"Is liberal education as vulnerable to 'unbundling' as newspapers are?" #wymhm

Our coming ability to conduct engaged and very personal academic discussion across great distances – or in cyberspace – should be of keen interest to institutions of liberal education. Rather than unbundle liberal education, these new technologies and networks will allow liberal education institutions to "rebundle" themselves: to recombine academic assets into new arrangements across distance and institutional boundaries. In a world where space has been collapsed to allow for intimate engaged dialogue over distance, the physical campus will become less the locus of learning than a point within a web of learning environments.

Douglas Knox (@knoxdw) shared this same article in a mention to Dan Cohen (@dancohen) and Rob Townsend (@rbthisted). He also posed an interesting question: "What's the Craigslist of liberal education?"

"Soon there will be no reason to have a big, boxy computer on your desk" #wymhm

In spite of their name, desktop PCs often have several users. Laptops, netbooks, and tablets are usually single-user machines—that is, they really are personal. Modern mobile operating systems are built with room enough for one—Apple's iOS and Google's Android are both tied in to a single user's e-mail, calendar, and app-purchasing accounts. Forrester's numbers also suggest that in the future we'll have many such machines around the house. Your "main" computer will be a laptop—and you'll probably have several smaller, tablet-type machines that you use regularly as well.

My laptop is my "main" computer, my only computer, at least until my current wireless carrier contract ends and I'm able to land a Google Android. Then I'll have two single-user machines, four and five if the PS3 and Xbox 360 qualify, six if I dare include my Moleskine journal.