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A new study from the Knight Commission says 1/3 of Americans don’t have broadband internet access, which limits their ability to communicate with the outside world. This means a lot, says the commission.
1. It’s harder for people to access fair news, which hurts their ability to participate in Democracy and in the economy.
2. Newspapers are the best source of fair news in many areas. Newspapers therefore must not die and their content should be more available.
3. Public broadcasting needs to become more local.
We certainly enjoy writing about broadband in Kentucky, and it seems like this report echoes what many rural providers have been saying for a long time: high-speed internet access is not a luxury anymore.
I want to address point #3 without sounding too braggy. Public radio is becoming more local, as even cash-strapped stations are cranking up their local news coverage. Last week I was in upstate Pennsylvania and heard plenty of local news via public radio. It was surprising. Also, KET now has a 100% local channel on digital television.
Every so often an academic muckety-muck comes out of his ivory tower to chastise the younger generation for being dumb. This SNOOT can’t tolerate (read: understand) the language kids use when writing on FaceBooks, txt msgs and their tweeter machines. Just thinking of it now I can almost hear the tweed rustling.
It’s not completely unfounded for someone to worry about language being misused, but aside from being pretentious, the argument that new technology is destroying the English language is unfounded. At least that’s what Clive Thompson says in Wired.
Thompson summarizes a study to make the point that kids are reading and writing more than ever, and the writing wasn’t garbled abbreviations.
Lunsford’s team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.
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The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it’s over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn’t serve any purpose other than to get them a grade. As for those texting short-forms and smileys defiling serious academic writing? Another myth. When Lunsford examined the work of first-year students, she didn’t find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper.
Of course, good teaching is always going to be crucial, as is the mastering of formal academic prose. But it’s also becoming clear that online media are pushing literacy into cool directions.
Are you a teacher? Have you noticed any new trends in student writing?
The FTC is cracking down on robocalls–those pre-recorded messages that no amount of do-not-call registries can seem to stop. The calls are now essentially banned (the out-of-work robots can come work for me).
Ars Technica points out that many of the robocalls being made now are already illegal (your car warranty is expiring!) and the bill’s exceptions do little to stop those legally abusing the technology.
…the rule comes with a list of exceptions. Any call that delivers “purely informational recorded messages” will be allowed—a good policy, since it will allow dentists and airlines to make automated calls to patrons about appointments or flight changes.
Banks, politicians, charities, and telephone companies are also allowed to robocall away, even when asking for cash.
The rule change, then, will affect companies that can legally make telemarketing calls but are not banks, charities, telcos, or politicians. Such companies will need to obtain written consent from consumers before robocalling them.
While we do love robots, we’re not crazy about robocalls, and our coverage has focused on the political kind, which aren’t stopping anytime soon.
(Thanks to Page One for the link)
Silicon Alley Insider did an analysis of Google trends and found that Louisville internet users are more likely to search for adult websites than users in any other city.
Here are the top 10.
- Louisville, KY
- Rochester, NY
- Philadelphia, PA
- Newark, NJ
- Los Angeles, CA
- Irvine, CA
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Las Vegas, NV
- Albany, NY
- Orlando, FL
I see the search results that bring people to The Edit and I have to ask…are you disappointed? (Either with what you find here or the insights into Louisville’s searching habits.)
I don’t really like puns, so I’ll stop editorializing on that end. But while we like to report on broadband penetration in Kentucky, we haven’t gotten that much into what the FCC is doing. We didn’t do that, because it was never quite clear what the FCC was doing, if anything, to increase broadband access (and theoretically lower prices, thereby allowing low-income households to go online, participate in education, commerce, etc.)
Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin was among the more notable Senators pushing broadband action, and there was some discussion of it in the last farm bill, but I haven’t been able to find out that much about it since.
Well, most of my problems have been solved with Blogband, the FCC’s broadband blog. Now you can go online and track the FCC’s actions. It’s actually a really fun read, with some subtle jokes and not many puns. We know how you hate those.
Where do you go in Louisville to find free wi-fi?
Lifehacker has a post about the best ways to hunt for wireless internet connections.
If you’re a smartphone or laptop user, you know the frustrations of trying to get online on the go. I just opened up my home wireless network, just in case someone in need of a quick Google Maps check ends up high and dry in my neighborhood. I doubt anyone will linger in front of an apartment building long enough to abuse the generosity. I’ve certainly connected to strangers’ home networks before, but only to do some urgent e-mailing or browsing.
How do you do it? Do you search for open networks or stick to reliable connections in your home, business or local hangout?
Here at The Edit, we like to cover the people who cover the news but don’t get paid. We told you about the CNN of Gallatin County and how to do what we do. Neither of those systems, however, is quite as collaborative as an actual newsroom. Well, that’s changed with I Am News.
I Am News lets you be a reporter, editor or news director. You can either submit reports (which at the moment seem to be mostly opinion pieces) or post assignments (at a cost). If you post an assignment, then you can pay reporters who get the story for you.
Is anyone here an I Am News user? How do you like it? Is there a fact-checking system?
The anonymity of the Internet is sometimes exaggerated, and that can lead to problems. For example, when people comment on websites and say they’re voting for Rand Paul, site administrators can tell that the comments are coming from everywhere but Kentucky. Are all of the voters on vacation?
The web may be anonymous, but you can’t hide questionable practices. Ars Technica has a report about how Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison learned that lesson the hard way. Hutchison is running for Governor. Her campaign staff hired a firm that generates phrases on the site that match popular search terms. The point of the phrases is to fool Google’s algorithm and get Hutchison’s site to rank higher in search results.
Hutchison is running against incumbent Rick Perry. Apparently a lot of people search for the phrase “Rick Perry gay.” When Hutchison’s Google-fooling tool generated that phrase, the search engine blocked the site from its rankings.
Hutchison’s site has since been redirected to a new URL. Sure, this isn’t Kentucky news, but maybe some local politicos can learn. In a state where a self-aggrandizing phrase can dominate the news cycle, maybe it’s best to let candidates make their own mistakes, and not let a computer program help.
Collecting the change from parking meters is probably one of the least fun jobs in Metro Government. And it is done by Metro Government employees, since Lanier’s contract doesn’t handle meter revenue. But while stopping every 20 feet to drain nickels and dimes out of a metal box is tedious, it’s apparently safer than the new electronic parking meters popping up in larger cities.
Wired reports that a researcher has figured out how to hack the fare cards used in the meters to get free parking.
“It wasn’t technically complicated and the fact that I can do it in three days means that other people are probably already doing it and probably taking advantage of it,” said Grand, a designer and hardware hacker and one of the hosts of the Discovery Channel’s Prototype This show. “It seems like the system wasn’t analyzed at all.”
In my research into the city’s parking contract and its future, I didn’t hear any talk of upgrading Louisville’s meters just yet, but I wonder if the researcher’s assertion that other people are hacking electronic parking meters is accurate.
