I am extremely fortunate to work in a library, an institution that is designed to help others and to share knowledge, resources, and expertise. Snell Library is a very busy library. Every year, we have two million visits. On some weekdays we receive well over 10,000 visitors, with thousands of them in the building at one … Continue reading Help Snell Library Help Others
What’s New, Episode 14: Privacy in the Facebook Age
On the latest What's New Podcast from Northeastern University Library, I interview Woody Hartzog, who has a new book just out this week from Harvard University Press entitled Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies. We had a wide-ranging discussion over a half-hour, including whether (and if so, how) Facebook should be regulated … Continue reading What’s New, Episode 14: Privacy in the Facebook Age
Authority and Usage and Emoji
Maybe it's a subconscious effect of my return to the blog, but I've found myself reading more essays recently, and so I found myself returning to the nonfiction work of David Foster Wallace.1 Despite the seeming topical randomness of his essays—John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, the tennis player Tracy Austin, a Maine lobster fest—there is a thematic consistency in … Continue reading Authority and Usage and Emoji
The Post-Coding Generation?
When I was in sixth grade our class got an Apple ][ and I fell in love for the first time. The green phosphorescence of the screen and the way text commands would lead to other text instantly appearing was magical. The true occult realm could be evoked by moving beyond the command line and … Continue reading The Post-Coding Generation?
Activism, Community Input, and the Evolution of Cities: My Interview with Ted Landsmark
I've had a dozen great guests on the What's New podcast, but this week's episode features a true legend: Ted Landsmark. He is probably best known as the subject of a shocking Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph showing a gang of white teens at a rally against school desegregation attacking him with an American flag. The image … Continue reading Activism, Community Input, and the Evolution of Cities: My Interview with Ted Landsmark
Revisiting Mills Kelly’s “Lying About the Past” 10 Years Later
If timing is everything, history professor Mills Kelly didn't have such great timing for his infamous course "Lying About the Past." Taught at George Mason University for the first time in 2008, and then again in 2012—both, notably, election years, although now seemingly from a distant era of democracy—the course stirred enormous controversy and then … Continue reading Revisiting Mills Kelly’s “Lying About the Past” 10 Years Later
Back to the Blog
One of the most-read pieces I've written here remains my entreaty "Professors Start Your Blogs," which is now 12 years old but might as well have been written in the Victorian age. It's quaint. In 2006, many academics viewed blogs through the lens of LiveJournal and other teen-oriented, oversharing diary sites, and it seemed silly … Continue reading Back to the Blog
