquely positioned to create a new and ultimately better marketplace for the news.

via bigthink.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

OLPC's Negroponte says XO-3 prototype tablet coming in 2010

via youtube.com

Nicholas Negroponte is at it again with the development of the XO-3 tablet computer and will have a working prototype by December 2010, two years ahead of projections. Negroponte said the final product would cost US$75.

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Around the World in 80 Days with 2D codes by Ubimark books

via youtube.com

Paper books are a joy to hold and read, but in a hyperlinked world they can feel a little limited. Dr. Sorin A. Matei of Purdue University is making paper books writable and multi-layered with 2D barcodes (QR codes) through a system he's built called Ubimark. Imagine having a cloud of user-contributed commentary, maps, photos, audio and video annotating the paper books you hold in your hand.

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

The Science of Horror-Flick Screams

As horror-flick titles go, Night of the Living Chaos and Rosemary’s Nonlinearity aren’t the catchiest. But filmmakers know that chaos — the mathematical kind — is scary. Now scientists know it too.

Filmmakers use chaotic, unpredictable sounds to evoke particular emotions, say researchers who have assessed screams and other outbursts from more than 100 movies. The new findings, reported May 25 in Biology Letters, come as no surprise, but they do highlight an emerging if little-known area of study, says cognitive biologist W. Tecumseh Fitch of the University of Vienna in Austria, who was not involved in the study.

“The classic example would be a screaming baby on an airplane,” says Fitch, “the kind you can’t ignore and makes your life hell.”

Cries are harder to ignore when they become irregular and chaotic, recent research suggests. Scientists think that these noises, uttered or roared when an animal is really worked up, have a crucial role in communication: They frantically demand attention.

By exploring the use of such dissonant, harsh sounds in film, scientists hope to get a better understanding of how fear is expressed, says study co-author Daniel Blumstein of the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Potentially, there are universal rules of arousal and ways to communicate fear,” says Blumstein, who typically studies screams in marmots, not starlets.

Blumstein and his co-authors acoustically analyzed 30-second cuts from more than 100 movies representing a broad array of genres. The movies included titles such as Aliens, Goldfinger, Annie Hall, The Green Mile, Slumdog Millionaire, Titanic, Carrie, The Shining and Black Hawk Down.

Not unexpectedly, the horror films had a lot of harsh and atonal screams. Dramatic films had sound tracks with fewer screams but a lot of abrupt changes in frequency. And adventure films, it turns out, had a surprising number of harsh male screams.

“Screams are basically chaos,” Fitch says.

Filmmakers have long been deliberately distorting sounds for dramatic effect, says musicologist James Wierzbicki of the University of Sydney. In Hitchcock’s classic The Birds, the only true avian sounds are heard near the beginning of the movie, in a pet shop. The calls of the demented, attacking birds were all electronically generated.

A true, harsh scream “is not a trivial thing to do,” Fitch says. In fact, capturing a realistic, blood-curdling cry is so difficult that filmmakers have used the very same one, now found on many websites, in more than 200 movies. Known as the Wilhelm scream, it is named for the character who first unleashed it in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River.

via wired.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Aga Khan Award for Architecture Finalist: The Green School

The Green School has been named a finalist in the 2010 Aga Khan Awards for Architecture (AKAA), which honors projects that exhibit architectural excellence as well as improve people's overall quality of life. The Green School is a model of both architectural excellence and social service. Comprised of a campus of buildings all built with bamboo, the Green School serves as a learning laboratory for bamboo construction and architectural expression. Additionally, the entire campus is managed with a focus on sustainability; according to their website, they strive to have the "lowest carbon footprint of any international school anywhere," which is partially made possible by their extensive use of locally grown bamboo, their on-campus food production, and plans for power generation on site. Finally, the school also serves their local and global community through educating both Balinese and international students to be future leaders in sustainability. The curriculum is based on hands-on studies of nature, ecology, the environment, sustainability, and creative arts with the aim that students will mature as stewards of the environment.

The AKAA website for the Green School has a good summary of its origins and architectural features:

"Environmentalists and designers John and Cynthia Hardy wanted to motivate communities to live sustainably. Part of that effort was to show people how to build with sustainable materials, namely bamboo. They established the Green School, and its affiliates: the Meranggi Foundation, which develops plantations of bamboo plants through presenting bamboo seedlings to local rice farmers; and PT Bambu, a for-profit design and construction company that promotes the use of bamboo as a primary building material, in an effort to avoid the further depletion of rainforests. The Green School, a giant laboratory built by PT Bambu, is located on a sustainable campus straddling both sides of the Ayung River in Sibang Kaja, Bali, within a lush jungle with native plants and trees growing alongside sustainable organic gardens. The campus is powered by a number of alternative energy sources, including a bamboo sawdust hot water and cooking system, a hydro-powered vortex generator and solar panels. Campus buildings include classrooms, gym, assembly spaces, faculty housing, offices, cafes and bathrooms. A range of architecturally significant spaces from large multi-storey communal gathering places to much smaller classrooms are a feature of the campus. Local bamboo, grown using sustainable methods, is used in innovative and experimental ways that demonstrate its architectural possibilities. The result is a holistic green community with a strong educational mandate that seeks to inspire students to be more curious, more engaged and more passionate about the environment and the planet."

The builder of the Green School, PT Bambu, as well as the Meranggi Foundation, believe bamboo is an important means by which we can address global climate concerns. They seek to change perceptions about bamboo away from the view that bamboo is only a traditional material used in small structures to the view that it is a strong and versatile building material suitable for modern applications. Here are just a few of the benefits of bamboo advertised on their websites:

• Certain timber bamboos have better tensile strength than iron or steel on a strength per weight ratio.
  
• Bamboo is extremely fast growing. It can be harvested in just 3-5 years as opposed to more than 20 years for most tropical hardwoods.
  
• Bamboo is earthquake and cyclone resistant.

The Heart of School building is the Green School's newest structure, and is the subject of all the images shown in this post. According to the designers the three interconnected spirals that encompass the building will stand over 20 meters high. Additionally, the building will have 2000 square meters of floor space and house the school's library, computer room, meeting spaces, exhibition halls, and offices. The bamboo structure is an architectural delight, showcasing the strength and beauty of 2,630 bamboo poles!

If you'd like to help the Green School with a donation of time or money (you can sponsor an Indonesian child to attend the school or buy a bamboo pole for use in constructing the Heart of School building) see the organization's donations page.

For more images of the Green School see greenschool.org or ptbambu.com.

Click here to see all 19 finalists in the 2010 Aga Khan Awards, which include a wetlands design, housing and village projects, more schools, a mosque, a factory, and a museum. The winner will be announced in October 2010.

About the Aga Khan Award for Architecture: It was established in 1977 to identify and encourage building concepts that successfully address the needs and aspirations of communities in which Muslims have a significant presence, thereby enhancing the understanding and appreciation of Islamic culture as expressed through architecture. Since it was launched, over 100 projects have received the award and more than 7,500 building projects have been documented in the fields of contemporary design, social housing, community improvement and development, historic preservation, reuse and area conservation, landscape design, and improvement of the environment. Click here for more.

Photos of the Heart of School building exterior and interior roof detail via greenschool.org; photograph of construction of the Heart of School building via ptbambu.com; image of site plan via Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

via worldchanging.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

British scientist becomes first human 'infected' with a computer virus

What happens when the implants get infected with a computer virus? That's what one brave researcher at the University of Reading is attempting to find out, and he's now actually gone so far as to willingly "infect" himself in the name of science. As you might expect, however, this is all this very much a proof of concept, but Dr. Mark Gasson says that the infected RFID chip in his hand was indeed able to pass on the virus to an external control device in his trials, and he warns that the eventual real world implications could be far more dire. Gasson is particularly concerned when it comes to medical implants, which he says could potentially become infected by other implants in the body, and even pass on the "infection" to other people. Head on past the break for the BBC's report, and try not to be too startled by the Dalek in the room.

via engadget.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

'Science in Hollywood' by Carolyn Porco, AAI 2009

via youtube.com

Carolyn Porco talk about science and religion and examines how science and scientists are portrayed in the film industry. She also explains how she interprets some of the stunning imagery taken by the Cassini mission to Saturn and the outer planets, which she oversees.

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Huge Gap Remains Between Mainstream Media and the Social Web

The top stories in the mainstream press are markedly different than those that lead on social media platforms, a recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism revealed.

Furthermore, what is popular on one social network rarely proves popular on another. In the 29 weeks that the Center tracked news items on blogs, Twitter and YouTube, the three platforms only shared the same top story once — the week of June 15-19, 2009, when Iranian citizens flocked to the streets to contest the results of the presidential election.

Let’s take a look at what was popular on the different social networking sites and how that compares to what gained traction with traditional news media in 2009.

Blogs

Of the three social media platforms examined, news-oriented blogs and mainstream media have the greatest overlap. Bloggers tend to credit traditional news outlets for their information and focus on the same topics, mainly political and international news. Even so, the two had the same top story for a mere 13 of the 49 weeks they were evaluated together.

Although blogs cover many of the same topics, the study found that bloggers tend to focus on more ideological and emotional stories — particularly those concerning human rights, like access to healthcare services or privacy on Facebook — and often with a personal or partisan angle. Bloggers also like to make a story out of “off-beat” or “buried” items in mainstream media coverage.

Although bloggers often attribute their material to the mainstream press, this rarely happened in the reverse. Over the course of the year, the study found only one story that the mainstream media picked up from the blogosphere: a story based on a number of controversial e-mails about climate research dubbed “Climate-gate”.

Because bloggers are so largely dependent on the mainstream media for their information — more than 99% of the stories cited in blogs linked to the websites of traditional news outlets — it will be interesting to see what will happen once major sources like The New York Times and The Times go behind paywalls. Where will bloggers get their information? Will they be as likely to link to stories if they are behind paywalls? How dramatically will that hurt referral traffic to traditional news sites?

Twitter

Compared to the blogosphere, Twitter’s community uses the platform more for sharing important breaking news items than for personal or political discussion, a method shaped both by the 140-character word limit — which does not allow for lengthy reflections — the service imposes, and because it is able to disseminate information through lists of followers quickly.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, technology was far and away the most popular new topic on Twitter in 2009; of all the news stories shared or discussed on the platform, 43% were focused on technology. Technology makes up a marginal 1% of news coverage at mainstream outlets and 8% of blogs. Notably, few Twitter users appear to be interested in economic news; 1% of all news tweets were about the economy, compared to 10% of articles in the traditional press and 7% posts on blogs.

Although technology is the Twitter community’s primary interest by and large, the top news subject in the latter half of 2009 was the aftermath of the Iranian election results. It remained the top news story on Twitter for seven straight weeks, much longer than on any other platform. Collectively, Twitter was more concerned with foreign events than the blogosphere and the traditional press, likely because its userbase is much more international.

YouTube

Like Twitter, YouTube is more of a platform to share and curate important information than a forum for lengthy discussions, although viewers are often active in the comments. Because videos take a long time to edit and upload, there is less of an emphasis on breaking news than on Twitter.

What’s unique about YouTube is that its focus on politics and foreign events far surpasses that of any other platform. Of the news videos on YouTube, politics attracted 21% of views and international news attracted 26%, compared to 15% and 9% in the mainstream media, respectively. The study intelligently points out that this is because “videos transcend language barriers in a way written text cannot.”

What This Means for Mainstream Media

The study underlines the large disconnect between what mainstream media thinks is “top news” and what social media users consider newsworthy, as well as the different kinds of content and discussion each platform attracts.

It also suggests that if traditional news companies want to succeed online — that is, if they want to attract a large number of page views and be relevant to users on the web — they may need to alter their content to match readers’ interests

via mashable.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Surfing renewable energy, hexagonal LEDs, and ultra-efficient aerodynamics

This week Inhabitat reported live from the scene of New York Design Week, where we sifted through thousands of new home furnishings and interiors products to bring you the state-of-the-art in green design. Fresh from the floor of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair is this stunning hexagonal crystal LED light, which is composed of glowing geometric blocks that snap together to form a myriad of shapes. We were also impressed by this beautifully finished wood calculator that multiplies its green factor with sustainably-sourced materials.

The past week was also surging with developments from the field of renewable energy - first we were excited to see the unveiling of the Oyster 2, an offshore wave-harvesting energy plant that improves upon its predecessor with a simpler design, fewer moving parts, and a 250% increase in energy generation. Google, HP, and Microsoft are also getting into the green energy game with plans to tap an unexpected energy source to run their data centers - cow dung! Google also led the charge towards cleaner energy this week by funding a new type of jet engine-inspired geothermal drill that uses superheated streams of water to bore through previously impenetrable surfaces.

Speaking of jets, MIT has just unveiled several ultra-efficient airplane designs that are capable of cutting fuel use by a whopping 70%. The auto industry also received a jolt of energy as Toyota announced a partnership with Tesla that will boost California's flagging economy and likely lead to more affordable iconic electric vehicles.

The field of wearable technology saw several innovative advancements this week as well - safe cyclists rejoice, because a group of Indian students have designed a $22 Solar and Wind Powered Bike Helmet. Meanwhile, a group of Colorado State University seniors have designed a medical incubator backpack unit that they believe can reduce baby deaths in medical emergencies.

Finally, we shined light on several brilliant advancements from the field of solar technology, starting with China's plans to build the "biggest solar energy production base" in the world. We also looked at the HYDRA, a solar-powered hydrogen fuel cell system that can reportedly generate 20,000 gallons of pure water a day, and green energy got literal with the unveiling of the first leaf-shaped crystalline silicon solar panels.

via engadget.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Images from the Shanghai Expo 2010

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from bookaman's posterous

E-Health and Web 2.0: The Doctor Will Tweet You Now

When Janel Wood’s 9-year-old son recently began experiencing migraines, the working mother decided to try a new company health care program that allowed her to communicate with a doctor through videoconferencing, voice over IP and instant messaging.

While her son was home for lunch, Wood logged onto a local medical practice’s websiite and connected via videoconferencing and IM with the doctor on duty, who then reviewed her son’s electronic medical record, or EMR, online. The doctor sent Wood links to migraine articles and podcasts and prescribed more hydration for her son, which worked over time.

“I ended up bringing [my son] back to school before missing any classes, which he was kind of bummed about. It was so quick and efficient,” Wood said.

While telemedicine may seem a cold and impersonal approach to patient care, physicians say it’s exactly the opposite. And they are quickly embracing it as a way to foster a more intimate relationship with patients and educate them about treatments prior to office visits.

“We’re getting very positive feedback from patients,” said Dr. Eric Christianson, assistant medical director of the emergency room at University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview. Fairview now has 36 physicians who are beta-testing patient Web 2.0 services powered by software from SaaS provider American Well.

Physicians take shifts during which they commit to being available for online sessions with patients. Fairview’s hours are from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the weekend.

American Well partnered with Microsoft to use its HealthVault EMR service, which allows patients to securely store their entire medical history online. Test results and radiological images can also be uploaded to the online records. Patients control access to their information and must specify who can see the records. Google Health is another popular online EMR service also being used to access patient information online.

BlueCross and BlueShield of Minnesota makes the online patient services available to employers, who then offer it to employees. There is a $10 or $20 co-payment fee for members, and nonmembers can use the services for $50 per session. In other states, however, BlueCross and BlueShield offers the services to any member, regardless of employer.

Social Networking Sites Get in the Game

It’s not only secure videoconferencing, IM or e-mail that’s being used to bolster communication with patients. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are also being used by physician practices and hospitals to disseminate health information and create online communities where patients can share their experiences.

Jeff Livingston, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Irving, Texas, said his 10-doctor practice has about 600 Facebook fans and more than 1,500 Twitter followers. They not only use the social networking service to communicate through text messaging, but can read and comment on postings about birth control, breast feeding and a variety of other health care topics.

New mothers also share baby photos through a popular Facebook community page created by patients of his practice, MacArthur OB/GYN. And MacArthur OB/GYN’s Facebook fans can connect with one another through the social networking site to discuss their own experiences with medical procedures.

MacArthur uses secure messaging and a private patient portal developed by Kryptiq Corp. to allow patients to access their full charts, make appointments, get test results and communicate one-on-one with their doctors about specific, private health concerns. The portal and secure message system meet HIPAA compliance rules and allows the clinic to balance the need for secure, trackable communication with patients.

Livingston said the more he can educate his patients through Facebook or Twitter, the more prepared they’ll be when they arrive for an appointment.

“If you think about the way you go to a doctor, it’s kind of upside down. In a 10-minute visit, six or seven minutes are spent gathering background information — what medicines you are on, what problems you are experiencing. Then we do a quick exam and run a test, and then spend the last few seconds talking about what we’re going to do,” Livingston said.

For example, on a typical day, Livingston often has young patients asking about birth control. If they’ve never explored the issue, then Livingston typically spends most of his time explaining options, along with their risks and benefits. If, however, he can point his patients to online resources, such as a podcast he created and links to on Facebook, then the majority of patients already know what they want when they arrive in the office.

“What’s really fascinating is how often the educated patient makes the exact same decision that I would have for them,” he said.

An Online ‘Knowledge Base’

Livingston said he also wants patients to see his Facebook and Twitter pages as something of “knowledge base.”

“Our Facebook page is very local. It’s our patients interacting with our practice,” he said. “With Twitter, I can point my patients in the direction of articles and blog postings and things interesting from an OB/GYN perspective. But what’s really happened with Twitter is that it’s really become international. We have followers all over the world who have identified us as a good resource on women’s health topics.”

While Livingston said it’s difficult to pinpoint a return on investment in terms of the time spent maintaining the web pages, social networking has definitely provided intangible benefits — including patient loyalty and more efficiency in his office.

“The most important ROI is the way a doctor’s visit goes,” he said. “If you allow your patients to become engaged in their own health care, they ironically make really good decisions. I think that’s a new concept for a lot of people.”

Patients Love the Convenience

Donita Gano, a nurse living in Hawaii, used her state-sponsored insurance plan through the Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA) to get treatment for an arm infection caused by a fall while hiking near a volcano on the Big Island.

Gano, who works for the state of Hawaii, said her older home computer didn’t have videoconferencing capabilities, so she used a VoIP connection to speak with an emergency room physician at the local hospital associated with her plan. She gave the physician electronic permission to view her EMR so he could see her medical history. The hospital then issued a prescription electronically to Gano’s pharmacy for antibiotics, which she picked up that day.

“You can’t beat it,” she said. “I like the fact that they do have my whole medical history. You have to give them [electronic] permission to see it, but really I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t do that. It just makes so much sense.”

The HMSA went live with its Online Care system a little over a year ago, as did Minnesota. OptumHealth, a division of UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest health insurer, started offering NowClinic, a virtual physician service, in Texas earlier this year and plans to roll it out nationwide later this year.

Elsewhere, BlueCross BlueShield insurance organizations in upstate New York have unveiled plans to offer their members virtual physician visits beginning this summer, making New York the fourth state to provide private online chat or VoIP phone consultations.

Neal Neuberger, executive director of the Institute for e-Health Policy, said physicians connecting with patients via social networking sites is a fast-growing trend. A plethora of applications have also cropped up for devices such as the iPhone that allow patients to communicate with physicians or find medical services in their area. “There are literally hundreds of them,” he said.

Privacy an Issue?

But “there are the liability issues,” Neuberger noted. “Those privacy issues and issues around government reimbursement would hold some clinicians back from using [Web 2.0 technology]. Many of the clinicians see value — even if they’re not getting reimbursed — in getting some of those patient questions and issues out of the way and being able to spend more quality time by engaging the patients remotely.”

Livingston said that he is well aware of potential privacy issues but feels that the issue is really much ado about nothing.

“To me, it’s very simple and not controversial, but people like to make it controversial,” he said. “You cannot diagnose, treat or discuss any personal health information in a nonsecure environment. So if a patient asks me a very specific question on Facebook, I cannot answer it legally.”

Physicians who want to adopt Web 2.0 technologies as part of their practice should focus on broad health care topics online — ones that do not involve any individual treatments.

“Patients follow the guidelines really well too,” Livingston said. “People who are on Facebook understand Facebook. They’re not going to post ‘I think I have a sexually transmitted disease’ on our wall for the entire world to see.”

Another force behind doctors’ adoption of Web 2.0 tools is that EMR providers are beginning to insert texting and videoconferencing tools right into their software, according to Conrad Clyburn, founding partner of MedTechIQ, an international content aggregation and physician collaboration website.

Physicians Need Web 2.0 for EMR Rollouts

The use of Web 2.0 isn’t limited to physician-patient interactions. A wave of Enterprise 2.0 software is already being developed that allows doctors to communicate with one another or share best practices and emerging technology tips among physician groups.

“The task is so big that we’re going to have to start using these tools to solve the problems” associated with rolling out complex new health information technologies, said Neuberger, who is also chairman of the American Telemedicine Association’s policy committee.

Enterprise 2.0 software and services are proving particularly crucial in the rollout of EHRs among small outpatient physician practices, which represent the majority of U.S. physicians. There are now about 788,000 physicians in the U.S., and 512,000 of them work in practices outside of hospitals.

The U.S. Office of the National Coordinator is in charge of managing about $46 billion earmarked through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, passed earlier this year. In order to receive tens of thousands of dollars in reimbursements for e-health technology rollouts, hospitals and other health care providers must demonstrate meaningful use of their online health records systems.

Docs Need Help With Tech, Too

Clyburn said that about 45 vendors now offer blog or microblog sites dealing with physician issues, some of the most pressing of which are the implementation of EHRs. Among the more popular sites are Sermo.com and Webicina.com.

The reason those sites are so popular is that most doctors tasked with rolling out EMR technology run small practices and have little experience with such implementations and have little or no IT staff, he said.

As a result, smaller practices are leaning toward SaaS models for EMRs, such as Practice Fusion, which is a free offering, and NoMoreClipboard. Both, Clyburn said, are “quite easy to use.”

“This is going to be a very interesting next couple of years,” he said. “One of the trends we’re going to see is a gravitation toward the low-cost solutions — and I think that low-cost solution will be [a] software-as-a-service subscription model. Those lend themselves very nicely to online interactivity and patient engagement through messaging and the things we’ve become accustomed to in the cloud.”

via wired.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Stupid place to pass out drunk is...

>

Quick quiz: a REALLY stupid place to pass out drunk is…

a) at your wedding, just before your turn to say “I do”

b) in a third-grade classroom, even if it’s the second time you’ve done that grade

c) at the annual Taliban Board of Directors meeting

d) in an anti-government street protest while shooting your slingshot at army troops

Yeah I know, you’re saying, “Well Bob, ALL of those places are pretty stupid,” which is true enough. But I’m going to go with the last answer, because that’s the one I have some photos of.

As you can see here, this protester couldn’t decide between having a few drinks or flinging stones at the soldiers, so he did both at the same time.

But he didn’t JUST pass out. He really pushed the envelope on stupidity, passing out while still clutching his slingshot, thus making it fairly easy for the soldiers to figure out what he was up to.

And here’s my favorite part. He passed out next to his pal, who just kept on flinging stones and calling attention to their location. Lonnie, Lamar, you guys take a bow!

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Making Good Typography on the Web Easier: Google Introduces Font API and Directory

Google just launched a font directory and a font API that will make it easier for web developers and publishers to use high-quality open source fonts on their sites. Good typography on the web is still in its infancy, but Google wants to make it easier for developers to use a wider variety of fonts on the Web that go beyond the standard set of "web-safe" fonts that come pre-installed on most modern computers.

The Google Font API uses Google's infrastructure to automatically convert a font into the right format for whatever browser the user is using. According to Google, these fonts also work well with CSS3 and HTML5 styling.

WebFont Loader

Google also worked with Typekit to develop an open source WebFont Loader, a JavaScript library that allows developers to easily integrate Web fonts into their Web products. Today, different browsers tend to treat web fonts very differently. As Google notes, Firefox, for example, will load a page and display the fallback font until the Web font is loaded. Chrome and Safari, on the other hand, won't display any text until the font is fully downloaded and Internet Explorer "sometimes won't render any content at all until the web font is available." This even works for older browsers like Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6. Developers can use the WebFont loader to access fonts from Google, as well as from Typekit and other vendors.

Google's font directory currently features 18 fonts (some with multiple variants), including the popular Droid fonts. For now, Google is only supporting Western European languages, but the company expects to offer support for a more diverse set of languages soon.

via readwriteweb.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

  
Download now or listen on posterous

60 Minutes - Gustavo Dudamel.mp3 (6357 KB)

Posted via email from bookaman's posterous

Fake Hills Megastructure By MAD Architects

It will be enough to hear what’s the name of the company that has designed this project and you’ll realize how incredible this really is.

Chinese architecture company MAD Architects has created a conceptual design of a housing complex that should be eventually built in Beihai. The key feature of this incredible megastructure is that it just looks like a few of hills brought together.

The project is named “Fake Hills” and designers are claiming that it will significantly reduce consumption of energy by allowing natural air and light to filter through the construction.

As you can see from photos, it is planned to put in a few of botanical gardens inside this complex. Let’s just hope that the designers will find company that is strong enough to ensure financial backup for this colossal complex which, if it was built, will become one of the main touristic attractions in China.

Credits: [ Designboom.com ]

via incredibleworld.net

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Robot Presides Over Japanese Wedding

via youtube.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

May 17, 1902: Ancient Antikythera Calculating Mechanism Discovered

1902: A diver exploring a shipwreck off the coast of Antikythera, an island between the Greek mainland and Crete, brings up a heavily encrusted mechanism that turns out to be the world’s first known scientific instrument.

The Antikythera mechanism plotted the positions of celestial bodies 19 years into the future — and as an added bonus, it kept track of upcoming Olympics.

"The maker took information about astronomical theories, and made a machine that could predict the future," said Tony Freeth, co-author of a study published in Nature in July 2008. "And it would tell you, as a bit of an add-on, what Olympic games would be in progress at the time."

A dictionary-size assemblage of 37 interlocking dials crafted with the precision and complexity of a 19th-century Swiss clock, the machine has been dated to approximately 150 B.C. The wreck was first discovered in 1900, but its most famous artifact was not brought to the surface until May 17, 1902.

The device captured the world’s imagination. Such craftsmanship wouldn’t be seen for a thousand years after the Greeks — but its purpose was a mystery to 20th-century archaeologists.

Many different researchers took turns investigating the machine and its possible uses. Scientists painstakingly reverse-engineered the mechanism, deciphered the script etched on its housing — the world’s first instruction manual — and pieced the fragments into physical and later digital models, and most recently a working replica.

They determined that the mechanism predicted future positions of the moon and sun, and perhaps other planets. But that’s not all: Freeth and his Antikythera Mechanism Research Project colleagues found a tiny dial labeled with the locations of Olympic competitions.

The feature was probably not integral to its function, said Freeth, but a stylish demonstration of the machine’s power, not unlike a watch that displays stock prices or an iPhone-enabled speedometer.

"It’s slightly opportunistic in terms of how it’s powered through the gearing. If you wanted to do a dial that turns every four years, it’s easy, but this is at the end of a more complicated gear train. It’s an add-on," said Freeth.

Of course, the mechanism itself was much more significant than a watch or an iPhone: It’s the forerunner of all scientific instrumentation. The Olympics were also of paramount importance to ancient Greeks, who labeled years in relation to ongoing Olympiads and suspended wars for the games’ duration.

Perhaps the mechanism was used to foretell the celestial auspices of competitions, said Freeth, but he’s not convinced.

"We haven’t found anything on the instrument that suggests it was used for astrology, which was suggested in the past," he said. "I think the maker was showing off a huge amount of knowledge and skill. They demonstrated that you could take these theories about how astronomical bodies move, and make a machine that would calculate them. That was a completely revolutionary idea."

Though its functions are understood, said Freeth, its application remains unknown.

"We don’t have any insights into the mind of the designer," he said. "We can only look at the result — and the result is dazzling. You can only admire the person who made it. But I’m not quite sure why they put the Olympics there."

via wired.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Huge Artificial Waterfall Structure Designed for Rio

With its burgeoning economy and bold commitments to reducing carbon emissions and deforestation, Brazil is poised to be an important player in the years and decades to come. So for many Brazilian, having their beloved city of Rio de Janeiro selected to host the 2016 Olympic Games presents an opportunity to introduce their nation, on the forefront of the environmental movement, to an international audience. In hopes of creating an icon for Rio's Olympics that's as forward-thinking as the country itself, one firm has designed a structure that symbolizes Brazil's natural beauty and its commitment to a sustainable future.

Designed by the Swiss firm RAFAA for the International Architecture Competition for the Olympic Games 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, the proposed structure is both beautiful and green. Named the Solar City Tower, the building is adorned with solar panels that can be used to help make Rio's Olympics the first ever zero-carbon games.

Excess energy gathered by the solar panels will be used to pump seawater high into the tower to power turbines, producing energy during the night. For some occasions, the tower can transform into an urban waterfall the designer calls "a symbol for the forces of nature."

The proposal situates the Solar City Tower on one of the island in Guanabara Bay that make up Rio's dramatic natural skyline. Just as the city's iconic Christ the Redeemer statue has come to symbolize Brazil's strong Catholic tradition throughout the last century, the Solar City Tower could represent the nation's role as a green leader in the 21st century--all while contributing to it with its sustainable features.

According to RAFAA:

"The aim of this project is to ask how the classic concept of a landmark can be reconsidered. It is less about an expressive, iconic architectural form; rather, it is a return to content and actual, real challenges for the imminent post-oil-era. This project represents a message of a society facing the future; thus, it is the representation of an inner attitude. Our project, standing in the tradition of "a building/city as a machine", shall provide energy both to the city of Rio de Janeiro and its citizens while using natural resources."

In addition the being a machine that produces clean energy, the structure will boast an amphitheater, auditorium, cafeteria and shops in the ground level. Several observation decks will offer visitors yet another view of a city known for its breathtaking vantage points. The proposal even includes a deck for bungee-jumping.

Just as the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio will surely help reinforce Brazil's position as a nation on the rise, both in terms of economic power and as a spearhead of the global green movement--the Solar City Tower may help redefine sustainable urban design.

via treehugger.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous

Does the Web Turn Us Into Partisans?

The Internet provides an infinity of stuff, but it's all too easy to siphon off oneself in a cozy, ideologically uniform echo chamber of information -- or disinformation. You might expect that the searchable, personalized architecture of the Internet might guarantee that we find the information we're looking for rather than the information that we need to know.

But a fascinating new paper from NBER says that's not exactly how the Internet works. The authors find that online news consumption is much less ideologically segregating than face-to-face interactions, but more segregating than offline news consumption. Ryan Avent concludes "The internet, if anything, provides a counter to the more ideologically homogeneous circles of friends, families, and colleagues in which we operate daily."

There's a more pessimistic way to interpret the findings. Imagine online news consumption, from newish e-magazines (eg Slate) to blogs like at The Atlantic and Economist, as a halfway mark between offline news consumption and face-to-face interactions. Many of them are, as Andrew Sullivan likes to say, a broadcast of the writer's opinions rather than an iterative publication. A good broadcast is powerful, but also personal and emotional. In that light, online news takes the offline news model and slow-walks it toward the ideological homogeneity of social circles. Avent's right. We're not there yet. But it's a slow-walk.

The Web might not be turning us into partisans. But it gives our partisanship the chance to marinate in partisan news -- a lot of it, accessible from anywhere. Newspapers have been somewhat partisan for centuries. Magazines even more so. But even if Web readers are merely consuming the news we've always read, but pixelated rather than printed, it is a little disappointing that having been offered a universe of content, readers are probably sticking to their ideological solar systems.

via theatlantic.com

Posted via web from bookaman's posterous