Category: Status

WWW Turns 30

And most important of all, citizens must hold companies and governments accountable for the commitments they make, and demand that both respect the web as a global community with citizens at its heart. If we don’t elect politicians who defend a free and open web, if we don’t do our part to foster constructive healthy conversations online, if we continue to click consent without demanding our data rights be respected, we walk away from our responsibility to put these issues on the priority agenda of our governments.

Source: 30 years on, what’s next #ForTheWeb? – World Wide Web Foundation

Next phase of the web

That’s what Peach is for. It is a place to be real with people who’ve chosen to be real with you. It’s friendly, it’s therapeutic, it’s cathartic. It’s necessary. When it’s not around, those of us who use it go a little bit mad.

We’ve come to lean on confessing out loud. And there are no priests left who can be trusted any more. The only thing we can trust is benign neglect.

Is that the next phase of the web? The web that hardly works, where no one’s paying attention because no one really cares? (Except your friends, including strangers, who somehow care so much?)

Source: kottke.org – home of fine hypertext products

Yep.

Breaking Gender Biased Language

How can we transition to a gender-balanced world, if these biases remain part of our vernacular?  ELaN Languages, an independent translation organisation in Belgium, wants to tackle our unconscious bias by updating their online translation tool with a new feature: ‘the unbias button’. The plug-in offers unbiased translations of biased words. Making us aware of our unconscious bias by translating bias words, such as job titles, into gender-neutral words.

Source: A NEW PRODUCT FEATURE TO BREAK GENDER BIAS – J. Walter Thompson Amsterdam (news)

Goodbye, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Hello World.

Today starts the liturgical season of Lent. Around 12:03AM this morning (or last night, depending on your biological sense of time), I committed the ultimate mind crime of deleting my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. Well, I began the process of deleting them since each of these advertising companies give you a 30-day “grace” period for you to “make sure” that you really want to disengage from the machine.

But, it’s time.

It’s time for me to stop making excuses about where I put my time and attention. It’s time for me to stop making excuses for participating in systems that I don’t want to encourage or necessarily be a part of even if there’s the offer of exposure and connections. It’s just not worth it.

Jump from the hook. You’re not obliged to swallow anything that you despise.

The Moral Checklist

Merianna and Sam discuss old friends, new parenting techniques while attempting to figure out what makes the church different from the garden club.

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