technology

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• SOURCE: NPR
  3/2/2021
  

  Reading A Letter That's Been Sealed For More Than 300 Years — Without Opening It

  A new digital technique can allow researchers to virtually read letters, folded by the senders to thwart tampering, without having to open or damage the artifacts. 

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• SOURCE: Phi Delta Kappan
  2/22/2021
  

  A History of Technological Hype

  by Victoria E.M. Cain and Adam Laats

  The history of education shows a series of episodes of hasty, ill-considered investment in hyped technologies that failed spectacularly. Will that history convince administrators to look (and research) before they take the next leap?

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/9/2021
  

  How Will Jeff Bezos Spend His Billions Now?

  by Margaret O'Mara

  John D. Rockefeller used philanthropy to blunt harsh criticism of his business practices and the social dysfunction represented by his immense wealth. What will his 21st-century analogue Jeff Bezos do for an image-burnishing second act? And will it be about service to the public or service to Bezos? 

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• SOURCE: Vice
  1/12/2021
  

  Archivists Are Mining Parler Metadata to Pinpoint Crimes at the Capitol

  Before it was removed from Amazon Web Services, researchers archived a significant number of the posts on Parler, the network favored by many on the far right. That data could prove useful in figuring out what happened around and inside the Capitol on January 6. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  9/11/2020
  

  ‘On the Books’: Machine Learning Jim Crow

  by William Sturkey

  Lawyer and activist Pauli Murray undertook the arduous task of identifying racially discriminatory laws across the United States, and published a volume cataloguing them in 1950 as a took for attorneys working to dismantle Jim Crow. A University of North Carolina project uses technology to complete that task and demonstrate the historical pervasiveness of racism in the law.

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• SOURCE: War on the Rocks
  9/4/2020
  

  Terror and Technology, From Dynamite to Drones (Review)

  Audrey Cronin's new book warns that terrorist networks are less likely to employ cutting-edge technology than to adapt widely-available tools to new destructive ends; security experts are still surprised by this repeating pattern. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  9/8/2020
  

  The Anti-Democratic Origins of Voter Prediction (Review)

  A review of Jill Lepore's "If Then," which finds the roots of contemporary political messaging in a 1960s company's pioneering efforts to apply computer modeling to voter behavior. 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  8/27/2020
  

  Not ‘Glorified Skype’

  The extensive labor required to develop new online courses or shift existing ones to a virtual or mixed delivery is not always obvious to higher ed critics. 

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  8/18/2020
  

  Netflix’s New Doc Is Like The Last Dance for Gamers

  The six-part High Score is heavy on nostalgia but light on revelations.

• 
• SOURCE: LitHub
  7/30/2020
  

  In the 1990s, Feminism Found a New Ally: Computers (excerpt)

  by Lisa Levenstein

  Few observers recognized that Edie Farwell’s group was part of a wide-ranging network of female technology specialists who were using the 1995 Beijing NGO conference to build the infrastructure for what would become online feminism.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/30/2020
  

  The Last Days of the Tech Emperors?

  by Margaret O'Mara

  The mood of Congressional questioning of tech executives recalled the traffic safety debates of the mid-1960s that helped catalyze significantly more regulation for the auto industry.

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• SOURCE: Washington Monthly
  7/17/2020
  

  Abraham Lincoln, Tech Entrepreneur

  by Sidney Blumenthal

  The president who created the National Academy of Sciences in 1863, Abraham Lincoln, did more to advance the scientific revolution in American life than any chief executive of the 19th century.

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• 7/12/2020
  

  Marshall McLuhan: The Man Who Predicted the Internet and Warned Us of its Dangers

  by Ludovic Rembert

  These days, most of Professor McLuhan's "global village" is kept in private and confined spaces: the village plaza is Facebook, a space that is operated for commercial purposes, restricting our discussions and absorbing our private data within our conversations and searches to sell it to advertisers.

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  6/29/2020
  

  The Long, Unhappy History of Working From Home

  As the coronavirus keeps spreading, employers are convinced remote work has a bright future. Decades of setbacks suggest otherwise.

• 
• 6/28/2020
  

  Vannevar Bush: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Indispensable Expert

  by Michael H. Ebner

  Vannevar Bush's efforts to bring the expertise of scientists to bear on public policy decisions led to the establishment of the National Science Foundation under Harry Truman's presidency.

• 
• SOURCE: Newsweek
  6/8/2020
  

  Complete Roman City Mapped Using Advanced Ground-Penetrating Radar Technology

  The technology used in this project could "revolutionize" archaeological studies of ancient urban sites.

• 
• SOURCE: MIT Technology Review
  6/3/2020
  

  Why Filming Police Violence Has Done Nothing to Stop It

  The evidence suggests body cameras and other technological solutions to police violence are inadequate because the police are protected against consequences even if their misdeeds are recorded. 

• 
• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  6/3/2020
  

  Remote Reflections: Learning in the Time of Corona

  by Sarah Shurts

  Sometimes it is not a matter of making the past more engaging for students, it is a matter of engaging ourselves in the present lives of our students.

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• 5/31/2020
  

  Disruption and Resilience: Lessons from the Ancient History of the 2000s

  by Garrett Peck

  The history of the 2000s is a story of human resilience in the face of crisis. We must find ways to respond to disruption with mutual care and creativity. 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  5/11/2020
  

  Video Chat Is Helping Us Stay Connected in Lockdown. But the Tech Was Once a ‘Spectacular Flop’

  by Francine Uenuma

  The first video-call technology was demonstrated in 1927, but the idea was largely a failure in the years that followed. Here's why.