Jeffrey Rosen writes in the NYTimes a well researched piece (provocatively titled) "The Web Means the End of Forgetting" on the premise that the web is contributing to our continual evolution of social norms such as forgiveness, exposure, voyeurism and discretion. Although Rosen doesn't address middle schoolers directly, I couldn't help but consider my own students. This current generation of middle and primary school students will help bake the standards for their world as we enter a new cultural experience shaped, in great part, by the web for the first time. In my opinion, the most significant part of the post comes at the end when Rosen opines about the need for a new conception of empathy:

In the meantime, as all of us stumble over the challenges of living in a world without forgetting, we need to learn new forms of empathy, new ways of defining ourselves without reference to what others say about us and new ways of forgiving one another for the digital trails that will follow us forever.

Expressed and genuine empathy is the one quality I admire the most in young people and I hope my daughters themselves have a strong sense of empathy (I'm an INFP after all). As we enter this brave new digital-tinged world, I wonder out loud what will become of empathy? The evening news and magazine articles targeting late 30's suburban mothers typically point to a future of zero empathy because of these evolving digital norms. However, I don't think that will be the case. Instead, perhaps these new tools are helping us realize more about ourselves as creatures than we realize.

Personally, I'm not sure which I'm more over... Facebook or news sites that split up relatively short articles over multiple pages to increase page views.

The five stages of Facebook grief - Computerworld: A gaming site called Roiworld surveyed 600 teenagers and found that 20% of teens have either dropped Facebook or are using it less. Of those who have abandoned Facebook altogether, 43% say it's because there are "too many adults or older people," their parents are on Facebook or because they're concerned about privacy.

Thank goodness for RSS and Safari's Reader feature to help me avoid both (scams that prey upon human nature) as much as possible. /rant

Last October, I made a post saying that I was "bringing back home" all of my scattered data around the web to have more focus on this as my homesite.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been blogging regularly on samharrelson.me. I’ve also had my email hosted through an @gmail.com address, have been reading feeds through Google Reader, keeping my calendar on a free @gmail Google Calendar, keeping my documents dispersed through that associated Google Docs account as well as my Dropbox account, precious family photos on Flickr, Facebook, Posterous, Picasa and SmugMug and notes on Evernote.

That initiative lasted a solid month or two but then things fell apart. Here I am trying the same process again. This time I mean it (seriously). - I've moved my blogs (this one and adverb.fm) to a self-hosted account with BlueHost. Now that I have my OpenID setup with my domain (so I can sign in to comment or access apps just by typing in "http://www.samharrelson.com" without having to have a slew of logins and passwords), it's a win-win. - Like last time, I've primarily been using the sam@samharrelson.com email address lately. I still have my sam@adverb.fm account for adverb, my advertising blog and my school email (hosted by Google Apps) for school communications. But everything personal is going through that @samharrelson.com address and it's independently hosted (not through Google). Sure, I miss the Google Mail interface, but I've always loved Apple Mail's functionality (esp for high volume email), so that wasn't too painful. I actually enjoy being free of the Google chain there. I might run this mail through MobileMe's new interface, but not sure. I like SquirrelMail too much :) And if there's any problem with sending mail through Apple Mail, I've always got Loa Power Tools. - Speaking of being free of Google, I've also moved my calendars to iCal/MobileMe. This is incredibly painless since I have a Macbook Pro, an iPad and an iPhone. Being beholden to MobileMe rather than Google gives me a little more independence while still keeping things synced up across the board. - I'm back on OmniFocus for getting things done. Again, not difficult given the built-in sync via MobileMe and my predisposition for Apple products. - Documents-wise, I'm keeping most things in Pages/Numbers/Keynote via MobileMe so that I can have access on my Mac, iPhone or iPad relatively easily. I'm also keeping everything backed up via Dropbox and Amazon S3 via Jungle Disk. - I do most of my feed reading via the awesome Reeder app on the iPad and iPhone. On my Macbook I'm using NetNewsWire, but I rarely read feeds on the Mac anymore. The iPad is just an insanely good reading device, especially with Reeder. Of course, I also use Instapaper and Delicious when I have time to dig deeper. - Socially, I still use Twitter as my main conduit. Having been on the service for almost four years now, I find it just as useful and revolutionary today as I did back in 2006. I've pretty much moved off of Facebook but still keep a profile (with limited info) there just as a) a pointer and b) a way for friends and students to connect. I'll echo what I said last October:

I love the social web and the incredible apps that have come along these last five years. However, I also love my independence. There’s something to the “Coral Reef” idea that Dave Winer spoke of in regard to Twitter a couple of years back that appeals to me in terms of net identity. I like to think of samharrelson.com as my digital coral reef that provides the biosphere and anchor for all the species of web apps that make up my online content ecosystem. That’s the hope here.

That's still my sentiment. I'm loving not being chained to a Google account or another third party service for my digital coral reef. This time I'm planning on making that sentiment stick.

"Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new "Lost Generation" of minimalists who would much rather watch Lost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences. w00t! w00t! Throughout the course, a further paring down of the Hemingway/Stein school of minimalism will be emphasized, limiting the superfluous use of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, gerunds, and other literary pitfalls..."

Students must have completed at least two of the following.

ENG: 232WR—Advanced Tweeting: The Elements of Droll
LIT: 223—Early-21st-Century Literature: 140 Characters or Less
ENG: 102—Staring Blankly at Handheld Devices While Others Are Talking
ENG: 30—Advanced Blog and Book Skimming
ENG: 231WR—Facebook Wall Alliteration and Assonance
LIT: 202—The Literary Merits of Lolcats
LIT: 209—Internet-Age Surrealistic Narcissism and Self-Absorption