In The News

Tear Down This Cyberwall!

Nicholas D. Kristof June 23, 2009
As the election-related violence in Iran continues, help for some opponents of the current regime has come from an unlikely source: China, or more accurately Chinese living abroad. “Censorship-evading” software that helped the Falun Gong movement to spread its message is being used by close to 400,000 Iranians wishing to inform the rest of the world about the crisis currently gripping their...

Coping With Digital Revolution: China Offers Green Dam, Iran Faces Neda

Guobin Yang June 23, 2009
The global response to China’s filtering software Green Dam Youth Escort and the Iranian election are not only proof of the power of the internet as a democratic form of communication, but also as a lever for democracy itself. Columbia Professor Guobin Yang shows how. The Green Dam software program that the Chinese government is requiring all computers to carry starting July 1 is facing intense...

Irish Student Hoaxes World's Media with Fake Quote

Shawn Pogatchnik May 12, 2009
Making up fake quotes may once have been considered a school boy prank. Today, when those quotes are posted on the world’s foremost online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and then are incorrectly attributed by numerous online news services, it becomes an experiment in how globalization monitors itself. A Dublin university student posted a fake quote of composer and conductor Maurice Jarre on Wikipedia...

How the Mobile Phone in Your Pocket is Helping to Pay for the Civil War in Congo

Mike Pflanz November 14, 2008
An abundance of rare minerals bless and curse the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Raw columbium-tantalite ore, commonly known as coltan, is ground to make a heat- resistant powder used in capacitors for mobile telephones and other electrical devices, reports Mike Phlanz. The bulk of the world’s supply is inside war-torn Congo. “The links between Congo's vast riches and its blood-stained...

FCC Vote on "White Spaces" to Be Delayed?

Cyrus Farivar October 28, 2008
Besides the presidential election, November 4 marks another big vote in the US, with the Federal Communications Commission set to decide whether to open its white space – unused space between channels that produces static on televisions – for unlicensed use that could potentially allow universal broadband access throughout the US. The amount of white space will increase after the US moves to...

Diagnosing at a Distance

Margot Cohen September 10, 2008
The poor are often the last to benefit from technological leaps in health care. But trained physicians and technological advances combined with the presence of a large number of poor dispersed throughout the Indian countryside could usher in changes for health-care delivery. Rapidly declining costs of satellite and internet connections allow caregivers to use telemedicine and reach more patients...

A Book Too Hot Off The Presses

Michelle Boorstein August 25, 2008
After the 9/11 attacks, a newspaper reporter in Montana became intrigued with the history of Islam and set out to write a book about Mohammed and his wives. During the course of her research, she became convinced that the Prophet “supported more rights for women than do many of his modern followers,” writes Michelle Boorstein for the Washington Post. The book, “The Jewel of Medina, is a...