Category Archives: Internet

Journalists are Needed more than Ever

Although some might claim that we no longer need journalists, that the internet has given us access to primary sources which we can interpret for ourselves—“do your own research” anyone—I think we need them now more than ever. Those who … Continue reading

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Travelling Without Geography

Most people around the world marvel when American television shows feature street geography quizzes and Americans cannot point to a single country on a map. The subsequent discussion usually centres around the failing American education system, the geographical ignorance that … Continue reading

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Winnipeg Bus Conversations

Conversations on public transit are less frequent with each passing year. Although print media in the form of books and newspapers have always protected the less socialized from interaction, that has been exacerbated by the use of smart phones. Normally … Continue reading

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The Dunning–Kruger Effect

He didn’t mean to laugh, but he was easily overcome by the mangled sentences coming out of the man’s mouth. It was a kind of disorder, that he couldn’t control himself once someone was mangling their words so much as … Continue reading

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When Plagiarism Goes Wrong

One of the ways that students plagiarize, at least when they take material from online and attempt to incorporate it into their papers, is to run a thesaurus function—such as the synonym option in MSword—on certain words. They seldom trouble … Continue reading

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Please Leave a Message

In the early nineties answering machines on phones were ubiquitous, which means that nearly everyone had left a message on one and therefore knew what to do upon hearing the greeting. For some reason, that didn’t stop people from leaving … Continue reading

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Maybe the Algorithms are Working Against Us

Most news, internet search, and social media platforms have optimized their offerings to suit what their viewers most frequently choose to see. That makes sense in terms of ad dollars, for they want to have a targetable demographic, but as … Continue reading

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Serendipity and Other People’s Hard Work: Contributing to Intellectual Society

Many years ago, when I used to build computers from found parts, installing hard drives was much more of an ordeal. You needed to look up the serial number of the hard drive in a database—if you were lucky enough … Continue reading

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The Contamination of Ideas: Truth and Lies in the Internet Age

A recent encounter reminds me that notions of knowledge and how it is gained can be subjective. I was told by a young person that a documentary watched by their mother—they didn’t even see the documentary themselves—argued that there was … Continue reading

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Magazines and the Internet

I was watching a video on YouTube about a man who was setting up his wilderness cabin. Although he spent most of his time complaining about a snow storm that was sweeping through his area I was most struck by … Continue reading

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