From relationships to revolutions: seven ways Facebook has changed the world On Monday, one in seven people on Earth used Facebook – 1 billion people, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg. In a decade, the social network has transformed people’s relationships, privacy, their businesses, the news media, helped topple regimes and even changed the meaning of everyday words. “A more open and connected world is a better world. It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities, and a stronger society that reflects all of our values,” wrote Zuckerberg in the post announcing the numbers. These are just some of the ways his company changed everything – for better or worse. Facebook has changed the definition of “friend” “To friend” is now a verb. Although the meaning of the words “share” and “like” are essentially the same, Facebook has brought an entirely new weight to the terms. But unlike in real life, Facebook has no hierarchy of friendships. It doesn’t necessarily mean we see them the same way. We care less about privacy
5 things the media does to manufacture outrage. 5 things the media does to manufacture outrage. People are so sensitive these days! People are just offended by every little thing! Millennials, amirite?! Is the world more easily “outraged” than it used to be? I think maybe the media is just getting better at making us all feel like the world is little more than a collection of 7 billion whining people-organism-things. The media’s always manipulated the public, and while sometimes that’s used for large things (see: presidential campaigns), more often manipulation is just a way to find content from one day to the next (between the large things). Here’s a story about something that happened to me, and the 5 steps involved in going from innocuous comment to an “outrage narrative” providing us all with content for days to come. 1. And oh man, it’s usually something extraordinarily stupid. Earlier this year, Kayla and I were hanging out at the Sephora near the North & Clyborn red line station. So, what can we conclude? 2. 3. 4. “So, NO. 5.
Charge Your Phone With A Plant - Creative Phone Chargers Normal outlets are a tad 2015, wouldn't you say? Particularly now that there is a greener alternative to giving your cell's battery level a boost (in case you're not already charging your phone with a coffee mug). Barcelona-based firm Arkyne Technologies has created a pot called Bioo Lite, that produces electricity from a plant's natural process of photosytnehsis (cue the oohs and aahs). Don't mistake this for an 8th-grade science experiment — the technology is sophisticated and involves fancy things like organic molecular decomposition, active anaerobic microorganisms, and biological nanowires (once again: ooh, aah). Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Here's how it works: Photosynthesis uses sunshine to swap C02 and water into oxygen and organic compounds. Courtesy of Bioo The system collects electricity throughout the day and night, which Bioo Lite says it can use to charge your phone or tablet up to three times a day. Check out Bioo Lite below. h/t: Design Taxi
The Unfair Truth About How Creative People Really Succeed The other week, I was invited to a dinner hosted by a friend. Those attending included people I’ve admired for years. Halfway through the dinner, I silently asked myself, “How did I get here?” For years, I heard people talk about their influential friendships and subsequent success, and I would seethe with envy. Years later, I would discover that success is born of luck (I don’t think any honest person can dispute that). The truth is life is not fair. The good news, though, is you have more control over this than you realize. Creativity: A Systems Approach What makes a person creative? In his decades-long study of creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes what he calls a “systems approach.” The DomainThe FieldThe Individual In order for a work to be considered Creative (in the sense that it offers some kind of enduring work the world remembers), it must satisfy all three of these areas. First, an individual must master her craft in a given domain (art, science, mathematics). Networks.
Fake news. It's complicated. - First Draft News This article is available also in Deutsch, Español, Français and العربية By now we’ve all agreed the term “fake news” is unhelpful, but without an alternative, we’re left awkwardly using air quotes whenever we utter the phrase. The reason we’re struggling with a replacement is because this is about more than news, it’s about the entire information ecosystem. To understand the current information ecosystem, we need to break down three elements: The different types of content that are being created and sharedThe motivations of those who create this contentThe ways this content is being disseminated This matters. This is far more worrying than fake news sites created by profit driven Macedonian teenagers. The Different Types of Mis and Disinformation Back in November, I wrote about the different types of problematic information I saw circulate during the US election. Why is this type of content being created? Dissemination Mechanisms What can we do? We all play a crucial part in this ecosystem.
Thank you for ad blocking | a botlab.io initiative Facebook accused of censoring conservatives, report says | Technology Facebook’s trending bar deliberately suppresses conservative news, according to a new report. Facebook, now arguably the most important distributor of news online, has cultivated the idea that its bar is an impartial algorithm that responds to “likes” and gives users only what they’ve indicated they want. But in a bombshell confession on the tech blog Gizmodo, a former editor says popular conservative news would be kept off the “trending news” sidebar. “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference] or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz,” the former news curator told Gizmodo. The news started a firestorm in conservative media circles. “Facebook claims its algorithm simply populates ‘topics that have recently become popular on Facebook’ in its trending news section, but now we know that’s not true.”
Social media is protecting men from periods, breast milk and body hair | Jessica Valenti | Opinion There’s a predictable social media formula for what women’s pictures online should look like. Breasts in barely-there bikinis are good (thumbs-up emoji, even), but breasts with babies attached them are questionable. Women wearing next to nothing is commonplace, but if you’re over a size 10 your account may be banned. And now, in a controversy that once again brings together technology, art, feminism and sex, Instagram is under fire for removing a self-portrait from artist Rupi Kaur that showed a small amount of her menstrual blood. The broader message to women couldn’t be clearer: SeXXXy images are appropriate, but images of women’s bodies doing normal women body things are not. As Kaur pointed out on her Tumblr account, Instagram is filled with pictures of underage girls who are “objectified” and “pornified.” “I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in underwear but not be okay with a small leak,” she wrote.
amazon Welcome to the new feudalism – with Silicon Valley as our overlords | Evgeny Morozov | Opinion Are we facing another tech bubble? Or, to put it in Silicon Valley speak, are most unicorn startups born zombies? How you answer these questions depends, by and large, on where you stand on the overall health of the global economy. Some, like the prominent venture capitalist Peter Thiel, argue that virtually everything else – from publicly traded companies to houses to government bonds – is already overvalued. If true, this is good news for Thiel and his peers, especially at a time of negative interest rates. For several months now, Alphaville, the excellent finance blog of the Financial Times – not your typical bastion of technophobia and capitalism-bashing – has been raising concerns about Silicon Valley’s effect on the rest of the economy. How so? All these subsidies, though, make it hard to understand what the underlying goods and services cost. Think about it. If software, indeed, is eating the world, this “world” surely also includes car companies, banks, hotels, newspapers.
How did the news go ‘fake’? When the media went social The Collins Dictionary word of the year for 2017 is, disappointingly, “fake news”. We say disappointingly, because the ubiquity of that phrase among journalists, academics and policymakers is partly why the debate around this issue is so simplistic. The phrase is grossly inadequate to explain the nature and scale of the problem. (Were those Russian ads displayed at the congressional hearings last week news, for example?) But what’s more troubling, and the reason that we simply cannot use the phrase any more, is that it is being used by politicians around the world as a weapon against the fourth estate and an excuse to censor free speech. Definitions matter. Social media force us to live our lives in public, positioned centre-stage in our very own daily performances. The social networks are engineered so that we are constantly assessing others – and being assessed ourselves. We grudgingly accept these public performances when it comes to our travels, shopping, dating, and dining.
How to: Install and Update drivers in Windows 10 Windows 10 continues the tradition of hardware compatibility by providing support for a vast collection of devices available within the Windows ecosystem. Hardware detection in particular is an important part of the out of the box experience. Driver software which makes this happen, allows your hardware to function by communicating with the operating system. I recently installed Windows 10 on an HP Elitebook to see how well the most recent Windows 10 build performs. Apart from this, I had wi-fi ready, which mean, I could connect to the Internet right away. Installing drivers through Windows Update Windows Update is the premier starting point to resolve most common driver issues you might experience immediately after installing Windows 10. Simply launch it from Start > Settings > Update and Recovery and click Check for Updates or Press Windows key + R Type: ms-settings:windowsupdate Hit Enter Click Check for updates (make sure you have an active Internet connection). Press Windows key + X