Transplanting a Seattleite

Ezra Klein has some guest bloggers so I figured I'd go check out some new blogs. In particular, I figured I'd poke a toe into education politics, since I recently had a conversation with A. and A. is one of my indicators for things-everyone-will-shortly-become-obsessed-with. A.'s tried a variety of educational choices for her children, and is both very open-minded and very realistic about the pros and cons. She also values education beyond the 3Rs and knows that people can become good at a job via a variety of paths.

Anyway. I stumbled across this entry in Dana Goldstein's blog:

http://www.danagoldstein.net/dana_goldstein/2011/05/the-history-of-lifo.html

Now, I don't care who you are, or what topic you are writing on, if you write about the etymology and use of LIFO, you're going to get my attention. And I was genuinely puzzled by this entry. A few posts later (earlier in the order I was reading them), Goldstein does a nice job breaking down where the money is coming from in education philanthropy, and let's just say that Bill Gates Has Influence. Yet the entire discussion of LIFO is focused on accounting.

I _cannot_ imagine (literally Can Not) that Bill Gates could get all involved in anything and fail to import a computer-y science-y view of the world. And that view is going to include ideas like LIFO. I can't speak to where the term originally came from or when it specifically entered the education debate (Goldstein presents a believable case). But I cannot help but feel that a big chunk of the story -- what happened behind what gotten written up -- is missing.

http://blogs.forrester.com/reineke_reitsma/11-04-29-the_data_digest_how_many_us_households_have_multiple_pcs

I'm not entirely certain what to say about this. I thought I would try some calibration of the eReader and/or tablet stuff I was reading, to see what sources (in this case, Forrester blogs) are saying about other topics at the same time. After all, the perspective issues I see in eReader and/or tablet coverage may well be representative of a lot more than just those topics.

Years ago, I remember sitting in Mayberry, NH, in a small, but not tiny house and trying to figure out how we could adjust lifestyle to fit into it as a then-growing family. (The short answer is, we gave up and moved to a much bigger house, altho not exclusively or even primarily for additional space. We could have renovated to get more space, but that wasn't going to change commute time or the school system/community.) One part of the problem was my collection of books (it is big, altho it has stopped growing in pbook form, which is to say, I am now getting rid of pbooks faster than I am acquiring them. This has happened before the kindle, altho only when facing a cross country move.); another part of the problem was R.'s collection of CDs (also big, altho probably not as big. I'm not sure, altho I am quite sure I don't really want to know.).

One of my bright ideas was to set up a laptop and peripherals etagere. We never actually did this in Mayberry, but the idea was to get a tall, narrow shelving unit of some sort, so we could each have a spot to put a laptop when it wasn't in use where it could charge, and also on the shelf would be things like the scanner, the printer, etc. We have approximated it in the larger house; a printer lives underneath the TV/DVD/DVR/etc. equipment. The laptops and iPads have designated charging spaces on other furniture.

So when I read this blog entry, in particular this quote:

"And I suddenly wondered: “Is this how a typical household looks, with every household member having their own PC?”"

I was sort of happy to get some real data, sort of suspicious that this was a new insight (I'm inclined to believe this is a put-up question to justify putting the data out there) and really exasperated. The really exasperated part derives from the sense that a household _does_ need something close to a desktop (could be a desktop replacement laptop) to be some combination of data storage, network management, location to run tax software, etc. But while individuals in the household have been acquiring their own computers (desktop, laptop, netbook, tablet), it has not been at all obvious to me that this was a good match for what people were doing with them. Specifically, it seemed really obvious to me that if you live in a household with a shared "home PC" that could do the serious stuff, you could absolutely get away with a tablet/netbook/etc. for web/TV/email/games.

But if you don't realize what households are doing and why, it's going to look a little confusing when you see families buying their pre-k'ers iPod Touchs and kindles and, in more extreme cases, tablets, and their tweeners all have netbooks and so forth. Is it expensive? The question is not whether this costs money. Everything about a family costs money. The question is what the alternative is. And all these smaller devices consume less money and/or space than the more traditional alternative.