Impromptus

I recently tried to read Digital Shock by Hervé Fischer and actually managed to read and to finish Small Pieces, Loosely Joined by David Weinberger. They were both problematic for me, in similar ways. Both of them, in the midst of talking about technology, made philosophical claims for which I would like better citation than [...]

In order of priority. Rule 1: No touching. Your car is prohibited from touching other cars or bikes or pedestrians. This is the most important rule. Rule 2: Don’t slow anyone else down. The only acceptable reason to slow people down is to prevent touching. Rule 3: Follow all the written rules of the road, [...]

I just finished reading Born Digital and I can’t stop thinking about it. Not because it was so insightful, but because many of their major insights seemed so obvious. I’m a little too old to be what they term a “digital native”, and I started with computers a little too late in development, but I [...]

While it is teenagers who have embraced social media, the people who should really embrace it are the elderly. Being old is, among other things, socially isolating because it is harder to travel and meet people. Social networking was designed to bring old friends together in spite of distance, and it does a great job. [...]

My degree is in Computer Science.  But I am part of a combined mathematics/computer science department.  This means that I also teach the odd math service course, so far always Calculus I.  It is profoundly strange to be a Calc teacher when you are pretty sure that it is 1s and 0s at the bottom [...]

This blog has lain fallow for more than 2 years. Why is that, and what have I been doing in the meantime? Well: I wrote much of my dissertation, got a job as an Assistant Professor at Manhattan College, moved across the country, taught for a year while writing my dissertation, tried to defend but [...]