ThoughtVectors2014

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."

While Angelina Jolie's announcement that she had a preventive double mastectomy raised awareness of breast cancer, it did not lead to more people understanding how gene mutations actually affect breast cancer risk.

researchers noted that the risk of developing breast cancer is between 5 and 15 percent for women without the BRCA mutation.

Epithelial cell tumors start from the cells on the surface of the ovaries. These are the most common type of ovarian tumors.Germ cell tumors start in the cells that produce the eggs. They can either be benign or cancerous. Most are benign.Stromal tumors originate in the cells that produce female hormones.

t’s a truism that Facebook is the many-headed frenemy, the great underminer. We know this because science tells us so. The Human–Computer Institute at Carnegie Mellon has found that your “passive consumption” of your friends’ feeds and your own “broadcasts to wider audiences” on Facebook correlate with feelings of loneliness and even depression

Even the positive effects of Facebook can be double-edged: Viewing your profile can increase your self-esteem, but it also lowers your ability to ace a serial subtraction task.

A closer look at Facebook studies also supports an untested but tantalizing hypothesis: that, despite all the evidence, Facebook is actually not the greatest underminer at the social-media cocktail party (that you probably weren’t invited to, but you saw the pictures and it looked incredible). Facebook is not the frenemy with the most heads. That title, in fact, goes to Instagram

Ms. Greenfield concluded that "every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others." Our growing use of screen-based media, she said, has strengthened visual-spatial intelligence, which can improve the ability to do jobs that involve keeping track of lots of simultaneous signals, like air traffic control. But that has been accompanied by "new weaknesses in higher-order cognitive processes," including "abstract vocabulary, mindfulness, reflection, inductive problem solving, critical thinking, and imagination." We're becoming, in a word, shallower.

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.

ng form of wiki-surfing in particular is Path-Finding [also called 'trail-blazing' or 'railroading'], which is a form of link-surfing where the user deliberately looks for dead links or 'wipe-out pages'. Then, upon finding these links, fills in the relevant information if possible. This is a morally uplifting activity since it gives the internet user pride in the possibility that they are aiding the travels of a fellow link-surfer. As such, path-finding is encouraged in the link-surfing community.

Surfing the Internet has become a daily routine of the new generation.

The present generation especially the college students are well versed with the new technologies and their application in present networked society

Now the potential reader can access and browse the online information from the whole web while using his/her terminal at home.

The Internet has become an essential propagator of knowledge, both through free as well as paid services. The credibility of this form of education and whether it is safe, secure, and trustworthy, is usually proven through the quality and authenticity of content presented by each website. The World Wide Web has become a remarkable avenue for the academically unprivileged, to amass greater knowledge and know-how on subjects.

The Internet has become an essential propagator of knowledge, both through free as well as paid services. The credibility of this form of education and whether it is safe, secure, and trustworthy, is usually proven through the quality and authenticity of content presented by each website. The World Wide Web has become a remarkable avenue for the academically unprivileged, to amass greater knowledge and know-how on subjects.

The Internet has become an essential propagator of knowledge, both through free as well as paid services. The credibility of this form of education and whether it is safe, secure, and trustworthy, is usually proven through the quality and authenticity of content presented by each website. The World Wide Web has become a remarkable avenue for the academically unprivileged, to amass greater knowledge and know-how on subjects. The entire scope of homeschooling has expanded because of increased accessibility to videos of teachers giving lectures, showing diagrams and explaining concepts, much like a real classroom. Nonprofit organizations too have opened websites that seek volunteers and donations in order to help the ones in need. There are also sites like Wikipedia, Coursera, Babbel, Archive, and Teachertube, among others, that have dedicated themselves to the art of imparting knowledge to people of all age groups.