Category Archives: Online Places

Instant Literacy

By Ray Watkins | Published: April 28, 2010
I enjoyed this piece on Read Write Web ("Do Kids Read Blogs? New Study Aims to Confuse") becuase it does a great job of talking about the various ways that a survey can be designed and or manipulated to make the points that you want to make. In this case, it's BlogHer and iVillage 's apparent desire to make blogs seem younger and so, presumably, more marketable, than what was recently reported by Pew Internet. What I find most interesting, though, is the way these debates illustrate the role of consumerism on new communication technologies. In a general sense, blogs became the "thing" a few years back and as such were used to illustrate that these new technologies...
Also posted in Language, Professional | Comments closed

Library to World: The Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated

By Ray Watkins | Published: April 7, 2010
Nearly one-third of Americans age 14 or older – roughly 77 million people – used a public library computer or wireless network to access the Internet in the past year, according to a national report released today. In 2009, as the nation struggled through a recession, people relied on library technology to find work, apply for college, secure government benefits, learn about critical medical treatments, and connect with their communities. "Study: A Third of Americans Use Library Computers"
This is one of those ironic bits of good news. On the one hand, it suggests the enormous importance of the library in a democratic society; on the other, it suggests something about the enormous scale of U.S. poverty in general and in...
Also posted in Economics, Professional | Comments closed

The Cost of Class

By Ray Watkins | Published: March 22, 2010
College teachers, such as myself, are always telling our students that whatever else they get out of college, (and I hope they get a lot more) they can be confident that their investment of time and energy will underwrite a lifetime of relative economic prosperity. (Last night's passage of the health reform bill may make an equally important contribution to the financial security of the middle class.) Doug Henwood's recent costs and benefits analysis of education ("I’m borrowing my way through college…") shows that this is still true. Someone who doesn't finish high school will on average earn only half as much as a high school graduate; if you earn a graduate degree, you can earn 2 to...
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A Sentimental Education

By Ray Watkins | Published: March 3, 2010
Americans are most sentimental about two things: children and small towns. You'd think, then, that we'd protect them as carefully as the French protect baguettes and cheese. Not even close. Our education system is a shambles, we don't have universal health care, even for children, and we long ago destroyed the agricultural system that underwrote the iconic Midwestern small town. Who needs enemies when we've got sentimentality like this? In online education, which is so far a largely adult realm, this sentimentality revolves-- encrusts?-- the idea of community, symbolically linked to that small-town ideal in which everyone knows their neighbor and everyone looks out for one another. Crime rates are low, teenagers don't have sex, the church is full on...
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Tenure and Violence

By Ray Watkins | Published: February 17, 2010
I'm more than a little hesitant to write about the shootings at Alabama. It sounds like an incident that we can use as an occasion to talk about the horrors of the current academic status system, which too often licenses the worst sorts of pettiness and nepotism. My sense, though, is that while tenure is involved, the real story at Alabama is the more familiar tale of our cultural embrace of violence, our cowardly gun control laws, and especially our terrible mental health care system. It makes us look bad enough, in other words, even without thinking about tenure. (In any case, "The Trouble with Tenure" gives it a good shot.) Still, I could not help but think...
Also posted in Economics, Professional, Writing | Comments closed

History Repeated, this Time as Farce

By Ray Watkins | Published: August 21, 2009
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”-Margaret Thatcher. With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable and they are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation or they will bankrupt us. Health Care Reform, by John Mackey, August 14, 2009
I am not sure what to think about John Mackey, health-food billionaire, starting his piece with a quote...
Also posted in Economics | Comments closed