Blurts

I have been a Brave browser and ecosystem convert for a long time. Brave, which is built with Chrome and allows most Chrome extensions, blocks traditional ads and the collection of personal information that goes along with these ads, but allows user to substitute the viewing of ads provided through Brave without the collection of personal information and encourages the compensation of content creators with part of the money it collects from those who offer the ads. Technically, you can view these ads and collect compensation from Brave yourself, but the amount available is small and I turn around whatever I would be compensated to support content creators.

Apple claims that this approach when used within the iOS violates Apple’s tasks for cash provision and is forcing to remove the method for compensating the user and/or the content creator from apps sold through the app store. For all practical purposes this eliminates iPhones and iPads. You can continue to participate from a desktop or laptop. This seems a significant stretch to me, but I guess Brave takes 30% of this revenue to fund its own personnel and infrastructure costs. The Apple policy would also seem to run contrary to Apple’s promotion of personal privacy and I have long thought the Brave approach was a great compromise – personal privacy and a reward to support content creators. I wonder if Apple would allow the present iOS app if Brave sold it for $4 instead of giving it away

Time to invest a little effort to understand and appreciate the pioneers. Doug Engelbart is someone I followed from my earliest tech days and he is even a bigger personal hero of my wife who spent time with him at an Apple Distinguished Educator training back in the day (she was in the 3rd class of ADEs).

Engelbart did the mouse and conceptualized windows. My interest was in his concept of augmented text. Some of these ideas have influenced my thinking regarding text annotation as a way to advance reading.

The Engelbart demo remembered (50+ years later)

The NWEA (think MAP testing folks) offers some data on student learning during the pandemic. The general summary – not too bad. Students taking the exam (an important consideration) scored a bit lower in math, but at about the same level as usual in reading. This outcome is an improvement over what had been predicted by such agencies as Stanford’s Center for Research on Outcomes.

This makes perfect sense to me. Reading is a skill area in which explanations for how it is done are extremely difficult to generate. You can tell if a student comprehends, but telling them how to go about comprehending is difficult. Time engaged and encouragement are important. Math lends itself more to feedback and demonstration. The assistance one might experience in a classroom is not as easy to deliver online.

Issues of participation and access are distinct from the success of what available access can produce and there are obvious concerns here.

The Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure studies the potential of the internet as a resource for the public good as an alternative to profit-making ventures. Think of this as the contrast between commercial television and public television or radio. I think of some of the concepts advanced by this organization as a return to what I used to call the Participatory Web or Web 2.0. The organization will offer academic papers, a podcast series, and gobo.social which uses your Facebook and Twitter feeds to demonstrate how algorithms can influence what you see. If you listen to podcasts and are interested in the future of the Internet, I have enjoyed the focus of this podcast.