How Technology Makes Us Better Social Beings
Sociologist Keith Hampton believes technology and social networking affect our lives in some very positive ways.
2011 Invention Awards: A Magic Wand For Printing
In 2000, one of Europe’s largest rubber-stamp companies approached Alex Breton, an engineer from Stockholm, Sweden, for product ideas. Instead of dreaming up a new stamp, he designed the PrintBrush, an 8.8-ounce handheld gadget that uses inkjets, computer-mouse-like optics and navigation software to print uploaded images and text on any flat surface, including paper, plastic, wood and even fabric. Read entire article…
With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.
Meet the 20-cent 'cloud phone'
- ‘Cloud phones’ let groups of people share a single mobile handset
- Cloud-based software lets each person maintain a number and account
- The method is said to be more private than using multiple SIM cards
- A person can start an account with 10 or 20 cents, instead of $25 for a phone
A reminder to “Disconnect to Connect”.
(Source: youtube.com)
LIGHT POOL is a mobile phone created with just such a view in mind. In a world where time, light, sound, smell, and other senses seem to flow around you, iida’s new mobile phone creates a new presence that radiates by designing an everyday scene that is lyrical in nature. Like the sunset or mist, LIGHT POOL is intimately bound to your deepest emotions, thereby enabling you to more richly experience the feelings of everyday life.
Closing the Digital Frontier
The era of the Web browser’s dominance is coming to a close. And the Internet’s founding ideology - that information wants to be free, and that attempts to constrain it are not only hopeless but immoral - suddenly seems naive and stale in the new age of apps, smart phones, and pricing plans. What will this mean for the future of the media - and of the Web itself? Michael Hirschorn reflects on this in latest issue of The Atlantic Magazine:
“The shift of the digital frontier from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway, signals a radical shift from openness to a degree of closed-ness that would have been remarkable even before 1995.”
How telecommunications are revolutionising east Africa
Filmmaker Declan McCormack looks at how mobile phones and the internet are changing lives in east Africa
updated.
