My Re:framing column in this Sunday’s New York Times explored a new teacher credentialing program that’s just been accredited and is underway in a network of charter schools in Northern California, called the Reach Institute.
Public K-12 education not being my “beat,” so to speak, I was fascinated to discover just how much impact a good […]

The WELL, one of the oldest online communities still in existence, is hosting me as guest author for a two-week conversation in its ‘Inkwell’ book discussion topic about Intervention — and whatever topics come up as a result of talking about technology, innovation and risk. It’s been underway for several days now, and will continue […]

Hybrid Vigor’s co-founder Diana Rhoten has just published an op-ed in the journal Inside Higher Ed that should be of interest to anyone who is trying to understand how interdisciplinary research works in the real world.
An excerpt from the article, which you can read in its entirety here:
… As researchers interested in interdisciplinarity as an […]

My New York Times column today, “Testing Testers, Finding Flaws” was a pure pleasure to write.
Developed by computer science researchers at Keele University in England, it’s about a method for revealing shortcomings in human reasoning — and errors in research — that has the potential to help us solve some of the most vexing problems […]

My New York Times column yesterday used a new study from the National Human Genome Research Institute to illuminate one of the central issues of Intervention: that the reductionist scientific principles on which the biotech industry is founded — that is, the theory that one gene will reliably and predictably yield one function or trait […]

This morning, I was one of the two opening speakers at the Supernova 2007 conference in San Francisco. I shared the stage with Clay Shirky. We both talked about social media and social networks. I think we got blogged in lots of places, but here’s the first one I saw, on ZDNET, by Mitch Radcliffe.
My […]

I’m very happy to report that my book, Intervention, has won a Silver Medal in the Science category, in the 2007 Independent Publishers Book Awards competition.
IPPY winners in 65 categories were selected from a total of 2,690 national entries came from “all 50 U.S. states, eight Canadian provinces, and 17 countries overseas.”
In the Science category, […]

Via the blog at Genome Technology Online, I stumbled onto this terrific essay at The Scientist, called ‘A New Dynamic … Can a Penn State center predict and prevent the next pandemic?’
… During the breeding season, tiny leeches climb aboard the newts, sucking their blood, and possibly transmitting Icthyophonus, a fungus-like pathogen that hides in […]

My New York Times Re:framing column today is about the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, and the indefatigable Red Burns — the chair of the program who designed it from scratch specifically to protect and nurture its wildly creative, collaborative, innovative spirit.
Here are a couple of excerpts, but if you click to the […]

The Packard Foundation is doing a very cool thing that you are invited to participate in.
They’ve set up an online forum to solicit input on the new program they’re hoping to fund, for reducing nitrogen pollution.
They’ve developed a draft strategy for the program. But in order to combat the blind spots that can occur when […]