This is subset of articles, blog posts, and other items I’ve written about information technology policy and practice, especially in higher education, during the 20+ years I’ve spent in the field. A fuller list appears on the “Information Technology” link on the “Writing” menu. These items are “favorites” variously because they generated useful discussion, responses, or progress in the field, or because I especially like them, or occasionally both. Listed most recent first.
- “We Shoulda Known: Lessons for the Future from the Past” (Educause Review, March 2019, with others). Avoiding failure can be just as important for IT professionals as emulating success. Lessons ensue.
- “Campus Closures. What’s Tech Got To Do With It?” (LinkedIn, Aug 2018; republished, with minor editorial changes, by EdSurge). Is educational technology preventing institutional closures, promoting them, or compensating for them?
- “On Apple Watch & the Student ID” (LinkedIn, Jun 2018). Aggregators and Developers innovate very differently. Which is better depends somewhat on what’s happened so far.
- “Stockard Channing, Extended Mind, and the Paradoxical Persistence of Email” (LinkedIn, Apr 2018). How IT intended for one purpose comes to serve another, and what that implies for operations and development.
- “Counts, Complexity, and IT Responsibility” (Medium, Sep 2017). As technology proliferates and becomes pervasive and invisible, who should manage it how changes.
- “Seatbelts & IT Security” (LinkedIn, Aug 2017). Individuals want security. They also don’t.
- “Curmudgeoncy, Modernity, & IT Practice” (LinkedIn, Aug 2017). There are good reasons for respecting the past, and also for not doing that.
- “Ravioli, Support, Triangles, & Bridges” (LinkedIn, Jul 2016). The “open triangle” that makes effective support so elusive.
- “Why is this IT different from all other ITs?” (LinkedIn, Jul 2016). How information technology in higher education differs from that in more structured environments.
- “Network neutrality: Who’s involved? What’s the issue? Why should campuses give a darn?” (LinkedIn, Jun 2016). An updated discussion of what network neutrality is, and why it’s important to higher education.
- “Spheros, the IT Squeeze, and EdTech Innovation” (LinkedIn, Jun 2016). A response to a question from the Chronicle: Are campuses less interested in IT-based innovation, and if so why?
- “Mystery/Mastery, Knowledge as Power, Long Distance Calls, and the Voss Admonition” (LinkedIn, Apr 2016). Perhaps campus presidents don’t need to master IT, even though Brian Voss thinks they should.
- “National IT Organizations for Higher Education: Evolution, Roles, Prospects” (LinkedIn, Dec 2015). How IT organizations came to be, evolved, merged, died, and survived. And some thoughts on why, and what to do looking forward.
- “Story of S, and the Mythology of the Lost Generation” (Ruminations, Apr 2013). The several failures that have made unauthorized copying such a vexing issue for campuses and copyright holders.
- “The Rock, and The Hard Place” (Ruminations, Sep 2012). Growing needs meet shrinking resources.
- “IT-Based Transformation in Higher Education: Possibilities and Prospects” (paper for special gathering sponsored by the Center for American Progress and EDUCAUSE, January 2012). This is a long piece, commissioned to inform and audience some of whom knew a lot about higher education, some of whom knew a lot about IT, and only a few of whom understood both or how they interacted.
- “Leading an IT Organization Out of Control“, EDUCAUSE Review 46 (July/Aug 2011) 32. This started out as a plenary session for an EDUCAUSE conference about the evolving role of leadership in higher-education IT organizations, and its implications for how CIOs might best succeed.
- “On Policy, Morality, Duty, and Consequence” (Ruminations, Oct 2010). When must IT support staff–or others–report something that they weren’t supposed to see?
- “The Shrinking CIO?“, EDUCAUSE Review 46 (January/February 2011). An argument for the continuing strategic importance of central IT leadership even in the face of decentralized organizations and functions.
- “The Strategic Role of Lunch”, in “The Organization of the Organization: CIOs’ Views on the Role of Central IT”, EDUCAUSE Review 42 (November/December 2007), 46. A note on how one really gets things done.
- “Things I’ve Screwed Up–And How!“, invited award presentation (EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, Seattle, October 2007)
- Written and oral testimony, The Role of Technology in Reducing Illegal Filesharing: A University Perspective, US House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology (5 June 2007). The Committee wanted to understand whether legislation was needed to strike the right balance between the interests of copyright holders one the one hand and colleges and universities on the other. I was speaking on behalf of the latter.
- “A CIO’s Question: Will You Still Need Me When I’m 64?”, Chronicle of Higher Education 50:21 (30 Jan 2004), B22. Some early comments on how IT trends might affect IT leadership roles.
- “Ya Can Talk All Ya Want, But IT’s Different Than It Was: Conundrums in Support of Information Technology”, EDUCAUSE Review 36 (Sep/Oct 2001) 16-26. What we might learn from The Music Man, among other sources, about IT policy and practice. Originally a plenary presentation for the Seminars on Academic Computing.
- “The Wired Campus: Enough is Enough,” Chronicle of Higher Education 56 (Aug 7, 2000), B8. An argument against simplistic views of IT in higher education, and especially against overemphasis on oversimplistic measures.
- ‘”Follow the Money’ & Other Unsolicited Advice for CIOs,” CAUSE/EFFECT 22 (Spr 1999) 44-48. Soon after I first became a CIO, the CAUSE/EFFECT editors asked what I’d learned that other new CIOs might want to know. (I recently updated this article with comments on what remains valid and what’s changed.)
- “Promoting Civility on the Academic Network: Crime & Punishment, or the Golden Rule?,” Educational Record 75 (Sum 1994) 29-39. Why it’s more important to stop harassment than to punish it, and how MIT worked to do that.
- “The Information Center” (LinkedIn, March 20202, but written back in 1970, when I was, well, younger). Some observations from the political times and mediating activites that got me more focused on the role of universities in social policy than the role of electrons in solid-state devices.