1. An Educational Extinction Event?
A very thought provoking article from Dick Lipton.He talks about a scary scenario of Educational Extinction Event where Universities as we know may not exist 25 years now. He talks about recent phenomenon of online educational systems like University of Phoenix , the challenges they pose to universities and the evolution of potential role of the universities. As usual, many commenters had chimed in with interesting perspectives. So do check out the comments too ! My favorite comment referred to another blog post by Bruce Eckel ! There were some excellent nuggets like comparing a professor to an antique web server or pointing out that educational institutions have less incentive to change as they "control the game".
2. In which I come out: Notes from the FTC Privacy Roundtable
Arvind Narayanan is an expert in privacy and data anonymization . His work on de-anonymizing social networks and Netflix data are two of my favorites. His papers can be found here. The post is about his experience in attending FTC’s privacy roundtable. Good read.
3. The ‘Luxury Prime’: How Luxury Changes People
This post talks about a Harvard Business School’s working paper "The Devil Wears Prada? Effects of Exposure to Luxury Goods on Cognition and Decision Making". As the title says exposure to luxury makes people less considerate towards others. Rhetorically, "Will the same business meeting reach different decisions when it is held at a luxury resort as opposed to a modest conference room?" . The answer seems to be yes, unfortunately, but not surprisingly. This paper did have some interesting tidbits of information.
4. What Are Your Eyes Giving Away?
I don’t think the post’s author is an expert psychologist, but I found myself agreeing with many of his observations or conclusions.Check it out yourself.
5. Amazon Macmillan Pricing Row
There was a fierce behind the scenes tussle between Amazon and Macmillan over pricing of e-books. Looks like Amazon has blinked and has agreed to price increases. For more details see here and here . Interesting to see how (the strangely named ) iPad will change the market dynamics.
Thanks for the comments and pointer. I hope that we can continue to discuss this important issue.
Prof. Lipton,
Its a honor to have your comment in my blog. Looking forward to more of your excellent posts.