Ben Werdmuller

Category: Politics

  • The death of newspapers, and why it matters

    The Internet has, undeniably, changed our culture. For most of the 20th century, we paid for our news, entertainment, art and literature. We allowed businesses to act as gatekeepers for this content, and accepted that the media landscape would be dictated by decisions made in the boardroom. Publishers, movie studio bosses, broadcasters and record company […]

  • Public IT project hell: let’s make government work for us

    Why does it cost $235 million to integrate a few IT systems? Johannes Ernst contrasts the Yahoo/Facebook deep integration announcement with the US government’s announcement that they will spend $235 million on integrating incompatible healthcare IT systems, and asks some pertinent questions: I assume we all agree that an environment in which leading-edge companies innovate […]

  • Net neutrality

    Please take five minutes to watch FreeForm’s video about the open Internet, and then share it with as many people as you can: Then, if you’re a US citizen, head over to the Save the Internet Campaign and sign their petition to congress to preserve net neutrality. Also see FreePress’s links on how some telecoms […]

  • Learning on the social web

    ScienceBlog reports that on Saturday, Carl Whithaus will announce the preliminary results from a California Department of Education study into increasing academic achievement using computers in 4th grade classrooms (emphasis mine): During the first year of the two-year study, student achievement increased 27.5 percent, according to Whithaus, who is principal investigator of a study to […]