Contexts

Apple’s application marketplace boasts over half a million apps, ranging from games to productivity tools. Now, the store also offers apps for autism.

In fact, there are currently over 200 apps for autism, according to speech pathologist Lois Brady. Some apps, like TOBY Playpad, help caregivers teach children early learning concepts. Others, like Proloquo2go and TapToTalk, help users overcome difficulties with speaking and communication. AutismXpress helps users identify emotions. And one app, called Look in My Eyes, helps individuals practice eye contact. Some suggest the technology has revolutionized autism treatment.

Technology has transformed how we diagnose disorders, understand illness, interact with medical authorities, and even relate to our own bodies. In a 2010 article in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, sociologists Monica Casper and Daniel Morrison argue that these transformative technologies include vaccines, ultrasound machines, artificial joints, genetic mapping, and even electronic medical records.

Some suggest that these technologies help drive medicalization, the process through which personal problems are defined as medical concerns. But sociologist Andrew Webster, writing in Current Sociology in 2002, argues that technology is not necessarily expanding medicine’s domain. By “open[ing] the medical black bag,” he writes, technology may in fact loosen doctors’ control over treatment.

While some therapists incorporate apps into their treatment, one doesn’t need to consult a doctor or obtain a prescription to benefit from them. Clearly, they allow consumers to take medical treatment into their own hands. But apps aren’t for everyone. Nor can everyone afford these technologies. And some people, in the end, prefer to interact with a good old-fashioned human being.

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The classroom is a social space, and how students experience and perceive that space shapes how they approach their classrooms and what they do in them. Margaret Austin Smith uses ethnographic data of college students’ classroom experiences to demonstrate the degree of importance understanding students’ ways of knowing the classroom has on the effectiveness of teaching and learning relationships.

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Sociologist Andrea Press discusses the recent firing of President Teresa Sullivan, the first woman and first sociologist serving this role at the University of Virginia, by Helen Dragas, the first woman rector directing University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors. She analyzes the role of gender in these events and also examines the importance of social media in relation to facilitating faculty governance.

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Recommended Reading

To learn more about Teresa Sullivan's firing at the University of Virginia, Andrea Press recommends the following resources:

• The UVa Rector’s Peculiar Approach to Free Expression, Bruce Holsinger
• Anatomy of a Campus Coup, Andrew Rice
• A Much Higher Education, Siva Vaidhyanathan
• Charlottesville Right Now Interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan

Students now have the opportunity to attend Harvard—without playing the high-stakes admissions game, or even paying a cent.

In May 2012, Harvard and MIT, along with a corporate partner, unveiled non-credit MOOCs (“Massive Open Online Courses”). This joint venture, which will offer free public online courses, is just one of a number of similar recent collaborations between select academic institutions and their corporate affiliates.

Encouraged to venture beyond faculty-assembled resources, students compile, debate, and synthesize knowledge using the MOOC platform, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, SecondLife, YouTube, and Google Groups. Within these networked learning spaces, the knowledge base evolves continuously, promising a more flexible and enriching experience than in traditional closed online courses. Education researcher Lynore DeSilets suggests that MOOCs cater to “free agent learners.” She says this new generation of self-directed learners “leverage emerging communications and collaboration tools to create personal networks of experts” (Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 2011).

The debut of MOOCs follows a trend toward open access scholarship, which proponents say will increase visibility of faculty research and the rankings of their institutions, and result in “greater distribution [and collaboration] of scholarship as well as some return to the public for funding its production,” according to scholar Annette Vee, in the 2011 CCCC-Intellectual Property Annual. But as critics charge, by offering MOOCs, elite schools draw students away from non-participating competitors, further widening the prestige gap between different rungs of universities. They also contribute to the corporatization of the university, particularly through distance learning initiatives. “These relationships place corporate sponsors in a powerful position to affect research agendas,” warns social sciences researcher Risa Lieberwitz (Public Interest Law Journal, 2002-3). Corporate intermediaries (such as Udacity) are eyeing to profit by playing matchmaker for headhunters vying for learners.

By catering to market-driven demands, and potentially threatening academic freedom, perhaps this “democratization” of education exacts too great a price?

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Brother, can you spare $25?

Nicholas Kristof did. In 2007, the New York Times columnist generated buzz when he wrote about his visits to Afghan shop owners whose microloans he helped subsidize through Kiva.org.

A San Francisco-based non-profit, Kiva mediates cash flow between “social lenders” like Kristof and microfinance institutions (MFIs). With a web-based platform, Kiva attracts supporters eager to empower the poor with loans of as little as $25. The funds serve as a welcome cushion for the MFIs, which oversee disbursements to micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries. As of July 2012, Kiva partnerships have resulted in over $300 million in loans to more than 800,000 business owners.

Development experts Raj M. Desai and Homi Kharas suggest that collective giving is innovative because it “reflects the views of multiple small donors rather than a few experts” (Journal of International Law and Politics, 2010). It certainly illustrates the changing landscape of development assistance. According to the Center for Global Prosperity, the amount of aid from U.S. private philanthropic organizations increased steadily from $24.2 billion in 2004 to $37.5 billion in 2009. As federal aid ebbed and flowed during this period, philanthropic contributions surpassed government aid to developing countries.

Some suggest that the success of organizations such as Kiva is proof of the greater effectiveness of private solutions; online solicitation circumvents government bureaucracy and associated transaction costs. Writing in an Australian forum on human-computer interaction (OZCHI) in 2009, Jolynna Sinanan suggests that “renewed interest in social entrepreneurship… reinvents the notion of ‘community.’”

Kiva provides potential lenders access to development projects in the Global South that may previously have been out of reach. Now poised to inject life into ailing businesses closer to home, Kiva has expanded its operations to selected U.S. cities, including New Orleans and Detroit. Underlying this strategic decision is the recognition that glaring economic inequality is not confined to developing countries; it is a global phenomenon, and can be eradicated only through transnational, collaborative efforts.

Thanks to organizations such as Kiva, help for struggling business owners may only be a few keystrokes away.

Sociologist Gary K. Perry talks with historian Michael Mizell-Nelson about digital memory banks created after Hurricane Katrina. Perry further reflects on disasters and the pedagogy of helping.

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Crowdsourcing is a practice employed by many types of organizations that makes use of the internet to harness the time, energy, and talents of individuals who are otherwise unconnected to the organization. Hana Shepherd explores some of the many creative uses of crowdsourcing and discuss the issues the practice raises in terms of the nature and future of work.

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Hana Shepherd's Recommended Reading

• The Rise of Crowdsourcing
• Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world
• Working the Crowd: Employment and Labor Law in the Crowdsourcing Industry
• crowdsourcing.com
• CS298-52: Crowdsourcing Seminar
• The Labor Economics of Paid Crowdsourcing
• Shirky and Sanger, or the costs of crowdsourcing

Facebook was established to help students keep in touch after graduation, but now it’s being credited with major roles in everything from domestic elections to international uprisings. In its no-longer-insular world, Facebook transforms the private into the public.

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The increasing use of wireless Internet access in public spaces has transformed the way that urban spaces are used and the types of interactions that take place there.

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Further Reading

Want to read the research behind the photos? Check out Keith Hampton's new article in the Journal of Communication.