Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Dec 02, 2009, 06:12 AM

Anyone who studies "Digital Anything" without thinking through the cultural, social, philosophical, and material implications and applications of technology misses the boat.   It's happened over and over again in the history of technology.  Where people "blame technology" for cultural changes without understanding the mechanisms of cultural change.

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Nov 04, 2009, 08:51 AM

I wish you could all be here. Short of that, I invite you to follow us on Twitter with the #DNWS hashtag and to check out David Sonntag's amazing work using Google Wave. Here's that url again: http://aoardlifesci.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/digital-natives-workshop-da...

Submitted by NancyKimberly on Sep 11, 2009, 01:24 PM

Registration for DAC09 is now open!

Until October 14th, reduced rates are available for full and student registration.

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Apr 08, 2009, 09:40 AM
Once again my "This Is Your Brain on the Internet" seminar is doing great work.  Monday's collaborative presentation by Jennifer, Tom, and Jeff did an excellent job of putting the concept of "addiction" in perspective--relative to other addictions (reading gothic novels, amateur violin playing, tv watching) and within different cultures.   Etiquette on the Internet too (surprise, surprise!) is culture-bound.  Watch this great video on Korean Netiquette, teaching young children that, though faceless, the Internet is a community in which we are all known and all responsible and where interaction is precious.  Snarky?  Not so much.

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Nov 16, 2008, 09:19 AM
I read with sadness this NY Times story, "What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?" The number of females going into computer science has actually decreased, not increased, over the last generation in the U.S. (This is not true elsewhere, btw. Don't, please don't, drag out some hokey, fake genetic explanation here.) Why? everyone is asking. Good question. When I was a kid, I won a scholarship to math camp. The days were challenging and exhilirating but the nights were terrible. When we all went to our tents, I was the only girl in the girl's tent. Later, when it came time to choose between majors, and decide what graduate school to go to, I was torn between my first love, what was then called quantificational logic, and literature. Had I chosen the former, I would have ended up in AI, I suspect. I looked through a lot of catalogues, then decided I didn't want to spend an entire life as the only girl in the tent. Why do so few women today go into computer science? Here's the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16digi.html?emc=eta1

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Sep 08, 2008, 12:09 PM

After several years as an administrator and then on my first sabbatical since 1995, I am returning to teaching in the Spring. One of my courses is called "This Is Your Brain on the Internet" and is an introduction to the deep structure of thinking in the information age. I thought HASTAC readers might be interested in seeing my course description.

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Sep 02, 2008, 08:58 AM

As readers of this Cat in the Stack blog know, one of my pet peeves is really bad extrapolation from an instance of human behavior to a reductionist biological explanation to evolutionary hoo-ha (I mean, theory).

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on May 30, 2008, 09:12 AM
I'm heading to Tokyo in a few weeks for a pan-Asian Digital Youth culture and thinking a lot about the "youth" part of that topic.

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on May 18, 2008, 02:09 AM
When I lectutred last week in Italy on digital youth, someone asked me how I made the connection between digitality and neuroscience. That's an easy question and an extremely difficult one and the path from one to the other is: learning.

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Apr 09, 2008, 10:12 AM
A recent study of dyslexia, and how it affects different parts of the brains of children reading in English or Chinese, is gaining a lot of attention and being posed as another example of the "neurbiological clues" of dyslexia. But studies of differential dyslexic rates and definitions have gone on for decades. The issue isn't just neurobiological but the intertwined relationship of neurobiology, culture, history, and linguistics. Once again, brain-determinism shortchanges the complexity of the research findings.