Spotlights On Our Global Village As A New Society
New Study: Liberals More Open Than Conservatives By Ari Melber Many liberal blogs, it turns out, were created with platforms to host multiple authors and share attention with guest contributors. Conservative blogs, in contrast, often use technologies highlighting a single author–while consigning guests to the digital equivalent of a newspaper’s classified section. Those are some…
Are the legal struggles faced by professional journalism today — such as copyright infringement and online aggregation issues — unique to our times? What are the historical precedents and origins for these challenges, and how might we pave a better path forward? Joshua Benton — Director, Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University — addresses the…
In recent years Internet-based campaigns–efforts that often blossom on bulletin boards and blogs in hours or days–have pressured the Chinese government to release prisoners, launch investigations into scandals such as the kidnapping of boys conscripted into slave labor, and imprison corrupt government officials. “The Internet has empowered the Chinese people more than the combined effects…
OIL continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico on Monday as the authorities waited to see if the quickest possible method of stopping the leaks would bring an end to what was threatening to become an environmental disaster. Remote-controlled robots operating 5,000 feet under the ocean’s surface were more than a full day into…
A Spaniard and a South Korean are vying to become the first woman to conquer the world’s 14 highest mountains. In 1986, Italy’s Reinhold Messner became the first person to climb the world’s 14 highest mountain peaks. Now, two women in Europe are battling it out to become the first woman ever to achieve the…
British scientist Stephen Hawking has warned mankind against making alien contact, saying “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.” He also imagined that “Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they…
Hue and cry about the Library of Congress acquiring the Twitter archive, dating back to its origins in 2006, has shown that we continue to stubbornly believe two myths about social networking. First, that it is private. Second, that it is trivial. Social-networking sites seem to have a curiously alcoholic effect on users. We approach…
But, if we don’t all have helicopter packs, how will we fight the barbarians at the gate Earlier this month, Kevin Zero, of Grinding fame, wrote Your Jetpack (Cannibal Futures), an excellent rant on the old “Where’s my fucking jetpack?” trope that called on people to stop sitting around and actually build their own future….
FACEBOOK FACTS More than 400 million active users Average user has 130 friends 70% of users outside the US Facebook set out its stall to unseat Google and be at the heart of the web experience as it becomes more social. The world’s largest social network unveiled a series of products at its developer conference…