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DL 200

It Goes On

Published: 2019-06-08 • 📧 Newsletter

Milestone issue - celebrating 200 issues of digital literacy curation and analysis

Welcome to issue 200! I started this newsletter several years ago with the intention of curating during the week and distilling this down into an easy-to-read source for you to quickly consume. My goal was to provide the information & details you need to be digitally literate. I hope you enjoy...and thank you for reading.

This week I posted: Six criteria used to describe assessments - detailing some of the ways in which we talk about assessment in educational spaces.

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

I'm super excited about the possibilities of 3D printing in our lives. The problem is that 3D printing always has questions about feasibility on a large scale.

That was until I watched this video from Unbox Therapy about a new Adidas sneaker and the "Futurecraft 4D" printing process used to create the sole. Imagine being able to scan your sole with your mobile device, and have a custom-fit shoe printed up for you.

The Futurecraft collaboration between Adidas and Carbon represents manufacturing's paradigm shift from mass production to mass customization. Previous 3D printing remained in prototype territory—interesting demonstrations without commercial viability. Carbon's Digital Light Synthesis technology produces actual consumer products at scale, answering skeptics who asked "but can it scale?" The mobile scanning possibility—your unique foot shape generating your unique sole—suggests personalization becoming standard rather than premium. This milestone issue coincidentally arrives as manufacturing milestones demonstrate technology's transformative potential when engineering problems finally get solved.

📚 Read

Facebook is reportedly planning to announce its cryptocurrency later this month. According to reports, the company will let users trade, store, and exchange its cryptocurrency for fiat currency through Facebook's apps, including Messenger and WhatsApp.

Facebook has been moving from scandal to scandal over the last couple of years. Cryptocurrencies and alt-coins are built on foundations of trust. It will be interesting to see if this initiative takes off.

The timing creates profound irony: cryptocurrency emerged partly to escape institutional control, yet Facebook—perhaps the least trusted major technology company—seeks to become global financial infrastructure. The stablecoin approach (pegged to fiat currency) avoids Bitcoin's volatility while enabling instant payments across Messenger and WhatsApp's billions of users. But cryptocurrency requires believing issuers will maintain value and honor redemptions. Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, election manipulation facilitation, and privacy violations make trust a significant obstacle. Network effects may override concerns—if two billion people can suddenly pay each other instantly across borders, convenience might trump principle.

Facebook Shareholders Try and Fail to Limit Mark Zuckerberg's Power

Shareholders are furious at how Zuckerberg has handled Facebook scandals, including election interference in 2016 and the Cambridge Analytica data breach. They think the company would benefit from an independent chairman holding Zuckerberg accountable.

The investment structure means Zuckerberg owns a majority of the votes and will always control the company's destiny. This makes the cryptocurrency story even more interesting.

The dual-class stock structure reveals corporate governance's fundamental limits. Facebook went public while ensuring Zuckerberg maintained voting control—investors knowingly bought shares without proportional voice. Now those investors regret the bargain: scandal after scandal, billions in fines, democratic damage, yet the founder remains unaccountable to anyone. The independent chairman proposal would create oversight but can't pass because the person who would be overseen controls the votes. The cryptocurrency connection amplifies concerns: Zuckerberg can unilaterally decide Facebook becomes global financial infrastructure without board approval or shareholder vote. This concentration of power over communication and potentially money in one unaccountable individual deserves serious scrutiny.

The DoJ and FTC are preparing antitrust investigations into Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook. Martin Giles indicates regulators face a long road for three reasons:

Giles identifies doctrinal obstacles built into existing antitrust frameworks. The "free services" problem: traditional antitrust measures consumer harm through price increases, but Google search and Facebook access cost nothing monetarily. The "natural monopoly" problem: utilities like electricity have infrastructure making competition impractical, but theoretically anyone can build a social network. The "data dominance" problem: accumulated data improves services, creating advantages competitors can't match without equivalent data. Each obstacle reflects antitrust doctrine designed for industrial-age monopolies applied awkwardly to information-age platforms. Resolution may require reconceptualizing harm beyond price—attention extraction, privacy invasion, democratic manipulation—and monopoly beyond infrastructure—network effects, data moats, platform lock-in.

After a vacation to Disney World, I was struck by how technology and customer segmentation have separated us into disparate groups. While our devices force us to be social only in digital spaces, we're losing physical common spaces for community connection.

The Sweetgreen-ification thesis identifies how technology enables customer segmentation destroying shared experiences. Previously, everyone waited in the same bank line, shopped in the same stores, encountered each other in physical space. Now premium apps skip lines, subscription services deliver to doors, algorithms route different customers through different experiences. The wealthy never encounter the non-wealthy; each tier experiences different version of the same company. Disney exemplifies both dynamics: expensive enough to exclude many families, while employing staff paid to simulate spontaneous human interaction that organic public spaces once provided naturally. We "commune" through screens while physical common spaces become either premium experiences or neglected.

🔨 Do

Whether you're wrapping up a school year, taking a vacation, or it's just another week—pick up a new book to capture your imagination and perhaps inspire you. This list from TED speakers contains guidance for all moods, activities, and tastes.

TED speaker recommendations offer curated entry points into diverse fields—each speaker brings deep expertise and selects books that shaped their thinking. The reading-as-inspiration framing matters: books aren't just information delivery but imagination catalysts, opening possibilities previously unconsidered. Summer reading specifically creates space for longer, deeper engagement that fragmented attention during working seasons prevents.

🤔 Consider

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on." — Robert Frost

Frost's wisdom on life's continuity feels apt for a milestone 200th issue. The newsletter goes on—through platform scandals, manufacturing revolutions, regulatory challenges, and social fragmentation. Technology keeps going on; the question is whether we're shaping where it goes or merely observing its passage.

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Part of the 📧 Newsletter archive documenting digital literacy and technology.