This week we learn that people will completely reverse their opinion, and justify it, if they are fooled into thinking they answered a survey question differently than they actually did. Meanwhile, a fiber optic cable sends the equivalent of 5,000 HDTV movies per second, a common drug halts muscle aging in mice, and listening to music while you study and sleep could help encode memories.
Posts Tagged ‘internet’
September 28th, 2012
Friday Roundup: A Trick Reverses Opinion in Seconds, A Breakthrough Optic Cable, and Ending Muscle Aging
No Comments, All Posts, by Carter Bowles.August 26th, 2012
The TPP, Destroying the Internet and the Economy
No Comments, All Posts, Featured, by Carter Bowles.While this isn’t a political blog, every once in a while politics start to get personal. The TPP (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership) poses a threat to the Internet and the economy, and therefore, me. As a result, for completely selfish reasons, I have no choice but to step onto my soapbox once more.
March 20th, 2012
Why You Will Soon Be Seeing Ads On This Site
1 Comment, All Posts, by Carter Bowles.
Those of you who have been paying attention probably noticed that this site has been free of ads since it was first created. This will soon be changing. Before I get into why, I’d like to take some time to explain why I was opposed to ads in the first place, since that’s something I’ve never actually taken the time to elaborate on.
March 17th, 2012
Howard Rheingold On Social Media, the Intelligence of Networks, and the Skills We Need to Understand Them
No Comments, All Posts, by Carter Bowles.
Social media is everywhere now, but there was a time not so long ago that it wasn’t much more than an abstract theory. In the 1980s, a few academics theorized about virtual worlds, and Howard Rheingold was among them.
Rheingold has written extensively about the capacity of technology to act as a “mind amplifier.” His latest book, Net Smart
Between launching a book and teaching students how to set up blogs, Rheingold is a very busy man. He didn’t have a lot of time for me, but what he had to say was very intriguing.
July 20th, 2011
Fiverr – A New Economy or the Same Old Story?
No Comments, All Posts, by Carter Bowles.The call for donations that you see to your right didn’t materialize out of the ether. These images are so common that most of us dismiss them as noise, but somebody creates them. In this case, he’s a teenager who I knew only by the name of ‘AwesomeFresh.’ He did the work for only five dollars.
It occurred to me about a week ago that there was a story there.
Zach is different from the other experts I’ve interviewed. He’s not a scientist, an economist, or a psychologist. But I thought he could give me some insight into the ways that the economy could be changing as technology intersects with cultural change.
His answers proved revealing.
The trendline has taken a sharp turn off the surface of the chart.
An encyclopedia emerges where all of the writers are volunteers. It’s the biggest encyclopedia on the planet, and it’s as accurate as Britannica. A network pops up where people can download virtually all media at a moment’s notice, and at no cost (except the legal risks). Users clamor for visibility on YouTube, knowing full well that they won’t make money doing so. And the world’s youngest billionaire is living in a five bedroom rental home.
Something is going wrong here. The classical economists say that this is blatantly irrational behavior. The world’s largest encyclopedia, and the largest collection of videos on the planet, can’t be dismissed as small blips in our view of how the economy works.