There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.Leonard Cohen

July 2012

  • The illusion of Facebook

    Call me naïve, call me ignorant, but here is what I think of Facebook’s economic woes. You may or may not know that investors are edgy or dissatisfied or disappointed or fearful that the company has either lost them money or not made them what they were looking for. When Facebook went public recently at a phenomenal opening price it was based on the fact that given its popularity and the number of people who use it, the users were in some way an untapped source of revenue. Facebook executives still believe that, one said this week the underlying issue is due to the fact they have to work further on their monetization. A columnist wrote of their problems, that they are having an identity crisis thinking they can offer a free service, when in fact they can’t. I’d rather think that the identity crisis stems from trying to turn an orange into an apple. Facebook’s success rose from its being a social media and it does look that if that erodes so does its success. They can have ads, and yet past a certain point people will more than likely be turned off if there are too many and not use Facebook, which apparently in some cases is already happening with the very mobile apps the executives are betting on. No matter how I think of Facebook and its sagging financial fortune, it seems to me that here is a case where a lot of grown ups can still participate in mass illusion and that greed can trump common sense, knowledge and experience.

  • An Alternative?

    In the last few weeks many universities, including some elite institutions, have signed up with Coursera, a venture offering free classes online. So much so that “there’s panic” said Kevin Carey, director of education policy at the New America Foundation, “whether it’s senseless panic is unclear.” MOOCS or massive open online courses let colleges reach big student pools at relatively low cost. Many wonder whether in future students will be willing to pay from $20,000 to $60,000 a year for a traditional campus experience. For now most of the students come from foreign countries and the free courses do not offer credits towards a degree. Some believe it is only a matter of time before they do, and worry what will that mean to universities’ budgets when that happens in some cases even trying to come up with ways to make the venture profitable. Free, or nearly free, online courses appear to be a way to make higher education affordable and available to all. Yet it seems that we are lamenting the lack of a business model instead of lamenting the many consequences of high current tuition costs.

  • Progress–However Slowly

    British historian Ian Mortimer usually writes about history as if he were a time traveler. In his latest, The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, he explains the sights, sounds and smells one would be exposed to were we to be transported back to that time. All in all it was he says a dangerous and brutal time, a time of “death, disease, suffering and incredible violence…half the population didn’t live past the age of 21.” He goes on to describe such realities of daily life as the lack of dental care and the prevalence of rape. Aside from its historical significance, it may be a book that prompts us to rethink some of our assumptions about the present, that we are not progressing, for instance. We may have many problems, but we are, for example, safer than in Medieval times—unless one lives in a war zone, of course. We can’t always see progress, and yet when we look back a few centuries, we can see that however slowly and however many detours it takes, it does occur. And certainly occurs whether we are aware of it or not.

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