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markfrankel18

Angela Merkel: internet search engines are 'distorting perception' | World news | The G... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-are-distorting-our-perception

TOK technology perception filter bubble

shared by markfrankel18 on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Angela Merkel has called on major internet platforms to divulge the secrets of their algorithms, arguing that their lack of transparency endangers debating culture. The German chancellor said internet users had a right to know how and on what basis the information they received via search engines was channelled to them. Speaking to a media conference in Munich, Merkel said: “I’m of the opinion that algorithms must be made more transparent, so that one can inform oneself as an interested citizen about questions like ‘what influences my behaviour on the internet and that of others?’. “Algorithms, when they are not transparent, can lead to a distortion of our perception, they can shrink our expanse of information.”
Lawrence Hrubes

Maya Angelou and the Internet's Stamp of Approval - The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...he-internets-stamp-of-approval

arts poetry internet media errors misinformation

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • his week, the United States Postal Service came in for a full news cycle’s worth of ridicule after it was&nbsp;pointed out, by the Washington&nbsp;Post, that the agency’s new Maya Angelou stamp featured a quotation that the late poet and memoirist didn’t write. The line—“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song”—has been widely attributed to Angelou. And it seems like something she might have written, perhaps as a shorthand explanation for the title of her most famous book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” But the line, in a slightly different form, was originally published in a poetry collection from 1967 called “A Cup of Sun,” by Joan Walsh Anglund. The&nbsp;Post&nbsp;reported this on Monday. By Tuesday, when such luminaries as First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey stood onstage in front of a giant reproduction of the Angelou stamp at the official unveiling, everyone knew that the words behind them belonged to someone else. According to the U.S.P.S., more than&nbsp;eighty million Angelou stamps were produced, and there are no plans to retract them. <!doctype html>div,ul,li{margin:0;padding:0;}.abgc{height:15px;position:absolute;right:16px;text-rendering:geometricPrecision;top:0;width:15px;z-index:9010;}.abgb{height:100%;}.abgc img{display:block;}.abgc svg{display:block;}.abgs{display:none;height:100%;}.abgl{text-decoration:none;}.cbc{background-image: url('http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/images/x_button_blue2.png');background-position: right top;background-repeat: no-repeat;cursor:pointer;height:15px;right:0;top:0;margin:0;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:16px;z-index:9010;}.cbc.cbc-hover {background-image: url('http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/images/x_button_dark.png');}.cbc > .cb-x{height: 15px;position:absolute;width: 16px;right:0;top:0;}.cb-x > .cb-x-svg{background-color: lightgray;position:absolute;}.cbc.cbc-hover > .cb-x > .cb-x-svg{background-color: #58585a;}.cb-x > .cb-x-svg > .cb-x-svg-path{fill : #00aecd;}.cbc.cbc-hover > .cb-x > .cb-x-svg > .cb-x-svg-path{fill : white;}.cb-x > .cb-x-svg > .cb-x-svg-s-path{fill : white;} .ddmc{background:#ccc;color:#000;padding:0;position:absolute;z-index:9020;max-width:100%;box-shadow:2px 2px 3px #aaaaaa;}.ddmc.left{margin-right:0;left:0px;}.ddmc.right{margin-left:0;right:0px;}.ddmc.top{bottom:20px;}.ddmc.bottom{top:20px;}.ddmc .tip{border-left:4px solid transparent;border-right:4px solid transparent;height:0;position:absolute;width:0;font-size:0;line-height:0;}.ddmc.bottom .tip{border-bottom:4px solid #ccc;top:-4px;}.ddmc.top .tip{border-top:4px solid #ccc;bottom:-4px;}.ddmc.right .tip{right:3px;}.ddmc.left .tip{left:3px;}.ddmc .dropdown-content{display:block;}.dropdown-content{display:none;border-collapse:collapse;}.dropdown-item{font:12px Arial,sans-serif;cursor:pointer;padding:3px 7px;vertical-align:middle;}.dropdown-item-hover{background:#58585a;color:#fff;}.dropdown-content > table{border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;}.dropdown-content > table > tbody > tr > td{padding:0;}Ad covers the pageStop seeing this ad.feedback_container {width: 100%;height: 100%;position: absolute;top:0;left:0;display: none;z-index: 9020;background-color: white;}.feedback_page {font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;;font-size: 13px;margin: 16px 16px 16px 16px;}.feedback_title {font-weight: bold;color: #000000;}.feedback_page a {font-weight: normal;color: #3366cc;}.feedback_description {color: #666666;line-height: 16px;margin: 12px 0 12px 0;}.feedback_closing {color: #0367ff;line-height: 16px;margin: 12px 0 12px 0;}.feedback_logo {position: absolute;right: 0;bottom: 0;margin: 0 12px 9px 0;}.feedback_logo img {height: 15px;}.survey_description {color: #666666;line-height: 17px;margin: 12px 0 10px 0;}.survey {color: #666666;line-height: 20px;}.survey_option input {margin: 0;vertical-align: middle;}.survey_option_text {margin: 0 0 0 5px;line-height: 17px;vertical-align: bottom;}.survey_option:hover {background-color: lightblue;cursor: default;}It&amp;#39;s gone. UndoWhat was wrong with this ad?InappropriateRepetitiveIrrelevantThanks for the feedback! BackWe’ll review this ad to improve your
markfrankel18

Internet Makes Hypochondria Worse - 1 views

www.webmd.com/...ernet-makes-hypochondria-worse

TOK technology psychology

shared by markfrankel18 on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Thanks to the Internet, becoming a hypochondriac is much easier than it used to be. The easy availability of health information on the web has certainly helped countless people make educated decisions about their health and medical treatment, but it can be disastrous for people who are likely to worry. Hypochondriacs researching an illness used to have to scour books and ask doctors for information. Now a universe of information is available with a few mouse clicks. "For hypochondriacs, the Internet has absolutely changed things for the worse," says Brian Fallon, MD, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and the co-author of Phantom Illness: Recognizing, Understanding and Overcoming Hypochondria (1996). So far, no studies have been conducted on just how hypochondriacs use the Internet, Fallon says. But the phenomenon is common enough to have a snappy name -- "cyberchondria."
markfrankel18

Timeline Outline View : HistoryofInformation.com - 1 views

www.historyofinformation.com/index.php

TOK information timeline

shared by markfrankel18 on 29 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • markfrankel18 on 29 Jul 14
     
    While the explosion of information resulting from the Internet is undoubtedly compounding an old problem, the Internet has also brought us new tools to explore both the rapidly expanding universe of information and the history of information. Using these new tools, HistoryofInformation.com is designed to help you follow the development of information and media, and attitudes about them, from the beginning of records to the present.
markfrankel18

How an Archive of the Internet Could Change History - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rnet-could-change-history.html

TOK history

shared by markfrankel18 on 26 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Building an archive has always required asking a couple of simple but thorny questions: What will we save and how? Whose stories are the most important and why? In theory, the internet already functions as a kind of archive: Any document, video or photo can in principle remain there indefinitely, available to be viewed by anyone with a connection. But in reality, things disappear constantly.
  • But there’s still a low-grade urgency to save our social media for posterity — and it’s particularly urgent in cases in which social media itself had a profound influence on historic events.
  • Social media might one day offer a dazzling, and even overwhelming, array of source material for historians. Such an abundance presents a logistical challenge (the total number of tweets ever written is nearing half a trillion) as well as an ethical one (will people get to opt out of having ephemeral thoughts entered into the historical record?). But this plethora of new media and materials may function as a totally new type of archive: a multidimensional ledger of events that academics, scholars, researchers and the general public can parse to generate a more prismatic recollection of history.
markfrankel18

English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet - Megan Garber - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...281601

TOK language because

shared by markfrankel18 on 05 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Linguists are recognizing the delightful evolution of the word "because."&nbsp;
  • he word "because," in standard English usage, is a subordinating conjunction, which means that it connects two parts of a sentence in which one (the subordinate) explains the other. In that capacity, "because" has two distinct forms. It can be followed either by&nbsp;a finite clause (I'm reading this because [I saw it on the web]) or by a prepositional phrase (I'm reading this because [of the web]). These two forms are, traditionally, the only ones to which "because" lends itself. I mention all that ... because language. Because evolution. Because there is another way to use "because." Linguists are calling it&nbsp;the "prepositional-because." Or the "because-noun." You probably know it better, however, as explanation by way of Internet—explanation that maximizes efficiency and irony in equal measure.&nbsp;I'm late because YouTube. You're reading this because procrastination.&nbsp;As the language writer Stan Carey&nbsp;delightfully sums it up: "'Because' has become a preposition, because&nbsp;grammar."&nbsp;
markfrankel18

What it feels like to be the last generation to remember life before the internet - Quartz - 0 views

qz.com/...ember-life-before-the-internet

TOK technology internet

shared by markfrankel18 on 21 Aug 14 - No Cached
sleggettisp liked it
  • Harris takes a different&nbsp;path from those that have come before. Instead of&nbsp;a broad investigation into the effects on constant connectivity on human behaviour, Harris looks at a very specific demographic: people born before 1985, or the very opposite of the “millennial” demographic coveted by advertisers and&nbsp;targeted by new media outlets.
  • It was neither better nor worse than the world we live in today.&nbsp;Like technology, it just was.
  • That means being able to notice things like the&nbsp;reduction of interactions to numbers, and how that translates into quantifications of human worth.&nbsp;“I think it has to do with this&nbsp;notion&nbsp;of online accountability. That is,&nbsp;noticing that you actually count seems to be related to a sense of self worth,” he says over the phone from Toronto, where he is based. “So it’s like if a tweet gets&nbsp;retweeted&nbsp;a couple of hundred times, that must mean&nbsp;that my&nbsp;thoughts are worthy. If my Facebook photo is ‘liked,’ that must mean I am good looking. One of the things that concerns me about a media diet that is overly online, is that we lose the&nbsp;ability&nbsp;to decide for ourselves what we think about who we are.” +
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Instead of wondering what should I do, we wonder what did I miss.
markfrankel18

The Internet, where languages go to die? | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...nternetdigitaldivideicann.html

TOK language internet

shared by markfrankel18 on 18 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Forget the triumphant universalism of the Web; 95 percent of languages have almost no presence online
  • What few acknowledge is that the online world — when compared with offline, analog diversity — is very nearly a monoculture, an echo chamber where the planet’s few dominant cultures talk among themselves. English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and just a handful of other languages dominate digital communication. Thanks to their sheer size and to the powerful official and commercial forces behind them, the populations that speak and write these languages can plug in, develop the necessary tools and assume that their languages will follow them into an ever-expanding range of virtual realms.
Michael Peters

Internet Archive: About IA - 0 views

archive.org/about

Internet Archive digital archiving preservation

shared by Michael Peters on 28 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Michael Peters on 28 Apr 15
     
    The leading independent non-profit organisation dedicated to digital preservation.
Lawrence Hrubes

A world empire by other means - www.economist.com - 0 views

www.readability.com/...e1prrjxq

TOK language English globalization protectionism extinction

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 23 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 23 Dec 13
     
    "IT IS everywhere. Some 380m people speak it as their first language and perhaps two-thirds as many again as their second. A billion are learning it, about a third of the world's population are in some sense exposed to it and by 2050, it is predicted, half the world will be more or less proficient in it. It is the language of globalisation-of international business, politics and diplomacy. It is the language of computers and the Internet. It is now the global language. How come? Not because English is easy."
markfrankel18

The Emerging Global Web - 0 views

kottke.org/...the-emerging-global-web

TOK economics technology

shared by markfrankel18 on 22 May 14 - No Cached
  • This slideshow on The Emerging Global Web shows how people in the rest of the world, particularly in countries with emerging economies, use the internet. Talks about things like selling sheep on Instagram, mobile-only internet use, online marketplaces in China like Tmall, a Chinese eBay for services, lifestyle bloggers as retailers, and mobile-only banking and payments.
markfrankel18

When Big Ideas Go Bad - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

www.chronicle.com/...238544

TOK science bias psychology

shared by markfrankel18 on 10 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • So how did arguably the most popular idea on the internet end up on the scientific ash heap? For that matter, how could such questionable research migrate from a journal to a viral video to a best seller, circulating for years, retweeted and forwarded and praised by millions, with almost no pushback? The answer tells us something about the practice and promotion of science, and also how both may be changing for the better.
markfrankel18

PLOS ONE: Digital Language Death - 0 views

www.plosone.org/...10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0077056

TOK language internet

shared by markfrankel18 on 18 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today, some 2,500 are generally considered endangered. Here we argue that this consensus figure vastly underestimates the danger of digital language death, in that less than 5% of all languages can still ascend to the digital realm. We present evidence of a massive die-off caused by the digital divide.
markfrankel18

Where Time Comes From - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...where-time-comes-from

TOK time science

shared by markfrankel18 on 14 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The time that ends up on your smartphone—and that synchronizes GPS, military operations, financial transactions, and internet communications—originates in a set of atomic clocks on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Dr. Demetrios Matsakis, Chief Scientist for USNO's Time Services, gives a tour.
markfrankel18

Whose Picture Is It, Anyway? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...renting-internet-facebook.html

TOK ethics facebook

shared by markfrankel18 on 21 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Could social media awareness be a new developmental milestone? &nbsp;And if so, is my son part of the first wave of children who are nearing adolescence, and all the social awareness that entails, to realize their parents have been posting embarrassing pictures of them online since they were minutes old?Legally, I’m well within my rights as my son’s guardian, but what about ethically? Howard Cohen, a chancellor emeritus and a professor of philosophy at Purdue University Calumet in Hammond, Ind., said that depended upon whether I agreed with the teachings of Aristotle or those of Immanuel Kant.
markfrankel18

Important kitty litter questions answered - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...o-litter-no-memes-b7bf70791175

TOK

shared by markfrankel18 on 14 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Important kitty litter questions answeredIt is a kind of clay and it is directly responsible for Internet culture
markfrankel18

The Limits of Friendship - The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...math-dunbar-number-friendships

TOK friendship psychology technology social media

shared by markfrankel18 on 08 Oct 14 - Cached
  • The Dunbar number is actually a series of them. The best known, a hundred and fifty, is the number of people we call casual friends—the people, say, you’d invite to a large party.
  • On an even deeper level, there may be a physiological aspect of friendship that virtual connections can never replace. This wouldn’t surprise Dunbar, who discovered his number when he was studying the social bonding that occurs among primates through grooming. Over the past few years, Dunbar and his colleagues have been looking at the importance of touch in sparking the sort of neurological and physiological responses that, in turn, lead to bonding and friendship. “We underestimate how important touch is in the social world,” he said.
  • So what happens if you’re raised from a young age to see virtual interactions as akin to physical ones? “This is the big imponderable,” Dunbar said. “We haven’t yet seen an entire generation that’s grown up with things like Facebook go through adulthood yet.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • One concern, though, is that some social skills may not develop as effectively when so many interactions exist online. We learn how we are and aren’t supposed to act by observing others and then having&nbsp;opportunities to act out our observations ourselves. We aren’t born with full social awareness, and Dunbar fears that too much virtual interaction may subvert that education. “In the sandpit of life, when somebody kicks sand in your face, you can’t get out of the sandpit. You have to deal with it, learn, compromise,” he said. “On the internet, you can pull the plug and walk away. There’s no forcing mechanism that makes us have to learn.”
markfrankel18

The Timekeeper: Behind the Scenes of Humanity's Most Accurate Atomic Clocks, Which Dict... - 0 views

www.brainpickings.org/...eeper-video-demetrios-matsakis

TOK time perception technology

shared by markfrankel18 on 24 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • In this fascinating micro-documentary, Dr. Demetrios Matsakis, chief scientist for Time Services at the U.S. Naval Observatory — the same federal agency that hired astronomer Maria Mitchell as the first woman employed by the government — takes us on a tour of the USNO’s 100 atomic clocks, where the time on your iPhone originates. Dr. Matsakis explains how these atomic clocks — which won’t fall behind or race forward by a single second in 300 million years, rendering them the most accurate measuring devices ever created by humanity — also synchronize GPS, coordinate military operations, dictate financial transactions, and orchestrate internet communication. He then peers into the future to imagine the time-accuracy that is to come, as well as the dark side of such precision.
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