Cognitive Surplus and How Institutions Change

A recent post about Web 2.0 brought a very helpful link form Davimack.

I have not read Clay Shirky's book "Here Comes Everybody"
but the title will ring a bell with Joycean scholars.
This exploration of the changes web usage has brought to society
and institutions has no links with the Anthony Burgess book,
but I expect that both Joyce and Burgess who had their "moments"
with society would have found it riviting.

Whereas twenty years ago I was happy to trot round Dublin
earning my keep, these days a session at the Internet coalface
seems to suffice when it comes to doing an honourable day's work.

I expect I'm not alone...

What Makes for a Prize-Winning Blog?

This question will gather momentum as more people start blogging.
In the meantime, I've taken to recording moments of Blogger History,
from time to time.



Perhaps we should all
Keep Our Eyes on the Prize?

Women and the Means of Production

A question from Davimack about the ethics of blocking
women from certain aspects of campus life got me thinking...

Always a mixed blessing, as it could upset the usual harmony
of my little Inner World.

I attended a college which, for many reasons and not all of them
spiritual I expect, had been closed to anybody who was not bound
for ordination. For almost two hundred years no women had studied
there, but the liberation in the late 1960's, which now seems so old hat,
brought droves of us in.

I have great memories of having the freedom to read non-stop for over four
years and to spend hours with friends who still visit and who keep up
lively conversations on life in general.

While it would have been very useful to have joined the
Beekeepers society while I was a student,
it is probable that the mysterious veiled hats
worn by the true inner circle of students
was probably, by then, the only refuge they
could find from our enthusiasm and energetic
desire to know.




And in any case, they did own the Means of Production...