Took me many years, but I have finally learned to articulate my First Commandment.
Don’t participate in something (anything) unless you can make a real contribution.
All through my school years I was focused on soaking up knowledge and, of course, on using that knowledge to get things done. But I also spent a lot of time going to events where I was listening rather than really interacting and learning. Soon after that, as a young faculty member at Northwestern University, I started a research project and began helping other professors and graduate students learn how to use computers in teaching. Converting “learning” into “action” is what got me that faculty position, and what has worked for me ever since.
This may be just an artifact of my personal experience, but I think I’m finding that the hotels offering “free Internet” are more often the low-priced hotels than the more expensive ones. At least in Paris and London.
Who has access to your email addresses and your email-writing history?
This is the same process the Bush administration used, in the early 2000s, to ask libraries to turn over the records of books checked out by patrons, which was strongly resisted by librarians at that time.