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Luddites Win
Happy Friday! What's good? I've picked up many, many new subscribers to Second Breakfast this week. Welcome. And thank you all for making me feel like my decision to re-enter the ed-tech fray and write another book is a good one. I started Second Breakfast because
The Extra Mile
It's really happening! I mean, I even updated Hack Education with the news. Here'a little bit of what my book-writing process looks like: I read. A lot. I read stuff online, sure, sure. I already lament not having access to academic journal articles. So for now,
The Terminator
Noam Chomsky's savage review of B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, published in The New York Review of Books in 1971, is sometimes credited as the coup de grâce to behaviorism – its widely-read condemnation of that particular strand of psychology (alongside what Chomsky argued were
The Extra Mile
AI for Breakfast
Happy Friday! What's good? No surprise, this email has a slight shift of focus this morning – the new book project demands it. Typically, on Fridays, I send an email detailing the week's news about the business of health technology. For the next few months (at least)
The Extra Mile
You Don't Need "Personalization"
Paid subscribers to Second Breakfast learned on Monday that I'm toying with writing another book. And surprise surprise, it'll explore artificial intelligence, teaching, and learning – the long history of "intelligent tutoring systems," sure, but more of a series of provocations about philosophy, science, and
The Extra Mile
Watching Apple Health
The big story about the future of everyone's health and wellbeing this week seemed to involve Tuesday night's Presidential Debate, and as such there wasn't a lot of news about fitness technology for me to summarize here. Once upon a time, perhaps, Apple'
The Extra Mile
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is one of the best selling piece of educational software of all time. First released in 1987 by game developer Toolworks, the program offered interactive typing drills designed to improve the speed and accuracy of users' keyboard skills. The cover of the box featured Renée
Watched, But Not Optimized
On Tuesday, my Garmin said I slept 2 minutes. One problem (or rather, the first in a series of problems with this record): it was 8am, and I get up every morning at 6. I wasn't even in bed at 8, let alone asleep. (Indeed, I think I
The Extra Mile
Lactate Meters and Labor Day Weekend
You can tell that folks are gearing up for the last week of summer, as marked – in the US, at least – by the "back-to-school" season. Things have been pretty quiet this week, save the steady drumbeat of marketing emails about Labor Day sales from every company from which
The Extra Mile
Earlier this month, Virginia Sole-Smith, bestselling author of Fat Talk, published a podcast/essay titled "Nobody Cares About Your 'Health and Fitness' Journey." I'm not a premium subscriber to her Burnt Toast newsletter, I confess, so I couldn't listen or read; and
What Computers Cannot Do (for Health and Fitness)
Happy Friday! What's good? Here are some of the latest stories about the intersection of health and fitness and technology (and money). Speaking of money, I'm, like, 20 years late to the game, but I just started reading Michael Lewis's Moneyball, in part because
The Extra Mile
Cooling Technologies, "Cool" Technologies, and Not At All Cool Technologies
I don't know about you, but I'm feeling that end-of-summer, post-Olympics melancholy this week, so this will be a fairly short one. (Shorter than Monday’s massive missive, at least.) I'd say I'm feeling a bit resentful that I'm having
Teaching Machines (for Bodies, Not Brains)
Many histories of education technology start with the hornbook, a fifteenth century invention that, according to Bill Ferster, "married pedagogy and content knowledge into a physical device" — a device that allowed students to learn their letters (without tearing up or writing in an actual book, I guess). Of
The Extra Mile
An author I very much admire complained on Facebook recently that the Olympics are an example of "scarcity economics" – only one gold medal so we don't celebrate everyone's immense talent. The Games – all manner of sports contests, she said – are closely bound up in
The Technologies of the Olympics, Continued
Wow. The US is having one helluva track meet over there in Paris. I'll have more to say in Monday's newsletter – Cole Hocker!!! – as I really am trying to restrict Friday's email to news about health and fitness technology, not just news about my
The Extra Mile
Maybe Not the Sports Technologies You Were Expecting
As a writer about and critic of education technology, I was often asked "what's your favorite piece of ed-tech" – some sort of "gotcha" question, I reckon, in which I was supposed to confess that, in fact, I hate everything. I'd answer "
