From typewriters to the stars

A father found his old typewriter in the garage. He had some insurance forms that had to be filled out on originals in triplicate. His seven year old son was amazed by the typewriter. “What is it?” The father tried various ways of explaining it and finally said. “It’s a printer.” I type on these keys. The flat panel monitor takes up little space. The laser printer is light and sits nearby....

19 August 2005 · Katherine M. Lawrence

Personal media versus mass media

Shigeru Miyagawa, Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, discusses “Personal Media” on 17 minute streaming video [link updated] in part one of a series entitled “Media, Education, and the Marketplace.” Professor Miyagawa’s insights are fascinating and dovetail with the role that the founders of pingV have envisioned. Professor Miyagawa speaks of “story telling,” which is a pingV pillar. He speaks to how learning is changing and how the role of mass media is central....

11 August 2005 · Katherine M. Lawrence

B-L-O-G-S: “Bequeathed Legacy Of Guaranteed Speech”

I asked a historian of women’s issues, “In the 1920’s, and recently, there were great strides for women’s rights. Why did it fade away?” The answer got was not one I expected. “It didn’t. The media merely stopped reporting it.” Whether it is Tiananmen Square or Washington Square, if people can communicate, they can rally around a cause. When there is a coup, what’s one of the first things the leaders take over?...

29 July 2005 · Katherine M. Lawrence

If Women Hold Up Half the Sky, Why Are They Not Heard?

In 1980, China had paid lip service to women by saying “women hold up half the sky.” Yet when the United Nations declared the 1980’s “The Decade of Women,” we wondered if things were any different here versus elsewhere? While men of one nation squared off against men of another nation, the women’s stake in the struggle seemed different and even vague. Is a woman whose rights are denied in the name of Islam all that different from a woman whose rights are denied in the name of Christ?...

29 July 2005 · Katherine M. Lawrence

I was blogging before blogging was cool

On July 9, 1978, a Women’s Suffrage banner that had rarely been seen outside of a museum since the 1920’s, once again saw the light day. Old and venerable, the purple and gold colors of the National Women’s Party moved down the Capital Mall as over 100,000 of us stepped into herstory. Dressed all in white-the suffragist colors-we marched to peaceably ask for an extension on the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)....

28 July 2005 · Katherine M. Lawrence