The world we live in...

I am currently reading a chapter by Lynette Kvasny and Duane Truex about discourse surrounding the digital divide. Setting the context, they explain a shift in world's balance of power. Here is a quote:

Elston (2000) goes even further in stating that the balance of global economic power has shifted from governments to corporate boardrooms. She cites a study by the Institute for Policy Studies that compared corporate sales and gross domestic products, and concluded that 51 of the largest 100 economies in the world are corporations, not countries. This means that General Motors is now bigger than Denmark, IBM is bigger than Singapore, and Sony is bigger than Pakistan. (p. 403)

I find it fascinating and also helping me to build an argument for looking at the role of corporate world in policy making in my research. Any thoughts? Suggestions for additional references?

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In case you are interested, the full citation of the article is:

vasny, L., & Truex, D. (2001). Defining away the digital divide: A content analysis of institutional influences on popular representations of technology. In N. Russo, B. Fitzgerald, & J. DeGross (Eds.), Realigning Research and Practice in Information Systems Development: The Social and Organizational Perspective (pp. 399-414). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

And the Elston article is:

Elston, S. Global Economy: Shifting the Balance of Power, Environmental News Network, January 31, 2001 (available from http://enn.com/news/ennstories/2001/01/01312001/economy_41639.asp).

Firfox profile

I think it's been over half a year since i completely switched to Firefox and, frankly, do not have any desire of getting back to IE (except for the rare occasions when the site doesn't come up right). Particularly i like it because of all the add-ons. I got this small weather bar at the bottom of the window, which is extremely helpful in the erratic Ithaca weather. I love BugMeNot plug-in and DownThemAll is also very handy. I am checking out a citation add-on from Zotero and am about to switch to del.ish.us as the main favorites manager. And there are more which i don't have the time to look up. I can feel the program getting more and more customized to my needs and it nice.

But there is also a concern. I am still using windows. So eventually i will have to re-install the computer. What will happen to all the personalization i have done to Firefix when i re-install it? The beauty of these add-ons is that they become so "transparent" that you just use them without thinking: "here i am going to use DownThemAll", or "i am checking weather with Forecastfox" (I actually had to look up the name of the add-on, to write about it here). You simply use it.

So here is the idea, and my guts' feeling is that it has been implemented already, but if not, i hope someone with enough coding skills will pick the challenge up. What if we could save a profile of our Firefox? Kind of an image that we could put at a newly installed machine, and it would have all the features we got used to? Such an image could be stored at a third party server, or you could just make it locally and back it up. But the main pint is that you personalized configuration of Firefox would be backed up.

What do you think?

Library recommenders systems

Have you ever experienced a situation when you've borrowed a book from a library and a week later got an email saying that someone requested that book and you have to return it in a few days? It just happened to me a couple of weeks ago when i was required to return two books of Manuel Castells without even getting a chance to read them well. And i personally got curious about who is that person requesting the same books i am interested in. What else does s/he read?

And this is where i though about Amazon.com and wondered wouldn't it be cool if there was a recommender's system embedded in a library website? For example you search for a book and you see what else people searching for the same book looked at. People could post reviews and comments on particular items, reflecting for example on how useful the book or an article were for a particular course. Moreover, once a new book, supposedly relevant to your interests, would arrive to the library, you could get a notice about that. Etc.

Wouldn't all that and more (take a look at Amazon for example), make the entire library search richer and more engaging? Wouldn't it make the life easier when you start searching for literature on a subject you have no clue about? Wouldn't it get students more involved in the library, thus contributing both to their learning experience and community building? Where is potential flaw in this idea?

What do you think? I have a sense that if such a system is not already implemented somewhere, it is soon going to be...