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Open course material on the Internet may be free, but getting it there definitely isn’t. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the principal financial backer of the open educational movement, has spent more than $110 million over the past eight years, with more than $14 million going to M.I.T. The cost of re-creating the educational experience is high. Only 33 of the 1,975 courses posted by M.I.T. have videos of lectures. Another hundred or so contain multimedia material like simulations and animations. The rest is simply text: syllabuses, class notes, reading lists, problem sets, homework assignments.

In the light of economic reality, nothing is free. Someone — be it an advertiser, an administrator, an investor or an entrepreneur — is footing the bill for every one and zero that’s electronically transmitted across this great Internet of ours. And at some point, most of those folks expect to see a return on their investment.

And just as we’ve grown used to paying for music through apps such as iTunes and getting cheap access to films online through Netflix, it’s about time we suck it up as consumers and start paying for the bandwidth we use, from web hosting to online storage to site creation and maintenance. As we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

We would stroke their steel dolphin-like bodies in museums and honour them as symbols of a daunting technical intelligence and a prodigious wealth.

We would admire them like small boys do, and adults no longer dare, for fear of seeming uncynical and unvigilant towards their crimes against our world.

Since fall 2009, Larson has been using the Amazon Kindle in her work with a pair of second-graders. The e-reader has features that make the text audible, increase or decrease font size and let readers make notes about the book.

"It's interesting to see the kinds of things these kids have been able to do," Larson said.

She said sometimes they make comments summarizing the plot, therefore reinforcing their understanding of the book. Other times they ponder character development, jotting down things like "If I were him, I'd say no way!"

DeMarco said hate speech has been a problem for years. Game makers, despite some serious efforts, can only seek to limit the amount.

"A lot of the problem lies within the players themselves," DeMarco said.

The widespread use of the slurs is partly fueled by the same anonymity that provides cover for abuse throughout cyberspace. Players can compete with people thousands of miles away, and know them only by the fictional "gamertags" they use to identify themselves.

After years of tolerating abusive players, gamers have become more diligent about noting the gametags of abusive players and reporting them to game companies. Abusive players can be punished or even banned, but the process is slow.

One of the new features Twitter announced is called points of interest. People on Twitter have been able to include their general location. But now they will be able to reveal exactly where they are. People will be able to search for a certain location, like a concert hall or hotel, and see all the posts written from that spot.

This is similar to the check-ins on Foursquare, Gowalla and other services that people use to share their location. Mr. Williams said that Twitter was not trying to duplicate those services but rather provide Twitter users with more relevant content.

“Where you are defines what you’re interested in,” he said.

they get to know the taste of their customers, and you can respect their wisdom and knowledge. The experience of forming a relationship with the people who work in and frequent shops such as Phonica in Soho is hugely important – entire bands have been formed after meeting in the right record shop. Entire genres have started by a great record being passed from one person to another.

Flat, Black & Circular forever!