The Algorithmic Order
The history of education technology is inseparable from the history of standardized testing. That’s part of the argument I make in Teaching Machines, where I trace the development of both the machinery of teaching and the machinery of testing back to the early twentieth century. There are more recent
Perceptual Engineering
Reflecting Pools
Just a short newsletter this week, full of links to others' writing – apologies. Ideologies: Fred Turner argues in The Baffler that the California Ideology, as articulated by Richard Barbrook and Andrew Cameron in their famous 1995 essay, is no longer central to Silicon Valley hegemony. Instead, Turner contends, it’
The Vibes
Public Offering, Public Sacrifice
Despite a last minute call from Senator Elizabeth Warren to delay the IPO, SpaceX is set to go public today, making Elon Musk, already the world’s richest man and surely one of its most unsavory, into the world's first trillionaire. In a letter to the SEC, Warren
Back Step
At What Cost?
I’m a couple of weeks behind on sharing links, so apologies for the length of this email and for the outdatedness of some of the news therein. But I devoted much of last week, as I noted in Saturday’s missive, to reading the Pope’s encyclical letter, and
Sleeping Off Your Demons
Moral Panic, Moral Imagination
It's become quite commonplace to charge those of us who challenge technology – specifically children's use of technology -- with fomenting some sort of "moral panic." To do so invokes a long history of opposition to television and rock-n-roll and video games and comic
Of Course They Booed
Every spring, we get a flood of stories about college graduation ceremonies -- typically full of tut-tutting about inappropriate behavior or inappropriate speech -- always presented as synecdochical of all of higher ed. Oh sure sure, there’s often the odd tale of triumph: someone’s service dog gets a diploma;
