3.8: s3 outage; edtech; media ecosystem

updates and ideas from the D&S community and beyond

Around the Institute

When a Typo Breaks the Internet
Ingrid Burrington reflects on last week’s Amazon S3 outage, and considers the implications of centralized infrastructure.

Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda
“If technology were the most important driver towards a ‘post-truth’ world, we would expect to see symmetric patterns on the left and the right. Instead, different internal political dynamics in the right and the left led to different patterns in the reception and use of the technology by each wing.” —Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, Ethan Zuckerman

When Social Media Assignments Increase Risks for Vulnerable Students
Jade Davis, Monica Bulger, and Mikaela Pitcan discuss integrating principles of safe use into media literacy work with vulnerable students.

Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms
“Because Chromebooks store documents in the cloud, they can be shared among students, who can grab any school device to access their class work. Google also provides school administrators with an online dashboard to remotely manage thousands of the laptops at once.” —Natasha Singer

Around the Around

The Trouble with ‘Screen Time Rules’
“If the answer to these questions is more or less ‘yes,’ then perhaps the problem of ‘screen time’ is less dramatic than many parents have been led to believe. The notion of ‘addiction’ to the screen requires particular care, and certainly cannot be determined by simple measures of time.” —Sonia Livingstone, Alicia Blum-Ross

BONUS: Sonia Livingstone’s Databite, Living and Learning in the Digital Age, is on Listen!

Uber Uses Ubiquitous Surveillance to Identify and Block Regulators
“When Edward Snowden exposed the fact that the NSA does this sort of thing, I commented that the technologies will eventually become cheap enough for corporations to do it. Now, it has.” —Bruce Schneier

‘Artificial Intelligence’ Has Become Meaningless
“But today, computers trick people all the time. Not by successfully posing as humans, but by convincing them that they are sufficient alternatives to other tools of human effort.” —Ian Bogost