Technology
Cal Newport describes an interesting natural experiment created by the way Facebook rolled out from one campus to the next: The authors of this paper connect a dataset containing the dates when Facebook was introduced to 775 different colleges with answers from seventeen consecutive waves of the National College Health Assessment (NCHA), a comprehensive and longstanding…
This is an amazing incident, in which YouTube cut the streams of several of its most successful, home-grown channels because they were utilizing a public video stream and were overshadowing mainstream media sources: The Rekieta Law channel, which features multiple lawyers doing real-time analysis of the trial, often beat the number of people watching the…
During a conversation with Blake Masters on a recent episode of his podcast (go to 48:40 at that link), Andrew Klavan mentioned the contra-regulation argument he sometimes hears that government is simply too slow and legislators too old and out of touch to regulate fast-moving technology. The only response Masters and Klavan offered (per my…
The perspective of a parent produces a different reaction to URI’s Media Education Lab study of “media literacy” in Rhode Island schools than the perspective of a policy theorist, although they can come together for a conclusion. An interview with lead researcher Rene Hobbs by Alexa Gagosz in The Boston Globe gives a good overview, but…
In the amazing advance of our technology comes the possibility of smart watches’ diagnosing health issues before symptoms begin, Steven Reinberg reports for HealthDay News. Keeping track of your vital stats on an ongoing basis as you go about your day (and sleep at night), you can get an early start on treatment, which can…
Jeff Bezos has recruited Star Trek legend William Shatner to give PR for his personal space program a boost. Well, I’ll take any excuse to revisit this classic performance:
Somehow, this seems at odds with the strong hand Big Tech has brought to bear against people it claims are trying to undermine elections in the United States: Following Russia’s demand that Apple and Google remove the tactical voting app, and then threats of fines, Apple and Google have dropped the “Smart Voting” app in…
Two Woonsocket residents are suing Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt with the help of the ACLU for deleting their posts on and blocking them from her Facebook page: Greg Duhamel said he was banned last November when he made a post challenging Woonsocket Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt’s attempt to claim credit for the building of a skate park.…
In a time of cultivated resentment (and leaving as a separate question whether something in our system is unjustly permitting individuals to collect monopolistic billions), we should take this as a leading edge toward the future: Two billionaires are putting everything on the line this month to ride their own rockets into space. It’s intended…
A central concern about the development of artificial intelligence is that it will depend so heavily (at least for its starting point) on the input of the people who created it. A Daily Wire article by Luke Rosiak about social-justice turmoil in the Google “Ethical AI” team provides a detail of just how short-sighted a launch…
