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wstrahan

Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah - 0 views

    • wstrahan
       
      Neo-colonialism isn't a problem until it's being used to impoverish less developed countries, rather than help develop them.
  • Non-alignment, as practised by Ghana and many other countries, is based on co-operation with all States whether they be capitalist, socialist or have a mixed economy. Such a policy, therefore, involves foreign investment from capitalist countries, but it must be invested in accordance with a national plan drawn up by the government of the non-aligned State with its own interests in mind.
    • wstrahan
       
      Countries like Ghana choose not to align with an economic policy like capitalism or socialism in order to trade with all countries based on their own national plan.
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  • The growth of nuclear weapons has made out of date the old-fashioned balance of power which rested upon the ultimate sanction of a major war. Certainty of mutual mass destruction effectively prevents either of the great power blocs from threatening the other with the possibility of a world-wide war, and military conflict has thus become confined to ‘limited wars’. For these neo-colonialism is the breeding ground.
    • wstrahan
       
      Nuclear weapons have increased the growth in neo-colonialism. Larger economic countries such as the U.S. and Russia would rather avoid a world war and nuclear mass destruction by fighting "limited wars"
  • Limited war, once embarked upon, achieves a momentum of its own. Of this, the war in South Vietnam is only one example. It escalates despite the desire of the great power blocs to keep it limited. While this particular war may be prevented from leading to a world conflict, the multiplication of similar limited wars can only have one end-world war and the terrible consequences of nuclear conflict.
  • Neo-colonialism is also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.
  • In the days of old-fashioned colonialism, the imperial power had at least to explain and justify at home the actions it was taking abroad.
  • Neo-colonialism, like colonialism, is an attempt to export the social conflicts of the capitalist countries.
  • The problem which faced the wealthy nations of the world at the end of the second world war was the impossibility of returning to the pre-war situation in which there was a great gulf between the few rich and the many poor. Irrespective of what particular political party was in power, the internal pressures in the rich countries of the world were such that no post-war capitalist country could survive unless it became a ‘Welfare State’. There might be differences in degree in the extent of the social benefits given to the industrial and agricultural workers, but what was everywhere impossible was a return to the mass unemployment and to the low level of living of the pre-war years.
  • In the past it was possible to convert a country upon which a neo-colonial regime had been imposed — Egypt in the nineteenth century is an example — into a colonial territory.
  • The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.
  • e, but neo-
  • The neo-colonial State may be obliged to take the manufactured products of the imperialist power to the exclusion of competing products from elsewhere. Control over government policy in the neo-colonial State may be secured by payments towards the cost of running the State, by the provision of civil servants in positions where they can dictate policy, and by monetary control over foreign exchange through the imposition of a banking system controlled by the imperial power.
  • Where neo-colonialism exists the power exercising control is often the State which formerly ruled the territory in question, but this is not necessarily so. For example, in the case of South Vietnam the former imperial power was France, but neo-colonial control of the State has now gone to the United States.
  • The control of the Congo by great international financial concerns is a case in point.
  • The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world.
  • The struggle against neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding the capital of the developed world from operating in less developed countries. It is aimed at preventing the financial power of the developed countries being used in such a way as to impoverish the less developed.
  • The system of neo-colonialism was therefore instituted and in the short run it has served the developed powers admirably. It is in the long run that its consequences are likely to be catastrophic for them
  • Neo-colonialism is based upon the principle of breaking up former large united colonial territories into a number of small non-viable States which are incapable of independent development and must rely upon the former imperial power for defence and even internal security. Their economic and financial systems are linked, as in colonial days, with those of the former colonial ruler.
  • In the neo-colonialist territories, since the former colonial power has in theory relinquished political control, if the social conditions occasioned by neo-colonialism cause a revolt the local neo-colonialist government can be sacrificed and another equally subservient one substituted in its place.
  • The introduction of neo-colonialism increases the rivalry between the great powers which was provoked by the old-style colonialism. However little real power the government of a neo-colonialist State may possess, it must have, from the very fact of its nominal independence, a certain area of manoeuvre. It may not be able to exist without a neo-colonialist master but it may still have the ability to change masters.
  • The ideal neo-colonialist State would be one which was wholly subservient to neo-colonialist interests but the existence of the socialist nations makes it impossible to enforce the full rigour of the neo-colonialist system. The existence of an alternative system is itself a challenge to the neo-colonialist regime. Warnings about ‘the dangers of Communist subversion are likely to be two-edged since they bring to the notice of those living under a neo-colonialist system the possibility of a change of regime.
  • In fact neo-colonialism is the victim of its own contradictions. In order to make it attractive to those upon whom it is practised it must be shown as capable of raising their living standards, but the economic object of neo-colonialism is to keep those standards depressed in the interest of the developed countries.
  • Their manufacturers naturally object to any attempt to raise the price of the raw materials which they obtain from the neo-colonialist territory in question, or to the establishment there of manufacturing industries which might compete directly or indirectly with their own exports to the territory.
  • In the end the situation arises that the only type of aid which the neo-colonialist masters consider as safe is ‘military aid’.
  • Once a neo-colonialist territory is brought to such a state of economic chaos and misery that revolt actually breaks out then, and only then, is there no limit to the generosity of the neo-colonial overlord, provided, of course, that the funds supplied are utilised exclusively for military purposes.
  • Military aid in fact marks the last stage of neo-colonialism and its effect is self-destructive. Sooner or later the weapons supplied pass into the hands of the opponents of the neo-colonialist regime and the war itself increases the social misery which originally provoked it.
  • Nowhere has it proved successful, either in raising living standards or in ultimately benefiting countries which have indulged in it.
  • This book is therefore an attempt to examine neo-colonialism not only in its African context and its relation to African unity, but in world perspective. Neo-colonialism is by no means exclusively an African question. Long before it was practised on any large scale in Africa it was an established system in other parts of the world
  • ‘The industrial nations have added nearly $2 billion to their reserves, which now approximate $52 billion. At the same time, the reserves of the less-developed group not only have stopped rising, but have declined some $200 million. To analysts such as Britain’s Miss Ward, the significance of such statistics is clear: the economic gap is rapidly widening “between a white, complacent, highly bourgeois, very wealthy, very small North Atlantic elite and everybody else, and this is not a very comfortable heritage to leave to one’s children.”
  • ‘For the vast majority of mankind the most urgent problem is not war, or Communism, or the cost of living, or taxation. It is hunger. Over 1,500,000,000 people, some-thing like two-thirds of the world’s population, are living in conditions of acute hunger, defined in terms of identifiable nutritional disease.
  • What is lacking are any positive proposals for dealing with the situation. All that The Wall Street Journal’s correspondent can do is to point out that the traditional methods recommended for curing the evils are only likely to make the situation worse.
normonique

Can the Nervous System Be Hacked? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • But communication between nerves and the immune system was considered impossible, according to the scientific consensus in 1998.
  • It would have been “inconceivable,” he added, to propose that nerves were directly interacting with immune cells.
  • electrical pulses to the rat’s exposed vagus nerve. He stitched the cut closed and gave the rat a bacterial toxin known to promote the production of tumor necrosis factor, or T.N.F., a protein that triggers inflammation in animals, including humans.
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    • normonique
       
      This small passage answer my question of 'if the nervous system could be directly wired to technology' 
  • the nervous system was like a computer terminal through which you could deliver commands to stop a problem,
    • normonique
       
      This is a refreshing approach to cures from medicine which has a tedious list of side affects with no promise of correcting the initial problem. 
  • Inflammatory afflictions like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease are currently treated with drugs — painkillers, steroids and what are known as biologics, or genetically engineered proteins. But such medicines, Tracey pointed out, are often expensive, hard to administer, variable in their efficacy and sometimes accompanied by lethal side effects.
  • All the information is coming and going as electrical signals
  • His work seemed to indicate that electricity delivered to the vagus nerve in just the right intensity and at precise intervals could reproduce a drug’s therapeutic — in this case, anti-inflammatory — reaction. His subsequent research would also show that it could do so more effectively and with minimal health risks.
  • bioelectronics is straightforward: Get the nervous system to tell the body to heal itself.
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    This post is incredible, it's exciting to understand how technology can tell the brain to heal itself. 
normonique

Psychotronic and Electromagnetic Weapons: Remote Control of the Human Nervous System | ... - 0 views

  • Britain’s Daily Mail, as another exception, wrote that research in electromagnetic weapons has been secretly carried out in the USA and Russia since the 1950’s and that „previous research has shown that low-frequency waves or beams can affect brain cells, alter psychological states and make it possible to transmit suggestions and commands directly into someone’s thought processes.
    • normonique
       
      My initial question of whether technology will have the ability to influence the nervous system directly relate to this post. Yet I had not thought of neurotechnology being used a weapontry. It actually seems more dangerous than a bullet. 
  • In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a technology: using microwaves to send words into someone’s head
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    • normonique
       
      If technology has the ability to heal patients by sending pulse or microwaves to their brain aside from health how could this affect social communication.
  • An innovative and revolutionary technology is described that offers a low-probability-of-intercept radiofrequency (RF) communications. The feasibility of the concept has been established using both a low intensity laboratory system and a high power RF transmitter.
  • Dr. Robert Becker, who was twice nominated for Nobel Prize for his share in the discovery of the effects of pulsed fields at the healing of broken bones, wrote in his book “Body Electric”
  • hypnotist
  • Transmitting human speech into the human brain by means of electromagnetic waves is apparently, for the researchers, one of the most difficult tasks.
  • People who claim to be victims of experiments with those devices complain, aside of hearing voices, of false feelings (including orgasms) as well of aches of internal organs which the physicians are unable to diagnose.
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    This article help answer my question to 'Technology connecting to the nervous system directly'  -it also provide information of how this could harm and help people.  -I believe it's crazy that they use microwaves in combat. 
kimah6

Robot Brains: Circuits and Systems for Conscious Machines > 11: Machine consciousness :... - 1 views

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    "Robot Brains: Circuits and Systems for Conscious Machines"
anonymous

In the Programmable World, All Our Objects Will Act as One | Gadget Lab | WIRED - 0 views

  • what’s remarkable about this future isn’t the sensors, nor is it that all our sensors and objects and devices are linked together. It’s the fact that once we get enough of these objects onto our networks, they’re no longer one-off novelties or data sources but instead become a coherent system, a vast ensemble that can be choreographed, a body that can dance. Really, it’s the opposite of an “Internet,” a term that even today—in the era of the cloud and the app and the walled garden—connotes a peer-to-peer system in which each node is equally empowered. By contrast, these connected objects will act more like a swarm of drones, a distributed legion of bots, far-flung and sometimes even hidden from view but nevertheless coordinated as if they were a single giant machine.
  • For the Programmable World to reach its full potential, we need to pass through three stages. The first is simply the act of getting more devices onto the network—more sensors, more processors in everyday objects, more wireless hookups to extract data from the processors that already exist. The second is to make those devices rely on one another, coordinating their actions to carry out simple tasks without any human intervention. The third and final stage, once connected things become ubiquitous, is to understand them as a system to be programmed, a bona fide platform that can run software in much the same manner that a computer or smartphone can. Once we get there, that system will transform the world of everyday objects into a design­able environment, a playground for coders and engineers. It will change the whole way we think about the division between the virtual and the physical.
jurasovaib

Ovarian cyst - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • Most ovarian cysts are functional in nature and harmless (benign).[1][2] Ovarian cysts affect women of all ages. They occur most often, however, during a woman's childbearing years. Some ovarian cysts cause problems, such as bleeding and pain. Surgery may be required to remove cysts larger than 5 centimeters in diameter.
  • Functional cysts form as a normal part of the menstrual cycle. Such cysts may include: Follicular cyst, the most common type of ovarian cyst. In menstruation, a follicle containing the ovum (unfertilized egg) will rupture during ovulation. If this does not occur, a follicular cyst of more than 2.5 cm diameter may result.[3] Corpus luteum cysts appear after ovulation. The corpus luteum is the remnant of the follicle after the ovum has moved to the fallopian tubes. This normally degrades within 5–9 days. A corpus lutem that is more than 3 cm is defined as cystic.[3] Thecal cysts occur within the thecal layer of cells surrounding developing oocytes. Under the influence of excessive hCG, thecal cells may proliferate and become cystic. This is usually on both ovaries.[3]
  • Non-functional cysts may include: An ovary with many cysts, which may be found in normal women, or within the setting of polycystic ovary syndrome. Cysts caused by endometriosis, known as chocolate cysts. Hemorrhagic ovarian cyst Dermoid cyst Ovarian serous cystadenoma Ovarian mucinous cystadenoma Paraovarian cyst Cystic adenofibroma Borderline tumoral cysts
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  • There are several systems for scoring of the risk of an ovarian cyst of being an ovarian cancer, including RMI (risk of malignancy index), LR2 and SR (simple rules). Sensitivities and specificities of these systems are given in tables below:[5] Scoring systems Premenopausal Postmenopausal Sensitivity Specificity Sensitivity Specificity RMI I 44% 95% 79% 90% LR2 85% 91% 94% 70% SR 93% 83% 93% 76% Risk of malignancy index[edit] A widely recognized method of estimating the risk of malignant ovarian cancer based on initial workup is the risk of malignancy index (RMI).[6] It is recommended that women with an RMI score over 200 should be referred to a center with experience in ovarian cancer surgery.[7] The RMI is calculated as follows:[7]
yusraahmed

Russell Poldrack: Multi-Tasking Adversely Affects the Brain's Learning Systems - UCLA P... - 2 views

  • "Multi-tasking adversely affects how you learn," said Russell Poldrack, UCLA associate professor of psychology and co-author of the study. "Even if you learn while multi-tasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily. Our study shows that to the degree you can learn while multi-tasking, you will use different brain systems."
    • majeeds
       
      As my previous nugget mentions how important it is to learn gradually by steps, it is evident that multitasking is not advisable for that process.
kimah6

Real-Life Decepticons: Robots Learn to Cheat | Science | WIRED - 1 views

  • nnocence didn’t last.
    • kimah6
       
      Funny how the author used the word innocence.  The writer used "innocence" to describe a robot.  Robots have feelings?
  • Soon the robots learned to follow the signals of others who’d gathered at the food. But there wasn’t enough space for all of them to feed, and the robots bumped and jostled for position. As before, only a few made it through the bottleneck of selection. And before long, they’d evolved to mute their signals, thus concealing their location.
  • “Evolutionary robotic systems implicitly encompass many behavioral components … thus allowing for an unbiased investigation of the factors driving signal evolution,” the researchers wrote Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The great degree of realism provided by evolutionary robotic systems thus provides a powerful tool for studies that cannot readily be performed with real organisms.”
  •  
    Robots Learn to Cheat
Virinchi Tadikonda

Are Solar Sails the Future of Space Travel? - 0 views

    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      Innovation is one of the most important factors of space travel. This simple design can turn into something that we can use to potentially travel vast distances. 
  • But it took a long time for solar sails to go from concept to reality. The first successful demonstration of the propulsion system didn't come until 2010, when Japan's Ikaros probe deployed its 46-foot-wide (14 m) sail and became the first craft ever to cruise through space on the backs of photons.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      This just tells us that nothing comes easy, and that we might actually be a long distance away from achieving the next space milestone, which is setting foot on another planet. 
  • The $27 million Sunjammer mission, which takes its name from the Arthur C. Clarke story, will use a sail built by California-based company L'Garde that measures 124 feet (38 m) on a side. The sail, made of an advanced material called Kapton, is just 5 microns (about 0.0002 inches) thick. It weighs less than 70 pounds (32 kilograms) and packs down to the size of a dishwasher, NASA officials have said.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      As much as funds are being cut from NASA and budget cuts are taking a toll on all space related activities, research is definitely crucial. But we do not hear about these researches in the news. 
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    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      Prevention of disasters is one of the most important security aspects of technology. This kind of probes will enhance safety among the public but the one thing I see is that the media has not covered this. It is not a big aspect of technology it seems, and I disagree. 
  • And some researchers have even higher hopes for solar sails, suggesting that a truly enormous sail —one the size of Texas, for example — could send a spaceship to another star system in just a few centuries. (A space-based laser would have to shine a powerful beam on the sail as the craft moved farther and farther away from the sun, however.)   
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      This is the definition of future research for the benefit of society in the generations to come. This kind of technology can potentially unite us with another Earth. Unfortunately this is the first one I have found about any kind of research with solar panels in media. 
  • Several upcoming missions aim to harness the subtle push of sunlight, using gossamer "solar sails" to cruise through the heavens like boats through the sea.
  • A spacecraft equipped with a sail 1,300 feet (400 meters) wide, for example, could travel 1.3 billion miles (2.1 billion kilometers) per year, allowing it to escape the sun's sphere of influence in just a decade or so, according to researchers behind the Interstellar Probe, a NASA concept mission proposed about 15 years ago.
Virinchi Tadikonda

Future of Human Space Exploration Could See Humans on Mars, Alien Planets - 0 views

  • Closer to home, private industries like Mars One seek to establish a permanent settlement on the Red Planet. At the Smithsonian Magazine's "The Future is Here Festival" in Washington, D.C. this month, former astronaut Mae Jemison and NASA engineer Adam Steltzner spoke optimistically about the future of manned space exploration
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      The way that planet Earth and our Solar System is operating is that the sun expands everyday, and planets revolving around the sun. The sun will eventually grow and expand with the future being sucking in all the planets, killing all life. Future expansion of other planets is necessary. 
  • Although the idea that bacteria — and life — could hitch a ride on traveling rocks to spread life to other planets is not new, Steltzner suggested a deliberate program that sounds more like science fiction than science fact. Such bacteria could carry our genome and the instructions to reassemble it after landing on a planet (and, one assumes, after the planet has been terraformed to support such life). Steltzner described the process as "printing human beings organically over time."
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      Life in other planets is not at all impossible. There are many scientific methods to start life, the only question is how to do it, and will the life survive? 
  • In addition to curiosity-motivated exploration, Steltzner pointed out that as long as humans remain on a single planet, we are at risk of extinction when disaster strikes. "Our real estate portfolio suffers from a concentration of risk," he said.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      An important note is that we have limited resources on planet Earth. Once those resources are extinct, there must be exploration elsewhere from either Space, or deep in the unexplored regions of the oceans. 
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  • "Technology didn't slow us down getting to the moon," Steltzner said. "Technology won't slow us down getting to Mars."
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      The problem with this technology is that all the information that was used for getting to the moon was lost. The old computers got replaced and the people who worked to get astronauts to the moon retired. The key this time around is to not lose the information. In Kennedy's presidency, it took a long time to get all the components together. Now that technology is more advanced, it should take less time to get to the moon, and should be a straight shot to Mars. 
  • Mars may be one of the closest planets humans want to colonize, but it certainly isn't the only one. Mae Jemison described the 100-Year Starship project to an interested audience. Funded by NASA's Ames Research Center and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the 100-Year Starship project aims to develop the tools and technology necessary to build and fly a spaceship to another planetary system within the next 100 years. The program isn't necessarily concerned with building the ship itself as much as it seeks to foster innovation and enthusiasm for interstellar travel.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      The method of transportation is going to be very difficult. The researching that is in progress and takes a while to accomplish, obviously. Maybe this is NASA's plan to not release to the public yet? 
  • Though many people object to funding the space program when there are humanitarian needs that have to be met on Earth, Jemison points out that such exploration often leads to innovation and unexpected technology that make an impact on Earth-based programs. "I believe that pursuing an extraordinary tomorrow will create a better world today," she said.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      The original space launches did not revolve around trying to put up satellites, rather to explore space. Since then, satellites have been launched, telescopes have also been put up. Who knows what other technological aspects can be added once funding is no longer cut and innovation is big again?
kahn_artist

Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically? | July 2009 | Communications of the ACM - 1 views

  • Home/Magazine Archive/July 2009 (Vol. 52, No. 7)/Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically?/Full Text News Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically? By Samuel Greengard Communications of the ACM, Vol. 52 No. 7, Pages 18-19 10.1145/1538788.1538796 Comments (3) View as: Print ACM Digital Library Full Text (PDF) In the Digital Edition Share: Send by email Share on reddit Share on StumbleUpon Share on Tweeter Share on Facebook More Sharing ServicesShare Society has long cherished the ability to think beyond the ordinary. In a world where knowledge is revered and innovation equals progress, those able to bring forth greater insight and understanding are destined to make their mark and blaze a trail to greater enlightenment. "Critical thinking as an attitude is embedded in Western culture. There is a belief that argument is the way to finding truth," observes Adrian West, research director at the Edward de Bono Foundation U.K., and a former computer science lecturer at the University of Manchester. "Developing our abilities to think more clearly, richly, fully—individually and collectively—is absolutely crucial [to solving world problems]." To be sure, history is filled with tales of remarkable thinkers who have defined and redefined our world views: Sir Isaac Newton discovering gravity; Voltaire altering perceptions about society and religious dogma; and Albert Einstein redefining the view of the universe. But in an age of computers, video games, and the Internet, there's a growing question about how technology is changing critical thinking and whether society benefits from it. Although there's little debate that computer technology complements—and often enhances—the human mind in the quest to store information and process an ever-growing tangle of bits and bytes, there's increasing concern that the same technology is changing the way we approach complex problems and conundrums, and making it more difficult to really think. "We're exposed to [greater amounts of] poor yet charismatic thinking, the fads of intellectual fashion, opinion, and mere assertion," says West. "The wealth of communications and information can easily overwhelm our reasoning abilities." What's more, it's ironic that ever-growing piles of data and information do not equate to greater knowledge and better decision-making. What's remarkable, West says, is just "how little this has affected the quality of our thinking." According to the National Endowment for the Arts, literary reading declined 10 percentage points from 1982 to 2002 and the rate of decline is accelerating. Many, including Patricia Greenfield, a UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles, believe that a greater focus on visual media exacts a toll. "A drop-off in reading has possibly contributed to a decline in critical thinking," she says. "There is a greater emphasis on real-time media and multitasking rather than focusing on a single thing." Nevertheless, the verdict isn't in and a definitive answer about how technology affects critical thinking is not yet available. Instead, critical thinking lands in a mushy swamp somewhere between perception and reality; measurable and incomprehensible. It's largely a product of our own invention—and a subjective one at that. And although technology alters the way we see, hear, and assimilate our world—the act of thinking remains decidedly human. Back to Top Rethinking Thinking Arriving at a clear definition for critical thinking is a bit tricky. Wikipedia describes it as "purposeful and reflective judgment about what to believe or what to do in response to observations, experience, verbal or written expressions, or arguments." Overlay technology and that's where things get complex. "We can do the same critical-reasoning operations without technology as we can with it—just at different speeds and with different ease," West says. What's more, while it's tempting to view computers, video games, and the Internet in a monolithic good or bad way, the reality is that they may be both good and bad, and different technologies, systems, and uses yield entirely different results. For example, a computer game may promote critical thinking or diminish it. Reading on the Internet may ratchet up one's ability to analyze while chasing an endless array of hyperlinks may undercut deeper thought.
  • Reading on the Internet may ratchet up one's ability to analyze while chasing an endless array of hyperlinks may undercut deeper thought.
    • kahn_artist
       
      The highlighted text is particularly funny to me considering I am advocating Hyperlink chasing as a valuable form of research.
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    How does technology affect our ability to think critically?
anonymous

Media Presence and Inner Presence: The Sense of Presence in Virtual Reality Technologie... - 1 views

  • Presence is widely accepted as the key concept to be considered in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality (VR). Since its original description, the concept of presence has developed over the past decade to be considered by many researchers as the essence of any experience in a virtual environment. The VR generating systems comprise two main parts: a technological component and a psychological experience. The different relevance given to them produced two different but coexisting visions of presence: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). The main result of this approach is the definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation produced by means of the disappearance of the medium from the conscious attention of the subject. At the other extreme, there is the psychological or ecological perspective (Inner Presence). Specifically, this perspective considers presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon, evolved from the interplay of our biological and cultural inheritance, whose goal is the control of the human activity. Given its key role and the rate at which new approaches to understanding and examining presence are appearing, this chapter draws together current research on presence to provide an up to date overview of the most widely accepted approaches to its understanding and measurement.
anonymous

Giorgio Bertini's Public Library | Diigo - 1 views

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    Recommend this Diigo Metacognition Multidisciplinary Annotated Bibliography about Learning Change http://gfbertini.wordpress.com/ ... some readings from multidisciplinary research on society, culture, critical thinking, neuroscience, cognition, intelligence, creativity, autopoiesis, rhizomes, emergence, self-organization, complexity, systems, networks, methods, thinkers, futures ...
wstrahan

Music as a Service as an Alternative to Music Piracy? - Springer - 0 views

  • Music pirates show a clearly positive approach to MaaS. The mean of attitude was 3.95 on a five-point scale.
  • While most pirates would use the free version (mean = 3.57), few would pay for MaaS (mean = 1.65).
  • Alternative
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  • We can observe a strong difference between the influence of attitude on intention to use free MaaS and the intention to use paid MaaS: building a strong attitude therefore does not lead directly to high willingness to pay; instead, it is the intention to test free MaaS that is influenced by attitudes.
  • We found that the search for music recommendations and the flat rate preference influence the attitude towards MaaS positively and significantly. The new recommendation functions and the pricing model are therefore functions users rated highly and which can help build a strongly positive attitude towards MaaS.
  • Pirates seem satisfied with the sound quality of tracks provided via illegal networks and seem to feel safe from prosecution.
  • Our study demonstrated the attractiveness of MaaS offers to music pirates. Nevertheless, most music pirates prefer free MaaS.
  • We showed that flat rates are regarded as an attractive pricing model by music pirates and that this constitutes a suitable alternative to pay-per-download, which is often considered too expensive (Al-Rafee and Cronan 2006).
  • Users who do not consider music piracy owing to moral scruples and higher search costs also show a positive attitude towards MaaS.
  • A reason for the increased willingness to pay may also relate to hedonistic social benefits, established by integrating social features into recommendation systems
  • MaaS providers should therefore focus on comprehensive, user-friendly recommendation systems that support social exchanges between MaaS users. Our study results clearly demonstrate that a platform’s features positively influence the attitude towards MaaS. Besides direct recommendations from friends, users can receive recommendations based on tagged music channels or collaborative filtering.
  • The presented study demonstrates that new offers of music consumption can also be an attractive alternative for music pirates. Although there is no indication of the reduction of illegal downloads in general, music pirates consider the free ad-based version of MaaS an alternative. Music pirates who have rejected legal music consumption due to high prices in the past may well switch to legal consumption.
  • Pandora
ewingjm2

Does Laughing Make You Live Longer - 0 views

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    Ultimately laughter is good for your health. Laughter protects your heart by improving the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow. This can help prevent you from a heart attack or other cardiovascular problems. Laughter boots your immune system and improves your body's ability to fight off diseases.
Virinchi Tadikonda

NASA budget 2015: More cuts, more politics. - 0 views

  • In 2014 NASA got a total of $17.646 billion. The 2015 request is for $17.460 billion, a reduction of $186 million dollars, or about a 1 percent cut. That could’ve been worse. As we’ll see, though, it’s where those cuts are going that are bad.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      A reason for the lack of media coverage can be actually due to NASA not spending as much money to use for missions. A cut down of missions lead to less media coverage for typical launches unless major launches occur, such as a mission to the moon. 
  • ut I still fear NASA will have to cut other missions to fund this one
  • Some areas got more money, like Space Technology. That includes tech that will help the proposed asteroid retrieval mission.
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      NASA seems to be directing it's resources more towards missions that are bigger. This means more funding, and cutting of smaller missions. 
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  • Commercial Spaceflight will see an increase of more than $150 million to a total of $848 million. That includes buying launches from commercial companies like SpaceX, and I’m all for that. That comes with a $300 million reduction to the Exploration Systems Development,
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      Commercial Spaceflight by NASA is defined as flights that are for satellite repair and launching. This means that you can see crews up in space to repair GOES-R, Hubble, ISS, and other kind of satellites. 
  • Earth Science: cut by $56 million (given that so many in Congress are climate change deniers who want to cut Earth-observing missions, I think this may be a mistake). Astrophysics: cut by $61 million (including mothballing the wonderful SOFIA aircraft unless a German partner can pony up the cash; see page 15 of the report). Planetary Science: cut by $65 million. That last one is almost a victory, given how the White House has tried to eviscerate planetary exploration over the past few years. But don’t be fooled; these cuts would hurt. A lot. (Note added after I wrote this article but before it was posted: Casey Dreier at The Planetary Society has more on this situation.)
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      This paragraph alone shows how space exploration is going downhill, and that such explorations are not necessary. Astrophysics and Earth Science are two major fields that require much research for space exploration. Without either or a lack of information from either departments due to cuts, this just spells bad news. 
  • Again, let me remind you that this is a budget request. Congress will have a different budget for NASA,
    • Virinchi Tadikonda
       
      This is a budget request, but the government is much more stingy. These numbers for cuts can be much higher without any warning. 
anonymous

Carol Kuhlthau Information Search Process - 1 views

  • People engage in an information search experience holistically, with an interplay of thoughts, feelings and actions.  Common patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting are characteristic in each phase.  These studies were among the first to investigate the affective aspects or the feelings of a person in the process of information seeking along with the cognitive and physical aspects.  Rather than a steady increase in confidence from the beginning of a search to the conclusion, as might be expected, a dip in confidence is commonly experienced once an individual has initiated a search and begins to encounter conflicting and inconsistent information.  A person “in the dip” is increasingly uncertain and confused until a focus is formed to provide a path for seeking meaning and criteria for judging relevance. Advances in information technology, that open access to a vast assortment of sources, have not helped the user’s dilemma and may have intensified the sense of confusion and uncertainty.  Information systems may intensify the problem particularly in the early stages of the ISP by overwhelming the user with “everything” all at once.
George Neff

Your Brain While Watching Orange Is the New Black - Shape Magazine - 0 views

  • Like a perfectly addictive drug, almost every aspect of the television viewing experience grabs and holds your brain’s attention, which explains why it’s so tough to stop watching after just one (or three) episodes of Orange is the New Black.
  • Characters run or shout or shoot accompanied by sound effects and music. No two moments are quite alike. To your brain, this kind of continuously morphing sensory stimulation is pretty much impossible to ignore, explains Robert F. Potter, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Communication Research at Indiana University.
  • “Our brains are hardwired to automatically pay attention to anything that’s new in our environment, at least for a brief period of time,” he explains. And it’s not just humans; all animals evolved this way in order to spot potential threats, food sources, or reproductive opportunities, Potter says.
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  • “This also explains how you can sit in front of the TV and binge for hours and hours at a time and not feel a loss of entertainment,” he says. “You brain doesn’t have much time to grow bored.”
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Studies show that, by this point, most of your brain activity has shifted from the left hemisphere to the right, or from the areas involved with logical thought to those involved with emotion. There has also been a release of natural, relaxing opiates called endorphins, research indicates.
  • You’re noodle isn’t really analyzing or picking apart the data it’s receiving. It’s basically just absorbing. Potter calls this “automatic attention.” He says, “The television is just washing over you and your brain is marinating in the changes of sensory stimuli.”
  • At the same time, the content of your television show is lighting up your brain’s approach and avoid systems, Potter says. Put simply, your brain is pre-programmed for both attraction and disgust, and both grab and hold your attention in similar ways. Characters you hate keep you engaged just as much (and sometimes more) than characters you love.
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Like any addictive drug, cutting off your supply triggers a sudden drop in the release of those feel-good brain chemicals, which can leave you with a sense of sadness and a lack of energy, research shows. Experiments from the 1970s found that asking people to give up TV for a month actually triggered depression and the sense that the participants had “lost a friend.”
Mirna Shaban

World Development book case study: the role of social networking in the Arab Spring -- ... - 0 views

  • The start of the unrest was in Tunisia and the spark was the self-immolation of a market stallholder, Mohammed Bouaziz, on 10 December 2010.
  • he first reported use of social networking websites by dissident groups taking part in a civil revolt was in Moldova, a small country between Romania and Ukraine, in April 2009.
  • The internet is useful for information dissemination and news gathering, social media for connecting and co-ordinating groups and individuals, mobile phones for taking photographs of what is happening and making it available to a wide global audience and satellite television for instant global reporting of events.
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  • For dissident groups, all of these digital tools allow them to bring together remote and often disparate groups and give them channels to bypass the conventional media, which is usually state controlled and unwilling to broadcast any news of civil unrest and opposition to the government.
  • Rapid internet interaction through Twitter and Facebook gave information to the protesters about how to counteract the security forces as they tried to disperse the protesters, maps showing locations for protest meetings and practical advice about such things as what to do when teargas is used against groups of protesters.
  • The governments in Tunisia and Egypt were very unhappy about the often brutal images of repression of the protests by government security forces and both governments tried to block the social-networking sites. In Tunisia, the effect was to increase the size of protest demonstrations and the Tunisian president, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, was forced to change his strategy. He apologized for blocking the sites and reopened them. He offered to open talks with the dissident groups but by that time it was too late to save his government. He resigned on 16 January and an interim coalition government was set up.
  • The Egyptian government’s decision to cut all communication systems, including the internet and mobile phones, on the night of 27 January was widely perceived to be a watershed moment in the overthrow of the Mubarak government.
  • Egyptian protest sympathizers were unable to watch events on their computers and televisions and joined the demonstrators in Tahrir Square instead.
  • The Mubarak government stepped down on 12 February and was replaced by a military council purporting to support democratic change.
  • China has taken much firmer control of its internet as a result of events in Arab countries, fearing a contagion effect. After an internet call for popular revolt in February, over 100 activists are reported to have ‘disappeared’.
  • There is an argument to be made that the role of technology in these events has been overstated. The frequent cry is that it was not laptops that marched on Tahrir Square but people with a common cause that they had already identified. As far as they are concerned, revolution is nothing new and the impact of the new technology in the Arab Spring has mostly been reported by people who are using the technology themselves. Its importance, they say, has been exaggerated.
  • In the Western world, Twitter is a device that is most frequently used to comment on relatively minor media or personal events, such as the behaviour of a particular celebrity. In Egypt and Tunisia its use proved to be much more political and effective – not social networking, just networking.
  • The difficulties are immense: regional poverty, tensions over the use of resources such as oil and water, religious divisions within countries, rapid population growth and, more threatening than any of those, relationships between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
gerellmalazarte

Facebook draws fire from privacy advocates over ad changes - The Washington Post - 1 views

  • Facebook came under fire Thursday from privacy advocates who say that changes to its ad network mark an unprecedented expansion of its ability to collect users' personal data.
  • Facebook, of course, is no stranger to privacy criticism. In 2011, the company settled charges with the FTC over changes to its privacy policy
  • "It's true that everybody is doing all of this, and that's how the system works," Chester said. "But this is unprecedented. Given Facebook's scale, this is a dramatic expansion of its spying on users."
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  • In its announcement Thursday, the company said that it will follow competitors in joining the Digital Advertising Alliance and adopting that organization's central tools to let users opt out of data collection for ads.
  • He said that Facebook, in particular, has become skilled at reading what people understand about online privacy and figuring out how to gradually expand its data collection efforts in ways that will tamp down criticism.
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