academhack

I have had several conversations recently that take one of two shapes: 1. Why do you have over a 1,000 followers but only follow 200? or 2. How do you decide who to follow? These questions seem related, if not coterminous, and go to the heart of what I find valuable about twitter, and how [...]

Steven Johnson, who I started reading because of his book Everything Bad is Good For You (a well thought out defense of digital games) has a post on boingboing documenting his novel writing process (he has a new book out). Although he says he has used various writing tools for his different books, his “one [...]

(A story of Twitter, academia, and old journalism trying to be new but failing.)
Okay first read this article on CNN about the new whitehouse.gov website, okay you can actually just skim the article and skip to the last three paragraphs. Yes, that’s me being quoted in that article, and yes you are correct that [...]

I have been thinking a lot lately about Howard Rheingold’s “Attention 101” and “Attention 102” videos, this is somewhat inspired by his recent reposting and discussion as he begins class, but also because I am also beginning a new semester. I think regardless of what discipline or subject matter we teach, we could do with [...]

For those who follow my account on twitter you already no doubt know that between Christmas and New Year’s Eve I was in San Francisco at the Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association. Those who read this blog also know that I am critical of organizations and institutions (yes almost all of them), especially [...]