HCRHS Media Lit

"We evolved to want variable rewards. What happens when smartphones give them to us?"

"But things aren't always what they seem. Instagram may have started as a platform for sharing photos with family and friends, but its value as one of the most effective modern marketing tools is undeniable. And that's what much of this is: marketing. What makes Instagram so powerful is its ability to seamlessly blend advertising and "organic" content together, often via influencers who are paid to promote brands in a way that appears as natural as posting photos of one's breakfast. In the case of food and wellness influencers, they're doing both simultaneously. A vibrant photo of a colorful smoothie bowl could be peppered with sponsored hashtags citing the brands involved, but the image offers instant gratification without the tedious, preachy exposition we find so grating in other forms of advertising. Add to this the fact that Instagram suggests similar content based on things we've liked and followed in the past, and our feeds become a never-ending billboard. During the height of my disordered eating days, I often looked to Instagram to tell me what was "healthy" or socially "acceptable" to eat. But why? Influencers aren't nutrition experts, by and large; they post for engagement, not to dole out useful advice to their followers. A 2017 Men's Health UK article laments, "With so many wellness advocates being hailed as - if not necessarily claiming to be - 'nutrition experts', who should you trust?" A 2015 article from The Guardian echoes the sentiment, claiming that influencer food and wellness advice "is often served up with a hefty side dish of misinformation and encouragement of food phobias. After all, being obsessive about healthy eating isn't actually all that healthy.""

"The internet once seemed to promise an endless, uncensored repository of memories. In high school, I dreamed about one day revisiting Myspace and LiveJournal, my online haunts, where every good and bad night was documented in something close to real time. I thought I would be in the first generation to remember everything. Lately, the possibility sounds more like a nightmare. Old tweets now sour the fortunes of people who have something to lose. Director James Gunn was fired after pedophilia jokes from 2010 and 2011 were resurfaced by a right-wing smear campaign. Brewers reliever Josh Hader was forced to apologize before his inaugural All-Star game appearance after he was caught being racist online as a teenager. WWE wrestler Cedric Alexander did the same after an old one-liner about rape was dredged up from the ether. So, I asked a few people why they decided to obliterate their online pasts - which once lived so clearly in stream-of-consciousness Twitter timelines - in hopes of understanding what's going on here."

"Smartphone ownership has become a nearly ubiquitous element of teen life: 95% of teens now report they have a smartphone or access to one. These mobile connections are in turn fueling more-persistent online activities: 45% of teens now say they are online on a near-constant basis. The survey also finds there is no clear consensus among teens about the effect that social media has on the lives of young people today. Minorities of teens describe that effect as mostly positive (31%) or mostly negative (24%), but the largest share (45%) says that effect has been neither positive nor negative. These are some of the main findings from the Center's survey of U.S. teens conducted March 7-April 10, 2018. Throughout the report, "teens" refers to those ages 13 to 17."

"A cognition crisis is not defined by a lack of information, knowledge or skills. We have done a fine job in accumulating those and passing them along across millennia. Rather, this a crisis at the core of what makes us human: the dynamic interplay between our brain and our environment - the ever-present cycle between how we perceive our surroundings, integrate this information, and act upon it. This ancient perception-action cycle ensured our earliest survival by allowing our primordial predecessors to seek nutrients and avoid toxins. It is from these humble beginnings that the human brain evolved to pursue more diverse resources and elude more inventive threats. It is from here that human cognition emerged to support our success in an increasingly complex and competitive environment: attention, memory, perception, creativity, imagination, reasoning, decision making, emotion and aggression regulation, empathy, compassion, and wisdom. And it is here that our crisis exists. Today, hundreds of millions of people around the world seek medical assistance for serious impairments in their cognition: major depressive disorder, anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, dyslexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), addiction, dementia, and more. In the United States alone, depression affects 16.2 million adults, anxiety 18.7 million, and dementia 5.7 million - a number that is expected to nearly triple in the coming decades."

"Kapur came to MIT's Media Lab from New Delhi in 2016 to build wearable devices that seamlessly integrate technology into our 24/7 experience. No more reaching for cellphones. No more staring at screens. No more eyes down. No more tuning out to plug in. Improbably, AlterEgo, the soundless, voiceless, earbud-less device he'd been working on for the last two years had become adept enough at reading his thoughts that he could use it to order an Uber without saying a word."

"Few could have foreseen that our relationship with photography would become so intimate. The obsessive recording of our lives even seems to affect how we experience and remember the world. We see more moments through the camera, and we spend even more time looking at our phones, watching the lives of others. Phones and experiences go hand in hand. We walk through the world looking for moments to capture, which in turn shape the way we experience our environment. Given how many photos we now take, it's no wonder some worry it impedes on "real life." Many of us have been told to put down our phone and live in the moment, but there is also real science to back this up. An intensive social media habit can impair the way we store memories, researchers have found. A 2018 study confirmed that participants were less likely to remember objects they photographed than objects they simply observed. This is known as the "photo-taking-impairment effect" and was first identified in 2014."

""If, as many climate models suggest, our planet becomes one of killer heat waves, fickle rain, and baked croplands, might new human societies emerge in places currently unappealing for settlement?" asks Laurence C. Smith, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, in his book, The World in 2050 - Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future. "Could the 21st century see the decline of the southwestern United States and European Mediterranean, but the ascent of the northern United States, Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia?" According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international body that evaluates the science of climate change, the answer, for the year 2100, is "Yes." At that time, when Earth's atmosphere contains 1,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide - highly plausible, scientists say; today it's 410 ppm - places such as Greenland, Canada, Russia, and the northern United States would be significantly warmer and receive more precipitation than today. They would be downright livable. Based on today's climate science, here are five of the best places to live in 2100."

"Some argue it's the only way to save the species"

"By being unreal, she is an error-proof ideal. And by being the ideal, she represents a liberation from celebrity as much as its fulfillment. A pop singer today is, mostly, a beautiful image of a person who sings other people's material, and those other people, the creators, are mostly forgotten. "There are plenty of people who can do great music but who will never get on stage because they're not young, fit, beautiful people," says Amy Fineshriber, a fan who also occasionally works for Crypton Media. She has a point. When was the last time you saw a bad-looking pop singer? Hatsune Miku spares the creators the need to have the bodies they cannot have. For the imperfect, the overweight, the shy, the normal kids with regular bodies who just love pop music, Hatsune Miku bears the burden of the perfection demanded from celebrities, so that these kids can make the music they want to hear."

"CRISPR is fast becoming a household term, with one of the key scientists exploring this gene-editing mechanism following close behind. Jennifer Doudna, PhD, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, co-authored a breakthrough paper in 2012 examining how it works and suggesting how it might be harnessed by humans. Such a tool is already beginning to transform agriculture, medicine, and our understanding of the human species. It's also dusting up a fair amount of controversy. With transformative technologies come ethical questions: How should CRISPR be used, for what, and by whom? No surprise, these questions are being debated in boardrooms and in the courts as leading scientists compete for startup funding and face off against their former collaborators in patent disputes about who can use the tech."

"It's easy to believe that the human race won't be around for long, when you consider the state of the world today. But it's often been the role of the artist to bring us hope. That's why we've asked several illustrators this month to envision what humans might look like in 100 years as part of our monthly magazine, Future Human. You can check out the first and second entry here. This week's installment imagines technology as a positive force rather than one that will destroy us. Maybe we'll pour all of our workforces into a global cleanup crew. Or maybe we'll use augmented reality to build empathy and conserve resources. There are endless possibilities. Which fork in the road will you take?"

"Imagine that you could open an app, while you're riding on the subway or sitting at a bar, that could tell you everything about everyone sitting around you. Using facial recognition software, it could tap into social networks and databases to show you each person's name and occupation. It could tell you whether you share mutual friends or common interests. It could even pull up their financial or criminal records. The potential for abuse is so dire, even Microsoft's president recently called on the government to regulate the technology. Judith Donath, a social technology researcher who has spent decades studying online culture at MIT and Harvard, believes this sort of advanced facial recognition technology is inevitable. But whether it turns into the ultimate icebreaker or a digital panopticon, she says, is entirely up to us."

"Chips will offer more benefits as the technology progresses, McMullan believes. "We are developing medical uses that will monitor vital signs. Doctors will be able to proactively treat patients rather than always react," he says. McMullan believes the numbers of chipped employees worldwide will reach millions over a few years because the benefits of a sub-$100 chip are potentially huge."

"Technology has always promised a better future … eventually. Somehow the real breakthroughs have always seemed to be just around the corner. But somehow, when we weren't quite paying attention, the future actually arrived. Thanks to forward-thinking researchers calling on advances in genomics, artificial intelligence, food science, and drug hacking, a more resilient, enlightened, and cognitively-, physically-, and sexually-enhanced human already walks among us. (And her skin is amazing.) Here, eight exciting new health technologies - and where they're heading next."

"Immersion can already put you inside a giant redwood and a cell in Maine State Prison, and developers are building ways to holographically transport us into 3D digital worlds and allow us to live the experiences of another person. But how far can this go-and how will it change us? We talked to five immersive technology pioneers working across journalism, filmmaking, storytelling, and scientific research. Their ideas offer a range of perspectives about the potential of immersive technologies. What they all have in common, however, is the belief that immersive technology can be a positive force for the future - depending on what the rest of us choose to do with it."

"This software engineer let an algorithm pick where he lives, what he does-even what tattoo to get. Is he onto something?"

"Phones, email, and texting have reduced these wait times to almost zero, but delays are still instrumental to understanding how people communicate, argues Jason Farman, a media scholar at the University of Maryland. "Waiting is seen as an antiquated practice that needs to be eliminated," he writes in his new book, Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting From the Ancient to the Instant World, before suggesting that something gets lost in a culture that prizes instantaneousness."

"Don't like the media? Think it's all "lies" or "fake"? Then you're probably not as good at reading the news as your less perpetually annoyed peers. That's one finding from a new study from the News Co/Lab at Arizona State, in collaboration with the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas. Those who have negative opinions of the news media are less likely to spot a fake headline, less likely to differentiate between news and opinion - but more confident in their ability to find the information they need online."

"Social media influencers ply their trade in realms far beyond fake lashes. Marketers of literature, wellness, fashion, entertainment, and other wares are all hooked on influencers. As brands have warmed to social-media advertising, influencer marketing has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. Unlike traditional television or print ads, influencers have dedicated niche followings who take their word as gospel. There's another plus: Many users don't view influencers as paid endorsers or salespeople-even though a significant percentage are-but as trusted experts, friends, and "real" people. This perceived authenticity is part of why brands shell out so much cash in exchange for a brief appearance in your Instagram feed."