FreedomBox Foundation How Social Media Is Having a Positive Impact On Our Culture [OPINION] This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication. Josh Rose is the EVP, digital creative director of ad agency Deutsch LA, who -- when time permits -- moonlights as a photographer. Follow him at @joshrose. Two events today, although worlds apart, seem inextricably tied together. First, on my way to go sit down and read the newspaper at my coffee shop, I got a message from my 10-year-old son, just saying good morning and letting me know he was going to a birthday party today. The amount of calming satisfaction it gives me to be able to communicate with him through technology is undeniably palpable and human. I guess one man’s TMI is another man’s treasure. Moments later, I sat down and opened the paper. The Paradox of Online Closeness I recently asked the question to my Facebook friends: “Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare … is all this making you feel closer to people or farther away?” It is confusing. Filling in the Space With Connections
If the FCC had regulated the Internet: A counterfactual history of cyberspace. - By Jack Shafer The Federal Communications Commission recently issued new rules regulating the Internet—even though it doesn't appear to have such powers. A federal court gangster-slapped the commission last year, accusing it of regulatory overreach for attempting to dictate Internet policy to service providers. These new regulations got me to thinking of where we would be today if the FCC had regulated the Internet from the get-go. … In January 1993, idle regulators at the FCC belatedly discover the burgeoning world of online services. The FCC ignores the standalone Internet because nobody but academics, scientists, and some government bodies go there. "Regulating the Internet would make as much sense as regulating inter-office mail at Michigan State University," says the FCC chairman. The online companies protest and vow to sue the FCC, but the heavily Democratic Congress moots the suits by passing new legislation giving the commission oversight of the online world.
The Computer as a Communication Device This landmark 1968 essay foresaw many future computer applications and advances in communication technology, such as distributed information resources and online interactive communities that are commonplace today as Internet chat rooms and peer-to-peer applications. Originally published in Science and Technology, April 1968. Published on KurzweilAI.net November 9, 2001. In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. That is a rather startling thing to say, but it is our conclusion. We shall talk more about the mechanics of the meeting later; it is sufficient to note here that we were all in the same room. Our emphasis on people is deliberate. But to communicate is more than to send and to receive. To the people who telephone an airline flight operations information service, the tape recorder that answers seems more than a passive depository. Such a medium is at hand–the programmed digital computer.
Nearly Half of Americans Use Facebook; Only 7% Use Twitter [STUDY] Open University of Catalonia "The popular uprisings in the Arab world perhaps constitute the most important internet-led and facilitated change" The spontaneous social movements in Tunisia and Egypt have caught political analysts on the hop. As a sociologist and communication expert, were you surprised by the ability of the network society in these two countries to mobilise itself? No, not really. Could we consider these popular uprisings as a new turning point in the history and evolution of the internet or should we analyse them as a logical, albeit extremely important, consequence of the implementation of the Net in the world? These popular insurrections in the Arab world constitute a turning point in the social and political history of humanity. Young Egyptians have played a key role in the popular uprisings, thanks to the use of new technology. This figure is already out-of-date. It doesn't. For some years now, Islamic fundamentalist movements have used new technology to promote their causes.
If you build it, they won’t come (unless…) (Editor’s note: Jason Cohen is an angel investor and the founder of Smart Bear Software. This story originally appeared on his blog.) Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he’ll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun. Then he’ll describe his cutting-edge platform — cloud-based, scalable, distributed version control, continuous integration, one-click-deploy. Maybe you’ll even get a wobbly demo.”Great,” I always exclaim, sharing the thrill of modern software development, “so how will people find out about this brilliant website?” Four uncomfortable seconds later, a smile breaks across the founder’s face. Except the “strategy” is a tirade of drivel I’ve heard so many times I can lip-sync as the words spew out the founder’s mouth: “We’re going to A/B-test AdWords campaigns until we discover our hook.” The obvious problem is that every new startup on Earth says exactly these things. “We’ll have a website so people can read about us.”
Why Not Call It A Facebook Revolution? Tunisians filled the streets with the help of Twitter. Egypt's protests were coordinated on Facebook pages like that of Internet activist Wael Ghonim. Libyan dissenters spread the word about their "day of rage" last week the same way. "People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented," the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell opined on February 2. True enough — and utterly irrelevant. Yes, of course, technology alone doesn't make revolutions; the will of the people is the most vital ingredient.
Internet Growth | Web Traffic | Brazil Please support our site by enabling javascript to view ads. RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — The harried mother had little wish to visit an internet cafe with two squirmy boys in tow, but she said there was no choice. New to this potholed neighborhood on the city’s northern edge, Fabina da Silva, 31, needed to enroll her sons in school. Registering online was the only way. “If it wasn’t a necessity, I wouldn’t be here,” da Silva said on a recent afternoon as her 6-year-old, Lucas, thumped his toy Sponge Bob on the mouse pad beside her. Brazil has long been a bellwether nation for emerging-market internet trends and it’s riding a wave that will soon sweep the globe. And whether those newcomers are getting online for fun or because they must, they’re doing so en masse. But internet trend-watchers say there’s more at stake than the emergence of a worldwide class of digital consumers. “Potentially explosive” is how Marcos Aguiar describes the growth.
Electronic negotiation An electronic communication network (ECN) is a financial term for a type of computer system that facilitates trading of financial products outside of stock exchanges. An ECN is generally an electronic system that widely disseminates orders entered by market makers to third parties and permits the orders to be executed against in whole or in part.The primary products that are traded on ECNs are stocks and currencies. ECNs are generally passive computer-driven networks that internally match limit orders and charge a very small per share transaction fee (often a fraction of a cent per share).[1] The first ECN, Instinet, was created in 1969. ECNs increase competition among trading firms by lowering transaction costs, giving clients full access to their order books, and offering order matching outside of traditional exchange hours.[citation needed] ECNs are sometimes also referred to as alternative trading systems or Alternative Trading Networks. Function[edit] Negotiation types[edit]
HOW TO: Use QR Codes for Event Marketing Matthias Galica is CEO of ShareSquare. Via a self-serve mobile web app CMS and QR codes, the ShareSquare platform enhances real world promotions for artists, agencies & brands. Mashable readers can sign up for the private beta for free by clicking here. Nearly every year since 1994 has been hyped as the year that QR codes pierce the mainstream, but in 2011 the hubbub is finally reaching a fever pitch. This is thanks to a confluence of factors: Critical mass in smartphone penetration, a large installed base of many barcode-scanning apps, and an approaching social tipping point of awareness. Combine this with the fact that enhancing real world promotions in music, film and brand marketing is among the best applications of this technology, and next month’s SXSW has the potential to be the breakout event for QR codes in America. Unfortunately, many well-intentioned early adopters will waste the opportunity by not delivering enough value or making some very simple mistakes. Brands and Sponsors
The internet: is it changing the way we think? | Technology | The Observer Every 50 years or so, American magazine the Atlantic lobs an intellectual grenade into our culture. In the summer of 1945, for example, it published an essay by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineer Vannevar Bush entitled "As We May Think". It turned out to be the blueprint for what eventually emerged as the world wide web. Two summers ago, the Atlantic published an essay by Nicholas Carr, one of the blogosphere's most prominent (and thoughtful) contrarians, under the headline "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". "Over the past few years," Carr wrote, "I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. The title of the essay is misleading, because Carr's target was not really the world's leading search engine, but the impact that ubiquitous, always-on networking is having on our cognitive processes. But just because fears recur doesn't mean that they aren't valid.
Linking the Real World to the Web: 3 Emerging Technologies Compared Hamilton Chan is CEO of Paperlinks and Paperspring. Through its iPhone app (previously featured as the #1 New & Noteworthy free app in the iTunes store) and QR web platform, Paperlinks makes context sensitive marketing plug-and-play for small, medium and large businesses. No longer tied to a desktop browser, we now demand access to a broad range of information anytime and anywhere via our smartphones. This has created the opportunity for new technologies to facilitate our connections between the physical world and the digital one. In the past few years, three different technologies have emerged enabling such real-world linking through the capabilities of our smartphones: quick response (QR) codes, near field communication (NFC) tags, and visual recognition technology. QR codes, NFC and visual recognition technology each pose individual advantages and shortcomings that the savvy marketer must understand in order to leverage them properly. Quick Response (QR) Codes Paying for a latte?