opening up

Posts Tagged ‘activism’

well, that was disappointing

In narrative, politics, slush on 9 February 2008 tagged activism, boston-public-libary, bpl, digital-rights-management, drm, free-software, freedom, fsf, protest, protests with 9 comments

Yesterday, I heard about the Boston Public Library’s baleful DRM policy, and a protest staged by the Free Software Foundation and DefectiveByDesign in front of the BPL this afternoon from 1-3PM. So, I arrived at the BPL around 12:55PM, waited ’til 1:35PM, and then left.
No one showed up.
So, I wrote a letter to the [...]

opportunity : obligation :: right : responsibility :: privilege : duty

In economics, edumication, essays on 1 December 2007 tagged activism, education, education-reform, fixing-things, hell-in-a-handbasket, language, opportunity, philosophy, policy, power, privilege, reform, responsibility, scary, schooling with no comments

I’m going to constrain the meanings of these words for this post. People bandy them about, but there are some essential differences that call for their distinction.
Opportunities are the chance to do something, the chance at something. Rights are guarantees that are (morally or ethically) inviolable. Privilege are opportunities accorded by virtue [...]

someone else thinks we need more data, too

In slush on 1 November 2007 tagged activism, big-ideas, coffee-spoons, corporate-responsibility, environmentalism, fixing-things, information-visualization, reform, thoughtandmemory with 2 comments

At a meeting for the Center for the Future of Civic Media1 today, Lucy and Clay from ThoughtAndMemory gave a quick talk about their work in the tradition of James Patten’s “Swipe ‘n Gripe”. But, there work isn’t art. It’s real. They’re implementing a system wherein you can text or photograph a [...]

echo chamber

In politics on 31 October 2007 tagged activism, hell-in-a-handbasket, iraq, war with no comments

From Matt Yglesias, a concise pearl:

This is the basically fraudulent nature of the American enterprise in Iraq. We’re told we can’t leave because of the civil war that would break out or intensify or whatever if we do. But our troops aren’t really capable of meaningfully impacting the result of the sectarian conflict anyway. Instead, [...]

ironic juxtaposition

In slush on 9 October 2007 tagged activism, college, college rankings, education, funny, humor, irony, neil postman, postman, subversion, teaching, teaching activism with no comments

If you’re familiar with Neil Postman’s work, you’ll find the following as hilarious as I do:

If you’re not familiar with his work, take a look at the cover of this book: Teaching as a Subversive Activity. The juxtaposition of stubbornly radical and fawningly mainstream is pretty amusing.