Instead of reading the paper this morning, I decided to read through my RSS feed to see what’s interesting. I guess I was indirectly thinking about teaching in the winter term because I found a bunch of links that will probably come up in my computers and writing class.
- “Wikipedia: Maybe the masses aren’t asses, after all,” from InfoWorld. Basically, an article defending Wikipedia as a “pretty good” resource, which is my feelings about it. There’s a discussion going on one of the mailing lists I’m on about how Wikipedia would have been such a better project if they had used experts. Without getting into the whole “expert” thing, there was an article in Wired last February or March that addressed that issue. Basically, it turns out that “experts” aren’t as willing to work for free and they don’t work particularly quickly, either. In any event, you have to like an “open source” encylopedia which features an entry on “Criticism of Wikipedia.”
- This site on “Teaching Guttenberg,” called “The Guttenberg Bible: Primary Source Education Modules.” Really interesting things for a variety of classes where “history of writing technology” plays a role.
- Folks at The Valve– A Literary Organ wonder why academics aren’t up in arms about copyright. Entry writer John Holbo wonders “Why isn’t Larry Lessig a hero to humanities professors the way he is to boingboing readers?” Well, for starters, as Clancy notes in a comment on this post, Lessig is a hero of sorts to a lot of folks in the comp/rhet world, and copyright and IP is a big deal to a lot of people in computers and writing. But I do suspect that “compositionalists” are not what Holbo means by “humanities professors.”
There are a couple of other reasons why I for one have too hard of a time getting too excited about copyright thuogh. First, it’s really REALLY confusing and complicated law. Second, it just seems so easily circumnavigated — not that I’ve ever tried, of course.
- Speaking of which, Bradley Dilger has created a Wiki space to write an NCTE statement on open source software. Kinda cool.
- Finally, two links on Google. First, there’s this entry from Kairosnews on a game called “Guess the Google” that sounds like it might be fun to play. And second, there’s this entry on Charlie “cyberdash” Lowe’s blog about an author who wants her book included in Google Print, but her publisher (Simon and Schuster) is suing to keep it out of Google. The author’s argument is that being on Google will sell paper copies. I think this is undeniably true, but my experience has been that in disputes between an author and her or his publisher, the publisher always wins.