At all levels from kindergarten to twelfth grade, American schools are making huge investments in digital education – with proponents often touting digital tools as a way to close achievement gaps and improve learning opportunities for economically and academically disadvantaged students. Digital instruction – using computers, netbooks, or handheld devices – is rapidly spreading in classrooms and supplemental areas of instruction. Big money is in play: One estimate values the U.S. school market for education software and digital content at nearly $8 billion. Advances in technology allow digital tools to offer the promise of broad access at low cost, competing with face-to-face methods of instruction for shrinking funds. But with schools inundated with new digital tools, little attention has been paid to whether teachers, parents, and students are putting them to effective use. more...
technology
For most Americans, protecting free expression means countering threats from government. Private corporations are not usually seen as threatening free speech. But as private technology companies increasingly mediate access to information and services, the distinction between governmental and private censorship becomes less clear. Concepts of free speech and freedom of expression may need to be revised and enlarged to take account of new threats in the age of digital communications—and policies to protect freedom of expression may need to counter threats, often subtle, from the private sector as well as government. more...
A hundred years ago, America’s bright young men flocked to the high-tech industries of the day – among them electric power and oil and gas. These industries matured and gave the twentieth-century United States the great advantage of abundant and relatively inexpensive energy. But now the old energy system has reached its limits. It inflicts hardships on workers, communities and the environment, and entangles the nation in volatile situations overseas. Worst of all, scientists overwhelmingly agree that unless carbon-based patterns of energy production and use change, the world is headed toward climate-related disruptions on a devastating scale.
If humanity is to avoid this fate, nothing less than fundamental transformations of current patterns of energy production, delivery, and use are necessary. The challenge cannot be met merely by raising the price of fossil-fuels through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme. The key solution lies in discovering and deploying cost-effective clean energy technologies that are better and cheaper than those now available. The energy transformation must be global in scope, yet the skills and resources of U.S. entrepreneurs, investors, producers, and energy users will be pivotal. more...
Advanced technologies spread unevenly to different groups of Americans, with low-income people and minorities lagging behind whites on most measures of access and usage. But recently African Americans and Latinos have been narrowing the digital divide. A 2010 study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project showed that minorities are increasingly active purchasers of Internet enabled phones; two years later, another Pew report documented that minorities are outpacing whites not just in mundane activities like talking on the phone and texting, but also in more sophisticated applications like Internet-banking.
But progress toward closing America’s digital divides could be stalled or reversed by adverse federal government regulations or restrictive interpretations by the Federal Communications Commission. The regulatory details at issue are quite specific, but they have potentially momentous social consequences.
more...
For decades, social scientists have been looking for damaging effects from particular media forms, especially those enabled by new communication technologies. Does television make us stupid? Is the Internet undermining social ties? Despite many research efforts, there is very little uncontested empirical evidence of generally damaging media effects.
If social scientific methods have not shown that the media are doing us harm, why do so many of us still believe that one sort of communications media or another causes serious damage to individuals or society? My research on media criticism and its history has convinced me that our mistrust of communications media tells us more about ambivalence about modern life than it does about any actual ill effects from new modes of communication. more...
Nanotechnologies, bioengineering, robotics, artificial intelligence—in just one human generation such innovations have made the previously unimaginable possible, or even routine. More than three-fifths of the foods on U.S. supermarket shelves are made from genetically engineered plant ingredients. People can now choose the gender of their next child. Robots are performing some surgeries, and will soon do many more kinds of operations. What is coming down the pipeline will be even more startling to many Americans. Self-driving cars have been tested and may soon be commonplace on the roads. Gene therapy and nano-particles may be targeted to brain tissues to suppress unwanted behavior or emotions or induce desirable ones. Half a century ago, even several decades ago, this all would have sounded like science fiction.
American taxpayers are paying for many of these extraordinary advancements, yet citizens have very little say in the purposes new technologies will serve. U.S. government agencies fund not only basic and applied research but also industrial development. Over half of government funding for research and development goes directly to the private sector; and universities and government labs aim to transfer innovations quickly into private production. Few taxpayer-subsidized inventions return money to the public. Even more worrisome, citizens are usually left in the dark about the impact and purposes of new technologies. more...
For most Americans, protecting free expression means countering threats from government. Private corporations are not usually seen as threatening free speech. But as private technology companies increasingly mediate access to information and services, the distinction between governmental and private censorship becomes less clear. Concepts of free speech and freedom of expression may need to be revised and enlarged to take account of new threats in the age of digital communications—and policies to protect freedom of expression may need to counter threats, often subtle, from the private sector as well as government. more...
A hundred years ago, America’s bright young men flocked to the high-tech industries of the day – among them electric power and oil and gas. These industries matured and gave the twentieth-century United States the great advantage of abundant and relatively inexpensive energy. But now the old energy system has reached its limits. It inflicts hardships on workers, communities and the environment, and entangles the nation in volatile situations overseas. Worst of all, scientists overwhelmingly agree that unless carbon-based patterns of energy production and use change, the world is headed toward climate-related disruptions on a devastating scale.
If humanity is to avoid this fate, nothing less than fundamental transformations of current patterns of energy production, delivery, and use are necessary. The challenge cannot be met merely by raising the price of fossil-fuels through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme. The key solution lies in discovering and deploying cost-effective clean energy technologies that are better and cheaper than those now available. The energy transformation must be global in scope, yet the skills and resources of U.S. entrepreneurs, investors, producers, and energy users will be pivotal. more...
Advanced technologies spread unevenly to different groups of Americans, with low-income people and minorities lagging behind whites on most measures of access and usage. But recently African Americans and Latinos have been narrowing the digital divide. A 2010 study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project showed that minorities are increasingly active purchasers of Internet enabled phones; two years later, another Pew report documented that minorities are outpacing whites not just in mundane activities like talking on the phone and texting, but also in more sophisticated applications like Internet-banking.
But progress toward closing America’s digital divides could be stalled or reversed by adverse federal government regulations or restrictive interpretations by the Federal Communications Commission. The regulatory details at issue are quite specific, but they have potentially momentous social consequences.
more...
For decades, social scientists have been looking for damaging effects from particular media forms, especially those enabled by new communication technologies. Does television make us stupid? Is the Internet undermining social ties? Despite many research efforts, there is very little uncontested empirical evidence of generally damaging media effects.
If social scientific methods have not shown that the media are doing us harm, why do so many of us still believe that one sort of communications media or another causes serious damage to individuals or society? My research on media criticism and its history has convinced me that our mistrust of communications media tells us more about ambivalence about modern life than it does about any actual ill effects from new modes of communication. more...
Nanotechnologies, bioengineering, robotics, artificial intelligence—in just one human generation such innovations have made the previously unimaginable possible, or even routine. More than three-fifths of the foods on U.S. supermarket shelves are made from genetically engineered plant ingredients. People can now choose the gender of their next child. Robots are performing some surgeries, and will soon do many more kinds of operations. What is coming down the pipeline will be even more startling to many Americans. Self-driving cars have been tested and may soon be commonplace on the roads. Gene therapy and nano-particles may be targeted to brain tissues to suppress unwanted behavior or emotions or induce desirable ones. Half a century ago, even several decades ago, this all would have sounded like science fiction.
American taxpayers are paying for many of these extraordinary advancements, yet citizens have very little say in the purposes new technologies will serve. U.S. government agencies fund not only basic and applied research but also industrial development. Over half of government funding for research and development goes directly to the private sector; and universities and government labs aim to transfer innovations quickly into private production. Few taxpayer-subsidized inventions return money to the public. Even more worrisome, citizens are usually left in the dark about the impact and purposes of new technologies. more...
Research to Improve Policy: The Scholars Strategy Network seeks to improve public policy and strengthen democracy by organizing scholars working in America's colleges and universities. SSN's founding director is Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University.