I can think of no other postmodern-era project that has at once paid such homage to Walter Benjamin while at the same time so thoroughly refuting him — by making a convincing argument that even digitally rendered, mechanically generated facsimiles of mass-produced artifacts can effectively contain and transmit the experience he called “aura.” […]
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If anything describes my condition at this juncture, and for some years back, there you have it: I stubbornly cling to a dying profession, or, more accurately, my own eccentric mélange of such — criticism, historianship, investigative journalism, informed cultural reportage. […] We can’t know how Socrates would respond to our current situation, of course. But as someone who tries to teach in an approximation of what I understand as the Socratic style, I find synchronous online/distance learning anything but impersonal. To the contrary, it’s extremely personal, interactive, and involving. […] In short, if you work on a computer and use the internet you already have and use some applications that will serve to generate the content you need to augment your F2F teaching and begin to teach online. Your first task, then, is to take inventory of the applications with which you already work and the skillsets you already have: your present toolkit for online and distance learning. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Cabin Fever: Bits & Pieces 2022 (1)
Prediction for 2022: The inherently poisonous effect of social media will become ever more obvious. The fact that Mark Zuckerberg has any degree of influence over the survival of democracy will finally become understood as terrifying. […]