- Blog
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When in Doubt, Blame Slender Man
This is entirely predictable, and disappointing. Because of a couple of recent incidents in which young people have commited crimes because of the perpetrators’ imagined connection to the entirely fictional being Slender Man, certain corner of the media were sure to be on the lookout for what might constitute a “trend” or “epidemic” of Slender…
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The Less-Than Doomed E-reader
All of this leads me to think that e-readers are not doomed, but that they’re going to cease to be an explosive category of mass market technology. Instead, I think we’ll see them continue to be honed and improved for a slightly niche market of frequent book consumers.
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The Moore’s Law Express Hits the Great Ceiling: A Possible Hitch to Alien Contact
Amid the discussions of the potential for contact with extra-terrestrial civilizations, there’s one big buzzkill I don’t recall ever hearing posited as a possibility for why we haven’t made contact yet: Because it can’t be done. We are used to the idea that technology advances exponentially, that we are all riding the Moore’s Law Express…
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Skepticism Warranted in the Panic Over Twitter Changes
The thing that’s been giving the online world a collective ulcer is the idea that Twitter is going to fundamentally change the way its service works by bringing Facebook-style curation to its real-time firehose. But is it really? Despite the recent rending of garments by the Twitter faithful, I have found that skepticism is warranted. The…
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Measuring the Immeasurable Heavens
In this video from Nature, we are introduced to Laniakea, the incomprehensibly vast supercluster of galaxies of which our own Milky Way is an infinitesimal part. Astounding. “Laniakea,” by the way, is Hawaiian for “immeasurable heavens.” Well, they measured them.
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Learning Not to Be Tormented by the Twitter Torrent
I took a vacation from work last week, but I’m not good at vacations. One way or the other, I usually find some way to taint what should be a chance to relax with stress and labor. Sometimes that source of stress can be my own children. Not so much this time. This time, it…
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Let’s Agree to Disagree with Those Other People: The Stifling of Meaningful Dissent Online
A recent study from Pew that’s getting a lot of attention suggests that social media use is contributing to a dynamic in which people are afraid to express opinions that might dissent from what appears to be the majority consensus both on and offline. It appears as though Facebook, Twitter, and other social media lead people…
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The Collision: Enforced Religion Meets the Internet
Every human being alive today, provided they have access to even the most rudimentary computing hardware, is now a broadcasting platform. Compared to generations past, even for the least electronically visible among us, we have many times the reach for any thought or opinion we care to express. And we rarely have full control over…
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To Save Us From the Police, It’s Cameras All the Way Down
In order to bring more justice into the American criminal justice system, we may all need to point cameras at each other. That’s where a lot of the conversation is going in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting, which of course led to the days-long crisis in Ferguson, Missouri. The thinking goes that if…
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The Pixel-Based Employee: In Praise of Remote Working
I work from home, but not because I wanted to stay home with the kids. At the time of the arrangement, I had just moved to Maine, this position opened up, and my employers were willing to give the idea of my staying in Maine and working remotely a shot, and it worked out. I’ve…
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You Can Be Jailed for Internet Blasphemy Before You’ve Even Committed It in India
If you use the Internet in a particular state in India, you might be jailed for pre-crime. I wish I was being overly dramatic, but it really does seem to be the case that a law amended earlier this month assumes authorities in the Indian state of Karnataka to have Minority Report-like precognitive powers, allowing them…
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Twitter is Monkeying with What Makes it Great
Twitter has a lot of problems. It doesn’t seem to have the wherewithal to deal with abuse and harassment on its platform, it’s managed to antagonize the developer community by limiting anyone’s ability to make new apps and interfaces to the service, and, oh yeah, it still doesn’t really know how to make money for…
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As Ye Live, So Shall Ye Google
In American counties considered the easiest in which to live, cameras, iPad apps, and jogging are among the subjects that residents are googling for. In the hardest counties to live in, it’s diabetes, guns, and the Antichrist. This is according to an analysis by the New York Times which used its own metrics to determine…
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Ferguson as Portrayed by Facebook and Twitter: Algorithms Have Consequences
If Facebook’s algorithm is a brain, then Twitter is a stream of conscience. The Facebook brain decides what will and will not show up in your newsfeed based on an unknown array of factors, a major category of which is who has paid for extra attention (“promoted posts”). Twitter, on the other hand, is a…
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What Happens When You Starve the Facebook Brain?
The Facebook algorithm, the “brain” which decides what content to feature, what content to bury, and what content to put in front of you, is being tested mightily of late. One writer tried to game the Facebook brain by disguising his posts as major life events in hopes of seeing them rise to the top.…
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