Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Hackerville: How a Remote Town in Romania Has Become Cybercrime Central

Three hours outside Bucharest, Romanian National Road 7 begins a gentle ascent into the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps. Meadowlands give way to crumbling houses with chickens in the front yard, laundry flapping on clotheslines. But you know you’ve arrived in the town of Râmnicu Vâlcea when...

February 14th, 2011 | Social Insight | Read More

The AI Revolution Is On

Diapers.com warehouses are a bit of a jumble. Boxes of pacifiers sit above crates of onesies, which rest next to cartons of baby food. In a seeming abdication of logic, similar items are placed across the room from one another. A person trying to figure out how the products were shelved could well conclude...

January 31st, 2011 | Science & Technology | Read More

Wikileaks’ aim to defeat “Authoritarian Conspiracy”

The following is an interesting analysis (by ‘zunguzungu’) of a text by Wikileaks leader Julian Assange, probably written around 2006. See the paper: State and Terrorist Conspiracies For additional analysis, see here. By Michel Bauwens for the P2P Foundation Analysis: (nearly quoted in full) “Most...

December 14th, 2010 | Social Insight | Read More

Geek Power

“It’s funny in a way”, says Bill Gates, relaxing in an armchair in his office. “When I was young, I didn’t know any old people. When we did the microprocessor revolution, there was nobody old, nobody. It’s weird how old this industry has become.” The Microsoft cofounder and I, a couple...

May 1st, 2010 | Science & Technology | Read More

The Future of War

Cyber-war – the way of the future? Governments are increasingly preparing themselves for an internet-based attack on their essential service infrastructure, say security experts Jonathan Richards from the Times Online The prospect of inter-governmental cyber-war was something for which...

March 18th, 2010 | Science & Technology | Read More

Drugs & the Internet: Cyberdellic (R)evolution

This is a transcript of a talk by Charlotte Walsh at Retox Seminar earlier this month: Drugs & the Internet are inextricably and symbiotically entwined. Indeed, the very origins of the Internet are bound up with the exuberant experimentation with psychedelic drugs that took place in Silicon Valley...

February 4th, 2010 | Science & Technology | Read More

Google to end censorship in China over cyber attacks

Google, the world’s leading search engine, has thrown down the gauntlet to China by saying it is no longer willing to censor search results on its Chinese service. The internet giant said the decision followed a cyber attack it believes was aimed at gathering information on Chinese human rights...

January 18th, 2010 | Social Insight | Read More

The dark side of the internet

In the ‘deep web’, Freenet software allows users complete anonymity as they share viruses, criminal contacts and child pornography Fourteen years ago, a pasty Irish teenager with a flair for inventions arrived at Edinburgh University to study artificial intelligence and computer science....

January 14th, 2010 | Science & Technology | Read More

Second Lives – What attracts so many to live Virtual Lives?

You can live there, have a job, get married, get paid, go shopping… In fact the only difference between Second Life and your nine-to-five existence is that it all goes on in a virtual world, run on computers and accessed via the internet.For a staggering 26 million people virtual worlds are...

December 17th, 2009 | Social Insight | Read More

The World of Professional Gaming

I came across this documentary on professional video game players or “cyber-athletes” as they like to call themselves. I thought it was an interesting insight into the many manifestations of human obsession, the quest for social validation, and the increasing number of real opportunities...

December 15th, 2009 | Social Insight | Read More