The End of the Web, Search, and Computer as We Know It

Gelernter, David. "The End of the Web, Search, and Computer as We Know It." Wired, February 1, 2013. 

From the article: "People ask what the next web will be like, but there won’t be a next web.

The space-based web we currently have will gradually be replaced by a time-based worldstream. It’s already happening, and it all began with the lifestream, a phenomenon that I (with Eric Freeman) predicted in the 1990s and shared in the pages of Wired almost exactly 16 years ago.

This lifestream — a heterogeneous, content-searchable, real-time messaging stream — arrived in the form of blog posts and RSS feeds, Twitter and other chatstreams, and Facebook walls and timelines. Its structure represented a shift beyond the “flatland known as the desktop” (where our interfaces ignored the temporal dimension) towards streams, which flow and can therefore serve as a concrete representation of time.

It’s a bit like moving from a desktop to a magic diary: Picture a diary whose pages turn automatically, tracking your life moment to moment … Until you touch it, and then, the page-turning stops. The diary becomes a sort of reference book: a complete and searchable guide to your life. Put it down, and the pages start turning again." Read more

The Internet of Things Has Arrived — And So Have Massive Security Issues

Rose, Andrew. "The Internet of Things Has Arrived — And So Have Massive Security Issues." Wired, January 11, 2013. 

From the article: "While not devoid of hype and hyperbole, the Internet of Things (IoT) does represent a revolution happening right now. Companies of all kinds – not just technology and telecommunications firms – are linking “things” as diverse as smartphones, cars and household appliances to industrial-strength sensors, each other and the internet. The technical result may be mundane features such as intercommunication and autonomous machine-to-machine (M2M) data transfer, but the potential benefits to lifestyles and businesses are huge." Read more

Tech and the Digital Economy 2012: A Retrospective Roundup

“Fast Track to the Future: The 2012 IBM Tech Trends Report.”IBM Center for Applied Insights, 2012.

Grush, Andrew. “TopMobile Technology Innovations of 2012.” Mobile Magazine,December 12, 2012.

  

Higginbotham, Stacey. “2012: the Year Software-DefinedNetworking Sold Out.” GigaOm, December 17, 2012.

Loshin, David. “TechnicalObjectives for High Performance Information: Broadening Data Accessibility.”Attunity Blog, December 20, 2012.

O’Brien, Matthew, Thompson, Derek, and Jordan Weissmann. “The10 Things We Learned About Business and Economics in 2012.” The Atlantic,December 14, 2012.

Hacking the Human Brain: The Next Domain of Warfare

Diggins, Chloe and Clint Arizmendi. "Hacking the Human Brain: The Next Domain of Warfare." Wired, December 11, 2012. 

From the article: "This new battlespace is not just about influencing hearts and minds with people seeking information. It’s about involuntarily penetrating, shaping, and coercing the mind in the ultimate realization of Clausewitz’s definition of war: compelling an adversary to submit to one’s will. And the most powerful tool in this war is brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies, which connect the human brain to devices.

Current BCI work ranges from researchers compiling and interfacing neural data such as in the Human Conectome Project to work by scientists hardening the human brain against rubber hose cryptanalysis to technologists connecting the brain to robotic systems. While these groups are streamlining the BCI for either security or humanitarian purposes, the reality is that misapplication of such research and technology has significant implications for the future of warfare." Read more

Smartphone Use: Good for Healthcare

Manos, Diana. "Smartphone Use: Good for Healthcare." Healthcare IT News, December 10, 2012.  

Electronic tools, including smartphones, can help patients, but the adoption of apps for healthcare is still lagging, according to a new report released by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

At a Dec. 10 report-release briefing, Janet Marchabroda, chair of the Health IT Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said smartphones have changed every aspect of American life, including the way Americans shop, travel and manage their finances. "If we could apply that use of smartphones to healthcare, great things would result, she said.

Barriers on the consumer side often include lack of awareness that the apps are out there, and more innovation is still needed in the marketplace.

See also

"Improving Quality and Reducing Costs in Healthcare: Engaging Consumers Using Electronic Tools." Bipartisan Policy Center Health Information Technology Initiative, December 2012. 

The Information Economy Report 2012

"The Information Economy Report 2012: The Software Industry and Developing Countries." The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, November 28, 2012. 

From the report: "The Information Economy Report 2012 finds that, because software is increasingly permeating societies at all levels of development and activity, it is becoming more important for countries to develop the technological capabilities needed to adopt and adapt existing software solutions, and eventually to innovate. Software and service activities represent an opportunity for developing countries, thanks to the low capital entry requirements, the sector's high-value, high-growth nature and knowledge-rich profile. Due to changes in the ICT landscape, even small-scale developers in developing countries can now participate in software development and production, for example in the area of mobile applications. The Report suggests that there is considerable room for developing countries to make better use of the software potential.

The Report introduces the concept of the national software system. It emphasizes that domestic software producers and users are greatly influenced by the quality and affordability of ICT infrastructure, access to relevant human resources and capital, the legal framework, an enabling business infrastructure, as well as by the links with software networks in the rest of the world." Read more

Cell Phone Activities 2012

Duggan, Maeve and Lee Rainie. "Cell Phone Activities 2012." Pew Internet and American Life Project, November 25, 2012.

From the report: "Fully 85% of American adults own a cell phone and now use the devices to do much more than make phone calls. Cell phones have become a portal for an ever-growing list of activities. In nationally representative phone surveys in the spring and summer, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project obtained readings on some of the most popular activities including: 1) Taking pictures (82%), 2) Sending/receiving texts (80%), 3) Accessing the Internet (56%), and 4) Sending/receiving e-mail (50%)." Read more

The World Is Not Enough: Google and the Future of Augmented Reality

Madrigal, Alexis C. "The World Is Not Enough: Google and the Future of Augmented Reality." The Atlantic, October 25, 2012.

From the article: "It is The Future. You wake up at dawn and fumble on the bedstand for your (Google) Glass. Peering out at the world through transparent screens, what do you see? 

If you pick up a book, do you see a biography of its author, an analysis of the chemical composition of its paper, or the share price for its publisher? Do you see a list of your friends who've read it or a selection of its best passages or a map of its locations or its resale price or nothing? The problem for Google's brains, as it is for all brains, is choosing where to focus attention and computational power. As a Google-structured augmented reality comes closer to becoming a product-service combination you can buy, the particulars of how it will actually merge the offline and online are starting to matter." Read more 

FTC Releases Facial Recognition Tech Guidelines

Osborne, Charlie. "FTC Releases Facial Recognition Tech Guidelines." ZDNet, October 23, 2012. 

From the article: "The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has released "best practices" guidelines for companies that use facial recognition technology.

For many of us, tagging friends on Facebook or handing over biometric information may not seem like such a big deal -- but that information, stored on servers worldwide, can sometimes border on privacy infringement. Commercially, it's no longer a rare thing for such technology to be used -- but as adoption expands, if agencies wish to protect consumer rights, guidelines at the least should be implemented.

The new FTC report, titled "Facing Facts: Best Practices for Common Uses of Facial Recognition Technologies," is aimed at guiding businesses through the murky waters of using facial recognition for innovative products, but at the same time maintaining consumer privacy and rights." Read more

See also

Federal Trade Commission. "FTC Recommends Best Practices for Companies That Use Facial Recognition Technologies." October 22, 2012. 

The Future, as Imagined by Google

Miller, Claire Cain. "The Future, as Imagined by Google." The New York Times, October 15, 2012.

From the article: "In Eric E. Schmidt’s future, his life will be a lot easier.

His bed will wake him up when he cycles out of R.E.M. sleep. A driverless car will take him to work. Returning phone calls, scheduling events and other routine tasks will be taken care of by devices using artificial intelligence. A microrobot he swallows will monitor his insides and alert his doctor if something is wrong. At night, a robot will go to parties in his place." Read more

Intelligence Agencies Turn to Crowdsourcing

Weinberger, Sharon. "Intelligence Agencies Turn to Crowdsourcing." BBC, October 10, 2012.

From the article: "Research firm Applied ResearchAssociates, has just launched a website that invites the public—meaning anyone, anywhere—to sign up and try their hand at intelligence forecasting. The website is part of an effort, sponsored by the IntelligenceAdvanced Research Projects Activity (Iarpa), to understand the potential benefits of so-called crowdsourcing for predicting future events. Crowdsourcing aims to use the “wisdom of crowds” and was popularised by projects like Wikipedia." Read more

Tipping Point? We’re Watching More Web Video on TVs Than on PCs

Kafka, Peter. "Tipping Point? We’re Watching More Web Video on TVs Than on PCs." All Things D, September 26, 2012.

From the article:  "Consumer-tracking service NPD says TV sets are now the most popular way to watch streaming video.

NPD says 45 percent of consumers report that TV is now their primary Web video screen, up from 33 percent last year. It basically swapped places with the PC, which used to account for 48 percent of viewing but now represents 31 percent."  Read more

Researcher Says Twitter Holds the Potential to Alter Public Health Policy

Goldman, Lisa. "Researcher Says Twitter Holds the Potential to Alter Public Health Policy." Personal Democracy Media, September 19, 2012.

From the report: "Mark Dredze, an assistant research professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, wrote a research paper called How Social Media Will Change Public Health, in which he discusses how he has used an algorithm to mine tweets for information about self medication, exercise, dental pain and smoking to augment and create new public health capabilities. " Read more

See also

Dredze, Mark. "How Social Media Will Change Public Health," IEEE Intelligent Systems, Volume 27, Number 4, p. 81-84, July-August, 2012.

 

Google News at 10: How the Algorithm Won Over the News Industry

Garber, Megan. "Google News at 10: How the Algorithm Won Over the News Industry." The Atlantic, September 20, 2012.

From the blog:  "Achieving all this through an algorithm is, of course, approximately one thousand percent more complicated than it sounds. For one thing, there's the tricky balance of temporality and authority. How do you deal, for example, with a piece of news analysis that is incredibly authoritative about a particular story without being, in the algorithmic sense, "fresh"? How do you balance personal relevance with universal? How do you determine what counts as a "news site" in the first place? How do you account for irony and cheekiness in a headline? How do you accommodate news coverage's increasing emphasis on the update as its own form of news narrative? Andre Rohe, Google News's head of engineering, summed up the challenge: "How do I take a story that has 20,000 articles, potentially, and showcase all of its variety and breadth to the user?"" Read more

Automated Prediction: Perception, Law, and Policy

Zarsky, Tal. "Automated Prediction: Perception, Law, and Policy (September 1, 2012). Communications of the ACM, Volume 55, Number 9, September 2012, p. 33-35.

From the abstract:  "Governments are now using automated prediction for a wide range of tasks, from insider trading detection to fighting and preventing violent crimes and terrorist attacks. Automated predictions are considered problematic and even frightening by a large segment of the public. This common visceral response is not always rational and accurate, yet it is backed by several relevant legal concepts. However, automated prediction deserves a closer look, given the fact that it limits the role of human discretion, and thus of hidden biases. Therefore, automated predictions might promote important social objectives, such as equality and fairness.

This short "Viewpoint" addresses the disparity between data mining's hidden benefits, and its negative perception in public opinion. It concludes that automated prediction should have a more significant role in modern government. Therefore, legal impediments blocking some of these practices should be rethought and perhaps removed." Read more