 about
this issue
past issues
contact
|
||
| ||
 |
|
digital culture
tech news
e-business
net art
media
op-ed
|
 |
|
Letter from the Editors
As the Web nears its 20th birthday, ReadMe 4.5 takes stock of what might punningly be called the “Net effect”—the online medium’s effects on who we are, the way we live. In co-Managing Editor Christina Jeng’s profile of Jack Shafer, the Slate media critic argues that the Web’s cheap publishing platform and search engines such as Google enable amateur reporters to compete with the journalistic “priesthood”—the old guard at The New York Times. On the other hand, the wired students at the center of the controversy in Grace Lee’s “Plagiarism 101” are evidence, to some, that the Internet’s search capabilities have made plagiarism easier, too. Lee explores one possible solution: The anti-plagiarism service, Turnitin.com. In other school news, Africa continues to give Bill Gates’s Windows the thumbs-down, reports Melissa Davison. Instead, they’re embracing the “open source” revolution associated with the Linux operating system. The Web is crossing personal boundaries as well as international ones. In “iPeople,” Stephen Bowles tracks the iPod MP3 player’s evolution into a youth-culture phenomenon, dramatized by the trend of “jacking up”—sharing music with other hip iPod-ers you’ve never met before. And speaking of breached boundaries, co-Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz looks at the invasion-of-privacy issues raised by Google’s free e-mail service, Gmail. Is free mail worth letting a corporate Big Brother snoop around in our Inboxes, she wonders? —Vanessa Diaz and Christina Jeng, managing editors, ReadMe 4.5 STAFF Faculty Advisor Prof. Mark Dery Managing Editors Vanessa Díaz Christina Jeng DriftNet Editor Roshan Abraham Marketing Director Melissa Davison Staff Photographer Vanessa Díaz Section Editors/Contributing Writers Roshan Abraham (Op-Ed) Stephen Bowles (editor-at-large) Melissa Davison (e-Business) Christina Jeng (Tech News) Dain Lee (Digital Culture) Grace Lee (Media) Kasey Wehrum (Net Art) Production Staff Design/Programming: Todd Grimason |
|
| Recent comments by Bill Gates have stirred up a small backlash among copyright reformists |
 |
 08.21.2004 - 4:06 pm EDT"Roshan shares a personal anecdote about P2P software"
Read more from DriftNet »
|