Mathemagenic

Henry Copeland points to a story - A world without editors by Jeff Jarvis. Jeff writes about fighting with editor to get  his story about weblogs right:

So when I got the "edit" back, I responded by simply asking to kill the piece. [...]

Aw, to hell with it. I decided to just put the piece up here, for you are the audience I care about, not the handful of insular souls who'll read a self-referential, self-reverential faux scholarly periodical about weblogs -- when it would be so much better if they just read weblogs instead.

And if I'm wrong, you'll tell me. For you are my editor.

This last line is SO powerful...

Jim McGee with Rory Perry summarizes emergence of weblogs as mainstream content platform and an observation I loved (bold is mine):

One advantage of letting things pile up in your aggregator is that more efficient folks like Rory come along and organize stuff for you. I knew that eventually procrastination would become an important knowledge economy skill!

Designing for Ubiquity: The Perception of Privacy in IEEE Pervasive computing (requires subscription; bold is mine):

Ubicomp systems aim to be “distraction-free,” but as a result, users often forget the technology exists or fail to seriously question the role it plays in their lives. For monitoring systems, the issues are complicated because individual devices can collect data for different purposes, and combining data from various devices can reveal unanticipated information. The author was part of a team that investigated these issues in a sensor-rich eldercare facility. The team interviewed the facility’s management, staff, and residents, as well as residents’ family members, to understand how they viewed the technology and its effect on their privacy. Although our interviewees did see embedded technology as a central factor in their environment, few understood the technology, the data it gathered, or how it was used. These results have implications for other ubicomp environments, as well as ubicomp system design.

I found this by occasion: Weblogs - can they accelerate expertise? (.pdf) - an essay about weblogs and learning, looks like a course assignment. Didn't have time to read in detail.