beyondchips

 The children of the 1980s seem to have had it all. They had leisure time outdoors playing sports riding bicycles and skateboards until the sun went down. Indoors, they spent time watching television and playing video games of the time. Children of today, however, spend significantly less time outside than children of any previous generation. Average American children play outside for 35% less time than their parents did when they were their age, and those between the ages of six and seventeen only engage in free-form, unstructured play outside for seven minutes each day on average (Lee et al., 2021). Some say technology is to blame. Advances in technology have led to a rise in the amount of time that young people spend interacting with screen-based technologies, such as watching television, playing video game consoles, or using a mobile device, a computer, or a tablet. There is no doubt that children find technology engaging. There is also no doubt that prolonged use of existing t...

Instantaneous, brief, multimedia, public and posts, instantaneous, and words that begin with the pound sign. For those new to the format, these are the hallmarks of microblogging. Microblogging is the practice of posting in real-time brief messages that may contain text, links, images, or videos on social networking platforms (Dijck, 2011). The number of posts on these platforms is staggering. Consider the most well-known of the platforms, Twitter (now known as X). On average, over five hundred million posts are shared on the platform, making it difficult to identify authoritative and reliable sources. The ease of sharing any information through microblogging can facilitate the dissemination of false information that conceals the truth. The counterspeech doctrine enshrined in a landmark 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case sets forth a principle for addressing dangerous and threatening expressions through discussions where more speech is preferred than enforcing silence (Howard, 2021). In the ...

Disseminating information arguably started with verbal storytelling, singing songs, and conversations. Absent technology, this act is transitory or short-lived. The transmitter of knowledge and receiver must be at the same place at the same time and within earshot of each other. Outside these parameters, communication is impossible. Then came writing implements resulting in images and characters on things like caves, rocks, and other durable objects making it possible to communicate across time. The problem is, the receiver of information needs to be at the location of the message to receive. The printing press, which was invented in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg, resulted in a revolutionary change (Wheeler, 2019). The manner in which information could be disseminated. Suddenly, the availability of printed, books, newspapers, libraries, and pamphlets made it possible for ideas and knowledge to travel to a greater number of people, at least those who could read and have access to these mat...

For my second trip to Thailand a few years ago, I decided to tour the countryside and visit the areas surrounding Chaing Mai. Located near the borders of Laos and Myanmar, this northern part of Thailand is mountainous and home to a number of hill tribes living in dense rain forests. One village in particular was quite proud of its new school built in the middle of the jungle. Soon after our arrival, village elders were notified that we were visiting educators and they immediately invited us to see the new school and its computer lab. Many of us were in disbelief that a computer exist in the village given its primitive agricultural characteristics, remoteness, and the lack of infrastructure. Days before departing for the village, we were warned that the village has electricity for only a few hours a day and there are times when there are none. Extreme political rivalries have led to regional instabilities and a decline of governmental authorities as various forces in the region struggle...