CIS Focal Issue

Mattel unveiled its new, $300 3D Printer, the “ThingMaker,” which will allow children to print their own toys at home

While there are affordably priced 3D printers available today, the software that works with them can sometimes have a learning curve that can hinder adoption. With the new application, live now on iOS and Android, the goal was to make it easy enough for anyone to design their own toys – even younger children

The idea isn’t just to print an object and be done, however – instead, kids will print parts that can be assembled to form larger creations, like dolls, robots, dinosaurs, scorpions, skeletons, bracelets or necklaces, for example

Frequent use of digital devices is causing memory loss among Hongkongers

brain health experts have even coined a name for the condition: digital dementia.

correlation between more frequent usage of digital devices and self-reported memory loss in daily life and at work.

my attention monopolized at that moment by an electronic screen.

offers endlessly updating possibilities.

for many children growing up today, digital reality is the only reality.

"There's a certain class of content which is only going to come onto Facebook if there's a good way to compensate content owners for that,"

"We've recently rolled out the business model for this. We'll give a revenue share on a portion of the views to content owners

To grasp the scope of change unraveling in content creation, which is increasingly fragmented, consider all the mobile apps on your smartphone.

Tesla founder Elon Musk, big-name venture capitalist Peter Thiel, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and several other notable tech names have launched a new artificial intelligence startup called OpenAI,

OpenAI has the talent to compete with the industry’s top artificial intelligence outfits, including Google and Facebook—but the company has been setup as a non-profit.

The apparent aim is to build systems based on deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence that has proven extremely adept in recent years at identifying images, recognizing spoken words, translating from one language to another, and, to a certain extent, understanding the natural way that we humans talk.

unable to separate reality (or as "real" as the online world can be, cartoon or otherwise) and the fictional world of advertising.

Dr. Domingos' recent article in the Wall Street Journal paints a utopian scenario where consumers are able to wrest control of the personal information stolen by big business and use it to create "digital models".

we really need to ask if creating millions of digital models to remove us even further from face-to-face interaction is the right thing to do.

Российский премьер-министр Дмитрий Медведев предварительно одобрил идею введения налоговых льгот для российских компаний, которые создают мультфильмы

Мультипликационные компании очень похожи по своей сути на разработчиков программного обеспечения

По словам Попова, идея с налоговыми льготами для мультипликаторов в целом и с возможной пропиской в «Сколково» в частности предварительно обсуждалась на совещании в Минэкономразвития, чиновники которого идею поддержали

If you read the latest headlines, it seems like more and more of young new hires are not working out.

They spend half the workday on their devices

they often don’t seem to appreciate that they are entering a pre-existing scene

The team used 140,000 horror stories from the subreddit r/nosleep to teach the AI how to tell a horror story that a human would find intelligible, compelling and scary. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Shelley, though, is her reliance on human interaction to facilitate her storytelling.

AI can write surprisingly scary and creative horror stories

The average American driver spends 51 minutes a day in the car

On future screens, local restaurants, doctors’ offices and other services could target ads based on typical driving routes

“We see this as the battle for the fourth screen,”

“will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure.

There are all these different kinds of utilities for basically all the different things that you would want to do with everyone you know. And we basically built this whole platform around the town square

If you want to message someone on Instagram, you have to use Direct, if you want to message someone on WhatsApp you have to use WhatsApp. But I think people tend to have one of the messaging apps that they prefer the most. So giving people the choice to say, “Hey, I want to use WhatsApp because I prefer that as my service where I can not only message people on WhatsApp but I can message people on Facebook or Instagram as well and have those services connect …” I think that that will unlock a lot more convenient and seamless experiences. So connecting the services in that way I think will be valuable.

Consumers have more digital media options than ever, and most are finding what they want. But many are becoming frustrated by the complexity and effort piecing together their entertainment experience requires.

While consumers appreciate the freedom to customize their entertainment experiences, they don’t enjoy the friction—the hassles, responsibilities, and even vulnerabilities—that can result from choosing options à la carte.

The service will let you play all manner of computer games streamed from Google‘s data centers to your devices running the Chrome browser or ChromeOS platform, or even your TV with a Chromecast Ultra plugged in. You won’t need any additional hardware to run Stadia, and you won’t need to install anything to play games. As Google VP Phil Harrison noted in an interview with Eurogamer, “Anywhere where YouTube runs well, Stadia can run.”

Rather than treat Stadia as an entirely standalone service, Google sees people using it from and with YouTube. That means your starting point with Stadia could be a game trailer on the video platform, or a live stream of a tournament; you could simply hit Play on either video stream and start playing – solo or with others – within a few seconds.

The rich have grown afraid of screens. They want their children to play with blocks, and tech-free private schools are booming. Humans are more expensive, and rich people are willing and able to pay for them.

classes have been replaced by software, much of the academic day now spent in silence on a laptop. In Utah, thousands of children do a brief, state-provided preschool program at home via laptop.

And children who spent more than two hours a day looking at a screen got lower scores on thinking and language tests,

When Patrick McMullan wants a Diet Dr Pepper while he’s at work, he pays for it with a wave of his hand. McMullan has a microchip implanted between his thumb and forefinger, and the vending machine immediately deducts money from his account.

The chips he and his employees got are about the size of a very large grain of rice. They’re intended to make it a little easier to do things like get into the office, log on to computers, and buy food and drinks in the company cafeteria

chip includes identifying information to grant him access to the building, as well as some basic medical information,

In 2018, happiness among young adults in America fell to a record low. The share of adults ages 18 to 34 reporting that they were“very happy” in life fell to 25 percent—the lowest level that the General Social Survey, a key barometer of American social life, has ever recorded for that population.

Happiness fell most among young men—with only 22 percent of young men (and 28 percent of young women) reporting that they were “very happy” in 2018.

We wondered whether this trend was rooted in distinct shifts in young adults’ social ties—including what The Atlantic has called “the sex recession,” that is, a marked decline in sexual activity for this group in recent years.