In The News

Smartphone Addiction: The Slot Machine in Your Pocket

Tristan Harris July 27, 2016
Smartphones and social media by their very nature are like slot machines, enticing users to check for updates and news, explains Tristan Harris for Spiegel Online, describing intermittent variable rewards and need for social approval. The technology, like magicians, gives users the illusion of choice. “Western Culture is built around ideals of individual choice and freedom,” Harris writes. “...

Pokémon Go: Overnight Sensation Was 20 Years in the Making

Alex Hern July 25, 2016
Pokémon Go, an augmented reality computer game that aims to catch cute characters superimposed on surrounding scenery, has gone viral. Alex Hern of the Guardian profiles Dennis Crowley, whose career centers on location-based games like Pac-Manhattan, Dodgeball and Foursquare, and reminds that the game was 20 years in the making. Pokémon Go blends a popular game of the 1990s with Ingress, “a...

Want Better Cities?

Liz Stinson July 8, 2016
As the global population swelled, people have gravitated to cities. More than half the world’s population now lives in cities, compared to 3 percent in 1800, according to the United Nations. Researchers at Yale and University of Canterbury have plotted 6000 years of urbanization history in an online database with details on size of cities as well as how, when and where they emerged, reports Liz...

Why Brexit Freaks Out So Many Scientists

Michael Greshko June 28, 2016
The UK is belatedly tallying up benefits of EU membership including research support. “The decision has dismayed scientists in the United Kingdom and across Europe, as it stands to disrupt scientific funding and the United Kingdom’s stature in the European and international research communities,” writes Michael Greshko for National Geographic. The country will have a transition of two years, and...

Google Working on “Common-Sense” AI Engine at New Zurich Base

June 23, 2016
Anyone connected online has a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips, and it doesn’t take much misinformation to trip up individuals or machines. A Google research center based in Europe will focus on developing common sense for artificial intelligence as well as language and human-machine dialogue. Emmanuel Mogenet, who oversees the unit, suggests the world is entering a new era of computing. “...

The Rise of Manufacturing Marks the Fall of Globalization

Rebecca Keller June 10, 2016
The many parts of complex machinery are sourced for now from multiple countries. “Over the past century, finished products made in a single country have become increasingly hard to find as globalization – weighted a term as it is – has stretched supply chains to the ends of the Earth,” writes Rebecca Keller for Stratfor. She points out that automation, robotics and computerization will gradually...

China’s Internet Policy Offers the Wrong Kind of Lessons

Pete Hunt June 8, 2016
Authoritarians may eye China’s system of internet censorship, known as the Great Firewall, with envy, but other governments may struggle to apply the Chinese model, suggests internet policy analyst Pete Hunt. “China’s real lesson to the world, in turns out, is that maintaining cyber sovereignty is an expensive endeavor with sizable opportunity costs,” he writes for the Diplomat. “The government’s...