divided attention
“Nass says he was surprised at the result: He had expected the multitaskers to perform better on at least some elements of the test. But no. The study was yet another piece of evidence for the unwisdom of multitasking.” David Glenn
network selection vs. peer review
The online open science ecosystem may yet provide a superior method to peer review for judging article credibility. “The time is long overdue for scientists and experts in all academic fields to no longer turn their backs on the network laws that have made peer review obsolete.” Judy Breck
information generation
“Technology critics and primitivists usually claim that this anxiety is innately bad, and stems from my generation’s need for instant gratification. But what’s so bad about instant gratification? Should I have to work to find the information I want, or need, when it is conveniently at my fingertips? Shouldn’t information be easy to access?”
Apple to destroy textbook publishing
“Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the “GarageBand for e-books,” so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users. Don’t expect that content to come directly from Apple, however.” Chris Foresman
scholarly communications must be scalable
“Any learned communication that is not made to scale will shrink in its audiences and relevance, whereas scholarship that embraces scalability will be far more dynamic, flexible, and responsive—a manifestly superior mode of knowledge.” Gideon Burton
the age of big data
“We’re really just getting under way. But the march of quantification, made possible by enormous new sources of data, will sweep through academia, business and government. There is no area that is going to be untouched.” Gary King
torturer’s apprentice
NGram Viewer allows users to search a database of millions of published works and discover how often particular words have been used from year to year. The word ‘inquisition’ comes up more and more because people have been invoking it as a casual metaphor when writing about our own times.
brain, computer, economy
“How does information—or the perceived value of any given piece of information—affect the decision making? Humans are so good at creating patterns and meaning where none objectively exist, often doing so to justify a decision based more on biases in our thinking than on facts.” Peg AtKisson
