This week Sun Microsystems announced the purchase of the Swedish firm MySQL for the paltry sum of $1 billion, bringing together one of America’s biggest open source software companies with the firm that makes the software that drives so much of what happens online (including WordPress, the software running this blog). Why should people in…
A Fitting Memorial for Roy
On January 16 the American Historical Association and the Center for History and New Media announced the Roy Rosenzweig Prize in History and New Media. The prize will be awarded annually for an innovative and freely available new media project that reflects thoughtful, critical, and rigorous engagement with technology and the practice of history. I…
Size Matters
The rise of the small and very inexpensive laptop is the subject of the most recent edition of the Digital Campus podcast that went up online today. Tom, Dan, and I discussed the One Laptop Per Child project and what its small and cheap laptops–as well as other small and cheap laptops–might mean for higher…
Tagging History
I’m writing this post from Prague where I am leading a study tour for George Mason University. Over the last two years I’ve noticed a greater and greater volume of graffiti (mostly tagging) in the historic districts of cities like Prague and Florence. I’m not sure what it means of why it is happening, but…