When I began thinking about this blog post, I thought I’d find some fabulous article or research to post about. Then, I got a phone call asking me to be on a television show taping on the other side of the country; left the classroom for an ice rink and CBS television city; and began my own technology adventure — Skyping into classes, emailing assignments, overnighting art projects to campus, and generally exploring my studies as a ‘virtual’ student. And so, I sit down to write this blog today and it occurs to me, what better experience to write about than my own?

I’m experiencing a virtual education today. I awoke at 5am(PST), emailed my ‘bring to class’ assignments, turned on my Skype, and eagerly awaited my professors’ video calls. During class I used my chat box to send messages to my peer review group as they spoke back to me about both my drafts and theirs. In art class I viewed projects on my computer screen as my classmates critiqued them [hanging on the wall in front of them]. The only difference between being on campus and virtually present was the interaction with my classmates walking between buildings. For even when my instructor took a pole of students that had chosen a particular topic, via his computer screen, he saw me raise my hand.

Never has technology been as exciting as it is today. While interacting one-on-one with classmates is one of the most valuable experiences on campus, the ability to access vast wealths of resources is invaluable for those who encounter opportunities or struggles that limit their access to the on-campus experience. I for one know that there is nothing I’d trade for my education at Yale, but I also know that, as we heard many times in opening day speeches, we should not ‘let school get in the way of our education’. And education comes in many forms. The better able schools are to provide logistical help when it is needed via technological means, the more educational opportunities will be realized in society.

While there are many pitfalls to the online educational opportunities, both for the student and for the professor and institution, there are many benefits as well. The academic world will always need great institutions but mediocre establishments may, and possibly should, be feeling the pressure of technology bearing down on them as great intimations spread their ‘virtual wings’. No longer will working students be bound by their city limits in accessing great lectures or forced to pay for sub-par instruction simply because that is all that is locally available. The internet is bringing the opportunity for education to the masses. Those that choose to take that opportunity and run with it can success like never before.

I am thankful for the internet and the generous understanding of my professors and advisers in allowing me to fit other exciting opportunities into my schedule. I’ve not taken the help lightly, no exceptions from assignments have been requested. Instead, I’m present at every opportunity, if sometimes only virtually. From my stand point, I’d love to be in the chilly fall air of New England, but if that can’t happen, I guess I’ll have to listen to lectures from a hotel in sunny California.

“Them’s the Breaks! “

How would you feel if you were on a sinking ship and someone handed you a new laptop? Somehow I don’t think you would be too pleased. Yet somehow Nicholas Negroponte doesn’t see any problem waltzing into impoverished countries with failing education systems and handing out laptops directly into the hands of children. What good does this really do anyone? With no infrastructure to provide technical support or adequate training to help teachers integrate the technology into their lesson plans, how much good is One Laptop per Child really doing? The problem with education in many of these developing countries goes far deeper than a few laptops can fix. The XO netbook isn’t going to be a revolution for more reasons than one.

How many of you own an iPhone? How many of you have bothered to jailbreak them? Very few I’m guessing. By most accounts fewer than 10% of iPhone users have tried to jailbreak their devices. The truth of the matter is that most consumers simply can’t be bothered to go the extra step to get that extra utility from their phones. Yet Zittrain somehow expects that the kids receiving these XO netbooks will be driven enough to learn the programming skills necessary to make the device suit their needs. This seems highly unlikely.

Instead I propose a different idea. Whatever happens to all the computers on campus when Yale decides to replace aging units? An initiative to donate used computers to these developing countries would be far more sustainable than convincing a government that probably has many other issues on its plate to spend 200 dollars on a laptop that will then be handed over directly into the hands of children. More importantly educators need to be trained to use these devices to take advantage of the wealth of free digital educational resources available out there. Even if every child won’t be able to attend Khan University on their own personal laptops, teachers will at least be able to access free online classroom aides or learn new teaching methods from Khan’s short but sweet style.

There is definitely a huge gap between the wonderful educational resources available online and the people who need them the most. But putting a laptop into children’s hands simply doesn’t get the job done if the correct infrastructure isn’t there to support both the child and the device. Education is certainly the key to closing the gaps between the developed and developing worlds. But throwing cute little laptops at kids is a far too narrow solution to have any real effect.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative is a good one, but it definitely raises some red flags for me.  Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but the idea of a child’s primary education coming from a computer bugs me.  But, it’s not even as if these computer skills gained will be transferrable to other Windows, Mac, etc. computers.  The XO’s linux based operating system is one that only trains one how to use an XO.  On top of that, the XO is tethered in a way that would allow for the complete shutdown of the laptop from a remote location.  The criminally deterrent ramifications of this are an obvious plus, however, that comes with a downside as well.  Any information, books or otherwise, that a student may have saved on that device could be easily destroyed. I don’t know about you, but the idea of my favorite, thoroughly highlighted and annotated book potentially bursting into flames one day is unsettling.  The situation with stored data on the XO is much the same.

The main problem with this idea is that it presents a “cyberized” education as a child’s first education.  I make this distinction, because I think the utilization of technology in learning is a very good idea.  A shining example of this is Sal Kahn’s online academy.  He posts video mini-lectures on many educational disciplines and posts them online for all to see.  His idea overcomes barriers of distance and communication that would otherwise be insurmountable without technology.  However, the key thing that makes his method ok is the fact that the people utilizing it already have at least some form of education.  Their entire conception of learning isn’t going to be shaped and centered around his online videos.  The XO, however, gives first time learners a basis for understanding material that will be all but useless when applied to most real-world environment.  The benefits of using an XO immediately disappear when you try the laptop’s methods with a book or even another laptop with a more mainstream OS.

Overall, I applaud the effort, but the OLPC idea is simply too much too soon.  If the method is tried once the children have an educational foundation rooted in something useful outside the XO community, then I will support it.  Until then, I say that we stick to the good old bound paperback.

Computers did us a great service in bringing together up-to-the-minute information in a (somewhat) easy to view format on the web.  These articles tend to be lower quality, which is understandable because they need to be written more quickly and their readers have shorter attention spans.  The problem is, now that low-quality information is widely available, many people just settle at that.  With the rise of sites like CNN.com, print news subscriptions have decreased dramatically (with a few exceptions that prove the rule).  More and more people, especially in my generation, get news exclusively from the web.

It’s like high school—when kids realize there are Spark Notes for a book in English class, it means a lot fewer kids read the book.  When people don’t have to read the paper to get the news, they can settle for these watered down news sites.  But unlike high school, where kids know they’re reading the Spark Notes, more often we’re just lowering the bar for “being informed.”  These websites don’t portray themselves as “supplements” or “previews” for the news.  They sell themselves as the whole deal, and they come with labels like The New York Times that many people trust.

Another option-related problem is that many people only read articles that confirm their existing political views.  Although this was possible before the web, for instance if one exclusively watched NBC news, the degree of choice has been dramatically increased.  A newspaper would usually provide several sides of an issue, but online it’s easy to see only conservatively-spun articles or liberal ones.  Of the growing number of people who get all of their info from the web, a large portion are just reading watered down Fox News.

It’s not that people today are lazier than their parents a few decades ago (although that may be the case).  And it’s not that computers are the source of the problem.  It just turns out that people are willing to settle for less when “less” is an option that’s available.  Whereas previous media helped saved us from ourselves, the web is an enabler for our bad habits.

Most Internet users believe that their actions online are anonymous unless they have recently explicitly identified themselves. This is far from the truth. Two common techniques greatly reduce your anonymity online: computer recognition techniques and cross site trackers. With our website (forgetmysecret.com), Thaddeus Diamond and I created a simple game which illustrates how powerful these tracking techniques are. I recommend you visit the website to better understand privacy on the Internet.

A website can remember your computer using many techniques. The three most common techniques are cookies, flash cookies, and browser fingerprints. Cookies are very simple to erase. Most browsers include a “forget history” option as well as a privacy web-surfing mode. Both of these will defeat the tracking ability of cookies. Flash cookies, however, are much more difficult to erase. Flash cookies are stored deep in the computer’s file system, are shared between browsers, are not eliminated when a browser’s history is cleared, and are not effected by using a privacy mode. To clear this tracking information you must determine where these are stored on your particular operating system and manually remove them. Some browsers have third party plugins available which remove these cookies. Browser fingerprinting does not even rely on storing information. Instead, it captures lots of information regarding your computer system (such as font lists, plugin lists and software versions) to establish a highly unique “fingerprint” of your system. This fingerprint can then be used to identify you even if you clear all of the cookies stored on your computer.

Computer Recognition alone does not pose a large threat to privacy. However, when computer recognition information is shared between websites through “trackers” online anonymity is greatly reduced. Tackers allow for users to be followed between different websites. For example, your activity on website A can be shared and grouped with your activity on website B. This is primarily used to display personalized advertisements to users. You may have experienced this before when it appears that a certain targeted ad “follows” you around the Internet and appears at different websites. However, this technology can also be used to identify an otherwise anonymous user. If you identify yourself by logging in to website A, and then post an “anonymous” comment on website B (or visit a website you believe you are surfing privately), your identity can potentially be determined by website B through the use of such cross site trackers. Installing the Ghostery plugin from ghostery.com can show you how you are tracked at various websites.

It is crucial that web users become informed about privacy online. Misinformed surfers can accidentally expose their real identities while believed to by anonymous. Furthermore, a web user’s activity can potentially be aggregated into a single data source and sold for data mining. This greatly compromises our belief and desire of privacy for our online activities. I believe in the future it will be crucial for web browser developers to include many more tools to protect the privacy of their clients. By educating users and redesigning our browsers we will be able to recapture the true sense of freedom once enjoyed on the world wide web.

The digital age has undoubtedly brought significant changes to the entrepreneurial community. Both fixed and marginal costs are now lower than ever resulting in fewer barriers to entry for aspiring entrepreneurs. As more and more young students have capitalized on this opportunity society has become fascinated by the college-student-turn-billionaire concept enabled by these trends. The Internet economy is not without its drawbacks. Businesses must now find new and unique competitive advantages as the marginal costs of Internet services approach zero. Also, certain existing industries have been greatly challenged by the disruptive nature of this new economy. However, I believe the greatest impact of the digital economy will be its ability to act as a gateway for aspiring entrepreneurs.

No one exemplifies this concept better than Elon Musk. After graduating from college Musk formed two Internet based companies: Zip2 and later PayPal. Both ventures achieved great success and were started with little else than Musk’s own creativity. It is difficult to imagine an entrepreneur receiving such rapid achievement from little investment before the changes brought by the digital revolution. However, Musk did not stop after PayPal. Instead, he invested his profits into his own new venture, SpaceX. Unlike Zip2 and PayPal, SpaceX has little or nothing to do with the Internet. Rather, this company develops rockets and spacecraft which use reusable vehicles. SpaceX has already transformed space exploration from an exclusively government controlled operation to competition amongst private firms. Musk further went on to fund and lead the development of Tesla Motors, a company frequently credited with revolutionizing the automotive industry.

This example illustrates how the Internet has been able to act at as “gateway,” allowing creative individuals to become entrepreneurs. In the case of Musk, he was able to expand from digital markets with low costs to developing markets with astronomical costs. The Internet has changed our society in countless overt ways, however perhaps this is the greatest contribution the Internet will make, it can guide individuals into the world of business and innovation. As countless business leaders can now attest to, the Internet allows for entrepreneurship “with training wheels” due to unprecedentedly low barriers to entry. Hopefully the web will be the beginning of myriad serial entrepreneurs.

SpaceX Rocket