Old-Fashioned Atlas Gets a New-Fashioned Update

UNITED STATES A new digital project reproduces all maps in the legendary 1932 Historical Geography of the United States. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data. (University of Richmond) Check out our own collection of historical maps! Listen to University of Richmond President Ed Ayers explain … Continue reading Old-Fashioned Atlas Gets a New-Fashioned Update

Old Port City Leaps into High-Tech Future

WORLD Old Port City Leaps into High-Tech Future The Spanish city of Santander is using a network of sensors to help improve services and save money. The sensors measure everything from air pollution to where there are free parking spaces. They can even tell garbage collectors which bins are full, and automatically dim street lights when no one is around. Discussion Ideas: Using an app … Continue reading Old Port City Leaps into High-Tech Future

A President for the Digital Age

This post is part of a series for the Youth Media Blog-a-Thon on the topic of “regime change.”

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How can one man move the majority of the country to vote for him? One man can’t, but his network can.

On November 4, 2008 Barack Obama won what will be called a historical election not just because he’s the first African-American president elected in the United States, but also because he’s the first presidential candidate to win the election in the era of digital communications.

Digital communications broadly describes most of the technology you use to get in touch with your friends and family–mobile phones, the internet, social networks such as Facebook or MySpace, YouTube, blogs, text message, email, Twitter–basically any information you share on your phone or online.

Think about it: The last time you got together with friends, how did you organize yourselves? Did you send a text message? Did you email each other? Call? Send a message on Facebook or MySpace? Tweet?
 
During the 2008 presidential primary and race, the Obama campaign did all of the above.

Continue reading “A President for the Digital Age”