Green Reading

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In May, Amazon introduced the electronic book reader Kindle DX, touted as a new way to read textbooks, newspapers and other large documents. This fall, six colleges and universities will test the technology in a pilot, which includes making the textbooks for certain courses available online.

The Kindle DX (for “deluxe”) is searchable and portable, a plus for students accustomed to toting heavy backpacks. But there is another reason that some institutions jumped at the chance to try it out: the technology could substantially reduce their use of paper.

July 30, 2009, Universities Turn to Kindle — Sometimes to Save Paper, Sara Peters

Here’s another chance for me to get all crabby and complain about the way technology tends to get adapted– at least at first– mostly to help those who don’t need much help. That is, we give the best tools to the students with the sorts of privileged backgrounds that make education seem an inevitable rite of passage rather than a transformative economic and social necessity.

That’s also true of other green initiatives. Organic foods are still probably too expensive to be widely adopted; the alternative energy tax credits are not yet generous enough to really push the technology into the mainstream. (That doesn’t have to be true, of course.) We do things upside down, starting with those who need help the least, hoping that it will trickle down.

Still, I think that if the universities are willing to resist the inevitable pressure they will feel from the textbook industry, the electronic book could be a boon to affordable education. The problem, of course, will be digital rights management and property. The textbook industry will try to milk students (as always ) for as much money as possible, in effect, encouraging pirating of textbooks.

That debate is likely to create a smokescreen that obscures the real issues, which ought to center around educational affordability and access to information. The real hope is that we can use these devices to link to open courseware and to the emerging ecosystem of free textbooks. Somewhere out these someone is working on a hack for the Kindle…

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Writing

Coporate America, We Dare You: Support a Public Option

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Without a public option, the other parties that comprise America’s non-system of health care — private insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and medical suppliers — have little or no incentive to supply high-quality care at a lower cost than they do now.

Which is precisely why the public option has become such a lightening rod. The American Medical Association is dead-set against it, Big Pharma rejects it out of hand, and the biggest insurance companies won’t consider it. No other issue in the current health-care debate is as fiercely opposed by the medical establishment and their lobbies now swarming over Capitol Hill. Of course, they don’t want it. A public option would squeeze their profits and force them to undertake major reforms. That’s the whole point.

Why the Critics of a Public Option for Health Care Are Wrong, Robert Reich, Tuesday, June 23, 2009

In the early 1980s, in Austin, Texas, there was a punk band called the Dicks. The Dicks had this super song whose title, if I remember correctly, was “We Hate the Rich, They Bore Us.” (Was it really the Dicks? I’d love to hear if I am wrong.) Anyway, when it comes to health care, I think that truism has now been superseded: “We Hate the Rich, They’re Cowards.”

That’s not to say that the rich are any less boring. But I say that because if the rich and/or powerful had a coherent sense of self-interest (or just a time-frame longer than the next year) they would support not just a public option but a single payer plan. With certain exceptions, though, they seem locked into some sort of dysfunctional reasoning that they just can’t seem to escape.

If we had national health care, much of the automobile debacle could have been avoided. Nationals as well as multinationals could compete more effectively with other developed nations. Small businesses could make market ideology seem almost reasonable. The list of good reasons is endless. We’d all benefit, but as with everything, the rich would benefit most. Yet we are told to compromise.

It’s as if an entire class of people rejected anti-viral drugs in the middle of a flu epidemic that was killing thousands. If Wal-Mart and ATT and the like now accept the public option principle as necessary to reform, Obama should consider that the center-right position and negotiate accordingly. If we have to accept compromise, don’t toss the baby out with the bathwater.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Writing

The Bland Leading the Bland

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The Chicago Tribune has reported that trustees and administrators at the University of Illinois are at the center of a scandal regarding the admission of politically-connected students who were less qualified than the general pool of applicants. After the newspaper ran an investigative piece several weeks ago that sparked outrage, Governor Pat Quinn created an independent Admissions Review Commission to investigate allegations of preferential treatment.

Examination is surely in order. As ACTA has long argued, trustees must be more than just fundraisers, boosters, or rubber stamps. Board service is an honor, and it is also a responsibility. As ACTA noted in its guidebook for governors, it is vital that governors “appoint thoughtful, active trustees” who have “a clear sense of their responsibilities to the public.” Trustees do not serve for the benefit of friends or special constituencies; they are stewards of the public interest — appointed to safeguard the academic and financial integrity of the university — for the benefit of the entire community.

ACTA’s Must Reads, Posted by Heather Lakemacher on July 02, 2009

I probably shouldn’t pick on the ACTA so much, but since I did wonder out loud recently how they would respond to the ongoing ‘class scandal’ here in Illinois I thought a comment was justified. Their acknowledgment of the problem is remarkably non-committal and perhaps inevitably bland. This neutrality is curious, given the ACTA’s promotion of high moral and political standards.

I’d think that they would decry this sort of corruption as another example of how the American system of meritocracy and a-political education has been undermined by special interests. They certainly never pull any punches when it comes to what they see as the abuses of diversity and the “special interests” of the professors. Affirmative action, is not so bad, I guess, if it’s for the powerful.

I think this timidity, too, represents what might be called the Obama-effect, a not-so-buried fear rippling through the culture of the powerful, an anxiety that “business as usual” might be a little more disrupted than they hoped. The trustee system is certainly a prime candidate for populist change, especially if it becomes more visible. How can they make this look good?

Is the ACTA, and other like minded folks, wondering if these hearings risk pulling on a thread that might unravel the assumptions that allowed business people (aka Capital) to take over the governance of public universities? It wasn’t always that way, of course, and it”s easy to imagine a more progressive trustees model rooted in community service and academic-self governance.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Online Places, Writing

The Big Lie Nears Climax: E.F.C.A.

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America’s unionized private workforce has declined by approximately 27 percent since 1958. This, according to McMahon, has been a sign that unions have failed to respond to workers and market forces.

“(Small businesses) have to be nimble and flexible in their costs,” McMahon said. “Labor unions have not figured out a way to deal with that.”

He added that this reduction has led to a retirement and pension crisis for labor organizations.

“If you understand the Social Security problem, then you understand their problem,” McMahon said.

Union rep: card check vote imminent, BRUCE SIWY, Daily American Staff Writer

When I spend a little time looking around for relatively reasonable criticism of the Employee Free Choice Act, I have a hard time finding anything of substance. This piece, from a small paper in Pennsylvania, at least tries to set out somethi8ng resembling a debate. The E.F.C.A. is both so important and so simple, though, that critics can’t quite get a handle on it.

I certainly don’t meant to imply that the right’s rhetoric is based in an ideal of informed debate! But on certain issues like the current climate change bill they do at least make some effort at argument. I’d say that their arguments fall apart on closer examination, but at least they go through the motions.

E.F.C.A., however, generates the same cynicism and manipulation that surround the debates over terror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein has nukes that can hit the U.S. in 45 minutes; the terrorists have a plan to kill thousands of people tomorrow and only by torturing them can be stop the plot; E.F.C.A. is the end of the world as we know it.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Online Places