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Jacques Vallée, one of the co-creators of the Internet, explains how the acceleration of technology in an increasingly connected society is producing "impossible futures" that range from rapid collapse of major banks to the emergence of complex new forms of political power, with the Internet as both a tool and a victim. Quotes: [The KGB] arrested people at random, and brought them to their headquarters; they had one question for them: "who do you know? who do you talk to, and what do you talk about?" If somebody wanted to do that today, they would not need to arrest people, all they need to do is look at Facebook, Twitter, Google; we give this information everyday to the network and the superstructure above the web. [nb: slightly shortened and simplified] The connected world provides many examples of "Impossible" futures that create a dissonance between existing cultures or belief systems... and the sudden emergence of new facts. The impact cannot be ignored.

Making sense of too much data (10 talks) It's the age of Big Data. But what, exactly, do we do with all this information? These talks explore practical, ethical -- and spectacularly visual -

Check out the first talk The first talk is "Can Social Awards Create Better Wikis?" submitted by Aaron Shaw and Benjamin Mako Hill. In this presentation, two sociologists studying online communities present findings from three studies that give us insight into when and how non-monetary awards and incentives do and do not work.

""There's no way for microfinance companies to communicate with each other," said Joyce Kim, executive director at the Stellar Development Foundation. The combined Oradian/Stellar product would allow microfinance companies to quickly send money to each other. "There's something like 100,000 microfinance institutions, how do we connect them? How do they get the kinds of efficiencies that will change their lives?" The partnership is going to move slowly, beginning with a pilot program in Nigeria, where moving money often physically carrying cash on a 12-hour bus ride. Stellar could, obviously, change that dynamic."

"The internet is a wonderful thing, a thing of knowledge and power but also a thing of beauty and inspiration. We are all a part of the internet in one way or another, whether that is via our emails or our social media accounts. But what do we all actually do on the internet? It's an interesting question which we here at Tech Spartan aim to answer in this infographic looking at what happens in an internet minute, comparing last year (2013) to this years latests statistics. Did you know that there are now 11.6% more internet users now than 1 whole year ago? "

Law enforcement agencies across the country have failed to provide us with even basic information about the lives they have taken. And while the recently signed Death in Custody Reporting Act mandates this data be reported, its unclear whether police departments will actually comply with this mandate and, even if they do decide to report this information, it could be several years before the data is fully collected, compiled and made public. We cannot wait to know the true scale of police violence against our communities. And in a country where at least three people are killed by police every day, we cannot wait for police departments to provide us with these answers. The maps and charts on this site aim to provide us with the answers we need. They include information on 1,131 known police killings - including 1,067 arrest-related deaths (according to Bureau of Justice Statistics definitions) as well as 64 unintentional, off-duty and/or in-custody deaths - that occurred in 2014. They also include information on 1,080 police killings in 2013, 1,131 in 2015, 1,129 police killings in 2016 and 1,147 killings in 2017. 93 percent of the killings in our database occurred while a police officer was acting in a law enforcement capacity. Importantly, these data do not include killings by vigilantes or security guards who are not off-duty police officers.

As reported by Nesta, an innovation charity with a mission to help people and organisations bring great ideas to life: As technology shapes our world, young people need to be able to shape it too. As skills and work become increasingly technologically mediated, the need for digital skills is paramount with some calculating a potential £2 billion loss to the UK economy from unfilled roles requiring such skills. After several years working with organisations supporting digital making, and with creating with technology set to go mainstream through a forthcoming BBC campaign, this report takes stock of what is happening. Key Findings: 82 per cent of young people say they are interested in digital making. However, half of young people make things with digital technology less than once a week or never. Parents are overwhelmingly supportive of digital making. 89 per cent think it is a worthwhile activity for their children. 73 per cent encourage their children to make things with technology. We identified 130,800 opportunities to experience digital making provided by the organisations surveyed. This is a long way from providing for the interest shown by 82 per cent of our survey, which represents a possible 8.2 million school age children and young people in the UK. Digital making is powered not just by money, but also by volunteers. Two thirds of the organisations identified said they relied on volunteers to do their work. Only half of teachers who teach ICT or computing report being confident in teaching the curriculum.

"How much do you know about information literacy?"

A Turing machine (TM) is a very simple kind of computer, * but despite its simplicity it can do anything * that the computer you are reading this on can * (it will probably be slower, but it will work).

Related bookmarks: - Coalition of Automated Legal Applications | Working Groups http://coala.global/?page_id=15461 - Bitlov is a blockchain secured money automation system for individuals, corporations, and also charities. http://www.bitlov.com - How to Write Safe Smart Contracts https://chriseth.github.io/notes/talks/safe_solidity/#/ - Doing Distributed Business | Eris + IPFS https://db.erisindustries.com/distributed%20business/2015/11/01/eris-and-ipfs/ - Slock.it to Introduce Smart Locks Linked to Smart Ethereum Contracts, Decentralize the Sharing Economy | Bitcoin Magazine - https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/slock-it-to-introduce-smart-locks-linked-to-smart-ethereum-contracts-decentralize-the-sharing-economy-1446746719 Pay for Performance, Simplified - http://smartcontract.com/ Related articles: - Smart contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart%20contract - Ethereum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum - Crypto-anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism - Block chain (database) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block%20chain%20%28database%29

Go to school, listen to your teacher lecture, go home, do your homework. For centuries, this has been the way that school's been done. But now, a new model of teaching is turning the traditional classroom on its head. Under the flipped classroom model, students watch lectures at home, online. Class time is reserved for collaborative activities that help reinforce concepts and increase engagement. The present infographic on the Flipped Classroom has been published by knewton.com. it is mainly focused on the US market, but it translates a a deep coming change in the education sector and in the communication sector as well within the society. At MAC-Team, we have already been developing successful pilot approaches of the Flipped Classroom in 2013 in the WikiSkills project. Active and collaborative learning can go one step further where the students/learners have an active learning/teaching role, and where the teachers and the other stakeholders (educational governance, companies ...) also get involved and contribute in a new relationship model.

"Designer and social entrepreneur Aral Balkan believes it is time to build an alternate future where we own our own tools, services, and data. And to do this we must create a new category of design-led, experience-driven 'technology'."

"Net Generation (Tapscott, 2009, 1998; Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005), Generation Y (Zhao and Liu, 2008; Halse and Mallinson, 2009), Millennials (Howe and Strauss, 2000), Homo Zappiens (Veen, 2003) and i-Generation (Rosen, 2010). The labels used to describe the generation of young people and their relation with technology are numerous. Over the past few years, one of the notions, which might have had more echoes among parents, teachers, and policy-makers is those of "digital natives" introduced in 2001 by Mark Prensky. The metaphor has had enduring influence on how the educational system perceives students and technology. Most scholars do not like it, for various reasons. Among other problems, the term implies that technological abilities are innate rather than taught and learned. The aim of this contribution is not to join the existing debate about the existence of digital native but to examine if there is any empirical evidence to support the use of that metaphor in the first place, questioning its usefulness to depict particular generations of young people"

Bruce Sterling is back this year. He has a remarkable ability to both celebrate dreams of the future - but also to challenge us with the problems he sees. That makes us more deeply consider what we are doing, why we are doing it - and the potential consequences of those decisions.

"Des Web addict, ceux qui avaient connu l'éclatement de la bulle internet en 2000 et qui préparaient l'internet des prochaines années : le web 2.0. Cette petite communauté de geek m'a fait découvrir un monde parallèle que je ne connaissais pas jusqu'alors : celui des blogs, des wiki, des réseaux sociaux, des plate-formes de partage, du streaming… La révélation fut aussi douce que brutale : permettre à tout un chacun de s'exprimer, de faire valoir son talent, de partager ses idées, ses opinions…"

Bruce Sterling closes the SXSW Interactive Festival with a wide-ranging, hour-long speech about the state of the nation (technological obsolescence of humanity, the robots-will-take-our-jobs,...)

Now for the first time ever, we have a global plan of action - the Contract for the Web - created by experts and citizens from across the world to make sure our online world is safe, empowering and genuinely for everyone. We invite governments, companies, civil society organizations and individuals to back the Contract and uphold its principles and clauses. The Contract for the Web will become a strong mechanism for each party to be held accountable for doing their part to build an open and free web.

Richard Stallman shares how he has created the first free operating system, and explains how nonfree programs give companies control of their users and what users can do in order to recover control over their computing Quotes: Nowadays, computing is so important in society that the freedoms of free software are among the human rights that society must establish and protect.