6/12/2008

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going - so far as I can tell - but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. | 0 Comments

US retains technology top spot

The US remains the dominant global player in science and technology in spite of popular perceptions that it risks losing its crown, says the Rand Corporation.
Nevertheless, the research group says in a report published on Thursday the country cannot afford to be complacent. | 0 Comments

6/11/2008

Law Professors Rule Laptops Out of Order in Class

The forbidden-laptop zone is territory into which few professors dare tread. Students have been known to protest when laptops are banned from a classroom, and even claim that they are being denied a proper education. Professors who have taken the bold step, though, sound like they've experienced an epiphany. | 0 Comments

6/09/2008

Rummaging through the internet

THE web has changed in many ways since it first emerged in the mid-1990s. The first web pages contained only text, and there was a big debate about whether pictures should be allowed. Today, by contrast, it is quite normal for pages to be bursting with photos, animated graphics, video clips, music and chunks of software, as well as text. In one respect, however, the web is unaltered: the clickable hyperlinks between pages are still the way users get from one page to another. | 0 Comments

After His Last Lecture, a Computer Scientist Contemplates His Final Months

Randy Pausch's "last lecture" at Carnegie Mellon University last year has inspired other colleges to ask their professors to also deliver last lectures. | 0 Comments

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