“Does it pay to be Internet savvy? Yes. In more ways than many people imagine. Sure, the Internet is a great way to research just about anything you could ever want to know about; and it’s an outstanding communication, marketing, and entertainment tool. But the Internet can also save you a boatload of money. And we’re not just talking 10 cents off here and there. We’re talking free (and nearly free) stuff.”

“In a special report, The Chronicle looks at university faculty and staff members who are pushing, in court and on campus, to keep teaching and research from being starved of material.”

“If Nancy Sims had to pick one word to describe how researchers, students, and librarians feel about copyright, it would probably be “confused.”"

A popular video about Internet history

Yet another good ‘In Plain English’ video

online quiz

infograpic intro to how the Internet works.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/314134/june-30-2010/nicholas-carr?xrs=share_copy

Here's the info your browser carries around while you're surfing:

WSJ's page about digital news

“Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, was out to cause “anxiety and concern” among his audience. His argument: Internet companies that focus on “crowdsourcing,” getting the public to do odd jobs for small or no fees, are morally questionable ventures.”

“Austin Kleon, author of Newspaper Blackout and curator of one of the most interesting tags on Tumblr, recently posted a link to this helpful chart, designed by Pia Jane Bijkerk and Erin Loechner, on whether or not to post an image to the internet.”

“But quickly lost in the swirl of revolution was the government’s ferocious counterattack, a dark achievement that many had thought impossible in the age of global connectedness. In a span of minutes just after midnight on Jan. 28, a technologically advanced, densely wired country with more than 20 million people online was essentially severed from the global Internet.”

“Many Internet companies and consumer advocates say the main law governing communication privacy — enacted in 1986, before cellphone and e-mail use was widespread, and before social networking was even conceived — is outdated, affording more protection to letters in a file cabinet than e-mail on a server.”

“In a groundbreaking new series titled “What They Know,” the Wall Street Journal is taking a close look at the information that online advertisers collect about you as you browse the Web”

“Starting in the Spring of 2010, a Washington, D.C., law firm calling itself the “U.S. Copyright Group” (USCG) launched a series of predatory lawsuits naming thousands of alleged BitTorrent users. The lawsuits claim copyright infringement, specifically that those sued illegally downloaded independent movies such as “Far Cry” and “The Hurt Locker.” The lawsuits follow the model of those filed by the RIAA starting in 2003. They begin by suing unnamed John Does, then seek to subpoena the ISPs of users in order to obtain their identities, then sue the individuals themselves.

Once the user’s identity is known, USCG’s strategy appears to be to threaten a judgment of up to $150,000 per downloaded movie — the maximum penalty allowable by law in copyright suits and a very unlikely judgment in cases arising from a single, noncommercial infringement — in order to pressure the alleged infringers to settle quickly for $1,500 to $2,500 per person.”

“This page provides a bibliography of articles concerning social network sites. For an overview of this space, including a definition of “social network sites,” a history of SNSs, and a literature review, see boyd & Ellison’s 2007 introduction to the JCMC Special Issue on Social Network Sites, Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Example social network sites addressed include: Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Cyworld, Mixi, Black Planet, Dodgeball, and LiveJournal.”

Building Communities through Online Social Networking
Somethings  for us to consider

Article from 2005 discussing the beginnings of user-uploaded video sites.

“Wired had the two sit down for a conversation about motivation and media, social networking, sitcoms, and why the hell people spend their free time editing Wikipedia.”

“The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate,” Small concluded, “but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains.”