eCROP Blog

The phrase "planned obsolescence" entered our vocabulary as a critique of business practices that forced the purchase of new products through the things we owned but broke, often because they were built to break after a too short period of time, which then fostered "conspicuous waste". It is wonderful phrase in the richness of its nuances and interesting to apply to higher education and its graduates. Here's another meaning. In a rapidly changing culture, if you plan not to change, if you choose to avoid environmental scanning as to how things are different and where competition is emerging then you have also created your own "planned obsolescence". The reasons for not changing are many, including: fear, insufficient capacity or general slackness. There are interesting levels to this problem, but where the "front burner" academic issue of open access publishing directly impacts a tiny fraction of our culture, academics, the more "back...

There have been some interesting stories in the news about Europe's ongoing struggle for unity. There is a digital age under-current to this story that is not making news, a digital reason why some European countries are recovering and some are not. But where Greece seems unconscious of the problem, Spain would seem more hopeful, yet I have struggled to find the digital companies and entrepreneurs in Spain ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) that can show the way forward. The surface political problem is relatively clear as these two stories reveal. Spain’s Yearnings Are Now Its Agony http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/spains-yearnings-are-now-its-agony.html?_r=1 Why breaking up the eurozone could be painful http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/18/why-breaking-up-the-eurozone-would-be-painful / What is missing from this analysis by news reporters with tight deadlines and insufficient vision is the invisible global transition of power from finance and manufacturing cent...

ChronoZoom combines thinking from many of our content areas. It is a Web site as application, a new form of digital story telling, a history of everything timeline, a cross linking of the humanities and sciences and currently the first stage of a global community composition project. It is not completed, but it is far enough along that the project is seeking feedback: http://www.chronozoomproject.org / It is a classic example of the power of melding different elements in the digital palette , so far including: text, 2D animation, images from photos to complex layered almost infinitely zoomable graphics, audio, video, programming and different levels of interactivity. Here's a short news clip that gives a quick overview of its major concepts, http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/03/chronozoom-takes-you-through-14-billion-years-of-space-time-via-html.ars?clicked=related_right Alvarez is a character of international renown in science and how he served as catayst for this project ...

One of the foundations for reading and understanding maps and finding your way in the real world are the concepts of latitude and longitude. Their lines and numbers are used within Google Earth and GPS systems. Explore the multimedia article also titled Latitude & Longitude & on to GPS . Use the comments field below to contribute your thoughts on this piece. Please also contribute ideas, Web addresses and other related resources that can extend and improve it.