Morning Open Thread is here every day at 6:30 am EDT.
Quote of the Day:
If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever.
Julian Assange, June 1, 2013.
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Joel Kotkin in The Daily Beast calls out our blind hero worship of tech CEO's.
Interviewed for the Daily Ticker (video), Kotkin points out that our elevation of these people to "celebrity" status is misguided:
When Steve Jobs died, Occupy Wall Street was in full effect. Yet those who were fighting for wealth equality and the end of the banking oligarchy held a moment of silence in honor of the Apple co-founder, who had a net worth of $7 billion
Jobs “didn’t believe in charity," writes Joel Kotkin in The Daily Beast. Apple (AAPL) was a company that "had more cash in hand than the U.S. Treasury while doing everything in its power to avoid paying taxes...Jobs was being celebrated by those who should have been fighting against him."
Kotkin believes that tech gurus are America’s newest set of oligarchs. They hurt competition and hold great influence with government officials. They don’t create many U.S. jobs, they don’t pay much in taxes, and yet 72% of Americans express positive feelings for their industry.
We saw the same
fawning and drooling when Tim Cook proudly testified before the Senate about his company's tax "avoidance:"
By the end of the hearing, senators were praising Apple products and reassuring Cook that they recognized his company as a cornerstone of American innovation. "You managed to change the world, which is an incredible legacy for Apple," Senator John McCain told him.
Kotkin:
So why do these companies get a free pass when it comes to public opinion?
“In our era we have grown up to love our toys,” Kotkin tells The Daily Ticker. “I think it has a kind of halo effect. People don’t realize that this is not as clean and carefree as we tend to think.”
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From Education Week, your children are being watched:
They’ve been watching the world from malls, gas stations, and other public places for decades, but now, surveillance cameras are becoming a standard, even expected, fixture in school hallways. And technological advances and violent incidents such as the recent Newtown, Conn., school shootings seem to be hastening their installation across the country, according to experts.
Because psychotics planning to shoot up a school would likely be deterred by a surveillance camera. That could seriously compromise their "getaway" plan, I suppose.
Speaking of schools and tech giants, the Tea Party is out to destroy Bill and Melinda's Common Core Standards:
Tea party groups over the past few weeks have suddenly and successfully pressured Republican governors to reassess their support for a rare bipartisan initiative backed by President Obama to overhaul the nation’s public schools.
Activists have donned matching T-shirts and packed buses bound for state legislative hearing rooms in Harrisburg, Pa., grilled Georgia education officials at a local Republican Party breakfast and deluged Michigan lawmakers with phone calls urging opposition to the Common Core State Standards.
Whatever your feelings about the Common Core standards (they've been adopted in 45 states), the fact that the most anti-intellectual political group in the nation's history is "taking on education" probably does not bode well (and for future reference, apparently nothing scares Republican governors more than "matching T-shirts").
Again, from Education week, more of the steady diet of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg for our children's consumption:
While the growth of online content, social networking, and multimedia production tools have all helped educators reconsider how students should consume, discuss, and demonstrate mastery of content, only the dramatic increase in video availability has led directly to the "flipped classroom" movement.
What, you may ask is the
flipped classroom movement?
Basically it entails sending kids home to receive their school lessons online:
They take notes about concepts they are learning at home and then return to school with any questions and to complete assignments that would have previously been homework.
The practice — known as a “flipped classroom” because of the reversed roles of instruction and homework — has helped students master lessons better and more quickly, school officials said. More class time is devoted to individualized, extra help for those who need it and advanced curriculum and projects.
The process is popular among teachers, according to the article. Probably because they don't have to teach anything, it seems. Tom Marshall, a 7th grade math teacher, thinks it's just groovy:
Marshall said it’s an instructional goal of his to introduce his students to more technology next year through his iPad and Apple TV.
“There’s more interaction with the kids,” Marshall said of the flipped class model.
Sure there is.
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How about Printing the Internet in honor of Aaron Swartz?
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The Mitt Romney White House That Never Was. Yes, he actually thought he was going to win. Time magazine profiles the Bain-ified White House that awaited us:
R2P also prepared a detailed plan for Romney’s first 200 days in office—a list including preparations to repeal Obamacare, develop a tax reform plan, and roll back federal regulations, all in accordance with the Romney campaign’s policy agenda and his campaign promises.
Romney 200 Days
Even before the election, hundreds of staffers held table-top practice drills to game out how they would parachute into federal agencies to learn the ropes and explore policies and procedures for the new administration to change. Another team would work in “the bunker,” a secure room in the federal office building housing the transition where potential Cabinet and senior staff nominees and appointees were vetted. By Election Day, nearly 20 researchers and lawyers had prepared Romney to select his entire Cabinet and more than 25 senior White House staffers, as well as deputies for key departments and agency heads.
More than 20,000 pages of vetting material had been gathered awaiting Romney’s sign-off—so many documents that they had to be transported to Boston from the transition’s Washington, D.C. headquarters by train since they wouldn’t fit in the overhead compartments on the US Airways shuttle.
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Welcome to the Morning Open Thread.