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DL 233

To The Renegades

Published: February 15, 2020 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Digitally Literate, issue 233. Your go-to source for insightful content on education, technology, and the digital landscape.

🔖 Key Takeaways

Hi all, welcome to issue 233 of Digitally Literate.

I posted and shared the following this week:

If you haven't already, please subscribe if you would like this newsletter to show up in your inbox. Feel free to reach out and let me know what you think of this work at hello@digitallyliterate.net.

📺 Watch

I love to have music playing in the background as I cook, work, and (sometimes) when I teach. I'm looking for music that I can play in the background and hopefully doesn't contain expletives.

This YouTube channel is a rare gem exploring rare grooves in themed playlists every month. Their coffee break sessions offer explorations of African Grooves, Jazz from the USSR, and Japanese Funk & Soul.

You can learn more and support this work on their Patreon page. The channel represents the best of YouTube as a platform for curating and sharing musical knowledge.

📚 Read

You knew this use of tech was coming.

If you could use virtual reality to see a dead loved one again one more time, would you want to?

This raises questions about our framing of death in future contexts. I think we'd find ourselves in a perpetual loop of looking for answers from artificially intelligent versions of loved ones long gone. The technology is here—the ethics are not.

Facebook is designed to make you anxious, depressed and dissatisfied—three states of mind that make you more vulnerable to advertising and behavioral manipulation. Small wonder that people who quit using Facebook report higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression and anxiety.

The post also examines the disconnect between happiness and utility when looking at the value of money. People usually predict that the things they'd pay money for would also boost their happiness—but not always.

Cost Cutting Algorithms Are Making Your Job Search a Living Hell

Companies are increasingly using automated systems to select who gets ahead and who gets eliminated from pools of applicants. For jobseekers, this can mean a series of bizarre, time-consuming tasks demanded by companies who have not shown any meaningful consideration of them.

The hidden cost of automation in hiring isn't just efficiency—it's the erosion of human dignity in the application process.

TikTok was introduced in the United States only a year and a half ago. Norms, particularly around credit and attribution, are still being established. One of the more popular pieces of content on the network involves dancers who perform and share their choreography with others online.

Most of these dancers identify as Dubsmashers—they use Dubsmash and other short-form social video apps like Funimate, Likee, and Triller to document choreography. For Dubsmashers and the Instagram dance community, it's common courtesy to tag creators and use hashtags to track a dance's evolution.

This piece by Taylor Lorenz shares the challenges that occur as a creator's content becomes popular and is ultimately co-opted by the TikTok masses without proper attribution.

This report from JISC explores assessment in universities and colleges and how technology could help address problems and opportunities.

The report sets five targets for the next five years:

🔨 Do

Google recently pushed a change to the way it displays search results, further blurring the line between ads and genuine results. This lightweight Chrome extension makes sure the difference remains crystal clear.

As advertising becomes harder to distinguish from organic content, tools that restore clarity become essential.

🤔 Consider

We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.

John Dewey

Dewey's observation connects to this issue's themes of attribution and reflection. The Renegade dance loses meaning without knowing its creator. Assessment becomes authentic when it mirrors real reflection. Even VR grief technology raises questions about what we're actually processing versus endlessly replaying.

I really enjoyed this video on the birth and evolution of metal. The Trash Theory YouTube channel is excellent if you're looking to learn more about music history.

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