Confirmed: The Internet Does Not Solve Global Inequality
If you live in a rich country, the Internet has probably changed the way you consume (and produce) information. But when you look at global-scale knowledge production, things are as they ever were: the Anglophone world dominates with the United States doing the lion’s share of academic and user-generated publishing.
Those are the messages of the Oxford Internet Institute’s new e-book, Geographies of the World’s Knowledge, from which the above graphics were drawn. The book’s authors, Corinne Flick of the Convoco Foundation and the Institute’s Mark Graham and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, reluctantly conclude that the Internet has not delivered on the hopes that it would make knowledge “more accessible.”
“Many commentators speculated that [the Internet] would allow people outside of industrialised nations to gain access to all networked and codified knowledge, thus mitigating the traditionally concentrated nature of information production and consumption,” they write. “These early expectations remain largely unrealised.”
We’re not only talking about publishing in academic journals or Wikipedia. The researchers also sampled user-generated content on Google and found that rich countries, especially the United States, dominate the production of user content.The fact of the matter is that people without money can’t afford to get the education necessary to publish in academic journals, Internet-enabled or not. The other fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people in very poor countries don’t spend their time producing content for free. Hope as we might, the Internet isn’t a magic wand that makes the world more equal.
Read more. [Image: Oxford Internet Institute]
My book collection. Not pictured are a slew of school texts covering both my bed and floor, but all of the good leftist stuff is present and shelved.
I think I’ll take this picture too :)
I will try to get something together…
Biological views of love tend to view the emotion as a human drive. While love is often seen as one of the basic human emotions such as anger or happiness, some have suggested that love is instead a cultural phenomenon that arises partly due to social pressures and…
Why, you ask? Because we’re gathering the science bloggers on Tumblr together to make an epic blog listing everyone who talks about science.
The only way this can be successful is if you - yes, you - have a science blog (or 4 like me!) and would like to add yourself to this directory. There have been times I’ve received messages asking me, “Can you suggest science blogs to follow?”. Of course, I only follow a certain amount of blogs, and there’s just so many out there waiting to be discovered.
“Science On!” makes it easy for anyone looking for new blogs to follow, and just to keep count of who blogs about what. If someone messages me and says, “Suggest some blogs?”, I’ll be able to say, “Yes! Check out scienceon.tumblr.com for all your science-y needs.”
Everyone’s always looking for new blogs to follow, so I feel this will help us all out in the future.
Spread the word, submit your science blogs, and enjoy!
Hey, everyone. I’m reblogging this post on scienceon as well for anyone following who’d like to spread the word. I’ve got a ton of new submissions coming in, and they’re being published in a timely fashion, but let’s keep it up to grow a fantastic list of science bloggers on Tumblr. Thanks, guys!
(high-res)
Five Myths About Crime in Black America—and the Statistical Truths
In the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death, we’ve seen a lot of discussion of the larger societal issues that play into how and when people are perceived as criminals. There were hoodies, there were marches, and there were frank talks from parent to child about how to minimize the danger of being a young person of color. On the other side, there were justifications of George Zimmerman’s actions: a smear campaign against Martin’s character, and plenty of writers explaining that statistically, blacks are simply more dangerous to be around.
That framing ignores the realities behind the numbers. Here are five myths about crime and people of color.
CC: Click on the photo of the third myth in order to see the fourth one (perhaps this is just my pc, but it isn’t showing).
| — | Arthur Schopenhauer | Essays (via blogut) |
