Lee Rainie, Kathryn Zickuhr, Kristen Purcell, Mary Madden and Joanna Brenner:

One-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read an e-book in the past year, and this number increased following a gift-giving season that saw a spike in the ownership of both tablet computers and e-book reading devices such as the original Kindles and Nooks.1 In mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an e-book in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%.

The rise of e-books in American culture is part of a larger story about a shift from printed to digital material. Using a broader definition of e-content in a survey ending in December 2011, some 43% of Americans age 16 and older say they have either read an e-book in the past year or have read other long-form content such as magazines, journals, and news articles in digital format on an e-book reader, tablet computer, regular computer, or cell phone.

Those who have taken the plunge into reading e-books stand out in almost every way from other kinds of readers. Foremost, they are relatively avid readers of books in all formats: 88% of those who read e-books in the past 12 months also read printed books.2 Compared with other book readers, they read more books. They read more frequently for a host of reasons: for pleasure, for research, for current events, and for work or school. They are also more likely than others to have bought their most recent book, rather than borrowed it, and they are more likely than others to say they prefer to purchase books in general, often starting their search online.

Kathryn Zickuhr, Aaron Smith:

When the Pew Internet Project first began writing about the role of the internet in American life in 2000, there were stark differences between those who were using the internet and those who were not.1 Today, differences in internet access still exist among different demographic groups, especially when it comes to access to high-speed broadband at home. Among the main findings about the state of digital access:

• One in five American adults does not use the internet. Senior citizens, those who prefer to take our interviews in Spanish rather than English, adults with less than a high school education, and those living in households earning less than $30,000 per year are the least likely adults to have internet access.
• Among adults who do not use the internet, almost half have told us that the main reason they don’t go online is because they don’t think the internet is relevant to them. Most have never used the internet before, and don’t have anyone in their household who does. About one in five say that they do know enough about technology to start using the internet on their own, and only one in ten told us that they were interested in using the internet or email in the future.
• The 27% of adults living with disability in the U.S. today are significantly less likely than adults without a disability to go online (54% vs. 81%). Furthermore, 2% of adults have a disability or illness that makes it more difficult or impossible for them to use the internet at all.
• Though overall internet adoption rates have leveled off, adults who are already online are doing more. And even for many of the “core” internet activities we studied, significant differences in use remain, generally related to age, household income, and educational attainment.

Nicholas Carr:

There are also economic differences. In Germany, publishers set book prices, and the prices don’t vary from store to store. E-book prices follow these same rules, which means that they have not undercut print prices to the same degree that they have in the U.S. But this policy, too, is rooted in culture: it is aimed at preserving the diversity of the book trade. (It must pain Eric Holder enormously to travel to Germany and see so many flourishing bookshops.) E-books are also taxed at a higher rate than print books, which enjoy a tax exemption in Germany – another manifestation of the book’s special place in the culture.

Dhirubhai’sm

Before he was famous, before he painted the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, before he invented the helicopter, before he drew the most famous image of man, before he was all of these things, Leonardo da Vinci was an armorer, a weapons guy, a maker of things that go “boom”.



And, like you, he had to put together a resume to get his next gig. So in 1482, at the age of 30, he wrote out a letter and a list of his capabilities and sent it off to Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan.

James Ball:

British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world-wide web, champions open data to governments.


Rickard Falkvinge

Founder, the Pirate party




Falkvinge founded the Swedish Pirate party in 2006 to focus on reforming copyright, patents and file sharing laws. The party now has an often marginal presence in 22 countries, with significant presence in Sweden, where it has two members of the European parliament, and Germany, where it polls as the third biggest political party.

Healthline:

This data visualization project attempts to help show how poverty and lack of access to fresh fruits and vegetables (defined in this project as a “food desert”) can create an environment in which developing type 2 diabetes is, for some people, easier than not.

Susan Spano and Aviva Shen:

There are lists of the best places to get a job, retire, ski, golf and fall in love, best places lists for almost everything. We think any best place worth traveling to should have one quality above others: culture.

To help create our list, we asked the geographic information systems company Esri to search its data bases for high concentrations of museums, historic sites, botanic gardens, resident orchestras, art galleries and other cultural assets common to big cities. But we focused on towns with populations less than 25,000, so travelers could experience what might be called enlightened good times in an unhurried, charming setting. We also tried to select towns ranging across the lower 48.

Dave Winer:

PS: I wrote this story in response to a request from my alma mater that I explain the value that Madison has for me. It’s pretty simple. It turned my life in a great, productive and happy direction. That’s a lot to ask of a school. But it delivered. I’m sure they didn’t know they were doing it, but that’s fine. It’s not their job to know, just to create an environment where these kinds of things can happen.

I completely agree with Dave’s words. The UW-Madison provided me with a fertile environment to think and create. I hope it continues to do the same for decades to come.

Patrick Kingsley:

Viik says you could walk 100 miles – from the pastel-coloured turrets here in medieval Tallinn to the university spires of Tartu – and never lose internet connection.

“We realised that if the government was going to use the internet, the internet had to be available to everybody,” Viik said. “So we built a huge network of public internet access points for people who couldn’t afford them at home.”

The country took a similar approach to education. By 1997, thanks to a campaign led in part by Ilves, a staggering 97% of Estonian schools already had internet. Now 42 Estonian services are now managed mainly through the internet. Last year, 94% of tax returns were made online, usually within five minutes. You can vote on your laptop (at the last election, Ilves did it from Macedonia) and sign legal documents on a smartphone. Cabinet meetings have been paperless since 2000.

Doctors only issue prescriptions electronically, while in the main cities you can pay by text for bus tickets, parking, and – in some cases – a pint of beer. Not bad for country where, two decades ago, half the population had no phone line.

Central to the Estonian project is the ID card, introduced in 2002. Nine in 10 Estonians have one, and – by slotting it into their computer – citizens can use their card to vote online, transfer money and access all the information the state has on them.

William MacNamara:

In a cave on a mountaintop in northern Ethiopia I meet a Christian monk reputed to be 140 years old. Even if this were true, he is markedly young compared to the relics hidden around him in these holy mountains. A few steps away from his hermit hole is a wooden door set flush against the rockface. It is the entrance to St Mary Korkor, one of more than 100 churches buried in the mesas of Tigray, in Ethiopia’s far north.


Push open the church door and you enter the mountain. In the gloom of the nave are frescoes depicting scenes straight out of a Renaissance chapel: the Annunciation, the Last Supper, St George slaying the dragon. But the faces of Jesus and the saints are African, and they were painted 1,200 years ago. This region is a Christian heartland, familiar and yet fascinatingly different. Easter, for example, is celebrated with church services, then family get-togethers and meals – but not this weekend. Instead, it comes after a Lent fasting period of 56 days, on April 15 this year.