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TLDR 156

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 156

Published: 2018-06-29 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Issue 156. Listening to learn.

This week I posted the following:

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

Estrellita: Immigration animation

"Estrellita" is a very short animation about immigration, work, ICE, and loss, set in Vermont.

As Bryan Alexander points out, digital storytelling has always had the ability to speak to current issues. The animation addresses family separation, immigration enforcement, and the human cost of policy through powerful visual narrative that captures complexity and emotion in just a few minutes.

A Burlington Free Press article adds more background about the work on the project, detailing how Middlebury College animation studio created this timely piece responding to ongoing immigration debates and the reality of ICE enforcement in Vermont communities.

📚 Read

A new poll by the Pew Research Center suggests people in the U.S. believe that technology companies are politically biased and/or engaged in suppression of political speech. This is most evident in self-identified Republicans that say technology firms support the views of liberals over conservatives and that social media platforms censor political viewpoints.

Relatively few Americans trust major technology companies to consistently do what is right, and 51% think they should be regulated more than they are currently. Generational differences exist around some—but not all—of the questions about the role of technology companies in society. On the whole, Americans tend to feel that these firms benefit them and—to a lesser degree—society.

The findings reveal deep partisan divide in perceptions of tech platforms, with implications for how companies navigate content moderation, political advertising, and platform governance. The calls for increased regulation suggest growing skepticism about tech industry self-governance.

This was a bit of a lesson for me this week in "media literacy" and reading deeper into a story. When I first saw this story linked above, I shared it out, and started talking about it with colleagues. I dug into the story, and noticed a lot of similarities with the news that came out years ago from the PRISM and Snowden leaks.

After sending this out, I received a couple of messages behind the scenes from many of you indicating that there was more to this story. As a side note—I really appreciate the expertise and pushback many of you send behind the scenes as I share things out. I try to make sure I fold this thinking into my work and content.

Some of the content that I received in response to this story from The Intercept is this story from The Observer and this tweet thread from Chris "Cal" Carnahan.

The lesson here: First stories are rarely complete stories. Initial reporting deserves scrutiny. Multiple perspectives reveal complexity that single sources miss. The willingness to receive feedback and revise understanding is essential for media literacy. Sometimes the most important skill isn't finding information but knowing when you need to keep looking.

I've been doing some deep thinking on this, and it'll most likely show up in an upcoming publication. But—what do you think?

California unanimously passes historic privacy bill

California lawmakers passed a new privacy bill on Thursday that would give residents of the state more control over the information businesses collect on them and impose new penalties on businesses that don't comply. It is the first law of its kind in the United States.

The so-called California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, would govern how tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Uber collect and monetize consumers' personal data—a set of changes that could ripple throughout the country.

The new online privacy law would require tech companies to disclose the categories of data they collect about consumers as well as the third-party entities, like advertisers, with whom they share that information. Web users would also gain the ability to opt out of having their data sold, and companies wouldn't be allowed to charge users a fee or provide them less service if they made that choice.

This represents significant shift in US approach to data privacy, moving closer to GDPR-style protections. Because California represents such large market, companies may implement these protections nationally rather than maintaining separate systems for California residents.

This publication from Rebecca Hogue, Jeffrey Keefer, Maha Bali, Keith Harmon, Apostolos Koutropoulos, Ron Leunissen, and Lenandlar Singh details what they call "swarm writing."

They detail how an institutionally, culturally, and geographically diverse group of people, many of whom have met and worked together only online, are able to come together to create conference presentations and write academic papers collaboratively. They focus this study on our primary authoring tool, Google Docs, and the processes that made possible, enabled, and shaped collaborations.

Swarm writing represents alternative to traditional academic authorship models. Rather than single author or small co-author teams working sequentially, swarm writing involves large groups working simultaneously in shared documents. The practice requires new norms around revision, attribution, voice, and coordination.

The geographic and institutional diversity of the authors demonstrates how digital tools enable collaboration that would have been impossible in pre-internet academia. But tools alone don't create effective collaboration—the paper examines social practices and conventions that made their swarm writing productive rather than chaotic.

A great post about listening from Sherri Spelic. What I appreciate most about the post is Spelic's humility and wisdom in listening as a form of learning, action, and resistance.

I frequently find myself at the keyboard on my computer or mobile device and ready to fire off a rant, or targeted message. Yet, I find myself stopping, pausing, and deleting. I've recently thought about that as a sign of weakness. But, perhaps Sherri is pointing me (us) in a better direction.

Spelic reframes the pause before responding not as weakness but as strength. Listening—truly listening rather than just waiting for your turn to speak—requires discipline and intentionality. It's resistance against culture of immediate reaction, against assumption that first thoughts are best thoughts, against compulsion to fill every silence with your own voice.

In educational contexts, listening as resistance means creating space for student voices rather than dominating classroom discourse. In political contexts, it means seeking understanding before judgment. In personal contexts, it means valuing relationships over being right.

The post challenges the equation of silence with complicity. Sometimes the most powerful action is listening long enough to understand what response is actually needed.

🔨 Do

Why did I not do this sooner?!

My son has a tablet in his room. He uses it to listen to white noise when he sleeps. He also plays games, listens to music, reads comics, etc. We wanted a way to place some limits on time, apps, and content on his device.

Since this is an Android tablet, Google Family Link allows me to install/remove/modify apps and content on his device. We can determine time spent per day, hours of usage, etc.

The app even lets me see where the tablet is and set off an alarm if his sister hid it in the room.

I haven't tried this on our iPhone/iPad, but I love how Google's app is baked into the system. The integration makes parental controls less about adding surveillance layer and more about establishing agreed-upon boundaries around device use.

The challenge with any parental control tool is balancing protection with trust, monitoring with privacy, limits with autonomy. As kids get older, these tools should evolve from control mechanisms to conversation starters about healthy technology use.

🤔 Consider

"Where there is power, there is resistance." — Michel Foucault

Foucault's observation about power and resistance captures this issue's theme of listening to learn and the multiple forms resistance takes. Listening itself becomes resistance—against impulsive response, against dominating discourse, against assuming we already know. The California privacy law represents resistance to unchecked data collection power. IndieWeb represents resistance to centralized platform control. Estrellita animation represents resistance to dehumanizing immigration policy. The media literacy lesson about NSA story represents resistance to accepting first narratives. Swarm writing represents resistance to hierarchical academic publishing. Even parental controls represent negotiated resistance—children's resistance to unlimited authority, parents' resistance to unlimited access. Foucault reminds us that resistance isn't separate from power but emerges wherever power operates. The question isn't whether to resist but how—whether resistance takes form of refusal or renegotiation, exit or voice, individual action or collective organizing. This issue explores resistance through listening, through creating, through legislating, through collaborating, through pausing before responding. Each represents different strategy for engaging power structures rather than simply accepting them.

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