Book Review #3

After making the remarks I’ve made in my previous two entries, I’m a little bit relieved to see Negroponte’s afterwords. I’ve made repeated references to the “past freshness date” tone of the book, but the author addresses that in the afterwords, acknowledging that the internet, and more specifically, the digital age, means that information and technology will be constantly evolving – that what’s modern and cutting-edge today will be nearly obsolete in just a short time.

But given that so much information is exchanged digitally – in fact, one can make the argument that far more exchange of information takes place in the digital rather than the analog realm – I feel it’s all the more imperative that we as teachers are cognizant of this. At the very least, we should be familiar with the digitization of our culture. And to better serve our students, I feel it’s all the more imperative that we stay abreast of and informed of the digital culture.

I was a middle-schooler just 15 years ago. Yet, in that time, the exchange of information has been completely modernize – and will continue to do so. Where I would read newspapers or watch the evening news, my students can/will log in to foxnews.com, whether it’s on a desktop computer, a wireless-enabled laptop, or an internet-enabled cell phone. Where I would send letters, or pass notes, my students will e-mail, send texts, or “myspace” each other.

So rather than to try and take what I feel is a misguided approach – to avoid it altogether – why not take advantage of something students use and understand? Why not put them in a comfort zone, and let the lessons come to them? So much of what they consume, news, entertainment, and so on, is digitized. Is it really that far-fetched to think their lessons could be digitized as well?

Book Review #2

As I’m going along with the reading here, one of the things I’m noticing is again, how out-of-date a book written just a few years ago has become. Negroponte talks about several different technologies, and how some are logistically impossible, at least at the time he wrote the book. But look at p.153, for example.

“Imagine a future in which your interface can read every newswire and every newspaper and catch every TV and radio broadcast on the planet, and then construct a personalized summary. This kind of newspaper is printed in an edition of one.”

Every morning, when I double-click on Firefox, my home page comes up, and gives me something fairly close to what Negroponte is describing. While my “interface,” otherwise known as My Yahoo!, isn’t nearly as sophisticated that it can catch everything he’s describing, it comes pretty close. I have a few dozen headlines, all neatly summarized, and all personalized by me. My own custom-edition newspaper, bringing me the morning’s politics, business, and sports news is delivered to me every morning. But even better, I need not even step outside of my house for it, or even need to be home for that matter. With wi-fi access growing more and more common, I can be miles and miles from home but still have instant access to my custom newspaper.

And as Negroponte also notes, someone reading a paper at 7 a.m. isn’t going to want (or have access to) the same content as someone reading a paper at 7 p.m. But my instant news comes updated, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It is fascinating to see that so much at the time this book was written, wasn’t quite a reality. But now, so much more of what’s described is real. And it does make one ponder upon how technology today will continue to improve in that same time span.

Book Report #1, "Being Digital"

The most glaring and obvious point I noted while reading the first 60 or so pages of this book, “Being Digital,” is how outdated it is. It was published in 1995, a mere 12 years ago, yet so much of it is in need updating. Off the top of my head, the author’s thoughts on HDTV, for one, are rather amusing. Negroponte appeared to me, beyond convinced that HDTV would never take hold and that such a technology wouldn’t proliferate in American households. Well, without doing extensive research – just a quick Google search – it turns out that in 2005, more than 13% of American households view HDTV programming, and more of such programming continues to be available today.

I mention that point for a couple of reasons. First, is that making such bold statements about technology in particular, can often be folly, as predicting market and technological trends isn’t quite an exact science. Second, is that the ever-changing and ever-evolving technological landscape means that while a bold statement such as the aforementioned may seem like a perfectly logical conclusion draw 10 years ago, it seems amusingly misinformed just a scant 10 years later.

Another point I noted was Negroponte’s questioning of the validity of cross-ownership rules. He stated, and I paraphrase, that “there isn’t anything necessarily wrong about the ‘co-mingling’ of ‘bits’ and that to restrict it would be to deny the media consumer the richest possible environment.” In light of such rampant media conglomeration just 12 years later, I wonder if Negroponte would still hold to this idea now.

Lastly, it also amuses me to read that in 1995, Negroponte felt that copyright law was out of date and in need of an overhaul. And that’s long before the massive proliferation of the internet, and more specifically, internet-based music trading, both legitimate (iTunes, etc.) and illegitimate. With the continual battles today concerning such issues, I wonder how much more so Negroponte would feel copyright law is outdated.