Searching for "net neutrality"

digital darwinism

We Need New Rules for the Internet Economy

Antitrust laws only go so far when addressing companies that don’t produce any physical goods. It is time to negotiate a new set of rules. Otherwise, our future economy will be dominated by just a few companies.

A DER SPIEGEL Editorial by Armin Mahler  November 03, 2017  06:12 PMhttp://www.spiegel.de/international/business/editorial-time-for-new-rules-for-the-ditigal-economy-a-1176403.html

There are still people out there who think that Amazon is nothing more than an online version of a department store. But it’s much more than that: It is a rapidly growing, global internet giant that is changing the way we shop, conquering more and more markets, using Alexa to suck up our personal data straight out of our living rooms and currently seeking access to our front door keys so it can deliver packages even when nobody’s home.

It wasn’t that long ago that EU efforts to limit the power of Google and Amazon on the European market were decried in the U.S. as protectionism, as an attempt by the Europeans to protect their own inferior digital economy. Now, though, politicians and economists in the U.S. have even begun discussing the prospect of breaking up the internet giants. The mood has shifted.

The digital economy, by contrast, is based on algorithms and its most powerful companies don’t produce any physical products. Customers receive their services free of charge, paying only with their data. The more customers a service provider attracts, the more attractive it becomes to new customers, who then deliver even more data – which is why Google and Facebook need not fear new competition.

first of all, the power of a company, and the abuse of that power, must be redefined. We cannot allow a situation in which these extremely large companies can swallow up potential rivals before they can even begin to develop. As such, company acquisitions must be monitored much more strictly than they currently are and, if need be, blocked.

Second, it must be determined who owns the data collected – whether, for example, it should also be made available to competitors or whether consumers should receive more in exchange than simply free internet search results.

Third, those disseminating content cannot be allowed to reject responsibility for that content. Demonstrably false claims and expressions of hate should not be tolerated.

And finally, those who earn lots of money must also pay lots of taxes – and not just back home but in all the countries where they do business.

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more on net neutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=net+neutrality

Gamification, personalization and continued education

Gamification, personalization and continued education are trending in edtech

Surveillance Age and Librarians

Privacy in the Surveillance Age: How Librarians Can Fight Back.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
2pm Eastern (11am Pacific | 12pm Mountain | 1pm Central)
Register: https://goo.gl/6Qelrm
Description:
In the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA and FBI dragnet surveillance, many Americans are concerned that their rights to privacy and intellectual freedom are under threat. But librarians are perfectly positioned to help our communities develop strategies to protect themselves against unwanted surveillance. In this webinar, Alison Macrina and April Glaser of the Library Freedom Project will talk about the landscape of surveillance, the work of the LFP, and some tips and tools librarians can use to resist pervasive surveillance in the digital age.
About the Presenters:
 
Alison Macrina is a librarian, privacy rights activist, and the founder and director of the Library Freedom Project, an initiative which aims to make real the promise of intellectual freedom in libraries by teaching librarians and their local communities about surveillance threats, privacy rights and law, and privacy-protecting technology tools to help safeguard digital freedoms. Alison is passionate about connecting surveillance issues to larger global struggles for justice, demystifying privacy and security technologies for ordinary users, and resisting an internet controlled by a handful of intelligence agencies and giant multinational corporations. When she’s not doing any of that, she’s reading.
April Glaser is a writer and an activist with the Library Freedom Project. She currently works as a mobilization specialist at Greenpeace USA, where she focuses on ending oil extraction in the Arctic. Prior to Greenpeace, April was at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, organizing around the net neutrality campaign and EFF’s grassroots programming. April also previously worked with the Prometheus Radio Project, where her efforts helped propel the passage of the Local Community Radio Act, the largest expansion of community radio in U.S. history. She lives in Oakland, California and continues to work with local organizations on a range of digital rights issues.
Can’t make it to the live show? That’s okay. The session will be recorded and available on the Carterette Series Webinars site for later viewing.
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To register for the online event
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1. Go to registration page: https://goo.gl/6Qelrm
2. Complete and submit the form.
3. A URL for the event will be emailed to you immediately after registration.
~~~
Contact a member of the Carterette Series planning team with questions or suggestions:
carteretteserieswebinars@gmail.com
More on privacy in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=privacy&submit=Search
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2013/10/23/pro-domo-sua-are-we-puppets-in-a-wired-world-surveillance-and-privacy-revisited/

New York State require ISPs to offer $15 broadband

New York State just passed a law requiring ISPs to offer $15 broadband from r/technology

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388184/new-york-affordable-internet-cost-low-income-price-cap-bill

Earlier in 2021, a bipartisan group of senators called on the FCC to redefine broadband as 100 Mbps down and 100 Mbps up, as that would better reflect how people actually use their internet.

Still, paying $15 a month for 25 Mbps down is a heckuva lot better than paying $50 a month for those same speeds. Better yet, for those living in urban areas such as New York City, where the internet tends to be much faster, the same bill caps the price of broadband up to 200 Mbps at just $20 a month.

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more on netneutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=netneutrality

3Mbps for US

3Mbps uploads still fast enough for US homes, Ajit Pai says in final report from r/technology

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/3mbps-uploads-still-fast-enough-for-us-homes-ajit-pai-says-in-final-report/

Rosenworcel said that Pai’s report obscures “the hard truth that the digital divide is very real and very big” and that “it confounds logic that today the FCC decides to release a report that says that broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.”

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more on netneutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=netneutrality

free fast broadband in UK

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jan/18/free-fast-broadband-service-launched-in-uk-to-support-home-schooling

Thousands of families struggling with home learning are being offered free high-speed broadband following a partnership between internet provider Hyperoptic and dozens of local authorities across the UK.

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more on netneutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=netneutrality

Comast data cap

Comcast data cap blasted by lawmakers as it expands into 12 more states from r/technology

Comcast data cap blasted by lawmakers as it expands into 12 more states

Data cap harms poor people and isn’t needed to manage network, Mass. reps say.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/comcast-data-cap-blasted-by-lawmakers-as-it-expands-into-12-more-states/

Comcast charges an extra $30 per month for unlimited data, or $25 for the “xFi Complete” add-on package that includes the Comcast gateway device and unlimited data. Customers who don’t upgrade to unlimited data and exceed the 1.2TB cap must pay $10 for each additional block of 50GB, up to a maximum of $100 each month. Comcast is phasing in the charges gradually, so customers in newly capped areas could start getting overage charges for their April 2021 usage.

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more on netneutrality in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=netneutrality

Algorithmic Test Proctoring

Our Bodies Encoded: Algorithmic Test Proctoring in Higher Education

SHEA SWAUGER ED-TECH

https://hybridpedagogy.org/our-bodies-encoded-algorithmic-test-proctoring-in-higher-education/

While in-person test proctoring has been used to combat test-based cheating, this can be difficult to translate to online courses. Ed-tech companies have sought to address this concern by offering to watch students take online tests, in real time, through their webcams.

Some of the more prominent companies offering these services include ProctorioRespondusProctorUHonorLockKryterion Global Testing Solutions, and Examity.

Algorithmic test proctoring’s settings have discriminatory consequences across multiple identities and serious privacy implications. 

While racist technology calibrated for white skin isn’t new (everything from photography to soap dispensers do this), we see it deployed through face detection and facial recognition used by algorithmic proctoring systems.

While some test proctoring companies develop their own facial recognition software, most purchase software developed by other companies, but these technologies generally function similarly and have shown a consistent inability to identify people with darker skin or even tell the difference between Chinese people. Facial recognition literally encodes the invisibility of Black people and the racist stereotype that all Asian people look the same.

As Os Keyes has demonstrated, facial recognition has a terrible history with gender. This means that a software asking students to verify their identity is compromising for students who identify as trans, non-binary, or express their gender in ways counter to cis/heteronormativity.

These features and settings create a system of asymmetric surveillance and lack of accountability, things which have always created a risk for abuse and sexual harassment. Technologies like these have a long history of being abused, largely by heterosexual men at the expense of women’s bodies, privacy, and dignity.

Their promotional messaging functions similarly to dog whistle politics which is commonly used in anti-immigration rhetoric. It’s also not a coincidence that these technologies are being used to exclude people not wanted by an institution; biometrics and facial recognition have been connected to anti-immigration policies, supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations, going back to the 1990’s.

Borrowing from Henry A. Giroux, Kevin Seeber describes the pedagogy of punishment and some of its consequences in regards to higher education’s approach to plagiarism in his book chapter “The Failed Pedagogy of Punishment: Moving Discussions of Plagiarism beyond Detection and Discipline.”

my note: I am repeating this for years
Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel’s ongoing critique of Turnitin, a plagiarism detection software, outlines exactly how this logic operates in ed-tech and higher education: 1) don’t trust students, 2) surveil them, 3) ignore the complexity of writing and citation, and 4) monetize the data.

Technological Solutionism

Cheating is not a technological problem, but a social and pedagogical problem.
Our habit of believing that technology will solve pedagogical problems is endemic to narratives produced by the ed-tech community and, as Audrey Watters writes, is tied to the Silicon Valley culture that often funds it. Scholars have been dismantling the narrative of technological solutionism and neutrality for some time now. In her book “Algorithms of Oppression,” Safiya Umoja Noble demonstrates how the algorithms that are responsible for Google Search amplify and “reinforce oppressive social relationships and enact new modes of racial profiling.”

Anna Lauren Hoffmann, who coined the term “data violence” to describe the impact harmful technological systems have on people and how these systems retain the appearance of objectivity despite the disproportionate harm they inflict on marginalized communities.

This system of measuring bodies and behaviors, associating certain bodies and behaviors with desirability and others with inferiority, engages in what Lennard J. Davis calls the Eugenic Gaze.

Higher education is deeply complicit in the eugenics movement. Nazism borrowed many of its ideas about racial purity from the American school of eugenics, and universities were instrumental in supporting eugenics research by publishing copious literature on it, establishing endowed professorships, institutes, and scholarly societies that spearheaded eugenic research and propaganda.

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more on privacy in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=privacy

topics for IM260

proposed topics for IM 260 class

  • Media literacy. Differentiated instruction. Media literacy guide.
    Fake news as part of media literacy. Visual literacy as part of media literacy. Media literacy as part of digital citizenship.
  • Web design / web development
    the roles of HTML5, CSS, Java Script, PHP, Bootstrap, JQuery, React and other scripting languages and libraries. Heat maps and other usability issues; website content strategy. THE MODEL-VIEW-CONTROLLER (MVC) design pattern
  • Social media for institutional use. Digital Curation. Social Media algorithms. Etiquette Ethics. Mastodon
    I hosted a LITA webinar in the fall of 2016 (four weeks); I can accommodate any information from that webinar for the use of the IM students
  • OER and instructional designer’s assistance to book creators.
    I can cover both the “library part” (“free” OER, copyright issues etc) and the support / creative part of an OER book / textbook
  • Big Data.” Data visualization. Large scale visualization. Text encoding. Analytics, Data mining. Unizin. Python, R in academia.
    I can introduce the students to the large idea of Big Data and its importance in lieu of the upcoming IoT, but also departmentalize its importance for academia, business, etc. From infographics to heavy duty visualization (Primo X-Services API. JSON, Flask).
  • NetNeutrality, Digital Darwinism, Internet economy and the role of your professional in such environment
    I can introduce students to the issues, if not familiar and / or lead a discussion on a rather controversial topic
  • Digital assessment. Digital Assessment literacy.
    I can introduce students to tools, how to evaluate and select tools and their pedagogical implications
  • Wikipedia
    a hands-on exercise on working with Wikipedia. After the session, students will be able to create Wikipedia entries thus knowing intimately the process of Wikipedia and its information.
  • Effective presentations. Tools, methods, concepts and theories (cognitive load). Presentations in the era of VR, AR and mixed reality. Unity.
    I can facilitate a discussion among experts (your students) on selection of tools and their didactically sound use to convey information. I can supplement the discussion with my own findings and conclusions.
  • eConferencing. Tools and methods
    I can facilitate a discussion among your students on selection of tools and comparison. Discussion about the their future and their place in an increasing online learning environment
  • Digital Storytelling. Immersive Storytelling. The Moth. Twine. Transmedia Storytelling
    I am teaching a LIB 490/590 Digital Storytelling class. I can adapt any information from that class to the use of IM students
  • VR, AR, Mixed Reality.
    besides Mark Gill, I can facilitate a discussion, which goes beyond hardware and brands, but expand on the implications for academia and corporate education / world
  • IoT , Arduino, Raspberry PI. Industry 4.0
  • Instructional design. ID2ID
    I can facilitate a discussion based on the Educause suggestions about the profession’s development
  • Microcredentialing in academia and corporate world. Blockchain
  • IT in K12. How to evaluate; prioritize; select. obsolete trends in 21 century schools. K12 mobile learning
  • Podcasting: past, present, future. Beautiful Audio Editor.
    a definition of podcasting and delineation of similar activities; advantages and disadvantages.
  • Digital, Blended (Hybrid), Online teaching and learning: facilitation. Methods and techniques. Proctoring. Online students’ expectations. Faculty support. Asynch. Blended Synchronous Learning Environment
  • Gender, race and age in education. Digital divide. Xennials, Millennials and Gen Z. generational approach to teaching and learning. Young vs old Millennials. Millennial employees.
  • Privacy, [cyber]security, surveillance. K12 cyberincidents. Hackers.
  • Gaming and gamification. Appsmashing. Gradecraft
  • Lecture capture, course capture.
  • Bibliometrics, altmetrics
  • Technology and cheating, academic dishonest, plagiarism, copyright.

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