October 2010

[Commentary] Free speech was swell when it was just a few early Americans talking amongst themselves, their flintlocks leaning in the corner as they debated the fine points of the Federalist Papers. Other than the threat of being hauled up for sedition, those were the days. Then along came Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Larry Flint, the ACLU, 24-hour cable, and the Circus Maximus of the Internet.

Not only can anybody say and show anything - and you know what I mean by anything - but people all over the world are tuning in. Free listening is the flip side of free speech. It is about 200 years younger than the First Amendment. I'd date its birth to 1987, when Moscow stopped jamming the Voice of America and other external broadcasters. Free societies don't jam. They let the marketplace of ideas decide, as John Stuart Mill said they should. They trust their people, even when they say and do jerky things. North Korea, China, Iran, and a few other countries still don't allow unfettered access to the Internet, but most of the world is clicking, watching, and listening. Seconds after an article is published on the Web, it is picked up by search engines. Everyone can see it - the misquoted villager, the government official irked at how his country was portrayed. Everyone can be a fact-checker. That's good. It improves accuracy. It may also mean that a closed society that puts a Google watch on a reporter's name may not let that reporter back into the country. Such are the trade-offs in the era of the global conversation.

Long live free speech. Here's hoping free speakers don't overdo it. Here's hoping all the new free listeners get used to it.

The research firm IDC estimates that the market for cloud computing in Asia outside Japan will grow to about $1.3 billion this year and will continue expanding at a rate of about 40 percent a year until 2014. That figure is just a splash in the estimated $68.3 billion that cloud computing will bring in globally in 2010, according to the research firm Gartner. And for every case of avid adoption, as in Singapore, there are other countries where acceptance is hindered by regulations, concerns about data security and poor Internet connections.

"What will drive adoption is broadband penetration," said Emilio Umeoka, president of Microsoft's Asian operations in Singapore. "If you don't have the pipe, you can't get onto the cloud." For potential customers, the savings from cloud computing are enticing. Like equipment leasing before it, cloud computing turns what once was a big-ticket capital expenditure into an operating expense for companies -- one that can be tuned up or down, depending on business conditions. What is giving Asian customers pause, though, is the same concern being voiced elsewhere: that a company's precious financial and customer data could be lost, stolen or even rendered temporarily inaccessible through no fault of its own. To many, the threat posed by hackers, possible government interference and even power failures justifies keeping their data housed on their own premises, in their own countries.

The University of Bristol's Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences in the UK has found that more than two hours of screen time for youngsters is related to higher psychological difficulty scores.

The researchers measured psychological well-being via a questionnaire that rated each child's emotional, peer, conduct, and hyperactivity issues. The kids had to respond to statements such as 'I am often unhappy, down-hearted or tearful' or 'I generally play alone or keep to myself' with one of three answers: true, somewhat true, or not true. So the results rely, at least in part, on the kids' abilities to accurately self-report. Perhaps most surprising is that these numbers were consistent regardless of physical activity levels. Lead author Angie Page says it is time to reconsider the belief that we can balance out screen time with other activities. "Whilst low levels of screen viewing may not be problematic, we cannot rely on physical activity to compensate for long hours of screen viewing," said Page. "Watching TV or playing computer games for more than two hours a day is related to greater psychological difficulties irrespective of how active children are." In other words, according to the results of these questionnaires, the kid who spends hours every day playing soccer and constructing tree forts and skipping over sidewalk cracks runs the same risk of behavioral problems as the kid who is couch-bound, so long as they're both dedicating more than two hours a day to watching a screen of some type.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced on Monday a $20 million project to fund Internet and other high-tech ventures aimed at boosting the nation's troubling college graduation rates. Through the use of the Web, social networks, games and gadgets, the foundation said technology provides new opportunities to keep students engaged in their studies and provide more flexibility to attend classes online. At stake is a brewing educational and economic crisis, the foundation said. Only half of Americans at age 30 have a college degree. But in eight years, about 64 percent of all jobs will require more than a high school diploma.

The Gates Foundation will accept applications for initial awards of $250,000 to $750,000 for the following:

• Increasing the use of blended learning models, which combine face-to-face instruction with online learning activities.
• Deepening students' learning and engagement through use of interactive applications, such as digital games, interactive video, immersive simulations and social media.
• Supporting the availability of high-quality open courseware, particularly for high-enrollment introductory classes such as math, science, and English, which often have low rates of student success.
• Helping institutions, instructors and students benefit from learning analytics, which can monitor student progress and customize proven supports and interventions.