The New Literacy
Calgary’s new public library garnered worldwide attention when it opened in November 2018. And rightly so: Its stunning, inventive design made Architectural Digest’s “most anticipated” list [...]
Technology
Technology
Retrospective: The Next Alberta
Critics of the culture of cyberspace note the link between ongoing privatization of public space and the Internet junkie’s loss of contact, while blithely cruising the cosmos, with the [...]
Optical Illusion
My 94-year-old mother and I are sitting in a southwest Calgary medical office and settling in to spend the day. It will be a long one but by the time we leave, my mother will have a new right eye [...]
The Wired, Wired West
Though most of us haven’t heard about it, the Alberta government is now rolling out what may be the most aggressive information highway program of any jurisdiction in Canada. SuperNet is a [...]
Head of the Virtual Class
Debbie Jabbour hasn’t attended a single lecture in her three years as a psychology student. In fact, she hasn’t gone to a class, lecture or lab. When she sits down to study for an upcoming exam [...]
Computers in Schools
The information age has radically altered business and industry. People work at occupations that were unknown 10 years ago. The workplace of 2002 looks significantly different from 1972. A visit [...]
MOST READ
MOST READ
The Lesson of Lougheed
For 100 years, between 1905 and 2005, Albertans changed their government only three times (1921, 1935, 1971). The last of these elections, the most portentous, happened 50 years ago this August. Alberta has now changed government twice in the past six years. The next election may see yet another new government—meaning ...
The Assault on Higher Education
The Kenney government proclaimed in fall 2019 that Alberta’s post-secondary institutions were “overly dependent” on government funding—which is an odd thing to say about a public good. Then it declared that the province’s grant to the schools should be reduced by 20 per cent by 2023. The rationale for this ...
Rediscovering a River
The Cree called it Kisiskâciwanisîpiy—the swiftly flowing river. For the Blackfoot, it was omaka-ty—the big river. It starts in the Columbia Icefield, at the toe of the Saskatchewan Glacier, and cuts the province in half as it flows through Banff and Jasper national parks, northeast to Edmonton, then east-by-southeast across the ...