Useful new data from Pew on internet adoption/activity by generation.
Over half of the adult internet population is between 18 and 44 years old. But larger percentages of older generations are online now than in the past, and they are doing more activities online, according to surveys taken from 2006-2008.
This report serves as a compilation of adoption statistics from a number of Pew’s studies. Attention should be paid to the methodology, as the margins of error are high on the weighted populations.
Download the full report at Pew Internet: Generations Online in 2009.
Erik Marshall points to an essay by Steven Johnson on his research and writing techniques. Steven is a brilliant writer; it is interesting and humanizing to see the extent to which he uses technology. I use BibDesk is a manner similar to how Johnson uses Devonthink, but I think I would benefit from the more unstructured approach in Devonthink. Any readers use it?
The first stage, which is crucial, is a completely disorganized capture of every little snippet of text that seems vaguely interesting. I grab paragraphs from web pages, from digital books, and transcribe pages from printed text — and each little snippet I just drop into Devonthink with no organization other than a citation of where it came from. This goes on for months and months; I read in a completely unplanned and exploratory way (increasingly online, thanks to Google Books and other sources) and just drag anything that seems at all interesting into Devonthink.
….in the last stage before I actually start writing, I create a little folder in Devonthink for each of the chapters. And then I sit down and read through every single little snippet that I’ve uncovered over the past year or so of research. And as I’m reading them on the screen, I just drag them into the chapter folder where I think they will be most useful. Some snippets get dragged to multiple folders; most don’t make it into any folder. But I read through them all, and in reading through them all, I have a completely new contextual experience of them, because I’m at the end of the research cycle, not at the beginning. They feel like pieces of a puzzle that’s coming together, instead of hints or hunches.
Read the full article: DIY: How to write a book – Boing Boing.
Announcing Times Open, a day-long event for developers interested in working with NYTimes.com as a news and information platform. When we started this Open blog, we also embarked on a mission to share more of what we do on the development side of The Times. So far, we’ve done that via conference presentations, open-source software, blog posts and (most recently and probably most importantly) our APIs. Times Open is the next logical step in our vision of NYTimes.com. We see our site as more than just a source of news and information: it’s a platform on which news and information become building blocks.
If only I had the time/money/bandwidth to get there – there are some awesome things to be built with the Gray Lady’s data. Featuring my buddy Gabriel Dance.
Mimi Ito’s team is posting reviews of new media practices to the Future of Learning blog.
For the past few months, I have been working with a team of researchers in conducting a literature review of new media uptake in different parts of the world. This work has been part of our work with the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative to understand the ways in which new media is intersecting with young people’s everyday learning. Our work thus far has been focused on the U.S. context, but now we are trying to understand how what we have learned relates to developments overseas.
We selected a set of countries where there are interesting developments in new media uptake, but there is relatively little research literature available in English. The literature reviews are broken down by country, with Cara Wallis taking the lead on Chiina, HyeRyoung Ok for Korea, Anke Schwittay for India, Heather Horst for Brazil, Daisuke Okabe and I for Japan, and Araba Sey for Ghana. We will be rolling these out in installments starting today and continuing through March. You can find the posts at our Futures of Learning blog.
via Mimi Ito – Weblog: International literature review on new media practices.
Nancy Baym has released the slides and writeup of a smart talk she recently gave regarding social practice and online music fandom. She highlights a number of the key activities of online fandom, drawing the themes out to show how producers can leverage fans and technologies to increase engagement. While the talk is rooted in music fandom, Baym’s advice is applicable across multiple domains. If you’re producing online content, read Baym’s talk.
I identify 5 key social practices in fandom, 5 reasons the internet has superpowered fans, and make 4 suggestions for how artists and those who represent them can make this work for everyone. I argue that the key to fostering fans’ strong connections to artists is fostering their connections to one another by understanding and nurturing the activities that bind them together in their fandom.
via Online Fandom » Relating to Fans Means Helping Them Relate to Each Other.
Fred Stutzman is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studies privacy and social media. He is the designer of the productivity software Freedom and Anti-Social, and co-founder of the identity management service ClaimID.com.
