Online commentary: marketplace of ideas or shouting match?

A central disruptive technology of our online world is the breaking down of unidirectional communication. In years past, newspapers and other media published articles without immediate feedback from readers. True, a few readers might telephone the editor’s desk, and the paper might print a select handful of “letters to the editor” in the next issue. […]

Online psychotherapy

Telepsychiatry is clinical evaluation and psychiatric treatment at a distance. It brings a specialist’s expertise to otherwise inaccessible populations in prisons, military settings, and distant rural communities. Introduced decades ago, it is perhaps the most successful example of the more general field of telemedicine. Telepsychiatry traditionally treats patients at supervised sites and makes use of […]

Online anonymity and transference

I’ve been online quite a few years now. Actually, I first used the internet in college in the late 1970s. There were only a handful of non-governmental university sites back then, and I happened to be an undergraduate at one of them. A decade later, in the late 1980s, I was a member of the […]