The late Steve Jobs on Technology and Education

Q: Could technology help by improving education? 

Steve Jobs: 
I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent....

Full interview @ Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing 



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Students find call of gadgets irresistible

THREE out of four of Singapore's tech-mad youngsters may be just a bit too fond of their electronic gadgets, suffering physically and socially as a result.

In a survey of 600 polytechnic and university students, three-quarters admitted to constantly fiddling with their mobile phones and other electronic gadgets.

Many of the respondents aged 17 to 25 checked their phones or laptops every few seconds, and took those gadgets with them wherever they went.

More than two in five, for instance, took their mobile phones everywhere - including the toilet. And one in 50 respondents admitted to getting chided 'all the time' for ignoring those around them in favour of their gadgets.

Miss Christine Tan, a final-year undergraduate at Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, said her four-man team decided to look into the issue because 'we saw it in ourselves and our peers...where nothing else matters when we are on our gadgets'.

While technology had many proven benefits, like allowing users to work away from the office and increasing productivity, Miss Tan and her team wanted to red-flag what they believed was a rise in the number of young people so compulsively dependent on their gadgets that they suffered negative side effects.

The most obvious were physical pains such as aches in the head, neck and thumbs.

Raffles Hospital clinical director for pain management, Dr Ho Kok Yuen, said he had seen an increase in the number of younger people suffering from chronic pain - a condition earlier seen only in people aged 60 and above.

'Most people who continue using their gadgets do not realise that their usage patterns can have a very serious impact on their physical well-being,' said Dr Ho.

Those with the condition, which is increasingly being referred to as 'gadget over-dependency', may be affected in less obvious ways as well.

According to a New York Times article, those constantly exposed to a deluge of information find themselves unable to focus on tasks at hand, and also face increased stress.

Long-term exposure to a constant diet of text messages, Facebook updates and Twitter posts, say neuroscientists in the Times report, can 'rewire' human brains to the point that key areas such as analytical ability and creativity might potentially be impaired.

Compulsive usage, said psychologist Nicholas Lim, also 'robs you of the ability to know what controls you and what you control'.

This has the ring of familiarity for private school student Lynn Lim, 22.

'A few years ago, I was at an interview for a part-time job, and there was an alert on my phone. I took it out, checked the message and replied because that is what I always do. When I looked up, the look on the interviewer's face was priceless... No, I didn't get the job.

From ST

THE END for the BOOK?

Borders closes 200 shops as it files for bankruptcy

US bookseller Borders has said it will close 200 of its 642 stores in the next few weeks and has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The firm blamed declining sales and a rapidly changing book market.

According to documents filed with the bankruptcy court in New York, Borders had $1.28bn (£799m) in assets and $1.29bn in debts as of December 2010.

The firm has struggled in the face of fierce competition from supermarkets, online sales and digital books.

"It has become increasingly clear that in light of the environment of curtailed customer spending, our ongoing discussions with publishers and the company's lack of liquidity, Borders Group does not have the capital resources it needs to be a viable competitor," said Borders president Mike Edwards in a statement.

Borders will receive financing of $505m from GE Capital to help it restructure.

Declining sales

As the book industry evolves, Borders has continued with a business strategy that focused on adding more stores to its portfolio.

"Books and content just became so available at so many other locations, online and offline, the 'grow, rinse, repeat' mindset just wouldn't work anymore," said Michael Norris, analyst at Simba Information.

In addition, US book sales have been falling.

According to researcher Nielsen, which follows 70% of the US book market, book sales declined from 751 million to 717 million in 2010.

Borders was founded by Tom and Louis Border in 1971 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

It was active in the UK market from 1998 to 2009, first as a subsidiary of the US company and later as an independent concern before going into administration.

Chinese online gamer dies after three-day session

A Chinese man has died after a three-day online gaming session in which he did not sleep and barely ate, reports say.

The man reportedly lost consciousness at an internet cafe on the outskirts of the Chinese capital, Beijing.

He was rushed to a clinic but could not be revived, the Beijing Times said.

The 30-year-old man, who was not identified, was said to have spent more than 10,000 yuan ($1,500; £928) on gaming in the month before his death.

China has more than 450 million internet users, and online games - which can involve multiple users role-playing in a virtual world - are particularly popular with young men.

Researchers say tens of millions of Chinese people - many of them teenagers - are addicted to internet gaming, despite curbs introduced by the authorities aimed at tackling the problem.

Similar deaths have occurred in other nations. In 2005 a 28-year-old man died in South Korea after playing online games for 50 hours without a break.

From BBC

The impact of iPod

What Is Web 2.0?

Web 1.0 was focused on a relatively small number of companies and advertisers producing content for users to access—some people called the web at the time the “brochure web.” Web 2.0involves the user—not only is the content often created by users, but users help organize it, share it, remix it, critique it, update it, etc. One way to look at Web 1.0 is as a lecture, a small number of professors informing a large audience of students. In comparison, Web 2.0 is aconversation, with everyone having the opportunity to speak and share views.

Web 2.0 embraces an architecture of participation—a design that encourages user interaction and community contributions. You, the user, are the most important aspect of Web 2.0—so important, in fact, that in 2006, TIME Magazine’s “Person of the Year” was “you.” The article recognized the social phenomenon of Web 2.0—the shift away from a powerful few to an empowered many.

“We can’t be device centric...we must be user centric.”

—Bill Gates, MIX06 conference

Many Web 2.0 companies are built almost entirely on user-generated content and harnessing collective intelligence. The significance is not just in having user-generated content, but in how it is used. Google—the leading search engine and Internet advertising company—sends its users to user-generated websites by considering what users collectively have valued in the past. For websites like MySpace^®, Flickr™, YouTube and Wikipedia^®, users create the content, while the sites provide the platforms. These companies trust their users—without such trust, users cannot make significant contributions to the sites.

“A platform beats an application every time.”

—Tim O’Reilly

The architecture of participation is seen in software development as well. Open software is available for anyone to use and modify with few or no restrictions—this has played a major role in Web 2.0 development. Harnessing collective intelligence, communities collaborate to develop software that many people believe is better than proprietary software.

You, the user, are not only contributing content and developing open source software, but you are also directing how media is delivered, and deciding which news and information outlets you trust. Many popularblogs now compete with traditional media powerhouses. Social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia allow users to recommend their favorite sites to others. Social media sites such as Digg™ or Reddit enable the community to decide which news articles are the most significant. You are also changing the way we find the information on these sites by tagging (i.e., labeling) web content by subject or keyword in a way that helps anyone locate information more effectively. This is just one of the ways Web 2.0 helps users identify new meaning in already existing content.RSS feeds (Chapter 14, XML and RSS) enable you to receive new information as it is updated—pushing the content right to your desktop.

The rise ofsocial networks has changed the way we interact and network. MySpace— the largest social network—has rapidly become the world’s most popular website. Other popular social networking sites include Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, and Second Life—a 3D virtual world where you interact with others via your online persona called an avatar.

User-Generated Content

User-generated content has been the key to success for many of today’s leading Web 2.0 companies, such as Amazon, eBay and Monster. The community adds value to these sites, which, in many cases, are almost entirely built on user-generated content. For example, eBay (an online auction site) relies on the community to buy and sell auction items, and Monster (a job search engine) connects job seekers with employers and recruiters.

User-generated content includes explicitly generated content such as articles, home videos and photos. It can also include implicitly generated content—information that is gathered from the users’ actions online. For example, every product you buy from Amazon and every video you watch on YouTube provides these sites with valuable information about your interests. Companies like Amazon have developed massive databases of anonymous user data to understand how users interact with their site. For example, Amazon uses your purchase history and compares it to purchases made by other users with similar interests to make personalized recommendations (e.g., “customers who bought this item also bought...”). Implicitly generated content is often considered hidden content. For example, web links and tags are hidden content; every site you link to from your own site or bookmark on a social bookmarking site could be considered a vote for that site’s importance. Search engines such as Google (which uses the PageRank algorithm) use the number and quality of these links to a site to determine the importance of a site in search results.

Source:

http://www.deitel.com/eBook/WhatIsWeb20/tabid/2483/Default.aspx

https://php.radford.edu/~tlc/wordpress/