C’est bien inquiétant, cette idée de social scoring. Jacques Ellul trouverait beaucoup à critiquer. Et ce n’est pas le seul—j’ai beaucoup aimé ce resumé des critiques d’Adam Knight, à l’Université de Leyden: En réduisant les personnes à des profils algorithmiques, cela menacerait la vie privée, l’égalité et les procédures régulières. Ce n’est pas juste la surveillance qui est à craindre, mais également une “discrimination automatisée”, estime le chercheur.

This is a take on digital labor and datafication that I can honestly say I never expected.

This is a really important read. It’s why educational technology researchers should be concerned about more than “does it improve learning?"—and why our understanding of edtech needs to include all of these platforms, not just the obvious stuff.

At the beginning of my senior year of high school, Tyler and I were neck and neck in class rankings—if memory serves, he was slightly ahead. This never got in the way of our friendship. We had spent too much time playing the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Roleplaying Game together, and a few years earlier, we’d even spent one memorable night with our mutual friend Chris hiking repeatedly back and forth between Tyler’s house and mine so that we could find the right hardware for hooking up someone’s GameCube to my family’s venerable TV so that we could play TimeSplitters 2.

As kiddo’s school year has gotten into full swing and mine has gotten busier, I’ve spent less time griping about her school’s use of ClassDojo. However, I’ve also become increasingly annoyed at the fact that the weekly update email I get from the company always has the subject line “What did your child accomplish this week?” The body of the email is divided into two sections: The number of “points” that my child was assigned, and the number of “stories” that my child appeared in.

Yesterday, I complained about Apple putting artificial limitations on what its hardware and software can do in terms of music syncing in order to make more money out of its consumers (and, probably, keep music companies happy). As I was writing that, I was thinking about similarities with the business model of a lot of mobile apps—let people download the app for free, but keep bonus features (or even the best features) behind a paywall.

Datafying yourself is one thing, datafying your kids is another.