(emerging genre, see the other links)

How many people have ever lived? (estimate: 106 billion)

A fine rant from George Siemens, "Open isn’t so open anymore", with this Aux Armes: "We need some good ol’ radicals in open education. You know, the types that have a vision and an ideological orientation that defies the pragmatics of reality. Stubborn, irritating, aggravating visionaries…"

First Look at Blio, Ray Kurzweil's Tablet-Friendly Ebook Format (via Gizmodo)

via BoingBoing, and a heretofore unimagined spectrum of urban hostility

Anthony McCarthy's year-end rant is well worth thinking about: "…The sales pitch of lap tops in the schools, of online access was that it was supposed to provide children (and adults) with a hugely expanded source of important information. What I’m seeing is that it is the worst of TV raised to a staggering power… The results of the absolute freedom to entice, seduce, lie, steal, use and profit are going to prove to incompatible with democracy, they are going to prove incompatible with civil society. The truth will not be able to compete with intentionally entertaining lies and fluff. A world inhabited by entertainment addled adolescents will never grow up. That is what we are on the verge of living with, a plugged in dark age. "

nice summary of the year

gaaaaah!

from back in the day

the Crux, if you ask me: "…mandating unaffordable private health insurance is a way to cast in stone one of the things that is most wrong with US health care, its total submission to the goals and objectives of the private health insurance industry… people forced into the arms of the benevolent insurance industry who will then violate them further with increased premiums and a legal requirement that people buy their shoddy wares"

"Resources for Virtual Ethnography… Cyberanthropology… a central hub for those interested in ethnography of the internet"