Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.

Source: Twitter / Jay Rosen : Clay Shirky

What are the problems that schools still solve that they are engaged in preserving? What are the new problems that schools don’t solve that they don’t want to deal with?

Discuss: Weblogg-ed » What’s the Problem that Schools Solve?

Basically, Google is so flush with its cash, and so frustrated by slow American ISPs, that it has decided to step in and improve connection speeds itself or goad someone else to — all the better to increase traffic to Google, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, Picasa, YouTube, and so on.

The company’s thinking appears to be, “if you want something done right, do it yourself,” rather than depending on the oligopoly of entrenched internet service providers currently serving (but mostly under-serving) American consumers relative to those in other developed countries. But it might also be sandbagging in an attempt to do as little as possible to scare others into doing something.

Source: Al Franken Jokes, But Google Fiber Is No Laughing Matter | Epicenter | Wired.com

Actually, it’s not that expensive. Scaring others works, too.

Don’t poll your friends. It’s your art, not an election.

Source: Seth’s Blog: Random rules for ideas worth spreading

Merlin Mann interviews Seth Godin about his book Linchpin. It’s the best 33 minutes I’ve spent learning thus far in 2010.

43 Folders – Interview with “Linchpin” author, Seth Godin | 43 Folders

Photo Credit

This quote originally struck me as related to the “echo chamber” effect of social networking. After sitting on it, it’s resonating internally to describe the frustration I’m having connecting deeper with a part of my network that I haven’t had the chance of meeting face-to-face.

We are overdoing the assumption that we are like everybody else. We need to go out to look at what everyone else is like. We need to have a dialog with them and with ourselves about what we are trying to build.

Elizabeth Churchill on Episode #7 of Tummelvision, a new podcast on the TWiT Network that discusses the art and science of using technology to build and engage communities of people.

Disclosure: Many of the women on the Canadian team play in either Madison, WI (where I live) or Duluth, MN (where I grew up). This whole situation makes me feel closer to Dean Shareski.

“We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.”

This is what happens when major telecommunications companies fail to lead, fail to follow, and fail to get out of the way.

Go Google.

[Source: Google ]

“As a social experiment, at least, ChatRoulette makes the Internet seem ‘new’ again — paradoxically by making it feel old.”

[Source: Switched.com]

This is why I love the Internets.

Chatroulette!

“Caring about our students is about listening to them. About learning about them — from them. It is, as I’ve written before, about understanding that if we hope to be a transformative figure in their lives, we must be willing to be transformed ourselves.”

Chris shares a breakthrough in connecting his thoughts about inquiry and caring. Simple question: “What do you think?”

[Source: Chris Lehmann]

“It means that book publishers will have to earn their bound-book sales, though at the same time they will be able to mass-market digital pulps.”

When everybody calms down that this thing doesn’t have a camera, they’ll realize, like AKMA, that the iPad isn’t about replicating the iPhone, only bigger.

Apple’s purpose for the iPad is all about disrupting the print, picture, television, and movie media industry in a way that the iPod disrupted the music industry. The iPad isn’t a transformation of the iPhone, it’s a transformation of how we will consume (and later produce) media. It will start slow, much in the same way the iPod did back in the day. Ten years out, we’ll be transformed.

Most see this now as a “book or device” thing. The secret sauce is in the delivery. The transformation of the print industry into a mass market of digital pulps, as AKMA puts it.

It will also get it’s camera.

[Source: AKMA]