Category: media

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Taking My Mind Back Redux

This one is just a short update. A few years ago, I deleted my Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Threads accounts. This morning, after a nineteen year run there, I’ve added Reddit to that list, having deleting my account there about an hour ago.

And I did so for the same reason as the others: I realized that time spent there was wasted, not utilized. It was a little more difficult, because good conversations can be had there, but as with most other social media, it was just too easy to get drawn into ideological conflicts.

So that’s it: so long, Reddit. You’ve been permanently downvoted. And that leaves me on only two social media networks, ones I’m very likely to keep, even though they’re polar opposites.

The first is my Mastodon account in the Fediverse, which is designed totally differently from other social networks and actually promotes conversation rather than serving up endless outrage to keep people’s attention. If anything, it was difficult to get used to it, because it doesn’t try to keep you doomscrolling—sticking around is entirely up to you.

The second is LinkedIn. I get it, people think of that as just a hub of self-promotion and AI slop, and it’s certainly no paradise. But I have a lot of businessy interests and do a lot of businessy stuff, and that makes it the only social media network where I see posts that actually tell me things I didn’t know that might help me reach my goals. So it stays, at least as long as that remains true.

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An Open Letter to the Editor of GlobalPost

Dear Editor:

With respect to your article “Puerto Ricans Struggle To Find Their Feet as Bad Bunny ‘Puts Them on the Map’” published on February 27th, I was astonished that the entire focus was on their prospects for independence. Your unfounded and unchecked presumption that this must be what most Puerto Ricans want deformed your article entirely out of alignment with the truth.

The majority of Puerto Ricans do not want their island to become an independent country. There have been a variety of referenda over the years regarding the island’s status relative to the United States. In the most recent one, in 2024, Puerto Ricans had a choice between statehood, free association with the United States, and independence. The majority, 58.6%, voted for statehood. Most of the rest, 29.6%, voted for free association. Independence was a distant third at 11.8%—fewer than one in eight votes. Moreover, support for statehood was widespread, earning a majority in all but one of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities.

Perhaps you would have run into information about this referendum had you started out with impartial, fact-driven sources to familiarize yourself with the situation. Instead, you openly cited Cuban propaganda, by name. With sources like this, it’s no wonder your article ended up being a counterfactual travesty.

I should add that my shock and disappointment is not derived from nationalist sentiment but simply from your lack of commitment to accuracy. If Puerto Ricans wanted independence I would wholeheartedly support them. Most do not.

Were this simply a matter of getting a single article woefully wrong, then that might be one thing. But the real problem is that when I see things go so far astray on a topic with which I am passably familiar, then I cannot trust your reporting on topics about which I know little or nothing. You have sown doubt about everything I read in your newsletter, undermining any reason to continue doing so.

Sincerely,

Steve Foerster

Note: I would have loved to link to the article in question so that anyone reading this could make up their own mind about my criticism. Unfortunately, as far as I can determine, GlobalPost only makes their articles available via their newsletter, not on the publicly viewable Internet, even behind a paywall.

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Taking My Mind Back

I’ve written a few times on my struggles with commercial social media and my approach to using it, and this is in particular a follow up to Sorry Twitter, It’s Not Me, It’s You. 

Of course, when I say “my struggles” I’m sure they’re not all that different from those that many people have. The first and foremost issue is that, on balance, it’s a giant waste of time. Yes, I have learned a few things that were helpful from friends and other contacts, and I’ve occasionally gotten updates about people I know that I was grateful to know about. But what percent of posts on Facebook or Twitter qualify as genuinely informative about something or someone I actually care about? The ratio of signal to noise is vanishingly unfavorable.

It’s not just that it’s not the best use of time, though. In many ways, use of commercial social media is an act of self-harm. Large commercial social media outlets have evolved their design to keep people online no matter what, and the most effective way has been to encourage argument and division rather than conversation and understanding. The intention is to make people angrier for using it, and keep us addicted to outrage. To put it dramatically, the cruelty is the point—or at least the revenue model.

As if that weren’t bad enough, its purposefully addictive design damages one’s attention span, even in older people who didn’t grow up with it. How many of us cannot even watch TV anymore without having phone in hand, thoughtlessly doomscrolling because our brains tell us that a 44 minute episode of even the most exciting show just isn’t triggering dopamine often enough?

The cherry on top was that I also recently got an unpleasant reminder of its negative privacy implications. No need for details, nothing terrible happened, but even a glancing blow was enough of a wake up call.

That triggering event was enough to push me to do what sadly has become unthinkable these days: I quit Facebook and Twitter—permanently. And I don’t mean that I uninstalled the app, or that I “deactivated” my accounts safe in the knowledge I could always reactivate them later and pick up right where I left off. I just stone cold deleted my accounts altogether. 

This was about one week ago, and only now am I getting to the point where I’m not reflexively picking up my phone to see what’s “new”. I can tell that I’m starting to be more productive, and regaining a better level of focus. Every day I can tell it was the right thing to do.

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Sorry Twitter, It’s Not Me, It’s You

One of the big stories of 2022 was Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, and subsequent hilarious mismanagement of it such that it basically looks like he put $44 billion into a gigantic mountain of cash and set it on fire. A lot of people have taken exception to his changing policies at Twitter seemingly making it a less unfriendly place for hate speech and other objectionable content. But I haven’t really noticed a difference since he took over. After all, long before Musk’s acquisition Twitter was already an endless cage match of outrage-driven engagement carefully stoked by algorithms that decide what content to show. There may be a new ringmaster, but it’s still the same circus.

Even so, however, I hadn’t fully given up on Twitter. There were still some interesting people sharing ideas there, and I didn’t want to miss out on them. Now, though, I’ve decided to curtail my involvement with Twitter more or less completely. It’s not really because of Elon Musk. I think he’s wildly overrated at best (although it seems the rest of the world is catching on to that) and I don’t care for his changes, but the person at the top isn’t necessarily a deal breaker for me. I mean, it’s not like I’ve fully left Facebook even though it’s controlled by Mark Zuckerberg, who’s basically the best evidence that conspiracy theorists have that the world is controlled by reptoids.

No, my issue is a different, more profane matter. Simply put, on balance, Twitter is an enormous waste of time and emotional energy. I never come away from Twitter thinking, “Wow, what a productive activity that was!” And all too often, a visit there involves temptations to engage with people on extremely negative terms. Twitter is a bad habit, not different from smoking cigarettes or eating junk food or drinking too much. And like any bad habit, it’s a wonder target for a new year’s resolution.

I’ve actually done this before. Two years ago I deleted the Facebook app off of my phone. My time on that platform dropped like a stone. Since then I’ve only posted five things to my main profile there, and of those three were just reposting something smart someone else said. Nowadays I only drop by that site infrequently, and when I do I spend very little time. I expect I can do the same for Twitter. Scylla having been slain, it’s time for Charybdis to follow.

That doesn’t mean that I’m no longer interested in social media at all. On the contrary, it’s only anti-social media that I’m avoiding here. So what’s better? I’ve written about Mastodon and the Fediverse in the past, and how I believe it’s a more worthwhile platform in general, especially for academics. And having been active on that platform for several years, I noticed enormous waves of interest, new accounts, and enthusiasm there when it was announced that Musk would buy Twitter, and again when the deal finally went through. It’s gotten to be a really great platform, and I hope to see you there!

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Higher Education Podcasts for 2022

My friend Bryan Alexander recently asked which podcasts relating to higher education I would recommend, and the list grew so long that I thought I’d better post it here rather than try to jam it into a comment somewhere else.

The list shows that my interests lean heavily toward educational technology and open education. I’m actually not including all of the ones to which I’m subscribed, since, like any program, some of them no longer produce new episodes and this is meant to be a list of what’s current. I’m providing links to their sites, but they should be discoverable by name through just about any podcast service.

Obviously at the top is The EdUp Experience. Their flagship show is a crown jewel of higher education podcasting, with hundreds of high quality episodes released in just a few years and more dropping all the time. As if that weren’t enough, host Joe Sallustio and producer Elvin Freytes have parlayed the wild success of this first podcast into a network of shows about education with various themes, including technology, K-12 issues, disruption, social justice, and many more.

IngenioUs is another great one. I enjoy the longer episodes hosted by Melissa Morriss-Olson, but I really appreciate David Staley’s outstanding short audio essays, many of which offer more insight in just a few minutes than one might ever think possible. He’s thought about higher education a lot, and it shows!

FutureU is very strong. Journalist Jeff Selingo and author Michael Horn have been around, seen it all, and are great communicators. I appreciate their unique format of having a short interview with a guest, then after a short break discussing it between themselves. The EdSurge Podcast, hosted by Jeff Young, also has a polished journalistic style one might expect from that organization.

There are a few podcasts that are great in terms of content, but I think deserve special mention for their presenters. These include The eLearning Podcast; because I really like host Stephen Ladek’s crisp, positive style; Teaching in Higher Ed , because listening to Bonni Stachowiak feels like listening to a friend you haven’t met yet; and Enrollment Growth University — despite the name, episodes range in topic and aren’t solely about enrollment growth, and Eric Olsen is a really affirming, sincere interviewer.

Other higher education podcasts I enjoy include the following:

Finally, I wasn’t planning to include any that are no longer producing episodes, but I feel like I’d be remiss not to at least mention 25 Years of Ed Tech. Martin Weller of the Open University expanded his important historical book into an audio series that really is fascinating listening, especially given that higher education as a culture often has “innovation amnesia” about which of its approaches that many believe are novel have actually been tried before.

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Spirit Of The Staircase

So, this is actually a little embarrassing, but too funny not to share anyway.

In early 1998, which as of this writing is nearly a quarter of a century ago, I had this little idea that it would be fun to read The Washington Post every day and whenever one of their writers said something especially boneheaded I would write the equivalent to a letter to the editor, but on a special web site of my own for that purpose.

It’s not like I had any kind of special antipathy towards the Post, then or now. On the contrary, it’s the newspaper I read growing up, and to this day my mom subscribes to their print edition. But no one is perfect, and their coverage does tend to slant in a different direction than I do — although it’s probably a point in their favor that I’ve seen both progressives and conservatives complain about their coverage.

There were a number of reasons I never followed through, including that I was too busy with things that actually paid; that it would have required a lot of manual formatting since blogging hosts hadn’t quite hit the scene by then; and, perhaps worst of all, that I was never sure what I would call it.

So all this time, in my mental attic of boxed up ideas it’s just been filed away as “the Post thing”. And it was only today, decades later, that totally out of the blue I realized the best possible name for it would be…

The Washington Riposte

And so ends what is probably the worst case of l’esprit de l’escalier in history.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m actually going to do this, especially since I’m actually busier now that I was then. But at least now if I do ever decide to become a gadfly buzzing around the nation’s newspaper of record, I finally know what I’ll call it. And yes, I did register the domain name… just in case.

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Focus On What You See

It seems that in the last few years there’s been an increase in the way that many in the media promote petty intergenerational rivalries. It started with stereotypes about Millennials being lazy, unfocused, and self-absorbed, but has since progressed to stereotypes of Baby Boomers as having selfishly destroyed the economy, using up resources, and generally leaving societal institutions of politics, media, finance, religion, etc., in a worse state than they found them. An example would be the vitriol expressed by some younger people when they find out that many senior citizens get steep discounts at many universities.

Most people leave the front door wide open when it comes to allowing ideas that they get from media to enter their ways of thinking. And sure enough, those stereotypes can be found all over social media being expressed by ordinary people, ranging from wry offhand slights all the way to the way to outrage.

Unfortunately, the problem is much more broad than just Millennials and Baby Boomers. It’s as if we’re being goaded into conflict, with collectivist ideas constantly being emitted towards us subtly and not-so-subtly that people are defined primarily by the groups to which they belong, and that each of those groups is suspect.

Consider every media message you encounter that has the effect of making you feel negatively about another group. Obviously this includes big things like age, race, national origin, religion, political affiliation, region of the country, and so forth, but it’s more insidious than that. Look at how socially acceptable it is to ridicule hipsters and vegans, not because they’re harmful, but simply because it’s an idea virus that’s spread across our culture without any real critical thinking taking place to counteract it.

But don’t take my word for it. Take a day and count all the times you come into contact with a message that, upon reflection, you can tell is meant to be divisive. Take special care to count messages that are meant to make you feel comfortable about yourself at others’ expense.

I should add that I’m not suggesting this is a pernicious conspiracy. Yes, Russian troll farms exist to stir the pot, but for the most part I think that reader and viewer attention is what sells ads, and that if you want someone’s attention, an effective way to get it and hold on to it through a commercial break is to outrage them.

Either way, given how pervasive the problem is, what’s the solution? Well, in the epic ’90s sci-fi series Babylon 5, Commander Sinclair remarks, “Ignore the propaganda. Focus on what you see.”  To do that requires retraining one’s mind to resist the collectivism of seeing people in terms of the groups to which they belong, and instead think of them first and foremost as individuals, with all the extraordinary potential variety that entails.

It takes a little practice, but after a while, not only will you have immunized yourself against these sorts of negative idea viruses, you’ll be amazed (and not a little dismayed) that most people can’t see how glaring stereotypes and generalizations are being used in a way that keeps people divided.

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Which Media Outlets Are Worthwhile?

I often discuss current events and geopolitics on the DavosMan.org forum, a small but interesting set of people who range all over the ideological map, and who hail from North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Recently one of the people there listed the set of news media he follows, and it made me think about which ones I follow. I was going to respond in kind there, but I realized the answer might be more general interest, so I’m answering here instead.

For starters, I don’t watch TV other than occasional entertainment shows. TV news is a wasteland. The 20th century newspaper columnist H.L. Mencken once wrote, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” Nowadays that phrase would seem as appropriate for 24 hour news channels, the revenue model for which is to sell ads by promoting a pernicious adrenaline high of outrage and fear so that people will keep watching. For some reason CNN seems to be the default telescreen braying in public spaces in the U.S., and every time I see it I’m reminded just how empty it really is, an endless barrage of false urgency coupled with flashy imagery designed to mesmerize. And its competitors are no better.

Some print media are a little more useful, and while I don’t set out to stay current with any specific periodical, although I’ll often read articles from the Washington Post, The Guardian, The Intercept, Reason, FEE, Asia Times, PanAm Post, and Fair Observer (long form journalism that leans centre-left). For specialty media I’ll read Dominica News Online, University World News, and InsideHigherEd.

Like many people nowadays, typically I read an article not because it’s in a particular publication but because it’s recommended on social media by someone who I know is thoughtful. Some of those people mostly share my perspectives, but others do not.

I occasionally run into articles from RT, CGTN, Granma, teleSUR, etc., but do not take them seriously. They are not an “alternative perspective”, they are just press releases from dictators worthy of no more attention than a missive from Sarah Sanders. RT in particular is an interesting study in propaganda, however, not because the news it delivers is untrue, but because its editorial approach is deliberately to report on events in a way designed to sow mistrust in Americans of every societal institution in their lives, especially governmental, media, and financial. The sad thing is that these societal institutions deserve that mistrust, which is why RT doesn’t typically have to lie, so in that sense perhaps RT is performing a backhanded service, and I can see why some libertarians actually find it appealing. But it’s still not something one could actually trust.

Instead of any of those, I’ve come to prefer spending that time on podcasts that cover new ideas in my specialization. Especially if you’re someone who spends a fair bit of time in the car, finding worthwhile podcasts is something I strongly recommend. There is definitely something for everyone out there, from the ridiculous to the sublime, a cornucopia of unfiltered experts sharing what they know.

And I don’t feel bad about spending less and less time on news media. Other than weather reports, I can’t remember the last time a news article from general interest media actually gave me information that I could use to help me reach my goals. Can you?

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Going Through The Journalistic Motions

“Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.” — Rebecca West

Wrong!
Recently on a LinkedIn group about international education, a contributor posted an article called Keeping up with the Digital Natives. There were so many things wrong with this article that my response wouldn’t fit as a LinkedIn comment. But not to worry, here I have all the space I need to do a complete autopsy of shoddy education journalism, and this article definitely requires it.

It might be hard to believe, but just a few years ago, analysts and insiders alike were predicting the downfall of the university system at the hands of massive open online courses.

Yes, there were some attention seekers saying that sort of thing a few years ago, but this makes it sound like everyone active in higher education believed this, when a lot of us knew immediately that this was patently ridiculous and have said so all along.

Elsewhere, studies have shown that online learners underperform against their face-to-face peers.

The author says studies, yet links to an article reporting on only one study, and a flawed one at that. For example, that this is referred to as “the first rigorous test of the effects of live versus online instruction on student performance” is absurd. Research has been conducted on the efficacy of distance learning since at least 1928 (there being no Internet then, that was studying correspondence courses), and the majority of those studies show no significant different in efficacy between a properly constructed online course and a properly constructed classroom-based course. In particular, a meta-analysis done by the U.S. Department of Education a few years back confirmed that across many studies there is no significant difference between the two — although it did conclude that hybrid learning, where both modes of instruction are used, are slightly better than either one on its own.

Moreover, this article has a whole undercurrent here that is all too common in education journalism, that of confusing MOOCs with online education as a whole. MOOCs are a small, recent segment of online education. Not distinguishing between them is an amateur’s mistake.

Hitchcock offered four points to back up his argument:

Note that the article has moved on to interview an executive of a company that provides online learning services to universities. That’s fair enough, it’s a profile piece after all, but everything he says should be considered in that light.

one, there is no economic value in a MOOC – “at some stage even a university that gets government funding needs to have some sort of revenue coming in,” he says.

MOOCs can serve many purposes for a university. Those with strong financials can offer MOOCs simply as a public service, and since they’re not credit bearing they don’t cannibalise the institution’s basic revenue model. But MOOCs don’t necessarily have to be written off as charity, because they can also be considered a marketing expense when they are promoted skillfully and attract positive attention to the institution offering them.

Two, MOOCs have huge drop out rates – up to 93 percent of starters.

That assumes that one measures completion of a MOOC as necessarily being the goal of the student. But there’s no reason to assume that. Many students are simply curious, or are interested in a few topics covered but not others. Since (real) MOOCs have no barrier to entry, there’s no reason for them to pick and choose from what’s available in a course, even if it’s just a quick overview. That’s not failure, that’s success.

Three, universities are instrumental in the transition from being a child to being a self-determining adult, he says, something you can’t get from a MOOC.

MOOCs aren’t supposed to replace the university campus experience for young adults. They’re much better at being continuing education for working professionals, or an avenue for personal development. That they have a more limited role than their most enthusiastic supports claim doesn’t mean that MOOCs don’t make sense at all for universities to offer.

And finally, the issue of accreditation – “how do you prove that person who has taken that assessment or who has been doing that work is in fact the person who signed up?”

Firstly, that’s not what the word accreditation means. Secondly, as I’ve previously written, there’s evidence that students learning online are less likely to cheat than their classroom-based peers, not more. Besides, considering the recent Harvard cheating scandal or the long time systemic academic dishonestly at UNC-Chapel Hill, even the best regarded classroom-based providers should maintain better vigilance.

The rest of this is simply a venue for the executive to praise how brilliant his own company is. Fine so far as it goes, since that’s the purpose of the article. But if Navitas’s understanding of their own industry is as flawed as their CIO’s comments make it sound, I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole.

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The NRA’s Response To Newtown Misses The Mark

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin

Police at riot
I have to admit to being disappointed. After Newtown, when those who run the NRA had no public statement, I was unsure of the reason. Was it that they believed that it would be politically disadvantageous for them to say anything for a while? Did they believe that it would be in their interest to wait to get a better sense of any change in public opinion in the wake of the massacre? Did they (unlike gun control advocates) actually have sufficient decorum to wait until after all of the funerals to politicize the tragedy?

But now we’ve learned that the real reason was none of these things. Instead, their response was delayed so long because, apparently, they have been working around the clock to come up with the most stupid and short-sighted possible response to the shootings. Put simply, for them to suggest that it’s actually necessary or wise to have an armed policeman in every school in America is so ridiculous if I hadn’t read it on their own web site I wouldn’t have believed they could say something that obtuse.

Now I understand the basic idea behind their proposal, that places where good guys don’t have guns, only bad guys will have them. And with that much I can agree. But as I see it, there are three really glaring flaws in any plan to station armed police in every public school in America.

First, it accepts at face value the hysterical notion that children are in unreasonable danger when they go to school. Events like Newtown and Columbine are horrific, but they’re also incredibly rare. I have four kids in public schools in the U.S., and I am no more concerned that they’ll be killed at school than I am if they go to the mall, or a museum, or any other public place. I realize that there is always a chance that something terrible could happen, and I don’t mean to minimize the sorrow of parents who have lost children to violence. But there is no way to keep kids completely safe, and there comes a point when one has already taken all reasonable precautions.

Second, this is the sort of proposal that addresses the symptom of the disease rather than the root cause. By the time someone gets to the point where they’re shooting innocent kids in a school, to blame the gun is like blaming a pencil because the one holding it never learned how to spell properly. American culture doesn’t take mental illness seriously enough, in particular when it focuses on liberally dispensing psychotropic drugs that destabilize people as often as help them. Americans’ lazy relationship with news media isn’t helpful either, because the sort of attention these incidents get serves only to glorify those who commit these atrocities.

Finally, the NRA’s plan shows that their leaders may care about private gun ownership, but have no concern for what it will take to slow the continuing decline of American freedom. The key to having kids grow up thinking of themselves as the heirs to a free society is not to have them spend the majority of their waking hours in the company of armed police. The history of liberty’s decline is the history of the use of crises as an excuse to increase government control over people’s lives, so the suggestion that we acclimate future generations to the constant presence of armed government officials is one that might be better expected from an organization that promotes tyranny than liberty.

It’s important to remember that no matter what its detractors say, the NRA doesn’t speak for all gun owners nor for those like me who don’t own a gun but believe the government has no legitimate role to play in an individual’s right to choose whether or not to do so. With this poorly considered proposal, that’s certainly the case. There’s no way to ensure perfect safety for kids, and armed cops in schools is no exception. But even on an individual basis we can renew our commitment to valuing life, accentuate positivity in ourselves, and promote an environment of concern for one another. Passing on those sorts of cultural changes on to future generations, not gun control or armed cops in schools, is the best way to respond to this tragedy.