tech book

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[unwrapping]

Imagine a world where the next kids getting started with their big idea are stuck having to think about negotiating or establishing relationships with these big gatekeepers – before they’re even able to think about doing anything ambitious on the Internet. That’s a really, really scary notion and one that we need to work very hard, and will be working very hard, to make sure does not happen.

David Karp on net neutrality at Wired BizCon (via david)

[everythinginthesky]

Remember that stuff about crazy people and bad code? The internet is that except it’s literally a billion times worse. Websites that are glorified shopping carts with maybe three dynamic pages are maintained by teams of people around the clock, because the truth is everything is breaking all the time, everywhere, for everyone. Right now someone who works for Facebook is getting tens of thousands of error messages and frantically trying to find the problem before the whole charade collapses. There’s a team at a Google office that hasn’t slept in three days. Somewhere there’s a database programmer surrounded by empty Mountain Dew bottles whose husband thinks she’s dead. And if these people stop, the world burns. Most people don’t even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn’t make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.

Peter Welch (via maxistentialist)

[990000]

Students today...

As you might know by now, I have a bit of a fascination with information authenticity these days, thanks to the internet (and Tumblr). So after reading velvetant’s funny “slate vs. paper” post which has quickly racked 14k of notes so far, I did a search and came across this Powerpoint presentation by Dr. Jim Jeffery, Dean of the School of Education at Andrews University, that contained the following slides (titles moved to the front). Note the second item:

Teacher’s Conference 1703: 

Students today can’t prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend on their slates which are more expensive. What will they do when the slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write!

Principal’s Association 1815:

Students today depend on paper too much. They don’t know how to write on a slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They can’t clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?

National Association of Teachers 1907:

Students today depend too much upon ink. They don’t know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil.

The Rural American Teacher 1928: 

Students today depend upon store bought ink. They don’t know how to make their own. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write words or ciphers until their next trip to the settlement. This is a sad commentary on modern education.

PTA Gazette 1941: 

Students today depend on these expensive fountain pens. They can no longer write with a straight pen and nib. We parents must not allow them to wallow in such luxury to the detriment of learning how to cope in the real business world which is not so extravagant.

Federal Teachers 1950: 

Ballpoint pens will be the ruin of education in our country. Students use these devices and then throw them away. The American values of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Business and banks will never allow such expensive luxuries.

High School Math Teacher 1980: 

You can’t use those calculators on the test. If I let you do that, you wouldn’t ever learn how to use the tables in the back of the book and use interpolation to figure out your trig ratios.

High School Math Teacher 1989: 

We can’t let them use calculators in middle school. If we do, they’ll forget how to do long division or how to multiply three digit numbers by three digit numbers. What will they do when they don’t have access to a calculator?

High School Math Teacher 1993: 

Why are you writing a grant for a classroom set of graphing calculators? We’ll never be allowed to use them and – even if we can – that’s only one class, and parents in other classes will never buy them for their students.

District Employee 1995: 

Why would you ever want the Internet for student use? It’s just the latest fad – have them use the library.

District Employee 1995: 

You don’t need a web page . Who’s ever going to look at it?

Teacher on a District Committee 1996: 

Teachers will never use email.

Member of School Accountability Committee 1999: 

What can you do with an LCD Projector that you can’t do with an overhead projector?

Member of Laptop Committee 2000: 

Why are we talking about students having laptops in high school? I don’t think most parents will even give their kids their old computer, much less buy them a new one.

Teacher 2001:

Why would I want to put my grades on the web? Who’s going to look at them?

Interestingly enough, after I did a search for the funny first quote, it led to this page on quoteinvestigator.com which refers to it as apocryphal and  claims that the “quotes were constructed with a humorous intent.”

quoteinvestigator:

Students Today Can’t Prepare Bark to Calculate Their Problems

…

Several of the quotes begin with the phrase “Students today”. This is a stylistic technique that provides a parallel structure which emphasizes the continuity of the series. It also highlights the changes of each historical era. QI believes that it is unlikely that real quotations would conform to this convenient pattern.

In addition, QI has searched several massive full-text databases for evidence of these words before 1978, and QI was unable to locate any previous citations in the time periods indicated.

The author name listed after these quotes in 1978 was Gene Zirkel of Nassau Community College who was an editor of the MATYC journal. He taught and wrote extensively about mathematics and computers. QI believes that Zirkel should probably be credited with the creation of these quotes. QI also thinks there was no intention to deceive. The piece was supposed to reflect technological and attitudinal changes with a clever satirical edge.

Many periodicals and books have treated the quotes as genuine. 

Fascinating stuff, no? It kind of makes me wonder about historical text in general.

[oursearchof-blog]

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Maya Angelou (via xxxi-i-mcmxcii)

[tech-book]

a collection of frustrations when reading the social media chapter in my marketing textbook. 

[continuations]

[tech-book]

This is a great post on the "unbundling" of universities as students are able to choose their education "a la carte" now. 

[theatlantic]

The Federal Student Aid Program Is Breaking Its Promise to the Poor

One hundred dollars.

This is all that stood in between my aunt Gwen and the 1960 Olympics and a college degree. Following her senior year of high school in 1956, Ed Temple, the legendary coach of the U.S. Women’s Olympic Track and Field team, invited Gwen to the prestigious summer training camp at Tennessee State University. Her roommate there was Wilma Rudolph, the fastest woman in the world and first African-American woman to win three Olympic gold medals.

Over Christmas dinner last year, Gwen told the family how Coach Temple had offered her a scholarship to cover most of school, but that she’d need to come up with the remaining $100 on her own. That amount may sound small—about $900 in today’s dollars—but it was insurmountable to my grandparents, who were sharecroppers in the Deep South. It wasn’t that they didn’t value an investment in the education of their eldest daughter of eight children; it’s just that they couldn’t afford it.

In 1956, there was no such thing as federal student aid. And in the Jim Crow South, blacks below the poverty line had little to no chance of being approved for a private loan. So instead of standing on the podium collecting Olympic gold with her Tigerbelle teammates from Tennessee State, she spent decades in Newark and Boston working hourly-wage jobs.

It’d be nice to think federal student aid programs were originally created to help indigent students access the opportunities afforded through higher education.

Read more. [Image: Aresauburn/Flickr]

[tech-book]

Get Customers In the Door with HootSuite's Foursquare for Business App

HootSuite has partnered with Foursquare to provide a venue management solution for businesses, combining the power of customer insights from Foursquare with HootSuite’s social engagement capabilities.

With this new app integration, you can take further control of your local business listing on Foursquare. This is a huge opportunity to better understand these conversations about your business and learn how to connect and engage with your customers!

[tech-book]

The future of social media for businesses isn't a team of social media managers. Instead, social media is becoming a skill that is needed across every department to achieve company goals.  With this shift, there is now a clear need for employees equipped with tangible skills and a strategic understanding of social media and how it fits across the entire organization. Today HootSuite and Newhouse School at Syracuse University launched an innovative Advanced Social Media Strategy Certificate. The course is delivered online, you earn industry recognized credentials, and you can work at your own pace while interacting with amazing professors (trust me, they're great!) If you want to level-up your career and gain new skills, let me know and I'll hook you up with our friends & family pricing.

[thecool]

Imagine you could run a company on autopilot: no tier of “managers,” just people creating value by doing what they love and letting the rest fall into place.

Inside GitHub’s Super-Lean Management Strategy—And How It Drives Innovation (via thecool)

[tech-book]

story time with Commander Hadfield at work. being able to work with his son Evan on managing some of their social media is definitely a career highlight!

[psql-deactivated20201129]

Old introduction video of tumblr dashboard v5 with David doing the voice over.

[mehan]

The U.S. federal government, led by the executive branch, should make all taxpayer-funded software development open-sourced by default. In the short run, this would help to prevent the recurrence of problems like those that plague healthcare.gov. Longer term, it will lead to better, more secure software and could allow the government to deliver a range of services more effectively. And it would enrich democracy to boot.

Open-Source Everything: The Moral of the Healthcare.gov Debacle - Businessweek (via mehan)

[christmasgorilla]

Why Uber/Lyft market is so much bigger than people think: it’s not a substitute for cabs, it’s a substitute for driving.

David Sacks, CEO of Yammer / Paypal Mafia 

[tech-book]

at "GirlDev" meetups, you drink tea instead of beer.

[mastervvv]

It’s one of Silicon Valley’s great oddities that start-up founders refer to themselves as “entrepreneurs.” More often than not, the people who come up with company ideas have no understanding of how to run a business or turn a profit.

Nick Bilton (via heyveronica)

[tech-book]

the new hootlet, a chrome extension, is a pretty awesome way to share things online. if you've never used HootSuite before, this is a good place to start