OLDaily

Confessional technologies of the self: From Seneca to social media
Norm Friesen, First Monday, 2017/06/01

Norm Friesen argues that personal self-expression on the web is a continuation of a tradition of externalized identity that dates from centuries in the past. "It is not difficult to regard Facebook — a social media site with over one billion registered users — as a powerful, interpellating, confessional technology of the self," he writes. We can see the link between Facebook's injunction to answer the question "what's on your mind?" and the confessional catechism. But it's also a practice of personal discipline. As Foucault says, "technologies of the self" are “reflected and voluntary practices by which men not only fix rules of conduct for themselves but seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their particular being, and to make their life an oeuvre.” Which, arguably, is what I'm doing with this website.

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From digital commons to the data-fied urge: Theorising evolving trends in the intersections of digital culture and open education
Giota Alevizou, First Monday, 2017/06/01

This paper could be clearer, but the mapping of trends evolving from open education in digital culture is important, as is the warning it contains. The trends are as follows (quoted, my emphasis):

• not just access to wider availability of resources, but also an element of the processes of continuous improvement from interacting with others in the production of public education goods;
• a vision of ethics around educational entitlement, wider participation and alternative curricula notions of techno-economic efficiency that put forward neoliberal appropriations of education as public good;
  
• a picture where surveillance is glorified in the name of ‘student engagement’ and teaching excellence, collective intelligence, critical reflection and cultural pedagogy are reduced to a datified ‘learning process’.
  

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Platform Capitalism in the Classroom
Ben Williamson, DMLcentral, 2017/06/01

According to this article, 'platform capitalism' is "a business model based on the extraction of value from connecting people into networks and mining their data." So companies like Google and Facebook practice platform capitalism. The author suggests that it has made its way to education as well, citing the example of ClassDojo. These platforms, according to  Tarleton Gillespie, are also “curators of public discourse” because their choices  “affect the design of social media interfaces." Just so, we read, "ClassDojo is acting as a curator of educational discourse and practice, particularly around social and emotional learning. ClassDojo has already distributed the vocabulary of growth mindset, mindfulness, character development and influenced the uptake of social-emotional learning practices among millions of teachers."

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Internet Trends 2017 - CODE Conference
Mary Meeker, Kleiner Perkins, 2017/06/01

Mary Meeker is back with her influential report documenting the latest internet trends (355 page PDF). This year's take: overall internet use growth is strong, but the rate of mobile internet use growth is leveling off. Advertising is growing (and increasingly measurable). Search and advertising go hand-in-hand, and following trends in user-generated content (UGC) a lot of search in the future will be image-driven. The ads themselves are becoming targeted storefronts, leading to a new type of store: the subscription store. 

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