Threads for later use

A second post just recording threads for later use.

Via @maximos62, Mark Schaefer's Twitter is Dying—and It’s All Your Fault reports on Mark's perception of Twitter problems, while Neil Whitfield maintains his love affair with Facebook. At some stage, I want to do a consolidation of my own writing on the rise and possible fall of social media.

Staying with maximos62, Digital archives transforming the study of history really concludes that the textbook is dead, at least so far as history is concerned. Two of my Armidale Express columns (Belshaw's World - the online myth, Belshaw's World - online learning no teaching panacea) take a more jaundiced view of the application of the new technology. To my mind, it's not either or but fitness for purpose. What may not be clear from the columns is that there is an interesting and potentially important debate running in Armidale on the role of online teaching triggered by UNE VC Jim Barber's approach.

Still staying with maximos62, What do we do about the decline of Bahasa #Indonesia in #Australia? is as the name says. As Australia has become more multicultural with more native language speakers, the general study of foreign languages has declined. I think that the two are connected.

The Australian Tax forum actually seems to have achieved a little more than I expected in Fiscal imbalance & the tax forum, although the key issue of Commonwealth-State financial relations really wasn't addressed. One issue that did come was the welfare question. I quote from the SMH:

THE Newstart unemployment benefit shrank so much relative to living costs that the cheapest capital city accommodation took all but $16.50 a day, the tax summit has been told.

Peter Whiteford, of the social policy research centre at the University of NSW, told the summit the cheapest one-bedroom accommodation in the Sydney region could be found at Wyong, on the central coast. The Melbourne equivalent would be Melton South on the north-western fringe.

"If you had an unemployment payment and rent assistance, after you paid your rent you would have $16.50 a day for everything else and looking for work," he said. Professor Whiteford was an economist with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Fourteen years ago, before Newstart and the pension were separately indexed, the unemployment benefit was 91 per cent of the single pension. It is now 65 per cent and projected to fall to 33 per cent.

A former productivity commissioner, Judith Sloan, said the gap had become "enormous".

I have written a little on social issues connected with current welfare and job structures and have more to say. I am also becoming increasingly concerned about certain aspects of the debate on aging population.

The Australian remains the best present source on the Forum. However, there is an interesting Internet issue here as the paper moves towards a pay for view system. Will any of the links have given over time survive the transition?

Postscript

Just adding one more for reference via @killcare: The Future of the Book.