Group items tagged

"Top 10 High-Tech Car Safety Technologies"

Photos of e-waste from Basel Action Network

Although this is an Op-Ed piece, I thought it worth our attention. I could serve as a stepping off place for a unit on AI and Robotics, or stimulate a myriad of debates at the end of such a unit. I have enjoyed my summer reading of Lanier's book You Are Not Your Gadget_ and share this piece with you.

Lanier wrote _You Are Not Your Gadget_. He is considered the "father" of virtual reality

"WE LIVE IN AN AGE of increasingly smart machines. In recent years, engineers have pushed into areas, from voice recognition to robotics to search engines, that once seemed to be the preserve of humans. But I.B.M. has a particular knack for pitting man against machine. In 1997, the company's supercomputer Deep Blue famously beat the grandmaster Garry Kasparov at chess, a feat that generated enormous publicity for I.B.M. It did not, however, produce a marketable product; the technical accomplishment - playing chess really well - didn't translate to real-world business problems and so produced little direct profit for I.B.M. In the mid '00s, the company's top executives were looking for another high-profile project that would provide a similar flood of global publicity. But this time, they wanted a "grand challenge" (as they call it internally), that would meet a real-world need. "

"Last week, one of the world's most successful online gaming companies, Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine, told its global community of World of Warcraft players that they'd have to use real names in forums. The pushback was severe. The most outraged, as Register writer Ian Hamilton reported, lashed out by publishing online every public item they could find about Blizzard employees and, in some cases, their relatives."

Slide Show - NYTimes.com Excellent graphics from Ghana

"In Agbogbloshie, a slum in Accra, the (capital of Ghana, adults and children tear away at computers from abroad (to get at the precious metals inside. Left, David Akore, 18, and other foragers."

This also looks like a good article for Paper 2 practice. Originally shared by Mark Brookes

Video stories from 11 people who volunteered to give up technology for a period of time.

How does constant access to digital devices affect our concentration and learning processes?

Game addiction and - perhaps predictably - one person's plan to sue a game company because he didn't get "enough warning" about the "addictiveness" of the game he was playing. *Requires subscription*