Guest Work • Jul 19, 2017 •
Ralph Holz, University of Sydney Most people have never heard of the software that makes up the machinery of the internet. Outside developer circles, its authors receive little reward for their efforts, in terms of either money or public recognition. One example is the encryption software GNU Privacy Guard (also known as GnuPG and GPG), and its authors … Read More
Sarb Johal • May 16, 2017 •
“Right now we have a health hazard to democratic functioning.” Those are the words of Professor Sam Wineberg of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University in the United States, my guest on this edition of The Psychology Report. You can listen to the original podcast here, as well as reading our conversation below. Professor … Read More
Peter Griffin • Apr 14, 2016 •
Despite the Edward Snowden revelations of mass online collection of meta data and some high profile data breaches at our own government departments, what Kiwis most fear is not snooping spies, but companies harvesting our Facebook likes and internet searches. The latest World Internet Project survey of nearly 1400 Kiwis included for the first time a set of questions about online privacy … Read More
Ken Perrott • Sep 10, 2015 •
Here are some of chemists’ pet peeves about discussion on social media and the internet in general. The list is from the article 5 simple chemistry facts that everyone should understand before talking about science posted on the blog The Logic of Science. Everyone who has attempted to discuss issues like vaccination or fluoridation with opponents will have come across these … Read More
Ken Perrott • Mar 09, 2015 •
Social media – Facebook, Twitter, etc., – are a challenge for science. Often considered frivolous or at least not serious, they are tempting to ignore. But it seems that many anti-scientific or pseudoscientific ideas a promoted by social media. What’s … Continue reading → … Read More
Ken Perrott • Jan 14, 2015 •
A recent analysis of the internet and social media illustrates the up-hill battle science and health professionals, and pro-science lay people, often face with misinformation and outright distortion of science. The authors show the problem for the case of community water fluoridation and … Continue reading → … Read More
Ken Perrott • Dec 18, 2014 •
Came across this word “doxxing” lately. According to Wikipedia it refers to “the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual.” My introduction to this new word was in a discussion of the ethics of identifying … Continue reading → … Read More
SciBooks • Sep 29, 2014 •
By Diane Owenga REVIEW: Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned from Online Dating by Paul Oyer Harvard Business Review Press 2013 The concepts underpinning micro-economics were developed by Adam Smith and others in the 18th century, from observing how auction-style commercial markets behave. In these markets price changes are the ‘invisible hand’ … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Aug 09, 2013 •
Here’s a fun attempt to represent how busy the internet is. Check it out. (Keep clicking the orange arrows.) Rather than plot data as a graph, they’ve used a mix of a grid of icons and time to convey quantity – the time it takes for the data to scroll past. It’s an interestingly dynamic … Read More
Aimee Whitcroft • May 02, 2013 •
‘I’m Paul Miller and I just spent a year without the internet. Can you tell?’ Paul Miller – tech writer for The Verge, amongst other things – has just completed a full year ‘without the internet’. On April 30th 2012,… Read more › … Read More