After 30 years of “greed is good” even Gordon Gekko is having second thoughts. Arguably, the extreme accumulation of wealth promoted by Reagan-style politics is finally producing the first hints of what might be an entirely new age of philanthropy. After the steel and railroad magnates were allowed to amass huge fortunes, they gave back at least a fraction of the wealth to libraries and universities and museums. Something similar seems to be emerging now.

The poster child for the new philanthropy is the Gates-Buffet plans to give away billions, much of it to health and human services programs in the developing world. Whatever criticism you might have of these efforts, they are at least an attempt to…

It’s nearing the end of the year and so it’s time for the proliferation of top ten lists and predictions for 2011. It’s always both enjoyable and, often, more than a little irritating. I just read a piece in Campus Technology, “5 Higher Ed Tech Trends To Watch in 2011,” by Bridget McCrea. Most of the list is boring and very predictable– cloud and mobile technology dominate– until you get to the very last item: “A Retreat from Technology Overload is Imminent.” It’s an intriguing idea, I think, although the shape of the retreat is debatable.

Arguably, what we are seeing is a bifurcation of the use of communication technologies along class lines. It’s an emerging picture that’s both…