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Invisibly but quickly, the Internet is changing. Sites like Google and Facebook show you what they think you want to see, based on data they've collected about you.

The filter bubble is the invisible, personal universe of information that results--a bubble you live in, and you don't even know it. And it means that the world you see online and the world I see may be very different.

As consumers, we can vary our information pathways more and use things like incognito browsing to stop some of the tracking that leads to personalization.

look no further than the Fukada Sports Park, which serves the 7,500 mostly older residents here with a baseball diamond, lighted tennis courts, a soccer field and a $35 million gymnasium with indoor pool and Olympic-size volleyball arena. The gym is just one of several big public works projects paid for with the hundreds of millions of dollars this community is receiving for acce

the aid has enriched rural communities that were rapidly losing jobs and people to the cities. With no substantial reserves of oil or coal, Japan relies on nuclear power for the energy needed to drive its economic machine. But critics contend that the largess has also made communities dependent on central government spending — and thus unwilling to rock the boat by pushing for robust safety measures.

Tsuneyoshi Adachi, a 63-year-old fisherman, joined the huge protests in the 1970s and 1980s against the plant’s No. 2 reactor. He said many fishermen were angry then because chlorine from the pumps of the plant’s No. 1 reactor, which began operating in 1974, was killing seaweed and fish in local fishing grounds. However, Mr. Adachi said, once compensation payments from the No. 2 reactor began to flow in, neighbors began to give him cold looks and then ignore him. By the time the No. 3 reactor was proposed in the early 1990s, no one, including Mr. Adachi, was willing to speak out against the plant. He said that there was the same peer pressure even after the accident at Fukushima, which scared many here because they live within a few miles of the Shimane plant. “Sure, we are all worried in our hearts about whether the same disaster could happen at the Shimane nuclear plant,” Mr. Adachi said. However, “the town knows it can no longer survive economically without the nuclear plant.”

Governments of all kinds are compelling ISPs and website operators to help with their censorship efforts. In Turkey, ISPs are required to assist in blocking several categories of content, including “insulting” the long-decesased founding father of the Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. And even nominally advanced countries have gotten into the act. In Italy, Google executives faced criminal liability for hosting an insensitive YouTube video despite the fact that Google complied promptly to the takedown request. "Holding intermediaries liable for the content disseminated or created by their users severely undermines the enjoyment of the right to freedom of opinion and expression," La Rue writes. "It leads to self-protective and over-broad private censorship, often without transparency and the due process of the law."

La Rue saved some of his strongest criticism for the "three strikes" laws recently enacted by France and the UK. He writes that he is "deeply concerned" about proposals to create a centralized system for cutting people off from Internet access as a punishment for copyright infringement. France has such a system, which was approved by the courts in 2009 and is reportedly getting 25,000 complaints a day. The United Kingdom passed a Digital Economy Act in 2010 that contained similar provisions. The Special Rapporteur is "alarmed" by these regulations, writing that cutting off Internet access as a response to copyright infringement is "disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights." He notes that Internet disconnection language has been removed from recent drafts of the ACTA treaty, but writes that he "remains watchful about the treaty’s eventual implications for intermediary liability and the right to freedom of expression."

The regulatory decree was issued on May 27. The rationale behind the decision? Apparently mentioning social networks like Twitter or Facebook by name goes against a 1992 decree prohibiting surreptitious advertising. Encouraging users to engage with the content creators or give their own feedback is “clandestine advertising” for the social networks themselves.

Christine Kelly, a spokesperson for the CSA, tried to explain the decision by saying it “would be a distortion of competition” to “give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition.”

Matthew Fraser, a Canadian-born journalist who lives and works in Paris, sees this ruling as an example of the “deeply rooted animosity in the French psyche toward Anglo-Saxon cultural domination.” Fraser writes that “sometimes this cultural resentment finds expression in French regulations and laws.”

What many of these sceptics – or deniers, if you must – do question is a) whether – and if so by how much – this warming is anthropogenic (ie human-caused) b) whether the warming constitutes a threat – or whether its benefits might in fact far outweigh its drawbacks c) whether this warming likely to continue or whether – as happened without human influence at the end of the Roman warm period and the Medieval warm period – it will be followed by a period of natural cooling d) whether the drastic policy measures (tax, regulation, “decarbonisation”, the drive for renewables) being enacted to ‘combat climate change’ will not end up doing far more harm than good.

Though Dr Jones’s report argues that the BBC should from henceforward give less space to sceptics, it’s difficult to imagine quite how it could possibly do so. About the only occasion on which they have been given any air space has been on hatchet-jobs like the BBC’s feature-length assault on Lord Monckton, “Meet The Climate Sceptics”.

There are three broad camps in contemporary debates over bioethics. In the name of human rights and human dignity, “bio-conservatives” tend to support restricting, regulating and stigmatizing the technologies that allow us to create, manipulate and destroy embryonic life. In the name of scientific progress and human freedom, “bio-libertarians” tend to oppose any restrictions on what individuals, doctors and researchers are allowed to do. Then somewhere in between are the anguished liberals, who are uncomfortable with what they see as the absolutism of both sides, and who tend to argue that society needs to decide where to draw its bioethical lines not based on some general ideal (like “life” or “choice”), but rather case by case by case — accepting this kind of abortion but not that kind; this use of embryos but not that use; existing developments in genetic engineering but not, perhaps, the developments that await us in the future.

at least in the United States, the liberal effort to (as the Goodman of 1980 put it) “monitor” and “debate” and “control” the development of reproductive technologies has been extraordinarily ineffectual. From embryo experimentation to selective reduction to the eugenic uses of abortion, liberals always promise to draw lines and then never actually manage to draw them. Like Dr. Evans, they find reasons to embrace each new technological leap while promising to resist the next one — and then time passes, science marches on, and they find reasons why the next moral compromise, too, must be accepted for the greater good, or at least tolerated in the name of privacy and choice. You can always count on them to worry, often perceptively, about hypothetical evils, potential slips down the bioethical slope. But they’re either ineffectual or accommodating once an evil actually arrives. Tomorrow, they always say — tomorrow, we’ll draw the line. But tomorrow never comes.

the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer, published by research firm StrategyOne, which surveyed 5,075 "informed publics" in 23 countries on their trust in business, government, institutions and individuals. One of the questions asked of respondents was: "If you heard information about a company from one of these people, how credible would that information be?". Of the eight groups of individuals - academic/expert, technical expert in company, financial/industry analyst, CEO, non-governmental organisation representative, government official, person like myself, and regular employee - academic/expert came out tops with a score of 70 per cent, followed by technical expert at 64 per cent.

the film on the global financial crisis Inside Job, which won the 2011 Academy Award for best documentary. One of the documentary's themes is the role a number of renowned academics, particularly academic economists, played in the global crisis. It highlighted potentially serious conflicts of interests related to significant compensation derived by these academics serving on boards of financial services firms and advising such firms.

Often, these academics also played key roles in shaping government policies relating to deregulation - most appear allergic to regulation of the financial services industry. The documentary argued that these academics from Ivy League universities had basically become advocates for financial services firms, which blinded them to firms' excesses. It noted that few academic economists saw the financial crisis coming, and suggested this might be because they were too busy making money from the industry.

Q. The debate over climate science has involved very complex physical models and rarefied areas of scientific knowledge. What role do you think social scientists have to play, given the complexity of the actual physical science?

A. We have to think about the process by which something, an idea, develops scientific consensus and a second process by which is developed a social and political consensus. The first part is the domain of data and models and physical science. The second is very much a social and political process. And that brings to the fore a whole host of value-based, worldview-based, cognitive and cultural dimensions that need to be addressed.

Social scientists, beyond economists, have a lot to say on cognition, perceptions, values, social movements and political processes that are very important for understanding whether the public accepts the conclusions of a scientific body.

But, to the surprise of the West, that steel mill grew out to be POSCO, the world's third-largest and Asia's most profitable steel maker.

South Korea's developmental state, which relied on active government investment in R&D and crucial support for capital-intensive sectors in the form of start-up subsidies and infant industry protection, transformed the country into the richest on the Asian continent (with the exception of Singapore and Hong Kong). LG and Hyundai are similar legacies of Korea's spectacular industrial policy success.

Even though they were not trained as economists, the economic officials of East Asia knew some economics. However, especially until the 1970s, the economics they knew was mostly not of the free-market variety. The economics they happened to know was the economics of Karl Marx, Friedrich List, Joseph Schumpeter, Nicholas Kaldor and Albert Hirschman. Of course, these economists lived in different times, contended with different problems and had radically differing political views (ranging from the very right-wing List to the very left-wing Marx). However, there was a commonality between their economics. It was the recognition that capitalism develops through long-term investments and technological innovations that transform the productive structure, and not merely an expansion of existing structures, like inflating a balloon.

One part of Matthew Nisbet's recent report that has received very little attention is its comparative analysis of ideological and partisan perspectives of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Nisbet shows that AAAS members are extremely partisan and ideological.  The word "extremely" is mine, and what do I mean by it?  Look at the figure above:  AAAS members are more partisan than MSNBC viewers and even Tea Party members.  AAAS members are more ideological than evangelical churchgoers but less so than Fox News viewers.  In both cases AAAS members are very different than the public as a whole.

Dan Sarewitz has discussed the problems with the ideological and partisan likemindedness of our scientific community, which has been exploited and reenforced in political debates: During the Bush administration, Democrats discovered that they could score political points by accusing Bush of being anti-science. In the process, they seem to have convinced themselves that they are the keepers of the Enlightenment spirit, and that those who disagree with them on issues like climate change are fundamentally irrational. Meanwhile, many Republicans have come to believe that mainstream science is corrupted by ideology and amounts to no more than politics by another name. Attracted to fringe scientists like the small and vocal group of climate skeptics, Republicans appear to be alienated from a mainstream scientific community that by and large doesn't share their political beliefs. The climate debacle is only the most conspicuous example of these debilitating tendencies, which play out in issues as diverse as nuclear waste disposal, protection of endangered species, and regulation of pharmaceuticals. How would a more politically diverse scientific community improve this situation? First, it could foster greater confidence among Republican politicians about the legitimacy of mainstream science. Second, it would cultivate more informed, creative, and challenging debates about the policy implications of scientific knowledge. This could help keep difficult problems like climate change from getting prematurely straitjacketed by ideology. A more politically diverse scientific community would, overall, support a healthier relationship between science and politics.

It should come as no surprise that the increasing politicization of science has come to make science more political rather than politics more scientific.  At the same time, the more partisan and/or and ideological that you are, the more welcome and comfortable that you will find the politicization of science, as it reenforces your preconceptions.

THINK income inequality growth is primarily an American phenomenon?  Think again:American society is more unequal than those in most other OECD countries, and growth in inequality there has been relatively large. But with very few exceptions, the rich have done better over the past 30 years, even in highly egalitarian places like Scandinavia.

Over the past decades, OECD countries have undergone significant structural changes resulting from their closer integration into a global economy and rapid technological progress. These changes have brought higher rewards for high-skilled workers and thus affected the way earnings from work are distributed. The skills gap in earnings reflects several factors. First, a rapid rise in trade and financial markets integration has generated a relative shift in labour demand in favour of high-skilled workers at the expense of low-skilled labour. Second, technical progress has shifted production technologies in both industries and services in favour of skilled labour...Finally, during the past two decades most OECD countries carried out regulatory reforms to strengthen competition in the markets for goods and services and associated reforms that aimed at making labour markets more adaptable. For instance, anti-competitive product-market regulations were reduced significantly in all countries. Employment protection legislation for workers with temporary contracts also became more lenient in many countries. Minimum wages, relative to average wages, have also declined in a number of countries since the 1980s. Wage-setting mechanisms have also changed; the share of union members among workers has fallen across most countries, although the coverage of collective bargaining has generally remained rather stable over time. In a number of countries, unemployment benefit replacement rates fell, and in an attempt to promote employment among low-skilled workers, taxes on labour for low-income workers were also reduced.

It's tempting to look at this list of regulatory changes and argue that it was these rule changes which facilitated growth in inequality. That may be true to some extent, but the unverisality of the reform experience makes me think it's at least as likely that underlying trends (like globalisation and technological change) made the prevailing rules unsustainable.

TOC, Mr Brown, Leong Sze Hian and other bloggers received the information from Tan’s office yesterday and honoured the embargo on the news.

As the presumptive government-endorsed candidate, Tan's move can be seen as a landmark in relations between the state and Singapore’s intrepid and often unruly alternative online media. Until now, the government has refused to treat any of these sites as engaging in bona fide journalism. Bloggers have long complained that government departments do not respond to requests for information. When The Online Citizen organised a pre-election forum for all political parties to share their ideas last December, the People’s Action Party would have nothing to do with it. TOC highlighted the ruling party’s conspicuous absence by leaving an empty chair on stage. The election regulations’ ban on campaigning on the “cooling off” day and polling day also discriminate against citizen journalism: only licenced news organisations are exempted.

The sudden change of heart is undoubtedly one result of May’s groundbreaking general election. Online media were obviously influential, and the government may have decided that it has no choice but to do business with them.

Popular Science explains the rationale: China and other regimes around the world inherently have an upper hand when it comes to cyber defense because their lack of civil liberty protections lets the government freely monitor online activity. Things like “deep packet inspection” (which gained notoriety during Iranian election protests back in 2009) that let governments monitor citizens traffic also let them monitor for unusual activity … The U.S. Internet, by virtue of its adherence civil liberties, is more like the wild west. Everyone does everything online anonymously, and while that’s great for liberties, it’s also dangerous when cyber criminals/foreign hackers are roaming the cyber countryside

The .secure zone would essentially mimic the way the internet is regulated in more oppressive regimes, creating a space where banks, government contractors and the government can do business without fear of being hacked. Keith Alexander, who has the totally not made-up title of Cyber Command Chief, and several lawmakers are pushing for the new infrastructure, saying it’s absolutely necessary for national security. While the vulnerability of our infrastructure is a major concern, we’d wager a lot of Americans might have a problem with a section of the internet where your right to privacy is nonexistent.