After ten editions and multiple translations, Digital Planet is now officially out of print. We’re deeply grateful to all of you who joined us as we rode the waves from Computer Currents to Digital Planet.
Category: -Updates
Net neutrality has been a core principle of the Internet since the beginning, but it’s been making lots of headlines lately. The FCC has ruled that net neutrality is the law of the land—at least for now. But what does that mean for you? This Huffington Post article focuses on that question and gives clear answers.
www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/26/fcc-net-neutrality-ruling_n_6761174.html
Most of us think about video games as escapist fare. But a new genre of games, called news games, can take players deeper into real-world situations, helping them to develop an understanding of news that goes far beyond headlines. This NPR story talks about the potential impact of these games, including a USC student project called Project Syria.
This short video goes deeper into the Project and the process of creating this compelling virtual reality experience.
Malware makers are always coming up with new ways to exploit innocent computer users. One relatively new breed of malware, ransomware, encrypts files, making them effectively unusable, unless their owners pay ransom to the perpetrators. This short NPR story focuses on this very real threat.
It’s fairly well known that sitting at a desk staring at a computer all day can be hazardous to your spine (see page 86 of Digital Planet), but new research suggests that standing with your smart phone can also cause problems. This short Huffington Post piece explains why.
Drones are, in essence, flying robots, capable of carrying out all kinds of tasks, from acts of war to acts of art. This Huffington Post article focuses on the use of drones to capture video footage that would be difficult or impossible to get by conventional means.
Blackmail isn’t just for low-life con artists anymore. Digital extortion—demanding ransom in return for not doing damage to critical computer systems—has become increasingly common in recent years. This Huffington Post has details.
huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/hacker-blackmail_n_5048853.html
Don’t look now, but your phone might be a looking glass that enables you to peer into a unique, irresistible fantasy world. Technologists and artists at Google and Motorola just introduced Windy Day, a free virtual reality interactive story that may represent a whole new form of narrative storytelling. And if you own a Moto X phone, it’s yours for free. Steven Levy tells the story behind the story in this Wired article.
wired.com/business/2013/10/motorola-google-mouse
IBM’s Watson hasn’t been sitting on its circuits since it won the special Jeopardy! championship game in 2011. This Wired article describes how doctors are putting Watson to work as an expert advisor to help them diagnose cancer and save lives.
wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-medical-doctor
If you’re reading this, take a moment to thank Doug Engelbart. At a time when computers were big, expensive, isolated, finicky, and terribly difficult to program and use, this unassuming genius had a vision of a digital future that was so far ahead of its time that few of his peers took it seriously. He is widely credited with inventing the mouse, but that’s just a tiny part of his grand vision. Graphical user interfaces, interactive computing, the Internet, and more, owe their existence at least in part to Engelbart’s visionary work. Thank you, Doug.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/technology/douglas-c-engelbart-inventor-of-the-computer-mouse-dies-at-88.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&smid=tw-share